What good will any of this do? Under this plan, Windows will still be the most popular desktop OS, people will still use Word, and Windows applications will continue to suck. Also, we'll now have the government watching both of these companies and any company started by or employing former high-level Microsoft people, looking for "collusion" and the slightest excuse to micromanage the industry.
And that's after years of appeals, if this isn't overturned.
Basically, this whole investigation was a big, pointless sideshow orchestrated by some publicity-hound people in the DoJ and companies that wanted to get Microsoft.
The government's purpose is to protect people and enforce their rights. Most governments do an almost passable job of that when the laws and policies they follow coincide with everyone's rights and interests. (Unfortunately, a lot of laws are stupid and dangerous, and there you get most of the dissatisfaction with government.)
The role of government in commerce is essentially to make sure companies and individuals aren't cheating each other. The privacy issues the FTC bring up involve consumer and regulator discontent with the practices of some businesses that use the Internet. However, one has to look at the issue beyond the initial "I don't like how this company is acting" reaction - we live in a free country, where supposedly simply not liking what other people do isn't a justification for putting them in jail or taking their money away.
I have to take a very skeptical view of the FTC's complaints, based on the problem areas they identify.
Lack of notices (or "clear" notices) describing privacy policies on web pages. Besides the joke of three high-level bureaucrats complaining about "confusing, contradictory and ambiguous" notices on web pages, one has to wonder about the desertion of common sense, here. If someone, whether a person, a company, or an organization, asks you for information and doesn't give some kind of direct assurance (or accepts your condition) that he/she/it won't share the information ("We won't give our mailing lists out" or "Dude, man, I won't tell Amy what you said, I promise"), you have to pretty much assume that that information can become public and given to anyone freely without any recourse on your part. In fact, I imagine some of the anti-IP crowd here would have to go through either blank denial ("because it's different, man!") or convoluted mental gymnastics to explain why, if it's OK to rip an MP3 from a CD and distribute that data against the wishes of the artist, it is wrong to distribute data about themselves that someone shares with you freely, when you make no promise not to do so. Now, admittedly, there is a second issue: what if a company blatantly lies in its privacy policy and shares information it promises to keep confidential? Well, there's a word for it: fraud. And, amazingly enough, the FTC has long had the authority to get involved in cases of fraud (or at least ones that cross state lines). So, why exactly are these bureaucrats asking for additional laws to be passed to deal with a problem when the FTC could be cracking down right now?
Lack of consumer control over how collected information is used. The consumer's control is not to give the information in the first place! This is much the same issue, essentially, as before. When you give someone information, unless they promise to only use it in certain ways or you make such limitations a requirement for you to share the information (and they agree to that), it's now his/her/it's information, to. You can't retroactively demand control. (And, of course, if fraud comes up due to some sort of deception in the process, the FTC already has the ability to act.)
Access to that data. Here's an odd little reversal of principle. Forcing someone or some group to divulge data seems, to me, like a much more obvious violation of privacy than keeping and distributing data that was freely given. Now, the only reasonable argument that has been given for this is that some people end up with incorrect "reputations", ie inaccurate and damage credit reports and similar things. Well, just like any other speech, trade of credit records and other data that are known to be inaccurate are libelous. The FTC should be be looking to prosecute the trade of information known to be false, even if that does require new laws, not seeking the authority to blindly delve into the databases of companies, businesses, and organizations.
Assurances that the data is secure. Simply put, if the company, person, organization or entity claims that your data is secure (perhaps with clarification along the lines of "Script kiddies can't get in, but the NSA can probably read your selections from Victoria's Secret if they possibly care", but in better legalese), and he/she/it fail to keep it so...They've defrauded you. Back to square one, where the FTC really has the power to deal with these problems if and when they come up, but is for some reason asking for new laws to authorize them "fixing the problem".
So, what's the deal? If I'm claiming that most of these things aren't wrong, and the remainder are things the FTC can already deal with if they want to, why is the FTC asking for Congressional action?
Well, right now, companies involved in internet commerce are having a public-image problem. People don't like filling out a form on a web page and getting spam from several other companies and similar things. Two of the five commissioners of the FTC noticed that companies are catching on that consumers don't like being treated that way and so are starting to change their behavior, and said so (and I've got to be one of the most stunned people here to read of a government official recognizing the power and function of the market). However, the other three perhaps decided to hike up the public image of the FTC (making even a token effort to show disapproval of something people don't like works wonders with voters) and their personal regulatory credentials, both of which are good for their current jobs and future political positions. On the other hand, they may be those among government regulators who genuinely believe that they, not the decisions of consumers or the effort of entrepeneurs and companies, provide the benefits of the free market to people. Or, considering the mixture of pragmatism and "idealism" most people have, probably some mixture of both.
In any case, it's a matter of the FTC trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes to gain public support and hide their failure at enforcing current laws, and should be rejected as such.
I think Lars proved he does understand the basic issues involved. Sadly, everyone here is denouncing the guy, first of all, because he came across as a bit inarticulate in a verbatim transcript of what looks like a phone call (which is incredibly stupid - have you ever paid attention to a conversation and listened to how people trip over phrases and wander around to get to the gist of an idea? - especially in light of just how badly some slashdot posts come across, when the writers have editing and preview capability). Second of all, everyone's trashing him for the simple reason that he disagrees with Slashdot Wisdom. Ergo, because he disagrees with Slashdotters, he's a fool, QED.
Lars has done his research enough to know what's going on. I was actually impressed; I did not expect him to have any real understanding. He just doesn't buy the self-serving arguments of MP3 pirates and Napster, and he presented reasonably well why he doesn't, particularly in the tricky rhetorical areas of "isn't this just like tape-trading?" and "this will free artists from record companies!"
