This is eeriely similar to "Night Watch" from babylon 5, where some people on the station had to report "suspicious" and "unpatriotic" behavior in their friends to a dictator-led government.
Indeed.
"As the name implies, you must also be watchful. Peace can be made or broken with a gun, a word, an idea, even a thought. Now, those who work against peace sow the seeds of discontent. They plant false stories, they undermine the public good. It's not because they are necessarily evil. It's because they don't know any better. They're rejected, they're unhappy, and they lash out in the only way they can. So, If we could be made aware of these problems as they occur, then we can find these people, we can talk to these people, we can embrace them again in the arms of society, while, at the same time, protecting society from misinformation and harmful ideas. We're less interested in actions than we are in attitudes. We must help protect society against its own worst instincts. And by taking these bold steps, we will help to ensure a better future for everyone. I'm proud to be a part of it, and I hope you'll all join me in becoming part of the Night Watch."
--Babylon 5, "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum"
Guns: Sorry, but the evidence says you're wrong on this one. Fifty years ago, guns were far more available to students than they are now (school rifle teams were as common as school chess clubs), and yet school shootings were unheard of.
As for defensive uses of guns -- if it's him or me, then I reserve the right to own tools that stack the deck in favor of me. I consider this a perfectly reasonable and moral stance.
Parental Responsibility: It was a lot easier for one parent to work and one to raise the kids when the government took a tenth or their income instead of a third. This suggests an obvious method to remedy the problem (Hint: It does not involve giving the government more money or hiring more bureaucrats).
Tipping the Authorities: While some people need to remain anonymous to avoid reprisal, the government should never be in the business of encouraging citizens to anonymously informing on one another, for obvious reasons. The people who are really scared don't need special prompting to remain anonymous, and the police and courts are charged with the job of figuring out which evidence is credible and which isn't.
School Authorities: Generally agreed, with the caveat that simply offending someone (racial slurs) cannot reasonably be considered to be officially punishable misconduct. /.
If you have the ability to stop a crime before it happens, and the police bust down a drug dealer's door before he's made the sale, are said dealer's rights violated?
If it was done without evidence (anonymous tip != evidence), then, yes, according to the principles of civilized law as embodied in the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Yes, I do harbor the chauvinistic notion that some cultures are civilized and others are not. Deal.)
Rewards? That I disagree with.
Hmmm... how about turning that around, with a $1000 bond-posting requirement? If your tip is bogus, the grand goes to the person you fingered. (This would be in the form of a certified check with your name on it, of course -- we wouldn't want "paranoia" to prevent him from writing a thank-you note, now would we?) /.
I also think that there is a decent reason, other than people don't want to pay taxes, why the internet should not be taxed.
In addition, there is the fact that the net taxation schemes being pushed by various local politicians are simply ways for them to get their hands into the pockets of distant consumers who don't use any of their services and can't vote them out of office.
What was that line I remember from history class....? Oh, yeah: "No Taxation Without Representation". /.
The only other regulation we need is guaranteed low-cost access for anyone, like basic telephone service. No matter where they live in rural or remote areas.
Nonsense. In rural areas, some things naturally cost less (e.g. land) and some things naturally cost more (e.g. wiring). Deal. Or move. Or invest in technologies that circumvent the high costs (e.g. wireless).
Tolerance is a live-and-let-live attitude. If it were a matter of 'oh, I don't like my neighbor's nice new car, I wish it were gone,' it would be a matter of simple resentment. If I don't like my neighbor's sexual practices or hobbies or skin color, that's intolerance. But that's not the problem.
I'm sorry -- trying to draw a distinction between hating someone because you don't like where he puts his money and hating someone because you don't like where he puts his penis is puerile it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-'is'-is sophistry. /.
The framer's intentions ARE abundantly clear, and you're missing them. They wanted to make sure that people had that incentive you talked about, and they knew that they couldn't protect that freedom froever, though they would have preferred it that way.
The simple fact is that the first US copyright law established a fourteen-year term, with a single fourteen-year renewal option. Thus, it is quite evident that the Founders considered limited periods of protection sufficient unto the purpose of protecting the right to profit from one's intellectual creations.
