It's not a matter of how good the effects are. It's a matter of how they are used.
This is all too true. I remeber catching Jurassic park in the theaters, opening day no less. I came out of the theater still wondering when the movie was going to start, it was little more than a, "hey look at what we can do" movie. They just killed any possibility of a plot, and relied on the graphics to bring the money in. And no, I've never read the book, I tried after seeing the movie, but I just couldn't get into it.
On the other hand, I loved the CG effects in Gladiator, very subtle, and didn't get in the way.
As for Matrix I, sure the special effects were kinda obvious, since the characters were supposed to be defying the laws of the universe. But overall, I thought they were well done.
In the trailer, the first time I saw it, I didn't notice the CG effects in the fight scene, but I wasn't looking for them. At this point, knowng that they are CG, I think it would be unfair to critically analyze it now, of course I would find flaws, I would be looking so hard for them I would eventually find them.
Personally, I'll be plunking down the $15 (2 tickets) to see this movie. My girlfriend would probably shoot me if I didn't, the Matrix was one of her favorite movies.
I think your keyboard is upside-down, every where near me its more like 9 bucks. Though I do get a student discount, so its 7.50. But still, the price of movies these days is getting out of hand, and they absolutly gouge you on the concessions. To make it worse, they have now started running commercials before the movies, not just other movie trailers, those are fine and enjoyed, but standard TV commercials. I thought part of the advantage of paying was that I didn't have to see that crap.
I do still go to movies from time to time, and will for this one, but unless something looks really good, I'll wait for DVD and/or TV.
If the law decides that home addresses of business owners must be released, it will apply to all businesses, not just spammers. Try to think through the consequences here, and not let your visceral hatred of spammers override your judgement.
There is a bit of a difference here, this is his registered business address. It is, in fact, a matter of public record, he has willingly submitted it as such. Do we now allow people to hide the address of their business, because it happenes to be their home address? I think not, this is, and should be, a matter of public record. If one is dumb enough to run a very unpopular business out of their home, then they should be ready to deal with the consequences of their actions. As you said, the law works on precident, the current precident is that your location of business is registered, and therefore public. This guy is trying to reverse that, which, in my opinion, is a bad idea.
I agree that the harrasing phone calls and catalogues are out of order. The first is definate harrasment, the other is mail fraud at best. However, I should be allowed to send a business a letter telling them exactly what I think of them.
As such, I would encourage everyone to stop siging this guy up for catalogues and calling him with death threats and the like. Instead, send him a letter telling him how much you hate what he is doing, and by extension him. And/or call him and tell him the same thing, never threaten him, just express your distaste for this sort of thing, and the people who support it, and let it go at that.
From the Article Header: At the 2003 Financial Markets Conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Sea Island, Georgia
I think Greenspan is plainning on having the rest of the Fed look at this stuff real critically, thus he leaves the questions open. This is, hopefully a very good thing, as it might raise some questions about congress's continued protection of Mickey. As it is, I would have to place Greenspan as one of the more influential people in the US economy today. I swear, this man farts and the DOW drops three points. I think that, if Greenspan was to state that he dislikes the current Copyright "balance", we might see some changes to it come down the pipe.
As for trying to get some good answers, you do realize that this is/. right?
..for California to simply enforce the ADV:-at-the-beginning-of-the-subject-line law rather than create a whole slew of new spam laws? If the state did this, then users could just create mail rules to send those ADV: messages straight to the trash. Voila! No spam in your inbox.
That still fails to address the real problem with SPAM. Sure its inconvient for it to be cluttering up your inbox, but realistically the cost of deleteing it is trivial. However, for an ISP, or a person running their own mail server, there is the issue of server storage and bandwidth. These things cost real money, and with a large portion of the SPAM these days containing graphics, these costs are going up.
Even if you have mail rules set up, the SPAM still needs to get to the server before it can be dumped. Sure you can start blacklisting domains, and it will help for a bit, until the spammer moves on, or you are forced to blacklist a large domain (e.g. yahoo.com) and you end up alienating users, because their mother's emails keep getting bounced.
I'm all for some sort of law that allows people to sue spammers. Though I think it would be much better if we are able to sue the company that paid for the ad. From what little I read of the proposed law, it seemed to include this provision. Something along the lines of "send or caused to be sent." if this works out, who knows it might have a trickle down affect. e.g. I sue the company that paid for the SPAM, if they were smart, they had a provision in their contract with the spammer that said that the spammer would be held responsible in the event that the spam was sent to a person who was able to sue the company. The spammer then takes the brunt of the costs.
