I certainly don't believe it's okay to use the justice system to oppress people; quite the reverse. I've been screwed over by a glitch in the justice system myself. And I'm in a profession where under local law, my constitutional rights can be trampled with impunity.
What I was pointing out is that a lot of people here, being they're still at that stage of life where everything fits into tidy and logical pigeonholes, just don't see why pity and mercy have a place in the courtroom, or should be considered along with physical evidence.
[goes off, in the interests of evidence reads a couple hundred posts by NYCL's foes]
Far as I looked (at about half your foes and mainly at their comments re RIAA/DMCA/DRM) I only see one probable-RIAA-shill (I didn't mark who it was, but speaking as an experienced editor, his posts had the flavour of ad-agency writing and copy-and-paste). The rest are expressing pretty much the same opinions they always have on any related topic, and some of these folks were here way before the lawsuits started.
Sadly, there are a few people here as everywhere who honestly believe that if someone is accused of $foo, they are certainly guilty of $foo, because anyone who gets themselves so-accused is just too cheap to pay for anything. Likewise, there are some people who believe that The Law Is Always Right, and if you object to unfair laws and unfair applications of those laws, it can only be because you want to Break The Law With Impunity.
This doesn't preclude vested interest, but it doesn't necessarily follow that someone is an RIAA shill, either. Frex, I have a computer client who is an independent writer, and he LOVES the DMCA and the lawsuits, and will quote you chapter and verse in support of his viewpoint; in fact he's busy suing libraries himself (allegedly some of his old articles are being infringed by being included by indexing services). He sees the DMCA as a potential source of free money, much as the RIAA does. If he did forums, he'd be flaming away with the best of 'em, expressing his honestly-held if misguided belief that we're all a bunch of thieves for objecting to abuses encouraged by the DMCA. But I don't think that qualifies him as a "troll".
[Industrial-sized irony: my client's articles were not exactly "original"; they consisted *entirely* of regurgitated promotional literature.... er, "research".]
Anyway, I'll go back to the cheering section now -- all the above aside, I'm very glad we have people like you with the guts to defend regular folks from the RIAA's abusive tactics. Keep up the good work!
I think the problem here is that the appeal to pity is perceived as exactly the same sort of tactic as the RIAA's use of fear -- emotional first and foremost, thus dishonest. And to others here, both points are factual enough, but neither is physical evidence, thus not (to their view) valid.
But in court you've gotta use every weapon you're handed -- and as I understand it, that's also the defense lawyer's duty to his client, just as the RIAA lawyers' duty is to use every weapon they can for their client. If that requires a battle of good emotions vs nasty emotions, well, that's what you do.:(
Whilst RTFA'ing, I did wonder why the RIAA doesn't just sue EVERYONE and get it over with.:/
Hmm. Is there such a thing as an inverse class action suit, where an entity can bring suit against a broad class of the Public?? (As contrasted to the public class bringing suit against an entity.)
What a horrifying idea. I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.
Hmnmmmmm.... this is probably just a soap bubble, but what about a class action suit against the RIAA, alleging emotional abuse?? probably wouldn't go anywhere, but if it made a stink and tied up their resources, it might have value.
Kinda like how most folk who live in a cold climate discover that if you're really chilled, the fastest way to get unchilled is to soak your hands in a bowl of hot water. Radiators work both ways.:)
Same thing as dumping cold water over your head, or wearing a wet T-shirt while doing hard work in a hot climate. Gives the body a bigger radiator system, cools you down, keeps you from wearing out so fast.
I just noticed your sig for the first time earlier today, when you said something or other that I felt an urge to mod up.:) Anyway, good explanation, and you're right -- political parties are more about opposing what the other party wants than about doing their jobs.:/
As to the nominal topic, people forget that many advances in medicine that later become available to the public, START as advances in battlefield medicine. Most especially wrt trauma survival.
And TFA is right -- I noticed decades ago that the single most fatiguing factor is overheating, not "running out of gas". If I stay just a tish on the chilled side, I can dig a hole or ride a bike a lot longer than if I'm too warm.
