I was quite interested to see if software reading a book was legally a performance or not - it is a bit of a gray area. I guess now we won't know.
I'm not a lawyer, but copyright law is one of my Geek-subjects. This is really not a gray area. Amazon did NOT have to disable text-to-speech.
I think it's clear NewYorkCountryLawyer agrees, though his post wasn't explicit. He called Amazon's move "abhorrent from a copyright law perspective", and is calling the Author's Guild claims an other-than-legitimate attempt to extort money.
To simplify, there are basically three rights in copyright. (The law technically lists six, but some can be lumped together leaving just three basic concepts). The creation of copies, the distribution of copies, and public performance. Those are the only three exclusive rights that the copyright holder has to license out. Those are the only three things you need a license for (there's Fair Use and other exceptions where you CAN do those three things without a license, but that's a big complex subject).
Loaning or reselling the copy you bought is not an infringement of distribution. A performance of the work for yourself, for friends, for family, for other normal social contacts, that is a private performance, not a public performance. You do not need any license for private performance.
Amazon is licensed to create and distribute copies. The person who buys that copy becomes the owner of that particular physical copy. As the owner of that copy, you can do anything you likes with it except (1) you cannot creating new infringing copies (2) you cannot engaging in infringing distribution, and (3) you cannot do infringing public performances.
Many people think when you buy a copyrighted work, you are getting some sort of license with it. That is rarely true. When you buy something in a store, you almost never get any license to make and distribute new copies, and almost never get any license for public performance. When you buy something as an ordinary shopper, you almost never get any license at all. You do not need any license at all in normal use.
When you buy a paper book you can look at it and read it because you own it, without any license at all. When you buy a record you can play on a record player because you own it, without any license at all. When you buy a videocassette you can play it in a VCR because you own it, without any license at all. In fact when you buy software, you do NOT need any license at all to install and run that software. US law explicitly states installing and running software does not require any license. European law says installing and running software does not require any license. Most or all other countries' laws say the same thing. Copyright law does not require you to agree to an EULA. You can decline an EULA and it its not infringement to install and run that software. Companies may attempt other legal complexities trying to pin an EULA on you, but they have nothing to do with copyright. Most tactics trying to pin an EULA on you would be equally valid (or equally invalid) as selling you a tomato with an EULA.
If you buy a copyrighted book, copyright law does not care whether you display it on the screen as text, or if you display it on a mechanical board as braille, or if you display with a speaker as synthesized-word sound, or if you use some weird alien interface to display it with tastes or smells.
I am not aware of any law that allows copying a game.
US Code Title 17 Section 107 covers all forms of copyrighted works, and states that it is not an infringement of copyright to make Fair Use copies. It includes a non-exhaustive list of examples of where unauthorized copies are absolutely legal.
US Code Title 17 Section 117 explicitly addresses software, and it explicitly affirms the legality of backup copies.
Note that the second law is redundant. Backup copies clearly fall under Fair Use.
Note that in fact the first law, section 107, is itself redundant. It doesn't actually do anything. In fact the congressional record when it was passed explicitly notes that section is not intended to do anything. The congressional record explicitly says that section 106 is merely intended to reflect Fair Use as already established by the courts, and that it is not intended to enlarge nor diminish Fair Use at all.
More than a hundred years prior to section 107 being added, the US Supreme Court issued a number of rulings establishing Fair Use. The Supreme Court ruling that Copyright law itself would be unconstitutional and struck down as invalid if it did not permit Fair Use.
So there are TWO laws allowing it, where in fact it is allowed even with ZERO laws allowing it.
It seems they both [copy protection and DRM] achieve the same goal
Well yeah, sure. Security guards and chopping people's hands off as they enter my store both have the same GOAL of preventing shoplifting. Just because the GOALS are the same does not make them equal, does not make them equally reasonable, does not even make them both SANE.
Copy protection makes copying a pain in the ass to do. DRM IMPRISONS innocent people who give other innocent people instructions on how to do perfectly legal things. That is how the DRM law is written, it literally imprisons innocent people who give other innocent people instructions on how to do perfectly legal things. It sounds absurd because it is absurd. The GOAL is to keep people from getting instructions on how to make and use infringing copies. The law puts you in prison for giving people instructions, period. If you do not infringe, if you give instructions to someone in order to do something completely legal, you go to prison because those instructions COULD be helpful for making and using an infringing copy.
I give you instructions on how to use chopsticks, you use those chopsticks to eat your food, the idiotic DRM law puts me in prison because my chopsticks-instructions COULD be used to reach through the hole in a DRM package and eat food you didn't pay for.
The GOAL may be the same, but the method is completely different. It is wrong and insane and it is harmful.
In summary, "Copy Protection" prevented you from making unauthorized "copies" of the software.
No, "Copy Protection" make it a pain in the ass to make copies - both 100% legal copies and infringing copies.
DRM lets you make all the copies you like - both 100% legal copies and infringing copies - but makes it pain in the ass to use them. And DRM putts you in prison if you give someone instructions on how to do it.
Copy protection is about making infringement difficult. DRM isn't about infringement at all. DRM is about putting NON-infringing people in prison.
Yeah, that's how the DMCA is set up. If you crack DRM and make an infringing copy you have NOT violated the DMCA. That's 100% legal, aside from the fact that you committed infringement under standard OLD copyright law. What the DMCA criminalizes is someone who WRITES INSTRUCTIONS and gives that information to other people - especially if you write those instructions in computer-interpretable-language. The DMCA criminalizes certain SPEECH, even if that speaker has never copied anything at all. Even if that speaker has never come within a hundred miles of any copyrighted content at all.
