What's next? From a legal (and certainly slashdot-ethical) standpoint, Napster is still an indiscriminating transfer protocol, just like the rest of the Internet, right?
So, what's next? The internet backbone companies will make a deal with the RIAA to pay 2 cents per megabyte transfered?
Okay, that's sounds like a bit of a stretch, nobody would go for that. But let's say an author writes a program and doesn't intend it to be used primarily for copyright infringement, but it ends up being used widely for pirating MS Windows (eg. Hotline). Would it be right for the author to be forced to pay MS for every copy that's pirated over his/her service? No. Will they anyway? Probably.
So, what's the difference? Intention of the author? Perhaps, but that's still not much. If an author writes a tool and intends it to be used for evil purposes, but only 1% of its use is for piracy, will the offended party go after the author for forced payments? No. Will this settlement mean that companies will apply more indescriminate and random rules in deciding who to go after, because the public thinks that P2P's have bad vibes? Yes. --
I might search on Guinness and turn up a "-sucks" website, and then I might actually be curious and click on it, thereby depriving the real Guinness of my eyeballs. Again, I am not kidding. This is actually part of the reason the domains were taken away from their owner.
If this argument were taken just a teeny bit further, they could argue that when a user searches for "Guinness", the only pages that should show up are Guinness's own pages. No Guinness fan pages should show up. No parody sites. No fair use. --
Sonic Team seems to be pretty cool. They released Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Chu Chu Rocket. Phantasy Star will be an online multiplayer RPG game for the Dreamcast (awesome), coming out the begining of next year. --
Bluetooth is for PANs, not LANs. It's for devices with low memory and slow displays. Rule of thumb: Bluetooth is good for devices that use AAA batteries or less (base stations excepted, of course). --
There used to be a Beowulf project for PS2s going, but the mailing list died out. After a couple months, this post came across:
My impression was that sony itself put the damper on this
project. In order to do development, you would have had to buy a
20k development kit. In order to get the kit, you would need to sign
all sorts of licensing agreements which would severly limit the
solution space for wulfstation. In order to distribute anything
developed for wulfstation, you would have to get sony to manufacture
the media (with their proprietary content scrambling system) with
a minimum volume of 10,000 units.
Remember that sony is a media company and not really a
hardware company. Their hardware development is subservient
to their media distribution efforts. Wulfstation development runs
counter to the business goals of sony.
When I evaluated the risks and put the emotion engine on
a bang for buck graph with other product families, I got crossover
in early 2001. My scheduling showed wulfstation development not
paying off until late q3 2000 (old analysis). Hence, wulfstation
had a 4 month window before it was over taken by the normal
intel and amd solutions. I didn't consider speed improvements
based on SSE and 3D-now.
So, the choices were:
1) Fight the good fight, get sued, and end up on the back
side of the power curve.
2) Relax, develop other things, and end up in front of
the power curve.
Pretty easy, eh?
For straight out linux, I suppose the power curve doesn't matter so much. Though I don't know if there's anyone out there willing to spend $20k just for the geek factor of running linux on it.
--
If the context is "even when the customer demonstrates more clue than you, and cites evidence that the problem is not on his end, adamantly refuse to escalate and continue to blame the user", I've got a big problem.
Well, their goal is to get your problem solved as quickly as possible so they can minimize the number of customer support people they have to pay for, so I don't know why they would consciously decide on such a policy. --
DMCA only covers Copyright (dmCa), obviously. Not trade secrets, which is all I could think they could claim
DMCA requires a "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" be breached. I suppose if the guy hacked into a computer to get the info, that might count, but that doesn't seem to be the goal of the law (but I don't doubt that some lawyer could twist it into that). If he got it from an employee, then the employee information protection policy doesn't cut it.
Even if you encrypt everything, they can still do traffic analysis. Meaning that they still know a few things:
WHO you're talking to
WHEN you're talking to them
HOW MUCH data you're sending
Which can sometimes be just as/more revealing than the contents of the messages.
Though I suppose these could be smudged a little bit by sending random data to random people on random UDP ports. Or other ways (open proxies, but we know how much spammers like those).
And it's a real pain in the ass to make sure that your recipients have the proper asymetric encryption to be able to receive your encrypted messages. --
Somebody seems to be trying to moderate as badly as possible. Maybe this is funny, I dunno. Does metamod kill a person's mod points if they get 5 wrong?
I assume this is a rogue person because it'd be very hard to organize such a thing...?
