If a DL can pass this yellow box then it is a real DL and not a fake, this is a way for the bars to make sure no underage patrons or patrons without valid ID (expired) are in the house.
Quoth the website you linked to, "No Connection or Installation." The yellow box simply cannot confirm that a license is real; it simply reports what the magstripe says. A skilled forger will encode the fake identity onto the magstripe. This makes it harder to fake IDs, but not exceptionally so. It certainly cannot perfectly validate an ID. Maybe if the information was digitally signed, but there is no incentive to bother, so no state I'm aware of does (although some do have crappy, easy to break encryption). If the box was connected to a network service that could compare the information to the state's database you'd have something much harder to crack.
Furthermore, great, so at least some bars are using boxes that behave politely. But some does not mean all. As the article notes, there is no incentive to not collect the information. There is value to the information and it's legal to collect. Surely someone out there has noticed the business opportunity is is selling machines that store the data as we speak.
CSS degrades far better than tables
on
CSS Cookbook
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· Score: 3, Insightful
However, CSS layouts don't usually degrade well in older browsers: you may see al your elements sequentially, for example.
The entire point of CSS is to "degrade well." You've confused "displays identically on mainstream browsers with large resolutions" for actually degrading gracefully. To take a single example I have a lot of experience with, those beautiful table layouts fall apart on small displays. Maybe you can reasonably assume modern laptops and desktops have a resolution of 800x600, but what about my phone (128 x 160) or my Palm (320x480). A table based layout falls apart. But a CSS based layout using floating sidebars degrade reasonably gracefully on my palm. My phone doesn't support CSS and I frequently disable CSS on my Palm for speed. In both cases the CSS based layout may be dull and sequential, but it's perfectly readable. For web sites about presenting useful information this is great. Table based layouts turn into hard to read messes. Now my Palm's browser has a great feature that tries to detect tables-as-layout and linearizes them, and it's pretty good, but it occasionally trashed actual tabular data. Because people use tables to mean two totally different things ("I want this thing exactly here for visual impact" vs "This is tabular data"), my Palm can't try to present a graceful degredation.
YouTube and Google Video *are* full of copyrighted material. They *should* have some liability.
"Should" and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. Just as one should have the right to purchase DRM defeating devices for purposes of fair use, perhaps Google should be liable. However, it's still illegal to to create a DVD CSS descrambler, and it's Google legally has zero financial liability. You can thank the DMCA for both. Specifically under Title II of the DMCA, so long as Google is generally ignorant of the infringement and moves promptly to remove infringing materials when information, they're scott free.
Besides, do you really want sites that host user submitted content to have to act like police; to increase their costs by hiring a bunch of people to screen incoming video; to delay posting material while it happens; to have legal content occasionally incorrectly blocked? In practice this will destroy great services with lots of legal and good uses. Of course this won't just apply to video, it applies to podcasts (goodbye iTunes podcast service), the millions of blogs (goodbye LiveJournal, MySpace, Blogger, Blogspot, and more), host user home pages (goodbye every free website), and more. The DMCA is a deeply evil law, but the safe harbor provisions are a really good idea that allow service providers to act (sort of) like common-carriers: the provide the service, the user is responsible. Indeed, suing Google over something a user uploaded is just as ridiculous as suing the company I pay for webhosting at because I've uploaded something infringing onto my own web site.
Indeed. For most of my simple spidering needs I've found Perl's WWW::Mechanize to be a dream. I say what I mean: go get this page, find a link labeled "Today's Story" and follow it, on the resulting page find the second form and fill in the username and password fields with $username and $password, click submit, return the resulting page. I've found it useful for scraping sites with regular updates that have unpredictable URLs but constant links. Perl.com's "Screen-scraping with WWW::Mechanize" is a good introduction, then check out the full documentation.
Those are some sloppy, sloppy versions of the extreme arguments.
Only a foolish extreme pro-copyright debater would suggest that they want IP to be "exactly" like physical property. Ignoring that it's absolute nonsense, it would suggest that you're actually completely free to make copies of things protected by IP laws. If you draft some brilliant blueprints for a house design, then build a house to those blueprints, then sell me the house, I'm free to hire a draftsman to generate new blueprints from the house I purchased, then use those new blueprints to build lots and lots of copies. The only thing that would limit me would be copyright law, which misses the point. The extreme pro-copyright debaters like making the "theft" and "just like real property" comparison because they want to mimize serious discussion of the issue, not because they actually believe those silly comparisons.
Conversely, you lazily suggest that without copyright that essentially all creation will end, which is silly nonsense. It ignores the thousands of years of creative works created before copyright existed in the modern sense. It ignores the creative work released under the GPL, BSD, or Creative Commons licenses. Perhaps the abolition of copyright will reduce the amount of creative work, but it's nonsense to suggest that it essentially end. First, people like creating; as the cost of creation and distribution has come down you see more and more work being created and distributed for the simple joy of doing so. There are incentives beyond profit from direct sales of creative works.
Second, and more importantly, you have an interesting lack of faith in the free market for someone so certain that the free market is a good idea. I have money and want good books. An author can write good books and wants money. We'll work something out. Perhaps patronage. Perhaps we'll use the Street Performer Protocol. Perhaps contracts in the form, "you agree to not redistribute this" with expensive penalties. Perhaps gaining employment after your work establishes you as an authority in an area. Perhaps relying on demand for new works and exploiting the window before the work is widely distributed. Perhaps selling access to difficult to duplicate things, like events. Most likely, a blend of multiple solutions.
By the way, you seem confused on the point of the tragedy of the commons. Copyrightable works are hardly a finite grass field that will be overgrazed and become useless. No matter how many infringing copies of PopSong23 are circulating, my own legal copy remains valuable to me. You're suggesting a variant of the tragedy of the commons where the field cannot be overgrazed and grows to accomodate as many herds as you like. Hardly a tragedy. Where exactly is the actual harm from lack of copyright, the disincentive to create new works for profit? Perhaps it's the disincentive to spend time and money seeking out new fields with better grass, since once you do everyone will head on over and your expenses won't be recovered (unless, of course, you have your own animals, in which case there is a benefit for you). The Tragedy of the Commons completely inappropriate in discussions of intellectual property.