That is the dumbest fucking thing I have read all week.
Greetings. I'm with the Slashdot Welcoming Committee. You should sign up for a username, that way you can get the full Slashdot Experience on your second visit with us.
> the majority of the stuff you can get your hands on by using the services of The Pirate Bay is actually legal to share.(Don't believe me? Check for yourselves. Pick a bunch of random.torrent files and analyze what content they describe...)
I just checked the top few movies in their top 100.
Are you nutz? Do you WANT to trigger the Second Great Depression?
Imagine what would happen to the economy if we suddenly threw three-quarters-of-million law enforcement people out of work because no one was breaking any laws anymore.
the idea - that if there is a natural explanation, then there cannot be any room for God.
In several years on here participating in almost every evolution article that comes up here on Slashdot I only ever recall a single person on the evolution side directly asserting such a thing, and I personally smacked them down for it. They replied within a matter of hours profusely apologizing for for their careless misstatement. Chuckle.
Maybe it's what Christians hear, in any case.
I'd like to try to explain what I think the actual situation is, and why the way things sound may lead people to certain impressions.
I think most of the reality of this debate can be covered by listing the cast of players.
The largest group are the people in the middle. The bulk of the general public. People who haven't particularly looked into the argument and don't really care that strongly about it. They may have an opinion one way or the other, but it's often mostly based on who they listen to and choose to trust. The mostly silent majority. These people have little to do with how the debate sounds. It's the motivated activists on the ends who do the arguing. The breakdown here is nearly all Christian, plus the few percent of the population who are atheist. The atheists are pretty well all on the evolution side. Christians in the US are split almost equally pro-evolution and anti-evolution, see this article with this chart. (The population is such a high percentage Christian that the non-Christians in the sample can't budge it more than a few percent in either direction.) And looking over that chart and considering the overwhelmingly Christian populations in other western nations, it is mathematically required that the Majority of Christians globally are evolutionists.
Then there are the professional biologists. They also aren't often the ones directly engaging in the debates on Slashdot and similar places. Scientists have an abnormally high atheist percentage, but they are still split in the ballpark of 50%-50% between Christian and atheist. Professional biologists are split roughly 700-to-1 in favor of evolution. About 99.85% accept evolution and about 0.15% reject it. Even if you assume all the atheists are on the evolution side and throw out their half of the votes, mathematically that means 0.3% of Christian biologists reject evolution and 99.7% of Christian biologists being on the evolution side. Rounded to the nearest full percentage point, thats 100% of Christians biologists accept evolution.
Now lets get to the two sides actually doing almost all of the loud arguing. The two sides framing the debate, and responsible for what people "hear".
On one side are religious fundamentalists. Mostly strict six day Genesis literalists. And in standard fundamentalist style they take the one-true-religion and one-true-God thing to mind bending extremes. The literal six day Genesis god is the One True God and is the Only Possible God. Anyone or anything that denies literal six day Genesisism denies the Only Possible God, and therefore equals atheism. They have the One True religion, they have the One True Christianity. They are Christians following Christianity, and if you don't follow their flavor of fundamentalism then you aren't following Christianity and you're not truly Christian.
Evolution conflicts with literal six day Genesisism, anyone or anything saying (their) God doesn't exist equals atheism. In their view the One And Only God is being attacked. In their view the One And Only Christianity is being attacked. The way they speak they make it sound like they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians. As far as they are concerned they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians - because in their mind their fundamentalist brand of Christianity *is* all of Christianity and in their mind *they* *are* all o
logic should say that only the unimmunized are ever at risk, and that the immunized are completely safe regardless
Your logic is wrong on many counts. Just off the top of my head I can list at least SEVEN reasons unimmunized people present a genuine social danger.
(1) Sometimes the immune system fails to actually establish immunity. Just as there are rare cases of someone contracting the same disease twice, an immunized person does have a low chance of catching the disease "again" when exposed to the real live dangerous virus/bacteria.
(2) The more contact the disease has across the immunized-unimmunized population interface the more opportunity the disease has to evolve its way around that immunization defense and place EVERYONE at risk of a new immunization-resistant epidemic.
(3) People who are immuno-compromised due to some other medical condition will be vulnerable despite their immunizations. In fact this vastly MULTIPLIES the evolution issue mentioned above. Someone who has been immunized but has a weakened immune response is the most dangerous person to infect. That person will be a breeding ground for the disease and their immune system to apply a constant intense evolutionary pressure on the disease to hide or escape from that immunization-preprogrammed attack.
(4) Some people may have been unable to receive their full course of immunizations due to allergies or other medical issues.
(5) Some people have NO IDEA that their parents denied them immunizations and have NO IDEA that their parents & you have effectively conspired to put them in fatal danger.
(6) Infants and toddlers have not yet had a full course of immunizations, or have had none at all yet.
(7) You not only present a direct threat of infecting the infants and other vulnerable groups listed above, there is also a chance you may seed an initial infection in an immunized person who may become a carrier during the time it takes their immune system to spot that tiny initial infection and ramp up the defense to eradicate it.
I'm sure there's more than just those seven. I have a fairly good hobbyist level knowledge of biology and science in general, but I am far from an expert on diseases and transmission and all of the ways that unimmunized people present a threat.