And, for the record, I suspect that the number of 1 unsigned artist's MP3 DLed in a 48 hour period is very close to the actual number. Even the people here talking about "unsigned" artists whose MP3s they have found will tell you about owning that artist's CDs. Hello, people! Indie record companies ARE record companies! Someone signed up with such a company is by definition NOT an "unsigned artist"! Napster is a tool used something like 99% of the time to illegally distribute music of published artists.
And, of course, the moment MS-Apps releases a new version or new program that does better than average in the software market, the same cries of collusion will spring up as if Apps and OS worked in the same building. The break-up is a joke and an attempt to destroy MS on behalf of its biggest, most vocal, and most campaign-contributing competitors, not an attempt to "foster competition".
You know, listening to all of these breakup plans until this very moment, I hadn't been swayed. The idea of the government interfering in the computer industry, particularly in the workings of a single company, repulsed me. The idea of tearing apart the wealth people had built up from a little piss-ant company that started back in the seventies appalled me (and don't give me the "stock boost" stuff - at least some of the proposals specifically ban Gates and others from owning stock in both or more companies, so all concerned WILL lose money). The idea of a bunch of someone's competitors using the DOJ to attack one's company when they couldn't out-compete disgusted me.
But now I've seen the light!
It's silly, at best, for a company to produce more than one product, and at worst, it's an attempt at evil corporate dominance! Some companies use their multiple product lines to reinforce the profits of all their products. This is clearly a manipulation of consumers.
Let's look at our own beloved computer industry.
Apple, with its traitorous devotion to Micrsoft, clearly deserve much scrutiny as soon as the DOJ can turn its attention to the rotten dealings there. Besides the fact that Apple offers a much more convincing example of a monopoly on MacOS/PowerPC computers (which is really less important because far fewer consumers suffer due to this), treated as completely distinct from "PCs" by the proceedings in the current case, Apple produces apps, an OS, and not just hardware, but entire computer systems! No significant competitors exist on their platform on the OS (Linux has been specifically dismissed as relevant in the current case) and system fronts (ever since mercilessly choking off the clone-makers by ending the same hardware-maker discounts on OS copies MS does now), and outside of the limited market of graphics professionals (who are of course irrelevant to Mac users at large, just as server and network use is irrelevent to PC users at large), the biggest software producer outside of Apple for the Mac is...Microsoft. Therefore, Apple needs to be broken up into at least three companies to restore competition there.
Sun, one of the noble companies who had the decency to make contributions to congressional campaigns before the case, unlike selfish Microsoft, sadly also merits investigation. Sun produces an OS, hardware, some applications, and Java. Java, which was touted as a "Windows-killer" (it's perfectly fine to attempt to destroy a more powerful competitor, while the more powerful competitor attempting to retaliate or even defend itself is just wrong, always remember!), is in some niches actually used to perform useful tasks. However, Sun uses its creation of Java to justify the promotion of development kits. Sad, really, that a company so aware of others' faults could miss its own.
AOL/Time Warner/Netscape...It used to give away a browser for free in order to promote the use of other products! We know that's wrong! Even within the computer world, it operates an online service, produces a browser and messaging software...and doesn't allow competitors to produce compatible software for the service, or competing services that could use the sign-up software! And beyond the computer subsection of the company (browser, online/internet (maybe TOO much to combine, there...) service, service-access software, and messaging software companies all sound good), there must be a hundred potential baby-AOLs in that heaving mass.
IBM should still be under investigation from the previous antitrust prosecution. Whether the market's own changes made the issue "moot" is hardly a valid concern, and shouldn't have thrown things off. It has produced mainframes, PCs, even an OS (the staged "death" of OS/2 is merely a ploy to divert attention, just like the shift away from PCs). Worse, it bundled Lotus Smart Suite applications in with many recent models of its PCs! These violations of good sense must be pursued.
Further, these companies also make a crucial, horrible mockery of the open software market - they don't release the source code of their products so that any chump with GCC and a CD-R can compile and sell "his" or "her" own competing versions of those programs. That's just wrong.
I think I see a glorious future for our industry, and maybe many others. There are a lot of companies that just need to be broken up into smaller, more intelligent businesses. The people running the companies and the shareholders can't be trusted to judge this for themselves. Who is better-prepared than the lawyers of the DOJ to perform this sort of micro-management of the market? Certainly, this will cause a temporary period of adjustment, and the legal profession's ranks will swell, but in just a few decades the computer industry would be unstrung enough from the courts to come back to life and start work on the long-awaited next versions of all those products...
And then, all those out-of-work lawyers can start taking a look at the "GNU/Linux" racket. I mean, come on! They give all these things away, then start leaning on any companies that makes use of the software to release versions of the companies' products that are compatible through astroturfing by users who barely use any of the software to begin with...
Theoretically this would be possible, but the amount of energy to resist the pull of gravity as you cross the event horizon would be infinite. On a less theoretical angle, the tidal forces as you approach the event horizon of any black hole smaller than a galaxy-swallowing monstrosity would probably be fatal to you and your spaceship.
That "resistance" to new ideas has two causes, one good, one bad. The bad cause is that scientists, as human beings, sometimes put their ego in their ideas and get offended when their work is challenged. The good cause is that 99% of challenges to "big theories" are idiotic cruft akin to claims of perpetual motion machines and trisection of angles with a compass.
No one posted the entirety of the information. Excerpts were posted for the purposes of discussion. Even with DMCA, fair use still exists for the purposes of public discussion of works. It's the same principle that lets you quote from a book in a book review.
