It needs a social solution. One good reason people don't cheat as often in RL is social mores. Basically that boils down to everyone will stop playing with them. What online games need is a way to identify other players with whom you're personally more likely to enjoy playing. A collaborative filter approach would make sense. If you enjoy playing games with person X, you're likely to enjoy playing with person Y who also enjoys playing with person X. In a system like this, more aggressive players would naturally tend to be matched up with more aggressive players, while those who enjoy a more casual game would be matched together. Cheaters would tend to annoy pretty much all other players, even other cheaters. Players who consistently aggravate their opponents would eventually find the pickin's mighty slim.
It's things like this that make me laugh out loud any time I see a security related product, or any product where security is a strong concern for that matter, with a web interface.
If Intelligent Design is to be accepted as science, that opens the nature of God to public discussion subject to scientific rigor. Honestly, do any of you seriously propose putting the definition of God in the hands of the scientific community? Think about that before you lend your support to Intelligent Design.
The fact that through observation we can determine that a naturally created object was not intelligently designed while one created by human engineering did involve intelligent design is in itself an eloquent argument _against_ the intelligent design of nature, isn't it? If the entire universe were created with an intelligent design, it would be impossible to observe any such distinction. Try not to base your arguments on their own refutations in future. It would be more convincing.
As soon as you provide three repeatable, observable facts that provide incontrovertible proof that you graduated high-school, we will comply. Or that prove anything else in such a manner, for that matter.
In other words, you should probably familiarize yourself with the concept of the scientific method and the definitions of words such as "theory" before you say anything further on the subject.
No form of security is totally secure. It's always a matter of making the restricted action more difficult, not impossible. The point with DRM is that there's a fundamental flaw in the concept that prevents it from making the restricted action more than trivially difficult. We're talking more about door locks on cars with open windows.
I don't think we're really arguing. We both agree the boundaries of fair use are vague and indistinct, and that ultimately it's up to the courts to clarify them. I think we also both agree that it's likely the courts will eventually get around to upholding the right of the individual consumer to make copies for personal use for things like device-shifting, as they have with uses like time-shifting. My original point was that the laws being complex and vague has resulted in a country full of people who have no real idea what rights they have and don't have, as evidenced by ridiculous concepts like a "license to listen". What we've been tossing about is really fine points of semantics on concepts that haven't been properly defined. To hopefully make my point a little clearer, though, I'll use time-shifting as an example. The courts have ruled that making a temporary copy of a television program (for example) in order to be able to view it later because the original time slot is inconvenient or impossible for the consumer in question is perfectly legal. But they haven't used the term "fair use" to describe it. I don't see any problem with using a phrase like "fair use" to discuss something like time-shifting, but the courts chose not to. I feel ultimately device-shifting will be considered similarly. Ultimately the semantic distinction is meaningless, unless you actually are a lawyer presenting a case. Then you have to use the right magic words.
I don't mean to say that "fair use" is well defined, I agree it is not. I think also it's confusing because something might be what one would consider a fair use without being what is technically considered "fair use" in a legal sense. I think the sections that are most relevant to what I'm saying are really:
Section 107 now says, "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." It doesn't spell out exactly what is - or is not - fair use. It gives a partial list of factors: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
and
On the other hand, the kind of use you seem most interested in, copying an entire work for personal use, is unlikely to be considered fair use. For example, in BMG Music v. Gonzalez, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that an individual who downloaded songs from a filesharing network because "she was just sampling music to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail" was not making a fair use of the works she copied. Of course, the fact that she didn't delete the files after she listened to them probably hurt her case. The court upheld a $22,500 damage award (30 songs at $750 per song) granted without trial. The Supreme Court refused to review the case.
Though we'll discuss a few exceptions below, most wholesale copying is not fair use.
Reproduction of the entirety of a copyrighted work for personal use doesn't really seem to fall into even the vague description of what fair use is that appears in the law. On the question of what exactly one can and cannot do with a copy of a copyrighted work which one has legally purchased, regardless of whether it's "fair use" or something else that allows those rights... I agree those lines are so blurred as to be practically indistinct, and it is going to require further cases in law to set some precedents.
