MS will have to "give up its revenue stream" in the OS (meaning giving it away for free) in order to protect the revenue stream from their other apps.
This is what I don't get about the whole article. Microsoft makes about 99.999% of their actual profit from variations of Windows and Office. Everything else is just window dressing to keep the accounts from being too boring. Saying they should stop charging for Windows so they can maintain their revenues from all those other things is like saying car makers should stop charging for cars so they can maintain their revenues from cargo nets and foot mats.
But when you've got religious fanatics in charge of nuclear arsenals... well, the extremist Muslims have no qualms with dying for their religion, nor do they seem to have much of a problem with causing the deaths of other Muslims. Really, whether Iran ever launches or not isn't going to be decided by anything we can predict - more likely that decision will rest on whether the reining mullahs are totally insane, or just a little-bit insane.
It's funny you should say that. Until 20 January, most of the world seems to have been expressing similar views about the administration running another nuclear power.
The correct response to such a move by the Italian authorities would be to completely ignore it.
This is a legal issue, and legal issues should be dealt with by courts under the law of the land. Any company that thinks it has enough power to corrupt due process is either wrong or a danger to society that should be dealt with accordingly. You don't get to be above the law just by being rich, and from the government's view, any change in stance as a result of such a threat is on the same level as negotiating with hostage takers: you have to take a principled view and refuse every time, or you're screwed forever.
In any case, I rather doubt losing access to YouTube for a couple of hours would bring down the Italian government. It's just a video-sharing service. There are a few million other web sites and plenty of other sources of entertainment for people to use instead.
Throughout your post, you make an implicit assumption that open services like this are a good thing, and that if they can only run by violating laws then the laws are broken rather than the service being unviable.
I'm not expressing a view either way on that position, but I do note that there is plenty of precedent for laws that restrict behaviour preemptively because the legislature believed that the danger of not doing so was too great: weapons controls, collecting employees' taxes directly from employers, many kinds of compulsory insurance, all sorts of road traffic laws. You can certainly question the ethics of such laws, but pragmatically you can't dispute that most of them, at least, were introduced in response to real abuses and have successfully reduced those abuses.
Given that illegal content on YouTube is widespread, that Google makes a substantial amount of money off a business model that arguably would not have been viable without turning a blind eye to mass copyright infringement, and that there are definitely times when people just watch infringing material on YouTube and never pay for it when they would otherwise buy it legally, you can certainly make a rational argument against the safe harbour laws and the current business model of sites like YouTube. As I said before, I'm not claiming that this is necessarily the stronger position to take, but a few people in this discussion are hammering on the Italian official as though he's taken leave of his senses, and I suspect that's more because of their preconceptions or personal preferences than because the law in Italy is black and white.
I live in the same world as everyone else, but I think perhaps some of us see it through more forgiving eyes than others. I tend to believe that most people are basically honest and decent, though not necessarily fully aware of or considerate about the full implications of their actions. Unfortunately, I also tend to believe that the minority of less pleasant people have a disproportionate impact on others, that those who spend their lives dealing with such people tend to have an abnormally dark view of the world, and that the rules and regulations the authorities in that position may seek to create therefore tend to be unfair or unreasonably prejudiced against the honest majority.
For independent developers, Paypal donations are quite a viable model. Also ads revenues (onslaught comes into mind).
So your proposed alternatives are a donation model that rarely works using a business that acts like a bank but isn't subject to the usual regulations, or the increasingly ineffective model of web sites everywhere? I'm afraid those aren't terribly convincing, unless you have information I've never seen or heard of that suggests it is even plausible that these alternative models would bring in a useful income.
They feel cheated because gamers don't like the new 69.99$ price tag on games, and are migrating on the used market or waiting for end of stock discount, so companies are trying to make their business model survive using draconian drm, comprising activations and licensing reselling limits.
You're changing the subject. We're talking about a small, independent developer, whose games are much cheaper than that, and who makes a point of not using DRM and similar nonsense.
IME, copyright discussions on Slashdot usually crash around the time someone starts equating the situation of a small number of megacorps with the situation of the numerous small players in the same industry.
also, the 4 point is becoming lesser true every day: look at Crayon physics, World of Goo, and the indie section of Steam.
This is why I said "almost zero". But the fact remains that the low-end professional world produces many more games of that standard than the hobbyist community, and the high-end professional world is in a different class. A lot of people enjoy playing the games produced by those professional groups, and I don't believe that all of those people would prefer to switch to the handful of alternatives you mentioned.
for the third point, it's an universal statement, but the point is that lot of people enjoy also medium quality games, Castle Crasher is still in the top ten of the Xbox 360 Arcade games selled.
