BTW this extreme privileges that writers, singers and actors get.
It's not even as if this applies to all of these kind of people. There are "staff writers", "session musicians", "extras". Who do a "job" just like everyone else. In the same way that there are individual musicians and bands who provide live entertainment, but only get paid when they do this.
Painters and sculpturers never had those, and are now fighting to have a cut of their work's re-sales.
Do freelance writers get extra money if someone orders a back issue contining their writing?
The only reason to extend after the death is to ensure that the husband/wife receives a pension and the children are supported until they can start working by themselves.
Why should the spouse/children of authors get such special treatment in the first place?
For the first part, 70 years is most likely a bit excessive for most cases
If said spouse is young enough for 70 years not to be excessive he or she is probably also young enough to get a job. As might be the case for many other "Stay at Homes" who were widowed.
How about: lifetime of spouse or until the youngest child is 25 years, whichever is greater. This may be difficult to administer, in that case, just make it 25 years after death and you have covered it in 95% of all cases.
Actually anything which relates to the date of death of the author is difficult to administer. Even without such complexities as several authors collaberating and use of psudonyms. The only easy to administer system one which relates to first publication/performance/broadcast.
As much as the current state of the copyright law and the public domain pisses me off, I can't help but laugh at the rationale that was presented when they extended copyright from life of the author plus 50 years to plus 70 years. They really did argue that it was necessary as an incentive for artists to produce--it wouldn't be worth it to do the work if their heirs couldn't benefit from the work that long.
It gets ever dafter when copyright is extended on works which already exist. Even if you allow for the posibility of someone using a time machine to go and convince their ancestor that copyright isn't long enough you run into a classic time travel paradox:)
Israel has been dealing for this threat on a much higher level for years.
Most other countries havn't been warzones for decades.
It's not as hassle free a solution as no security, but the wait times are substantially less, and success substantially better than America's Funniest Security Theater.
Wasn't security at Schipol provided by an Israeli company?
Which begs the question: Why do terrorists insist on blowing up airplanes?
If my goal was to instill fear and a high body count, I'd just wear an explosive ladden vest and sit in the first car of the longest passenger train that I can find
Be far more effective to deliberatly cause a derailment
OR wrap said explosives in nails and wait in line at a concert
A terrorist called David Copeland used nail bombs in london in 1999, but he wasn't a "suicide bomber" nor was Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski was known as the "Unabomber", short for "University and Airline Bomber"...
Hey, why don't we just ground all commercial planes indefinitely? That is guaranteed to stop all attacks on commercial aviation.
N.B. This would mean all commercial planes. Remember that FedEx 705 was a freighter.
That's the only way to solve the problem for good. Of course, terrorists would just move on to other targets (like they did in London and Madrid), but that's besides the point. Actually, come to think of it, how much did they beef up security in London and Madrid after the attacks? I don't doubt they did, but to the point of insanity as we're seeing in the aviation industry?
It might be more meaningful to consider what changes were made at Moscow (and other airports within the Russian Federation) after two sucessful suicide bombings of aircraft occured in August 2004. Especially if Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have not been able to make it onto a plane had he tried to at DME.
I agree, but we need to be careful about how we define "better". Security specialists will tend to define "better" as "more secure", no matter what happens to convenience or civil liberties.
Actual security specialists understand that the idea of "more secure" means less "convenience" or less "civil liberties" is a false dichotomy. This position is more likely to come from political groups or salesmen of "screening machines".
The issue with profiling is what happens to the innocent that unfortunately match a profile. They are likely to be significantly inconvenienced, and the more we trust the profiling the worse it is likely to get for the false positives.
Which actually makes things less secure. Since any group can employ operatives which do not match whatever that profle happens to be.
I think random searches will be about as effective as what is done today.
They'd probably be more effective. But more people would kick up a fuss when they saw someone "obviously not a terrorist" being searched.
Spend the money on tracking people down before they get to the airport.
It makes more sense to spend money on basic law enforcement detective work. Concentrating on aviation means that you have no chance of catching the terrorist who's planning on gunning down someone in a church.
