At the end of the day i'm in the UK and it's perfectly legal for me to create a website with naked 16 year old school girls on it
Yup they are called models, and all grow up to be wired on crack and (insert word meaning disease that makes you think you are fat when you are emaciated [RAM error])
Forget porn, ban the fashion industry!
I'd have thought that this law would only apply in the US anyway (naive or what). Also wasn't it mostly to prevent commercial exploitation of children online more than anything? (umm I mean advertising, email gathering etc, not bunging them down t' mine)
the jpegs don't matter at all if it is just porn, but there are far worse things out there, spent ages trying to avoid people giving me URLs to some of the things that happened during the riots in Indonesia...
From what it says in the email they are limiting what they make on the sale to the cost of the registration fee. Interestingly enough it doesn't say what happens to the rest, do they give it to you??
Well anyway just in case they do I am off to register several thousand domains and ignore the invoices when they come through, no cash down and NetSol will auction them for me, now that's business.
one of the important things to note is that you can explicitely delete the domain, previously you didn't have to, you didn't pay, they removed this.
we have been trying to move a domain from them to another registrar, we let the name lapse because it was going to be easier and faster than trying to get it transferred. They still have it in whois, just trying to send in a DELETE mod now, so see what happens I guess...
anyway here is their email to business account holders for your further elucidation...
> Dear Premier/Business Account Program Members: > > Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) is implementing a new practice that could > eliminate, or at least reduce, the number of unpaid registrations that > occur when your customers fail to pay for our domain name registration > services. As you are aware, pursuant to the terms of your > Premier/Business Account Agreement with us, your customers must remit > payments for our services in a timely manner for your account to remain in > good standing. Effective immediately, we are providing your domain name > registration customers with an opportunity to satisfy their payment > obligation to us by placing their delinquent registration in our new > auction site. If such actions result in a transfer to a new registrant > through the auction site, the proceeds we receive from the transfer (up to > the full amount of the registration fee) will be retained by us to satisfy > your customer's registration fee. > > We believe this to be a sound and reasonable course of action for > customers who register domain names, but refuse to pay for services > rendered. We also believe that these actions will alleviate the payment > burden from our partners. Generally, we have learned that if we have not > been paid, it is likely that our partners have not either. > > So that you clearly understand the process leading up to this action we > offer the following information: > > * We have sent the registrant three prior billing notices: > 1. Original invoice > 2. Late notice > 3. Notice of deactivation > > The customer has still not paid for our domain name > registration services. > > * On Thursday, June 22, the administrative contact for such > registrants will receive an e-mail from NSI requesting payment for such > domain name(s). This means that if a registrant has registered multiple > domain names and has not paid for them, he/she will receive a separate > e-mail for each unpaid name. > > * The administrative contact will be given three options. > 1. Pay the registration fee electronically by June 28, 2000. > 2. Instruct NSI to delete the name by June 28, 2000. > 3. If the domain name is not paid for or is deleted by June 28, > 2000, it will be entered on the NSI auction site. Any proceeds from the > sale of the name (up to the full amount of the registration fee) will be > retained by NSI and the domain name will be transferred to the successful > bidder. > > There will be no exceptions or exemptions from this e-mail as it is > extremely important that these registrants be given one final chance to > pay. > > We thank you for your cooperation. Please direct any questions to your > Partner Relations or Business Support team. > > Sincerely, > > Thomas E. van Gorder > Vice President, Sales and Business Development
which all falls down when you have to use your real details, whether it is to make sure the purchase arrives at your door, not Mr Cypherpunks, or to prove your legal ownership/rentalship of something, and god forbid that the site involved might publish your details online
One solution is to maintain 2 (or more) identities and just hope no one ever makes it from A to B, tricky though, I'd imagine that there are some people who know who I am just from my nick here, and info on various sites from way back when that could be used to trace me...
I'd agree in general though, maybe it is time for a new nick and a bit more care in maintaining it.