Slashdot has developed a nasty habit of randomly logging me out, in fact it did so when I went to this story's comment page. I always log back in to post, but it's annoying enough (requires several extra steps to post) that I expect some people don't bother and just post AC.
I'd have modded the parent post Informative instead, but I couldn't get it to log me back in for this page, even tho I have mod points today... geesh!!
Elsewhere in the discussion, concern was voiced over watermarked original DVDs vs the Doctrine of First Sale -- if the physical disk is watermarked, then you'd need a transferrable license for said disk (so you don't get dinged for the next owner's filesharing), in violation of First Sale (which I gather applies to any copyrighted work, or at least was *meant* to do so). But if only ripped copies are watermarked, then you could freely sell the disk and no worries about whether the next owner ripped *and uploaded* the content -- the rips would be watermarked by HIS gateway, not yours.
So I see watermarking at the point of home recording (from cable TV) or home ripping (from DVD) as better than watermarking the physical disks. Such a watermark does no harm to files you use on your own devices; and for the **AA anti-piracy crusade, it would be a much more positive ID of a file's point-of-origin than the current nebulous use of IP addresses.
Of course anything can be hacked, but for legit copies, this watermarking at the point of record/rip would fall under "why bother??" since it would in no way inhibit your Fair Use.
So tell me if I get this right: If you record said video and use it anywhere on your own home network or mobile devices, no problem; you'd never know the watermark was there. The only time the watermark is significant is if you upload the file to the greater internet, whereat the watermark can be used to ID the original recipient (and thereby the probable uploader).
I don't have a problem with that, provided it's not tied to some DRM scheme.
I can see it being used to identify DVD rips as well, using just such a DSL gateway as TFSummary imagined -- no problem using your ripped content on your own devices, but you could be ID'd by said watermark if you fileshared it.
They're missing potential profit here, too -- if filesharing is used as a legit distribution medium, such watermarks could be used to track who gets paid what (for content and for distribution).
"Individual watermarks in the content might sound good, but they can be stolen"
Yes indeed, and that's why (if I understand correctly from commenters that RTFA -- I can't get at it) watermarking at the output/gateway device is much better than watermarking the original DVD or CD. If you sell or someone steals your DVD collection, rips it, and posts it to the internet, it goes out with THEIR gateway's watermark, not yours.
Whereas what you rip and/or use in your own home and on your own devices never goes anywhere else, so watermarks added during ripping/viewing have no impact on you. And if you sell the DVD, there's no watermark-license to transfer, since it's generated at the site of the current owner.
And no DRM needed, and an end to bogus lawsuits based solely on an IP address.
Far as I can tell from comments by folks who'd RTFA (I can't get at TFA) the idea here is to watermark the output during playback, so only ripped copies (or those floating around your home network) are watermarked. The original that you purchased remains virgin, thus the Doctrine of First Sale remains in effect. No transfer license required. And the watermark is never an issue unless one of those ripped copies floats out the gateway and onto the wider internet.
At least, this is my understanding. I don't have a problem with watermarks if used this way, and if there's no DRM involved.
I've argued for watermarked legal MP3s too, for two reasons:
1) Easy tracking of the original culprit, should content be illicitly uploaded. Well, maybe not the actual person who uploaded the content, but the physical gateway it was uploaded from. No more lawsuits based on no evidence other than a tenuous IP-address match. The only real issue I see here is if someone's system is hacked and the miscreant is using their gateway.
2) Easy tracking of both royalties due (if any) and the person(s) who should get paid for hosting/sharing the file, when filesharing is used as a legit distribution medium. This could be win-win for everyone.
In either case, no DRM required.
As to people who talk about the video quality being degraded, a watermark probably doesn't have to be distributed throughout the entire file. The first and last two minutes might suffice, so any video issues are during the credits, thus less likely to be annoying. Or maybe it could be akin to the ID3 tag, which can be in several locations without harming sound quality.
