One of the nicest apps of PoE is definitely small, dirt-cheap, semi-disposable network appliances, which wouldn't be as affordable if they had to include their own power supply. Those would definitely include sensors of different kinds, protocol bridges (e.g. lately I've been thinking about migration paths from closed, DRM laden digital audio interfaces to open ones based on standard 100Mbps Ethernet) and the like.
But perhaps the nicest application I can come up with are miniaturized throwaway remailers built on cheap microcontrollers with integrated Ethernet hardware. The cost of a fully functional (if limited capacity) mixmaster might well be pushed into the range of dollars, suddenly making it possible to distribute hundreds of remailers into unsuspecting networks around the globe. If they're picked up, so what -- the cost is negligible. Up till now the problems have had to do with the level of integration required, power supply trouble and ease of physical detection. PoE solves two out of the three problems in one fell swoop.
On the other hand, overlaying multiple different modulation methods on the same frequency bands can lead to better aggregate utilization of the total bandwidth. I'm not sure this couldn't happen when we have overlap narrowband (frequency localized) and UWB (time-localized) signals. Conventional CDMA on top of that is probably cutting it a bit close, though.
Now you're confusing a whole lot of completely separate things. I don't think you mean to say DNS entries shouldn't be owned -- in the absence of ownership (more likely a lease from the resolution service owner who then effectively owns the domain names), how could you guarantee that yoursite.com would still point to your site, next week? If the name is not owned, there's nothing to stop anybody from reusing it at will.
What you probably meant to oppose was things like the UDRP, with their connotation that domain names have something to do with registered trademarks, considered "intellectual property". That I have a problem with, too. I think homesteading is the way to go in cyberspace as well, not ownership by fiat of specific bit patterns. No matter the context.
Still another problem with your gut reaction is the idea that only physical things should have property rights attached to them. But even if intellectual property didn't exist, there would still be such things as ownership in usage rights, financial instruments and, you guessed it, scarce immaterial resources like the electromagnetic spectrum. We need such rights in order to put those resources into the best possible use.
AFAICT, what is slowing innovation, here, is not lawyers confused over the proper application of property rights, but bureaucrats regulating innovation out of existence. After all, a market in privately owned radio spectrum would admit UWB and other newer modulation technologies as soon as the price was right. If UWB is so useful, the price would be just that. Interference would simply elevate that price, and give a financial incentive to further develop the technology. That's progress.
Who says the government sold something in the first place? Originally property rights in parts of the radio spectrum were obtained by the electronic equivalent of homesteading. Later that newly formed private property was socialized. It would only be reasonable that it's privatized once more.
The reason you cannot purchase the visual spectrum is because it's not a scarce, shared resource in the way radio frequencies are. (You can purchase it in the sense you do when you put up signs on your property, though.)
We have the institution of private property for a reason. That reason is efficient allocation of scarce resources. There is no essential reason why such allocation would not be best provided by the property rights in the case of radio frequencies -- it works just fine for physical property. (Granted, I don't think it's a good idea for information. But that's different.)
So you have Compliant hardware, a Compliant OS and the few apps those let you run, presumably Compliant too; you cannot violate copyright on your machine. A few of the things Big Business really wants to protect are site designs, online documentation, code and so on. This would seem to imply that you probably can't even save a document you discover on the Web. Hell, you probably couldn't quote an original email in a reply—the original writer of course has a copyright on it by the Berne convention. You certainly can't link to stuff, if they can help it. And if they can control that much, they'll likely not let you escape the AOL frontpage or whatever it is your browser fires up with. Cut'n'paste, fuhgettaboutit.
In a nutshell, there's not a whole lot you can do with your precious hardware if the Act ever gets passed.
It seems somebody forgot about what computers are for: processing information. Since most of that is more about recombining existing data than about creating new, the result is that a sizable chunk of what computers are used for, now, suddenly becomes impossible. Then you'll have to think twice about whether buying a computer is really worth it. That, then, is the end of ubiquitous computing and the information age.
I'm not entirely sure, but at least some of the drives out there ought to be capable of doing ATAPI long reads on the CIRCed data. That would mean that one has to decode the CIRC layer in software, but would also give a lot more possibilities for correcting read errors, be they intentional or not. Anybody remember where the ATAPI specs are?