I got this rammed home to me one morning when some CD's I'd ordered from Xoom arrived, I'd paid a discount price for them, but they'd put the full retail price on the customs declaration, which meant I ended up paying about the same again in duty and VAT (not much fun scrabbling to find coins to make up the amount 5 minutes after you are woken).
It can be worthwhile though as there are some items that are 0 rated for import duty (including computer hardware in the UK IIRC)
The taxation is fairly clear cut when it comes to actual Things anyway, as basically everything that applies to mail order goes for internet purchases as well.
Where it gets complicated is things that are over the wire, hosting, software downloads, services (some), etc...
It will be interesting to see how far the definition of ISP can be stretched, possibly Slashdot could argue that they are just providing a web hosting service, with built in page publishing tools, we are the content providers.
On the other hand that is probably just silly.
It's quite refreshing to have a sensible judgement like this from the court system for a change though, now if only they could have done this in the UK with Dr Nutter Vs. Demon Internet.
Not just the US, everyone loves to hate taxes, but what are the alternatives.
Admittedly it is possible to make an argument for lower or at least better spent taxes, a huge amount of the money is basically just thrown away ($40 000 an hour to keep AF1 in the air?, if coach is good enough for Bill Gates...)
When I was at university (way back when you could actually afford to do so in the UK without mortgaging your life), there was one time we were hassled by some common bounders (hmm ok most of my younger life was on or below the poverty line) who were unhappy that their tax was funding our education. Now it is their children who will be leaving school at 16 as basically there is no reason to try any more.
The (%) number of students in Scotland (where tuition fees are paid) compared to England is interesting...
I believe education is fairly essential and shouldn't just be a perk of the priviledged (yeah it is possible to work your way through, I know people in the US who get home from university, work till 1 or 2 am, study and then back to uni at 9, how can you learn like that?)
All characters & facts above are entirly fictional, and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
Are you sure about this?, in the UK at least if you order something from outside the country you have (or should, often you get away with it) to pay import duty (& VAT for that matter, but that is just Europe methinks) on it at whatever rate that commodity ir gauged at.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as it would do a lot of damage to the Canadian economy if everyone just imported from the US because it was cheaper, not to mention putting a lot of people out of jobs. These regulations aren't nice but they are there for a reason.
It is possible to reason that if everyone is buying from another country then the balance remains, but I'm not sure it would work out that way.
ahh yes, but the doctor had had to have her adrenal cortex and ovaries removed previously for some unspecified reason....
ok ok I know, me stupid, should check facts on things I have absolutely no idea about.
Although for what it's worth, it means my day wasn't totally wasted, I've learned something, in fact far more about testosterone than I could ever wish. Someone actually mashed up several tons of bulls balls just for a couple of drops?? Hunter S would be proud.
And in a vain attempt to keep this on topic, one of the great advantages that open media has in allowing instant discussion is that it allows a much broader range of sources and opinion to be added via hyperlinking, creating a tree of the event rather than an isolated report.
Never actually heard of NPR, but the BBC could also be considered a closed media source that is fairly unbiased (of course they have their own agendas as well) because they are free of the necesity to keep their advertisers happy, I'd imagine licence fees are probably pretty abhorrent to the USians here, but it does work.
Perhaps the real issue here isn't so much open and closed media, but that the person paying the bills has the say.
And just for fun, and because it might actually be relevant, a link to Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky, a guy who makes reading Jon's stuff feel short and refreshing.
A father and son were out driving one day, when a truck coming the other way skidded out of control and crushed their car, within 30 minutes the paramedics arrived and rushed them to hospital, unfortunately the father died on the way. The child was rushed into the operating theatre, the doctor took one look and said "I can't operate on him, that's my son".
Well, you must have *some* level of testosterone... regardless of other factors... - think about it.
You could only be wrong if there appears some new method of sponsering sites other than advertising...
The exception to this could be sites where the journalists have day jobs and do the work in their spare time, e.g. Declan McCullagh's Politechbot site, but these are likely to remain fringe affairs.
