Don't forget to answer the question "Is this system admissible in court"?
I've been wondering the same thing. Many Slashdotters recommend using mpeg or jpeg, but these technologies alter the image to save space. Has lossy compression ever been tested in court? Can you prove that the compression algorithm didn't leave out, or even create crucial details?
Unless you have a well-informed lawyer tell you otherwise, I would recommend using lossless compression. Since that may not be feasable, perhaps you could capture still frames every couple seconds, and store those with lossless compression; while also recording video with lossy compression.
The irony -- that a Russian company would be suing for freedom of speech in America -- is a much better story, and an easier sell,
And completely false. Elcommsoft is not sueing. The government is charging Elcommsoft with committing a crime. Here in America, the media has a long tradition of portraying accused criminals as a standing danger to society. If somehow, the accused criminal is aquitted, the media has a tradition of portraying the aquitted defended has having "gotten away with it".
Lest I be mistaken, the deadline is 60 days from the date the settlement was printed in the Federal Register. The settlement was printed November 28,2001. December had 31 days, so the deadline would really be January 27. The 27th falls on a Sunday, so you should try to get your comments in before Friday. That's in TWO days!
While reading through the story, I started thinking, "No one could possibly be this dumb. Someone must have broken into his computer and is playing a practicle joke." Then he went off and started making phone calls from his house. What an idiot!
We don't care what the person's sex/race/religion/politics are unless that data means the person is more likely to buy (and thus is intersted in our product). Even if we had that kind of information, we're a business.
You might not need it, but somebody will.
Employers would love to buy a psychological profile of you, in the same way a bank buys your credit report.
Lawyers would love to know which jurors will help them, and which jurors will hurt them.
Your browsing habits would provide tantilizing data for prospective mates.
Corrupt government officials would like to know if prospective employees will break the law to support their cause.
Scam artists would like to know if you're a schmuck who will buy or believe anything.
Criminal syndicates would like to know if you've been investigating options that they disagree with.
The public would drool over the browsing habits of alleged sex offenders.
Politicians would never hesitate to dig up dirt on their competitors.
Stalkers would obsess over the personal lives of their victims.
The media would like to know which political candidates have been reading up on copyright issues.
You may only be interested in whether or not someone will buy your product, but the market for personal data far exceeds your little advertising agenda.
In reaching this conclusion, the court (sixth circuit) found that evidence that respondent could tend to her personal hygiene and carry out personal or household chores did not affect a determination that her impairments substantially limited her ability to perform the range of manual tasks associated with an assembly line job.
...
In this case, repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods, the manual task on which the Sixth Circuit relied, is not an important part of most people's daily lives. Household chores, bathing, and brushing one's teeth, in contrast, are among the types of manual tasks of central importance to people's daily lives, so the Sixth Circuit should not have disregarded respondent's ability to do these activities.
So basically, the court is saying that Williams CTS was not sufficiently sever to sue under the ADA. If her CTS had prevented her from carrying out ordinary tasks, then the ADA would apply.
Of course congress will respond to this by eliminating the Audio Home Recording Act, thus making it illegal to make copies for your car, computer, etc.
The record labels will support this. The royalties account for $5 million per year, which is about 0.03% of their annual revenue.
With all the hype surrounding LoTR and Harry Potter, I have been wondering who has a financial stake in these movies. As usual, Google came to the rescue and revealed that AOL-Time Warner invested in both. In case anybody was wondering...
They think you're a shoplifter because of their face recognition software? Fine, you walk away and shop at another store where they're more careful with their accusations.
The facial recognition system constitutes a standardized test. If every store uses the same technology, and shares their list of suspects, you won't be able to shop anywhere. When the manager kicks you out, they will make a note that the system is working great!
An article at MIT describes the issues of surviellance societies.
Some other negative aspects of the new surveillance can be briefly mentioned:
IT IS CATEGORICAL in nature, involving "fishing expeditions" and "searches" absent any evidence of specific wrongdoing, thus violating the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. The presumption of innocence can be undermined-shifting the burden of proof from the state to the accused. There is also a danger of presumption of guilt (or an unwarranted innocence) by association or statistical artifact. And, because of the technical nature of the surveillance and its distancing aspects, the accused may (at least initially) be unable to face the accuser. The legal basis of some of the new surveillance's crime-prevention actions is also questionable.
THE SYSTEM'S FOCUS on prevention entails the risk of wasting resources on preventing things that would not have occurred in any case, or, as sometimes occurs in undercover activities, of creating violations through self-fulfilling affects.
