They are requesting records of search queries and the results returned along with a random sample of web addresses indexed by the search engine.
Thanks for pointing out precisely how the government's request fails to meet the requirement of "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
Even if you object to the goal of trying to defend the law in question
The people have granted to the government a limited ability to conduct searches and seizures for certain purposes. Now, let's play "One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others":
1. The government is attempting to find the perpetrator of a crime.
2. The government is attempting to discover the plans of an enemy.
3. The government is attempting to advance a political agenda.
Re:Wierdly, CAN-SPAM is working. But not as expect
on
Spam is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Spam is now a branch of organized crime, not marketing. And it's highly visible organized crime, which makes it vulnerable. It's not that hard to follow the money. We need to push for more law enforcement priority in this area.
The most likely way that will happen is if someone notices (preferably before an actual incident) that spam is an excellent criminal/terrorist comm channel (by steganographically encrypting messages in the anti-filter junk attached to the spam mailing). Traffic analysis is defeated by sending the message to millions of random people, a few of whom know that the hidden message exists.
I agree that spam is on the decline IF you assume the use of a state-of-the-art filter.
A combination of good filters and rational laws (i.e. treating the evasion of spam filtering the same as any other form of cracker break-and-enter exploit) would solve most of the problem. Given the latter, the former could be loosened a bit to minimize the risk of screening out valid e-mail because of false positives -- the filter would simply need to be good enough that no measure capable of actually beating it could possibly be passed off as an inadvertent trait of a legitimate mass mailing.
Every society uses coercion in some form or other to enforce property rights (either there is some form of police agency that arrests thieves, or the property owners take care of thieves directly). What else is new?
Well, then, since your standard is "breaking into your house", you're on board with my position (the use of ANY technique identifiable as a method of spam-filter evasion makes you liable to prosecution and penalties). I'm glad we're in agreement.
YOUR bandwidth and YOUR server don't cost ME money. Make a law, and it does.
We already have laws that say that if you use other people's property without permission (or against an express prohibition), it costs you money (or, particularly in the latter case, jail time). These laws merely need to be clarified so that they unambiguously apply to the property-rights violation known as "spamming".
If you don't want my e-mails, you can run a white list and bounce everything not in it.
No, if I don't want your e-mails, I will run a basic spam filter. If you use ANY filter-evasion technique whatsoever, then (in a just society) you get to spend the next 1-5 as the Bride of Bubba, just as if you'd attempted to similarly violate my property rights (e.g. by picking my front door lock).
What worries me most is the definition of "inappropriate sales pitches", which can be heavily fined. What is inappropriate?
This is precisely why the penalties should apply to spam generally (as a violation of the property rights of the recipient), not to specific types thereof.
even if limited from PCs, he would have a hard time getting a useful job
Somebody who has an attitude that the world owes him a living (which is inherent to the sort of people, such as spammers, who live as parasites on society) is going to have a hard time getting a useful job in any case.
We can't trust too many people with this, of course, because emails from our President would quickly be marked as spam.
I am GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States. Due to political conditions in my country, I need to transport $100 BILLION DOLLARS US out of the country. I seek your assistance in arranging this bank transaction, and offer a 10 PERCENT ASSSISTANCE FEE in return....
Only the hidden objective (yes, you CAN SPAM as long as you keep the coin-operated legislation machine fed) has been any sort of success.
A genuine anti-spam law consistent with legitimate free speech concerns (e.g. severe penalties for the fraud of disguising bulk e-mail as non-bulk) is still needed.
The RIAA saw fit to use ridiculously high fines to scare people away from downloading music; perhaps the ridiculously high fines here will scare music publishers away from DRM completely.
Indeed. Live by the ridiculously high fine; die by the ridiculously high fine.
And, today's PSA:
Copyright Office Taking DMCA Comments. Clearly, the rules need to make it 100% unambiguously clear that, yes, it's legal to remove malware from your computer.
IMO, attempts to up-price certain tracks are intended to suppress online distribution -- if they can't do it universally, they'll at least try to do it for their latest stars.