Sadly, this law is probably going to die somewhere along the way, but I can dream.
This sounds a lot like the California system, so far, no results. But on the up shot, the CA AG is actively seeking spam which defies the laws, and we may see some action eventually.
It doesn't get any clearer than that, now does it?
Not particularlly, the whole point of the current argument is whether or not al-Muhajir should be considered an enemy combatant. In the paragraph you cited, the court was stating that those involved in the case were clearly within the boundries of military jurisdiction. Given that this is point under argument for al-Muhajir, you can't simply assume it to prove it. Personally, I don't think that the decision which you referenced is really valid for comparison. In that case the judges had little doubt whether the law of war applied to them, as stated in the first sentance of your citation.
As for something outside of the Hague Convention providing reason for al-Muhajir to be treated as a spy, you'd have to point something out to me before I buy that.
No, when you fly a plane into the Pentagon, it's WAR. We cannot declare war against and adversary hideing in the shadows, but it is still a WAR.
Nothing is stopping congress from declaring a war on a terrorist organization. It simply hasn't because it has not seen the need to. Just because it hasn't doesn't mean it can't.
It is also a war we very well might lose if people don't wise up and relize the rules have changed, but we didn't change them. How will you prevent the next disaster?
First off, nothing changed. There have been terrorist attacks against the US for a long time, and they will continue for a long time. That's just the way it is. On 9/11 a group of terrorists got lucky, that's all. Admitadlly there was a good amount of planning, which went into the attacks. But the fact that the CIA/FBI didn't pick up on them sooner, that the 'hostages' were too afraid to do anything, and that the WTC actually collapsed, was all just a sting of luck. We can't prevent the next disaster, as long as there are people willing to die to kill Americans, some of them are bound to get through, no matter how locked down our society becomes. Quit living in fear. Yes, a terrorist could bomb your home tomorrow, but draconian laws aren't going to change that fact.
How will you console the families of the dead and dying?
And how do you plan to console the families of people, put to death by military tribunals, who didn't do anything? How are you going to console those people whose lives are destroyed by the inevitable witch hunts? (Yes, falacious arguments like these can work both ways)
I don't like the sacrafices that must be made, but things will never be the same.
We don't need to make any sacrifices. The government was doing a pretty good job of protecting the people beforehand. Just because a group of terrorists got lucky one day, doesn't mean that we suddenly need to start living in fear. Its kind of sad that we don't get to see the work the CIA/FBI are doing in this areana, I would bet that for evey attack that gets through many more are thwarted, just by virtue of the CIA/FBI finding out about the possibility. Get over it, terrorism has been happeneing for a long time and will continue to do so, yes, 9/11 sucked, I feel sorry for the families of the dead, but hiding under a blanket of draconian policies is not going to make you any safer. This is Real Life, not Scobby Doo, what you don't see can hurt you.
What can you possible do to prevent such a thing? They prey upon open societies, we are the first, when we become more resistant to attack they will seek an easier target. We were by far the easiest target on the block on 9-11. Adapt and survive!
We can't prevent such a thing. Take a good look at Isreal right now, they are doing everything they can to prevent attacks, and they still have attacks getting through on a weekly basis. Now matter how hard you clamp down you will never stop everything.
Also, the terrorists aren't going to stop attacking us just because we make it harder, they are simply going to try harder. Their whole goal is to kill Americans, no matter what the cost.
Ok, looked at both of your links, and both of them reference piracy, which is specifically given to the jurisdiction of military tribunals. In fact, in your other link, to Ex Parte Quirin, the judges make mention of the fact that piracy falls under the articles of war.
Further, in that same decision, it is noted that there was a declared war, and that: Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, [317 U.S. 1, 38] guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war.
Emphasis added.
This decision is simply not applicable in the case of Padilla. First, Padilla is not being accused of piracy. As such, the arguments about piracy being tried by a military tribunal are invalid. Second, there is no enemy govenment which provided aid.
In the case of Padilla, it would seem that the laws concerning organized crime and/or treason would be more applicable. Of course, this wouldn't allow the government to hold Padilla indefinatly, without trial, access to a lawyer, or torture him.
