I was an MRI tech for 4 years, so golly I have special experience here. Our primary reason for restricting metal was not heating -- the RF is not all that strong, not like a microwave -- but the 1.5 Tesla magnetic field (that's a moderately strong magnet). Our concern was that the field would pull or twist something sensitive like an aneurysm clip. Also the metal would cause a distortion in the magnetic field such that it was impossible to extract images near something fixed, such as screwed into bone -- the biggest practical problem here.
The field is *powerful* -- in one case it took several of us to pull free a chunk of metal another tech had unwittingly brought into the room.
I can see how this would be useful for non-magnetic materials like most stainless (yes, there are magnetic blends of ss in the 4xx series before someone tries to correct me:), which would be susceptible to induced current. We were mostly worried about older pacemakers that were not entirely solid-state. Many pacemakers are not full-time, btw, that it the heart can work without them.
(Rudimentary MRI primer: the primary field sets up a net alignment of molecules in the body, most significantly water; the RF pulses then tweak these molecules so they emit RF of their own, revealing location and quantity. Things have evolved since i was a tech, however.)
Kudos to the honest and helpful neighbor, but I have to assume they didn't figure out "My Father's Computer" was your father's computer without some additionnal snooping. How much did they read? They did the right thing, of course assuming they read no more than necessary.
Cable modems do have privacy issues, don't they? Mine is on the other side of an SMC firewall which (I hope I will not be instantly disabused!) is protection....
lol, I meant little-s switch, not the big-S switch. I'm one of the people who never had to switch. What a nice predicament, to have to choose among competing *free* browsers; my concern is that the 800-lb. might quite unintentionally do what M*******t so often does intentionally: squash the smaller but interesting flora and fauna.
I'd be using -- in fact am using -- OS X regardless of Safari.
If Safari beats it out in popularity it will be because Camino stopped adding features people wanted or needed.
Well, yes, but it might also be because the Camino people realize they have better things to do that be Apple's shadow development team while catering to an increasingly small audience. Certainly they want their work to be used. With Safari's edge of being distributed with every machine and by Software Update, plus Apple's formidible paid software engineering team, Camino will wither and die for lack of distinction as well as consumer awareness it even exists.
I'm aware of the benefits of open competition, but we're looking at a "market failure" here. I don't think Apple is doing anything wrong in the moral sense, and am delighted they're returning to the very necessary product of a web browser, after abruptly dropping the promising Cyberdog years ago. But how right is this in the long run, from the perspective of their self-interest.
The single, solitary thing I want to know is how open source/GPL work will prosper when the commercial giant can instantly me-to and distribute every feature. It is a philosophical and practical question of how software will develop in the future if the creative pool shrinks. By participating in the community -- as it also does with various iApps -- Apple may inadvertantly kill off a lot of Mac-platform creativity, damaging itself in the long run by effectively going it alone.
I imagine Apple has thought about this and am curious what their answer is.
Another thread here touting Camino was mysteriously modded "flamebait" so here goes...
I have used and loved Chimera for many months for many reasons. As other have found, the renamed Camino is crash-prone, strange in the very last nightly build of Chimera before the trademark-conflict name change (which you can find easily by anonymous FTP to their server) is great. I downgraded to Build 2003030408 and am content.
Now comes Safari, also great, except the lack of tabbed browsing and that awful brushed metal stuff. OK, tabbed browsing is now checked off on the feature list. Safari shares a startling number of other features, and then some. Eventually Safari will be indistinguishable from Camino/Chimera. Congratulations Apple, what a coup.... (Hey guys, add keywords for bookmarks so I can continue to google with "g keyword keyword" and I'll switch.)
So what's the deal for independent software efforts? Bust yourself to develop and demonstrate new UI and core technologies to have them lifted by a large for-profit computer maker? Granted the open source Camino is intended to create new work without profit, but at some point it will also lose the "profit" of public attention, and wither away, and cease to produce new things.
At the least I'd like to see Safari give a nod to Chimera. At the best I'd like an answer from Apple how they're not doing the Internet Explorer thing in miniature, and how non-Apple developers will continue to inspire and be inspired when they face having their work negated in a mere twitch of the tail of the whale.
I'm a Mac person, and back to the years before the Mac (the Apple ][+ is in a box). I think Apple has often done the right thing and will continue to (often) do the right thing. But there is something disturbing in their generous production of free software, similar in effect if not (I hope) intent to what Redmond has done. Be careful, Apple.
> I often see this attitude from techies... you have to understand...
LOL, you may have missed a turn -- this attitude is coming from a tech-oriented lawyer, quite aware of the law's limitations in making subjective calls, and the less often it is forced to do so the better. The slippery slope's fine, but don't hop out there if you don't have to.
The post title was rhetorical. That's why I pointed to existing law of fraud etc. as appropriate and adequate.
I'm very skeptical of this sort of thing, and believe this particular effort should be discarded as unenforceable subjective paternalistic hogwash. Much as I despise filters, they and other forms of self-help are preferable to government fumbling. Imagine trying to determine the typographical penumbra of legit URL's. (I just hit googl and was irritated to hit a bogus site, period.) Most of us couldn't do a good job of it and I'm sure the government can't.
However, some kinds of speech are illegal, such as false or deceptive advertising. So are trademark violation and tarnishment. The problem here is the injury -- wasted time and perhaps some psychological insult -- is trivial. I'm happier with whitehouse.com as a porn site than as a very tricky imitation of the real thing.
If they're worried about kids as opposed to trying for those family values votes, their should be restrictions on the home page content and age verification requirements. It is already considered consistent with the 1st Amendment to restrict access by minors to certain materials, and the adult site operators should be held to it. It might also prevent someone from losing their job over a typo....
Civil liability, as opposed to criminal, is a solution available to private citizens for constitutional violations. However, in practice these cases are difficult to win because they are often worth little money (assuming nothing expensive was destroyed and no one got killed) and the government actors may be protected by various types of qualified (e.g., good faith) and abaolute (e.g., judicial) immunity. Perhaps the greatest bar to the bulk of violations is that litigation is very very expensive and stressful.