I don't dispute that, but the fact that people also enjoy other things does not negate the fact that people enjoy the kind of games currently produced under professional/copyright conditions. The latter is the relevant thing here: if people enjoy those kinds of games, then there is an argument that society benefits from having them, and therefore an argument in favour of making it commercially viable to produce them.
steam and xbox arcade may make the second point moot, as more and more game are selled for a fraction of the cost, with special week discount and so on; far from a "donation only business model" but it's still cheaper than the standard delivery chain based of 60+ price tag for games.
Once again, you're drifting off the topic. Last time I looked, I don't think any of Cliff's games were anything close to that price anyway.
Neither is having access to professional quality games that someone worked hard to produce.
Well, people will pay you to keep making them whether they are forced to do so or not.
Some people will. Most people won't. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that most people simply aren't that generous. Perhaps if we had a dramatic culture shift, so that in our society everything from copyright to taxation went away and people had to learn that it is important to support things you value... Perhaps then your idea would work, and it might even be a nicer world than we live in today.
But we don't live in that world, and I defy you to produce any meaningful evidence that suggests making those games would still be financially viable under your system. Even the high profile experiments by a few musicicians recently — all of whom have had a huge profile already, paid for by the system we're talking about — haven't exactly shown humanity collectively to be a kind and generous race.
Please don't even bother to claim ignorance of alternative business models, deliberate ignorance is no argument at all.
This is how I see the argument:
Cliff is trying to make an honest living producing and selling decent games that he created, mostly on his own as a result of a lot of hard work.
To date, there are exactly zero credible alternative models for making money in that line of work.
Lots of people enjoy playing games of professional quality.
To date, there are almost zero games produced of anything close to professional standards by the hobbyist community.
As far as I can see, unless you dispute any of those propositions, Cliff's argument is pretty much right on the money. So which of those four simple statements do you think is not true?
There are really only two kinds of rights: moral/ethical ones that we believe people should have, and legal ones that we use to codify those decisions. Since you are objectively wrong on the legal rights issue, I assumed we were talking about the others. (The only other useful definition I know is the classic one: the only rights you truly have are those you are prepared to die defending, since ultimately anything else can be taken from you.)
In any case, you seem to have already made up your own mind about copyright and rationalised your choice to ignore it, so I don't think it's worth trying to convince you of anything different. Maybe I'll just move into your living room until you get the point, since that is also a non-coercive action.
It is an objective fact, however, that freeloading--in the form of copyright infringement--causes no harm to others: it does not violate anyone's right to life or liberty, or does it deprive anyone of the use of their property.
But that's just the thing: it's not objective at all, because if everyone did as you describe, it would deprive society of a great deal of value, because the dominant incentive for artists to create and share new works would be removed. Freeloading in such a situation pretty much implies that the freeloader is either ignorant or sociopathic, and neither is a positive trait.
Really? Keep your word. Swap a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Look after those you love. Never stop learning. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Be polite. Is it so hard to think of honest, decent behaviour these days? That's very sad.
The right to act in any way which does not cause harm to others
No harm to others? You are taking advantage of the fact that some people do pay in order to get something for free for yourself. You have failed the back-of-an-envelope ethics test: if everyone acted according to the principles you choose, would the world be a better place?
The fact the Eircom rolled-over in just 8 days demonstrates that these companies have no interest in protecting our rights. For them it's all about the money
Of course it is. It is not a company's job to protect your rights. A company's main purpose is to make money for its shareholders.
Laws are what are supposed to protect your rights, because that company has to operate within the law. If the company's actions are an abuse, then the law should be changed (or enforced) so that this does not happen.
Of course, I'm assuming you were referring to legitimate privacy rights here, not to a non-existent right to download material in breach of copyright.
I'm not arguing that new technologies negate fair use. On the contrary, I think the US fair use law, based on four general principles rather than numerous specific circumstances, is an excellent example of a law that does adapt to new uses well.
I just happen to consider that in this case, the use probably isn't fair according to those criteria. I base this on the four criteria themselves, rather than an analogy to a case nearly five decades ago: if I were the lawyer in court, I would argue that the excerpts being quoted represent a substantial part of the value of the original work, and that the use being made of them is commercial, adds no value, and may be to the detriment of the copyright holder. Looking at the fair use criteria, it's hard to reconcile that position with any argument that the use is fair.
You sound like one more person who fails to understand the concept of fair use and that old laws are not written with new technological possibilities in mind.
You might like to reflect on what you wrote there, until you understand the irony.
FTA, it sounds like Gatehouse see this as a copyright violation but, as several other posters have pointed out, the same thing goes on on news aggregator sites all the time.