Its not that I want to see Padilla set free, or that I want to see lienancy given to a terrorist. I simply want to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where the government is able to make someone disappear, simply by declaring them an 'enemy combatant'. And I feel that the most obvious demarcation point between unlawful beligerent and criminal, is the existance of a declared war on an enemy government. Anything else is far to vague.
So, if someone calls from within the US, you can haul them to court where there's an $11K fine... but what if the call originates in... say... Tijuana? Ottowa? Bombay?
1. "Who, may I ask, is calling?"
2. "One moment, I will get the person for you."
3. Set phone down, don't hang it up, go back to whatever you were doing.
The cost of this should drive most of these companies out of business pretty quickly. And the rest of us can get back to our lives.
Its funny, at first I was going to disagree with you, I got about half way through my first paragraph and changed my mind. While I think that the spirit of this article is great, it does seem that the letter of it is ripe for abuse.
The way I read it, this article would allow the copyright holder to make a really crappy tool for copying, but copies into all formats. Basically, they could create a bootable CD (you could download the ISO for free, or email them for a copy.) Which then boots you into a difficult to use environment, but will, in fact, copy a song onto your harddrive, in pretty much any format. And will only rip at say.25X. Technically they would have complied with the letter of the law.
While I don't think that changing the "and" to an "or" is the right solution, this clause could probably benifit from adding in the phrase " and reasonable" after the word "necessary", to combat this sort of abuse.
But when they realize that Linux is a market and they start making these so-called "means" (Like they will inevitably do for the Windows market) that restrict the QUALITY of the copy (which is NOT covered by this bill), then it'll be a problem.
I was going to send a message to my representative about this until I realized that Zoe Lofgren is my representative. Therefore, I win.
Send one anyway. Even if it is just an attaboy, it still shows your congrescritter that you are watching and that you approve and support this sort of thing. If the old saying that, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" holds any water, then going silent because you approve of something is a bad idea, send an email voicing your support and thanking her for trying to work for the benifit of her constituents. As for me, I'll be writting an email to Jerry Lewis tonight.
Actually, I think you may have struck on something really good here. This sort of thing could, concivably strike a good balance between the desires of the P2P community and the legitimate needs of the artists. For example:
To start with, once the major labels get their online song stores set up, get some sort of file hash on all of the songs, so that you can garantee that these are the correct files.
Next, create a P2P app which allows you to post a file (which matches a known hash). When you post it, it gets placed on a portion of your HD which is encrypted and inaccessable. Also, when you post a song you have to digially sign an agreement which states that this is the only copy of the file in your possesion, and that you take responsibility in the event that you are lying.
Now, when someone else downloads the file from you, you lose access to it, it is erased from your drive. And if you download from somone else they lose access. As such you only have 1 copy floating around for every copy put into the system. Also, even after you download the song, it remains inaccessable except through the P2P app, which can be used as a player.
Further implement a system of payment. If you download a song, your credit card gets charged $0.50, if you upload your credit card gets paid $0.50.
Lastly, at the central server (yes, I would propose having one, to control the charges.) Implement a policy that watches for leeches. If somone downloads say, more that 10 songs in a week, without uploading any, their account gets frozen.
Anyhow, its just an idea if this bill passes, I hereby cast it into the public domain.
Why is it that the government must mandate the protection of children? This is and should be the domain of the parents. If you, as a person, decide to have a child, you are taking on the responsibilities that go with it. That means that you have to spend time with the child, spend money on the child, and protect the child. If you deem that the internet has inappropriate content on it then you need to do something about it. Quite simply, I didn't decide to have the child, I want no part in that responsibility, and there is no reason that I should be forced to deal with it. (It takes a parent to raise a child, not a village. Unless you are willing to give me spanking rights when your child is acting up and you won't deal with it, don't ask me to take any responsibility for it.) So, feel free to do what you need to do to protect your child, but damn well don't interfere with my ability to view porn anonymously. If/When I have children I will extend everyone else the same courtesy.