However, by lifting this data-checking requirement, the government has not done anything that reduces these lawsuits, rather they have reduced internal accountability and increased the likelihood mistakes will be made and violations committed. There have been astonishing errors already, which one would think are warning enough.
So from the perspective of victims and those in government, this is lose-lose proposition. No one wants to get arrested for something they didn't do, and the cops don't want to waste time arresting them and sowing ill will. The change primarily serves those with fantasies of massive domestic spy databases and with little appreciation of the harm in sloppy law enforcement.
I predict we will see more, not fewer, lawsuits, but far too few to bring change.
No, I understand your point, and sympathize. I don't want to expend money or effort to avoid or hear objectionable speech. The thing is that the world is messier and the First Amendment of necessity allows more imposition that a simple rule provides.
One example might be the junk mail sent to businesses. It takes money to pay people to sort through it. Another more compelling one is a political march by an unpopular group, say people demonstrating against Jim Crow (OK, this is dated). They have a right to police protection, even if the entire town refuses to hear, and although it would be cheaper if they did not speak. (This time the costs are do to the illegal actions of third parties, but still the objective result is the speech costs unwilling parties money.) And so on. Free speech has costs.
Now, whether you listen, well, it's hard to force anyone to listen, although the annoying old-fashioned sound trucks were held to be protected. But it may cost the listeners something even if they have their hands over their ears or aren't present. Certainly there are other ways of doing things, but a "can't cost be anything" rule is far from the law we do have, and so won't solve any court decisions.
Actually the First Amendment says even less, that the Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech. (This rule was later extended to the states, which have their own protections of speech that may go farther.) What "abridge" and "freedom" and "speech" meant exactly were left for later generations to figure out, and under our system the court rulings on these are effectively a part of the Constitution and must be read along with it.
Lastly the intent of the Framers and the text of the Constitution aren't necessarily the same. The Framers argued a lot and kept lousy notes. Imagine trying to figure out the intent of Congress...
Gee, I haven't heard the expression dormant interstate commerce clause in a while!
I think you and other refer to another case, which upheld Washington State's antispam law, Heckel v. State.
I looked up material regarding what I think is this case and see you're right that it is a commerce clause case, but there are first amendment overtones that perhaps was not argued or the court overlooked. I'm not especially familar with this case, but do wonder about the possibility of 1st A. arguments.
In any event, the ruling of an intermediate California court is not hardly conclusive of the issue nationally or federally (I don't know how California is set up, but it may not even be statewide in effect). Did the California Supreme Court deny review? Anyway, Ferguson is just a state court ruling about a particular state's law, there are 50 more of then, and judges certainly enjoy contradicting each other. Federal challenges will add a whole new layer.
So how about all the ads go out as a personal message from the company president? That's quite plausible for a company of one. Would that be entitled to free speech protection. Or if it's commercial content as opposed to a commercial speaker that deprives speech of protection, how about a nonprofit selling "Re-elect Bush" as a way to express its message and finance its organization? Is that political or commercial? What if they do it for profit?
I'm not criticizing your viewpoint, rather the idea that a sharp line can be drawn between commercial and political and individual speech. More than a few people have recommended abandoning the framework. The labels attempt to make the problem look easier, but they just move it back a step to figuring out what falls in which category. For example, courts used to try to figure out whether the government could act arbitrarily towards you if something was a right or a privilege, but that attempt to presort every interest into two neat categories has generally lost favor (for example, is driving a right or a privilege? well, whatever it is, the government must give you due process in depriving you of it).
And, of course, you're right that the First Amendment applies essentially to government action, but there's no company here trying to limit speech, they're the target.
THis "no right to be heard" argument is often made but doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Of course free speech amounts to a right to be heard, beacause it bars certain attempts by people who don't want to hear the speech or don't want others to hear it. In either case, the person exercising free speech does it to be heard, otherwise it's like that tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it.
So you can't stop protestors in the street simply because you don't want to hear them or political billboards merely because you don't want to see them or radio programs that you might stumble upon or political TV ads to don't want to view ot junk mail sent without your consent. You can avoid all these things, and many can be regulated as to time, place, and manner -- but you can't just declare the speaker has no right to be heard and prove anything by it. What I thing you're saying is that the first amendment doesn't given anyone the right to coerce people to listen, or to demand funding to underwrite the speech, and these come close to being true. Generally though the burden is on the listener, and in some cases it even costs something. I hardly defend spam and junk faxes, but do think "no right to be heard" does not represent actual law.
Yeah, but what assures you the registered mail is legit?
Familiar problems of encryption and authentication.
But legally, at some point you are expected to suspend disbelief and act.
Last, registered mail is the wrong product! I painfully sorted this out with a patient post office agent a long time ago. Moreover, registered/certfied mail proves nothing as to the sender's identity; rather it protects the sender by providing tracking and, if paid for, delivery confirmation and/or signature and/or return receipt. Registered mail is for stuff like negotiable instruments and stock certficates, and provides some sort of chain-of-custody service. I've used it once, and it's expensive.
To be picky, and give the statisticians a break (most are well-meaning) I think, the last term was originally politicians. And here it should be recycled as:
Liars, damned liars, and conflict-of-interest-product-vendors-and-the-repor ters-who-uncritically-lap-up-their-disinformation
The worst IMHO are Forrester and Jupiter, research/consulting groups that make up statistics if they haven't already invented them. One name or the other seems to pop up in every general media article on the Internet, as they're in every reporter's rolodex. Nice hard quote for the reporter, nice ad for the firm -- who cares if it's true. So... beware.
Not to drown in semantics, but the poster wants to know his legal obligation, not what he can get away with. With actual knowledge, safe harbor's dead unless he insists on lying about it, and I'm not giving advice on how to commit perjury.
As for notice, greater formality is required before the ISP is *forced* to act. Registered mail is unnecessary (anyway, it's for valuable documents like stock certificates). Certified mail and even paper itself are also unnecessary. DMCA requires "A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." Electronic signature?