Have all the sensitive data be saved by employees on network drives, that should greatly reduce physical data theft, but makes electronic data theft easier.
First and foremost use encryption. I use Win2k's Encrypted Filesystem and Bestcrypt...
Secondly, consider a desktop firewall. Consider a CEO that is on an Ethernet switch along with other employees on the same switched backbone. There is probably zero chance that...
Finally, I also "honeypot" my system. This is a little esoteric,...
Brilliant. The critical difference with the internet, as always, is that information is easily copiable. Preventing use of physical weapons is a lot easier than preventing use of program/information weapons. And the US government hasn't been able to get a good handle on physical weapons yet. --
I think the treaty is for something more along the lines of using a screwdriver to pry open someone else's covering.
They want to outlaw tools that are produced/distributed with the intent to commit a crime.
Which means that if some guy on the street is shouting "come get a fancy coat hanger! It's great for opening car doors!", that might be illegal under this treaty. But if someone else is advertising coat hangers for use on coats, then that person's act of selling hangers wouldn't be illegal.
Yeah, but should it be legal to leave a rocket launcher laying out in public view? Someone could walk by, pick it up, aim it at someone, and pull the trigger on an emotional whim.
Should it be legal to have software that's as easy to use?
Perhaps BUGTRAQ type exploits aren't quite as close to this, but what if there was a program that when run, would bring up a list of hospitals... the user selects a hospital and hits the "Okay" button... the software then uses its preprogrammed automation to find the power source for the hospital, hack into the power station, and turn the power off. Should such software be allowed to publicly propagate? --
The benefit is that you can use it for casual use... uses where you don't need to use the keyboard for more than a few keystrokes. (multitasking: good)
For example:
Skipping the current MP3 track
Writing a quick ICQ while watching TV
Alt-tabbing over to the slashdot homepage and reloading to see if there's a new story
Checking to see if your song is downloaded off of napster yet
Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law when committed intentionally and without right:
a) the production, sale, procurement for use, import, distribution or otherwise making available of:
1. a device, including a computer program, designed or adapted [specifically] [primarily] [particularly] for the purpose of committing any of the offences established in accordance with Article 2 - 5;
2. a computer password, access code, or similar data by which the whole or any part of a computer system is capable of being accessed
with intent that it be used for the purpose of committing the offences established in Articles 2 - 5;
b) the possession of an item referred to in paragraphs (a)(1) and (2) above, with intent that it be used for the purpose of committing the offenses established in Articles 2 - 5. A party may require by law that a number of such items be possessed before criminal liability attaches.
The last line of section A (intended use) might cover white hats, but perhaps not. It seems like that could be interpreted in serveral ways. --
For every field where offenses and defenses exist, there will be an arms race were each side temporarily gains the upper hand.
The speed of the arms race must be controlled.
If the arms race goes too fast, the result is anarchy. The faster the arms race, the higher the defense overhead for the common productive citizen becomes because they have to keep upgrading to the latest defense. The lower the defense overhead is, the smaller a business can be and still survive, which results in a greater diversity of goods and services.
If the arms race goes too slow, the result is tyranny by the government. To slow the arms race, the government must control the tools and people involved in the arms race. However, there will still be organized criminals who have the resources and stealth to advance the offenses. So the government is required to advance the defenses. This makes them invulnerable to overthrow by the people, which gives them ultimate control.
If the arms race goes at a medium pace, then it's the best situation for the common citizen. They have a moderate defensive overhead, yet are still able to overthrow the government if a majority of them organize their resources.
Okay, try this. Go to thomas.loc.gov. Search for "Children's Internet Protection Act" by phrase.
It looks like the act has been introduced several times into different bills, and each time it's faltered. The three requirements you gave appear in bill hr4600 which was introduced on June 8, but didn't go anywhere.
Then there's bill hr4577 (Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001), title VI, which seems to be the bill that was discussed in the earlier slashdot article and has the most/latest activity.
hr4577 has only the two criteria that I listed, which only calls for blocking things that are already illegal. (along with anything additional the library chooses to block, which I previously surmised was for the purpose of covering their butts)
I couldn't find your third requirement hidden within any currently active large appropriations bills. --
Actually, the proposed law was worded to get around this.
The law says that libraries and schools will be required to use software which blocks sexual images that are illegal already. These images can't be found in libraries on the shelves anyway... examples include child porn and images which fall under the legal definition of obscene.