In my, not quite so humble, opinion, this is a great argument for having some sort of parenting license. You are not allowed to have children unless you have been through some basic courses in how to control and look after your child, and have passed a worthwhile test at the end of it. Have little concepts in there like: The TV/Computer is not a babysitter; You are responsible for the Morals which your child learns; etc. Basic stuff that parents seem to be lacking these days. Also, I would probably add some sort of financial requirement to having children, if the child is going to be stuck in poverty and possibly end up starving, why the hell are you having a kid? As for implementing the licenseing, that would be the tough part, you would need a way to enforce sterilization on everyone (men and women) but have it reversible for once they obtain a license. This would also have the added benifit of stamping out teen pregnancy.
Is the above idea a bit too heavy handed? Certainly, but if we are going to try and legislate morals, why not go all the way?
That will only slow a malicious spammer down for a very short while.
How does one uncap an account? If it is a web based action (e.g. you log into the ISP's web site and change the setting), this would just require the 'bot to perform this action (remeber, the account has been cracked).
If it is a phone call, this would be easy enough. Make sure you have caller ID block enabled, call the ISP and ask for it to be uncapped, unless they have to provide some sort of personally identifying information this sort of thing would be trivial.
This also fails to address the idea of spammers "hijacking" their own accounts. It just adds one more level to the deception. Get an account; uncap it, because its for a mailing list; send out a "mailing list" once a month (actually, a small scale spam); then around three or four months later have the account "hijacked" and send a couple million emails. Unless I miss my guess, this type of sender charge would probably be billed once a month, this means that a hijacked account would be useful for about a month before it got noticed.
I still stand by my claim, a Sender Charge is not going to do anything other than make life harder on the average user.
I think the biggest problem is volume. Consdier for a moment if, instead of receiving 2-3 junk mailers per day, you received 50-100 per day. Now instead of a quick shuffle and dump, you have to spend more time wading through the junk to find the bills.
Moreover, the physical bulk mailer had to pay for the system, which delivered the mail to you (postage). The bulk e-mailer did not, maintainace for the internet is not free. It is this difference which keeps the volume of snail junk mail low.
Also, there is the problem of content. Adult content is regularly sent to minors, and while the puritanical rules of the US can be argued, this should be something that is decided by the parents. Even beyond that, this type of content is very offensive to some people, why should they have it heaped upon them for no transgression worse than posting an email address to a discussion group?
The biggest problem I see with the sender pays methodoligy is, what if your email address gets hijacked and used to send spam?
Consider that a persons address could be used to send say 10,000 spam messages before the ISP closes it off. At $0.01 per message.01*10000 = $100. So a person is out $100 because the ISP's security was breached and/or the person chose an easy to guess password.
And while I realize that I am about to get a dozen or so elitist, "they deserve it for picking a bad password" responses, that is absolute bullshit. Expecting people to use complex passwords, or even have the slightest clue about network security is simply ignoring the diverse range of people we have in the world. If you can't rebuild your car's engine, fabricate your own IC chips, and rebuild the laser your CD-ROM uses, then you have no business talking about other people using technology they don't know enough about.
Back to the topic at hand, above, I assumed that the ISP would close off the account at 10,000 messages; however, in a sender pays model, the ISP might just assume that all traffic is now normal, and if the person really wants to send that much email and pay for it, then why stop them? The number of messages could easily be larger by a factor of 100, so we get a $10,000 charge.
The obvious response would be that the person would be able to claim that they are not responsible, that they were hijacked. So how does the person prove this? The email account was accessed with the right password, sure it was remotely accessed, but this doesn't prove anything. And what is to keep spammers from setting up accounts a month or three in advance, then have them "hijacked"?
All this system does is shift the burden around some. The average person is now going to be fighting fradulent charges, the ISPs are going to have to spend large amounts of resources trying to determine between real mass mailings and hijacked accounts, and the courts are probably going to be seeing their fair share of cases about this sort of thing. Just as much as every other system proposed, the Sender Pays model is unworkable.
From reading the link to the law itself, this looks like a good start. I especially liked the fact that it clearly spells out that a private citizen can go after a spammer for not putting the ADV/ADLT-ADV tag at the beginning of the subject line (A2.7.1.2). And at $10/non-compliant SPAM, it should add up to enough, pretty quick, to make going after them worth while. It'll be interesting to see if this holds up in court.
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It's not a matter of how good the effects are. It's a matter of how they are used.
This is all too true. I remeber catching Jurassic park in the theaters, opening day no less. I came out of the theater still wondering when the movie was going to start, it was little more than a, "hey look at what we can do" movie. They just killed any possibility of a plot, and relied on the graphics to bring the money in. And no, I've never read the book, I tried after seeing the movie, but I just couldn't get into it.