Which doesn't make it any less of a copyright violation. "Him too" is not a defence in law.
In fact most stories on Slashdot contain snippets from other sites.
And sometimes Slashdot does go too far, but at least it's in a grey area, with original content and editorial control as well. Presenting factual information is one thing. Mechanically cloning another's work and using their exact words, while adding no value at all of your own, is another.
It's an unavoidable and very useful facet of the web
What is, the using links part, or the mechanical copying without adding value part?
This is yet another example of 'old' media not really understanding online practices.
It sounds to me like yet another example of 'new' media thinking that by being on the Internet they are somehow exempt from the law.
Most sites benefit tremendously from others linking to them - look at what happens with Slashdot.
In this context? I'd like to see some evidence of the benefits the people doing the original work derive in this sort of case, please.
By the way, Slashdot is a particularly unfortunate example, since people not reading the original article is a running joke and "Slashdot Effect" is not a term used to describe an abundance of ad revenue giving your business a huge boost.
This isn't really about the links, though, is it? On a news site, the effort required to identify a story and get the key facts right is a large part of the value of the site. If someone else can come along and copy the headline and intro, they've got most of that same value for nothing. They are just parasites, damaging the people who are doing the real work, and not even adding any useful value for society more generally. This is why places with sensible copyright laws judge fair use by criteria other than just the size of the excerpt.
OK, let me be very clear. I am not in favour of any arbitrary right for the authorities to close down anyone they like without a legitimate reason. I have never defended such a policy, and the suggestions I made in the GP post were intended specifically to show how seriously I think any such action should be treated. Indeed, one of the main reasons I'm concerned about the way this sort of case works out is because it could be used by the government as an example of why they "need" all ISPs to log all data and provide direct access to it without such niceties as warrants and judicial oversight.
Where a police officer is negligent in carrying out their duties and contravenes the law as a result, then I also have no problem with holding them personally to account with a "professional shield". I think we have to be careful, just as with the military, that there is a fine line between (a) not accepting "just following orders" as a defence in cases where there is a serious breach, and (b) the realistic need for senior officers to have their legitimate and commands carried out even if junior officers don't understand all the technicalities of the specific piece of law they are being asked to enforce.
That all said, I think we also have to be realistic about the environment in which the police operate. In a case involving public-facing servers, it is entirely possible that a host would be uncooperative where the police do have legitimate grounds to see logs or similar information, or to access private content on the machine that they have good reason to believe is being used for illegal purposes. They have to have some right of seizure where the circumstances do require it in the interests of justice, or they would be impotent and any fool could host whatever illegal activities he liked as long as his ISP conveniently denied all knowledge when the police come around. The world isn't black and white, and we need strong checks and balances on the power of the authorities, particularly front-line services such as the police, but we also can't hamstring them to the point that they can't go after actually bad people.
When it becomes illegal to promote free speech, I think you're in serious trouble.
As I've said from the start, if the proper warrants weren't in order for the action the police took, then they screwed up and should be dealt with accordingly. I've never claimed otherwise, and in one of my other posts I suggested a rather strong set of conditions that I think could reasonably be enforced on the authorities in cases where it is absolutely necessary to remove hardware in circumstances like these.
I just don't believe in using the magic words "free speech" as a convenient excuse to bypass other laws protecting personal privacy, reputation, and so on. Life isn't that black and white.
A good percentage of Western societies are rapidly approaching that point.
Are they, though, really?
I'll be the first to agree that a lot of the laws passed this millenium are not shining examples of how to do things. That tends to happen when a culture of fear pervades politics, as it did after the 11 September attacks, and as it does again today with the state of the world's economy.
Typically under those circumstances, politics takes over for the remainder of the current term of office. The incumbents are often returned at the next election as well, because the fear and emotion are still running high. It's the next election after that where you find out whether a more reasonable balance will be restored, bad laws undone, and those people who were unfairly treated compensated as much as possible.
I submit, therefore, that the resilience of nations' freedoms should be judged not by how they are attacked, but by how quickly they recover. To me, civil disobedience is what comes between "jury" and "ammo" on the four boxes scale. On the timeline above, most of us are still on "ballot". Judging by the dramatic change in emphasis in US politics since 20 January and the all-but-certain total annihilation of the Labour Party in British politics at the next general election, ballot is doing its job.
There have certainly been cases where things have gone too far, but in the UK they have been on a small scale (which doesn't make them any better in principle, of course) and more importantly they have been soundly thrashed by the press and opposition politicians. In many cases, corrective action either has been taken by government voluntarily or because a court ruling said they had gone too far. In other cases, corrective action is likely to be taken after the next election.