That's not what was done, though. The materials were discussed and I believe in some cases quoted from. The fair use doctrine still allows people to quote excerpts from works in order to discuss them.
Normally, I'd agree with you. I'm a supporter of IP rights and don't buy the "information wants to be free" rhetoric (because, as a friend said, oxen want to be free, to, but it's smarter to yoke them both). And while I despise Microsoft, I often feel obliged to defend their actions where permissable (Microsoft is to the free market supporter as the KKK is to the free speech supporter). However, this action by Microsoft is absurd and abusive!
The specifications Microsoft claimed were "trade secrets" were specifications that anyone with Windows on their machine were free to download. You can't claim something's a secret if you show it to anyone who asks! You didn't have to pay for them, you didn't have to meet any real requirements...You had to click an agreement.
Now, while I am a huge supporter of contract rights (I even think shrink-wrap agreements should be legal, as long as you can read them before you are committed to the product), I don't buy that you can make people promise to not share or discuss information that you're willing to show to just about anyone who makes that promise. That's a logically void agreement.
So, to hell with Microsoft in this instance. Slashdot should fight them.
Ayn Rand herself had a nasty run-in with trying to use a word to mean something overprecisely different from the common conception and semantics of the word. She tried to use "selfishness" to describe the peaceful ethic of acting in a manner to benefit oneself alone, without making demands on others or allowing others to make demands on oneself. Of course, this choice of terminology fell flat in mainstream thought because of the far-longer accepted informal understanding of "selfishness" as a miserly practice of self-advancement that often involved undercutting others...
The moral of the story? The linguistic baggage and social context of words can be more important than their precise (and especially) technical meaning when you're trying to communicate.
But there'd be very little incentive for a company to lock up its code, if the binary can be freely distributed. A monopoly on source code is not actually all that useful if you can't control the binary. (I'm presuming that more insidious methods of copy protection, such as compiling against a particular processor serial number, would be illegal under fair trade laws or whatever).
A mistaken assumption. It's simple to posit a program that regularly opens up an encrypted network connection and checks in with a central server to make sure it's on the same system as its internal serial number says it should be on. If that check fails, it erases itself. And that's just assuming companies don't take this to the ultimate logical conclusion and abandon distributing software entirely, in favor of renting access to application servers. Simply removing intellectual property rights doesn't magically open up source.
And as for reverse-engineering, if the workings of a program are sufficiently obfuscated, "reverse-engineering" becomes pretty much "building your own competing program from scratch".
Any restriction on what you can do with a program or work you possess removes certain freedoms of action. Copyright prevents me from making copies for free, if I abide by it. Copyleft prevents me from making copies without including accurate source, if I abide by it. My freedom to distribute works with either sets of conditions placed upon them is not absolute, regardless of what freedoms that gives to others. If one claims that intellectual property is an unreasonable concept, one has to consider all conditions any license imposes as equally unreasonable.
In that ethical view, the GPL is just as meaningless and ignorable as copyright. Therefore, for the GPL to exist and promote the open-source ethic, intellectual property must exist.
Re:Defense killing and murder(defense killing IS m
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GPL Violation - NVIDIA
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A terribly misinterpretive posting.
First of all, you assume a standard "murder and self-defense are distinct, elemental acts" moral stance. Quite unreasonable. Many genuinely non-violent people consider killing even in self-defense to be murder and morally impermissable, because the ending of life is, in their view, simply wrong, no matter the convenient justification given. This would appear to be most properly anagolous to the view that "Intellectual property and placing demands on people who make copies of your works are wrong". If one genuinely holds that view, instead of giving oneself the convenient out of "Oh, but forcing people to include the source is OK", one must discard the "GPL exception" - just as someone who is genuinely non-violent (as opposed to merely non-aggressive) discards the "self-defense exception".
By way of incidental explanation, I hold that self-defense is moral while murder is not, but I hold that killing is a morally neutral act considered outside of context. In the context of terminating another innocent person's life against his or her wishes, the killing is murder. In the context of ending the life of someone who has show no regard for my moral right to not be murdered, self-defense is moral because that person has removed him/herself from a moral context by committing aggression. This loses applicability when you're talking about copyright and GPL because neither is an aggression - you can choose whether you want to interact with copyrighted or copylefted material.
I'm rather puzzled by this point you and others are making. As I understand it, the GPL only exists because copyright exists, and without the existence of copyright there would be no need for "copyleft".
This seems doubtful to me. First of all, if the goal were simply to release free software without limitations on copying, it could simply be released as public domain, or without restrictions on duplication, alteration, or use. The existence of copyright doesn't prevent the dissemination of uncopyrighted material, otherwise there wouldn't be so many people publishing the King James Bible, as a perfect example of a work that has genuinely no license and no restrictions on distribution or alteration. So, I honestly can't see any legal requirement for the GPL.
No, the real purpose of the GPL is to enforce conditions on someone who distributes GPLed work, in order to encourage the ethic of opened, free source. The very premise that someone can set conditions that others must abide by with regards to something they create is the heart of intellectual property. It doesn't matter whether the conditions are "pay me if you make a copy" or "always include the current source with the copy", they're conditions.
Simply discarding the idea of intellectual property does not serve the purposes of the FSF. If anything, it sabotages them. Without any way to enforce the distribution of source, there's nothing to stop malicious versions of what happened with Nvidia. Entire proprietary operating systems could be based on GNU work, since the GPL would have no force. Further, without some sort of intellectual property system, corporations will lock up their code even more tightly, because the enhanced copy-prevention systems they'd have to put into software (since they'd have a greater number of people trying to crack them) would be difficult to implement if anyone outside the company can see the code.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to consider this answer unsatisfactory. The GPL isn't just an "anti-copyright" designed to remove the "immoral" restrictions on copying and use - there's no need to create a license to stop that in the current system. The GPL is a very different system from copyright, relying on the same moral principle of intellectual property that copyright does.