On the other hand, I loved the CG effects in Gladiator, very subtle, and didn't get in the way.
As for Matrix I, sure the special effects were kinda obvious, since the characters were supposed to be defying the laws of the universe. But overall, I thought they were well done.
In the trailer, the first time I saw it, I didn't notice the CG effects in the fight scene, but I wasn't looking for them. At this point, knowng that they are CG, I think it would be unfair to critically analyze it now, of course I would find flaws, I would be looking so hard for them I would eventually find them.
Personally, I'll be plunking down the $15 (2 tickets) to see this movie. My girlfriend would probably shoot me if I didn't, the Matrix was one of her favorite movies.
Pay the 6 bucks
I think your keyboard is upside-down, every where near me its more like 9 bucks. Though I do get a student discount, so its 7.50. But still, the price of movies these days is getting out of hand, and they absolutly gouge you on the concessions. To make it worse, they have now started running commercials before the movies, not just other movie trailers, those are fine and enjoyed, but standard TV commercials. I thought part of the advantage of paying was that I didn't have to see that crap.
I do still go to movies from time to time, and will for this one, but unless something looks really good, I'll wait for DVD and/or TV.
If the law decides that home addresses of business owners must be released, it will apply to all businesses, not just spammers. Try to think through the consequences here, and not let your visceral hatred of spammers override your judgement.
There is a bit of a difference here, this is his registered business address. It is, in fact, a matter of public record, he has willingly submitted it as such. Do we now allow people to hide the address of their business, because it happenes to be their home address? I think not, this is, and should be, a matter of public record. If one is dumb enough to run a very unpopular business out of their home, then they should be ready to deal with the consequences of their actions. As you said, the law works on precident, the current precident is that your location of business is registered, and therefore public. This guy is trying to reverse that, which, in my opinion, is a bad idea.
I agree that the harrasing phone calls and catalogues are out of order. The first is definate harrasment, the other is mail fraud at best. However, I should be allowed to send a business a letter telling them exactly what I think of them.
As such, I would encourage everyone to stop siging this guy up for catalogues and calling him with death threats and the like. Instead, send him a letter telling him how much you hate what he is doing, and by extension him. And/or call him and tell him the same thing, never threaten him, just express your distaste for this sort of thing, and the people who support it, and let it go at that.
haha, wow someone got that pretty fast. Yes, I know that its divinding by zero, but unless you are looking real carefully, it can slip by.
No, he's simply going to make an "impact".
Seriously though, I think that his idea is a hit. Simply Smashing.
Oops, I think I hear the pun police comming...
From the Article Header:
/. right?
At the 2003 Financial Markets Conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Sea Island, Georgia
I think Greenspan is plainning on having the rest of the Fed look at this stuff real critically, thus he leaves the questions open. This is, hopefully a very good thing, as it might raise some questions about congress's continued protection of Mickey. As it is, I would have to place Greenspan as one of the more influential people in the US economy today. I swear, this man farts and the DOW drops three points. I think that, if Greenspan was to state that he dislikes the current Copyright "balance", we might see some changes to it come down the pipe.
As for trying to get some good answers, you do realize that this is
What else am I supposed to do while I am work?
Your computer just needs a little R&R
Reformat & Reload. End of neurosis.
..for California to simply enforce the ADV:-at-the-beginning-of-the-subject-line law rather than create a whole slew of new spam laws? If the state did this, then users could just create mail rules to send those ADV: messages straight to the trash. Voila! No spam in your inbox.
That still fails to address the real problem with SPAM. Sure its inconvient for it to be cluttering up your inbox, but realistically the cost of deleteing it is trivial. However, for an ISP, or a person running their own mail server, there is the issue of server storage and bandwidth. These things cost real money, and with a large portion of the SPAM these days containing graphics, these costs are going up.
Even if you have mail rules set up, the SPAM still needs to get to the server before it can be dumped. Sure you can start blacklisting domains, and it will help for a bit, until the spammer moves on, or you are forced to blacklist a large domain (e.g. yahoo.com) and you end up alienating users, because their mother's emails keep getting bounced.