In this light it seems very fortunate that the traditional media is slow in moving forward (?!?) onto the internet, as when it does the chances are that all media is going to tend towards the lowest common denominator, democracy in action. Add this to the fact that there are plans afoot to add banner adds to free movie downloads to pay for the developement...
Possibly a bit of a bleak outlook, but I'd think there could be a real danger that the media is going to become seriously dumbed down, and from there it becomes a vicious circle, with a widening gap between the general populous and the technocracy needed to keep the system running.
once read (well ok several times) a great book on a similar theme, set in Britain, and largely written in the second person, also there were Gypsies?
True in general I guess, but there are quite a few 'Open Media' sources that do get their information first hand and have high standards, these are mostly very specialist, although The Register is one great example of an online news source that sends its reporters out onto the battlefield, and as far as I know they still have no corporate owners, just relying on bribes (prices on the site) and advertising.
Of course I don't know what their chances of survival are, there is a real problem in that Open media doesn't have any obvious source of revenue (banner adds?, pull the other one).
I'd imaging that eventually Open Media is going to run out of cash, Closed Media will fail through not adapting to the medium, Closed Media (they have huge cash reserves) will buy Open Media and close it up a bit.
The worst thing of all is that they don't even need to win the case, and given Valenti's backgrounding in the subject, which would need to be quite extensive for them to succeed, the chances are that this isn't even their intention.
All they need to do is drag the case on and on, one court to the next, people will forget about it and the outcome will be irrelevant by the time they are through. Fait accompli.
In their hands the law isn't about justice, or winning or losing, it is just another business tool they have at their disposal.
In any war of attrition those with the best supplies and resources are going to come out on top in the end, 2600 should really have chosen their battlefeild a little better (IMHO).
Just for the record that doesn't say DeCSS in my post above. That would be silly DeCSS has nothing to do with Censorware. You are imagining things. Stop it.
Maybe you need to go out and get some fresh air? that would be nice huh? just laying there looking up at the clouds...
Valenti claimed that "just a few keystrokes on an ordinary household computer will enable people throughout the globe to make perfect copies [of DVD movies]."
Looks like DeCSS is obsolete now anyway, anybody know which keys it is you have to press?
If the University is willing to change it's name to bypass the filters then they must have some fairly good reason to believe that there is damage being caused by their being blocked.
The fact that they have contacted the Censorware companies (you'd hope so anyway), quite probably a number of times, could imply that as they are still blocked then it must be intentional.
If the companies involved don't have some easy way to respond to complaints like this, and make exceptions for sites that use words that could be seen as offensive in other contexts then there is something fundamentally wrong with them. As they are now (semi)legally required (not entirely sure about this) in some places then it is in the public interest that they also be open for external review. It's rather disturbing that they are actually willing to go to quite extreme lengths to avoid any public scrutiny (DeCSS), the innocent company has nothing to fear . . .
Wonder if this is the only reason they are changing the name anyway, given its connotations they probably already have problems with it, and are thankful for the excuse, and all the free publicity can't be doing any harm either.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup they are called models, and all grow up to be wired on crack and (insert word meaning disease that makes you think you are fat when you are emaciated [RAM error])
Forget porn, ban the fashion industry!
I'd have thought that this law would only apply in the US anyway (naive or what). Also wasn't it mostly to prevent commercial exploitation of children online more than anything? (umm I mean advertising, email gathering etc, not bunging them down t' mine)
the jpegs don't matter at all if it is just porn, but there are far worse things out there, spent ages trying to avoid people giving me URLs to some of the things that happened during the riots in Indonesia...
From what it says in the email they are limiting what they make on the sale to the cost of the registration fee. Interestingly enough it doesn't say what happens to the rest, do they give it to you??
Well anyway just in case they do I am off to register several thousand domains and ignore the invoices when they come through, no cash down and NetSol will auction them for me, now that's business.
we have been trying to move a domain from them to another registrar, we let the name lapse because it was going to be easier and faster than trying to get it transferred. They still have it in whois, just trying to send in a DELETE mod now, so see what happens I guess...
anyway here is their email to business account holders for your further elucidation...