POWERFUL NEW DISCOVERY mechanisms may overload the system. Authorities may discover far more violations than they can act upon. There is a certain wisdom to the ignorance of the three monkeys. Having information on an overabundance of violations can lead to the misuse of prosecutorial discretion or demoralization on the part of control agents. Charges of favoritism and corruption may appear as only some offenses can be acted upon.
IN ORWELL'S AND OTHER science fiction accounts, control is both highly repressive and efficient. There is perfect control over information (whether the ability to discover infractions with certainty or to manage beliefs). As the examples cited suggest, the new surveillance has great repressive potential (in actuality or via myth). But it is invariable less than perfectly effective and certain, and it is subject to manipulation and error. 21
ALTHOUGH DETERRING OR DISCOVERING some offenders, the routinization of surveillance, ironically, may grant an almost guaranteed means for successful violations and theft to those who gain knowledge of the system and take action to neutralize and exploit it. This suggests that, over time, many of these systems will disproportionately net the marginal, amateur, occasional, or opportunistic violator rather than the master criminal. The systematization of surveillance may grant the latter a kind of license to steal, even while headlines hail the effectiveness of the new techniques.
However, it would have been really nice if someone who had gone to college and studied operating systems (of which there were plenty in Berkeley, an hour's drive away) had been there to keep the OS team from making some really stupid design decisions.
The Apple Lisa had a real OS. It failed in the market because the hardware of the day could not handle the OS overhead.
I'm suggesting that the public airwaves return to being a neutral forum.
I think that's as hopeless as expecting the presidency to remain a neutral position. If something can be exploited, somebody will exploit it. This is why we have three branches of government, they provide checks and balances on each other.
Government-sponsored or approved or even elected press will never have the accountability of a free, private-sector press.
I don't think that an elected media would necessarily be better than private media. However, I believe a combination of the two is much better than either one alone.
Who are the major television networks accountable to? Their shareholders and customers (advertisers). They have a conflict of interest when it comes to issues that effect their bottom line. As far as viewers are concerned, the networks need to maintain just enough credibility and sensationalism to keep people watching.
On the other hand, an elected media would have to cover issues that voters, trade groups, etc are truely concerned about. An elected media would have the independence to question what the corporate sponsered media report.
Consider globalization protests. The corporate media provide shallow reports of protesters getting pounded by the police. An elected media would be obligated to provide more in-depth coverage of why people are protesting in the first place. Corporate media reported that the DMCA would bring copyright into the 21st century. Elected media could have reported that the DMCA was corporate welfare.
Come election day, such diverse reporting would allow voters to make more informed opinions. An informed public is good for democracy and good for capitalism.
and insist that broadcasters NOT produce content and NOT sell political access.
I have a big problem with outlawing speech, even if it's from big, bad corporate liars. I would prefer a competitive solution, such as government-run media. In particular, I would like an independent fourth branch of government.
I envision a set of seven or so seperate news agencies. At election time, the people would vote for an organization (church, trade group, etc) that they trust their vote to. That organization would then cast its votes for a particular media director. The seven most popular directors would each run one news agency. With seven agencies, minority view points would certainly be published. Also, each agency should have exactly the same budget, codified in a constitutional ammendment (median national income * 2000 or something like that). Finally, everything the agencies publish should go directly into the public domain.
But I'm dreaming. Congress would never go for this. It would cost a fortune, and it would have to overcome the stigma of being state sponsered media.
I find it somewhat scary that 'content companies' have willing allies in congress for this kind of oppressive legislation.
This is no coincidence. The outcome of an election is based mostly on a small group of swing voters. Those voters make their decision based on media coverage. To win an election, and to stay in office, a congress-person must stay on good terms with the media, lest their mistakes become the punchline on Letterman.
ABC is owned by Disney. ABC News' motto is: more people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. So, when Disney asks congress to retroactively extend copyrights another 20 years, congress passes the law without so much as a debate.
With a video camera/cell phone, they could also be recording evidence to be used at trial.
I have long wondered about this. Since the recording uses lossy compression (which alters the original image), will a court allow such images into evidence? I would guess the quality is sufficient to determine what happened, but I would be quite leary of using it to identify a suspect.
You're forgetting: Ex-cons can't vote. Therefore, anyone who has suffered by an unjust or a law they just plain don't like CAN'T elect someone who shares their opinion.
Point well taken, except that ex-cons can have there voting rights restored once their sentence ends (it has to be okayed by a judge though).