So they put a limit on it. That limit was not some compromise between the two ends of the spectrum, it was something they felt would be enforceable.
Surely you do not seriously suggest that the Founders felt themselves incapable of enforcing the law over a twenty-nine-year period.
I recommend L. Ray Patterson's essay on the topic for a historical overview of Anglo-American copyright law. /.
Congress doesn't have a friend in the Executive branch of government for their censorship agenda
What are you talking about? Clinton signed the CDA (a far greater crime, being a direct violation of his oath of office, than those for which he was impeached). /.
What I don't understand is why they haven't been going after utilities such as Remote Selector that allow people with DVD-ROM drives to play movies from any region.
Because they can't figure out a way to scam anybody into thinbelieving king that there's a bootlegging issue involved. /.
Of course, a bit-by-bit copy of the entire disk would work just fine without any need for the copier to break the encryption.
It's not possible to do such a bit-by-bit copy with commercially available DVD blanks, because they have a track (where the CSS keys are stored) pre-burned. However, anyone with access to completely blank DVD disks can make playable bit-by-bit copies. The effect is that the large-scale bootlegging problem (mass production in see-no-evil jurisdictions) is unaffected by CSS.
The real issue here is that an open-source CSS player could allow consumers to circumvent region coding, playback restrictions (e.g. disabling fast-forward), etc. For obvious reasons, the industry prefers to wave the bloody shirt of "piracy" rather than admit that it doesn't want to let you play imported Japanimation DVD or zip through the ads at the beginning. /.
If everybody on the Net is officially permitted "one bite of the apple", the flood of spam would be worse than it is now (with a tiny minority spamming as often as they can get away with it). There are (at a conservative estimate) 10^7 people on the Net with something to sell or a message to spread; if each of them sends their one spam over the course of the next year, that's one spam every three seconds.
Yes, after which you can never be spammed ever again.
[sarcasm] Since, as we all know, no new people are coming onto the Net any more.... [/sarcasm]
Sorry, the bottom line is that we can no more permit everybody one free spam than we can permit everybody one free note on a brick through a window. /.
The problem is, spam is protected by the First Amendment, as is every other kind of expression
(IANAL disclaimer)
The simple fact is that all forms of expression are not protected by the First Amendment. There are some types of restrictions which are legally acceptable -- the relevant issue here is "time, place, and manner" regulation.
The test for time, place, and manner restriction has three parts:
1. Content-neutral: For instance, a ban on bulk unsolicited e-mailing in general would pass muster, a ban limited to porn spam would not. (A law imposing penalties for using spam in an activity which is illegal in its own right, such as running pyramid scams, probably would pass muster, but this is a different issue than time-place-and-manner.)
2. Narrowly tailored for significant governmental interest: Here, the significant government interest is protecting the property rights of ISPs and users whose resources are stolen by spammers. The "narrowly tailored" part requires that the scope of the law be focused on the problem and not used as a catch-all obstacle to legitimate use of e-mail; for instance, a general ban on sending large volumes of e-mail would fail this test because it would impede the operations of legitimate opt-in mailing lists.
3. Alternative channels: No problem; if spam is banned, the message can be made equally accessible by other media such as the Web.
I would propose a solution like this. All commercial e-mail, solicited or not, must include an opt-out function (opt-in would be better, of course, but we're talking about setting a bare minimum here). Now, let's say I opt out of e-mail lists from, say, l33tpr0n.com using this. If I ever get another e-mail from l33tpr0n.com again without first giving my permission, then it is considered harassment.
Quite unacceptable. If everybody on the Net is officially permitted "one bite of the apple", the flood of spam would be worse than it is now (with a tiny minority spamming as often as they can get away with it). There are (at a conservative estimate) 10^7 people on the Net with something to sell or a message to spread; if each of them sends their one spam over the course of the next year, that's one spam every three seconds. /.
I agree completely that it seems absurd that so many/. readers seem to think censorship is just fine as long as that which is being censored is something which annoys them.
The only thing here that seems absurd is your mischaracterization of the issue. It is a matter of property rights, not "free speach", as you would agree if equivalent actions were taken in the physical world (e.g. someone plastering unwanted bumper stickers on your car, spray-painting a message on your door, throwing notes wrapped around bricks through your windows, etc). /.