Ultimately you defend the original opinion piece as having a point. Yes, there is a point, if you're somehow worried that the extreme anti-IP folks are any chance of getting what they want. Me, I'm just not feeling too threatened by clueless teenagers, college anarchists, and the occasional purist libertarian.
In reality there is a growing number of people who like the core idea copyright, trademark, and patent law, but believe the current implementations need to be reconsidered. This is your "fuzzy middle." The RIAA isn't really interested in the fuzzy middle; his claims to such are absolute lies. They want the extreme pro-copyright position: infinite copyright with no exceptions. To achieve this, they are trying to paint those in the fuzzy middle as being the extremist anti-copyright side. They're trying to win the debate by lumping the moderates in with the extreme other side. They then take the tiniest, smallest steps away from their own extreme position and claim that they represent real compromise. It's all bullshit.
The DMCA is a terrible, terrible law for a bunch of reasons. One of the gems is section 512, which effectively allows anyone willing to engage in a little perjury to silence someone else for ten to fourteen days. This has been used to silence legit speech before. In practice there is no penalty for the perjury, after the two weeks just drop the claim with an, "Oops, I guess I was wrong, sorry." In theory you can countersue for damages, but you'd have to prove it was intentional, not a mistake, and that you suffered financial damages.
However, there is a silver lining on this afront to the first amendment: the safe harbor clause. "A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or...for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider...." In short, so long as an online service provider didn't know their users were uploading infringing materials, and promptly take the material down when properly informed, they are explicitly protected from copyright infringement claims. There is no requirement for the provider to police their users, so the easiest solution is to turn a blind eye, make reporting claims a nuisance, but process claims promptly when you get them. As someone who has filed DMCA takedown requests with Google over infringement, I can assure you that Google is doing exactly that.
For all the whining, the ADA has somehow failed to destroy small businesses. For most business it's really not a big deal to comply. Obviously they'd rather not spend the money (thus the whining), but compared to other expenses it's relatively small. The ADA allows those with disabilities more independence. That directly translates into less money the government needs to spend to support the disabled. That support has to be more individual, personalized, and expensive. Without the ADA you'd still be paying to help them, but the total cost to the country will be larger.
That the claims of lost revenue are inflated are directly relevant to "the elephant." You claim "that piracy is substantial...." How do we know that? Perhaps the impact of piracy is actually quite minor, largely controlled, and has little to no impact on society as a whole. Maybe it's a massive drain on society as a whole. But to make rational decisions we need realistic estimates of the damage, not the inflated numbers that the industry likes to throw around. The industry likes to throw around the inflated numbers because it wants to seem Really Important and convince government to spend more more money defending their profits. This is good for the industry (taxes are used to protect their bottom line), but if the actual damage from piracy is actually relatively low, it's bad for society as it's a handout to business. Take shoplifting, actual theft of product. While it's a serious matter, in reality it's not a major epidemic. We expect stores to largely police themselves, paying for security systems and guards.
Yes, there is an elephant in the room. But is it a mimmoth that industry should deal with themselves, or is a mammoth that requires additional government regulation and expenditure of tax dollars? To make that decision we need realistic numbers.
The author is very clear: only sue if they broke the law. The law is clear, and the punishment for breaking the law is that people get to personally fine you for $500. Given the unlikelyhood of an organization giving you $500 just because you send them a letter complaining, we need a government system to enforce the law, to give you and the organization a chance to speak your case and sort things out. That system is the court system.
If you don't want to be sued for $500, follow the letter of the law. It's not hard: clearly state the name of your organization and a phone number for your organization that can reach a human being. If you don't sue, these people get to continue breaking this law without punishment. Sure, it's a very minor offense, but it's annoying to a large number of people. If people weren't enforcing these laws the telemarketing (and junk fax, which has similar laws) problem would be far, far worse than it is.
This sort of lawsuit is not what is bogging down our court systems. This sort of small case is exactly why small claims courts exist. Generally speaking they're very efficient because they do away with much of the overhead of a full trial. On the down side you get less consistent and occasionally wrong decisions, but I'm prepared to take a little risk for small claims.
Good comes from this sort of law: it dramatically cut down on junk faxes. Maybe it's protecting us from sewage dumped in our water sources, but the cost to society as a whole is trivial and there is a real benefit.
One of the best horror games ever: Anchorhead
on
Games and Fear
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· Score: 2, Informative
It's "just" a text adventure, but it's reach, convincing, creepy, and free. I highl recommend Michael Gentry's Anchorhead. Your husband has just inherited an old family home from a relative he didn't know he had. You've just moved to Anchorhead. Your husband has gotten a position at the local college. You have a simple task: head over to the real estate agent's office and pick up the keys for your house. Unsurprisingly things go downhill as it turns out that your house and the town have a dark past.
For anyone new to interactive fiction, you'll need a free interpreter. I recommend Gargoyle on Windows or Linux and Spatterlight on Mac OS X.
Re:Thief: The Dark Project
on
Games and Fear
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· Score: 1
Thief worked so well, and was even scary in the non-horrific moments because you had to simply wait, and listen. To do well, you had to pay careful attention to the slightest sound. Is the guard far enough away? No? Then you wait, and hope his patrol route doesn't find you. In many cases they would pass mere feet form your hiding spot and you'd simply have to stay still, waiting. Once he's gone, will you have time to make it to another spot to hide before he turns around? I hear another guard. Is he approaching or moving away? Do I have time to wait and listen and be sure? Is there time to fall back? The intensity of attention the game demanded made it unlike anything else. For some reason other stealth oriented games never captured this feeling of terror for me.
This is about forcing something on the consumer that they don't want.
Ohnoes! You can optionally kiss a boy! Now that I know I can offer flowers to a boy in the game, I simply can't resist, I'm somehow compelled by the homosexual agenda! I'm being forced get flowers, to track down a gay character, and offer the flowers to that character! Help, help, I'm being oppressed!