Yet we still invest hundreds of billions of dollars, give away our rights, and piss off the international community all in an effort to reduce deaths by terrorism. If we had put that same amount of money into things like high speed rail, improved roads, or enforcing drunk driving laws, we could have saved many more lives.
Probably also by having more traffic cops, better driver training, taking bad drivers off the road, improved public transport, etc, etc.
It's interesting that you complain about a loss of civil liberties and then use drunk driving as an example of something that needs more attention. The war on drunk driving has infringed on many of our civil liberties.
It might actually make more sense to enforce against "dangerous driving", regardless of any intoxication. The "problem" is that this requires people to make judgment calls. Whereas the likes of X amount of drug per Y volume of blood, speed of travel, passing a red light, etc can be measured by some kind of machine.
Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Even in the unlikely event that they actually gain any "safety" by doing so. Nothing in the people giving up power to the state ensures that the people will gain anything at all.
I have to wonder what the benefit of having "civil liberties" is if the end result is being killed by a terrorist attack
In terms of causes of death terrorists attacks rank along with "freak accidents".
Being alive is a prerequisite to enjoying civil liberties, so being dead means being unable to enjoy them. We should be preserving life now, as the most important first step, and we can focus on preserving our civil liberties later since we'll still be alive to fight for them.
If that were the aim you'd start with adressing the leading causes of death. e.g. spend more on traffic cops...
When even the Supreme Court doesn't hold up the constitution as a valid basis there is not much that we can do except for revolt - but even if you get a critical mass to do that, they'll just stick the army on you or use near-lethal weaponry.
The issue of exactly what can cause a revolt is somewhat chaotic. As is how armed forces will react. Consider that China had to bring in troops from a completly different part of the country to deal with the Tianaman Square protest.
This is exactly why we protect our civil liberties. A lot of people are willing to hand over exceptional rights to the government to make them safe from terrorism.
It wouldn't be too bad if it were possible for people to hand over just their own rights. The problem comes when they expect even those who don't agree with them to hand over their rights. Even some of those who advocate loudest arn't actually handing over any rights.
The reason we don't do that is because the government abuses our rights.
Even if it actually "worked" in terms of reducing terrorism there are several orders of magnitude more corrupt public officials than there are terrorists. (Even before considering that the "War on Terror" is only intersted in a minority of terrorists.)
Proponents for strong government say it's a slippery slope argument, fortunately, we now have the evidence of wrong-doing to point back and show why rights need to be protected, and people responsible for abusing those rights should be severely prosecuted.
There's also very little historical evidence for "strong government" actually doing much to improve public safety anyways.
The ECPA provides for a jail sentence of up to 5 years per violation, and I would like to see prosecutors pursue significant jail sentences for the "senior FBI managers up to the assistant director level" that approved the procedures for emergency requests, particularly for those who did so "for two years after bureau lawyers raised concerns and an FBI official began pressing for changes."
Sounds like they may have broken quite a few other laws, which could have much longer sentences attached.
And if 5 years in jail seems excessive, it should take a look at the penalties for growing certain plants in your back yard.
5 years rather inadequate in the case of a senior public official. Especially without a lifetime ban from ever working in law enforcement or standing for public office.
It seldom happens here anymore because of the idea of "technicalities". Certain factions in the US -- chiefly the one that, with unconscious irony, is always calling for "law and order" -- have brainwashed large portions of the public into believing that the law doesn't or at least shouldn't matter in cases where the outcome displeases them. When someone is acquitted because law enforcement agencies trampled all over the law during their investigation, they are regarded as "getting off on a technicality"
As opposed to an innocent person being dragged through the process of a trial. Or even public servants failing to do their job properly.
and it generally triggers a backlash against the rule of law and accusations that the courts in question are "soft on crime".
When the problem is more likely to be either the police in failing to gather evidence correctly. Or prosecutors attempting to prosecute weak cases, including for politcal reasons.