This is my personal view, but I consider both copyright and the GPL to be equally valid and equally deserving of respect. The conflict is when someone respects one and not the other.
Your scapegoating of corporations as the source for all evil in the world is unfortunate, if only because of the vulnerability it gives you.
I'll cheerfully agree that various corporations have supported and lobbied for many disgusting government actions. Some of these are relatively minor and fail, such as Ben & Jerry's attacking competitors for having tiny trace amounts of dioxins in the paper cartons used to wrap ice cream (and lobbying for tighter controls that would have harmed their competitors) until it became public that Ben & Jerry's ice cream itself had higher (but still harmless) levels of dioxin. Some are far more successful and broad of scope, such as the use of Echelon for espionage on behalf of some American corporations.
However, to adopt the mindset that corporations are the only interests governments act on, and that governments themselves lack interests, is to blind oneself to very genuine dangers. Governments routinely act to protect political, religious, social, racial, and even sexual power groups - and to harm their enemies. They also often act to serve the personal interests and advancement of office-holders or even employees of the government. On a broader level, governments are not robotic entities without their own interests. Governments are groups of people that have one very interesting thing in common - naked, ready power over other people. Governments and agencies within governments act to increase their power, preserve their funding, enhance their public image, and, above all, maintain control.
Your mistake is to see one impetus for government transgression and label that the target to fight. (I have to wonder if you've missed such things as the Communications Decency Amendment, or recent revitalization of the efforts to "child-proof" the Internet, which, considering how large the adult entertainment industry is, and how many rather large corporations have fingers in that pie, doesn't strike me as the handiwork of the Corporate Overlords.) If you want to protect your freedoms, you have to catch the threat at the source - the government. Corporations, churches, unions, political factions, and grass-roots organizations all have the ears of government. However, the fist - the laws, regulations, and programs - is that of the government, and is the only thing you can grab.
While I applaud the handling of this on both sides, this sort of thing shows a blindspot among a lot of people here.
A lot of people here seem comfortable, simultaneously, with two very contradictory ideas. On the one hand, there's the idea that someone who claims "copyright" on something, say music, has no real right to demand that people not copy or distribute their works in a manner against the wishes of that person. On the other hand, there's the idea that someone who releases something under the GPL has every right to demand that no one violate that license and copy or distribute that work in a manner (sans source) against his/her wishes.
There's a deep conflict between those ideas, and Slashdotters who adore copyleft and ignore copyright need to recognize that and somehow resolve it.
In other words, how can GNU be so holy if the little copyright "c" is meaningless? I'm curious as to thoughts.
We all know that government invasion of privacy is nothing to fear. Instead, we must protect ourselves from web telemarketers, the real threat!
People, get real. Corporations may piss us off from time to time, but nothing is as bad as a government out of control. You can go to great lengths to protect yourself from both corporate and government spying, but only governments have the power and the gall to demand that you reveal your secrets to them - or else.
And for the insanely gullible who buy the "it's only going to be used with a search warrant" and "if you have nothing to hide, you needn't be afraid" arguments, note that pretty much each and every government organization in the United States that has been authorized to conduct wiretapping has been caught making wiretaps illegally, often in huge numbers. (This, yet, is in a country with a legally recognized right to privacy!) Even if, by some miracle, this new office only conducts wiretaps based on warrants, it's been given the power to monitor every communication to and from any person in an organization. So, make sure you never are part of a church, company, political organization, or club that the authorities get suspicious about...
Internet becomes popular in 1995, it's now 2000. Number of homes with broadband, 1995:Ha-ha, 1999: 3.25x10^6
Talk to your friends with 24-hour high-speed Net connections about "try" and "buy" musical consumption behaviour. It might be interesting..when it will be able to be studied in a few years. This whole market is just getting started.
I had a conversation about this last night with friends, some of which have high-speed connections. Their general consensus was that they generally buy CDs of MP3s they gather, they think most people do such, and that enough people will choose to pay content-creators to allow creative industries to continue to exist. Unfortunately, they're a biased selection, as they are content-creators, and they'd hardly keep their jobs if they thought there was no hope of getting paid for them. I can only hope.
That being said, I hardly see how you can call this culture freeloading. Unless you mean the most recent influx of/. folks who don't understand Free Software as a concept, or you mean Free Loading, as in introducing software into your life that is Free (Libre).
This is a strange conflation, but one a lot of people make (including such as Jon Katz). There is no philosophical connection between the Free Software/Open Source movement (if you merge them together for simplicity) and piracy of intellectual property. Free Software/Open Source are forms of "giftware", ie software created and released with few or no limitations, as the free choice of the creators. Piracy is the duplication and/or distribution of works in a manner outside the choice of the creator(s). Whether it's d/ling a few albums worth of MP3s you never plan to pay for, copying a game onto someone else's computer when that's outside the license, or distributing altered versions of GLPed programs without the new source, it's a violation of the terms under which the creator(s) released it to the public. In short, one is giving a gift, the other is theft.
When I refer to "freeloading", I mean specifically those who enjoy content that is released under a license requiring purchase without paying for it. This goes beyond even the simple act of violating the license of the creator. That content is produced at a cost, and released under terms designed to recoup those costs and even make a little money besides. That content wouldn't even be available in most cases without the money coming in. Therefore, those who don't pay for such content are parasites relying on the "rubes" who do pay for it. This does not apply to people using freely released software (though it would apply to someone who made software derivative of GPLed works without releasing the altered source - they would be freeloading off the work of GNU coders without abiding by their terms).