In the UK, the most likely justification for genuine civil disobedience in the near future seems to be the rise of the database state. This represents a profound and permanent shift in the balance of power between the people and the government, and it is very much a creation of the current, highly authoritarian Labour administration. It is interesting that on the issue of ID cards and the National Identity Register, a very large number of people have declared themselves willing to engage in civil disobedience, from the grass roots to the leaders of major political parties.
So yes, there are bad laws being made and right now a government with no real mandate is abusing its claimed authority for a couple of years. This sucks, but the system will deal with that particular administration fairly soon, just as it has done in several other countries recently, and in all likelihood much faster than any forcible revolution and overthrow of the government would. If it doesn't and the problems persist, or if the government attempts to accelerate the downward slide while it still clings to power such that waiting until the next election is too long to prevent serious or permanent harm to the nation's freedoms, then we may yet reach the point where civil disobedience is justified.
But we are still a very long way from the kind of dictatorship we see in Zimbabwe, the corruption endemic in politics in Russia, or the level of daily violence around Gaza. When contemplating actively stepping outside the rule of law, I think it is wise to remember how lucky we still are in the grand scheme of things, and to keep a sense of perspective.
And I do not believe, as you seem to, that civil disobedience is an unacceptable way to get a point across when nothing else is working.
Civil disobedience is a time-honoured tradition, but as you say, it is a last resort for use when nothing else is working. It is based on the principle that if the people truly do not believe a law to be just, then by openly defying it and challenging the system to deal with them all, the system itself will become overloaded and the lack of popular support for the law will be exposed. Note the part about open defiance and the system dealing with all of them: trying to get away with a crime under cover of anonymity is not civil disobedience.
What the SHAC people do, however, is a long way from this noble endeavour. They seem to believe that their opinions are more important than anyone else's, and that they have a right to use threatened and actual violence in order to get their way. We have a word for such people: criminals.
It is the simple truth that you cannot have free speech without anonymous speech because free speech is not a natural right.
Neither is anonymity. The natural order of things is that if you say something, others will know that you have said it, and you can be given credit or held accountable accordingly.
In any case, as I said before, I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech. It is, like freedom of religion, too often used as an excuse to do things that would otherwise be considered unreasonable.
Some kinds of speech should certainly be protected. For example, anyone should be free to say whatever they like on political matters, and I completely support a law that protects this.
Not everyone needs to be able to identify a speaker. For example, you don't need to know my real name just because I post this on Slashdot.
And verifying the identity of those turning up to vote is not the same as knowing how they voted. I'm not arguing for the latter.
But that doesn't mean I support a law that protects someone's right to say harmful and untrue things about someone else out of spite, or that I don't believe in personal privacy, or that I object to someone being able to trace my identity through due process if I do violate those things by posting something inappropriate.
As a general principle, I believe that with freedom must come responsibility. Anonymity is a mechanism for avoiding responsibility, and should be used selectively where the benefits outweigh the liabilities.
It is, rather, a right we would all like to have, and so in some societies (those which can reasonably be called free; which are on the list is another discussion) it has been recognized that for some to have it, all must have it.
On the contrary, as I think my position makes clear, it is not a right we would all like to have.
They should be proud that their service can be used for making anonymous death threats, because that also means that it can be used to express unpopular political ideas. That you don't understand this means that you don't understand freedom of speech.
I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech, and neither does the law in any country in the western world that I know of.
As for "won't cooperate with lawful authorities" I'm not really sure where to start with the incredible wrongness of this sentence, so I guess I'll begin at the top; they don't keep logs, so there's no cooperation.
And this is where the problems start. By actively choosing (it's not the default, nor common practice) not to keep logs that can be accessed as a one-off with a good reason, they are providing more ammunition for the case that government should have unrestricted direct access to logs and keeping them should be mandatory. I'd rather have practical, proportionate access available where it's justified than draconian rules imposed on everyone that give the government more power and less oversight.
Finally, "lawful authorities"? Something can be legal and still be wrong. This act is only the latter.
Ah, I see: you're an idealist, who would rather everyone can speak their mind and do as they wish with no legal authorities at all to interfere with his life, regardless of how damaging his actions might be to others. I imagine your point of view might be different if you were either the judge whose life was threatened, or anyone with an interest in seeing a fair and just outcome of the case before the court where that judge sits. In a civilised society, the answer to bad laws is to get them changed, not to threaten the lives of the judiciary whose task is merely to rule objectively according to those laws.
Slashdot Mirror
MS will have to "give up its revenue stream" in the OS (meaning giving it away for free) in order to protect the revenue stream from their other apps.