Last, I wouldn't blow off a halfway credible notification anyway, unless investigating it was simply impractical. This one was evidently credible and fraudulent, not anonymous, as discovered only when the person tried to reply. The email was also correct, though perhaps trivially. (I wonder as to the motivation, a peripheral issue.) Also aside from just wanting to do the right thing -- as the poster appears to -- the email could be one bit of evidence that the ISP had actual knowledge, even if it didn't. Staying out of court is often a lot cheaper than having a great defense when you get there.
I would at a minimum follow up with a request for a DMCA-compliant takedown notice rather than take a chance on my being wrong or ending up in hot water regardless.
This is not an attempt to provide the legal advice this person should get if they are unfamiliar with their legal obligations, even if I do happen to be a lawyer.
You confuse legal notification with knowledge. The poster already has actual knowledge of the problem thanks to his/her diligence. Had the poster simply stumbled on the problem, it would have to be dealt with.
Any idea what the heck the email writer had in mind? Enemy of your client perhaps? Anyway, perhaps in the future you could save your time with a form reply request "clarification." That would help with authenticity -- if this kind of game is common.
As you know, you are potentially liable for the copyright offenses of your customers, limited by the safe harbor exception I can't recall the details of. Once you've been notified, it may be foolhardy to ignore the wanring, as you could go down with the client. If you're like me, you may personally be kind of offended at people using your wares for criminal enterprises -- e.g., selling pirated songs. It appears the possibly malicious email writer has in fact brought a problem to your attention, and so you can't look the other way. (If they weren't malicious but wanted anonymity, maybe they could have just said so.)
I would strongly suggest you talk to a lawyer on this for legal advice to can rely on, and that you establish a written policy on how inquiries like this email are handled. You will want a paper trail to show your diligence later, and for your own conscience to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. I don't know whether you'll want to discuss the email when you talk to your client, or just use the generic "it has come to our attention that..."
If you used it to brain your enemy, it would STILL work AND would be simple enough for the debrained enemy to operate.
So there.:)
I'm most impressed not that this guy wanted a Mac, but that he actully got one. The military is rightly known for a plodding mentality, and what's he going to do if he needs an extra battery? Steal it from CNN? Of course, had the guy simply called Apple to say, hey, I'd like to place the first Mac in the field, they would have sent over ten gratis.
It's funny, these new laws technically shouldn't be necessary to the degree they address fraud and unfair/deceptive trade practices -- that stuff is already illegal. They do set out a framework for enforcement, and clear schedule of penalties, that may make them practical. I would like to see whether penalties are proportional to similar garden-variety fraud such as by telephone or mail.
There are a lot of naysayers here who say laws won't work, but it's quite early to declare failure. The FTC does a TON of consumer protection litigation the public rarely hears about -- and that case list is just the stubborn minority of targets that refused to stop after getting the letter, or to settle. I've seen several of their actions in detail; in one the huckster was so stubborn he ended up in jail for contempt of court. That's unusual -- remedies are typically fines and injunctions. And this guy did not go to jail for deceptive trade practices exactly, rather for defiance of a generic court order.
I would focus not on saying laws won't work, but on influencing the laws to be just and effective. The Ohio law COULD be disproportionate, especially if prosecutors fist leapt for the jugular rather than sensibly working out a settlement with the target. The latter is the just and cost-effective way of doing business -- litigation is very expensive. The federal law that is doubtlessly coming will be our only chance, as Congress may not return to improve the law for years.
Interestingly monitoring internet activity may not even rise to the level of being a wiretap. Wiretap are relatively carefully regulated thanks to President Nixon (in an indirect way!) but methods analogous to the old fashioned pen register and mistakenly thought less dangerous may be applicable to the internet.
And if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) comes into play, watch out.
Analogies are a risky thing, so legislation explicitly addressing internet privacy would seem be a prudent step. Maybe after we win the war on terrorism. Maybe.
You're right to be concerned about asset forfeiture, and I just complained about it a moment ago elsewhere. A couple of clarifications I'd add here -- there is due process in forfeiture, meaning notice of the proposed seizure and an opportunity to be heard. What's odd, though, is that the proceeding centers on the property, kind of as if *it* were guilty. So the owner can't protest their own innocence of the illegal conduct, only whether the item is properly subject to forfeiture -- which doesn't require a criminal conviction but a less burden of proof more-likely-than-not civil proceeding. So the due process may not do you much good, but it is there.
In some ways the concept makes sense -- you seize the priceless antique gun that was used as a murder weapon (in old English law sometimes called a deodand), the farm used t grow pot, the Learjet used to import drugs, and so on. But wow, it gives the state some fearsome power, and is especially pointless when used against innocent owners whose property is misused without their knowledge or consent. Unlike restitution or fines, proportionality is simply not an issue. But Ashcroft did not invent it, I think forfeiture has been pretty hot since the 80's, and its use dates back in one form or another such as the deodand over centuries (if you think our gov't is greedy, you should check out what the Crown was like).
I won't join in railing against "the government" because I've spent a fair amount of time working for the feds and respect many of the career investigators and prosecutors who bust folks 99% of us would want put away anyway. Some of the best talent in the country works for DOJ, for example; these jobs are coveted despite paying half that of private practice. But with great power comes great responsibility; thank goodness for defense attorneys and civil liberties organization.
Asset forfeiture -- assuming here a domain is an asset -- has been going on for centuries and now practically became a profit center for some law enforcement organizations. It steps from an ancient concept that something used in the commission of a crime is "soiled" and is thus forfeited to the state. (This shouldn't be confused as someone does above with contraband such as illegal drugs, which are always seized and generally have no market value; contraband is by definition illegal to possess.) It doesn't matter whether the value of the item is proportional to the offense or whether the owner has the slightest blame, as with a couple that lost their car after the husband performed received oral sex from a prostitute in it. The lawsuit was brought by the innocent spouse to recover her portion of the car's value. She lost!
Extraordinary cases of forfeiture abuse abound, such as a woman who lost her house because her son grew some pot in the backyard without her knowledge or even her negligence. Yes, asset forfeiture standing alone is frightening enough and has needed reining in for at least a decade. But no one complains too much when it's drug dealers (gasp) getting shafted.