In each and every case the percentage of immunized people plays a critical role in the overall threat to everyone. A small increase in the percentage of unimmunized persons can have an exponential impact on the number of infections. If there are very few unimmunized people then they may only infect zero or one or two other people before the infection chain is cut off by the surrounding immune population. With just a small increase in vulnerable people you multiply the chance that the one or two people you infect will themselves bump into someone vulnerable, and it multiplies the chance those new infected people will come in contact with even further vulnerable people. A change of just 1% can be the difference between an isolated infection that fizzles and dies vs an ongoing wildfire chain, not just exposing vulnerable people by massively repeatedly exposing immunized people who are resistant to the disease but who can and will contract it under repeated or intense exposure. Every 1% change in immunization levels presents a real level of increased danger and costs to the overall population. We eradicated the extremely deadly disease smallpox by hitting a high enough immunization percentage globally to break the transmission chains and for the last infections to burn out their vulnerable populations. We've almost wiped out several other diseases, but for inadequate immunization levels in other countries. When such diseases are carried into the country, each unimmunized person multiplies the potential chain of infection not just to vulnerable people but multiplies the danger to people who are mostly but imperfectly protected by their immunization shots.
I am in general on of the more vocal proponents of
Any single prediction doesn't amount to much, but evolution has made endless predictions that have turned out correct.
For example dinosaur-bird intermediate forms were predicted well before the discovery of feathered dinosaur fossils and archaeopteryx and other fossils. (Archaeopteryx has feathers and wings, but has dinosaur claws at the ends of it's arms and dinosaur head/jaw/teeth and dinosaur feet and dinosaur spine and dinosaur breastbone and on an on and on - in almost every characteristic it FAILS to have any of the defining traits of birds other than having feathers and wings. It's a dinosaur with feathers & wings, and otherwise completely unbirdlike.)
Evolution's primary aspect and primary sweeping prediction is the tree of common descent. Thousands if not millions of DNA analyses have been done across countless species, and every single one of them confirms the evolutionary tree of common descent relationship between species with the same Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt certainty that court room DNA analysis can and does prove the family tree descent relationships between people Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt. Way above and beyond the "convict someone of rape and murder and fry them in the electric chair" level of proof.
And then there's my personal favorite. There is a significant chunk of the tree of life in phylum foraminifera where we have an absolutely continuous and complete fossil record spanning thousands of species over a hundred million plus years. Not merely a complete sequence of every transitional species, but a hyper-continuous record of the evolution of entire populations and their transitional forms ALONG each individual species split. For most living things it is extremely rare and random for it to leave a fossil at all, and even if it does leave a fossil it is extremely rare and random for us to happen to dig it up. Foraminifera are a special and perfect case because both of those problems vanish. Foraminifera are really really tiny animals that live in the ocean by the trillions, and every single day millions and millions of them die and continuously rain down on the deep cold dark inert sea floor. They have mineral skeletons called tests, and these tests become ideal fossils continuously laid down and continuously layered in the deep cold dark inert sediment slowly accumulating on the sea floor. A limitless supply of perfectly layered perfectly preserved fossils. In the 1970's oil crunch we came up with new deep sea drilling technology to explore for oil, exploration that started bringing up long sediment drill cores from the sea floor. Drill cores that were incidentally loaded with these tiny foraminifera fossils by the thousands.
This one chunk of the fossil record alone is enough to absolutely prove the basic fact of evolution. An absolutely perfect continuous complete record showing exactly how populations can and repeatedly did diversify into new species. A perfect record spanning thousands of species, and tracing diverse living species back to their common ancestor.
It is as much absolute proof as a perfect complete fossil record tracing whales and humans and dogs and cats and other animals back to their mammal common ancestor, except tiny foram animals living in the ocean are not nearly as glamorous and well known as mammal and dinosaur fossils. The only "problem" is that your typical Joe The Plumber doesn't know a foram from a hole in the wall. But the fact that most people have never heard of these tiny animals living in the ocean does not diminish the scientific significance of these fossils. They show with absolute proof that a significant chunk of life on earth did evolve exactly as evolution claims, and by any sane reasonable standard it shows that the rest of the fossil record really is the random spotty gappy record of a continuous evolutionary tree that it appears to be and that scientists say it is. That fossil find really are random picks dicovered out of continuous lines of transitional forms.
And this perfect continuous complete chunk of fossil record shows exactly what evolution predicts. It shows a common ancestor branching and diversifying in a tree of new species, linking together diverse living species together is a single family tree of common descent.
the discussion here has again devolved into a "gee, Christians sure are stupid" type debate
Perhaps it is a bit of an issue of intent and perception. I personally do not accuse all Christians of being stupid. When I personally make comments in that direction, my intended target are specifically the subgroup borderline-delusional-fundies-who-happen-to-call-themselves-Christian. Maybe I'm projecting my own expectations, but it seems to me that very very few people in these debates are intending to blanket-slander all Christians. It seems to me that the anger and insults are meant to be directed to particular problem people within the broader Christian community.
certain principle ideas that God cannot be behind it all
Whoa, waitaminute there.
Science does not and cannot say anything either way about God. As far as I'm aware virtually no one has claimed that God cannot be behind it all. That is almost exclusively a Creationist straw man trying to falsely paint evolution as equaling atheism.
The science of optics does not mention God, just as evolution does not mention God. There is no remotely reasonable scientific doubt that optics is correct, just as there is no remotely reasonable scientific doubt that evolution is correct.