So... if these senators are a threat to national security, it follows that they should be locked up, preferably far away from a sensitive venue like Washingon D.C.;)
Not all mountains are of igneous origin. Some mountains are formed of heaved-up sedimentary rock. And there is a lot of coal in the deep seams of such mountains (Appalachians, Urals, no doubt others that don't come to mind offhand). Deep seams tend to be high-grade bituminous and anthracite (the result of putting sedimentary coal under pressure), which are more valuable because they burn hotter and cleaner.
Conversely, surface coal (the stuff you get from strip mines) tends to be low-grade bituminous, or worse, lignite (not-quite-coal-yet).
When I lived in Montana I heated my house with a coal stove (when it's -65F, wood just doesn't produce enough heat), and that's how I learned that coal from Montana was crap compared to coal from Wyoming, even tho the major strip mines were less than 200 miles apart. If I wanted decent coal, sometimes I had to drive down to Sheridan and pick it up off the side of the road (they'd let you do that outside the mines -- small chunks tend to fall off the trucks).
BTW when splitting coal for the stove, I often found fossilized "prints" from plants (leaves, tree rings, etc.)
I vaguely recall that some of the strip mines in eastern Montana (which dwarf these mountaintop mines) were required to post a reclamation bond with the state, following some loot-and-scoot operations such as you describe. I don't recall how successful the bond program was (this was 30-odd years ago), tho I do know some defunct mines were restored, some to a more useful state than the sagebrush and rocks they'd started as.
I had a related thought: If Google is in bed with the WWF today, whom might they be in bed with tomorrow?? And might this in turn taint the impartiality of their search results?? What if the WWF, or some other special interest (including the gov't), wishes to exaggerate/denigrate the impact of whatever their overlay is focused on??
Here in SoCal, developers literally move mountains to make more buildable land. Once the newly-flattened earth is covered with tract houses and shopping malls, it's even more irrecoverable than a mined-out mountain (which *could* eventually become an ecosystem again).
My comfortable reading speed is about 800wpm, and has been since I was a kid. I suspect it has a lot to do with learning to read at a very early age, plus a great deal of practice (I also read for fun), so for me reading is natural and efficient. I don't skip words at that speed, either (as evidenced by that I'm a very good proofreader... now watch me leave some weird typo in this post:)
In high school, I taught myself to do a sort of diagonal scan to rip the necessary stuff from boring texts. It was good enough to get a B on material I'd not otherwise studied, tho probably tended to be weak on snagging detail. I can also read by randomly jumping around the page, tho ultimately I don't skip any words when I do that; it's more like picking up spilled rice -- a scoop here, a grain there, til I get them all... I think I learned that technique in Latin class.:)
Occasionally I have an intensely negative reaction to some TV ad, even tho the ad is not overtly obnoxious or even particularly dislikeable. I've long suspected that I'm having a subconscious reaction to subliminal content.
Anyone who does repair or support work for others *routinely* downloads drivers and updates for hardware and software they don't own, and often that they wouldn't be caught dead with.
At the moment this machine stores over a gig of drivers for other folks stuff (why scrounge it up again if I've already done it once?) and I've got several CDs and a couple DVDs worth floating around the workbench. All for hardware I don't own.
The zoom functionality reminds me of a demo I saw from HP, probably 7 or 8 years ago, that was meant to allow partial views of ad content over the web. You picked the section you wanted to zoom in on, and it only sent you full data for that part. Looked useful, but never caught on.
In what cases is the output of a GPL program covered by the GPL too? Only when the program copies part of itself into the output.
That's a minefield all by itself. Say the program generates something with data fields, and it labels those data fields by copying $FOO from a list of labels defined within the program. Technically, the output now includes "part" of the program.
That may not be the intent (presumably the *intent* was to cover snippets of *source code* that a program copies into the output) but I can see how a wicked lawyer could have a field day with this.
Slashdot Mirror
I certainly don't believe it's okay to use the justice system to oppress people; quite the reverse. I've been screwed over by a glitch in the justice system myself. And I'm in a profession where under local law, my constitutional rights can be trampled with impunity.