Meanwhile in reality, the gay kiss isn't "forced" on the player any more than the straight kissing also possible in the game is forced on the player. Advancement through the core plotlines doesn't require the kiss. If you don't think to offer flowers to a boy in the game, it simply won't happen. Perhaps you're right that most Americans are homophobic, but refusing to play the game because you can, if you chose, kiss a boy is like refusing to interact with other people because you can, if you chose, kiss a boy.
The news coverage of this is nowhere near the level of that of Hot Coffee, so many gamers will never know of this functionality. Those who do tend to be more "hard core" gamers, and while some do reject games based on foolish perceptions ("Nintendo is only for little kids"), many buy anything that's good. Ultimately Bully will succeed or fail on the strength of its game play, and some very mild kissing isn't going to impact sales in a measurable either way.
I think a more likely case is that Comedy Central files a bunch of DMCA requests, and a bunch got taken down. But a "bunch" is hardly "all." And more will be uploaded. The DMCA is a deeply flawed tool (the mandatory takedown window even if you challenge the takedown is nothing less than an infringement of the first amendment), but in this case it's a copyright infringers friend. YouTube is not legally required to police for Comedy Centrals content, only to take content down when informed. Google (YouTube's new owner) has a very slow DMCA processing system (as someone whose used it, I can confirm this). So just don't worry about it. The total amont of infringing content may go down, and older stuff might be harder to find, but there will be lots of Comedy Central on YouTube for a long time.
Scalia, on the other hand, follows the Constitutional principle that the federal government can only regulate interstate commerce ("commerce among the states," as is in the Constitution). Using that principle, it would be Unconstitutional for the federal government to prohibit the growing of Marijuana on private property. States could still outlaw it, of course, but the feds couldn't do a thing.
The claim, of course, is that the Supreme Court and Congress can pretty much meddle in "activities that 'substantially affect' interstate commerce." Squint a little and have a generous idea of what "substantially" means and you can regulate anything you like. Surely Scalia would never agree to such madness. Except on the very issue you bring up Scalia voted to let the federal government regular private marijuana farming.His concurring opinion makes it clear that he firmly agrees that because private marijuana might, maybe become involved in interstate commerce, the feds are free to crack down on it.
Fraud is not protected by the first amendment. As the author of the site says, actually using his site would be illegal, as it's fraud. The question is: he's developed a tool and clear directions for engaging in fraud. That's definately borderline.
Right, but if, for whatever reason, your argument against DRM were some excuse like "DRM takes away my fair use rights", the possibility of analog re-recording kinda puts lie to that.
It depends on what sort of fair use you're engaging in. I want to format shift, why should I have to accept the loss in quality added by each additional analog step? Someone is teaching a class on computer animation and wants to show a small clip from a film at the highest quality possible since the entire point of the clip is to show the very small details, so an analog step is not feasible. And the analog hole is getting smaller and smaller. When your DVD player emits analog signal, the DVD's DRM has (usually) specified that it must turn on Macrovision to foil attempts at recording the stream. The next generation video systems will make you pick between high quality data carefully locked down every step of the way, or the low quality data.
Content providers don't need to make fair use easy, but they're actively using DRM to reduce the effectiveness of fair use. As technology advances and makes things easier, it's logical that legal use of copyright protected material should get easier as well. DRM stands in the way of technological advancement. That's sickening.
The Terms of Service are terrible. Section 1.5 says that Google is your exclusive search service. No offering Google and Windows Live to your users. Maybe no providing your own htdig service. It's Google or nothing. Of course, section 1.2 is the ever popular, "we can change this at any time without notifying you, and if you keep using the service you agree to the new terms without even knowing they exist." Of course, these are basically the same terms that Google Free offered. It's really frustrating; I'd like to use Google Search to give visitors to my job's web site a better search engine, but those terms aren't reasonable for a business.
There is a lot of very reasonable commentary there. And a few whiners. The whiners are more fun.
From Anonymous at the University of Texas, "Perhaps a moratorium on the sale of used copies of a title within the first month of its release." If you have a serious problem with used sales in the first month of release, your game is probably either too short, or just plain sucks. My friends with tigher budgets note that they typically have to what two or three months before the find used copies of game they want available.
I'm also fond of Pierre-Luc Lachance at Ubisoft's response, "We can only try to sensitize people to the ethical integrity and fairness of buying new, first hand games." Ethical integrity? I'm curious about Pierre-Luc's view of the ethical integrity of purchasing a used car or a used book. Idiot.
I NEVER buy used games, nor do I sell my old games. I am continually disappointed by the fact that I cannot convince many gamers to buy new. The age of hard copy is at an end. Digital distribution is coming and will be here to stay. Developers hands have been forced. Soon, small games presented on X Box Live and Nintendo Virtual Console will challenge hard copy games for profits. At this time the age of hard copy will end. Used game stores are pushing themselves out of business with hard handed tactics designed to force players to buy and sell used games.
Again, I'm curious if anonymous has ever bought or sold a used car, CD, or book. Have the car, book, and music industries been forced to online distribution by resales? ("Now downloading Subaru Impreza 2006. 3% complete. Downloading at 6.02 zeptoatoms/second.") Also, exactly what "hard handed" tactics have used game stores engaged in? How do they force me to buy and sell used games? I've never been "forced" to sell them a game. When I buy a new game, they do sometimes offer me a used game ("You can save five bucks on a used copy"), but that's hardly a hard sell. They've never refused to sell me a new copy when one was available (which I usually do, as it's worth $5 to me to get a shiny new copy).
There is a subset of the video game industry who are giant whiners. This isn't some conspiracy against video games; it's the free market. Resale of copyright protected works existed for hundreds of years before your industry even existed. Expecting to get some special protection makes you piss-poor capitalists.
This leads in to why I support the idea of.xxx domains. If you want access to it, fine with me. All I ask is that you make it easy for me to discriminate what my kids are exposed to. I want them to be able to use the internet and me to not have to worry about what they might find.