The science of optics is correct. If God exists, then optics is God's chosen mechanism for creating rainbows.
The science of evolution is correct. If God exists, then evolution is God's chosen mechanism for creating the diversity of life on earth.
Obviously atheist scientists don't believe the "If God exists..." part actually kicks in, but both theist and atheist biologists will overwhelmingly agree with it. That if God exists, then God is behind evolution in the same way that God is behind rainbows - that both optics and evolution accurately describe the "hows" of the universe as God chose to run things.
It's unfortunate that your science teacher couldn't/wouldn't provide background to back up evolution, but a vast range of evidence really does exist to back it up. I'll copy/paste from one of my own posts a brief summary of my favorite chunk of evidence, and I'll mention two others without details, which I can cover if you want.
Foraminifera are a phylum of really tiny aquatic animals. They live on the oceans by the trillions, and they have mineral skeletons called tests. Millions of them die every day and their tests continuously rain down on the deep dark cold inert sea floor as ideal fossils. They are continuously layered in the accumulating sea floor sediment. In the 1970's we developed new technology for deep sea oil exploration, bringing up long sediment cores from the seabed. Sediment cores that were incidentally loaded with a limitless supply of these fossils. It's an evolutionary scientist's wet dream treasure trove. A perfectly continuous and complete record spanning thousands of species over more than a hundred million years. Not merely a complete sequence of transitional species, but vast samples of entire populations continuously along individual species transitions, tracing diverse modern species back to their common ancestor. Scientists are have been examining how long each individual speciation took to occur, and examining exactly how entire populations evolved during individual speciation events.
A particularly interesting thing is that they have been studying is how and why the rate of speciation increases after each mass extinction event. In short, after an extinction event there is less competition between species. This allows the survival of more borderline-fitness high-diversity outliers speeding the diversification of the species into other ecological niches that are now vacant and exploitable, and these variants can then specialize and optimize to this new ecological niche and speciate.
The only "problem" is that most foraminifera are barely visible without a magnifying glass. They are tiny aquatic animals that most people have never heard of. Not nearly as glamorous as mammal or dinosaur fossils. It's one of the most powerful proofs of evolution, and it all flies under the radar of public discussion.
There's also DNA analysis, and it established evolution's family tree relationships between species with the same sort of beyond-any-reasonable-doubt level of proof, as courtroom DNA analysis establishes the family tree relationships between people. It proves that either that evolution is true, or that something functionally indistinguishable from evolution is true. If the "copying" of DNA between species was done by a "common designer", than that designer strictly did his work in a manner functionally indistinguishable from evolution.
There's also the fact that the process of evolution works - it is a successful applied science. You can run evolution on digital DNA in a computer, evolving that digital DNA over generations of reproduction mutation and selection. I happen to be a programmer and I've personally dabbled in such experiments and witnessed first hand the power of evolution to create complexity, new useful information, and solve problems. In fact evolution is so powerful at creating certain kinds of information and solving certain kinds of problems that more than half of all Fortune 500 companies use applied digital evolution somewhere or other in their business.
The first two items I listed demonstrate the historical accuracy of evolution, and the third proves that the evolution process can and does work creating new information and complexity. There's a lot more evidence of various sorts, but those are the three I generally cite.
it won't work becasue... they will say where is the transitional fossil between this and the precious fossil.
We've got them beat even there.
Foraminifera are a phylum of really tiny aquatic animals. They live on the oceans by the trillions, and they have mineral skeletons called tests. Millions of them die every day and their tests continuously rain down on the deep dark cold inert sea floor as ideal fossils. They are continuously layered in the accumulating sea floor sediment. In the 1970's we developed new technology for deep sea oil exploration, bringing up long sediment cores from the seabed. Sediment cores that were incidentally loaded with a limitless supply of these fossils. It's an evolutionary scientist's wet dream treasure trove. A perfectly continuous and complete record spanning thousands of species over more than a hundred million years. Not merely a complete sequence of transitional species, but vast samples of entire populations continuously along individual species transitions, tracing diverse modern species back to their common ancestor. Scientists are have been examining how long each individual speciation took to occur, and examining exactly how entire populations evolved during individual speciation events.
A particularly interesting thing is that they have been studying is how and why the rate of speciation increases after each mass extinction event. In short, after an extinction event there is less competition between species. This allows the survival of more borderline-fitness high-diversity outliers speeding the diversification of the species into other ecological niches that are now vacant and exploitable, and these variants can then specialize and optimize to this new ecological niche and speciate.
The only "problem" is that most foraminifera are barely visible without a magnifying glass. They are tiny aquatic animals that most people have never heard of. Not nearly as glamorous as mammal or dinosaur fossils. It's one of the most powerful proofs of evolution, and it all flies under the radar of public discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, becase speling iz teh magor geek-card point looser.
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I was quite interested to see if software reading a book was legally a performance or not - it is a bit of a gray area. I guess now we won't know.
I'm not a lawyer, but copyright law is one of my Geek-subjects. This is really not a gray area. Amazon did NOT have to disable text-to-speech.
I think it's clear NewYorkCountryLawyer agrees, though his post wasn't explicit. He called Amazon's move "abhorrent from a copyright law perspective", and is calling the Author's Guild claims an other-than-legitimate attempt to extort money.
To simplify, there are basically three rights in copyright. (The law technically lists six, but some can be lumped together leaving just three basic concepts). The creation of copies, the distribution of copies, and public performance. Those are the only three exclusive rights that the copyright holder has to license out. Those are the only three things you need a license for (there's Fair Use and other exceptions where you CAN do those three things without a license, but that's a big complex subject).