This is what I don't get about the whole article. Microsoft makes about 99.999% of their actual profit from variations of Windows and Office. Everything else is just window dressing to keep the accounts from being too boring. Saying they should stop charging for Windows so they can maintain their revenues from all those other things is like saying car makers should stop charging for cars so they can maintain their revenues from cargo nets and foot mats.
Yeah, but then the Microsoft version of Linux pops up a dialog box, and says:
Now if only someone would tell Palin which coast faces towards Russia...
But when you've got religious fanatics in charge of nuclear arsenals ... well, the extremist Muslims have no qualms with dying for their religion, nor do they seem to have much of a problem with causing the deaths of other Muslims. Really, whether Iran ever launches or not isn't going to be decided by anything we can predict - more likely that decision will rest on whether the reining mullahs are totally insane, or just a little-bit insane.
It's funny you should say that. Until 20 January, most of the world seems to have been expressing similar views about the administration running another nuclear power.
The correct response to such a move by the Italian authorities would be to completely ignore it.
This is a legal issue, and legal issues should be dealt with by courts under the law of the land. Any company that thinks it has enough power to corrupt due process is either wrong or a danger to society that should be dealt with accordingly. You don't get to be above the law just by being rich, and from the government's view, any change in stance as a result of such a threat is on the same level as negotiating with hostage takers: you have to take a principled view and refuse every time, or you're screwed forever.
In any case, I rather doubt losing access to YouTube for a couple of hours would bring down the Italian government. It's just a video-sharing service. There are a few million other web sites and plenty of other sources of entertainment for people to use instead.
Throughout your post, you make an implicit assumption that open services like this are a good thing, and that if they can only run by violating laws then the laws are broken rather than the service being unviable.
I'm not expressing a view either way on that position, but I do note that there is plenty of precedent for laws that restrict behaviour preemptively because the legislature believed that the danger of not doing so was too great: weapons controls, collecting employees' taxes directly from employers, many kinds of compulsory insurance, all sorts of road traffic laws. You can certainly question the ethics of such laws, but pragmatically you can't dispute that most of them, at least, were introduced in response to real abuses and have successfully reduced those abuses.
Given that illegal content on YouTube is widespread, that Google makes a substantial amount of money off a business model that arguably would not have been viable without turning a blind eye to mass copyright infringement, and that there are definitely times when people just watch infringing material on YouTube and never pay for it when they would otherwise buy it legally, you can certainly make a rational argument against the safe harbour laws and the current business model of sites like YouTube. As I said before, I'm not claiming that this is necessarily the stronger position to take, but a few people in this discussion are hammering on the Italian official as though he's taken leave of his senses, and I suspect that's more because of their preconceptions or personal preferences than because the law in Italy is black and white.
Some of us don't have a client at all, you insensitive clod!
What kind of candy coated world do you live in?
I live in the same world as everyone else, but I think perhaps some of us see it through more forgiving eyes than others. I tend to believe that most people are basically honest and decent, though not necessarily fully aware of or considerate about the full implications of their actions. Unfortunately, I also tend to believe that the minority of less pleasant people have a disproportionate impact on others, that those who spend their lives dealing with such people tend to have an abnormally dark view of the world, and that the rules and regulations the authorities in that position may seek to create therefore tend to be unfair or unreasonably prejudiced against the honest majority.
For independent developers, Paypal donations are quite a viable model. Also ads revenues (onslaught comes into mind).
So your proposed alternatives are a donation model that rarely works using a business that acts like a bank but isn't subject to the usual regulations, or the increasingly ineffective model of web sites everywhere? I'm afraid those aren't terribly convincing, unless you have information I've never seen or heard of that suggests it is even plausible that these alternative models would bring in a useful income.
They feel cheated because gamers don't like the new 69.99$ price tag on games, and are migrating on the used market or waiting for end of stock discount, so companies are trying to make their business model survive using draconian drm, comprising activations and licensing reselling limits.
You're changing the subject. We're talking about a small, independent developer, whose games are much cheaper than that, and who makes a point of not using DRM and similar nonsense.
IME, copyright discussions on Slashdot usually crash around the time someone starts equating the situation of a small number of megacorps with the situation of the numerous small players in the same industry.
also, the 4 point is becoming lesser true every day: look at Crayon physics, World of Goo, and the indie section of Steam.
This is why I said "almost zero". But the fact remains that the low-end professional world produces many more games of that standard than the hobbyist community, and the high-end professional world is in a different class. A lot of people enjoy playing the games produced by those professional groups, and I don't believe that all of those people would prefer to switch to the handful of alternatives you mentioned.
for the third point, it's an universal statement, but the point is that lot of people enjoy also medium quality games, Castle Crasher is still in the top ten of the Xbox 360 Arcade games selled.
