Back when society was composed of only Hunters and Gatherers we were entirely mobile and fragmented. Yet during the same time periods, archeologists have found no evidence of war, overpopulation, starvation
These societies were mobile, yes, but not fragmented. The tribe or clan traveled together. Maybe I wouldn't mind moving all around if I could take my family and friends - my tribe - with me.
And I understand that war - or at least organized inter-tribe violence - was not unknown.
I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned Brunner's classic The Shockwave Rider yet.
Also, how would I go about checking a binary file I downloaded to make sure it's what I think it is and not an insidious worm?
There are a few possibilities:
Download only from trusted sources. Hard to do with Gnutella, but practical with FTP or HTTP. Yes, the source could be compromised, but such a compromise would be quickly found and stopped. Don't trust your life that a download from, say, redhat.com is what it purports to be, but for most people the risk is minimal.
Download only files cryptographically signed by a trusted party. You've still got the problem of "who do I trust, and what if they are fooled?" but it's much more difficult to forge a cryptographic signature than to crack a server and put up a mailicious binary, and this can be used with anonymous-source downloads (i.e., Gnutella).
Download only source, and check it over yourself. That will only protect you against attacks you are knowledgable enough to find, and would get tedious real quick.
Run the binary in a sandbox or jail, where what it can do is limited. But that also means that the usefullness of the program is limited.
In the future, navigating will be all keyword based, and everyone will have forgotten what domain names are. Enter "Coca-Cola" and you'll be taken to the Coca-Cola website. (Or more likely, you'll be given a list of choices--official Coca-Cola site, Coca-Cola memorabilia site, Coca-Cola criticism.)
I know it's hard for those who came on-line after the September That Never Ended to understand, but the web is not the net.
Want sites related to keywords? Fine, that's what search engines are for. (And if that's too difficult, hey, there's alway AOL. (snicker))
Want to contact a specific machine or service? You need an address. How does e-mail, or ftp, work with your keyword scheme? Does "mail someguy@Coca-cola" give me the Coca-cola corporation, the memorabilla site, or what?
when no one will even use URLs in a few more years.
I would suggest that few people use them now. Naive users go to their ISP's configured portal and search for some keyword - often using a hostname as a search term, rather that using an "open location" menu option, because URLs and hostnames are a mystery to them. Slightly more knowledgeable users might type in www.megacorp.com in an "open location" box to get to the MegaCorp website, but a long URL - http://www.megacorp.com/some/document.html - leaves them lost.
That's fine for the Great Unwashed - their search for "infamous.net" will certainly turn up my website - but when I want to telnet somewhere, I need a hostname (or IP address, of course), not a keyword.
I do see any reason why they could not add a "fatigue meter" which reflects how much exertion you are putting out, slows down your reactions when high, and cycles down when you rest.
The great-granddaddy of 3D games, Dungeons of Daggorath (which ate a large part of my summer in 1983), didn't have hit points or health points - instead it used your character's heartrate. Running, fighting, and getting hurt raised your heart rate, while resting lowered it. Killing monsters increased your aerobic fitness. If your heartrate got too high, you died. It was brilliant! Hearing "your" heart speed up during critical times was a wonderful psychological hook.
People who actually want to change things rarely do it anonymously...Anonymous actions rarely have the same effect.
Nonsense. American (USAmerican) provides numerous counter-examples. Common Sense, which helped spur the Americian Revolution, and the Federalist Papers which helped lead to the founding of the union, were both written anonymously.
There also won't be any reason to continue creating.
I'm extremely tired of this argument, because it's not just wrong, it's doubly wrong.
First, there are other ways than pay-per-copy for people to get paid for making art, music, literature, and software.
Second, people can, will, and do create stuff without getting paid for it. I've spent hundreds of hours making poetry and music, resulting a total material compensation of one free meal at the sadly defunt Planet X coffehouse (for an Italian sonnet contest I won), a few free beers at the bar where I often play at the open mic, and a grand total of maybe $50 in cash.
If they grant you special permission to use their logo they dont want you slinging mud.