What I was pointing out is that a lot of people here, being they're still at that stage of life where everything fits into tidy and logical pigeonholes, just don't see why pity and mercy have a place in the courtroom, or should be considered along with physical evidence.
[goes off, in the interests of evidence reads a couple hundred posts by NYCL's foes]
Far as I looked (at about half your foes and mainly at their comments re RIAA/DMCA/DRM) I only see one probable-RIAA-shill (I didn't mark who it was, but speaking as an experienced editor, his posts had the flavour of ad-agency writing and copy-and-paste). The rest are expressing pretty much the same opinions they always have on any related topic, and some of these folks were here way before the lawsuits started.
Sadly, there are a few people here as everywhere who honestly believe that if someone is accused of $foo, they are certainly guilty of $foo, because anyone who gets themselves so-accused is just too cheap to pay for anything. Likewise, there are some people who believe that The Law Is Always Right, and if you object to unfair laws and unfair applications of those laws, it can only be because you want to Break The Law With Impunity.
This doesn't preclude vested interest, but it doesn't necessarily follow that someone is an RIAA shill, either. Frex, I have a computer client who is an independent writer, and he LOVES the DMCA and the lawsuits, and will quote you chapter and verse in support of his viewpoint; in fact he's busy suing libraries himself (allegedly some of his old articles are being infringed by being included by indexing services). He sees the DMCA as a potential source of free money, much as the RIAA does. If he did forums, he'd be flaming away with the best of 'em, expressing his honestly-held if misguided belief that we're all a bunch of thieves for objecting to abuses encouraged by the DMCA. But I don't think that qualifies him as a "troll".
[Industrial-sized irony: my client's articles were not exactly "original"; they consisted *entirely* of regurgitated promotional literature.... er, "research".]
Anyway, I'll go back to the cheering section now -- all the above aside, I'm very glad we have people like you with the guts to defend regular folks from the RIAA's abusive tactics. Keep up the good work!
I think the problem here is that the appeal to pity is perceived as exactly the same sort of tactic as the RIAA's use of fear -- emotional first and foremost, thus dishonest. And to others here, both points are factual enough, but neither is physical evidence, thus not (to their view) valid.
:(
:/
But in court you've gotta use every weapon you're handed -- and as I understand it, that's also the defense lawyer's duty to his client, just as the RIAA lawyers' duty is to use every weapon they can for their client. If that requires a battle of good emotions vs nasty emotions, well, that's what you do.
Whilst RTFA'ing, I did wonder why the RIAA doesn't just sue EVERYONE and get it over with.
Hmm. Is there such a thing as an inverse class action suit, where an entity can bring suit against a broad class of the Public?? (As contrasted to the public class bringing suit against an entity.)
What a horrifying idea. I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.
Hmnmmmmm.... this is probably just a soap bubble, but what about a class action suit against the RIAA, alleging emotional abuse?? probably wouldn't go anywhere, but if it made a stink and tied up their resources, it might have value.
Kinda like how most folk who live in a cold climate discover that if you're really chilled, the fastest way to get unchilled is to soak your hands in a bowl of hot water. Radiators work both ways. :)
Same thing as dumping cold water over your head, or wearing a wet T-shirt while doing hard work in a hot climate. Gives the body a bigger radiator system, cools you down, keeps you from wearing out so fast.
I just noticed your sig for the first time earlier today, when you said something or other that I felt an urge to mod up. :) Anyway, good explanation, and you're right -- political parties are more about opposing what the other party wants than about doing their jobs. :/
As to the nominal topic, people forget that many advances in medicine that later become available to the public, START as advances in battlefield medicine. Most especially wrt trauma survival.
And TFA is right -- I noticed decades ago that the single most fatiguing factor is overheating, not "running out of gas". If I stay just a tish on the chilled side, I can dig a hole or ride a bike a lot longer than if I'm too warm.
They might have meant http://www.saveourinternetradio.com/ and http://capwiz.com/congressorg/sbx/f/?aid=9461656&r =1
Slashdot has developed a nasty habit of randomly logging me out, in fact it did so when I went to this story's comment page. I always log back in to post, but it's annoying enough (requires several extra steps to post) that I expect some people don't bother and just post AC.