I'm all for some sort of law that allows people to sue spammers. Though I think it would be much better if we are able to sue the company that paid for the ad. From what little I read of the proposed law, it seemed to include this provision. Something along the lines of "send or caused to be sent." if this works out, who knows it might have a trickle down affect. e.g. I sue the company that paid for the SPAM, if they were smart, they had a provision in their contract with the spammer that said that the spammer would be held responsible in the event that the spam was sent to a person who was able to sue the company. The spammer then takes the brunt of the costs.
Sadly, this law is probably going to die somewhere along the way, but I can dream.
This sounds a lot like the California system, so far, no results. But on the up shot, the CA AG is actively seeking spam which defies the laws, and we may see some action eventually.
It doesn't get any clearer than that, now does it?
Not particularlly, the whole point of the current argument is whether or not al-Muhajir should be considered an enemy combatant. In the paragraph you cited, the court was stating that those involved in the case were clearly within the boundries of military jurisdiction. Given that this is point under argument for al-Muhajir, you can't simply assume it to prove it. Personally, I don't think that the decision which you referenced is really valid for comparison. In that case the judges had little doubt whether the law of war applied to them, as stated in the first sentance of your citation.
As for something outside of the Hague Convention providing reason for al-Muhajir to be treated as a spy, you'd have to point something out to me before I buy that.
No, when you fly a plane into the Pentagon, it's WAR. We cannot declare war against and adversary hideing in the shadows, but it is still a WAR.
Nothing is stopping congress from declaring a war on a terrorist organization. It simply hasn't because it has not seen the need to. Just because it hasn't doesn't mean it can't.
It is also a war we very well might lose if people don't wise up and relize the rules have changed, but we didn't change them. How will you prevent the next disaster?
First off, nothing changed. There have been terrorist attacks against the US for a long time, and they will continue for a long time. That's just the way it is. On 9/11 a group of terrorists got lucky, that's all. Admitadlly there was a good amount of planning, which went into the attacks. But the fact that the CIA/FBI didn't pick up on them sooner, that the 'hostages' were too afraid to do anything, and that the WTC actually collapsed, was all just a sting of luck. We can't prevent the next disaster, as long as there are people willing to die to kill Americans, some of them are bound to get through, no matter how locked down our society becomes. Quit living in fear. Yes, a terrorist could bomb your home tomorrow, but draconian laws aren't going to change that fact.
How will you console the families of the dead and dying?
And how do you plan to console the families of people, put to death by military tribunals, who didn't do anything? How are you going to console those people whose lives are destroyed by the inevitable witch hunts? (Yes, falacious arguments like these can work both ways)
I don't like the sacrafices that must be made, but things will never be the same.
We don't need to make any sacrifices. The government was doing a pretty good job of protecting the people beforehand. Just because a group of terrorists got lucky one day, doesn't mean that we suddenly need to start living in fear. Its kind of sad that we don't get to see the work the CIA/FBI are doing in this areana, I would bet that for evey attack that gets through many more are thwarted, just by virtue of the CIA/FBI finding out about the possibility. Get over it, terrorism has been happeneing for a long time and will continue to do so, yes, 9/11 sucked, I feel sorry for the families of the dead, but hiding under a blanket of draconian policies is not going to make you any safer. This is Real Life, not Scobby Doo, what you don't see can hurt you.
What can you possible do to prevent such a thing? They prey upon open societies, we are the first, when we become more resistant to attack they will seek an easier target. We were by far the easiest target on the block on 9-11. Adapt and survive!
We can't prevent such a thing. Take a good look at Isreal right now, they are doing everything they can to prevent attacks, and they still have attacks getting through on a weekly basis. Now matter how hard you clamp down you will never stop everything.
Also, the terrorists aren't going to stop attacking us just because we make it harder, they are simply going to try harder. Their whole goal is to kill Americans, no matter what the cost.
Ok, looked at both of your links, and both of them reference piracy, which is specifically given to the jurisdiction of military tribunals. In fact, in your other link, to Ex Parte Quirin, the judges make mention of the fact that piracy falls under the articles of war.
Further, in that same decision, it is noted that there was a declared war, and that:
Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, [317 U.S. 1, 38] guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war.
Emphasis added.
This decision is simply not applicable in the case of Padilla. First, Padilla is not being accused of piracy. As such, the arguments about piracy being tried by a military tribunal are invalid. Second, there is no enemy govenment which provided aid.