No. They want you under their thumb even if all you do is look at their web site or play their games:
This Agreement is a legally binding contract between you ("You") and Apogee Software Ltd., a/k/a 3D Realms, ("Apogee") regarding your
access to and use of its web site (the "Site"), as well as your use of Apogee's various games (collectively, the "Property"), the information contained therein and its copyright and trademark policies. By accessing the Property, you agree to the terms and conditions as outlined in this legal notice.
It seems to me that the guy is saying that in order for a war to be moral enough people on your side have to be killed.
It's not that you have to have you people killed - obviously that's bad. And it's not about killing from a distance, never seeing the face of your enemy. But you cannot claim to be fighting for right when you are willing to expose innocents to more risk than you are willing to take on yourself.
Bombing the shit out of the countryside and creating all sorts of "collateral damage" - i.e., dead innocents - from your safe little airplane because you're not willing to get down on the much more dangerous dirt and apply selective force is not heroism. The danger is the government's lies and deception about how selective a bombing campain can be - bullshit like "smart bombs" and "surgical strike" that somehow makes the masses think that only the guilty are being slaughtered.
(Not that "innocent" and "guilty" are necessarily always clear in war, granted.)
A king losing his crown and a 3 year old losing her doll are of the same magnitude to each.
Kings are very touchy about giving up those crowns. Usually the fight and you have to take the whole head, resulting in blood everywhere. Three-year-olds are a bit easier to deal with, if only because they're smaller.
Pretty soon they're gonna ban sales on pentagrams, demon-summoning paraphenalia, and the Necronomicon ex Mortii.
Is there anywhere on the web where it's still safe to sell Evil Things?
I'm sure you know this, but since just a few weeks ago I was asked if my pentacle earring meant I worshiped Satan, let me point out that pentagrams aren't evil but are a spiritual symbol found in many traditions.
But what about re-publishing the contents of that database?
That's always been perfectly legal. Phone books are a good example - those community phonebooks that you get are nothing but re-published information from the phone company's version. The phone company has copyright on the compilation, not the individual entries. There was a recent attempt to change this with some really really horrid legislation, but IIRC it was defeated.
Since a conviction requires a unamimous vote, I really only need one. The prosecution will probably not press for a retrial if they can't get a conviction first time, unless it's a very high profile crime.
Also, judges can set aside a conviction (but not an acquital) if they beleive that the evidence is insufficient. It's a 13-input AND gate.
And if you don't like that, in most cases you can elect to go before just a judge, no jury, and have him or her decide your fate; you're not mandated to accept a jury trial.
I ought to note that the courts, once again proving their illiteracy (what part of "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury" do they not understand?), have decided that the right to a jury trial doesn't apply to crimes carring a sentence of less than six months - even if you're facing twenty counts and could be put away for ten years. Trial by jury, another casualty of the War on (Some) Drugs.
I guess it's not meant to be an open-source product, by any chance?;)
Actually, Gauntlet originated from the TIS firewall toolkit, and used to be "crystal box" source - paying customers could get it for review. I don't know what the licences are like since Network Associates bought TIS.
Back when I worked for Norman Data Defense on their firewall product (which failed, so don't wonder if you never heard of it) they wanted to add in CyberPatrol. I screamed and yelled at management that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do, that it would be a huge gaping security hole to run sofware that we couldn't control on the firewall box.
(Disclosure: I used to work at TIS (though not on Gauntlet) and own Network Associates stock.)
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before?
on
At The Crossroads
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· Score: 2
Why shouldn't a musician be able to make money off of any copy of their work?
Because a pay-per-copy scheme limits my freedom to share information. That freedom is more important than the government's power to create copyrights.
They chose to take their musical talents and make a living of it.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that a per-per-copy scheme is the just or practical way for that to happen.
Perhaps copyrighting should have a simple boundary inserted in it - copying for private use is allowed, copying commercially without the author's permission is illegal?
I would suggest that for-profit commercial copying not be illegal, but would require royalty payments to the author. This would work sort of like music performance royalties today - I can sing anything I want anywhere I want, but if I'm getting paid to do it the songwriter gets a cut (via BMI or ASCAP). The actual implemention of this gets weird sometimes, but I think the basic idea is sound, just, and practical.
