Sure, I'm not disagreeing with the concept of the teacherreview web site, I'm just answering bludstone's question. I think the web site operator is on dodgy ground, he's publishing potentially libellous material. It's not the same as slashdot, where the discussions are clearly contributor opinions only, he's recommending that people use the reviews on his site to decide which teacher to use. He should exercise editorial control if he's going to do that.
Tell me exactly why teachers can grade students on their performance but students cant grade proffesors on theirs?
Because the teacher is qualified to grade the student. It's his job. It's what he gets paid to do. And when he grades the student, he doesn't publish defamatory sexual allegations about them.
There is a double-standard here: you cannot keep libraries from filtering the internet without also telling them to make pornography (in the form of books and magazines) readily available to anyone and everyone.
Installing filtering software is a deliberate act. Acquiring hard core porn and putting it on the shelf is a deliberate act. I think the libraries should do neither. It is reasonable to ask libraries to provide access to the entire internet, because it is easy for them to do. Asking them to provide access to every book and magazine ever published is unreasonable, because it is impossible. Anyway, most libraries do have adult material, but it is not on public display, you have to provide proof of age to get at it. If porn filtering were installed in a library, there should be a bypassing system available.
Yes, Slashdot knocks Microsoft. Yes, it's often unfair and poorly thought out. This is nothing to do with VA, it has always been that way. It's funnier, too. Why pass up the opportunity to jibe that Win2K only has 65,000 bugs because it's still got 16-bit code at the heart? It's utterly untrue, but funny none the less.
The American Libraries Association's comments point out an even better rebuttal of the MPMA's case. Access control refers to prevention of acquisition of a copyrighted work, not use of that work once it has been acquired. Access and use are separate and distinct terms in copyright law. As CSS is not an access control mechanism, but a use control mechanism, bypassing it isn't illegal. Anyway, under the "first sale" principle, the copyright holder has no right to control the use of a work once it has been sold to a customer, and the DMCA has a get-out clause that says that no existing rights should be considered to be revoked by the DMCA.
Even those that I have downloaded which are "unauthorized copies", as defined by the RIAA, are not illegal! How can I make this bold claim? Because I already own the vinyl record, or the cassette tape, or some other medium
I disagree with this point - the MP3 is probably taken from a CD, which may have ben digitally remastered since the 8-track was recorded. You don't have the right to benefit from the increased quality of the new recording. The fact that MP3 loses some or all of this improvement isn't relevant.
The cost of fixing Linux bugs is counted in hours and pay rate. If it costs you more than $100 (The cost of Windows) or more than $50 ($100 minus cost of offical distro cd) to fix bugs then you need to do the folowing... Fire your SysAdm.. pay your new SysAdm less..
I think you're making the same mistake as the article author - comparing the cost of fixing a Linux problem with the cost of buying Win. If you can get Linux for $50, and fix it for $500, that may be better than buying Win for $100 and losing avg. 2 man-hours per week on system crashes. (that was one of the 63% of statistics that are made up on the spot)
"Often fixing the problem is more expensive than what the company would have paid to buy a different operating system--and that completely defeats the purpose of Linux."
And what about the cost of fixing a problem with a commercial operating system? Surely that's a more meaningful comparison to make, even if sometimes it's not possible because said commercial operating system isn't open source.
The repeated claim of content providers in pressing for passage of Section 1201(a) was that "digital is different." Digital access permits making perfect copies; hence, access controls are needed to prevent rampant piracy of copyrighted works in a digital world. So clear was the distinction between "access" and "use" at the time of legislative consideration of the DMCA, that Congress also provided in Section 1201 the following provision:
(c) Other rights, etc., not affected - (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
...
The ambiguity is exacerbated by the distinctions in Section 1201 between "technological measures that effectively control access to a work protected under this title" [subsection (a)] and "technological measures that effectively protect a right of a copyright owner under this title" [subsection (b)]. The statute distinguishes between the two, but as we will document, the technological measures being marketed do not. Works protected by technological measures that attempt to control "access" when they are really controlling "rights" or "uses" are not covered by Section 1201(a).