And, whether or not one agrees with the license a work of another is released under or likes the terms the creator got for its distribution (and short of fraud or someone putting a gun to the artist's head, the artist agrees to those terms), simple honor requires one to either abide by the license or avoid the work in question. If you don't like the RIAA, don't buy CDs produced by artists working with participating record companies - and don't freeload off someone who did buy those CDs. If you dislike the GPL, avoid GNU software, don't break its terms.
If honor doesn't suffice, simple self-interest should. If content creators can't release their content under terms (any terms) and expect anyone but a very few to abide by them, content creation as we know it, whether it's software, music, or anything else, will fade away to a minimum point far below what we enjoy now. No commercial software, no GNU software, no new CDs by anyone around the world...Or at least very little of any of those things, on very marginal budgets. Basically, we'll be down to hobby content. Some of that can be very good...but frankly, most of it is hobby quality now because no one is willing to pay for it. That won't change.
Anyway, that's my opinion on the matter. Thanks for presenting your stance intelligently, even if I disagree with it.
You make some cogent points, actually, particularly in that you're at least willing to pay for some fraction of the music you listen to. I actually like the try-before-buying aspect of MP3s. But, unfortunately, it looks less and less like any significant number of people "try" instead of simply failing to "buy".
While I think MP3s provide a viable musical medium, I for one don't want our musical culture to devolve into MP3s of garage bands. I *like* listening to music produced by talented professional musicians on instruments above pawn-shop quality. Further, I really am starting to wonder if the freeloader culture that seems dominant on places like Slashdot leaves any room for more than a few rare people to make any money by distributing MP3s of their work. Maybe if artists had jumped on it early enough to legitimize it, but MP3 is tainted with the "underground" attitude and the freeloading ethic.
And no, I don't think that freely sharing my inexhaustible resources (or even exhaustible resources!) is wrong. However, the vast majority of MP3s out there have not been freely shared by their creating artists. They've been stolen.
Songs you "wouldn't buy", but for some reason keep in your archives, are just as much indefensible freeloading as the "immoral" section.
I'm sure there are people who completely and totally abuse Napster and use it to download entire albums that they should buy. And I'm sure that the libertarian/. crowd are high among those.
If you divorce the term 'libertarian' from any hint of meaning and use it to refer to the whiny, grasping segment of the population here who wants Microsoft broken up, all source code free by law, and no punishment for IP piracy, sure, I suppose so.
Slashdot Mirror
What good will any of this do? Under this plan, Windows will still be the most popular desktop OS, people will still use Word, and Windows applications will continue to suck. Also, we'll now have the government watching both of these companies and any company started by or employing former high-level Microsoft people, looking for "collusion" and the slightest excuse to micromanage the industry.
And that's after years of appeals, if this isn't overturned.
Basically, this whole investigation was a big, pointless sideshow orchestrated by some publicity-hound people in the DoJ and companies that wanted to get Microsoft.
But yeah...Whoopee.
OK, I'm a free market-lover and a reluctant defender of Microsoft...
The government's purpose is to protect people and enforce their rights. Most governments do an almost passable job of that when the laws and policies they follow coincide with everyone's rights and interests. (Unfortunately, a lot of laws are stupid and dangerous, and there you get most of the dissatisfaction with government.)
The role of government in commerce is essentially to make sure companies and individuals aren't cheating each other. The privacy issues the FTC bring up involve consumer and regulator discontent with the practices of some businesses that use the Internet. However, one has to look at the issue beyond the initial "I don't like how this company is acting" reaction - we live in a free country, where supposedly simply not liking what other people do isn't a justification for putting them in jail or taking their money away.I have to take a very skeptical view of the FTC's complaints, based on the problem areas they identify.
Now, admittedly, there is a second issue: what if a company blatantly lies in its privacy policy and shares information it promises to keep confidential? Well, there's a word for it: fraud. And, amazingly enough, the FTC has long had the authority to get involved in cases of fraud (or at least ones that cross state lines). So, why exactly are these bureaucrats asking for additional laws to be passed to deal with a problem when the FTC could be cracking down right now?
So, what's the deal? If I'm claiming that most of these things aren't wrong, and the remainder are things the FTC can already deal with if they want to, why is the FTC asking for Congressional action?
Well, right now, companies involved in internet commerce are having a public-image problem. People don't like filling out a form on a web page and getting spam from several other companies and similar things. Two of the five commissioners of the FTC noticed that companies are catching on that consumers don't like being treated that way and so are starting to change their behavior, and said so (and I've got to be one of the most stunned people here to read of a government official recognizing the power and function of the market). However, the other three perhaps decided to hike up the public image of the FTC (making even a token effort to show disapproval of something people don't like works wonders with voters) and their personal regulatory credentials, both of which are good for their current jobs and future political positions. On the other hand, they may be those among government regulators who genuinely believe that they, not the decisions of consumers or the effort of entrepeneurs and companies, provide the benefits of the free market to people. Or, considering the mixture of pragmatism and "idealism" most people have, probably some mixture of both.
In any case, it's a matter of the FTC trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes to gain public support and hide their failure at enforcing current laws, and should be rejected as such.