In Sweden, cases are decided by a board instead of a jury (except in freedom of press cases) While that system also has its problems it avoids the uncertainity of jury trials.
That "uncertainty" is a crucial guardian of liberty. The jury is an important check on the power of the state.
The procecutor, the judge, maybe even the defence attorney if you're stuck with a public defender, are all working for the government. If I were on trial I'd sure want someone involved in the process to be independant.
Juries exist not only to try the facts of the case, but sometime to try the law as well. (Sadly, this concept has gotten largely lost in recent years.) They are an important check against bad laws.
the world's a better place than it was 25 years ago, and 50 years ago, and 100 years ago, and... you get the picture.
Is it really? What evidence do you have that human happiness and contentment have been monotonically increasing over the past century? Yes, many people have more stuff, and a few of the nastier diseases have been eliminated, but is the average human being really happier today than previously? The prevelance of mood disorders and prescriptions for Prozac and the like would seem to bring this into question in the industrialized world; and things just haven't gotten much better in the third world over the past century - many poor countries still haven't recovered from colonialism.
So what makes you sure that the world's a better place?
(Meant as an honest question, not just a rhetorical one.)
If you deny Dylan the right to set the terms under which he will let you buy a copy of his singing, then Dylan will stop offering it for sale.
We don't, and never have, allowed artists to set such terms. Dylan can't put a shrinkwrap licence on his next CD saying "By purchasing this album you agree to the following terms: 1) You will make no more jokes about how Bob Dylan talks. 2) The next time someone asks you what your favorite song is, you will reply `Subterranean Homesick Blues'. 3) You will name your next child `Bob'. Whether it's a boy or a girl." and expect that to be enforced.
The only right we offer to create (and I deliberately use "create" rather than "recognize") for Dylan is to prevent - or, rather, punish - unauthorized copying. That's just not going to work anymore. Digital media makes control of copying impossible, short of stormtrooper techniques; you might smash Napster, but alternatives will spring up. It happened a few years back with OLGA, a collection of guitar tabs and chord charts; they shut down the main site, but mirrors - and search engines for those mirrors - sprouted like weeds.
Even if you somehow shut down centralized site, you can't stop personal swapping. Sending an MP3 to a friend is going to become as natural as the e-mail jokes we all forward.
I propose that we create a new right, the right to royalties when someone profits from your work. Previously, royalties were derived from copyright and contracts, but now we would make them primary. No restrictions on copying, but if you sell (or broadcast, or make available for download) copies and make a profit you owe the creator a cut.
If we eliminated pay per copy, there would be there would be no motivation to not share source code, and no motivation for most people to actually do the work in the first place.Maybe we could start by giving copper cups intead of diplomas to computer science graduates.
There are other ways to make money off software than pay-per-copy, you know.
Creating custom applications is a big business already, and much more interesting (IMHO) than writing another shrinkwrapped bloatware office suite.
On my last few projects, it wouldn't have mattered much if we posted binaries and source to USENET for all to see (other than embarrassment at parts of the source that were poorly written). No one except the paying customer could make much use of them, without hiring someone to customize the code - the existing code would just prevent them from having to re-invent basics.
They would probably still withhold source code, for no other reason than to get the money made off on support. Who would you trust to support you? The guy with the code or the guy without?
Whose software would you trust? The guy who gives you the source and the possibility of fixing it yourself, or the guy who doesn't?
Would you buy a car from a dealer who locked the hood and kept the key?
Software vendors get away with that today only because of the dominant pay-per-copy model. If that went away and the motive for retaining source code was clearly to extort support fees, market forces and social pressures would crush anyone who tried.
Your argument for the destruction of copyright is intrinsically immoral.
Enforcing a copyright involves the use of force to prevent the making of copies. How is arguing agsinst the use of force to prevent an act that does not harm anyone immoral?
You will no doubt counter that copying hurts the artist, by depriving him of his due. I just disagree that a state mandated monopoly on copying is anyone's natural right.
It would mean that the producer of a given piece of software, or of a given song, or of a given book, would NOT own what he has produced,
That's right. The idea that anyone can "own" an idea the same way they own physical property is a relatively new idea, not an eternal verity.