The choices local federal prosecutors make are influenced heavily by what comes out of Washington. If AG Ashcroft sets a priority, the various offices must follow. Ashcroft has set what I'd describe as a "scorched earth" policy to take law enforcement powers to the max in pursuit of specific political objectives. The AG has gone so far as to requiring prosecutors to seek the death penalty in cases where they had decided otherwise, reversing practice of many years to respect the prosecutors on the scene, and of offices in non-death penalty states such as Mass to respect the state's practice. Whatever my feelings about the death penlty, I'm concerned by such micromanagement by a central authority that just can't possibly evaluate every case in sufficient detail for this sort of decision.
My point is not to underestimate the power of a few political appointees. What you're reading in this case stems from a philosophy do different from the motivations behind the oddly named Patriot Act, domestic spying, and who knows what else we won't learn about until Congressional hearings some day.
With regard to the present case, whether a domain name is property is not half as disturbing an issue as the possibility the government might use them as a surreptitious vehicle for gathering evidence. As for whether it is property, the answer must be yes -- ask amazon.com if they'd like to change their URL. The conventional is that a domain name is renewable forever and can't be transferred without consent or misconductg of the owner; I think the courts will hold this is a property interest -- subject to forfeiture, naturally.
No seriouslt, NYT recently had something about how certain grade schools are now evaluating textbook candidates for weight. It seems that as books have gotten fatter to cram in pointless pictures and factoids many are clearing the 1,000-page mark and students are literally suffering back injuries toting them from class to class, and home and back.
Now, like you I thought this is silly, why aren't these dumb kids planning a head a litte, just carrying the books they need and knocking off the "heavy" subjects in study hall. Well, a separate development is that these schools have eliminated student lockers, to reduce problems of drugs, weapons, and forgotten lunch meat. These were relatively affluent school districts, too (heck, they can afford new textbooks).
So... maybe laptops can help with this rather pressing issue of weight. They sure would've made me nervous to leave my backpack unattended, though. Maybe the computers should come with leashes, or ignition keys. Nad maybe they should bring back school lockers, perhaps in plexiglas.
You know, when I was a kid they didn't even give us pencils.
Cute about the S.1618 gambit.:) Thx for your comments, you have more experience that I do, and I'm always looking to flesh out and test my views. I literally plan to work on the Hill, so who knows, some my thinking might actually ooze into a law somewhere.
In the last dozen years, I've lost one (to my knowledge) valid message in my fairly minimal filtering efforts, and it caused some significant headaches -- mostly because the other person was an idiot and assumed my lack of response proved I was ignoring him, but still it was a headache thanks to my effort to duck spam. I figure widespread filtering will cause many more headaches, trading the artery-clogging effect of spam for a reduced reliability similar to, say, USPS (which does a better job than it's given credit for, but you see my point). You lose either way. Because we don't get many paper bills at home any more I have to worry about tossing the remaining ones out along with the junk. I guess whether I do it by hand or delegate to a spam filter, it's functionally the same problem of false positives, and either way the responsibility is mine alone.
I'd recommend that most antispam measures be implemented at the ISP level -- blackholing and the like -- but hesitate knowing that the expertise isn't consistent at that level either. (Stated more directly, too many of these administrators are slobs.)
Any significant leakage of spam will allow the business to continue to prosper, as it will take considerable obstacles to starve them out, and the continued stream of messages -- ignored or not -- will strain bandwidth and cost us all money. (Ideally we could starve them by getting users to ignore the solicitations, but the ones who are responding won't do that, and are likely the same ones who won't filter.) Then there are the newsmaking rejection errors, such as AOL's. AOL may not be the brightest, but they have the resources and yet can't get it right, and it's costing them serious money to try. To AOL's credit, it has already gone after selected spammers in court -- the low-hanging fruit, and AOL does have resources ($$$) to do it.
Illegality will help right off the bat by intimidating the fraction of spammers -- the majority I think -- who don't mind being intensely annoying (which they rationalize anyway) but balk at breaking the law. They at least will put ADV: or some other tag in their messages. It's a little cousin to drunk driving -- behavior that used to be laughed off as perhaps a nuisance is now taken pretty seriously, and so declines more than enforcement of the law itself could have accomplished.
Liability that rubs off on the ISP will induce caution on their part against granting bulk mailing privileges to every new account. The thought crossed my mind they could require a bond to protect themselves -- now that would cost spammers a lot for serial abuse of TOS, no matter how cleverly they concealed their identity. Having millions of irritated people empowered to privately pursue spammers will also hurt the semi-legit ones who can be found. (I'm reminded of a proposal Microsoft should offer to pay $1000 to anyone bringing a significant bug to their attention -- an interesting incentive model that would at least finance the research.) Similarly, the availability of civil and criminal penalties will inspire prosecutors who have to cost-justify their efforts like the rest of us.
I'm sure there is no single decisive solution, and that whatever we do will require some collective reflection. My incoherent rambling reflects the many factors involved. It will be *so* nice to look back someday on this period and admire the brilliant solution we ultimately developed. Hindsight is a lovely thing.
For now, I'm very interested in a parallel to the junk fax law that in my experience has been devastatingly effective. Spam is tougher than junk faxes but not insurmountable. As the miscreants are put out of business, the momentum will grow.
Last, I'm not an expert in first A. law, but am comfortable predicting that a reasonable regulation of commercial spam will be held constitutional. Commercial speech doesn't get much respect in court -- in fact rec'd *no* protection until about 30 years ago -- especially under these circumstances. The area I'm skeptical of is anything touching on so-called political speech, and this should be avoided, save opt-out rights, lest the whole thing be brought down for overbreadth. Personally, too, I don't want political speech to be filtered by the state, it's just not healthy to democracy. Besides, the number of messages will be small relative to the various sexual enhancement and get-rich-quick entreaties of which we normally complain.
Where did this all start? Oh yeah -- I think "sender pays" won't work.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I was an MRI tech for 4 years, so golly I have special experience here. Our primary reason for restricting metal was not heating -- the RF is not all that strong, not like a microwave -- but the 1.5 Tesla magnetic field (that's a moderately strong magnet). Our concern was that the field would pull or twist something sensitive like an aneurysm clip. Also the metal would cause a distortion in the magnetic field such that it was impossible to extract images near something fixed, such as screwed into bone -- the biggest practical problem here.