That theory only works if you legally require that all porn be on.xxx domains. Otherwise you're still going to need to worry. Given that free speech protection has been extended to porn, demanding a subset of free speech to segregate itself is unconstitutional in US.
Say you somehow get this unconstitutional idea made law in the US. What about the rest of the world, which is free to use their domains as they want? Are you going to block every country which doesn't sign on?
Even if you find some way to get such laws passed it, you now face the question, "What is porn?" Snaps of kids running around naked? Nude art photography? Photos of topless women? Photos of swimsuit models? Photos of women showing their ankles? Fetish photography where the models are completely clothed? The higher you set the bar, the more things you probably don't want your kids seeing that will slip out. The lower you set the bar, the more you trample free speech and expression.
I'm for the.xxx top level domain, but for the same reason that.museum was created: to allow people who want to self segregate to do so. Filtering on.xxx would be a valid first step, but you're still going to need to worry about what they'll stumble upon. Demanding that they self segregate is censorship and unreasonable. It's not the rest of the world's job to make your job easier.
Given the choice between inserting the GPL into the EULA section of commonly used installer software, or opening themselves up to huge potential liability,...
Of course, this isn't a binary choice. You're perfectly free to excerpt the disclaimer and display just that. Indeed, the example offered for people adding the GPL to their program is quite short. The GPL's "How to apply" section specifically suggests showing this short message when your program starts. For reference, here's the suggestion. It's short enough that mroe people will read it, it clearly warns that users get no warranty and provide directions on how to see the full disclaimer. It also tells users of their free software rights, and gives directions on learning about that as well.
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
for details.
(Obviously you're supposed to change the "show w" and "show c" to something else if appropriate, say "Select Help > Warranty" and "Select Help > License".)
"The GPLv2 (and possibly GPLv3) may cause problems with doing this."
"May"? GPLv3 is designed to cause problems with this. That's my point. The FSF believes that once you buy a piece of software or a software-hardware combination you have the right to modify it. You're saying that the manufacturer wants to control the software that its customers run. That is exactly what the FSF is fighting against. You might disagree with thier beliefs, but that the GPLv3 will cause problems should be no surprise.
Meanwhile, your suggestions are silly. People modify things all the time. I'm free to swap in equivalent third-party parts on my car and my dealership is required to still respect the warranty. If I engage in more serious modifications, they won't. Yet you don't see lots of people complaining, "I installed a cheap hydrolics system in my Toyota, now my dealership says I voided the warranty!" People already replace the software in embedded systems in cars, video game consoles, wireless routers, and more. Somehow company's haven't gotten bad reputations from refusing to support modified systems.
does the GPLv3... truly inhibit your control as a developer over your device?
"Your" device? Once you've sold it to a customer, it's ceased to be "your" device. If a customer buys a device that runs GPLed software, they have the freedom to replace that software as they see fit. That's entire purpose of the GPL: to grant end users freedom. Complaining that the GPLv3 inhibits a developer's control over their device is like complaining that GPLv2 inhibits a developer's control over their software. Congratulations on identifying the core purpose of the GPL.
Next week on Ask Slashdot: "Can you use the Bill of Rights in your dictatorship, or does the it truly inhibit your control as a dictator over your citizens?"
What the hell is that supposed to even mean?! As far as I can tell, information is a pretty damn abstract concept, and it is people, if anything, that ever want something.
I trust when your physics teacher said, "Water seeks its own level," you got equally bent out of shape, pointing out that water doesn't "seek" anything.
Now the grandparent was indeed trolling. "Information wants to be free" isn't a moral justification for copyright infringement. Like "water seeks its own level," it's description, not prescription. It's a short reminder that information tends to be distributed. It's inherent to our nature as humans, we like sharing information. We invented speech, pictograms, writing, printing, telegraphs, telephones, film, television, fax machines, email, the web, and more because we love sharing information so much. All it takes for information to escape is for a single small leak. Once it's happened, you're done. To try and stop information from being free, we set up expensive technological measures like DRM and legal measures like confidentiality agreements and top secret clearance. And yet the information escapes.
"Information wants to be free" has gotten a bad rap because some idiots decided it mean that information should be free. No, it's just a description of human nature. Information is going to tend to be reproduce and distributed. For people who rely on suppressing the spread of information it's a reminder of what they're up against, just like someone building dams needs to keep in mind that water seeks its own level.
Re:Encryption algorithms will be obsolete by then
on
The Day Against DRM
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· Score: 1
Good modern encryption algorithms are designed to survive for thousands of years, even in the face of increasing computer speeds. Advances in cryptoanalysis may or may not pay off; the entire goal is to design a system where no analysis ever provides a better-than-brute-force solution. Codes from WWII managed to remain unbroken for 60 years, even given that the Enigma system was deeply flawed, and the advanced in crytoanalysis and computers since then.
On the up side, historically people implementing DRM have really sucked at cryptography.
Even assuming you're correct, I shouldn't need to break encryption to get access to data I own a copy of. And if something like the DMCA is still in effect and there are works still under copyright, it will be illegal for me to make or purchase software that will do the decoding for me.
Re:Would some one please explain...
on
The Day Against DRM
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· Score: 5, Informative
I love copyright. I disagree with some of the details of implementation (In my dream world copyright would last 14 years with an optional 14 year renewal), but I love the core idea. A government granted short term monopoly seems like a good way to encourage creation.
However, I loathe DRM. A few highlights:
DRM makes media players more expensive: Adding DRM support to hardware or software isn't free. Implementating a device without DRM support would be cheaper that implementing one with. You, the consumer, pay more for a device that intentionally does less.
DRM must be combined with draconian laws to be effective: "Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." (Bruce Schneier) You've given me the data and the software or hardware to play the data. All the pieces are in my hands. DRM must be breakable. So to make it effective, you need laws that make it illegal to distribute implementations that break DRM. This means source code that breaks DRM must be illegal. As source code is a form of speech, we have laws that try to limit free speech to protect a business model. That's never acceptable in my book.