Loaning or reselling the copy you bought is not an infringement of distribution.
A performance of the work for yourself, for friends, for family, for other normal social contacts, that is a private performance, not a public performance. You do not need any license for private performance.
Amazon is licensed to create and distribute copies. The person who buys that copy becomes the owner of that particular physical copy. As the owner of that copy, you can do anything you likes with it except (1) you cannot creating new infringing copies (2) you cannot engaging in infringing distribution, and (3) you cannot do infringing public performances.
Many people think when you buy a copyrighted work, you are getting some sort of license with it. That is rarely true. When you buy something in a store, you almost never get any license to make and distribute new copies, and almost never get any license for public performance. When you buy something as an ordinary shopper, you almost never get any license at all. You do not need any license at all in normal use.
When you buy a paper book you can look at it and read it because you own it, without any license at all.
When you buy a record you can play on a record player because you own it, without any license at all.
When you buy a videocassette you can play it in a VCR because you own it, without any license at all.
In fact when you buy software, you do NOT need any license at all to install and run that software. US law explicitly states installing and running software does not require any license. European law says installing and running software does not require any license. Most or all other countries' laws say the same thing. Copyright law does not require you to agree to an EULA. You can decline an EULA and it its not infringement to install and run that software. Companies may attempt other legal complexities trying to pin an EULA on you, but they have nothing to do with copyright. Most tactics trying to pin an EULA on you would be equally valid (or equally invalid) as selling you a tomato with an EULA.
If you buy a copyrighted book, copyright law does not care whether you display it on the screen as text, or if you display it on a mechanical board as braille, or if you display with a speaker as synthesized-word sound, or if you use some weird alien interface to display it with tastes or smells.
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Yes :)
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Yes. Consider the educational value!
Call it Operation Footbullet.
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I am not aware of any law that allows copying a game.
US Code Title 17 Section 107 covers all forms of copyrighted works, and states that it is not an infringement of copyright to make Fair Use copies. It includes a non-exhaustive list of examples of where unauthorized copies are absolutely legal.
US Code Title 17 Section 117 explicitly addresses software, and it explicitly affirms the legality of backup copies.
Note that the second law is redundant. Backup copies clearly fall under Fair Use.
Note that in fact the first law, section 107, is itself redundant. It doesn't actually do anything. In fact the congressional record when it was passed explicitly notes that section is not intended to do anything. The congressional record explicitly says that section 106 is merely intended to reflect Fair Use as already established by the courts, and that it is not intended to enlarge nor diminish Fair Use at all.
More than a hundred years prior to section 107 being added, the US Supreme Court issued a number of rulings establishing Fair Use. The Supreme Court ruling that Copyright law itself would be unconstitutional and struck down as invalid if it did not permit Fair Use.
So there are TWO laws allowing it, where in fact it is allowed even with ZERO laws allowing it.
It seems they both [copy protection and DRM] achieve the same goal
Well yeah, sure.
Security guards and chopping people's hands off as they enter my store both have the same GOAL of preventing shoplifting. Just because the GOALS are the same does not make them equal, does not make them equally reasonable, does not even make them both SANE.
Copy protection makes copying a pain in the ass to do.
DRM IMPRISONS innocent people who give other innocent people instructions on how to do perfectly legal things. That is how the DRM law is written, it literally imprisons innocent people who give other innocent people instructions on how to do perfectly legal things. It sounds absurd because it is absurd. The GOAL is to keep people from getting instructions on how to make and use infringing copies. The law puts you in prison for giving people instructions, period. If you do not infringe, if you give instructions to someone in order to do something completely legal, you go to prison because those instructions COULD be helpful for making and using an infringing copy.
I give you instructions on how to use chopsticks, you use those chopsticks to eat your food, the idiotic DRM law puts me in prison because my chopsticks-instructions COULD be used to reach through the hole in a DRM package and eat food you didn't pay for.
The GOAL may be the same, but the method is completely different. It is wrong and insane and it is harmful.
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Really good post, except for one thing:
In summary, "Copy Protection" prevented you from making unauthorized "copies" of the software.
No, "Copy Protection" make it a pain in the ass to make copies - both 100% legal copies and infringing copies.
DRM lets you make all the copies you like - both 100% legal copies and infringing copies - but makes it pain in the ass to use them. And DRM putts you in prison if you give someone instructions on how to do it.
Copy protection is about making infringement difficult.
DRM isn't about infringement at all. DRM is about putting NON-infringing people in prison.
Yeah, that's how the DMCA is set up. If you crack DRM and make an infringing copy you have NOT violated the DMCA. That's 100% legal, aside from the fact that you committed infringement under standard OLD copyright law. What the DMCA criminalizes is someone who WRITES INSTRUCTIONS and gives that information to other people - especially if you write those instructions in computer-interpretable-language. The DMCA criminalizes certain SPEECH, even if that speaker has never copied anything at all. Even if that speaker has never come within a hundred miles of any copyrighted content at all.
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Which is not a DRM break, it is an exploit of the last mile problem.
Oh
My
God!
That's it! That's how to beat the hackers! A DRM that exploits a last mile problem!
There are people who can easily walk a mile, and there are people who can easily crack any DRM, but there's no one who can walk a mile AND crack DRM!
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That is the dumbest fucking thing I have read all week.