What you're talking about isn't a legal restriction on the content itself. Notice you had to specify listening to iTunes music (and should have specified copy protected DVD video. Nothing prevents you from watching your home movie DVDs on your Linux box). You're talking about legal restrictions on circumventing the copy protection placed on the content. This is all complicated, of course, by the lack of "official" implementations of iTunes or DVD players that would not have to circumvent the copy protection in order to play the content. But that scarcity is itself the result of business issues, not legal ones. If Apple wanted to release iTunes for Linux, they could do so without having to lobby for an ammendment.
Of course the big question is the legality of such copy protections themselves, since they overreach the rights of the copyholders in that they prevent actions that are perfectly legal under fair use.
You're very right. As I said, however, copyright prohibits certain things, making copies being among them. Public performance is among the other things prohibited by copyright law. The important distinction is, the members of the audience are not the ones who require a license.
I'm not a lawyer either. To be precise, though, what we're talking about in the narrow sense is what exactly is "fair use". Fair use is not the only reason why the act of copying may not in fact breach copyright. The courts haven't taken a firm stance (yet) on whether making a personal copy is legal or not, but there is no question that it isn't protected under fair use. It may well end up that it will be considered protected for other reasons.
In short, I haven't said there aren't threats to those business models. Just that fair use as it is understood by the legal system in the US isn't one of them. It's nitpicking, I know, but that's what our legal system is all about.
Actually, the concept of "fair use" as understood historically by US courts of law, doesn't threaten the business models you refer to. Duplication of the entirety of a copyrighted work is generally not considered protected under fair use. A pretty user-friendly explanation of what is considered fair use can be found here on The Straight Dope. I highly recommend this series of four articles to anyone who finds US copyright law confusing.
"You don't understand," I said, "These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them."
"Well" she responded, "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to."
Now I was baffled. "Records never came with any such restrictions," I said.
She replied, "Well they were supposed to, but we weren't able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can"
This seems to be a common misunderstanding brought about by, I think, the inherently confusing nature of, let's face it, archaic copyright law in a modern context. A license grants the licensee the ability to legally do something from which normally they are legally prohibited. There are no laws that prohibit anyone from listening to music. What we have are laws that prohibit anyone apart from the author of any kind of creative work from (among other things) making a copy of that work. If you're not the author and you want to make a copy of a creative work then (with a few exceptions provided in copyright law) you need a license, because otherwise it is illegal for you to do so. When you purchase music online, you are buying a digital copy from an entity that is entitled by license to produce that copy. You are not buying a license to anything, and you don't inherit the rights which that license grants. Your buddies have just as much legal right to listen to the song you downloaded as you do, and just as little legal right to make a copy of it. That's how it works.
It seems to me that what's really being tested here and in the original Milgram experiments is the strength of the average person's moral objection to doing harm to others, which is assumed to be very strong indeed. Perform another experiment that involves the "teacher" subject giving the researcher a dollar every time the "learner" fails to answer the question properly, and see how far that goes. I imagine the contrasting results will give a pretty strong indication of the relative weight the average person puts on the suffering of others.
And as an aside, how interesting that the word I'm asked to identify in order to post this is "electro".
Change the security setting for "Allow paste operations via script" to "Prompt". Now it'll ask you every time a script interacts with the clipboard, as near as I can tell. For example, when you're pasting text into the form on Google Maps, it'll ask you if that's okay even though it's you the user requesting the paste operation. But pasting into the Post Comment form here on slashdot does not.
This has an interesting side effect on the "harmless" exploit page mentioned in the article, though. The script on that page apparently loops continuously, so every time you answer (whether yes or no) the dialog is presented again. The dialog takes precedence over other IE controls, and as near as I can tell there's no way out short of terminating the browser.