DRM is about making things you purchase distrust you: This is inherent to the system. This is morally repugnant. Your DVD player assumes you're trying to make bootleg copies, so it applies MacroVision to the output. The new video game you installed assumes you're trying to play a bootleg copy, so it installs low-level drivers into your system to monitor what you do. I paid money for these things, why do they serve an external company more than me?
DRM must infringe on fair use: The only DRM system that doesn't infringe on fair use is Microsoft's "Please don't make illegal copies" label printed on the CDs of some of their products. Fair use is subtle and non-obvious, no piece of electronics or software can be perfectly correct. If you err on the side of freedom, you are also creating a loophole for illegal use. You can either give people the ability to legally sample short segements of high definition video for review purposes or you can make it harder to make bootleg copies. You can give people the ability to legally format shift movies and music or you can make it harder to spread copies online.
DRM destroys competition: Want to make an open source player to play media you've paid for? An open source player could easily be modified to ignore the DRM. So they use technology to try and stop you. Where technology fails they use laws. Want to make a commercial, closed-source player? You need to pay the controllers of a given DRM implementation. They can deny you access without cause, they can charge you whatever you like.
DRM can't expire: Eventually everything enters the public domain. No DRM system can automatically unlock things when that happens. If they did, it would be relatively easy to spoof the date and unlock the media. When all copies of a given piece of media are locked under DRM, you effectively create infinite copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
Quoth the website you linked to, "No Connection or Installation." The yellow box simply cannot confirm that a license is real; it simply reports what the magstripe says. A skilled forger will encode the fake identity onto the magstripe. This makes it harder to fake IDs, but not exceptionally so. It certainly cannot perfectly validate an ID. Maybe if the information was digitally signed, but there is no incentive to bother, so no state I'm aware of does (although some do have crappy, easy to break encryption). If the box was connected to a network service that could compare the information to the state's database you'd have something much harder to crack.
Furthermore, great, so at least some bars are using boxes that behave politely. But some does not mean all. As the article notes, there is no incentive to not collect the information. There is value to the information and it's legal to collect. Surely someone out there has noticed the business opportunity is is selling machines that store the data as we speak.
The entire point of CSS is to "degrade well." You've confused "displays identically on mainstream browsers with large resolutions" for actually degrading gracefully. To take a single example I have a lot of experience with, those beautiful table layouts fall apart on small displays. Maybe you can reasonably assume modern laptops and desktops have a resolution of 800x600, but what about my phone (128 x 160) or my Palm (320x480). A table based layout falls apart. But a CSS based layout using floating sidebars degrade reasonably gracefully on my palm. My phone doesn't support CSS and I frequently disable CSS on my Palm for speed. In both cases the CSS based layout may be dull and sequential, but it's perfectly readable. For web sites about presenting useful information this is great. Table based layouts turn into hard to read messes. Now my Palm's browser has a great feature that tries to detect tables-as-layout and linearizes them, and it's pretty good, but it occasionally trashed actual tabular data. Because people use tables to mean two totally different things ("I want this thing exactly here for visual impact" vs "This is tabular data"), my Palm can't try to present a graceful degredation.
"Should" and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. Just as one should have the right to purchase DRM defeating devices for purposes of fair use, perhaps Google should be liable. However, it's still illegal to to create a DVD CSS descrambler, and it's Google legally has zero financial liability. You can thank the DMCA for both. Specifically under Title II of the DMCA, so long as Google is generally ignorant of the infringement and moves promptly to remove infringing materials when information, they're scott free.
Besides, do you really want sites that host user submitted content to have to act like police; to increase their costs by hiring a bunch of people to screen incoming video; to delay posting material while it happens; to have legal content occasionally incorrectly blocked? In practice this will destroy great services with lots of legal and good uses. Of course this won't just apply to video, it applies to podcasts (goodbye iTunes podcast service), the millions of blogs (goodbye LiveJournal, MySpace, Blogger, Blogspot, and more), host user home pages (goodbye every free website), and more. The DMCA is a deeply evil law, but the safe harbor provisions are a really good idea that allow service providers to act (sort of) like common-carriers: the provide the service, the user is responsible. Indeed, suing Google over something a user uploaded is just as ridiculous as suing the company I pay for webhosting at because I've uploaded something infringing onto my own web site.
Indeed. For most of my simple spidering needs I've found Perl's WWW::Mechanize to be a dream. I say what I mean: go get this page, find a link labeled "Today's Story" and follow it, on the resulting page find the second form and fill in the username and password fields with $username and $password, click submit, return the resulting page. I've found it useful for scraping sites with regular updates that have unpredictable URLs but constant links. Perl.com's "Screen-scraping with WWW::Mechanize" is a good introduction, then check out the full documentation.
Those are some sloppy, sloppy versions of the extreme arguments.
Only a foolish extreme pro-copyright debater would suggest that they want IP to be "exactly" like physical property. Ignoring that it's absolute nonsense, it would suggest that you're actually completely free to make copies of things protected by IP laws. If you draft some brilliant blueprints for a house design, then build a house to those blueprints, then sell me the house, I'm free to hire a draftsman to generate new blueprints from the house I purchased, then use those new blueprints to build lots and lots of copies. The only thing that would limit me would be copyright law, which misses the point. The extreme pro-copyright debaters like making the "theft" and "just like real property" comparison because they want to mimize serious discussion of the issue, not because they actually believe those silly comparisons.
Conversely, you lazily suggest that without copyright that essentially all creation will end, which is silly nonsense. It ignores the thousands of years of creative works created before copyright existed in the modern sense. It ignores the creative work released under the GPL, BSD, or Creative Commons licenses. Perhaps the abolition of copyright will reduce the amount of creative work, but it's nonsense to suggest that it essentially end. First, people like creating; as the cost of creation and distribution has come down you see more and more work being created and distributed for the simple joy of doing so. There are incentives beyond profit from direct sales of creative works.