In short, your viewpoint would result in the THEFT of these products from those who created them.
It's not theft. I take nothing away from the author, he's no worse off than he was before.
So what incentive have they to continue producing? ANSWER: NONE WHATSOEVER.
So we need a new model to compensate authors. Pay-per-copy won't work any more. I have suggested, and will suggest here again, that musical performance royalties are a decent model to start with - I can perform a song freely, but if my performance generates a profit I have to give the songwriter a cut. Similarly, perhaps copyright should be replaced with a royalty-right.
More importantly, who are you to tell a producer how he may use what he creates?
I'm not telling the producer how he can use what he creates, I'm objecting to him telling me what I can do with it. Bob Dylan doesn't have the right to prevent me from singing "Tangled Up in Blue" at a party; it's not at all clear that he has a right to prevent me from copying a recording of that song, or giving that recording to a friend.
The term hate crime was created so that certain crimes could be dealt with more harshly _because_ of racial or religious implications.
And that is the wrong thing to do. It's immoral discrimination, an attempt to legislate thought, and in the US it's an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection clause.
The GPL draws all of its power from the fact that the person who created a work owns strong copyrights to that work.
The GPL would not be necessary without copyright law!
The GPL exists to protect your rights to use, share, and modify software. Without copyright, no one could stop you from using or sharing; and if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code, and as more people understand the necessity of open source for quality, every reason for them to do so. (Note that today's "free beer" software always has a pay version, which shares a codebase.)
The GPL is a judo-type defense against copyright - it uses the attacker's power against them[*]. Take away the power to attack, and the defense goes away too - but since, by defintion, it's no longer needed, that's okay.
([*]Which isn't strictly true about judo; there are plenty of nasty attacks there. Whipping a choke on someone doesn't really use their power against them. But we'll ignore that for purposes of metaphor.)
Slashdot Mirror
And I understand that war - or at least organized inter-tribe violence - was not unknown.
I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned Brunner's classic The Shockwave Rider yet.
Want sites related to keywords? Fine, that's what search engines are for. (And if that's too difficult, hey, there's alway AOL. (snicker))
Want to contact a specific machine or service? You need an address. How does e-mail, or ftp, work with your keyword scheme? Does "mail someguy@Coca-cola" give me the Coca-cola corporation, the memorabilla site, or what?
I would suggest that few people use them now. Naive users go to their ISP's configured portal and search for some keyword - often using a hostname as a search term, rather that using an "open location" menu option, because URLs and hostnames are a mystery to them. Slightly more knowledgeable users might type in www.megacorp.com in an "open location" box to get to the MegaCorp website, but a long URL - http://www.megacorp.com/some/document.html - leaves them lost.That's fine for the Great Unwashed - their search for "infamous.net" will certainly turn up my website - but when I want to telnet somewhere, I need a hostname (or IP address, of course), not a keyword.
First, there are other ways than pay-per-copy for people to get paid for making art, music, literature, and software.
Second, people can, will, and do create stuff without getting paid for it. I've spent hundreds of hours making poetry and music, resulting a total material compensation of one free meal at the sadly defunt Planet X coffehouse (for an Italian sonnet contest I won), a few free beers at the bar where I often play at the open mic, and a grand total of maybe $50 in cash.
Bombing the shit out of the countryside and creating all sorts of "collateral damage" - i.e., dead innocents - from your safe little airplane because you're not willing to get down on the much more dangerous dirt and apply selective force is not heroism. The danger is the government's lies and deception about how selective a bombing campain can be - bullshit like "smart bombs" and "surgical strike" that somehow makes the masses think that only the guilty are being slaughtered.
(Not that "innocent" and "guilty" are necessarily always clear in war, granted.)
Thank you, enjoy the show.
Also, judges can set aside a conviction (but not an acquital) if they beleive that the evidence is insufficient. It's a 13-input AND gate.
And if you don't like that, in most cases you can elect to go before just a judge, no jury, and have him or her decide your fate; you're not mandated to accept a jury trial.