> Dear Premier/Business Account Program Members:
>
> Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) is implementing a new practice that could
> eliminate, or at least reduce, the number of unpaid registrations that
> occur when your customers fail to pay for our domain name registration
> services. As you are aware, pursuant to the terms of your
> Premier/Business Account Agreement with us, your customers must remit
> payments for our services in a timely manner for your account to remain in
> good standing. Effective immediately, we are providing your domain name
> registration customers with an opportunity to satisfy their payment
> obligation to us by placing their delinquent registration in our new
> auction site. If such actions result in a transfer to a new registrant
> through the auction site, the proceeds we receive from the transfer (up to
> the full amount of the registration fee) will be retained by us to satisfy
> your customer's registration fee.
>
> We believe this to be a sound and reasonable course of action for
> customers who register domain names, but refuse to pay for services
> rendered. We also believe that these actions will alleviate the payment
> burden from our partners. Generally, we have learned that if we have not
> been paid, it is likely that our partners have not either.
>
> So that you clearly understand the process leading up to this action we
> offer the following information:
>
> * We have sent the registrant three prior billing notices:
> 1. Original invoice
> 2. Late notice
> 3. Notice of deactivation
>
> The customer has still not paid for our domain name
> registration services.
>
> * On Thursday, June 22, the administrative contact for such
> registrants will receive an e-mail from NSI requesting payment for such
> domain name(s). This means that if a registrant has registered multiple
> domain names and has not paid for them, he/she will receive a separate
> e-mail for each unpaid name.
>
> * The administrative contact will be given three options.
> 1. Pay the registration fee electronically by June 28, 2000.
> 2. Instruct NSI to delete the name by June 28, 2000.
> 3. If the domain name is not paid for or is deleted by June 28,
> 2000, it will be entered on the NSI auction site. Any proceeds from the
> sale of the name (up to the full amount of the registration fee) will be
> retained by NSI and the domain name will be transferred to the successful
> bidder.
>
> There will be no exceptions or exemptions from this e-mail as it is
> extremely important that these registrants be given one final chance to
> pay.
>
> We thank you for your cooperation. Please direct any questions to your
> Partner Relations or Business Support team.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Thomas E. van Gorder
> Vice President, Sales and Business Development
any chance you could post the lottery results for the past 9 years?
One solution is to maintain 2 (or more) identities and just hope no one ever makes it from A to B, tricky though, I'd imagine that there are some people who know who I am just from my nick here, and info on various sites from way back when that could be used to trace me...
I'd agree in general though, maybe it is time for a new nick and a bit more care in maintaining it.
It can be worthwhile though as there are some items that are 0 rated for import duty (including computer hardware in the UK IIRC)
The taxation is fairly clear cut when it comes to actual Things anyway, as basically everything that applies to mail order goes for internet purchases as well.
Where it gets complicated is things that are over the wire, hosting, software downloads, services (some), etc...
On the other hand that is probably just silly.
It's quite refreshing to have a sensible judgement like this from the court system for a change though, now if only they could have done this in the UK with Dr Nutter Vs. Demon Internet.
Admittedly it is possible to make an argument for lower or at least better spent taxes, a huge amount of the money is basically just thrown away ($40 000 an hour to keep AF1 in the air?, if coach is good enough for Bill Gates...)
When I was at university (way back when you could actually afford to do so in the UK without mortgaging your life), there was one time we were hassled by some common bounders (hmm ok most of my younger life was on or below the poverty line) who were unhappy that their tax was funding our education. Now it is their children who will be leaving school at 16 as basically there is no reason to try any more.
The (%) number of students in Scotland (where tuition fees are paid) compared to England is interesting...
I believe education is fairly essential and shouldn't just be a perk of the priviledged (yeah it is possible to work your way through, I know people in the US who get home from university, work till 1 or 2 am, study and then back to uni at 9, how can you learn like that?)