Of course, what has happened is that the courts in question are actually tough on crime even when the crimes are committed by law enforcement,
Except that they are not. Otherwise you'd expect to see police and/or prosecutors jailed for "contempt of court" every so often.
And this is what makes the copyright vs public domain issue moot. Even if everyone has the right to copy them, CBS is not a public library and is under no obligation to hand over their tapes.
If the tapes contain someone else's "intellectual property" there may well be case (even statute) laws granting access to whoever that "property" belongs to. Just because your property "encloses" someone else's property does not transfer their property rights. Including that the ability of that property to change ownership.
But if they were registered for copyright, should not a copy have been submitted to a library of record (e.g. LOC)?
This is where copyright on music and video recordings appears to be rather badly broken. Unlike books where there's a specific requirement to deposit copies with "copyright libraries". AFAIK this dosn't even happen for works produced now. Even though the awful state of movie and TV companies' archives has been known about for 30-40 years. There are plenty of works still in copyright where no copies exist.
TFA even says that they're in the public domain. The only thing stopping anyone from preserving this stuff is the fact that the only copies in existence are owned by CBS. CBS owns the medium on which these things are stored and they are perfectly within their rights, even if the constitution prohibited any sort of copyright whatsoever, to refuse to give them to anyone for any reason they damned well feel like.
How is this different from the only copy of a TV show being in the hands of a private collector whilst the TV company still holds the copyright? This is something which has actually happened quite a lot due to poor (in some cases non existant) archival practices until about 30 years ago. It's hard to see how CBS's actions can be supported without invalidating the whole concept of "intellectual property".
Doctors who treat people with excessive weight need to know the exact numbers, especially as the readings are taken mid-course. They tell the doctor how effective the drugs and methods are. Half a pound is probably an unacceptable and unjustifiable error.
Only for people who drink or excrete less than 200ml at a time:)
And should they only be able to find a single one that isn't FDA approved and certified "for medical use", they will start their happy dance because they don't have to pay and the doc has to see how to get out of that shit.
Would this "FDA" be the "Food and Drug Administration" in the USA? When the article mentions the "University of Melbourne", the only such university I am aware of is in Victoria, Australia. Australia does healthcare very differently from the US.
One of the reasons for this is that the black hats are well aware that any vulnerability they might exploit is likely to be short-lived, while if they just focus on MSIE, they are likely to get a much longer window of opportunity before the holes are patched.
Not only does MSIE being "folded into" the OS make it more difficult to debug, Microsoft have also developed a policy of updates according to the calendar. Most other software tends to follow a "when needed" approach to bug fixes.
I've long held that the only answer to pervasive surveillance is to encrypt everything.
It won't stop them from cracking things that attract their attention, but for most things it won't be worth the hassle.
Encrypting only some things will draw attention to them, it can also leak information. e.g. communications between alice and bob are encrypted, but not between alice and cath... In the same way if you are going to shred documents it's a good idea to shred everything. Even try and ensure that shredded "confidential documents" are well mixed with shredded "junk documents".
This was an EXTREMELY great fear in the early to mid 90s, when the government was trying to get everyone to standardize encryption on all devices using the Clipper chip (and key escrow in general). The chip had good throughput... but it allowed for people to pull out any keys if they had access to the LEAF (law enforcement access field).
Which makes it "broken by design"
The algorithm was classified secret, and the chips were made in one factory, then moved to another factory where the algorithm was slapped on, before being shipped out
Funny thing, the cypherpunks were right. As soon as the algorithm was declassified, it was ripped apart in several days, and laid to rest months later.
The idea that encryption with secret "algorithms" is likely to be flawed goes back to at least the 19th century. That's before you consider if the implimentation actually follows the design.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW this extreme privileges that writers, singers and actors get.
It's not even as if this applies to all of these kind of people. There are "staff writers", "session musicians", "extras". Who do a "job" just like everyone else. In the same way that there are individual musicians and bands who provide live entertainment, but only get paid when they do this.
Painters and sculpturers never had those, and are now fighting to have a cut of their work's re-sales.