Greetings. I'm with the Slashdot Welcoming Committee.
You should sign up for a username, that way you can get the full Slashdot Experience on your second visit with us.
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And here the cops and the judges are usually kinfolk
Yeah, the judge is the cop's father,
or he's the cop's brother,
or more likely both.
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pretty soon the only thing you'll be able to post on the internet will be cat pictures.
I can haz internet?
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> the majority of the stuff you can get your hands on by using the services of The Pirate Bay is actually legal to share.(Don't believe me? Check for yourselves. Pick a bunch of random .torrent files and analyze what content they describe...)
I just checked the top few movies in their top 100.
Google search define:random
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Are they going to block all IRC access as well?
It's mostly kiddyporn there, rather than music.
So blocking IRC is a lower priority.
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That's like opting in to unprotected anal sex and then freaking out at the post-coital cuddling.
Sounds like my ex girlfriend.
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I can just picture 2000+ years from now people arguing over the location of the lost city of Metropolis.
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Are you nutz? Do you WANT to trigger the Second Great Depression?
Imagine what would happen to the economy if we suddenly threw three-quarters-of-million law enforcement people out of work because no one was breaking any laws anymore.
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For starters, don't post anywhere on this article.
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MAC addresses, which can easily be forged and sometimes are not even unique.
Well duuuuh!
That just means we need another law to protect the children. One making forged or non-unique MAC addresses illegal.
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the idea - that if there is a natural explanation, then there cannot be any room for God.
In several years on here participating in almost every evolution article that comes up here on Slashdot I only ever recall a single person on the evolution side directly asserting such a thing, and I personally smacked them down for it. They replied within a matter of hours profusely apologizing for for their careless misstatement. Chuckle.
Maybe it's what Christians hear, in any case.
I'd like to try to explain what I think the actual situation is, and why the way things sound may lead people to certain impressions.
I think most of the reality of this debate can be covered by listing the cast of players.
The largest group are the people in the middle. The bulk of the general public. People who haven't particularly looked into the argument and don't really care that strongly about it. They may have an opinion one way or the other, but it's often mostly based on who they listen to and choose to trust. The mostly silent majority. These people have little to do with how the debate sounds. It's the motivated activists on the ends who do the arguing. The breakdown here is nearly all Christian, plus the few percent of the population who are atheist. The atheists are pretty well all on the evolution side. Christians in the US are split almost equally pro-evolution and anti-evolution, see this article with this chart. (The population is such a high percentage Christian that the non-Christians in the sample can't budge it more than a few percent in either direction.) And looking over that chart and considering the overwhelmingly Christian populations in other western nations, it is mathematically required that the Majority of Christians globally are evolutionists.
Then there are the professional biologists. They also aren't often the ones directly engaging in the debates on Slashdot and similar places. Scientists have an abnormally high atheist percentage, but they are still split in the ballpark of 50%-50% between Christian and atheist. Professional biologists are split roughly 700-to-1 in favor of evolution. About 99.85% accept evolution and about 0.15% reject it. Even if you assume all the atheists are on the evolution side and throw out their half of the votes, mathematically that means 0.3% of Christian biologists reject evolution and 99.7% of Christian biologists being on the evolution side. Rounded to the nearest full percentage point, thats 100% of Christians biologists accept evolution.
Now lets get to the two sides actually doing almost all of the loud arguing. The two sides framing the debate, and responsible for what people "hear".
On one side are religious fundamentalists. Mostly strict six day Genesis literalists. And in standard fundamentalist style they take the one-true-religion and one-true-God thing to mind bending extremes. The literal six day Genesis god is the One True God and is the Only Possible God. Anyone or anything that denies literal six day Genesisism denies the Only Possible God, and therefore equals atheism. They have the One True religion, they have the One True Christianity. They are Christians following Christianity, and if you don't follow their flavor of fundamentalism then you aren't following Christianity and you're not truly Christian.
Evolution conflicts with literal six day Genesisism, anyone or anything saying (their) God doesn't exist equals atheism. In their view the One And Only God is being attacked. In their view the One And Only Christianity is being attacked. The way they speak they make it sound like they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians. As far as they are concerned they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians - because in their mind their fundamentalist brand of Christianity *is* all of Christianity and in their mind *they* *are* all o
logic should say that only the unimmunized are ever at risk, and that the immunized are completely safe regardless
Your logic is wrong on many counts. Just off the top of my head I can list at least SEVEN reasons unimmunized people present a genuine social danger.
(1) Sometimes the immune system fails to actually establish immunity. Just as there are rare cases of someone contracting the same disease twice, an immunized person does have a low chance of catching the disease "again" when exposed to the real live dangerous virus/bacteria.
(2) The more contact the disease has across the immunized-unimmunized population interface the more opportunity the disease has to evolve its way around that immunization defense and place EVERYONE at risk of a new immunization-resistant epidemic.
(3) People who are immuno-compromised due to some other medical condition will be vulnerable despite their immunizations. In fact this vastly MULTIPLIES the evolution issue mentioned above. Someone who has been immunized but has a weakened immune response is the most dangerous person to infect. That person will be a breeding ground for the disease and their immune system to apply a constant intense evolutionary pressure on the disease to hide or escape from that immunization-preprogrammed attack.
(4) Some people may have been unable to receive their full course of immunizations due to allergies or other medical issues.
(5) Some people have NO IDEA that their parents denied them immunizations and have NO IDEA that their parents & you have effectively conspired to put them in fatal danger.