All characters & facts above are entirly fictional, and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as it would do a lot of damage to the Canadian economy if everyone just imported from the US because it was cheaper, not to mention putting a lot of people out of jobs. These regulations aren't nice but they are there for a reason.
It is possible to reason that if everyone is buying from another country then the balance remains, but I'm not sure it would work out that way.
ok ok I know, me stupid, should check facts on things I have absolutely no idea about.
Although for what it's worth, it means my day wasn't totally wasted, I've learned something, in fact far more about testosterone than I could ever wish. Someone actually mashed up several tons of bulls balls just for a couple of drops?? Hunter S would be proud.
And in a vain attempt to keep this on topic, one of the great advantages that open media has in allowing instant discussion is that it allows a much broader range of sources and opinion to be added via hyperlinking, creating a tree of the event rather than an isolated report.
Thanks though.
Ho Hum
Perhaps the real issue here isn't so much open and closed media, but that the person paying the bills has the say.
And just for fun, and because it might actually be relevant, a link to Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky, a guy who makes reading Jon's stuff feel short and refreshing.
Well, you must have *some* level of testosterone... regardless of other factors... - think about it.
The exception to this could be sites where the journalists have day jobs and do the work in their spare time, e.g. Declan McCullagh's Politechbot site, but these are likely to remain fringe affairs.
In this light it seems very fortunate that the traditional media is slow in moving forward (?!?) onto the internet, as when it does the chances are that all media is going to tend towards the lowest common denominator, democracy in action. Add this to the fact that there are plans afoot to add banner adds to free movie downloads to pay for the developement...
Possibly a bit of a bleak outlook, but I'd think there could be a real danger that the media is going to become seriously dumbed down, and from there it becomes a vicious circle, with a widening gap between the general populous and the technocracy needed to keep the system running.
once read (well ok several times) a great book on a similar theme, set in Britain, and largely written in the second person, also there were Gypsies?
Of course I don't know what their chances of survival are, there is a real problem in that Open media doesn't have any obvious source of revenue (banner adds?, pull the other one).
I'd imaging that eventually Open Media is going to run out of cash, Closed Media will fail through not adapting to the medium, Closed Media (they have huge cash reserves) will buy Open Media and close it up a bit.
Mediocracy always wins
Recently several 'Open Media' companies have suffered setbacks and some have laid people off.
Old media companies think/hope this means that they are unlikely to survive, this thought makes them happy.
Jon Katz doesn't believe this is so.
Open media is interactive and dynamic and of the net not on it.
Closed Media is smug and anochronistic and think they can succede by replicating themselves online without adapting to the new environment.
quite often they are not on general release worldwide till after, just the US gets to see them first.
I guess under a wooden desk covered with various papers isn't a good idea then?
indeed
Of course the more common answer will be. . .
"Grandpa, what's an Academy Award?"
All they need to do is drag the case on and on, one court to the next, people will forget about it and the outcome will be irrelevant by the time they are through. Fait accompli.
In their hands the law isn't about justice, or winning or losing, it is just another business tool they have at their disposal.
In any war of attrition those with the best supplies and resources are going to come out on top in the end, 2600 should really have chosen their battlefeild a little better (IMHO).
Maybe you need to go out and get some fresh air? that would be nice huh? just laying there looking up at the clouds...
Looks like DeCSS is obsolete now anyway, anybody know which keys it is you have to press?
I wants my free movies
The fact that they have contacted the Censorware companies (you'd hope so anyway), quite probably a number of times, could imply that as they are still blocked then it must be intentional.
If the companies involved don't have some easy way to respond to complaints like this, and make exceptions for sites that use words that could be seen as offensive in other contexts then there is something fundamentally wrong with them. As they are now (semi)legally required (not entirely sure about this) in some places then it is in the public interest that they also be open for external review. It's rather disturbing that they are actually willing to go to quite extreme lengths to avoid any public scrutiny (DeCSS), the innocent company has nothing to fear . . .
Wonder if this is the only reason they are changing the name anyway, given its connotations they probably already have problems with it, and are thankful for the excuse, and all the free publicity can't be doing any harm either.