I think Lars proved he does understand the basic issues involved. Sadly, everyone here is denouncing the guy, first of all, because he came across as a bit inarticulate in a verbatim transcript of what looks like a phone call (which is incredibly stupid - have you ever paid attention to a conversation and listened to how people trip over phrases and wander around to get to the gist of an idea? - especially in light of just how badly some slashdot posts come across, when the writers have editing and preview capability). Second of all, everyone's trashing him for the simple reason that he disagrees with Slashdot Wisdom. Ergo, because he disagrees with Slashdotters, he's a fool, QED.
Lars has done his research enough to know what's going on. I was actually impressed; I did not expect him to have any real understanding. He just doesn't buy the self-serving arguments of MP3 pirates and Napster, and he presented reasonably well why he doesn't, particularly in the tricky rhetorical areas of "isn't this just like tape-trading?" and "this will free artists from record companies!"
And, for the record, I suspect that the number of 1 unsigned artist's MP3 DLed in a 48 hour period is very close to the actual number. Even the people here talking about "unsigned" artists whose MP3s they have found will tell you about owning that artist's CDs. Hello, people! Indie record companies ARE record companies! Someone signed up with such a company is by definition NOT an "unsigned artist"! Napster is a tool used something like 99% of the time to illegally distribute music of published artists.
And, of course, the moment MS-Apps releases a new version or new program that does better than average in the software market, the same cries of collusion will spring up as if Apps and OS worked in the same building. The break-up is a joke and an attempt to destroy MS on behalf of its biggest, most vocal, and most campaign-contributing competitors, not an attempt to "foster competition".
You know, listening to all of these breakup plans until this very moment, I hadn't been swayed. The idea of the government interfering in the computer industry, particularly in the workings of a single company, repulsed me. The idea of tearing apart the wealth people had built up from a little piss-ant company that started back in the seventies appalled me (and don't give me the "stock boost" stuff - at least some of the proposals specifically ban Gates and others from owning stock in both or more companies, so all concerned WILL lose money). The idea of a bunch of someone's competitors using the DOJ to attack one's company when they couldn't out-compete disgusted me.
But now I've seen the light!
It's silly, at best, for a company to produce more than one product, and at worst, it's an attempt at evil corporate dominance! Some companies use their multiple product lines to reinforce the profits of all their products. This is clearly a manipulation of consumers.
Let's look at our own beloved computer industry.
Further, these companies also make a crucial, horrible mockery of the open software market - they don't release the source code of their products so that any chump with GCC and a CD-R can compile and sell "his" or "her" own competing versions of those programs. That's just wrong.
I think I see a glorious future for our industry, and maybe many others. There are a lot of companies that just need to be broken up into smaller, more intelligent businesses. The people running the companies and the shareholders can't be trusted to judge this for themselves. Who is better-prepared than the lawyers of the DOJ to perform this sort of micro-management of the market? Certainly, this will cause a temporary period of adjustment, and the legal profession's ranks will swell, but in just a few decades the computer industry would be unstrung enough from the courts to come back to life and start work on the long-awaited next versions of all those products...
And then, all those out-of-work lawyers can start taking a look at the "GNU/Linux" racket. I mean, come on! They give all these things away, then start leaning on any companies that makes use of the software to release versions of the companies' products that are compatible through astroturfing by users who barely use any of the software to begin with...
Yeah, my karma was getting too high, anyway. ;)
Theoretically this would be possible, but the amount of energy to resist the pull of gravity as you cross the event horizon would be infinite. On a less theoretical angle, the tidal forces as you approach the event horizon of any black hole smaller than a galaxy-swallowing monstrosity would probably be fatal to you and your spaceship.
That "resistance" to new ideas has two causes, one good, one bad. The bad cause is that scientists, as human beings, sometimes put their ego in their ideas and get offended when their work is challenged. The good cause is that 99% of challenges to "big theories" are idiotic cruft akin to claims of perpetual motion machines and trisection of angles with a compass.
No one posted the entirety of the information. Excerpts were posted for the purposes of discussion. Even with DMCA, fair use still exists for the purposes of public discussion of works. It's the same principle that lets you quote from a book in a book review.
That's not what was done, though. The materials were discussed and I believe in some cases quoted from. The fair use doctrine still allows people to quote excerpts from works in order to discuss them.
Normally, I'd agree with you. I'm a supporter of IP rights and don't buy the "information wants to be free" rhetoric (because, as a friend said, oxen want to be free, to, but it's smarter to yoke them both). And while I despise Microsoft, I often feel obliged to defend their actions where permissable (Microsoft is to the free market supporter as the KKK is to the free speech supporter). However, this action by Microsoft is absurd and abusive!
The specifications Microsoft claimed were "trade secrets" were specifications that anyone with Windows on their machine were free to download. You can't claim something's a secret if you show it to anyone who asks! You didn't have to pay for them, you didn't have to meet any real requirements...You had to click an agreement.
Now, while I am a huge supporter of contract rights (I even think shrink-wrap agreements should be legal, as long as you can read them before you are committed to the product), I don't buy that you can make people promise to not share or discuss information that you're willing to show to just about anyone who makes that promise. That's a logically void agreement.
So, to hell with Microsoft in this instance. Slashdot should fight them.
Ayn Rand herself had a nasty run-in with trying to use a word to mean something overprecisely different from the common conception and semantics of the word. She tried to use "selfishness" to describe the peaceful ethic of acting in a manner to benefit oneself alone, without making demands on others or allowing others to make demands on oneself. Of course, this choice of terminology fell flat in mainstream thought because of the far-longer accepted informal understanding of "selfishness" as a miserly practice of self-advancement that often involved undercutting others...
The moral of the story? The linguistic baggage and social context of words can be more important than their precise (and especially) technical meaning when you're trying to communicate.
But that pressure cannot be exerted without the premise of intellectual property.