The underlying reason they wish to do so (besides the obvious desire to keep their monopoly) is that they're scared to death about what will happen if somebody has another set of independent sales stats. That would make it harder to divert royalties into the coke-and-roofies budget without getting caught.
Puh-leeze. Where on earth did you get the notion that I was equating the two? One is simply an example of a well-known and obvious truth; the other is one that deserves to be equally well-known and obvious in the public mind.
There has to come a time when you declare victory and move on
That time is after you have actually achieved victory. In this case, that will be when 1)Sony gets bitch-slapped by the law and 2)the meme "Using DRM/Copy-Protected Media Lets Viruses & Hackers Into Your Computer" is as firmly established as "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein Are Bad People" in Joe Sixpack's mind.
The principle of common courtesy requires us to describe Sony's actions using Sony's preferred term ("theft"). It's like using the preferred terminology of the group's members to refer to an ethnic group (e.g. "Inuit" rather than "Eskimo").
If indeed it is used only to identify the code it may be covered under fair use.
I commented on this in more detail on an earlier thread. To summarize, there are four key factors to be weighed in evaluating alleged "fair use". On two of them (commercial vs nonprofit educational, effect on the work's market value), Sony is pretty well damned (the rootkit is clearly being used for a commercial purpose, and sniffing out the LAME code in order to snitch it out and/or disable it clearly has a negative effect on its value). On the other two (nature of the copyrighted work, extent of use of the copyrighted work), the Magic 8-Ball says "Reply Hazy, Ask Again Later" (it's not yet known just how much LAME code Sony stole for their rootkit).
Copyright infringement in the US allows for statutory damages to be awarded - that is there is a presumption of damage even if the copyright owner can't prove any actual loss (monetary or otherwise) as a result of the copying.
Sony's epitaph: Live by purchased legislation; die by purchased legislation....
It seems that Sony has not actually included any executable code from LAME, only some data, which is likely used as a signature, to determine if you have LAME installed and are using it to rip MP3s. This is likely fair use, not wholesale copyright violation, as far as LAME and the LGPL are concerned.
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Going down the list:
1. Sony is clearly using the copied LAME code for a commercial purpose.
2. Obviously, both LAME and the rootkit are software. It's unclear how this affects the evaluation.
3. Remains to be seen, but there seems to be enough evidence for discovery to begin.
4. Almost any plausible answer to the original question "What does the rootkit do when it detects LAME?" constitutes a direct assault upon "the potential market for or value of" LAME. On this point, Sony is big-red-capital-Superman-S screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
1.) Porn
2.) UFOs
3.) Fantasy Football
That explains why the Nude Touch Football Vixens From Venus web site is always /.ed
Er, because the last couple Presidents would have burned their hands upon contact therewith?
Heck, if the previous President's Google searches were public, the Feds would already have all the data they need on online porn.
Thanks for pointing out precisely how the government's request fails to meet the requirement of "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
Even if you object to the goal of trying to defend the law in question
The people have granted to the government a limited ability to conduct searches and seizures for certain purposes. Now, let's play "One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others":
1. The government is attempting to find the perpetrator of a crime.
2. The government is attempting to discover the plans of an enemy.
3. The government is attempting to advance a political agenda.
The most likely way that will happen is if someone notices (preferably before an actual incident) that spam is an excellent criminal/terrorist comm channel (by steganographically encrypting messages in the anti-filter junk attached to the spam mailing). Traffic analysis is defeated by sending the message to millions of random people, a few of whom know that the hidden message exists.
A combination of good filters and rational laws (i.e. treating the evasion of spam filtering the same as any other form of cracker break-and-enter exploit) would solve most of the problem. Given the latter, the former could be loosened a bit to minimize the risk of screening out valid e-mail because of false positives -- the filter would simply need to be good enough that no measure capable of actually beating it could possibly be passed off as an inadvertent trait of a legitimate mass mailing.
Every society uses coercion in some form or other to enforce property rights (either there is some form of police agency that arrests thieves, or the property owners take care of thieves directly). What else is new?