:), which would be susceptible to induced current. We were mostly worried about older pacemakers that were not entirely solid-state. Many pacemakers are not full-time, btw, that it the heart can work without them.
The field is *powerful* -- in one case it took several of us to pull free a chunk of metal another tech had unwittingly brought into the room.
I can see how this would be useful for non-magnetic materials like most stainless (yes, there are magnetic blends of ss in the 4xx series before someone tries to correct me
(Rudimentary MRI primer: the primary field sets up a net alignment of molecules in the body, most significantly water; the RF pulses then tweak these molecules so they emit RF of their own, revealing location and quantity. Things have evolved since i was a tech, however.)
Kudos to the honest and helpful neighbor, but I have to assume they didn't figure out "My Father's Computer" was your father's computer without some additionnal snooping. How much did they read? They did the right thing, of course assuming they read no more than necessary.
Cable modems do have privacy issues, don't they? Mine is on the other side of an SMC firewall which (I hope I will not be instantly disabused!) is protection....
lol, I meant little-s switch, not the big-S switch. I'm one of the people who never had to switch. What a nice predicament, to have to choose among competing *free* browsers; my concern is that the 800-lb. might quite unintentionally do what M*******t so often does intentionally: squash the smaller but interesting flora and fauna.
I'd be using -- in fact am using -- OS X regardless of Safari.
Thx for the technical details.
If Safari beats it out in popularity it will be because Camino stopped adding features people wanted or needed.
Well, yes, but it might also be because the Camino people realize they have better things to do that be Apple's shadow development team while catering to an increasingly small audience. Certainly they want their work to be used. With Safari's edge of being distributed with every machine and by Software Update, plus Apple's formidible paid software engineering team, Camino will wither and die for lack of distinction as well as consumer awareness it even exists.
I'm aware of the benefits of open competition, but we're looking at a "market failure" here. I don't think Apple is doing anything wrong in the moral sense, and am delighted they're returning to the very necessary product of a web browser, after abruptly dropping the promising Cyberdog years ago. But how right is this in the long run, from the perspective of their self-interest.
The single, solitary thing I want to know is how open source/GPL work will prosper when the commercial giant can instantly me-to and distribute every feature. It is a philosophical and practical question of how software will develop in the future if the creative pool shrinks. By participating in the community -- as it also does with various iApps -- Apple may inadvertantly kill off a lot of Mac-platform creativity, damaging itself in the long run by effectively going it alone.
I imagine Apple has thought about this and am curious what their answer is.
Another thread here touting Camino was mysteriously modded "flamebait" so here goes...
I have used and loved Chimera for many months for many reasons. As other have found, the renamed Camino is crash-prone, strange in the very last nightly build of Chimera before the trademark-conflict name change (which you can find easily by anonymous FTP to their server) is great. I downgraded to Build 2003030408 and am content.
Now comes Safari, also great, except the lack of tabbed browsing and that awful brushed metal stuff. OK, tabbed browsing is now checked off on the feature list. Safari shares a startling number of other features, and then some. Eventually Safari will be indistinguishable from Camino/Chimera. Congratulations Apple, what a coup.... (Hey guys, add keywords for bookmarks so I can continue to google with "g keyword keyword" and I'll switch.)
So what's the deal for independent software efforts? Bust yourself to develop and demonstrate new UI and core technologies to have them lifted by a large for-profit computer maker? Granted the open source Camino is intended to create new work without profit, but at some point it will also lose the "profit" of public attention, and wither away, and cease to produce new things.
At the least I'd like to see Safari give a nod to Chimera. At the best I'd like an answer from Apple how they're not doing the Internet Explorer thing in miniature, and how non-Apple developers will continue to inspire and be inspired when they face having their work negated in a mere twitch of the tail of the whale.
I'm a Mac person, and back to the years before the Mac (the Apple ][+ is in a box). I think Apple has often done the right thing and will continue to (often) do the right thing. But there is something disturbing in their generous production of free software, similar in effect if not (I hope) intent to what Redmond has done. Be careful, Apple.
> I often see this attitude from techies ... you have to understand...
LOL, you may have missed a turn -- this attitude is coming from a tech-oriented lawyer, quite aware of the law's limitations in making subjective calls, and the less often it is forced to do so the better. The slippery slope's fine, but don't hop out there if you don't have to.
The post title was rhetorical. That's why I pointed to existing law of fraud etc. as appropriate and adequate.
I'm very skeptical of this sort of thing, and believe this particular effort should be discarded as unenforceable subjective paternalistic hogwash. Much as I despise filters, they and other forms of self-help are preferable to government fumbling. Imagine trying to determine the typographical penumbra of legit URL's. (I just hit googl and was irritated to hit a bogus site, period.) Most of us couldn't do a good job of it and I'm sure the government can't.
However, some kinds of speech are illegal, such as false or deceptive advertising. So are trademark violation and tarnishment. The problem here is the injury -- wasted time and perhaps some psychological insult -- is trivial. I'm happier with whitehouse.com as a porn site than as a very tricky imitation of the real thing.
If they're worried about kids as opposed to trying for those family values votes, their should be restrictions on the home page content and age verification requirements. It is already considered consistent with the 1st Amendment to restrict access by minors to certain materials, and the adult site operators should be held to it. It might also prevent someone from losing their job over a typo....
Civil liability, as opposed to criminal, is a solution available to private citizens for constitutional violations. However, in practice these cases are difficult to win because they are often worth little money (assuming nothing expensive was destroyed and no one got killed) and the government actors may be protected by various types of qualified (e.g., good faith) and abaolute (e.g., judicial) immunity. Perhaps the greatest bar to the bulk of violations is that litigation is very very expensive and stressful.
However, by lifting this data-checking requirement, the government has not done anything that reduces these lawsuits, rather they have reduced internal accountability and increased the likelihood mistakes will be made and violations committed. There have been astonishing errors already, which one would think are warning enough.