...
Further, the blurring of any distinction between "access" and "use" was certainly not the intent of the Congress when it passed the law. The key legislative committees all expressed their views on the fact that access prohibition should not affect all other rights, remedies and limitations in the Act. The intent of Section 1201(c)(1) was that once a work had been lawfully acquired (that is, "accessed"), circumvention by users to engage in lawful non-infringing uses as defined in the copyright law would not be prohibited by Section 1201(a). Due to the persistent nature of advanced technological measures, fair usage could fall dramatically. Without a meaningful exemption from the Librarian, Section 1201(a) will cause significant, irreparable harm to users attempting to make lawful, non-infringing use of works protected by technological measures.
What does this mean? My interpretation is this: The DMCA prohibits bypassing of access control mechanisms, for instance, passwords for downloading material. It does not prohibit bypassing of use control mechanisms, because copyright holders have no right to control use of copyrighted material, under the "First Sale" doctrine, which the EFF comment #204 explains, "terminates the author's right to control what happens to a particular work after its first sale".
That said, there are *good* clauses, like specifically allowing reverse engineering for compatibility. BRAVO!.
Yes the DMCA does permit reverse engineering for content delivery, but if you need to bypass some copyright protection to RE the content delivery than that is flatly illegal.
I think it says for interoperability, which I interpret as, for example, if I were writing some software that interfaced with your software, I could RE your software in order to make mine work with it. So, if I were working on WINE, I could RE the Xing player to get it to run under WINE on a Linux box. Giving away the secrets that I discovered while REing it is not what the interoperability clause is about, neither is writing a whole new program to run on Linux that does what the Xing player for Windows does. Sorry, I agree with many of the DeCSS arguements, and think the MPAA is out of order, but the interoperability clause isn't one we can use.
I think slashdot readers gets more than their fair share of criticism for exclusivity. There may be a few sickos that home in on ungeeks and flame them - but I've never noticed it, is this a real problem? I think you're more likely to get sad lonely nerds trying to hit on you.
I've been thinking about this. The user should be able to select the order that censor lists are applied in, and the censor list should be able to allow as well as disallow access. For example, if the American Family Association block list included gay and lesbian sites, then a Gay Rights block list, if applied with higher priority, would re-enable access to the sites that they think are inappropriately blocked. I can see that it would be difficult to get groups like the AFA to join this scheme, though.
Sounds good to me. An open source software censorware program should allow you to import black lists from other sites, so you could subscribe to the anti-porn, anti-racist, anti- sports, anti-republican, anti-microsoft and/or anti-government lists of your choice.
If the KKK and NAACP put up lists, take your pick. Or choose neither or both.
Maybe that way parents who don't want to take responsibility for supervising their children can at least take responsibility for choosing who they trust to take responsibility.
And maybe it will help the common folk realize that the open source community aren't just anarchists, but are really trying to help people get control of technology.
Reposted at Score:2 because I can't moderate today. If you're going to mod this down as redundant, then please mod up the parent coment and give GreyMatter the credit that he's due for this great idea.
Is there such a beast? This strikes me as the best way to deal with the problem - produce some software that does the job properly, and is open to peer review. Something like Junkbuster.
In fact, I'm a little disillusioned with them - I joined up on 6th January, and I haven't heard a peep from them. No acknowledgement, no book, no nothing. My credit card was charged, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes life isn't fair.
Because "the community" includes thousands of script kiddies. I think limited initial disclosure is easily justifiable.
Sure, I'm not disagreeing with the concept of the teacherreview web site, I'm just answering bludstone's question. I think the web site operator is on dodgy ground, he's publishing potentially libellous material. It's not the same as slashdot, where the discussions are clearly contributor opinions only, he's recommending that people use the reviews on his site to decide which teacher to use. He should exercise editorial control if he's going to do that.