Copyright protects the right to make a copy. It's nothing to do with access to the information. If you find a CD in the gutter and it still plays, bonus. You have every legal right to listen to that CD. So do all your friends. But even if you purchase the CD you don't have the right to copy its contents. It's not about possession or access. It's about making copies.
Sure I get that it's a joke. But that being said, A) you don't have to label something as copyrighted for it to be protected by copyright. Copyright is granted the moment you produce an original creative work. However, B) there's nothing creative about the contents of your robots.txt file. Labelling something as copyrighted doesn't make it copyrighted.
Slashdot Mirror
It needs a social solution. One good reason people don't cheat as often in RL is social mores. Basically that boils down to everyone will stop playing with them. What online games need is a way to identify other players with whom you're personally more likely to enjoy playing. A collaborative filter approach would make sense. If you enjoy playing games with person X, you're likely to enjoy playing with person Y who also enjoys playing with person X. In a system like this, more aggressive players would naturally tend to be matched up with more aggressive players, while those who enjoy a more casual game would be matched together. Cheaters would tend to annoy pretty much all other players, even other cheaters. Players who consistently aggravate their opponents would eventually find the pickin's mighty slim.
It's things like this that make me laugh out loud any time I see a security related product, or any product where security is a strong concern for that matter, with a web interface.
If Intelligent Design is to be accepted as science, that opens the nature of God to public discussion subject to scientific rigor. Honestly, do any of you seriously propose putting the definition of God in the hands of the scientific community? Think about that before you lend your support to Intelligent Design.
The fact that through observation we can determine that a naturally created object was not intelligently designed while one created by human engineering did involve intelligent design is in itself an eloquent argument _against_ the intelligent design of nature, isn't it? If the entire universe were created with an intelligent design, it would be impossible to observe any such distinction. Try not to base your arguments on their own refutations in future. It would be more convincing.
As soon as you provide three repeatable, observable facts that provide incontrovertible proof that you graduated high-school, we will comply. Or that prove anything else in such a manner, for that matter.
In other words, you should probably familiarize yourself with the concept of the scientific method and the definitions of words such as "theory" before you say anything further on the subject.
See, here's the problem with the idea of building a utopia by sending people to Mars... they will still be people.
No form of security is totally secure. It's always a matter of making the restricted action more difficult, not impossible. The point with DRM is that there's a fundamental flaw in the concept that prevents it from making the restricted action more than trivially difficult. We're talking more about door locks on cars with open windows.
Very, very simply, here is the premise behind DRM.
1. I know a secret
2. I want to tell you the secret
3. I don't want you to tell anyone else the secret
4. I don't trust you
Perhaps you can see now why there's no solution to that scenario.
You, uhh... You do know Linus is Finnish, right?
The thing about security is that anyone can come up with a solution so ingenious that they themselves can't find any way of circumventing it.
we'd all be eating steak.
I don't think we're really arguing. We both agree the boundaries of fair use are vague and indistinct, and that ultimately it's up to the courts to clarify them. I think we also both agree that it's likely the courts will eventually get around to upholding the right of the individual consumer to make copies for personal use for things like device-shifting, as they have with uses like time-shifting. My original point was that the laws being complex and vague has resulted in a country full of people who have no real idea what rights they have and don't have, as evidenced by ridiculous concepts like a "license to listen". What we've been tossing about is really fine points of semantics on concepts that haven't been properly defined. To hopefully make my point a little clearer, though, I'll use time-shifting as an example. The courts have ruled that making a temporary copy of a television program (for example) in order to be able to view it later because the original time slot is inconvenient or impossible for the consumer in question is perfectly legal. But they haven't used the term "fair use" to describe it. I don't see any problem with using a phrase like "fair use" to discuss something like time-shifting, but the courts chose not to. I feel ultimately device-shifting will be considered similarly. Ultimately the semantic distinction is meaningless, unless you actually are a lawyer presenting a case. Then you have to use the right magic words.