I'd have modded the parent post Informative instead, but I couldn't get it to log me back in for this page, even tho I have mod points today... geesh!!
Elsewhere in the discussion, concern was voiced over watermarked original DVDs vs the Doctrine of First Sale -- if the physical disk is watermarked, then you'd need a transferrable license for said disk (so you don't get dinged for the next owner's filesharing), in violation of First Sale (which I gather applies to any copyrighted work, or at least was *meant* to do so). But if only ripped copies are watermarked, then you could freely sell the disk and no worries about whether the next owner ripped *and uploaded* the content -- the rips would be watermarked by HIS gateway, not yours.
So I see watermarking at the point of home recording (from cable TV) or home ripping (from DVD) as better than watermarking the physical disks. Such a watermark does no harm to files you use on your own devices; and for the **AA anti-piracy crusade, it would be a much more positive ID of a file's point-of-origin than the current nebulous use of IP addresses.
Of course anything can be hacked, but for legit copies, this watermarking at the point of record/rip would fall under "why bother??" since it would in no way inhibit your Fair Use.
So tell me if I get this right: If you record said video and use it anywhere on your own home network or mobile devices, no problem; you'd never know the watermark was there. The only time the watermark is significant is if you upload the file to the greater internet, whereat the watermark can be used to ID the original recipient (and thereby the probable uploader).
I don't have a problem with that, provided it's not tied to some DRM scheme.
I can see it being used to identify DVD rips as well, using just such a DSL gateway as TFSummary imagined -- no problem using your ripped content on your own devices, but you could be ID'd by said watermark if you fileshared it.
They're missing potential profit here, too -- if filesharing is used as a legit distribution medium, such watermarks could be used to track who gets paid what (for content and for distribution).
"Individual watermarks in the content might sound good, but they can be stolen"
Yes indeed, and that's why (if I understand correctly from commenters that RTFA -- I can't get at it) watermarking at the output/gateway device is much better than watermarking the original DVD or CD. If you sell or someone steals your DVD collection, rips it, and posts it to the internet, it goes out with THEIR gateway's watermark, not yours.
Whereas what you rip and/or use in your own home and on your own devices never goes anywhere else, so watermarks added during ripping/viewing have no impact on you. And if you sell the DVD, there's no watermark-license to transfer, since it's generated at the site of the current owner.
And no DRM needed, and an end to bogus lawsuits based solely on an IP address.
Far as I can tell from comments by folks who'd RTFA (I can't get at TFA) the idea here is to watermark the output during playback, so only ripped copies (or those floating around your home network) are watermarked. The original that you purchased remains virgin, thus the Doctrine of First Sale remains in effect. No transfer license required. And the watermark is never an issue unless one of those ripped copies floats out the gateway and onto the wider internet.
At least, this is my understanding. I don't have a problem with watermarks if used this way, and if there's no DRM involved.
I've argued for watermarked legal MP3s too, for two reasons:
1) Easy tracking of the original culprit, should content be illicitly uploaded. Well, maybe not the actual person who uploaded the content, but the physical gateway it was uploaded from. No more lawsuits based on no evidence other than a tenuous IP-address match. The only real issue I see here is if someone's system is hacked and the miscreant is using their gateway.
2) Easy tracking of both royalties due (if any) and the person(s) who should get paid for hosting/sharing the file, when filesharing is used as a legit distribution medium. This could be win-win for everyone.
In either case, no DRM required.
As to people who talk about the video quality being degraded, a watermark probably doesn't have to be distributed throughout the entire file. The first and last two minutes might suffice, so any video issues are during the credits, thus less likely to be annoying. Or maybe it could be akin to the ID3 tag, which can be in several locations without harming sound quality.
A clever AC quips,
:/
"Yeah. Using strong arm techniques makes sense with World Wrestling Federation."