If a group like planned parent hood, the NRA, the KKK or whatever sends out a message to a large group of people unsolicited, couldnt this be considered spam?
Yes, and if they do they should be punished for their theft of bandwidth just like anyone else.
I like the idea I read that the sentence for spamming should be to lock the spammer in a cell with a computer recieving a flood of spam. He is let out when he "just hits delete" a number of times equal to the number of spam messages he sent or caused to be sent.
(Oh, and meal announcements would be sent via the same link. Delete those, miss that meal -- so no just tying down the DELETE key....) /.
Machinima is a new animation technique that permits animators with little money to create films rich in special effects -- Hollywood-quality movies on college budgets. If the motion picture industry doesn't like open-source software to decrypt DVDs, wait'll they get a load of this.
Here, Katz is on to something. Industry grabs for new special rights (control over format and access, blocking of archival backup and format conversion) in addition to their recognized legal rights (control over production of copies) represents one of two possibilities:
1. Pointy-haired confusion of these two concepts, or
2. A preemptive strike against effective "garage-band" publishing at professional quality (under a smokescreen designed to blur the distinction between the new special rights and traditional copyright protections, so that the former can disguise itself under the latter's halo).
Naturally, many suspect that they can't all be excusable by the former, and that the real agenda must therefore be the latter.
If so, the industry may come to regret its smokescreen. It works both ways -- instead of giving the new special rights the credibility of traditional copyright protection, the effect may be to tarnish traditional copyright protection with the disdain engendered by the access controls. /.
If I can buy a new Athlon 1GHZ for $1400 at a local store and play $102.20 in sales tax versus buying it over the internet for the same price but paying $5.00 shipping, then of course I'm not going to buy it from the local store.
Better get a high-bandwidth Net connection on that Athlon system, to field the flood of inquires asking where they can get that kind of deal on S&H.
When realistic numbers are used, your argument becomes rather less compelling. /.
Disclaimers dismissing the producers from responsibility if you happen die of shock in the seats?
Or disclaimers dismissing the producers from responsibility if you happen die of embarrassment at the thought of having paid to see this movie with money.... /.
Those of you who gasp at the scientific impossiblities are the same ones who think that the "Star Wars" trillogy was a profound set of workmanship.
Yep. The Star Wars trilogy made no pretense to be more than a classic space opera with modern SFX. This turkey gets 25 demerits for building up expectations and not delivering. /.
Even at 50% atmosphere, your eyeballs will be popping. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi, 50% atm will mean a difference of 7 lbs per sq inch.
Er, no. Judging from the Soyuz 11 case, vacuum exposure doesn't do that sort of damage (lack of air will kill in a few minutes, of course, but without gory SFX). /.
Think about it...the entire argument for censorware revolves around porn...but they block so much more...the worst of which is of course...they block dissenting opinions.
Here is one of the problems with the free pass software generally gets on standard consumer-fraud protections (which the industry is trying to lock into place with UCITA).
If I bought any normal product that is advertised as doing X, and it also has undesirable effect Y which was reasonably knowable to the seller but not reasonably known to the purchaser, I would generally have grounds for a refund (at least). In this case, the deliberate concealment of Y (the politically-incorrect sites on the block list) is a significant aggrivating factor. /.
The extent to which a police state reduces crime has been demonstrated in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Removal of the constant surveillance, wiretaps, copier controls, computer controls, etc. has been tried.
Someone has already noted that when you count crimes committed by the state, the crime rate in a police state is actually much higher. An entire population of gang-bangers would be hard put to compete with the body count racked up by the Ukranian famine, the Holocaust, etc ad nauseam.
Additionally, I point out that if you believe in the accuracy of police-state public statistics about something as embarrassing as petty crime, I have a bug-free copy of Win2K to sell you. /.
when smart people step up and say, "Well why don't we design a better system so that the privacy of innocents is better protected," you fight against that all the harder.
I've got a great system for better protecting the privacy of innocents against illegal violation. It's called "prison". (Not "Club Fed"; the culture of contempt for the Constitution in some of our agencies probably requires the full don't-bend-over-for-the-soap level of deterrence.) /.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed.