If libraries block additional sites, then it's their choice (read: their problem) and have to publicly display their filtering policy.
Depending on your point of view, it's either a nice way to get around that problem because software is inherently fallible and libraries will have pressure on them to use the software that blocks the least amount of legal material... or it's a way to push the whole 1st ammendment thing off onto the libraries and conveniently ignore the fact that the federal government is indirectly forcing 1st ammendment violations. --
Well, 13 U.S.C. 9 is a law that requires the Census Bureau to not release personally identifiable information to ANYONE, including other parts of the government. If a member of the census violates this, they can go to jail for 5 years or pay $5000.
The Census Bureau is only allowed to release information in aggregate.
I believe the intent is to get the most accurate information possible by promising confidentiality, similar to drug surveys. Only in this case, it's not only a promise but a law. --
Exactly. I don't remember the author, but someone once said that invasions of privacy are more okay if it's a mutual invasion of privacy.
For instance, it's more acceptable if a society allows anyone to invade anyone else's privacy in any way... than it is if one person can invade anyone else's privacy in any way. --
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the intent of the story was to create humorous responses. America has been saturated with political-speak for the past month.
--
So, what's next? The internet backbone companies will make a deal with the RIAA to pay 2 cents per megabyte transfered?
Okay, that's sounds like a bit of a stretch, nobody would go for that. But let's say an author writes a program and doesn't intend it to be used primarily for copyright infringement, but it ends up being used widely for pirating MS Windows (eg. Hotline). Would it be right for the author to be forced to pay MS for every copy that's pirated over his/her service? No. Will they anyway? Probably.
So, what's the difference? Intention of the author? Perhaps, but that's still not much. If an author writes a tool and intends it to be used for evil purposes, but only 1% of its use is for piracy, will the offended party go after the author for forced payments? No. Will this settlement mean that companies will apply more indescriminate and random rules in deciding who to go after, because the public thinks that P2P's have bad vibes? Yes.
--
If this argument were taken just a teeny bit further, they could argue that when a user searches for "Guinness", the only pages that should show up are Guinness's own pages. No Guinness fan pages should show up. No parody sites. No fair use.
--
Does anyone have a link to this or similar stats?
--
Sonic Team seems to be pretty cool. They released Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Chu Chu Rocket. Phantasy Star will be an online multiplayer RPG game for the Dreamcast (awesome), coming out the begining of next year.
--
One point was left out of their table: Games.
--
Bluetooth is for PANs, not LANs. It's for devices with low memory and slow displays. Rule of thumb: Bluetooth is good for devices that use AAA batteries or less (base stations excepted, of course).
--
- My impression was that sony itself put the damper on this
project. In order to do development, you would have had to buy a
20k development kit. In order to get the kit, you would need to sign
all sorts of licensing agreements which would severly limit the
solution space for wulfstation. In order to distribute anything
developed for wulfstation, you would have to get sony to manufacture
the media (with their proprietary content scrambling system) with
a minimum volume of 10,000 units.
- So, the choices were:
For straight out linux, I suppose the power curve doesn't matter so much. Though I don't know if there's anyone out there willing to spend $20k just for the geek factor of running linux on it.Remember that sony is a media company and not really a hardware company. Their hardware development is subservient to their media distribution efforts. Wulfstation development runs counter to the business goals of sony.
When I evaluated the risks and put the emotion engine on a bang for buck graph with other product families, I got crossover in early 2001. My scheduling showed wulfstation development not paying off until late q3 2000 (old analysis). Hence, wulfstation had a 4 month window before it was over taken by the normal intel and amd solutions. I didn't consider speed improvements based on SSE and 3D-now.
1) Fight the good fight, get sued, and end up on the back side of the power curve.
2) Relax, develop other things, and end up in front of the power curve.
Pretty easy, eh?
--
Well, their goal is to get your problem solved as quickly as possible so they can minimize the number of customer support people they have to pay for, so I don't know why they would consciously decide on such a policy.
--
--
Okay. What makes this study any more credible than the several other reports that contradict it? Because JonKatz says it's right?
--
- WHO you're talking to
- WHEN you're talking to them
- HOW MUCH data you're sending
Which can sometimes be just as/more revealing than the contents of the messages.Though I suppose these could be smudged a little bit by sending random data to random people on random UDP ports. Or other ways (open proxies, but we know how much spammers like those).
And it's a real pain in the ass to make sure that your recipients have the proper asymetric encryption to be able to receive your encrypted messages.