A mistaken assumption. It's simple to posit a program that regularly opens up an encrypted network connection and checks in with a central server to make sure it's on the same system as its internal serial number says it should be on. If that check fails, it erases itself. And that's just assuming companies don't take this to the ultimate logical conclusion and abandon distributing software entirely, in favor of renting access to application servers. Simply removing intellectual property rights doesn't magically open up source.
And as for reverse-engineering, if the workings of a program are sufficiently obfuscated, "reverse-engineering" becomes pretty much "building your own competing program from scratch".
Neither can I, really. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Any restriction on what you can do with a program or work you possess removes certain freedoms of action. Copyright prevents me from making copies for free, if I abide by it. Copyleft prevents me from making copies without including accurate source, if I abide by it. My freedom to distribute works with either sets of conditions placed upon them is not absolute, regardless of what freedoms that gives to others. If one claims that intellectual property is an unreasonable concept, one has to consider all conditions any license imposes as equally unreasonable.
In that ethical view, the GPL is just as meaningless and ignorable as copyright. Therefore, for the GPL to exist and promote the open-source ethic, intellectual property must exist.
A terribly misinterpretive posting.
First of all, you assume a standard "murder and self-defense are distinct, elemental acts" moral stance. Quite unreasonable. Many genuinely non-violent people consider killing even in self-defense to be murder and morally impermissable, because the ending of life is, in their view, simply wrong, no matter the convenient justification given. This would appear to be most properly anagolous to the view that "Intellectual property and placing demands on people who make copies of your works are wrong". If one genuinely holds that view, instead of giving oneself the convenient out of "Oh, but forcing people to include the source is OK", one must discard the "GPL exception" - just as someone who is genuinely non-violent (as opposed to merely non-aggressive) discards the "self-defense exception".
By way of incidental explanation, I hold that self-defense is moral while murder is not, but I hold that killing is a morally neutral act considered outside of context. In the context of terminating another innocent person's life against his or her wishes, the killing is murder. In the context of ending the life of someone who has show no regard for my moral right to not be murdered, self-defense is moral because that person has removed him/herself from a moral context by committing aggression. This loses applicability when you're talking about copyright and GPL because neither is an aggression - you can choose whether you want to interact with copyrighted or copylefted material.
I'm rather puzzled by this point you and others are making. As I understand it, the GPL only exists because copyright exists, and without the existence of copyright there would be no need for "copyleft".
This seems doubtful to me. First of all, if the goal were simply to release free software without limitations on copying, it could simply be released as public domain, or without restrictions on duplication, alteration, or use. The existence of copyright doesn't prevent the dissemination of uncopyrighted material, otherwise there wouldn't be so many people publishing the King James Bible, as a perfect example of a work that has genuinely no license and no restrictions on distribution or alteration. So, I honestly can't see any legal requirement for the GPL.
No, the real purpose of the GPL is to enforce conditions on someone who distributes GPLed work, in order to encourage the ethic of opened, free source. The very premise that someone can set conditions that others must abide by with regards to something they create is the heart of intellectual property. It doesn't matter whether the conditions are "pay me if you make a copy" or "always include the current source with the copy", they're conditions.
Simply discarding the idea of intellectual property does not serve the purposes of the FSF. If anything, it sabotages them. Without any way to enforce the distribution of source, there's nothing to stop malicious versions of what happened with Nvidia. Entire proprietary operating systems could be based on GNU work, since the GPL would have no force. Further, without some sort of intellectual property system, corporations will lock up their code even more tightly, because the enhanced copy-prevention systems they'd have to put into software (since they'd have a greater number of people trying to crack them) would be difficult to implement if anyone outside the company can see the code.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to consider this answer unsatisfactory. The GPL isn't just an "anti-copyright" designed to remove the "immoral" restrictions on copying and use - there's no need to create a license to stop that in the current system. The GPL is a very different system from copyright, relying on the same moral principle of intellectual property that copyright does.
This is my personal view, but I consider both copyright and the GPL to be equally valid and equally deserving of respect. The conflict is when someone respects one and not the other.
Your scapegoating of corporations as the source for all evil in the world is unfortunate, if only because of the vulnerability it gives you.
I'll cheerfully agree that various corporations have supported and lobbied for many disgusting government actions. Some of these are relatively minor and fail, such as Ben & Jerry's attacking competitors for having tiny trace amounts of dioxins in the paper cartons used to wrap ice cream (and lobbying for tighter controls that would have harmed their competitors) until it became public that Ben & Jerry's ice cream itself had higher (but still harmless) levels of dioxin. Some are far more successful and broad of scope, such as the use of Echelon for espionage on behalf of some American corporations.
However, to adopt the mindset that corporations are the only interests governments act on, and that governments themselves lack interests, is to blind oneself to very genuine dangers. Governments routinely act to protect political, religious, social, racial, and even sexual power groups - and to harm their enemies. They also often act to serve the personal interests and advancement of office-holders or even employees of the government. On a broader level, governments are not robotic entities without their own interests. Governments are groups of people that have one very interesting thing in common - naked, ready power over other people. Governments and agencies within governments act to increase their power, preserve their funding, enhance their public image, and, above all, maintain control.
Your mistake is to see one impetus for government transgression and label that the target to fight. (I have to wonder if you've missed such things as the Communications Decency Amendment, or recent revitalization of the efforts to "child-proof" the Internet, which, considering how large the adult entertainment industry is, and how many rather large corporations have fingers in that pie, doesn't strike me as the handiwork of the Corporate Overlords.) If you want to protect your freedoms, you have to catch the threat at the source - the government. Corporations, churches, unions, political factions, and grass-roots organizations all have the ears of government. However, the fist - the laws, regulations, and programs - is that of the government, and is the only thing you can grab.