The link from the teacher review page to his home page is wrong - it should be http://fog.ccsf.org/~dbrown/
The image on the shroud is probably Jaques de Molay.
Yes, Slashdot knocks Microsoft. Yes, it's often unfair and poorly thought out. This is nothing to do with VA, it has always been that way. It's funnier, too. Why pass up the opportunity to jibe that Win2K only has 65,000 bugs because it's still got 16-bit code at the heart? It's utterly untrue, but funny none the less.
The American Libraries Association's comments point out an even better rebuttal of the MPMA's case. Access control refers to prevention of acquisition of a copyrighted work, not use of that work once it has been acquired. Access and use are separate and distinct terms in copyright law. As CSS is not an access control mechanism, but a use control mechanism, bypassing it isn't illegal. Anyway, under the "first sale" principle, the copyright holder has no right to control the use of a work once it has been sold to a customer, and the DMCA has a get-out clause that says that no existing rights should be considered to be revoked by the DMCA.
And I just got it connecting to the internet just now!
And what about the cost of fixing a problem with a commercial operating system? Surely that's a more meaningful comparison to make, even if sometimes it's not possible because said commercial operating system isn't open source.
Yeah, me too. I thought it might be because I'm in the UK.
That, IMO, utterly vindicates DeCSS.
Yes the DMCA does permit reverse engineering for content delivery, but if you need to bypass some copyright protection to RE the content delivery than that is flatly illegal.
I think it says for interoperability, which I interpret as, for example, if I were writing some software that interfaced with your software, I could RE your software in order to make mine work with it. So, if I were working on WINE, I could RE the Xing player to get it to run under WINE on a Linux box. Giving away the secrets that I discovered while REing it is not what the interoperability clause is about, neither is writing a whole new program to run on Linux that does what the Xing player for Windows does. Sorry, I agree with many of the DeCSS arguements, and think the MPAA is out of order, but the interoperability clause isn't one we can use.
I think slashdot readers gets more than their fair share of criticism for exclusivity. There may be a few sickos that home in on ungeeks and flame them - but I've never noticed it, is this a real problem? I think you're more likely to get sad lonely nerds trying to hit on you.
I've been thinking about this. The user should be able to select the order that censor lists are applied in, and the censor list should be able to allow as well as disallow access. For example, if the American Family Association block list included gay and lesbian sites, then a Gay Rights block list, if applied with higher priority, would re-enable access to the sites that they think are inappropriately blocked. I can see that it would be difficult to get groups like the AFA to join this scheme, though.
Sounds good to me. An open source software censorware program should allow you to import black lists from other sites, so you could subscribe to the anti-porn, anti-racist, anti- sports, anti-republican, anti-microsoft and/or anti-government lists of your choice.
If the KKK and NAACP put up lists, take your pick. Or choose neither or both.
Maybe that way parents who don't want to take responsibility for supervising their children can at least take responsibility for choosing who they trust to take responsibility.
And maybe it will help the common folk realize that the open source community aren't just anarchists, but are really trying to help people get control of technology.
Reposted at Score:2 because I can't moderate today. If you're going to mod this down as redundant, then please mod up the parent coment and give GreyMatter the credit that he's due for this great idea.
the term "reverse engineering" shall apply to ... such methods as ... activity logging.
Also, it seems that the library isn't allowed to browse its own web access log in order to see what has been blocked by censorware. Cute.
Is there such a beast? This strikes me as the best way to deal with the problem - produce some software that does the job properly, and is open to peer review. Something like Junkbuster.
And, the EFF FAQ specifically mentions that they do not send out glossy membership material to keep costs down.
They were supposed to send me a book.
Disclaimer: I am a recent (post DeCSS fiasco) EFF supporter to the tune of $100/year.
Did you get your book?
Now, EFF, are you listening?
I seriously doubt it.
In fact, I'm a little disillusioned with them - I joined up on 6th January, and I haven't heard a peep from them. No acknowledgement, no book, no nothing. My credit card was charged, though.