So from the perspective of victims and those in government, this is lose-lose proposition. No one wants to get arrested for something they didn't do, and the cops don't want to waste time arresting them and sowing ill will. The change primarily serves those with fantasies of massive domestic spy databases and with little appreciation of the harm in sloppy law enforcement.
I predict we will see more, not fewer, lawsuits, but far too few to bring change.
No, I understand your point, and sympathize. I don't want to expend money or effort to avoid or hear objectionable speech. The thing is that the world is messier and the First Amendment of necessity allows more imposition that a simple rule provides.
One example might be the junk mail sent to businesses. It takes money to pay people to sort through it. Another more compelling one is a political march by an unpopular group, say people demonstrating against Jim Crow (OK, this is dated). They have a right to police protection, even if the entire town refuses to hear, and although it would be cheaper if they did not speak. (This time the costs are do to the illegal actions of third parties, but still the objective result is the speech costs unwilling parties money.) And so on. Free speech has costs.
Now, whether you listen, well, it's hard to force anyone to listen, although the annoying old-fashioned sound trucks were held to be protected. But it may cost the listeners something even if they have their hands over their ears or aren't present. Certainly there are other ways of doing things, but a "can't cost be anything" rule is far from the law we do have, and so won't solve any court decisions.
Actually the First Amendment says even less, that the Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech. (This rule was later extended to the states, which have their own protections of speech that may go farther.) What "abridge" and "freedom" and "speech" meant exactly were left for later generations to figure out, and under our system the court rulings on these are effectively a part of the Constitution and must be read along with it.
Lastly the intent of the Framers and the text of the Constitution aren't necessarily the same. The Framers argued a lot and kept lousy notes. Imagine trying to figure out the intent of Congress...
Gee, I haven't heard the expression dormant interstate commerce clause in a while!
I think you and other refer to another case, which upheld Washington State's antispam law, Heckel v. State.
I looked up material regarding what I think is this case and see you're right that it is a commerce clause case, but there are first amendment overtones that perhaps was not argued or the court overlooked. I'm not especially familar with this case, but do wonder about the possibility of 1st A. arguments.
In any event, the ruling of an intermediate California court is not hardly conclusive of the issue nationally or federally (I don't know how California is set up, but it may not even be statewide in effect). Did the California Supreme Court deny review? Anyway, Ferguson is just a state court ruling about a particular state's law, there are 50 more of then, and judges certainly enjoy contradicting each other. Federal challenges will add a whole new layer.
So how about all the ads go out as a personal message from the company president? That's quite plausible for a company of one. Would that be entitled to free speech protection. Or if it's commercial content as opposed to a commercial speaker that deprives speech of protection, how about a nonprofit selling "Re-elect Bush" as a way to express its message and finance its organization? Is that political or commercial? What if they do it for profit?
I'm not criticizing your viewpoint, rather the idea that a sharp line can be drawn between commercial and political and individual speech. More than a few people have recommended abandoning the framework. The labels attempt to make the problem look easier, but they just move it back a step to figuring out what falls in which category. For example, courts used to try to figure out whether the government could act arbitrarily towards you if something was a right or a privilege, but that attempt to presort every interest into two neat categories has generally lost favor (for example, is driving a right or a privilege? well, whatever it is, the government must give you due process in depriving you of it).
And, of course, you're right that the First Amendment applies essentially to government action, but there's no company here trying to limit speech, they're the target.
THis "no right to be heard" argument is often made but doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Of course free speech amounts to a right to be heard, beacause it bars certain attempts by people who don't want to hear the speech or don't want others to hear it. In either case, the person exercising free speech does it to be heard, otherwise it's like that tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it.
So you can't stop protestors in the street simply because you don't want to hear them or political billboards merely because you don't want to see them or radio programs that you might stumble upon or political TV ads to don't want to view ot junk mail sent without your consent. You can avoid all these things, and many can be regulated as to time, place, and manner -- but you can't just declare the speaker has no right to be heard and prove anything by it. What I thing you're saying is that the first amendment doesn't given anyone the right to coerce people to listen, or to demand funding to underwrite the speech, and these come close to being true. Generally though the burden is on the listener, and in some cases it even costs something. I hardly defend spam and junk faxes, but do think "no right to be heard" does not represent actual law.
Huh -- very interesting thank you! I take it he's paying for a lot of bandwidth.
You've gone above and beyond the call of duty. Hey, it's insurance against future headaches. Save your notes and the docs somewhere.
It sure doesn't sound like fair use, does it.
Yeah, but what assures you the registered mail is legit?
Familiar problems of encryption and authentication.
But legally, at some point you are expected to suspend disbelief and act.
Last, registered mail is the wrong product! I painfully sorted this out with a patient post office agent a long time ago. Moreover, registered/certfied mail proves nothing as to the sender's identity; rather it protects the sender by providing tracking and, if paid for, delivery confirmation and/or signature and/or return receipt. Registered mail is for stuff like negotiable instruments and stock certficates, and provides some sort of chain-of-custody service. I've used it once, and it's expensive.
To be picky, and give the statisticians a break (most are well-meaning) I think, the last term was originally politicians. And here it should be recycled as:
r ters-who-uncritically-lap-up-their-disinformation
... beware.
Liars, damned liars, and conflict-of-interest-product-vendors-and-the-repo
The worst IMHO are Forrester and Jupiter, research/consulting groups that make up statistics if they haven't already invented them. One name or the other seems to pop up in every general media article on the Internet, as they're in every reporter's rolodex. Nice hard quote for the reporter, nice ad for the firm -- who cares if it's true. So
Not to drown in semantics, but the poster wants to know his legal obligation, not what he can get away with. With actual knowledge, safe harbor's dead unless he insists on lying about it, and I'm not giving advice on how to commit perjury.
As for notice, greater formality is required before the ISP is *forced* to act. Registered mail is unnecessary (anyway, it's for valuable documents like stock certificates). Certified mail and even paper itself are also unnecessary. DMCA requires "A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." Electronic signature?
