An audio CD that only works on some players is not very different from software that only runs on a Mac -- is a buyer's fair use violated because the software won't run on PC's?
Mac software says right on the box that it requires a Mac. If copy-protected CDs say prominently on the box that they won't work on CD drives and might not work on some audio CD players (the former is insufficient; all significant deficiencies in what a reasonable consumer would expect by default must be covered), then the analogy would hold. /.
To take another example, a website under Sunstein's rules, might expose people to "both" sides of the abortion debate by presenting an article with the extreme pro-life position, and one with the extreme pro-choice position. Extremists on both sides of this issue claim that there can be no compromise--depsite the fact that the vast, but nonvocal majority of Americans seem to want a compromise, allowing abortion early in the pregnancy but not allowing partial-birth abortions. Is this really a good way to expose people to differing viewpoints?
Realistically, the debate would be rigged by having the side the government doesn't like represented by the most offensive extremists available.
If Sunstein's proposal had somehow been enacted and not laughed out of court, conservative appointees could select a link to Peter Singer's defense of infanticide as the token "pro-choice" link. When liberals come to power, the "pro-life" side would be represented by the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps. /.
If you don't like the V-chip...turn YOURS off. Leave MINE alone
No, the proper answer is, "If you don't like the V-chip... don't buy one -- and let the people who want one pay the legitimate market price for it, not the subsidy price generated by forcing it on anyone who buys a new TV."
Face it, you have your hand out just like those folks on welfare you mutter about. /.
The benchmark sites are compiled by a group of college students you pay to surf pr0n all day
"After watching for five minutes, I want to go right home and screw. After watching for ten minutes, I never want to screw again for as long as I live." --Erica Jong /.
Current policies have tended to concentrate on the protection of copyright grantees (e.g. protection from having their product undercut by counterfeiters) without regard to the fair use rights of consumers (e.g. the right to make copies of purchased recordings for backup or to use them in different devices, such as transferring CD tracks to an MP3 player). What policies would you favor to protect both? /.
when restricting someone's freedom will make their lives more convenient, then it's ok. i just don't get it.
where in the constitution does it say that we, or more specifically those bastards in congress, can make laws that restcict one's freedom just because their actions make someone else's life inconvenient?
Restricting my freedom to buy stuff and stick you with the bill certainly makes your life more convenient, but it's quite inconvenient for me. Since I'm sure there isn't a hypocritical bone in your body, I'll expect you to be sending me your credit card number any minute now.... /.
My basic position these days is that there has to be a way to make it viable to "hunt" spammers
Or we could make them outlaws in the original sense of the term (i.e. outside the protection of the law -- that is, proof that somebody spammed you would be a full and complete defense against any charges of cracking them). /.
Spam has the same effect on electronic communication as counterfeit money has on the economy.
Excellent analogy. Spammers effectively steal bandwidth from anybody they spam, just as counterfeiters effectively steal goods and services from the recipients of the bogus bills. Spammers taint the credibility of legitimate broadcast e-mail (opt-in lists) and net advertising (agreed-upon tie-ins between services and marketing), just as counterfeiters taint the credibility of legitimate money. Spammers cause some legitimate e-mail to be rejected by anti-spam defenses, just as counterfeiters cause some legitimate money to be rejected because it is mistaken for counterfeit.
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Nowhere in the constitution nor in the Bill of Rights does it say that you have the right to never be irritated.
However, there are a fair number of laws that say I have the right never to be robbed, which is what spammers do with their automated postage-due crap. /.
And the rest of us worldwide get inflicted with things like spam, hate speech, trolls, and all the results of people claiming rights without responsibility.
You are conflating apples and oranges. Spam is not a freedom-of-speech issue, it is a theft-of-bandwidth issue. Hate speech and trolls, on the other hand, are fundamentally matters of opinion, best addressed either by rebuttal or ostracism.
The responsibilities that go with freedom of speech are 1a)Recognizing that others have the same right, 1b)Recognizing that other rights (such as property rights) may not be violated to facilitate your speech, and 2)Recognizing that you'll need to apply some skull sweat in evaluating what you read -- freedom to speak necessarily includes the freedom to speak nonsense.
We also get the results of handing that responsibility to other people - censorware, draconian laws to deal with the unrestricted, unrestrained irresponsible speech of others (the Australian 'net censorship laws spring to mind as an example), and a general perception that curbing freedom of speech may not be such a bad thing after all...
Blaming censorship on people who speak provocatively is like blaming rape on women who dress provocatively. Both "arguments" excuse the inexcusable by transferring blame to the victim -- the very antithesis of "responsibility".
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The DMCA (PDF), however villified it is here on Slashdot, was not intended to turn out as it did. Sen. Hatch's intent was a law that would allow digital copies to be made.
I marked my ethnicity as Other, and filled in the blank with "Human". They actually sent somebody around afterwards for more detail.