Well, then, since your standard is "breaking into your house", you're on board with my position (the use of ANY technique identifiable as a method of spam-filter evasion makes you liable to prosecution and penalties). I'm glad we're in agreement.
We already have laws that say that if you use other people's property without permission (or against an express prohibition), it costs you money (or, particularly in the latter case, jail time). These laws merely need to be clarified so that they unambiguously apply to the property-rights violation known as "spamming".
No, if I don't want your e-mails, I will run a basic spam filter. If you use ANY filter-evasion technique whatsoever, then (in a just society) you get to spend the next 1-5 as the Bride of Bubba, just as if you'd attempted to similarly violate my property rights (e.g. by picking my front door lock).
This is precisely why the penalties should apply to spam generally (as a violation of the property rights of the recipient), not to specific types thereof.
Somebody who has an attitude that the world owes him a living (which is inherent to the sort of people, such as spammers, who live as parasites on society) is going to have a hard time getting a useful job in any case.
I am GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States. Due to political conditions in my country, I need to transport $100 BILLION DOLLARS US out of the country. I seek your assistance in arranging this bank transaction, and offer a 10 PERCENT ASSSISTANCE FEE in return....
A genuine anti-spam law consistent with legitimate free speech concerns (e.g. severe penalties for the fraud of disguising bulk e-mail as non-bulk) is still needed.
How is that possible if (as the article asserts) Wiki has no way of knowing who is doing the submissions?
"I'd have to PROVE that somebody is guilty of defamation before I can make his ISP give me his name. WAAAA!!"
Indeed. Live by the ridiculously high fine; die by the ridiculously high fine.
And, today's PSA:
Copyright Office Taking DMCA Comments. Clearly, the rules need to make it 100% unambiguously clear that, yes, it's legal to remove malware from your computer.
Leavanworth? How retro! Haven't you heard -- now, we have Gitmo, and a bunch of places in Eastern Europe so secret we don't even have names for them!
The underlying reason they wish to do so (besides the obvious desire to keep their monopoly) is that they're scared to death about what will happen if somebody has another set of independent sales stats. That would make it harder to divert royalties into the coke-and-roofies budget without getting caught.
Puh-leeze. Where on earth did you get the notion that I was equating the two? One is simply an example of a well-known and obvious truth; the other is one that deserves to be equally well-known and obvious in the public mind.
That time is after you have actually achieved victory. In this case, that will be when 1)Sony gets bitch-slapped by the law and 2)the meme "Using DRM/Copy-Protected Media Lets Viruses & Hackers Into Your Computer" is as firmly established as "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein Are Bad People" in Joe Sixpack's mind.
The principle of common courtesy requires us to describe Sony's actions using Sony's preferred term ("theft"). It's like using the preferred terminology of the group's members to refer to an ethnic group (e.g. "Inuit" rather than "Eskimo").
I commented on this in more detail on an earlier thread. To summarize, there are four key factors to be weighed in evaluating alleged "fair use". On two of them (commercial vs nonprofit educational, effect on the work's market value), Sony is pretty well damned (the rootkit is clearly being used for a commercial purpose, and sniffing out the LAME code in order to snitch it out and/or disable it clearly has a negative effect on its value). On the other two (nature of the copyrighted work, extent of use of the copyrighted work), the Magic 8-Ball says "Reply Hazy, Ask Again Later" (it's not yet known just how much LAME code Sony stole for their rootkit).
Sony's epitaph: Live by purchased legislation; die by purchased legislation....
According to the US Copyright Office, the key parameters to be evaluated are:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Going down the list:
1. Sony is clearly using the copied LAME code for a commercial purpose.
2. Obviously, both LAME and the rootkit are software. It's unclear how this affects the evaluation.
3. Remains to be seen, but there seems to be enough evidence for discovery to begin.
4. Almost any plausible answer to the original question "What does the rootkit do when it detects LAME?" constitutes a direct assault upon "the potential market for or value of" LAME. On this point, Sony is big-red-capital-Superman-S screwed.