I ought to note that the courts, once again proving their illiteracy (what part of "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury" do they not understand?), have decided that the right to a jury trial doesn't apply to crimes carring a sentence of less than six months - even if you're facing twenty counts and could be put away for ten years. Trial by jury, another casualty of the War on (Some) Drugs.
Back when I worked for Norman Data Defense on their firewall product (which failed, so don't wonder if you never heard of it) they wanted to add in CyberPatrol. I screamed and yelled at management that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do, that it would be a huge gaping security hole to run sofware that we couldn't control on the firewall box.
(Disclosure: I used to work at TIS (though not on Gauntlet) and own Network Associates stock.)
The procecutor, the judge, maybe even the defence attorney if you're stuck with a public defender, are all working for the government. If I were on trial I'd sure want someone involved in the process to be independant.
Juries exist not only to try the facts of the case, but sometime to try the law as well. (Sadly, this concept has gotten largely lost in recent years.) They are an important check against bad laws.
So what makes you sure that the world's a better place?
(Meant as an honest question, not just a rhetorical one.)
The only right we offer to create (and I deliberately use "create" rather than "recognize") for Dylan is to prevent - or, rather, punish - unauthorized copying. That's just not going to work anymore. Digital media makes control of copying impossible, short of stormtrooper techniques; you might smash Napster, but alternatives will spring up. It happened a few years back with OLGA, a collection of guitar tabs and chord charts; they shut down the main site, but mirrors - and search engines for those mirrors - sprouted like weeds.
Even if you somehow shut down centralized site, you can't stop personal swapping. Sending an MP3 to a friend is going to become as natural as the e-mail jokes we all forward.
I propose that we create a new right, the right to royalties when someone profits from your work. Previously, royalties were derived from copyright and contracts, but now we would make them primary. No restrictions on copying, but if you sell (or broadcast, or make available for download) copies and make a profit you owe the creator a cut.
Creating custom applications is a big business already, and much more interesting (IMHO) than writing another shrinkwrapped bloatware office suite.
On my last few projects, it wouldn't have mattered much if we posted binaries and source to USENET for all to see (other than embarrassment at parts of the source that were poorly written). No one except the paying customer could make much use of them, without hiring someone to customize the code - the existing code would just prevent them from having to re-invent basics.
Would you buy a car from a dealer who locked the hood and kept the key?
Software vendors get away with that today only because of the dominant pay-per-copy model. If that went away and the motive for retaining source code was clearly to extort support fees, market forces and social pressures would crush anyone who tried.
Enforcing a copyright involves the use of force to prevent the making of copies. How is arguing agsinst the use of force to prevent an act that does not harm anyone immoral?
You will no doubt counter that copying hurts the artist, by depriving him of his due. I just disagree that a state mandated monopoly on copying is anyone's natural right.
That's right. The idea that anyone can "own" an idea the same way they own physical property is a relatively new idea, not an eternal verity. It's not theft. I take nothing away from the author, he's no worse off than he was before. So we need a new model to compensate authors. Pay-per-copy won't work any more. I have suggested, and will suggest here again, that musical performance royalties are a decent model to start with - I can perform a song freely, but if my performance generates a profit I have to give the songwriter a cut. Similarly, perhaps copyright should be replaced with a royalty-right. I'm not telling the producer how he can use what he creates, I'm objecting to him telling me what I can do with it. Bob Dylan doesn't have the right to prevent me from singing "Tangled Up in Blue" at a party; it's not at all clear that he has a right to prevent me from copying a recording of that song, or giving that recording to a friend.The GPL exists to protect your rights to use, share, and modify software. Without copyright, no one could stop you from using or sharing; and if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code, and as more people understand the necessity of open source for quality, every reason for them to do so. (Note that today's "free beer" software always has a pay version, which shares a codebase.)
The GPL is a judo-type defense against copyright - it uses the attacker's power against them[*]. Take away the power to attack, and the defense goes away too - but since, by defintion, it's no longer needed, that's okay.
([*]Which isn't strictly true about judo; there are plenty of nasty attacks there. Whipping a choke on someone doesn't really use their power against them. But we'll ignore that for purposes of metaphor.)