--
I think he read too many "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a Beowulf cluster of those?!?" posts on slashdot.
--
I assume this is a rogue person because it'd be very hard to organize such a thing...?
Steps To Protect Oneself From Corporate Espionage? #1 - informative
Steps To Protect Oneself From Corporate Espionage? #2 - offtopic
Steps To Protect Oneself From Corporate Espionage? #7 - Insightful (I guess this one might be legit)
Not leaving the laptop lying around...?
kiku wa ittoki no haji kikanu wa matsudai no haji
Steps To Protect Oneself From Corporate Espionage? #26 - troll
Secondly, consider a desktop firewall. Consider a CEO that is on an Ethernet switch along with other employees on the same switched backbone. There is probably zero chance that ...
Finally, I also "honeypot" my system. This is a little esoteric, ...
Steps To Protect Oneself From Corporate Espionage? #34 - informative
--
Brilliant. The critical difference with the internet, as always, is that information is easily copiable. Preventing use of physical weapons is a lot easier than preventing use of program/information weapons. And the US government hasn't been able to get a good handle on physical weapons yet.
--
They want to outlaw tools that are produced/distributed with the intent to commit a crime.
Which means that if some guy on the street is shouting "come get a fancy coat hanger! It's great for opening car doors!", that might be illegal under this treaty. But if someone else is advertising coat hangers for use on coats, then that person's act of selling hangers wouldn't be illegal.
Or something dumb like that.
--
Yeah, but should it be legal to leave a rocket launcher laying out in public view? Someone could walk by, pick it up, aim it at someone, and pull the trigger on an emotional whim.
Should it be legal to have software that's as easy to use?
Perhaps BUGTRAQ type exploits aren't quite as close to this, but what if there was a program that when run, would bring up a list of hospitals... the user selects a hospital and hits the "Okay" button... the software then uses its preprogrammed automation to find the power source for the hospital, hack into the power station, and turn the power off. Should such software be allowed to publicly propagate?
--
For example:
--
- Article 6 - Illegal Devices
- a) the production, sale, procurement for use, import, distribution or otherwise making available of:
1. a device, including a computer program, designed or adapted [specifically] [primarily] [particularly] for the purpose of committing any of the offences established in accordance with Article 2 - 5;
The last line of section A (intended use) might cover white hats, but perhaps not. It seems like that could be interpreted in serveral ways.Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law when committed intentionally and without right:
2. a computer password, access code, or similar data by which the whole or any part of a computer system is capable of being accessed
with intent that it be used for the purpose of committing the offences established in Articles 2 - 5;
b) the possession of an item referred to in paragraphs (a)(1) and (2) above, with intent that it be used for the purpose of committing the offenses established in Articles 2 - 5. A party may require by law that a number of such items be possessed before criminal liability attaches.
--
The speed of the arms race must be controlled.
--
It looks like the act has been introduced several times into different bills, and each time it's faltered. The three requirements you gave appear in bill hr4600 which was introduced on June 8, but didn't go anywhere.
Then there's bill hr4577 (Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001), title VI, which seems to be the bill that was discussed in the earlier slashdot article and has the most/latest activity.
hr4577 has only the two criteria that I listed, which only calls for blocking things that are already illegal. (along with anything additional the library chooses to block, which I previously surmised was for the purpose of covering their butts)
I couldn't find your third requirement hidden within any currently active large appropriations bills.
--
The law says that libraries and schools will be required to use software which blocks sexual images that are illegal already. These images can't be found in libraries on the shelves anyway... examples include child porn and images which fall under the legal definition of obscene.
If libraries block additional sites, then it's their choice (read: their problem) and have to publicly display their filtering policy.
Depending on your point of view, it's either a nice way to get around that problem because software is inherently fallible and libraries will have pressure on them to use the software that blocks the least amount of legal material... or it's a way to push the whole 1st ammendment thing off onto the libraries and conveniently ignore the fact that the federal government is indirectly forcing 1st ammendment violations.
--
And the Census Bureau will be privatized, meaning that some corporation can make any deals they want.
--
The Census Bureau is only allowed to release information in aggregate.
I believe the intent is to get the most accurate information possible by promising confidentiality, similar to drug surveys. Only in this case, it's not only a promise but a law.
--
For instance, it's more acceptable if a society allows anyone to invade anyone else's privacy in any way... than it is if one person can invade anyone else's privacy in any way.
--