Do freelance writers get extra money if someone orders a back issue contining their writing?
The only reason to extend after the death is to ensure that the husband/wife receives a pension and the children are supported until they can start working by themselves.
Why should the spouse/children of authors get such special treatment in the first place?
For the first part, 70 years is most likely a bit excessive for most cases
If said spouse is young enough for 70 years not to be excessive he or she is probably also young enough to get a job. As might be the case for many other "Stay at Homes" who were widowed.
How about: lifetime of spouse or until the youngest child is 25 years, whichever is greater. This may be difficult to administer, in that case, just make it 25 years after death and you have covered it in 95% of all cases.
Actually anything which relates to the date of death of the author is difficult to administer. Even without such complexities as several authors collaberating and use of psudonyms.
The only easy to administer system one which relates to first publication/performance/broadcast.
As much as the current state of the copyright law and the public domain pisses me off, I can't help but laugh at the rationale that was presented when they extended copyright from life of the author plus 50 years to plus 70 years. They really did argue that it was necessary as an incentive for artists to produce--it wouldn't be worth it to do the work if their heirs couldn't benefit from the work that long.
:)
It gets ever dafter when copyright is extended on works which already exist. Even if you allow for the posibility of someone using a time machine to go and convince their ancestor that copyright isn't long enough you run into a classic time travel paradox
Israel has been dealing for this threat on a much higher level for years.
Most other countries havn't been warzones for decades.
It's not as hassle free a solution as no security, but the wait times are substantially less, and success substantially better than America's Funniest Security Theater.
Wasn't security at Schipol provided by an Israeli company?
Which begs the question: Why do terrorists insist on blowing up airplanes?
If my goal was to instill fear and a high body count, I'd just wear an explosive ladden vest and sit in the first car of the longest passenger train that I can find
Be far more effective to deliberatly cause a derailment
OR wrap said explosives in nails and wait in line at a concert
A terrorist called David Copeland used nail bombs in london in 1999, but he wasn't a "suicide bomber" nor was Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski was known as the "Unabomber", short for "University and Airline Bomber"...
Hey, why don't we just ground all commercial planes indefinitely? That is guaranteed to stop all attacks on commercial aviation.
N.B. This would mean all commercial planes. Remember that FedEx 705 was a freighter.
That's the only way to solve the problem for good. Of course, terrorists would just move on to other targets (like they did in London and Madrid), but that's besides the point. Actually, come to think of it, how much did they beef up security in London and Madrid after the attacks? I don't doubt they did, but to the point of insanity as we're seeing in the aviation industry?
It might be more meaningful to consider what changes were made at Moscow (and other airports within the Russian Federation) after two sucessful suicide bombings of aircraft occured in August 2004. Especially if Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have not been able to make it onto a plane had he tried to at DME.
I agree, but we need to be careful about how we define "better". Security specialists will tend to define "better" as "more secure", no matter what happens to convenience or civil liberties.
Actual security specialists understand that the idea of "more secure" means less "convenience" or less "civil liberties" is a false dichotomy. This position is more likely to come from political groups or salesmen of "screening machines".
The issue with profiling is what happens to the innocent that unfortunately match a profile. They are likely to be significantly inconvenienced, and the more we trust the profiling the worse it is likely to get for the false positives.
Which actually makes things less secure. Since any group can employ operatives which do not match whatever that profle happens to be.
I think random searches will be about as effective as what is done today.
They'd probably be more effective. But more people would kick up a fuss when they saw someone "obviously not a terrorist" being searched.
Spend the money on tracking people down before they get to the airport.
It makes more sense to spend money on basic law enforcement detective work. Concentrating on aviation means that you have no chance of catching the terrorist who's planning on gunning down someone in a church.
Yet we still invest hundreds of billions of dollars, give away our rights, and piss off the international community all in an effort to reduce deaths by terrorism. If we had put that same amount of money into things like high speed rail, improved roads, or enforcing drunk driving laws, we could have saved many more lives.