/.
Guns: Sorry, but the evidence says you're wrong on this one. Fifty years ago, guns were far more available to students than they are now (school rifle teams were as common as school chess clubs), and yet school shootings were unheard of.
As for defensive uses of guns -- if it's him or me, then I reserve the right to own tools that stack the deck in favor of me. I consider this a perfectly reasonable and moral stance.
Parental Responsibility: It was a lot easier for one parent to work and one to raise the kids when the government took a tenth or their income instead of a third. This suggests an obvious method to remedy the problem (Hint: It does not involve giving the government more money or hiring more bureaucrats).
Tipping the Authorities: While some people need to remain anonymous to avoid reprisal, the government should never be in the business of encouraging citizens to anonymously informing on one another, for obvious reasons. The people who are really scared don't need special prompting to remain anonymous, and the police and courts are charged with the job of figuring out which evidence is credible and which isn't.
School Authorities: Generally agreed, with the caveat that simply offending someone (racial slurs) cannot reasonably be considered to be officially punishable misconduct.
/.
If it was done without evidence (anonymous tip != evidence), then, yes, according to the principles of civilized law as embodied in the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Yes, I do harbor the chauvinistic notion that some cultures are civilized and others are not. Deal.)
Rewards? That I disagree with.
Hmmm... how about turning that around, with a $1000 bond-posting requirement? If your tip is bogus, the grand goes to the person you fingered. (This would be in the form of a certified check with your name on it, of course -- we wouldn't want "paranoia" to prevent him from writing a thank-you note, now would we?)
/.
In addition, there is the fact that the net taxation schemes being pushed by various local politicians are simply ways for them to get their hands into the pockets of distant consumers who don't use any of their services and can't vote them out of office.
What was that line I remember from history class....? Oh, yeah: "No Taxation Without Representation".
/.
Nonsense. In rural areas, some things naturally cost less (e.g. land) and some things naturally cost more (e.g. wiring). Deal. Or move. Or invest in technologies that circumvent the high costs (e.g. wireless).
Tax the high-speed access people for this.
Harrison Bergeron, please call your office.
/.
I'm sorry -- trying to draw a distinction between hating someone because you don't like where he puts his money and hating someone because you don't like where he puts his penis is puerile it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-'is'-is sophistry.
/.
The simple fact is that the first US copyright law established a fourteen-year term, with a single fourteen-year renewal option. Thus, it is quite evident that the Founders considered limited periods of protection sufficient unto the purpose of protecting the right to profit from one's intellectual creations.
So they put a limit on it. That limit was not some compromise between the two ends of the spectrum, it was something they felt would be enforceable.
Surely you do not seriously suggest that the Founders felt themselves incapable of enforcing the law over a twenty-nine-year period.
I recommend L. Ray Patterson's essay on the topic for a historical overview of Anglo-American copyright law.
/.
***BZZZZTTTT!!*** I'm sorry; that answer is not correct. Don't forget to pick up your lovely consolation prize....
Also, with an 84-16 vote, if Clinton hadn't signed it, his veto would have been easily over-ridden
Irrelevant. He had a free choice to side with or against the United States Constitution; he chose the latter.
/.
What are you talking about? Clinton signed the CDA (a far greater crime, being a direct violation of his oath of office, than those for which he was impeached).
/.
Because they can't figure out a way to scam anybody into thinbelieving king that there's a bootlegging issue involved.
/.
It's not possible to do such a bit-by-bit copy with commercially available DVD blanks, because they have a track (where the CSS keys are stored) pre-burned. However, anyone with access to completely blank DVD disks can make playable bit-by-bit copies. The effect is that the large-scale bootlegging problem (mass production in see-no-evil jurisdictions) is unaffected by CSS.
The real issue here is that an open-source CSS player could allow consumers to circumvent region coding, playback restrictions (e.g. disabling fast-forward), etc. For obvious reasons, the industry prefers to wave the bloody shirt of "piracy" rather than admit that it doesn't want to let you play imported Japanimation DVD or zip through the ads at the beginning.
/.
Somebody moderate this up as "Funny" -- it's a nice parody of Katz's disjoint style.