I don't dispute that, but the fact that people also enjoy other things does not negate the fact that people enjoy the kind of games currently produced under professional/copyright conditions. The latter is the relevant thing here: if people enjoy those kinds of games, then there is an argument that society benefits from having them, and therefore an argument in favour of making it commercially viable to produce them.
steam and xbox arcade may make the second point moot, as more and more game are selled for a fraction of the cost, with special week discount and so on; far from a "donation only business model" but it's still cheaper than the standard delivery chain based of 60+ price tag for games.
Once again, you're drifting off the topic. Last time I looked, I don't think any of Cliff's games were anything close to that price anyway.
IP is NOT a basic human right.
Neither is having access to professional quality games that someone worked hard to produce.
Well, people will pay you to keep making them whether they are forced to do so or not.
Some people will. Most people won't. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that most people simply aren't that generous. Perhaps if we had a dramatic culture shift, so that in our society everything from copyright to taxation went away and people had to learn that it is important to support things you value... Perhaps then your idea would work, and it might even be a nicer world than we live in today.
But we don't live in that world, and I defy you to produce any meaningful evidence that suggests making those games would still be financially viable under your system. Even the high profile experiments by a few musicicians recently — all of whom have had a huge profile already, paid for by the system we're talking about — haven't exactly shown humanity collectively to be a kind and generous race.
Please don't even bother to claim ignorance of alternative business models, deliberate ignorance is no argument at all.
This is how I see the argument:
As far as I can see, unless you dispute any of those propositions, Cliff's argument is pretty much right on the money. So which of those four simple statements do you think is not true?
We were discussing rights, not ethics or morals.
There are really only two kinds of rights: moral/ethical ones that we believe people should have, and legal ones that we use to codify those decisions. Since you are objectively wrong on the legal rights issue, I assumed we were talking about the others. (The only other useful definition I know is the classic one: the only rights you truly have are those you are prepared to die defending, since ultimately anything else can be taken from you.)
In any case, you seem to have already made up your own mind about copyright and rationalised your choice to ignore it, so I don't think it's worth trying to convince you of anything different. Maybe I'll just move into your living room until you get the point, since that is also a non-coercive action.
It is an objective fact, however, that freeloading--in the form of copyright infringement--causes no harm to others: it does not violate anyone's right to life or liberty, or does it deprive anyone of the use of their property.
But that's just the thing: it's not objective at all, because if everyone did as you describe, it would deprive society of a great deal of value, because the dominant incentive for artists to create and share new works would be removed. Freeloading in such a situation pretty much implies that the freeloader is either ignorant or sociopathic, and neither is a positive trait.
Really? Keep your word. Swap a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Look after those you love. Never stop learning. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Be polite. Is it so hard to think of honest, decent behaviour these days? That's very sad.
The right to act in any way which does not cause harm to others
No harm to others? You are taking advantage of the fact that some people do pay in order to get something for free for yourself. You have failed the back-of-an-envelope ethics test: if everyone acted according to the principles you choose, would the world be a better place?
The fact the Eircom rolled-over in just 8 days demonstrates that these companies have no interest in protecting our rights. For them it's all about the money
Of course it is. It is not a company's job to protect your rights. A company's main purpose is to make money for its shareholders.
Laws are what are supposed to protect your rights, because that company has to operate within the law. If the company's actions are an abuse, then the law should be changed (or enforced) so that this does not happen.
Of course, I'm assuming you were referring to legitimate privacy rights here, not to a non-existent right to download material in breach of copyright.
I'm not arguing that new technologies negate fair use. On the contrary, I think the US fair use law, based on four general principles rather than numerous specific circumstances, is an excellent example of a law that does adapt to new uses well.
I just happen to consider that in this case, the use probably isn't fair according to those criteria. I base this on the four criteria themselves, rather than an analogy to a case nearly five decades ago: if I were the lawyer in court, I would argue that the excerpts being quoted represent a substantial part of the value of the original work, and that the use being made of them is commercial, adds no value, and may be to the detriment of the copyright holder. Looking at the fair use criteria, it's hard to reconcile that position with any argument that the use is fair.
You sound like one more person who fails to understand the concept of fair use and that old laws are not written with new technological possibilities in mind.
You might like to reflect on what you wrote there, until you understand the irony.
FTA, it sounds like Gatehouse see this as a copyright violation but, as several other posters have pointed out, the same thing goes on on news aggregator sites all the time.