(6) Infants and toddlers have not yet had a full course of immunizations, or have had none at all yet.
(7) You not only present a direct threat of infecting the infants and other vulnerable groups listed above, there is also a chance you may seed an initial infection in an immunized person who may become a carrier during the time it takes their immune system to spot that tiny initial infection and ramp up the defense to eradicate it.
I'm sure there's more than just those seven. I have a fairly good hobbyist level knowledge of biology and science in general, but I am far from an expert on diseases and transmission and all of the ways that unimmunized people present a threat.
In each and every case the percentage of immunized people plays a critical role in the overall threat to everyone. A small increase in the percentage of unimmunized persons can have an exponential impact on the number of infections. If there are very few unimmunized people then they may only infect zero or one or two other people before the infection chain is cut off by the surrounding immune population. With just a small increase in vulnerable people you multiply the chance that the one or two people you infect will themselves bump into someone vulnerable, and it multiplies the chance those new infected people will come in contact with even further vulnerable people. A change of just 1% can be the difference between an isolated infection that fizzles and dies vs an ongoing wildfire chain, not just exposing vulnerable people by massively repeatedly exposing immunized people who are resistant to the disease but who can and will contract it under repeated or intense exposure. Every 1% change in immunization levels presents a real level of increased danger and costs to the overall population. We eradicated the extremely deadly disease smallpox by hitting a high enough immunization percentage globally to break the transmission chains and for the last infections to burn out their vulnerable populations. We've almost wiped out several other diseases, but for inadequate immunization levels in other countries. When such diseases are carried into the country, each unimmunized person multiplies the potential chain of infection not just to vulnerable people but multiplies the danger to people who are mostly but imperfectly protected by their immunization shots.
I am in general on of the more vocal proponents of
Any single prediction doesn't amount to much, but evolution has made endless predictions that have turned out correct.
For example dinosaur-bird intermediate forms were predicted well before the discovery of feathered dinosaur fossils and archaeopteryx and other fossils. (Archaeopteryx has feathers and wings, but has dinosaur claws at the ends of it's arms and dinosaur head/jaw/teeth and dinosaur feet and dinosaur spine and dinosaur breastbone and on an on and on - in almost every characteristic it FAILS to have any of the defining traits of birds other than having feathers and wings. It's a dinosaur with feathers & wings, and otherwise completely unbirdlike.)
Evolution's primary aspect and primary sweeping prediction is the tree of common descent. Thousands if not millions of DNA analyses have been done across countless species, and every single one of them confirms the evolutionary tree of common descent relationship between species with the same Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt certainty that court room DNA analysis can and does prove the family tree descent relationships between people Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt. Way above and beyond the "convict someone of rape and murder and fry them in the electric chair" level of proof.
And then there's my personal favorite. There is a significant chunk of the tree of life in phylum foraminifera where we have an absolutely continuous and complete fossil record spanning thousands of species over a hundred million plus years. Not merely a complete sequence of every transitional species, but a hyper-continuous record of the evolution of entire populations and their transitional forms ALONG each individual species split. For most living things it is extremely rare and random for it to leave a fossil at all, and even if it does leave a fossil it is extremely rare and random for us to happen to dig it up. Foraminifera are a special and perfect case because both of those problems vanish. Foraminifera are really really tiny animals that live in the ocean by the trillions, and every single day millions and millions of them die and continuously rain down on the deep cold dark inert sea floor. They have mineral skeletons called tests, and these tests become ideal fossils continuously laid down and continuously layered in the deep cold dark inert sediment slowly accumulating on the sea floor. A limitless supply of perfectly layered perfectly preserved fossils. In the 1970's oil crunch we came up with new deep sea drilling technology to explore for oil, exploration that started bringing up long sediment drill cores from the sea floor. Drill cores that were incidentally loaded with these tiny foraminifera fossils by the thousands.
This one chunk of the fossil record alone is enough to absolutely prove the basic fact of evolution. An absolutely perfect continuous complete record showing exactly how populations can and repeatedly did diversify into new species. A perfect record spanning thousands of species, and tracing diverse living species back to their common ancestor.
It is as much absolute proof as a perfect complete fossil record tracing whales and humans and dogs and cats and other animals back to their mammal common ancestor, except tiny foram animals living in the ocean are not nearly as glamorous and well known as mammal and dinosaur fossils. The only "problem" is that your typical Joe The Plumber doesn't know a foram from a hole in the wall. But the fact that most people have never heard of these tiny animals living in the ocean does not diminish the scientific significance of these fossils. They show with absolute proof that a significant chunk of life on earth did evolve exactly as evolution claims, and by any sane reasonable standard it shows that the rest of the fossil record really is the random spotty gappy record of a continuous evolutionary tree that it appears to be and that scientists say it is. That fossil find really are random picks dicovered out of continuous lines of transitional forms.
And this perfect continuous complete chunk of fossil record shows exactly what evolution predicts. It shows a common ancestor branching and diversifying in a tree of new species, linking together diverse living species together is a single family tree of common descent.
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It's like a car that only turns left in Soviet Russia, in which a big bowl of hot grits had Natalie Portman.
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the discussion here has again devolved into a "gee, Christians sure are stupid" type debate
Perhaps it is a bit of an issue of intent and perception.