Second, and more importantly, you have an interesting lack of faith in the free market for someone so certain that the free market is a good idea. I have money and want good books. An author can write good books and wants money. We'll work something out. Perhaps patronage. Perhaps we'll use the Street Performer Protocol. Perhaps contracts in the form, "you agree to not redistribute this" with expensive penalties. Perhaps gaining employment after your work establishes you as an authority in an area. Perhaps relying on demand for new works and exploiting the window before the work is widely distributed. Perhaps selling access to difficult to duplicate things, like events. Most likely, a blend of multiple solutions.
By the way, you seem confused on the point of the tragedy of the commons. Copyrightable works are hardly a finite grass field that will be overgrazed and become useless. No matter how many infringing copies of PopSong23 are circulating, my own legal copy remains valuable to me. You're suggesting a variant of the tragedy of the commons where the field cannot be overgrazed and grows to accomodate as many herds as you like. Hardly a tragedy. Where exactly is the actual harm from lack of copyright, the disincentive to create new works for profit? Perhaps it's the disincentive to spend time and money seeking out new fields with better grass, since once you do everyone will head on over and your expenses won't be recovered (unless, of course, you have your own animals, in which case there is a benefit for you). The Tragedy of the Commons completely inappropriate in discussions of intellectual property.
Ultimately you defend the original opinion piece as having a point. Yes, there is a point, if you're somehow worried that the extreme anti-IP folks are any chance of getting what they want. Me, I'm just not feeling too threatened by clueless teenagers, college anarchists, and the occasional purist libertarian.
In reality there is a growing number of people who like the core idea copyright, trademark, and patent law, but believe the current implementations need to be reconsidered. This is your "fuzzy middle." The RIAA isn't really interested in the fuzzy middle; his claims to such are absolute lies. They want the extreme pro-copyright position: infinite copyright with no exceptions. To achieve this, they are trying to paint those in the fuzzy middle as being the extremist anti-copyright side. They're trying to win the debate by lumping the moderates in with the extreme other side. They then take the tiniest, smallest steps away from their own extreme position and claim that they represent real compromise. It's all bullshit.
The DMCA is a terrible, terrible law for a bunch of reasons. One of the gems is section 512, which effectively allows anyone willing to engage in a little perjury to silence someone else for ten to fourteen days. This has been used to silence legit speech before. In practice there is no penalty for the perjury, after the two weeks just drop the claim with an, "Oops, I guess I was wrong, sorry." In theory you can countersue for damages, but you'd have to prove it was intentional, not a mistake, and that you suffered financial damages.
However, there is a silver lining on this afront to the first amendment: the safe harbor clause. "A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or...for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider...." In short, so long as an online service provider didn't know their users were uploading infringing materials, and promptly take the material down when properly informed, they are explicitly protected from copyright infringement claims. There is no requirement for the provider to police their users, so the easiest solution is to turn a blind eye, make reporting claims a nuisance, but process claims promptly when you get them. As someone who has filed DMCA takedown requests with Google over infringement, I can assure you that Google is doing exactly that.
For all the whining, the ADA has somehow failed to destroy small businesses. For most business it's really not a big deal to comply. Obviously they'd rather not spend the money (thus the whining), but compared to other expenses it's relatively small. The ADA allows those with disabilities more independence. That directly translates into less money the government needs to spend to support the disabled. That support has to be more individual, personalized, and expensive. Without the ADA you'd still be paying to help them, but the total cost to the country will be larger.
That the claims of lost revenue are inflated are directly relevant to "the elephant." You claim "that piracy is substantial...." How do we know that? Perhaps the impact of piracy is actually quite minor, largely controlled, and has little to no impact on society as a whole. Maybe it's a massive drain on society as a whole. But to make rational decisions we need realistic estimates of the damage, not the inflated numbers that the industry likes to throw around. The industry likes to throw around the inflated numbers because it wants to seem Really Important and convince government to spend more more money defending their profits. This is good for the industry (taxes are used to protect their bottom line), but if the actual damage from piracy is actually relatively low, it's bad for society as it's a handout to business. Take shoplifting, actual theft of product. While it's a serious matter, in reality it's not a major epidemic. We expect stores to largely police themselves, paying for security systems and guards.
Yes, there is an elephant in the room. But is it a mimmoth that industry should deal with themselves, or is a mammoth that requires additional government regulation and expenditure of tax dollars? To make that decision we need realistic numbers.
The author is very clear: only sue if they broke the law. The law is clear, and the punishment for breaking the law is that people get to personally fine you for $500. Given the unlikelyhood of an organization giving you $500 just because you send them a letter complaining, we need a government system to enforce the law, to give you and the organization a chance to speak your case and sort things out. That system is the court system.
If you don't want to be sued for $500, follow the letter of the law. It's not hard: clearly state the name of your organization and a phone number for your organization that can reach a human being. If you don't sue, these people get to continue breaking this law without punishment. Sure, it's a very minor offense, but it's annoying to a large number of people. If people weren't enforcing these laws the telemarketing (and junk fax, which has similar laws) problem would be far, far worse than it is.
This sort of lawsuit is not what is bogging down our court systems. This sort of small case is exactly why small claims courts exist. Generally speaking they're very efficient because they do away with much of the overhead of a full trial. On the down side you get less consistent and occasionally wrong decisions, but I'm prepared to take a little risk for small claims.
Good comes from this sort of law: it dramatically cut down on junk faxes. Maybe it's protecting us from sewage dumped in our water sources, but the cost to society as a whole is trivial and there is a real benefit.
It's "just" a text adventure, but it's reach, convincing, creepy, and free. I highl recommend Michael Gentry's Anchorhead . Your husband has just inherited an old family home from a relative he didn't know he had. You've just moved to Anchorhead. Your husband has gotten a position at the local college. You have a simple task: head over to the real estate agent's office and pick up the keys for your house. Unsurprisingly things go downhill as it turns out that your house and the town have a dark past.
For anyone new to interactive fiction, you'll need a free interpreter. I recommend Gargoyle on Windows or Linux and Spatterlight on Mac OS X.