In the case of Padilla, it would seem that the laws concerning organized crime and/or treason would be more applicable. Of course, this wouldn't allow the government to hold Padilla indefinatly, without trial, access to a lawyer, or torture him.
Its not that I want to see Padilla set free, or that I want to see lienancy given to a terrorist. I simply want to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where the government is able to make someone disappear, simply by declaring them an 'enemy combatant'. And I feel that the most obvious demarcation point between unlawful beligerent and criminal, is the existance of a declared war on an enemy government. Anything else is far to vague.
So, if someone calls from within the US, you can haul them to court where there's an $11K fine... but what if the call originates in... say... Tijuana? Ottowa? Bombay?
1. "Who, may I ask, is calling?"
2. "One moment, I will get the person for you."
3. Set phone down, don't hang it up, go back to whatever you were doing.
The cost of this should drive most of these companies out of business pretty quickly. And the rest of us can get back to our lives.
Its funny, at first I was going to disagree with you, I got about half way through my first paragraph and changed my mind. While I think that the spirit of this article is great, it does seem that the letter of it is ripe for abuse. .25X. Technically they would have complied with the letter of the law.
The way I read it, this article would allow the copyright holder to make a really crappy tool for copying, but copies into all formats. Basically, they could create a bootable CD (you could download the ISO for free, or email them for a copy.) Which then boots you into a difficult to use environment, but will, in fact, copy a song onto your harddrive, in pretty much any format. And will only rip at say
While I don't think that changing the "and" to an "or" is the right solution, this clause could probably benifit from adding in the phrase " and reasonable" after the word "necessary", to combat this sort of abuse.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day...
But when they realize that Linux is a market and they start making these so-called "means" (Like they will inevitably do for the Windows market) that restrict the QUALITY of the copy (which is NOT covered by this bill), then it'll be a problem.
I was going to send a message to my representative about this until I realized that Zoe Lofgren is my representative. Therefore, I win.
Send one anyway. Even if it is just an attaboy, it still shows your congrescritter that you are watching and that you approve and support this sort of thing. If the old saying that, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" holds any water, then going silent because you approve of something is a bad idea, send an email voicing your support and thanking her for trying to work for the benifit of her constituents. As for me, I'll be writting an email to Jerry Lewis tonight.
Actually, I think you may have struck on something really good here. This sort of thing could, concivably strike a good balance between the desires of the P2P community and the legitimate needs of the artists. For example:
To start with, once the major labels get their online song stores set up, get some sort of file hash on all of the songs, so that you can garantee that these are the correct files.
Next, create a P2P app which allows you to post a file (which matches a known hash). When you post it, it gets placed on a portion of your HD which is encrypted and inaccessable. Also, when you post a song you have to digially sign an agreement which states that this is the only copy of the file in your possesion, and that you take responsibility in the event that you are lying.
Now, when someone else downloads the file from you, you lose access to it, it is erased from your drive. And if you download from somone else they lose access. As such you only have 1 copy floating around for every copy put into the system. Also, even after you download the song, it remains inaccessable except through the P2P app, which can be used as a player.
Further implement a system of payment. If you download a song, your credit card gets charged $0.50, if you upload your credit card gets paid $0.50.
Lastly, at the central server (yes, I would propose having one, to control the charges.) Implement a policy that watches for leeches. If somone downloads say, more that 10 songs in a week, without uploading any, their account gets frozen.
Anyhow, its just an idea if this bill passes, I hereby cast it into the public domain.
Why is it that the government must mandate the protection of children? This is and should be the domain of the parents. If you, as a person, decide to have a child, you are taking on the responsibilities that go with it. That means that you have to spend time with the child, spend money on the child, and protect the child. If you deem that the internet has inappropriate content on it then you need to do something about it. Quite simply, I didn't decide to have the child, I want no part in that responsibility, and there is no reason that I should be forced to deal with it. (It takes a parent to raise a child, not a village. Unless you are willing to give me spanking rights when your child is acting up and you won't deal with it, don't ask me to take any responsibility for it.) So, feel free to do what you need to do to protect your child, but damn well don't interfere with my ability to view porn anonymously. If/When I have children I will extend everyone else the same courtesy.