Probably also by having more traffic cops, better driver training, taking bad drivers off the road, improved public transport, etc, etc.
It's interesting that you complain about a loss of civil liberties and then use drunk driving as an example of something that needs more attention. The war on drunk driving has infringed on many of our civil liberties.
It might actually make more sense to enforce against "dangerous driving", regardless of any intoxication. The "problem" is that this requires people to make judgment calls. Whereas the likes of X amount of drug per Y volume of blood, speed of travel, passing a red light, etc can be measured by some kind of machine.
Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Even in the unlikely event that they actually gain any "safety" by doing so. Nothing in the people giving up power to the state ensures that the people will gain anything at all.
This is a false dichotomy. Giving away civil liberties does not equal more safety.
It may not even increase safety from the "threat" used to justify it. As well as greatly increasing the risk from the activities of corrupt officials.
There is much more that can be done to prevent crime and violence that would be much more productive
That would be all crime, not just the tiny fraction which is "terrorism"
than wasting time money and effort on wire tapping, and that is just legal wire tapping, not this.
Where you have crime which involves a complex international conspiracy it's far more likely to involve fraud than terrorism too.
I have to wonder what the benefit of having "civil liberties" is if the end result is being killed by a terrorist attack
In terms of causes of death terrorists attacks rank along with "freak accidents".
Being alive is a prerequisite to enjoying civil liberties, so being dead means being unable to enjoy them. We should be preserving life now, as the most important first step, and we can focus on preserving our civil liberties later since we'll still be alive to fight for them.
If that were the aim you'd start with adressing the leading causes of death. e.g. spend more on traffic cops...
When even the Supreme Court doesn't hold up the constitution as a valid basis there is not much that we can do except for revolt - but even if you get a critical mass to do that, they'll just stick the army on you or use near-lethal weaponry.
The issue of exactly what can cause a revolt is somewhat chaotic. As is how armed forces will react. Consider that China had to bring in troops from a completly different part of the country to deal with the Tianaman Square protest.
This is exactly why we protect our civil liberties. A lot of people are willing to hand over exceptional rights to the government to make them safe from terrorism.
It wouldn't be too bad if it were possible for people to hand over just their own rights. The problem comes when they expect even those who don't agree with them to hand over their rights. Even some of those who advocate loudest arn't actually handing over any rights.
The reason we don't do that is because the government abuses our rights.
Even if it actually "worked" in terms of reducing terrorism there are several orders of magnitude more corrupt public officials than there are terrorists. (Even before considering that the "War on Terror" is only intersted in a minority of terrorists.)
Proponents for strong government say it's a slippery slope argument, fortunately, we now have the evidence of wrong-doing to point back and show why rights need to be protected, and people responsible for abusing those rights should be severely prosecuted.
There's also very little historical evidence for "strong government" actually doing much to improve public safety anyways.
The ECPA provides for a jail sentence of up to 5 years per violation, and I would like to see prosecutors pursue significant jail sentences for the "senior FBI managers up to the assistant director level" that approved the procedures for emergency requests, particularly for those who did so "for two years after bureau lawyers raised concerns and an FBI official began pressing for changes."
Sounds like they may have broken quite a few other laws, which could have much longer sentences attached.
And if 5 years in jail seems excessive, it should take a look at the penalties for growing certain plants in your back yard.
5 years rather inadequate in the case of a senior public official. Especially without a lifetime ban from ever working in law enforcement or standing for public office.
It seldom happens here anymore because of the idea of "technicalities". Certain factions in the US -- chiefly the one that, with unconscious irony, is always calling for "law and order" -- have brainwashed large portions of the public into believing that the law doesn't or at least shouldn't matter in cases where the outcome displeases them. When someone is acquitted because law enforcement agencies trampled all over the law during their investigation, they are regarded as "getting off on a technicality"
As opposed to an innocent person being dragged through the process of a trial. Or even public servants failing to do their job properly.
and it generally triggers a backlash against the rule of law and accusations that the courts in question are "soft on crime".