Thief worked so well, and was even scary in the non-horrific moments because you had to simply wait, and listen. To do well, you had to pay careful attention to the slightest sound. Is the guard far enough away? No? Then you wait, and hope his patrol route doesn't find you. In many cases they would pass mere feet form your hiding spot and you'd simply have to stay still, waiting. Once he's gone, will you have time to make it to another spot to hide before he turns around? I hear another guard. Is he approaching or moving away? Do I have time to wait and listen and be sure? Is there time to fall back? The intensity of attention the game demanded made it unlike anything else. For some reason other stealth oriented games never captured this feeling of terror for me.
Ohnoes! You can optionally kiss a boy! Now that I know I can offer flowers to a boy in the game, I simply can't resist, I'm somehow compelled by the homosexual agenda! I'm being forced get flowers, to track down a gay character, and offer the flowers to that character! Help, help, I'm being oppressed!
Meanwhile in reality, the gay kiss isn't "forced" on the player any more than the straight kissing also possible in the game is forced on the player. Advancement through the core plotlines doesn't require the kiss. If you don't think to offer flowers to a boy in the game, it simply won't happen. Perhaps you're right that most Americans are homophobic, but refusing to play the game because you can, if you chose, kiss a boy is like refusing to interact with other people because you can, if you chose, kiss a boy.
The news coverage of this is nowhere near the level of that of Hot Coffee, so many gamers will never know of this functionality. Those who do tend to be more "hard core" gamers, and while some do reject games based on foolish perceptions ("Nintendo is only for little kids"), many buy anything that's good. Ultimately Bully will succeed or fail on the strength of its game play, and some very mild kissing isn't going to impact sales in a measurable either way.
I think a more likely case is that Comedy Central files a bunch of DMCA requests, and a bunch got taken down. But a "bunch" is hardly "all." And more will be uploaded. The DMCA is a deeply flawed tool (the mandatory takedown window even if you challenge the takedown is nothing less than an infringement of the first amendment), but in this case it's a copyright infringers friend. YouTube is not legally required to police for Comedy Centrals content, only to take content down when informed. Google (YouTube's new owner) has a very slow DMCA processing system (as someone whose used it, I can confirm this). So just don't worry about it. The total amont of infringing content may go down, and older stuff might be harder to find, but there will be lots of Comedy Central on YouTube for a long time.
The claim, of course, is that the Supreme Court and Congress can pretty much meddle in "activities that 'substantially affect' interstate commerce." Squint a little and have a generous idea of what "substantially" means and you can regulate anything you like. Surely Scalia would never agree to such madness. Except on the very issue you bring up Scalia voted to let the federal government regular private marijuana farming. His concurring opinion makes it clear that he firmly agrees that because private marijuana might, maybe become involved in interstate commerce, the feds are free to crack down on it.
Fraud is not protected by the first amendment. As the author of the site says, actually using his site would be illegal, as it's fraud. The question is: he's developed a tool and clear directions for engaging in fraud. That's definately borderline.
It depends on what sort of fair use you're engaging in. I want to format shift, why should I have to accept the loss in quality added by each additional analog step? Someone is teaching a class on computer animation and wants to show a small clip from a film at the highest quality possible since the entire point of the clip is to show the very small details, so an analog step is not feasible. And the analog hole is getting smaller and smaller. When your DVD player emits analog signal, the DVD's DRM has (usually) specified that it must turn on Macrovision to foil attempts at recording the stream. The next generation video systems will make you pick between high quality data carefully locked down every step of the way, or the low quality data.
Content providers don't need to make fair use easy, but they're actively using DRM to reduce the effectiveness of fair use. As technology advances and makes things easier, it's logical that legal use of copyright protected material should get easier as well. DRM stands in the way of technological advancement. That's sickening.
The Terms of Service are terrible. Section 1.5 says that Google is your exclusive search service. No offering Google and Windows Live to your users. Maybe no providing your own htdig service. It's Google or nothing. Of course, section 1.2 is the ever popular, "we can change this at any time without notifying you, and if you keep using the service you agree to the new terms without even knowing they exist." Of course, these are basically the same terms that Google Free offered. It's really frustrating; I'd like to use Google Search to give visitors to my job's web site a better search engine, but those terms aren't reasonable for a business.
There is a lot of very reasonable commentary there. And a few whiners. The whiners are more fun.
From Anonymous at the University of Texas, "Perhaps a moratorium on the sale of used copies of a title within the first month of its release." If you have a serious problem with used sales in the first month of release, your game is probably either too short, or just plain sucks. My friends with tigher budgets note that they typically have to what two or three months before the find used copies of game they want available.
I'm also fond of Pierre-Luc Lachance at Ubisoft's response, "We can only try to sensitize people to the ethical integrity and fairness of buying new, first hand games." Ethical integrity? I'm curious about Pierre-Luc's view of the ethical integrity of purchasing a used car or a used book. Idiot.
This anonymous comment takes the cake:
Again, I'm curious if anonymous has ever bought or sold a used car, CD, or book. Have the car, book, and music industries been forced to online distribution by resales? ("Now downloading Subaru Impreza 2006. 3% complete. Downloading at 6.02 zeptoatoms/second.") Also, exactly what "hard handed" tactics have used game stores engaged in? How do they force me to buy and sell used games? I've never been "forced" to sell them a game. When I buy a new game, they do sometimes offer me a used game ("You can save five bucks on a used copy"), but that's hardly a hard sell. They've never refused to sell me a new copy when one was available (which I usually do, as it's worth $5 to me to get a shiny new copy).
There is a subset of the video game industry who are giant whiners. This isn't some conspiracy against video games; it's the free market. Resale of copyright protected works existed for hundreds of years before your industry even existed. Expecting to get some special protection makes you piss-poor capitalists.
That theory only works if you legally require that all porn be on .xxx domains. Otherwise you're still going to need to worry. Given that free speech protection has been extended to porn, demanding a subset of free speech to segregate itself is unconstitutional in US.
Say you somehow get this unconstitutional idea made law in the US. What about the rest of the world, which is free to use their domains as they want? Are you going to block every country which doesn't sign on?