In my, not quite so humble, opinion, this is a great argument for having some sort of parenting license. You are not allowed to have children unless you have been through some basic courses in how to control and look after your child, and have passed a worthwhile test at the end of it. Have little concepts in there like: The TV/Computer is not a babysitter; You are responsible for the Morals which your child learns; etc. Basic stuff that parents seem to be lacking these days. Also, I would probably add some sort of financial requirement to having children, if the child is going to be stuck in poverty and possibly end up starving, why the hell are you having a kid? As for implementing the licenseing, that would be the tough part, you would need a way to enforce sterilization on everyone (men and women) but have it reversible for once they obtain a license. This would also have the added benifit of stamping out teen pregnancy.
Is the above idea a bit too heavy handed? Certainly, but if we are going to try and legislate morals, why not go all the way?
That will only slow a malicious spammer down for a very short while.
How does one uncap an account? If it is a web based action (e.g. you log into the ISP's web site and change the setting), this would just require the 'bot to perform this action (remeber, the account has been cracked).
If it is a phone call, this would be easy enough. Make sure you have caller ID block enabled, call the ISP and ask for it to be uncapped, unless they have to provide some sort of personally identifying information this sort of thing would be trivial.
This also fails to address the idea of spammers "hijacking" their own accounts. It just adds one more level to the deception. Get an account; uncap it, because its for a mailing list; send out a "mailing list" once a month (actually, a small scale spam); then around three or four months later have the account "hijacked" and send a couple million emails. Unless I miss my guess, this type of sender charge would probably be billed once a month, this means that a hijacked account would be useful for about a month before it got noticed.
I still stand by my claim, a Sender Charge is not going to do anything other than make life harder on the average user.
I think the biggest problem is volume. Consdier for a moment if, instead of receiving 2-3 junk mailers per day, you received 50-100 per day. Now instead of a quick shuffle and dump, you have to spend more time wading through the junk to find the bills.
Moreover, the physical bulk mailer had to pay for the system, which delivered the mail to you (postage). The bulk e-mailer did not, maintainace for the internet is not free. It is this difference which keeps the volume of snail junk mail low.
Also, there is the problem of content. Adult content is regularly sent to minors, and while the puritanical rules of the US can be argued, this should be something that is decided by the parents. Even beyond that, this type of content is very offensive to some people, why should they have it heaped upon them for no transgression worse than posting an email address to a discussion group?
The biggest problem I see with the sender pays methodoligy is, what if your email address gets hijacked and used to send spam? .01*10000 = $100. So a person is out $100 because the ISP's security was breached and/or the person chose an easy to guess password.
Consider that a persons address could be used to send say 10,000 spam messages before the ISP closes it off. At $0.01 per message
And while I realize that I am about to get a dozen or so elitist, "they deserve it for picking a bad password" responses, that is absolute bullshit. Expecting people to use complex passwords, or even have the slightest clue about network security is simply ignoring the diverse range of people we have in the world. If you can't rebuild your car's engine, fabricate your own IC chips, and rebuild the laser your CD-ROM uses, then you have no business talking about other people using technology they don't know enough about.
Back to the topic at hand, above, I assumed that the ISP would close off the account at 10,000 messages; however, in a sender pays model, the ISP might just assume that all traffic is now normal, and if the person really wants to send that much email and pay for it, then why stop them? The number of messages could easily be larger by a factor of 100, so we get a $10,000 charge.
The obvious response would be that the person would be able to claim that they are not responsible, that they were hijacked. So how does the person prove this? The email account was accessed with the right password, sure it was remotely accessed, but this doesn't prove anything. And what is to keep spammers from setting up accounts a month or three in advance, then have them "hijacked"?
All this system does is shift the burden around some. The average person is now going to be fighting fradulent charges, the ISPs are going to have to spend large amounts of resources trying to determine between real mass mailings and hijacked accounts, and the courts are probably going to be seeing their fair share of cases about this sort of thing. Just as much as every other system proposed, the Sender Pays model is unworkable.
From reading the link to the law itself, this looks like a good start. I especially liked the fact that it clearly spells out that a private citizen can go after a spammer for not putting the ADV/ADLT-ADV tag at the beginning of the subject line (A2.7.1.2). And at $10/non-compliant SPAM, it should add up to enough, pretty quick, to make going after them worth while. It'll be interesting to see if this holds up in court.
What, you hadn't realized that the hitler^H^H^H America's Youth (BSA) was really just an indoctrinization of the youth of the US?