Last, I wouldn't blow off a halfway credible notification anyway, unless investigating it was simply impractical. This one was evidently credible and fraudulent, not anonymous, as discovered only when the person tried to reply. The email was also correct, though perhaps trivially. (I wonder as to the motivation, a peripheral issue.) Also aside from just wanting to do the right thing -- as the poster appears to -- the email could be one bit of evidence that the ISP had actual knowledge, even if it didn't. Staying out of court is often a lot cheaper than having a great defense when you get there.
I would at a minimum follow up with a request for a DMCA-compliant takedown notice rather than take a chance on my being wrong or ending up in hot water regardless.
This is not an attempt to provide the legal advice this person should get if they are unfamiliar with their legal obligations, even if I do happen to be a lawyer.
You confuse legal notification with knowledge. The poster already has actual knowledge of the problem thanks to his/her diligence. Had the poster simply stumbled on the problem, it would have to be dealt with.
Details.
Any idea what the heck the email writer had in mind? Enemy of your client perhaps? Anyway, perhaps in the future you could save your time with a form reply request "clarification." That would help with authenticity -- if this kind of game is common.
As you know, you are potentially liable for the copyright offenses of your customers, limited by the safe harbor exception I can't recall the details of. Once you've been notified, it may be foolhardy to ignore the wanring, as you could go down with the client. If you're like me, you may personally be kind of offended at people using your wares for criminal enterprises -- e.g., selling pirated songs. It appears the possibly malicious email writer has in fact brought a problem to your attention, and so you can't look the other way. (If they weren't malicious but wanted anonymity, maybe they could have just said so.)
I would strongly suggest you talk to a lawyer on this for legal advice to can rely on, and that you establish a written policy on how inquiries like this email are handled. You will want a paper trail to show your diligence later, and for your own conscience to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. I don't know whether you'll want to discuss the email when you talk to your client, or just use the generic "it has come to our attention that..."
Let us know what you do, OK?
If you used it to brain your enemy, it would STILL work AND would be simple enough for the debrained enemy to operate.
:)
So there.
I'm most impressed not that this guy wanted a Mac, but that he actully got one. The military is rightly known for a plodding mentality, and what's he going to do if he needs an extra battery? Steal it from CNN? Of course, had the guy simply called Apple to say, hey, I'd like to place the first Mac in the field, they would have sent over ten gratis.
Clicking away on my deweaponized iBook...
It's funny, these new laws technically shouldn't be necessary to the degree they address fraud and unfair/deceptive trade practices -- that stuff is already illegal. They do set out a framework for enforcement, and clear schedule of penalties, that may make them practical. I would like to see whether penalties are proportional to similar garden-variety fraud such as by telephone or mail.
There are a lot of naysayers here who say laws won't work, but it's quite early to declare failure. The FTC does a TON of consumer protection litigation the public rarely hears about -- and that case list is just the stubborn minority of targets that refused to stop after getting the letter, or to settle. I've seen several of their actions in detail; in one the huckster was so stubborn he ended up in jail for contempt of court. That's unusual -- remedies are typically fines and injunctions. And this guy did not go to jail for deceptive trade practices exactly, rather for defiance of a generic court order.
I would focus not on saying laws won't work, but on influencing the laws to be just and effective. The Ohio law COULD be disproportionate, especially if prosecutors fist leapt for the jugular rather than sensibly working out a settlement with the target. The latter is the just and cost-effective way of doing business -- litigation is very expensive. The federal law that is doubtlessly coming will be our only chance, as Congress may not return to improve the law for years.
Interestingly monitoring internet activity may not even rise to the level of being a wiretap. Wiretap are relatively carefully regulated thanks to President Nixon (in an indirect way!) but methods analogous to the old fashioned pen register and mistakenly thought less dangerous may be applicable to the internet.
And if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) comes into play, watch out.
Analogies are a risky thing, so legislation explicitly addressing internet privacy would seem be a prudent step. Maybe after we win the war on terrorism. Maybe.
You're right to be concerned about asset forfeiture, and I just complained about it a moment ago elsewhere. A couple of clarifications I'd add here -- there is due process in forfeiture, meaning notice of the proposed seizure and an opportunity to be heard. What's odd, though, is that the proceeding centers on the property, kind of as if *it* were guilty. So the owner can't protest their own innocence of the illegal conduct, only whether the item is properly subject to forfeiture -- which doesn't require a criminal conviction but a less burden of proof more-likely-than-not civil proceeding. So the due process may not do you much good, but it is there.
In some ways the concept makes sense -- you seize the priceless antique gun that was used as a murder weapon (in old English law sometimes called a deodand), the farm used t grow pot, the Learjet used to import drugs, and so on. But wow, it gives the state some fearsome power, and is especially pointless when used against innocent owners whose property is misused without their knowledge or consent. Unlike restitution or fines, proportionality is simply not an issue. But Ashcroft did not invent it, I think forfeiture has been pretty hot since the 80's, and its use dates back in one form or another such as the deodand over centuries (if you think our gov't is greedy, you should check out what the Crown was like).
I won't join in railing against "the government" because I've spent a fair amount of time working for the feds and respect many of the career investigators and prosecutors who bust folks 99% of us would want put away anyway. Some of the best talent in the country works for DOJ, for example; these jobs are coveted despite paying half that of private practice. But with great power comes great responsibility; thank goodness for defense attorneys and civil liberties organization.
Asset forfeiture -- assuming here a domain is an asset -- has been going on for centuries and now practically became a profit center for some law enforcement organizations. It steps from an ancient concept that something used in the commission of a crime is "soiled" and is thus forfeited to the state. (This shouldn't be confused as someone does above with contraband such as illegal drugs, which are always seized and generally have no market value; contraband is by definition illegal to possess.) It doesn't matter whether the value of the item is proportional to the offense or whether the owner has the slightest blame, as with a couple that lost their car after the husband performed received oral sex from a prostitute in it. The lawsuit was brought by the innocent spouse to recover her portion of the car's value. She lost!
Extraordinary cases of forfeiture abuse abound, such as a woman who lost her house because her son grew some pot in the backyard without her knowledge or even her negligence. Yes, asset forfeiture standing alone is frightening enough and has needed reining in for at least a decade. But no one complains too much when it's drug dealers (gasp) getting shafted.