Even if you find some way to get such laws passed it, you now face the question, "What is porn?" Snaps of kids running around naked? Nude art photography? Photos of topless women? Photos of swimsuit models? Photos of women showing their ankles? Fetish photography where the models are completely clothed? The higher you set the bar, the more things you probably don't want your kids seeing that will slip out. The lower you set the bar, the more you trample free speech and expression.
I'm for the .xxx top level domain, but for the same reason that .museum was created: to allow people who want to self segregate to do so. Filtering on .xxx would be a valid first step, but you're still going to need to worry about what they'll stumble upon. Demanding that they self segregate is censorship and unreasonable. It's not the rest of the world's job to make your job easier.
Of course, this isn't a binary choice. You're perfectly free to excerpt the disclaimer and display just that. Indeed, the example offered for people adding the GPL to their program is quite short. The GPL's "How to apply" section specifically suggests showing this short message when your program starts. For reference, here's the suggestion. It's short enough that mroe people will read it, it clearly warns that users get no warranty and provide directions on how to see the full disclaimer. It also tells users of their free software rights, and gives directions on learning about that as well.
(Obviously you're supposed to change the "show w" and "show c" to something else if appropriate, say "Select Help > Warranty" and "Select Help > License".)
"The GPLv2 (and possibly GPLv3) may cause problems with doing this."
"May"? GPLv3 is designed to cause problems with this. That's my point. The FSF believes that once you buy a piece of software or a software-hardware combination you have the right to modify it. You're saying that the manufacturer wants to control the software that its customers run. That is exactly what the FSF is fighting against. You might disagree with thier beliefs, but that the GPLv3 will cause problems should be no surprise.
Meanwhile, your suggestions are silly. People modify things all the time. I'm free to swap in equivalent third-party parts on my car and my dealership is required to still respect the warranty. If I engage in more serious modifications, they won't. Yet you don't see lots of people complaining, "I installed a cheap hydrolics system in my Toyota, now my dealership says I voided the warranty!" People already replace the software in embedded systems in cars, video game consoles, wireless routers, and more. Somehow company's haven't gotten bad reputations from refusing to support modified systems.
"Your" device? Once you've sold it to a customer, it's ceased to be "your" device. If a customer buys a device that runs GPLed software, they have the freedom to replace that software as they see fit. That's entire purpose of the GPL: to grant end users freedom. Complaining that the GPLv3 inhibits a developer's control over their device is like complaining that GPLv2 inhibits a developer's control over their software. Congratulations on identifying the core purpose of the GPL.
Next week on Ask Slashdot: "Can you use the Bill of Rights in your dictatorship, or does the it truly inhibit your control as a dictator over your citizens?"
I trust when your physics teacher said, "Water seeks its own level," you got equally bent out of shape, pointing out that water doesn't "seek" anything.
Now the grandparent was indeed trolling. "Information wants to be free" isn't a moral justification for copyright infringement. Like "water seeks its own level," it's description, not prescription. It's a short reminder that information tends to be distributed. It's inherent to our nature as humans, we like sharing information. We invented speech, pictograms, writing, printing, telegraphs, telephones, film, television, fax machines, email, the web, and more because we love sharing information so much. All it takes for information to escape is for a single small leak. Once it's happened, you're done. To try and stop information from being free, we set up expensive technological measures like DRM and legal measures like confidentiality agreements and top secret clearance. And yet the information escapes.
"Information wants to be free" has gotten a bad rap because some idiots decided it mean that information should be free. No, it's just a description of human nature. Information is going to tend to be reproduce and distributed. For people who rely on suppressing the spread of information it's a reminder of what they're up against, just like someone building dams needs to keep in mind that water seeks its own level.
Good modern encryption algorithms are designed to survive for thousands of years, even in the face of increasing computer speeds. Advances in cryptoanalysis may or may not pay off; the entire goal is to design a system where no analysis ever provides a better-than-brute-force solution. Codes from WWII managed to remain unbroken for 60 years, even given that the Enigma system was deeply flawed, and the advanced in crytoanalysis and computers since then.
On the up side, historically people implementing DRM have really sucked at cryptography.
Even assuming you're correct, I shouldn't need to break encryption to get access to data I own a copy of. And if something like the DMCA is still in effect and there are works still under copyright, it will be illegal for me to make or purchase software that will do the decoding for me.
I love copyright. I disagree with some of the details of implementation (In my dream world copyright would last 14 years with an optional 14 year renewal), but I love the core idea. A government granted short term monopoly seems like a good way to encourage creation.
However, I loathe DRM. A few highlights:
DRM makes media players more expensive: Adding DRM support to hardware or software isn't free. Implementating a device without DRM support would be cheaper that implementing one with. You, the consumer, pay more for a device that intentionally does less.
DRM must be combined with draconian laws to be effective: "Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." (Bruce Schneier) You've given me the data and the software or hardware to play the data. All the pieces are in my hands. DRM must be breakable. So to make it effective, you need laws that make it illegal to distribute implementations that break DRM. This means source code that breaks DRM must be illegal. As source code is a form of speech, we have laws that try to limit free speech to protect a business model. That's never acceptable in my book.
DRM is about making things you purchase distrust you: This is inherent to the system. This is morally repugnant. Your DVD player assumes you're trying to make bootleg copies, so it applies MacroVision to the output. The new video game you installed assumes you're trying to play a bootleg copy, so it installs low-level drivers into your system to monitor what you do. I paid money for these things, why do they serve an external company more than me?
DRM must infringe on fair use: The only DRM system that doesn't infringe on fair use is Microsoft's "Please don't make illegal copies" label printed on the CDs of some of their products. Fair use is subtle and non-obvious, no piece of electronics or software can be perfectly correct. If you err on the side of freedom, you are also creating a loophole for illegal use. You can either give people the ability to legally sample short segements of high definition video for review purposes or you can make it harder to make bootleg copies. You can give people the ability to legally format shift movies and music or you can make it harder to spread copies online.