Which doesn't make it any less of a copyright violation. "Him too" is not a defence in law.
In fact most stories on Slashdot contain snippets from other sites.
And sometimes Slashdot does go too far, but at least it's in a grey area, with original content and editorial control as well. Presenting factual information is one thing. Mechanically cloning another's work and using their exact words, while adding no value at all of your own, is another.
It's an unavoidable and very useful facet of the web
What is, the using links part, or the mechanical copying without adding value part?
This is yet another example of 'old' media not really understanding online practices.
It sounds to me like yet another example of 'new' media thinking that by being on the Internet they are somehow exempt from the law.
Most sites benefit tremendously from others linking to them - look at what happens with Slashdot.
In this context? I'd like to see some evidence of the benefits the people doing the original work derive in this sort of case, please.
By the way, Slashdot is a particularly unfortunate example, since people not reading the original article is a running joke and "Slashdot Effect" is not a term used to describe an abundance of ad revenue giving your business a huge boost.
This isn't really about the links, though, is it? On a news site, the effort required to identify a story and get the key facts right is a large part of the value of the site. If someone else can come along and copy the headline and intro, they've got most of that same value for nothing. They are just parasites, damaging the people who are doing the real work, and not even adding any useful value for society more generally. This is why places with sensible copyright laws judge fair use by criteria other than just the size of the excerpt.
OK, let me be very clear. I am not in favour of any arbitrary right for the authorities to close down anyone they like without a legitimate reason. I have never defended such a policy, and the suggestions I made in the GP post were intended specifically to show how seriously I think any such action should be treated. Indeed, one of the main reasons I'm concerned about the way this sort of case works out is because it could be used by the government as an example of why they "need" all ISPs to log all data and provide direct access to it without such niceties as warrants and judicial oversight.
Where a police officer is negligent in carrying out their duties and contravenes the law as a result, then I also have no problem with holding them personally to account with a "professional shield". I think we have to be careful, just as with the military, that there is a fine line between (a) not accepting "just following orders" as a defence in cases where there is a serious breach, and (b) the realistic need for senior officers to have their legitimate and commands carried out even if junior officers don't understand all the technicalities of the specific piece of law they are being asked to enforce.
That all said, I think we also have to be realistic about the environment in which the police operate. In a case involving public-facing servers, it is entirely possible that a host would be uncooperative where the police do have legitimate grounds to see logs or similar information, or to access private content on the machine that they have good reason to believe is being used for illegal purposes. They have to have some right of seizure where the circumstances do require it in the interests of justice, or they would be impotent and any fool could host whatever illegal activities he liked as long as his ISP conveniently denied all knowledge when the police come around. The world isn't black and white, and we need strong checks and balances on the power of the authorities, particularly front-line services such as the police, but we also can't hamstring them to the point that they can't go after actually bad people.
When it becomes illegal to promote free speech, I think you're in serious trouble.
As I've said from the start, if the proper warrants weren't in order for the action the police took, then they screwed up and should be dealt with accordingly. I've never claimed otherwise, and in one of my other posts I suggested a rather strong set of conditions that I think could reasonably be enforced on the authorities in cases where it is absolutely necessary to remove hardware in circumstances like these.
I just don't believe in using the magic words "free speech" as a convenient excuse to bypass other laws protecting personal privacy, reputation, and so on. Life isn't that black and white.
A good percentage of Western societies are rapidly approaching that point.
Are they, though, really?
I'll be the first to agree that a lot of the laws passed this millenium are not shining examples of how to do things. That tends to happen when a culture of fear pervades politics, as it did after the 11 September attacks, and as it does again today with the state of the world's economy.
Typically under those circumstances, politics takes over for the remainder of the current term of office. The incumbents are often returned at the next election as well, because the fear and emotion are still running high. It's the next election after that where you find out whether a more reasonable balance will be restored, bad laws undone, and those people who were unfairly treated compensated as much as possible.
I submit, therefore, that the resilience of nations' freedoms should be judged not by how they are attacked, but by how quickly they recover. To me, civil disobedience is what comes between "jury" and "ammo" on the four boxes scale. On the timeline above, most of us are still on "ballot". Judging by the dramatic change in emphasis in US politics since 20 January and the all-but-certain total annihilation of the Labour Party in British politics at the next general election, ballot is doing its job.
There have certainly been cases where things have gone too far, but in the UK they have been on a small scale (which doesn't make them any better in principle, of course) and more importantly they have been soundly thrashed by the press and opposition politicians. In many cases, corrective action either has been taken by government voluntarily or because a court ruling said they had gone too far. In other cases, corrective action is likely to be taken after the next election.