That's what I did. I was really hoping that the Census people would dispute it so that I could sell the story to the Weekly World News (US Government Discovers SPACE ALIEN Living In America!!). /.
Seriously, I'm not sure I'd want to mislead the census takers; it was considered important enough to put in the US Constitution, but maybe people elsewhere take it less seriously.
The Founders of the American Republic put into the Constitution that the government was to count people to allocate Congressional representation. It did not put in anything about the government tallying up how many toilets you have in your house, how far you commute to work, or any of the other stuff that market research experts should go get for themselves if they want it.
I got the 1990 long form. In retrospect, though I had never heard of Bill Clinton at the time, I managed to come up with some truly Clintonian "legally accurate" answers, e.g.:
Question: Do you live on more than 10 acres of land?
Answer (written): Yes
Answer (mental): Yes (it's called "North America")
Personally, I'm all in favor of "creative" answers to the nosy questions that the government really has no business asking. /.
No, it's an illustration of why a constitutional elected government works better than pure democracy.
A mandatory referendum with a 3% trigger is a mechanism that virtually guarantees that the majority will run roughshod over the rights of unpopular minorities. The general record of the Canadian Alliance Party implies that this was a feature, not a bug, in the proposal. /.
Warren Buffet's a moron. He can afford the lawyers to do fancy tricks with his money, meanwhile one of the oldest and most prestigious black newspapers, the Chicago Defender, is about to be sold -- probably to a large corporation -- because of the stupid estate tax.
On the contrary, he's smart -- smart enough to wrap his cynical motives (attempting to squelch rising competition from the next lower class, which in his case is the million-, as opposed to billion-, aire) in Mom and flag and apple pie.
As you say, Buffet (and the other really rich) can cloak their assets fairly easily. The people a few steps down the totem pole are millionaires on paper, but have most of their assets tied up in businesses, land, etc, which will get the anal probe as the owner assumes ambient temperature. /.
Re:Wouldn't it be easier to use The Bible
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Anticryptography
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The kama sutra has also been translated into "all sorts of native languages". Does that make it a good means of communication with an alien species? Of course not.
Maybe not, but it wouldn't be hard to find volunteers for the attempt.... /.
What will we do when everyone in the world tries to 'live' like Americans?
Living like Americans inherently includes having the same below-replacement birthrate as Americans. Try to think through the implications of your statements. /.
Re:Web comics and alien abduction
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It's a fairly common pop-culture trope that can be used to justify almost any weird thing the writer needs. /.
It never occurred to me before that the GPL is also an "embrace and extend" strategy. While RMS and Bill Gates seem to be polar opposites, they both play the game the same way -- Microsoft prefers that Microsoft code only play nice with other Microsoft code and RMS prefers that GPL code only play nice with other GPL code.
Huh?? Given that GPL code is necessarily open (if distributed), anyone can determine the protocols it uses, write new code "clean-room" code using those protocols, and produce proprietary code that is compatible with GPL code. /.
How about if I believed ours was the only planet that had produced "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"?
There was something like this in Babylon-5, where all known intelligent species had all produced something, though by different names, that was basically a sweedish meatballs dish.
That was a minor throwaway joke, of course. On the other hand, the Crusade episode "The Needs of Earth" noted the distinction between scientific knowledge (which is inherent to reality and can be discovered by any intelligence using the right tools) and culture (which is an irreproducable result). /.
There's nothing preventing MS embracing and extending a GPL protocol providing they make their revised source code freely available.
Of course, this defeats the purpose of defacing and upending the standards in the first place, since competing software could easily be updated to be compatible with the new version.
/.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Why would MS consider that desirable, other than to prevent people from noticing Plug-n-Pray failures?
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Mac software says right on the box that it requires a Mac. If copy-protected CDs say prominently on the box that they won't work on CD drives and might not work on some audio CD players (the former is insufficient; all significant deficiencies in what a reasonable consumer would expect by default must be covered), then the analogy would hold.
/.
Realistically, the debate would be rigged by having the side the government doesn't like represented by the most offensive extremists available.
If Sunstein's proposal had somehow been enacted and not laughed out of court, conservative appointees could select a link to Peter Singer's defense of infanticide as the token "pro-choice" link. When liberals come to power, the "pro-life" side would be represented by the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps.
/.
No, the proper answer is, "If you don't like the V-chip... don't buy one -- and let the people who want one pay the legitimate market price for it, not the subsidy price generated by forcing it on anyone who buys a new TV."
Face it, you have your hand out just like those folks on welfare you mutter about.
/.
If you start singing "Mr. Tambourine Man", I'm outta here....
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"After watching for five minutes, I want to go right home and screw. After watching for ten minutes, I never want to screw again for as long as I live." --Erica Jong
/.
The problem is that the oath of office isn't backed up with prison time for violation.
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Current policies have tended to concentrate on the protection of copyright grantees (e.g. protection from having their product undercut by counterfeiters) without regard to the fair use rights of consumers (e.g. the right to make copies of purchased recordings for backup or to use them in different devices, such as transferring CD tracks to an MP3 player). What policies would you favor to protect both?