The Mickey Mouse symbol is already protected under trademark. If you are claiming that Mickey Mouse the movie is an important Disney symbol, then what is to stop Disney from claiming Aladin, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame as important symbols?
In the 2600 appellate decision, the court ruled that code is speech, and that congress could outlaw the machine aspect irregardless of the speech aspect. This raises other interesting questions. Can congress outlaw the distribution of viruses, thus preventing you from sharing the virus with an anti-virus author? Or preventing you from distributing the virus so people can look through the code and see what effects it may have?
In the 2600 case, an actual Linux DVD player may have had a very different outcome on the case. Consider a program that takes encrypted Adobe E-Books and plays them to a braill reader. The program is clearly illegal, yet morally legitimate.
What we need is a law that focuses on the illegal use of the machine, not the machine itself.
I think this could become a very lucrative project for Google. Twenty years from now, Exxon may pay a fortune to hide anything with the word Valdez in it. AOL-TimeWarner may shell out big bucks to insert a thread on artists pleading for the DMCA, and a followup on how great the new law has been for them.
Frankly, I don't like the idea of a single company controlling the archives.
Verisign has a document describing the steps it takes before validating a signature. For example, a class 3 organizational certificate
assures that the organization exists, that the organization
has authorized the certificate, and that the person submitting the application
was authorized to do so.
As many slashdotters know, Verisign doesn't always follow through on that assurance. It would be nice if congress established a similar set of verification guidelines, and backed it up with legal force. Naturally, a certificate authority could be held liable if they claim to verify a signature without actually verifying it.
It would also be nice if an organization wishing to be a certificate authority, could get a license, and a name in the.sign.us domain.
Finally, it would be nice if certificate authorities were prohibited from disclosing any personal information (like IP numbers of people who checked a certain signiture) without a court order.
Five years ago would put is in late 1996. If you go back a few more years, to 1993-94, the original poster has some legitimate points. Before the World Wide Web, high speed modems, and commercial ISPs took off, usenet and gopher had far less noise.
Since internet users were mostly academic, usenet discussion tended to be more academic. Around 1995 or so, typical Joe users swamped the internet and began filling it with garbage. Many academics tired of the dribble and left. The signal to noise ratio went down like an IIS server.
My current ISP doesn't provide usenet, so I don't know if typical Joe users have abanded it in favor of WWW alternatives, but the mid-ninties were a bad time for usenet.
I do however, agree that as more people took to the internet, the number and diversity of quality sites increased. This has happened because people had the freedom and the ability to publish whatever they want. The original poster's concern is that corporations will influence the future of the internet in such a way that publishers will face an overwhelming barrier to entry.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been wondering the same thing. Many Slashdotters recommend using mpeg or jpeg, but these technologies alter the image to save space. Has lossy compression ever been tested in court? Can you prove that the compression algorithm didn't leave out, or even create crucial details?
Unless you have a well-informed lawyer tell you otherwise, I would recommend using lossless compression. Since that may not be feasable, perhaps you could capture still frames every couple seconds, and store those with lossless compression; while also recording video with lossy compression.
And completely false. Elcommsoft is not sueing. The government is charging Elcommsoft with committing a crime. Here in America, the media has a long tradition of portraying accused criminals as a standing danger to society. If somehow, the accused criminal is aquitted, the media has a tradition of portraying the aquitted defended has having "gotten away with it".
Am I the only person to see a hooded face in this picture? It's about half way down, and 1/4 of the way from the right edge.
I wouldn't trust it to get there.
Lest I be mistaken, the deadline is 60 days from the date the settlement was printed in the Federal Register. The settlement was printed November 28,2001. December had 31 days, so the deadline would really be January 27. The 27th falls on a Sunday, so you should try to get your comments in before Friday. That's in TWO days!
While reading through the story, I started thinking, "No one could possibly be this dumb. Someone must have broken into his computer and is playing a practicle joke." Then he went off and started making phone calls from his house. What an idiot!
You might not need it, but somebody will.
You may only be interested in whether or not someone will buy your product, but the market for personal data far exceeds your little advertising agenda.
So basically, the court is saying that Williams CTS was not sufficiently sever to sue under the ADA. If her CTS had prevented her from carrying out ordinary tasks, then the ADA would apply.
The record labels will support this. The royalties account for $5 million per year, which is about 0.03% of their annual revenue.
With all the hype surrounding LoTR and Harry Potter, I have been wondering who has a financial stake in these movies. As usual, Google came to the rescue and revealed that AOL-Time Warner invested in both. In case anybody was wondering...