I don't mean to say that "fair use" is well defined, I agree it is not. I think also it's confusing because something might be what one would consider a fair use without being what is technically considered "fair use" in a legal sense. I think the sections that are most relevant to what I'm saying are really:
andReproduction of the entirety of a copyrighted work for personal use doesn't really seem to fall into even the vague description of what fair use is that appears in the law. On the question of what exactly one can and cannot do with a copy of a copyrighted work which one has legally purchased, regardless of whether it's "fair use" or something else that allows those rights... I agree those lines are so blurred as to be practically indistinct, and it is going to require further cases in law to set some precedents.
What you're talking about isn't a legal restriction on the content itself. Notice you had to specify listening to iTunes music (and should have specified copy protected DVD video. Nothing prevents you from watching your home movie DVDs on your Linux box). You're talking about legal restrictions on circumventing the copy protection placed on the content. This is all complicated, of course, by the lack of "official" implementations of iTunes or DVD players that would not have to circumvent the copy protection in order to play the content. But that scarcity is itself the result of business issues, not legal ones. If Apple wanted to release iTunes for Linux, they could do so without having to lobby for an ammendment.
Of course the big question is the legality of such copy protections themselves, since they overreach the rights of the copyholders in that they prevent actions that are perfectly legal under fair use.
You're very right. As I said, however, copyright prohibits certain things, making copies being among them. Public performance is among the other things prohibited by copyright law. The important distinction is, the members of the audience are not the ones who require a license.
I'm not a lawyer either. To be precise, though, what we're talking about in the narrow sense is what exactly is "fair use". Fair use is not the only reason why the act of copying may not in fact breach copyright. The courts haven't taken a firm stance (yet) on whether making a personal copy is legal or not, but there is no question that it isn't protected under fair use. It may well end up that it will be considered protected for other reasons.
In short, I haven't said there aren't threats to those business models. Just that fair use as it is understood by the legal system in the US isn't one of them. It's nitpicking, I know, but that's what our legal system is all about.
Actually, the concept of "fair use" as understood historically by US courts of law, doesn't threaten the business models you refer to. Duplication of the entirety of a copyrighted work is generally not considered protected under fair use. A pretty user-friendly explanation of what is considered fair use can be found here on The Straight Dope. I highly recommend this series of four articles to anyone who finds US copyright law confusing.
Subject pretty much says it all.
It seems to me that what's really being tested here and in the original Milgram experiments is the strength of the average person's moral objection to doing harm to others, which is assumed to be very strong indeed. Perform another experiment that involves the "teacher" subject giving the researcher a dollar every time the "learner" fails to answer the question properly, and see how far that goes. I imagine the contrasting results will give a pretty strong indication of the relative weight the average person puts on the suffering of others.
And as an aside, how interesting that the word I'm asked to identify in order to post this is "electro".
Change the security setting for "Allow paste operations via script" to "Prompt". Now it'll ask you every time a script interacts with the clipboard, as near as I can tell. For example, when you're pasting text into the form on Google Maps, it'll ask you if that's okay even though it's you the user requesting the paste operation. But pasting into the Post Comment form here on slashdot does not.
This has an interesting side effect on the "harmless" exploit page mentioned in the article, though. The script on that page apparently loops continuously, so every time you answer (whether yes or no) the dialog is presented again. The dialog takes precedence over other IE controls, and as near as I can tell there's no way out short of terminating the browser.
Copyright protects the right to make a copy. It's nothing to do with access to the information. If you find a CD in the gutter and it still plays, bonus. You have every legal right to listen to that CD. So do all your friends. But even if you purchase the CD you don't have the right to copy its contents. It's not about possession or access. It's about making copies.
Sure I get that it's a joke. But that being said, A) you don't have to label something as copyrighted for it to be protected by copyright. Copyright is granted the moment you produce an original creative work. However, B) there's nothing creative about the contents of your robots.txt file. Labelling something as copyrighted doesn't make it copyrighted.
Is there anything about a lump of copper that identifies it as former pennies?
I cannot possibly be the only person who sees military applications for this research. I don't foresee them having any trouble with funding.