When the problem is more likely to be either the police in failing to gather evidence correctly. Or prosecutors attempting to prosecute weak cases, including for politcal reasons.
Of course, what has happened is that the courts in question are actually tough on crime even when the crimes are committed by law enforcement,
Except that they are not. Otherwise you'd expect to see police and/or prosecutors jailed for "contempt of court" every so often.
And this is what makes the copyright vs public domain issue moot. Even if everyone has the right to copy them, CBS is not a public library and is under no obligation to hand over their tapes.
If the tapes contain someone else's "intellectual property" there may well be case (even statute) laws granting access to whoever that "property" belongs to. Just because your property "encloses" someone else's property does not transfer their property rights. Including that the ability of that property to change ownership.
But if they were registered for copyright, should not a copy have been submitted to a library of record (e.g. LOC)?
This is where copyright on music and video recordings appears to be rather badly broken. Unlike books where there's a specific requirement to deposit copies with "copyright libraries". AFAIK this dosn't even happen for works produced now. Even though the awful state of movie and TV companies' archives has been known about for 30-40 years. There are plenty of works still in copyright where no copies exist.
TFA even says that they're in the public domain. The only thing stopping anyone from preserving this stuff is the fact that the only copies in existence are owned by CBS. CBS owns the medium on which these things are stored and they are perfectly within their rights, even if the constitution prohibited any sort of copyright whatsoever, to refuse to give them to anyone for any reason they damned well feel like.
How is this different from the only copy of a TV show being in the hands of a private collector whilst the TV company still holds the copyright? This is something which has actually happened quite a lot due to poor (in some cases non existant) archival practices until about 30 years ago.
It's hard to see how CBS's actions can be supported without invalidating the whole concept of "intellectual property".
Deliberate illegal acts should lead to jail time. Law enforcement officers are not above the law.
If anything they should face a harsher sentence than a regular member of the public.
Doctors who treat people with excessive weight need to know the exact numbers, especially as the readings are taken mid-course. They tell the doctor how effective the drugs and methods are. Half a pound is probably an unacceptable and unjustifiable error.
:)
Only for people who drink or excrete less than 200ml at a time
And should they only be able to find a single one that isn't FDA approved and certified "for medical use", they will start their happy dance because they don't have to pay and the doc has to see how to get out of that shit.
Would this "FDA" be the "Food and Drug Administration" in the USA? When the article mentions the "University of Melbourne", the only such university I am aware of is in Victoria, Australia. Australia does healthcare very differently from the US.
One of the reasons for this is that the black hats are well aware that any vulnerability they might exploit is likely to be short-lived, while if they just focus on MSIE, they are likely to get a much longer window of opportunity before the holes are patched.
Not only does MSIE being "folded into" the OS make it more difficult to debug, Microsoft have also developed a policy of updates according to the calendar. Most other software tends to follow a "when needed" approach to bug fixes.
I've long held that the only answer to pervasive surveillance is to encrypt everything.
It won't stop them from cracking things that attract their attention, but for most things it won't be worth the hassle.
Encrypting only some things will draw attention to them, it can also leak information. e.g. communications between alice and bob are encrypted, but not between alice and cath...
In the same way if you are going to shred documents it's a good idea to shred everything. Even try and ensure that shredded "confidential documents" are well mixed with shredded "junk documents".
This was an EXTREMELY great fear in the early to mid 90s, when the government was trying to get everyone to standardize encryption on all devices using the Clipper chip (and key escrow in general). The chip had good throughput... but it allowed for people to pull out any keys if they had access to the LEAF (law enforcement access field).
Which makes it "broken by design"
The algorithm was classified secret, and the chips were made in one factory, then moved to another factory where the algorithm was slapped on, before being shipped out
Funny thing, the cypherpunks were right. As soon as the algorithm was declassified, it was ripped apart in several days, and laid to rest months later.
The idea that encryption with secret "algorithms" is likely to be flawed goes back to at least the 19th century. That's before you consider if the implimentation actually follows the design.