The choices local federal prosecutors make are influenced heavily by what comes out of Washington. If AG Ashcroft sets a priority, the various offices must follow. Ashcroft has set what I'd describe as a "scorched earth" policy to take law enforcement powers to the max in pursuit of specific political objectives. The AG has gone so far as to requiring prosecutors to seek the death penalty in cases where they had decided otherwise, reversing practice of many years to respect the prosecutors on the scene, and of offices in non-death penalty states such as Mass to respect the state's practice. Whatever my feelings about the death penlty, I'm concerned by such micromanagement by a central authority that just can't possibly evaluate every case in sufficient detail for this sort of decision.
My point is not to underestimate the power of a few political appointees. What you're reading in this case stems from a philosophy do different from the motivations behind the oddly named Patriot Act, domestic spying, and who knows what else we won't learn about until Congressional hearings some day.
With regard to the present case, whether a domain name is property is not half as disturbing an issue as the possibility the government might use them as a surreptitious vehicle for gathering evidence. As for whether it is property, the answer must be yes -- ask amazon.com if they'd like to change their URL. The conventional is that a domain name is renewable forever and can't be transferred without consent or misconductg of the owner; I think the courts will hold this is a property interest -- subject to forfeiture, naturally.
You should feel lucky! 20 lbs! Why in my day...
... maybe laptops can help with this rather pressing issue of weight. They sure would've made me nervous to leave my backpack unattended, though. Maybe the computers should come with leashes, or ignition keys. Nad maybe they should bring back school lockers, perhaps in plexiglas.
No seriouslt, NYT recently had something about how certain grade schools are now evaluating textbook candidates for weight. It seems that as books have gotten fatter to cram in pointless pictures and factoids many are clearing the 1,000-page mark and students are literally suffering back injuries toting them from class to class, and home and back.
Now, like you I thought this is silly, why aren't these dumb kids planning a head a litte, just carrying the books they need and knocking off the "heavy" subjects in study hall. Well, a separate development is that these schools have eliminated student lockers, to reduce problems of drugs, weapons, and forgotten lunch meat. These were relatively affluent school districts, too (heck, they can afford new textbooks).
So
You know, when I was a kid they didn't even give us pencils.
Cute about the S.1618 gambit. :) Thx for your comments, you have more experience that I do, and I'm always looking to flesh out and test my views. I literally plan to work on the Hill, so who knows, some my thinking might actually ooze into a law somewhere.
:)
In the last dozen years, I've lost one (to my knowledge) valid message in my fairly minimal filtering efforts, and it caused some significant headaches -- mostly because the other person was an idiot and assumed my lack of response proved I was ignoring him, but still it was a headache thanks to my effort to duck spam. I figure widespread filtering will cause many more headaches, trading the artery-clogging effect of spam for a reduced reliability similar to, say, USPS (which does a better job than it's given credit for, but you see my point). You lose either way. Because we don't get many paper bills at home any more I have to worry about tossing the remaining ones out along with the junk. I guess whether I do it by hand or delegate to a spam filter, it's functionally the same problem of false positives, and either way the responsibility is mine alone.
I'd recommend that most antispam measures be implemented at the ISP level -- blackholing and the like -- but hesitate knowing that the expertise isn't consistent at that level either. (Stated more directly, too many of these administrators are slobs.)
Any significant leakage of spam will allow the business to continue to prosper, as it will take considerable obstacles to starve them out, and the continued stream of messages -- ignored or not -- will strain bandwidth and cost us all money. (Ideally we could starve them by getting users to ignore the solicitations, but the ones who are responding won't do that, and are likely the same ones who won't filter.) Then there are the newsmaking rejection errors, such as AOL's. AOL may not be the brightest, but they have the resources and yet can't get it right, and it's costing them serious money to try. To AOL's credit, it has already gone after selected spammers in court -- the low-hanging fruit, and AOL does have resources ($$$) to do it.
Illegality will help right off the bat by intimidating the fraction of spammers -- the majority I think -- who don't mind being intensely annoying (which they rationalize anyway) but balk at breaking the law. They at least will put ADV: or some other tag in their messages. It's a little cousin to drunk driving -- behavior that used to be laughed off as perhaps a nuisance is now taken pretty seriously, and so declines more than enforcement of the law itself could have accomplished.
Liability that rubs off on the ISP will induce caution on their part against granting bulk mailing privileges to every new account. The thought crossed my mind they could require a bond to protect themselves -- now that would cost spammers a lot for serial abuse of TOS, no matter how cleverly they concealed their identity. Having millions of irritated people empowered to privately pursue spammers will also hurt the semi-legit ones who can be found. (I'm reminded of a proposal Microsoft should offer to pay $1000 to anyone bringing a significant bug to their attention -- an interesting incentive model that would at least finance the research.) Similarly, the availability of civil and criminal penalties will inspire prosecutors who have to cost-justify their efforts like the rest of us.
I'm sure there is no single decisive solution, and that whatever we do will require some collective reflection. My incoherent rambling reflects the many factors involved. It will be *so* nice to look back someday on this period and admire the brilliant solution we ultimately developed. Hindsight is a lovely thing.
For now, I'm very interested in a parallel to the junk fax law that in my experience has been devastatingly effective. Spam is tougher than junk faxes but not insurmountable. As the miscreants are put out of business, the momentum will grow.
Last, I'm not an expert in first A. law, but am comfortable predicting that a reasonable regulation of commercial spam will be held constitutional. Commercial speech doesn't get much respect in court -- in fact rec'd *no* protection until about 30 years ago -- especially under these circumstances. The area I'm skeptical of is anything touching on so-called political speech, and this should be avoided, save opt-out rights, lest the whole thing be brought down for overbreadth. Personally, too, I don't want political speech to be filtered by the state, it's just not healthy to democracy. Besides, the number of messages will be small relative to the various sexual enhancement and get-rich-quick entreaties of which we normally complain.
Where did this all start? Oh yeah -- I think "sender pays" won't work.