One reason to go through with this is that those half-baked protection schemes are one of the prime problems with DMCA. They represent security thru actionability, instead of sound cryptographic engineering. In addition to closing the content, they also degrade technology.
Then, while I readily admit that the Adobe encryption case is far more likely to win popular support, in the courts a case involving squelched scientific speech will probably fare better. The legal precedent, and a signal to the recording industry that they cannot walk over programmers anyway they like, are both important to keep DMCA litigation to a minimum. Getting there with the Felten case is easier, as that effort has already been stepped up.
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One of the nicest apps of PoE is definitely small, dirt-cheap, semi-disposable network appliances, which wouldn't be as affordable if they had to include their own power supply. Those would definitely include sensors of different kinds, protocol bridges (e.g. lately I've been thinking about migration paths from closed, DRM laden digital audio interfaces to open ones based on standard 100Mbps Ethernet) and the like.
But perhaps the nicest application I can come up with are miniaturized throwaway remailers built on cheap microcontrollers with integrated Ethernet hardware. The cost of a fully functional (if limited capacity) mixmaster might well be pushed into the range of dollars, suddenly making it possible to distribute hundreds of remailers into unsuspecting networks around the globe. If they're picked up, so what -- the cost is negligible. Up till now the problems have had to do with the level of integration required, power supply trouble and ease of physical detection. PoE solves two out of the three problems in one fell swoop.
On the other hand, overlaying multiple different modulation methods on the same frequency bands can lead to better aggregate utilization of the total bandwidth. I'm not sure this couldn't happen when we have overlap narrowband (frequency localized) and UWB (time-localized) signals. Conventional CDMA on top of that is probably cutting it a bit close, though.
What you probably meant to oppose was things like the UDRP, with their connotation that domain names have something to do with registered trademarks, considered "intellectual property". That I have a problem with, too. I think homesteading is the way to go in cyberspace as well, not ownership by fiat of specific bit patterns. No matter the context.
Still another problem with your gut reaction is the idea that only physical things should have property rights attached to them. But even if intellectual property didn't exist, there would still be such things as ownership in usage rights, financial instruments and, you guessed it, scarce immaterial resources like the electromagnetic spectrum. We need such rights in order to put those resources into the best possible use.
AFAICT, what is slowing innovation, here, is not lawyers confused over the proper application of property rights, but bureaucrats regulating innovation out of existence. After all, a market in privately owned radio spectrum would admit UWB and other newer modulation technologies as soon as the price was right. If UWB is so useful, the price would be just that. Interference would simply elevate that price, and give a financial incentive to further develop the technology. That's progress.
The reason you cannot purchase the visual spectrum is because it's not a scarce, shared resource in the way radio frequencies are. (You can purchase it in the sense you do when you put up signs on your property, though.)
We have the institution of private property for a reason. That reason is efficient allocation of scarce resources. There is no essential reason why such allocation would not be best provided by the property rights in the case of radio frequencies -- it works just fine for physical property. (Granted, I don't think it's a good idea for information. But that's different.)
In a nutshell, there's not a whole lot you can do with your precious hardware if the Act ever gets passed.
It seems somebody forgot about what computers are for: processing information. Since most of that is more about recombining existing data than about creating new, the result is that a sizable chunk of what computers are used for, now, suddenly becomes impossible. Then you'll have to think twice about whether buying a computer is really worth it. That, then, is the end of ubiquitous computing and the information age.
I'm not entirely sure, but at least some of the drives out there ought to be capable of doing ATAPI long reads on the CIRCed data. That would mean that one has to decode the CIRC layer in software, but would also give a lot more possibilities for correcting read errors, be they intentional or not. Anybody remember where the ATAPI specs are?
Then, while I readily admit that the Adobe encryption case is far more likely to win popular support, in the courts a case involving squelched scientific speech will probably fare better. The legal precedent, and a signal to the recording industry that they cannot walk over programmers anyway they like, are both important to keep DMCA litigation to a minimum. Getting there with the Felten case is easier, as that effort has already been stepped up.