While I applaud the handling of this on both sides, this sort of thing shows a blindspot among a lot of people here.
A lot of people here seem comfortable, simultaneously, with two very contradictory ideas. On the one hand, there's the idea that someone who claims "copyright" on something, say music, has no real right to demand that people not copy or distribute their works in a manner against the wishes of that person. On the other hand, there's the idea that someone who releases something under the GPL has every right to demand that no one violate that license and copy or distribute that work in a manner (sans source) against his/her wishes.
There's a deep conflict between those ideas, and Slashdotters who adore copyleft and ignore copyright need to recognize that and somehow resolve it.
In other words, how can GNU be so holy if the little copyright "c" is meaningless? I'm curious as to thoughts.
We all know that government invasion of privacy is nothing to fear. Instead, we must protect ourselves from web telemarketers, the real threat!
People, get real. Corporations may piss us off from time to time, but nothing is as bad as a government out of control. You can go to great lengths to protect yourself from both corporate and government spying, but only governments have the power and the gall to demand that you reveal your secrets to them - or else.
And for the insanely gullible who buy the "it's only going to be used with a search warrant" and "if you have nothing to hide, you needn't be afraid" arguments, note that pretty much each and every government organization in the United States that has been authorized to conduct wiretapping has been caught making wiretaps illegally, often in huge numbers. (This, yet, is in a country with a legally recognized right to privacy!) Even if, by some miracle, this new office only conducts wiretaps based on warrants, it's been given the power to monitor every communication to and from any person in an organization. So, make sure you never are part of a church, company, political organization, or club that the authorities get suspicious about...
I had a conversation about this last night with friends, some of which have high-speed connections. Their general consensus was that they generally buy CDs of MP3s they gather, they think most people do such, and that enough people will choose to pay content-creators to allow creative industries to continue to exist. Unfortunately, they're a biased selection, as they are content-creators, and they'd hardly keep their jobs if they thought there was no hope of getting paid for them. I can only hope.
This is a strange conflation, but one a lot of people make (including such as Jon Katz). There is no philosophical connection between the Free Software/Open Source movement (if you merge them together for simplicity) and piracy of intellectual property. Free Software/Open Source are forms of "giftware", ie software created and released with few or no limitations, as the free choice of the creators. Piracy is the duplication and/or distribution of works in a manner outside the choice of the creator(s). Whether it's d/ling a few albums worth of MP3s you never plan to pay for, copying a game onto someone else's computer when that's outside the license, or distributing altered versions of GLPed programs without the new source, it's a violation of the terms under which the creator(s) released it to the public. In short, one is giving a gift, the other is theft.
When I refer to "freeloading", I mean specifically those who enjoy content that is released under a license requiring purchase without paying for it. This goes beyond even the simple act of violating the license of the creator. That content is produced at a cost, and released under terms designed to recoup those costs and even make a little money besides. That content wouldn't even be available in most cases without the money coming in. Therefore, those who don't pay for such content are parasites relying on the "rubes" who do pay for it. This does not apply to people using freely released software (though it would apply to someone who made software derivative of GPLed works without releasing the altered source - they would be freeloading off the work of GNU coders without abiding by their terms).
And, whether or not one agrees with the license a work of another is released under or likes the terms the creator got for its distribution (and short of fraud or someone putting a gun to the artist's head, the artist agrees to those terms), simple honor requires one to either abide by the license or avoid the work in question. If you don't like the RIAA, don't buy CDs produced by artists working with participating record companies - and don't freeload off someone who did buy those CDs. If you dislike the GPL, avoid GNU software, don't break its terms.
If honor doesn't suffice, simple self-interest should. If content creators can't release their content under terms (any terms) and expect anyone but a very few to abide by them, content creation as we know it, whether it's software, music, or anything else, will fade away to a minimum point far below what we enjoy now. No commercial software, no GNU software, no new CDs by anyone around the world...Or at least very little of any of those things, on very marginal budgets. Basically, we'll be down to hobby content. Some of that can be very good...but frankly, most of it is hobby quality now because no one is willing to pay for it. That won't change.
Anyway, that's my opinion on the matter. Thanks for presenting your stance intelligently, even if I disagree with it.
Considering that companies make real money offering less on their web pages, I think you're the one who's new to the medium.
You make some cogent points, actually, particularly in that you're at least willing to pay for some fraction of the music you listen to. I actually like the try-before-buying aspect of MP3s. But, unfortunately, it looks less and less like any significant number of people "try" instead of simply failing to "buy".
While I think MP3s provide a viable musical medium, I for one don't want our musical culture to devolve into MP3s of garage bands. I *like* listening to music produced by talented professional musicians on instruments above pawn-shop quality. Further, I really am starting to wonder if the freeloader culture that seems dominant on places like Slashdot leaves any room for more than a few rare people to make any money by distributing MP3s of their work. Maybe if artists had jumped on it early enough to legitimize it, but MP3 is tainted with the "underground" attitude and the freeloading ethic.
And no, I don't think that freely sharing my inexhaustible resources (or even exhaustible resources!) is wrong. However, the vast majority of MP3s out there have not been freely shared by their creating artists. They've been stolen.
Songs you "wouldn't buy", but for some reason keep in your archives, are just as much indefensible freeloading as the "immoral" section.
If you divorce the term 'libertarian' from any hint of meaning and use it to refer to the whiny, grasping segment of the population here who wants Microsoft broken up, all source code free by law, and no punishment for IP piracy, sure, I suppose so.