/.
where in the constitution does it say that we, or more specifically those bastards in congress, can make laws that restcict one's freedom just because their actions make someone else's life inconvenient?
Restricting my freedom to buy stuff and stick you with the bill certainly makes your life more convenient, but it's quite inconvenient for me. Since I'm sure there isn't a hypocritical bone in your body, I'll expect you to be sending me your credit card number any minute now....
/.
Or we could make them outlaws in the original sense of the term (i.e. outside the protection of the law -- that is, proof that somebody spammed you would be a full and complete defense against any charges of cracking them).
/.
Excellent analogy. Spammers effectively steal bandwidth from anybody they spam, just as counterfeiters effectively steal goods and services from the recipients of the bogus bills. Spammers taint the credibility of legitimate broadcast e-mail (opt-in lists) and net advertising (agreed-upon tie-ins between services and marketing), just as counterfeiters taint the credibility of legitimate money. Spammers cause some legitimate e-mail to be rejected by anti-spam defenses, just as counterfeiters cause some legitimate money to be rejected because it is mistaken for counterfeit.
/.
However, there are a fair number of laws that say I have the right never to be robbed, which is what spammers do with their automated postage-due crap.
/.
You are conflating apples and oranges. Spam is not a freedom-of-speech issue, it is a theft-of-bandwidth issue. Hate speech and trolls, on the other hand, are fundamentally matters of opinion, best addressed either by rebuttal or ostracism.
The responsibilities that go with freedom of speech are 1a)Recognizing that others have the same right, 1b)Recognizing that other rights (such as property rights) may not be violated to facilitate your speech, and 2)Recognizing that you'll need to apply some skull sweat in evaluating what you read -- freedom to speak necessarily includes the freedom to speak nonsense.
We also get the results of handing that responsibility to other people - censorware, draconian laws to deal with the unrestricted, unrestrained irresponsible speech of others (the Australian 'net censorship laws spring to mind as an example), and a general perception that curbing freedom of speech may not be such a bad thing after all...
Blaming censorship on people who speak provocatively is like blaming rape on women who dress provocatively. Both "arguments" excuse the inexcusable by transferring blame to the victim -- the very antithesis of "responsibility".
/.
"Was not intended" by whom? As Orwell noted in Politics and the English Language , the passive voice tends to obfuscate.
IMO, the RIAA most certainly did intend the law to turn out as it did, and pulled a scam on the legislators.
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That's what I did. I was really hoping that the Census people would dispute it so that I could sell the story to the Weekly World News (US Government Discovers SPACE ALIEN Living In America!!).
/.
The Founders of the American Republic put into the Constitution that the government was to count people to allocate Congressional representation. It did not put in anything about the government tallying up how many toilets you have in your house, how far you commute to work, or any of the other stuff that market research experts should go get for themselves if they want it.
I got the 1990 long form. In retrospect, though I had never heard of Bill Clinton at the time, I managed to come up with some truly Clintonian "legally accurate" answers, e.g.:
Personally, I'm all in favor of "creative" answers to the nosy questions that the government really has no business asking./.
No, it's an illustration of why a constitutional elected government works better than pure democracy.
A mandatory referendum with a 3% trigger is a mechanism that virtually guarantees that the majority will run roughshod over the rights of unpopular minorities. The general record of the Canadian Alliance Party implies that this was a feature, not a bug, in the proposal.
/.
On the contrary, he's smart -- smart enough to wrap his cynical motives (attempting to squelch rising competition from the next lower class, which in his case is the million-, as opposed to billion-, aire) in Mom and flag and apple pie.
As you say, Buffet (and the other really rich) can cloak their assets fairly easily. The people a few steps down the totem pole are millionaires on paper, but have most of their assets tied up in businesses, land, etc, which will get the anal probe as the owner assumes ambient temperature.
/.
Maybe not, but it wouldn't be hard to find volunteers for the attempt....
/.
Living like Americans inherently includes having the same below-replacement birthrate as Americans. Try to think through the implications of your statements.
/.
It's a fairly common pop-culture trope that can be used to justify almost any weird thing the writer needs.
/.
Huh?? Given that GPL code is necessarily open (if distributed), anyone can determine the protocols it uses, write new code "clean-room" code using those protocols, and produce proprietary code that is compatible with GPL code.
/.
That gave me a mental image I really didn't need of an alternate biometrics technology.
/.
There was something like this in Babylon-5, where all known intelligent species had all produced something, though by different names, that was basically a sweedish meatballs dish.
That was a minor throwaway joke, of course. On the other hand, the Crusade episode "The Needs of Earth" noted the distinction between scientific knowledge (which is inherent to reality and can be discovered by any intelligence using the right tools) and culture (which is an irreproducable result).
/.
Of course, this defeats the purpose of defacing and upending the standards in the first place, since competing software could easily be updated to be compatible with the new version.
/.