/.
Yes, after which you can never be spammed ever again.
[sarcasm]
Since, as we all know, no new people are coming onto the Net any more....
[/sarcasm]
Sorry, the bottom line is that we can no more permit everybody one free spam than we can permit everybody one free note on a brick through a window.
/.
(IANAL disclaimer)
The simple fact is that all forms of expression are not protected by the First Amendment. There are some types of restrictions which are legally acceptable -- the relevant issue here is "time, place, and manner" regulation.
The test for time, place, and manner restriction has three parts:
I would propose a solution like this. All commercial e-mail, solicited or not, must include an opt-out function (opt-in would be better, of course, but we're talking about setting a bare minimum here). Now, let's say I opt out of e-mail lists from, say, l33tpr0n.com using this. If I ever get another e-mail from l33tpr0n.com again without first giving my permission, then it is considered harassment.Quite unacceptable. If everybody on the Net is officially permitted "one bite of the apple", the flood of spam would be worse than it is now (with a tiny minority spamming as often as they can get away with it). There are (at a conservative estimate) 10^7 people on the Net with something to sell or a message to spread; if each of them sends their one spam over the course of the next year, that's one spam every three seconds.
/.
The only thing here that seems absurd is your mischaracterization of the issue. It is a matter of property rights, not "free speach", as you would agree if equivalent actions were taken in the physical world (e.g. someone plastering unwanted bumper stickers on your car, spray-painting a message on your door, throwing notes wrapped around bricks through your windows, etc).
/.
Yes, and if they do they should be punished for their theft of bandwidth just like anyone else.
I like the idea I read that the sentence for spamming should be to lock the spammer in a cell with a computer recieving a flood of spam. He is let out when he "just hits delete" a number of times equal to the number of spam messages he sent or caused to be sent.
(Oh, and meal announcements would be sent via the same link. Delete those, miss that meal -- so no just tying down the DELETE key....)
/.
Here, Katz is on to something. Industry grabs for new special rights (control over format and access, blocking of archival backup and format conversion) in addition to their recognized legal rights (control over production of copies) represents one of two possibilities:
Naturally, many suspect that they can't all be excusable by the former, and that the real agenda must therefore be the latter.If so, the industry may come to regret its smokescreen. It works both ways -- instead of giving the new special rights the credibility of traditional copyright protection, the effect may be to tarnish traditional copyright protection with the disdain engendered by the access controls.
/.
Better get a high-bandwidth Net connection on that Athlon system, to field the flood of inquires asking where they can get that kind of deal on S&H.
When realistic numbers are used, your argument becomes rather less compelling.
/.
Or disclaimers dismissing the producers from responsibility if you happen die of embarrassment at the thought of having paid to see this movie with money....
/.
Yep. The Star Wars trilogy made no pretense to be more than a classic space opera with modern SFX. This turkey gets 25 demerits for building up expectations and not delivering.
/.
Er, no. Judging from the Soyuz 11 case, vacuum exposure doesn't do that sort of damage (lack of air will kill in a few minutes, of course, but without gory SFX).
/.
Here is one of the problems with the free pass software generally gets on standard consumer-fraud protections (which the industry is trying to lock into place with UCITA).
If I bought any normal product that is advertised as doing X, and it also has undesirable effect Y which was reasonably knowable to the seller but not reasonably known to the purchaser, I would generally have grounds for a refund (at least). In this case, the deliberate concealment of Y (the politically-incorrect sites on the block list) is a significant aggrivating factor.
/.
Someone has already noted that when you count crimes committed by the state, the crime rate in a police state is actually much higher. An entire population of gang-bangers would be hard put to compete with the body count racked up by the Ukranian famine, the Holocaust, etc ad nauseam.
Additionally, I point out that if you believe in the accuracy of police-state public statistics about something as embarrassing as petty crime, I have a bug-free copy of Win2K to sell you.
/.
So, you've conceded the point, then?
/.
I've got a great system for better protecting the privacy of innocents against illegal violation. It's called "prison". (Not "Club Fed"; the culture of contempt for the Constitution in some of our agencies probably requires the full don't-bend-over-for-the-soap level of deterrence.)
/.