I personally do not accuse all Christians of being stupid. When I personally make comments in that direction, my intended target are specifically the subgroup borderline-delusional-fundies-who-happen-to-call-themselves-Christian. Maybe I'm projecting my own expectations, but it seems to me that very very few people in these debates are intending to blanket-slander all Christians. It seems to me that the anger and insults are meant to be directed to particular problem people within the broader Christian community.
certain principle ideas that God cannot be behind it all
Whoa, waitaminute there.
Science does not and cannot say anything either way about God. As far as I'm aware virtually no one has claimed that God cannot be behind it all. That is almost exclusively a Creationist straw man trying to falsely paint evolution as equaling atheism.
The science of optics does not mention God, just as evolution does not mention God. There is no remotely reasonable scientific doubt that optics is correct, just as there is no remotely reasonable scientific doubt that evolution is correct.
The science of optics is correct.
If God exists, then optics is God's chosen mechanism for creating rainbows.
The science of evolution is correct.
If God exists, then evolution is God's chosen mechanism for creating the diversity of life on earth.
Obviously atheist scientists don't believe the "If God exists..." part actually kicks in, but both theist and atheist biologists will overwhelmingly agree with it. That if God exists, then God is behind evolution in the same way that God is behind rainbows - that both optics and evolution accurately describe the "hows" of the universe as God chose to run things.
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It's unfortunate that your science teacher couldn't/wouldn't provide background to back up evolution, but a vast range of evidence really does exist to back it up. I'll copy/paste from one of my own posts a brief summary of my favorite chunk of evidence, and I'll mention two others without details, which I can cover if you want.
Foraminifera are a phylum of really tiny aquatic animals. They live on the oceans by the trillions, and they have mineral skeletons called tests. Millions of them die every day and their tests continuously rain down on the deep dark cold inert sea floor as ideal fossils. They are continuously layered in the accumulating sea floor sediment. In the 1970's we developed new technology for deep sea oil exploration, bringing up long sediment cores from the seabed. Sediment cores that were incidentally loaded with a limitless supply of these fossils. It's an evolutionary scientist's wet dream treasure trove. A perfectly continuous and complete record spanning thousands of species over more than a hundred million years. Not merely a complete sequence of transitional species, but vast samples of entire populations continuously along individual species transitions, tracing diverse modern species back to their common ancestor. Scientists are have been examining how long each individual speciation took to occur, and examining exactly how entire populations evolved during individual speciation events.
A particularly interesting thing is that they have been studying is how and why the rate of speciation increases after each mass extinction event. In short, after an extinction event there is less competition between species. This allows the survival of more borderline-fitness high-diversity outliers speeding the diversification of the species into other ecological niches that are now vacant and exploitable, and these variants can then specialize and optimize to this new ecological niche and speciate.
The only "problem" is that most foraminifera are barely visible without a magnifying glass. They are tiny aquatic animals that most people have never heard of. Not nearly as glamorous as mammal or dinosaur fossils. It's one of the most powerful proofs of evolution, and it all flies under the radar of public discussion.
There's also DNA analysis, and it established evolution's family tree relationships between species with the same sort of beyond-any-reasonable-doubt level of proof, as courtroom DNA analysis establishes the family tree relationships between people. It proves that either that evolution is true, or that something functionally indistinguishable from evolution is true. If the "copying" of DNA between species was done by a "common designer", than that designer strictly did his work in a manner functionally indistinguishable from evolution.
There's also the fact that the process of evolution works - it is a successful applied science. You can run evolution on digital DNA in a computer, evolving that digital DNA over generations of reproduction mutation and selection. I happen to be a programmer and I've personally dabbled in such experiments and witnessed first hand the power of evolution to create complexity, new useful information, and solve problems. In fact evolution is so powerful at creating certain kinds of information and solving certain kinds of problems that more than half of all Fortune 500 companies use applied digital evolution somewhere or other in their business.
The first two items I listed demonstrate the historical accuracy of evolution, and the third proves that the evolution process can and does work creating new information and complexity. There's a lot more evidence of various sorts, but those are the three I generally cite.
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I hope some of the new designer antibiotics work against it.
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it won't work becasue...
they will say where is the transitional fossil between this and the precious fossil.
We've got them beat even there.
Foraminifera are a phylum of really tiny aquatic animals. They live on the oceans by the trillions, and they have mineral skeletons called tests. Millions of them die every day and their tests continuously rain down on the deep dark cold inert sea floor as ideal fossils. They are continuously layered in the accumulating sea floor sediment. In the 1970's we developed new technology for deep sea oil exploration, bringing up long sediment cores from the seabed. Sediment cores that were incidentally loaded with a limitless supply of these fossils. It's an evolutionary scientist's wet dream treasure trove. A perfectly continuous and complete record spanning thousands of species over more than a hundred million years. Not merely a complete sequence of transitional species, but vast samples of entire populations continuously along individual species transitions, tracing diverse modern species back to their common ancestor. Scientists are have been examining how long each individual speciation took to occur, and examining exactly how entire populations evolved during individual speciation events.
A particularly interesting thing is that they have been studying is how and why the rate of speciation increases after each mass extinction event. In short, after an extinction event there is less competition between species. This allows the survival of more borderline-fitness high-diversity outliers speeding the diversification of the species into other ecological niches that are now vacant and exploitable, and these variants can then specialize and optimize to this new ecological niche and speciate.
The only "problem" is that most foraminifera are barely visible without a magnifying glass. They are tiny aquatic animals that most people have never heard of. Not nearly as glamorous as mammal or dinosaur fossils. It's one of the most powerful proofs of evolution, and it all flies under the radar of public discussion.
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