The facial recognition system constitutes a standardized test. If every store uses the same technology, and shares their list of suspects, you won't be able to shop anywhere. When the manager kicks you out, they will make a note that the system is working great!
The Apple Lisa had a real OS. It failed in the market because the hardware of the day could not handle the OS overhead.
I think that's as hopeless as expecting the presidency to remain a neutral position. If something can be exploited, somebody will exploit it. This is why we have three branches of government, they provide checks and balances on each other.
Government-sponsored or approved or even elected press will never have the accountability of a free, private-sector press.
I don't think that an elected media would necessarily be better than private media. However, I believe a combination of the two is much better than either one alone.
Who are the major television networks accountable to? Their shareholders and customers (advertisers). They have a conflict of interest when it comes to issues that effect their bottom line. As far as viewers are concerned, the networks need to maintain just enough credibility and sensationalism to keep people watching.
On the other hand, an elected media would have to cover issues that voters, trade groups, etc are truely concerned about. An elected media would have the independence to question what the corporate sponsered media report.
Consider globalization protests. The corporate media provide shallow reports of protesters getting pounded by the police. An elected media would be obligated to provide more in-depth coverage of why people are protesting in the first place. Corporate media reported that the DMCA would bring copyright into the 21st century. Elected media could have reported that the DMCA was corporate welfare.
Come election day, such diverse reporting would allow voters to make more informed opinions. An informed public is good for democracy and good for capitalism.
I have a big problem with outlawing speech, even if it's from big, bad corporate liars. I would prefer a competitive solution, such as government-run media. In particular, I would like an independent fourth branch of government.
I envision a set of seven or so seperate news agencies. At election time, the people would vote for an organization (church, trade group, etc) that they trust their vote to. That organization would then cast its votes for a particular media director. The seven most popular directors would each run one news agency. With seven agencies, minority view points would certainly be published. Also, each agency should have exactly the same budget, codified in a constitutional ammendment (median national income * 2000 or something like that). Finally, everything the agencies publish should go directly into the public domain.
But I'm dreaming. Congress would never go for this. It would cost a fortune, and it would have to overcome the stigma of being state sponsered media.
The total revenue of the mass media industry was $250.9 billion in 1998.
This is no coincidence. The outcome of an election is based mostly on a small group of swing voters. Those voters make their decision based on media coverage. To win an election, and to stay in office, a congress-person must stay on good terms with the media, lest their mistakes become the punchline on Letterman.
ABC is owned by Disney. ABC News' motto is: more people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. So, when Disney asks congress to retroactively extend copyrights another 20 years, congress passes the law without so much as a debate.
I have long wondered about this. Since the recording uses lossy compression (which alters the original image), will a court allow such images into evidence? I would guess the quality is sufficient to determine what happened, but I would be quite leary of using it to identify a suspect.
Point well taken, except that ex-cons can have there voting rights restored once their sentence ends (it has to be okayed by a judge though).
Frankly, I don't know either, but here are my guesses:
The Mickey Mouse symbol is already protected under trademark. If you are claiming that Mickey Mouse the movie is an important Disney symbol, then what is to stop Disney from claiming Aladin, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame as important symbols?
In the 2600 case, an actual Linux DVD player may have had a very different outcome on the case. Consider a program that takes encrypted Adobe E-Books and plays them to a braill reader. The program is clearly illegal, yet morally legitimate.
What we need is a law that focuses on the illegal use of the machine, not the machine itself.
Frankly, I don't like the idea of a single company controlling the archives.
As many slashdotters know, Verisign doesn't always follow through on that assurance. It would be nice if congress established a similar set of verification guidelines, and backed it up with legal force. Naturally, a certificate authority could be held liable if they claim to verify a signature without actually verifying it.
It would also be nice if an organization wishing to be a certificate authority, could get a license, and a name in the .sign.us domain.
Finally, it would be nice if certificate authorities were prohibited from disclosing any personal information (like IP numbers of people who checked a certain signiture) without a court order.
Since internet users were mostly academic, usenet discussion tended to be more academic. Around 1995 or so, typical Joe users swamped the internet and began filling it with garbage. Many academics tired of the dribble and left. The signal to noise ratio went down like an IIS server.
My current ISP doesn't provide usenet, so I don't know if typical Joe users have abanded it in favor of WWW alternatives, but the mid-ninties were a bad time for usenet.
I do however, agree that as more people took to the internet, the number and diversity of quality sites increased. This has happened because people had the freedom and the ability to publish whatever they want. The original poster's concern is that corporations will influence the future of the internet in such a way that publishers will face an overwhelming barrier to entry.