Amazingly, I had a similar thought... except that the "strong arm" of the *other* WWF was political rather than muscular
So... if these senators are a threat to national security, it follows that they should be locked up, preferably far away from a sensitive venue like Washingon D.C. ;)
Not all mountains are of igneous origin. Some mountains are formed of heaved-up sedimentary rock. And there is a lot of coal in the deep seams of such mountains (Appalachians, Urals, no doubt others that don't come to mind offhand). Deep seams tend to be high-grade bituminous and anthracite (the result of putting sedimentary coal under pressure), which are more valuable because they burn hotter and cleaner.
Conversely, surface coal (the stuff you get from strip mines) tends to be low-grade bituminous, or worse, lignite (not-quite-coal-yet).
When I lived in Montana I heated my house with a coal stove (when it's -65F, wood just doesn't produce enough heat), and that's how I learned that coal from Montana was crap compared to coal from Wyoming, even tho the major strip mines were less than 200 miles apart. If I wanted decent coal, sometimes I had to drive down to Sheridan and pick it up off the side of the road (they'd let you do that outside the mines -- small chunks tend to fall off the trucks).
BTW when splitting coal for the stove, I often found fossilized "prints" from plants (leaves, tree rings, etc.)
I vaguely recall that some of the strip mines in eastern Montana (which dwarf these mountaintop mines) were required to post a reclamation bond with the state, following some loot-and-scoot operations such as you describe. I don't recall how successful the bond program was (this was 30-odd years ago), tho I do know some defunct mines were restored, some to a more useful state than the sagebrush and rocks they'd started as.
I had a related thought: If Google is in bed with the WWF today, whom might they be in bed with tomorrow?? And might this in turn taint the impartiality of their search results?? What if the WWF, or some other special interest (including the gov't), wishes to exaggerate/denigrate the impact of whatever their overlay is focused on??
Here in SoCal, developers literally move mountains to make more buildable land. Once the newly-flattened earth is covered with tract houses and shopping malls, it's even more irrecoverable than a mined-out mountain (which *could* eventually become an ecosystem again).
My comfortable reading speed is about 800wpm, and has been since I was a kid. I suspect it has a lot to do with learning to read at a very early age, plus a great deal of practice (I also read for fun), so for me reading is natural and efficient. I don't skip words at that speed, either (as evidenced by that I'm a very good proofreader... now watch me leave some weird typo in this post :)
:)
In high school, I taught myself to do a sort of diagonal scan to rip the necessary stuff from boring texts. It was good enough to get a B on material I'd not otherwise studied, tho probably tended to be weak on snagging detail. I can also read by randomly jumping around the page, tho ultimately I don't skip any words when I do that; it's more like picking up spilled rice -- a scoop here, a grain there, til I get them all... I think I learned that technique in Latin class.
Occasionally I have an intensely negative reaction to some TV ad, even tho the ad is not overtly obnoxious or even particularly dislikeable. I've long suspected that I'm having a subconscious reaction to subliminal content.
Anyone who does repair or support work for others *routinely* downloads drivers and updates for hardware and software they don't own, and often that they wouldn't be caught dead with.
At the moment this machine stores over a gig of drivers for other folks stuff (why scrounge it up again if I've already done it once?) and I've got several CDs and a couple DVDs worth floating around the workbench. All for hardware I don't own.
The zoom functionality reminds me of a demo I saw from HP, probably 7 or 8 years ago, that was meant to allow partial views of ad content over the web. You picked the section you wanted to zoom in on, and it only sent you full data for that part. Looked useful, but never caught on.
[goes off to googlefight, inputs .PNG vs .GIF, then .PNG vs .JPG] .PNG: 71,400,000 results .GIF: 276,000,000 results .JPG: 440,000,000 results
Draw your own conclusions.
Only when the program copies part of itself into the output.
That's a minefield all by itself. Say the program generates something with data fields, and it labels those data fields by copying $FOO from a list of labels defined within the program. Technically, the output now includes "part" of the program.
That may not be the intent (presumably the *intent* was to cover snippets of *source code* that a program copies into the output) but I can see how a wicked lawyer could have a field day with this.