In the UK, the most likely justification for genuine civil disobedience in the near future seems to be the rise of the database state. This represents a profound and permanent shift in the balance of power between the people and the government, and it is very much a creation of the current, highly authoritarian Labour administration. It is interesting that on the issue of ID cards and the National Identity Register, a very large number of people have declared themselves willing to engage in civil disobedience, from the grass roots to the leaders of major political parties.
So yes, there are bad laws being made and right now a government with no real mandate is abusing its claimed authority for a couple of years. This sucks, but the system will deal with that particular administration fairly soon, just as it has done in several other countries recently, and in all likelihood much faster than any forcible revolution and overthrow of the government would. If it doesn't and the problems persist, or if the government attempts to accelerate the downward slide while it still clings to power such that waiting until the next election is too long to prevent serious or permanent harm to the nation's freedoms, then we may yet reach the point where civil disobedience is justified.
But we are still a very long way from the kind of dictatorship we see in Zimbabwe, the corruption endemic in politics in Russia, or the level of daily violence around Gaza. When contemplating actively stepping outside the rule of law, I think it is wise to remember how lucky we still are in the grand scheme of things, and to keep a sense of perspective.
And I do not believe, as you seem to, that civil disobedience is an unacceptable way to get a point across when nothing else is working.
Civil disobedience is a time-honoured tradition, but as you say, it is a last resort for use when nothing else is working. It is based on the principle that if the people truly do not believe a law to be just, then by openly defying it and challenging the system to deal with them all, the system itself will become overloaded and the lack of popular support for the law will be exposed. Note the part about open defiance and the system dealing with all of them: trying to get away with a crime under cover of anonymity is not civil disobedience.
What the SHAC people do, however, is a long way from this noble endeavour. They seem to believe that their opinions are more important than anyone else's, and that they have a right to use threatened and actual violence in order to get their way. We have a word for such people: criminals.
It is the simple truth that you cannot have free speech without anonymous speech because free speech is not a natural right.
Neither is anonymity. The natural order of things is that if you say something, others will know that you have said it, and you can be given credit or held accountable accordingly.
In any case, as I said before, I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech. It is, like freedom of religion, too often used as an excuse to do things that would otherwise be considered unreasonable.
Some kinds of speech should certainly be protected. For example, anyone should be free to say whatever they like on political matters, and I completely support a law that protects this.
Not everyone needs to be able to identify a speaker. For example, you don't need to know my real name just because I post this on Slashdot.
And verifying the identity of those turning up to vote is not the same as knowing how they voted. I'm not arguing for the latter.
But that doesn't mean I support a law that protects someone's right to say harmful and untrue things about someone else out of spite, or that I don't believe in personal privacy, or that I object to someone being able to trace my identity through due process if I do violate those things by posting something inappropriate.
As a general principle, I believe that with freedom must come responsibility. Anonymity is a mechanism for avoiding responsibility, and should be used selectively where the benefits outweigh the liabilities.
It is, rather, a right we would all like to have, and so in some societies (those which can reasonably be called free; which are on the list is another discussion) it has been recognized that for some to have it, all must have it.
On the contrary, as I think my position makes clear, it is not a right we would all like to have.
They should be proud that their service can be used for making anonymous death threats, because that also means that it can be used to express unpopular political ideas. That you don't understand this means that you don't understand freedom of speech.
I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech, and neither does the law in any country in the western world that I know of.
As for "won't cooperate with lawful authorities" I'm not really sure where to start with the incredible wrongness of this sentence, so I guess I'll begin at the top; they don't keep logs, so there's no cooperation.
And this is where the problems start. By actively choosing (it's not the default, nor common practice) not to keep logs that can be accessed as a one-off with a good reason, they are providing more ammunition for the case that government should have unrestricted direct access to logs and keeping them should be mandatory. I'd rather have practical, proportionate access available where it's justified than draconian rules imposed on everyone that give the government more power and less oversight.
Finally, "lawful authorities"? Something can be legal and still be wrong. This act is only the latter.
Ah, I see: you're an idealist, who would rather everyone can speak their mind and do as they wish with no legal authorities at all to interfere with his life, regardless of how damaging his actions might be to others. I imagine your point of view might be different if you were either the judge whose life was threatened, or anyone with an interest in seeing a fair and just outcome of the case before the court where that judge sits. In a civilised society, the answer to bad laws is to get them changed, not to threaten the lives of the judiciary whose task is merely to rule objectively according to those laws.
I bet if the post had been made on timesonline.co.uk (The Times' website) it wouldn't be seized.
I bet if someone had tried to make a death threat using timesonline.co.uk, the moderators would have called the police and warned them.