I think this is quite right. Interestingly enough, I'm sure the local law enforcement is turning a blind eye to the illegal Versace and Gucci knockoffs in the local night market.
No, they don't. They're still around but get busted regularly. I believe you can also buy fake Rolexes in New York.
This is *China.* They have been indoctrinating people and telling them ratting to The Party on their neighbors is grand since 1949. This is nothing new
This is *Hong Kong* which has been capitalist since 1841, and the Communist Party is still forbidden (by Beijing) from operating there overtly. This is evidently new to you.
Luckily, there is absolutely no comparison between someone asking your son to surf on the internet from the safety of his home and asking him to risk physical harm at the small hours of the morning.
Not physical harm (though one never knows, an unwary person can be tracked down by his IP, let alone other clues, and Hong Kong is a small place). But it's intersting to consider how this could develop. What if some over-zealous kids decided to encourage others to upload movies/MP3s etc and then ratted them out? Seems like entrapment. Or what about kids who are accused who claim that THEY were investigating the site and were going to report it but had to upload to gain credibility?
If you perform a search and know your facts, Hong Kong is running a system that is WAY more democratic than China, and many so-called "democratic" countries. In fact, it has more freedom now than when it was under British rule.
I live in Hong Kong, and no, we are not freer than under British rule. Since 1997 democracy has been wound back, the Legislative Council is much less representative due to the restricted voting of functional constituencies whihc elect half the members. Free speech has declined, self-censorship of the media is observed daily. We're still miles ahead of the mainland, but many freedoms (except the freedom to make money) are quite limited.
I submit to you that those 'elite hackers' start off as motivated script-kiddies.
You obviously know nothing about Hong Kong. China does not trust Hong Kong people politically, (having beeen tainted by British colonialism and western concepts of democracy) and they not allowed to join the PLA. For various reasons the Beijing govt keeps a hands-off policy with regard to HK governance (except for ruling out real elections, etc), and I can assure you this idea is entirely home-grown and in line with other of it's nany-state ideas.
1) Hong Kong (of China) is producing about 0% of quality games/movies/software
2) Hong Kong is losing about 0% due to piracy each year?
Hong Kong is one of the major movie producing cities in the world; coming after Hollywood and Bombay. Its pop music (Cantopop) is also popular in Asia (and American Chinatowns). There are frequent ads fronted by these movie stars (perhaps you've heard of Jackie Chan?) and singers on the theme of piracy is theft, you'll go to jail, etc. Undoubtedly the local industry has suffered due to piracy (though many other factors come into it). But the main reason the Hong Kong govt is getting gung ho about copyright piracy enforcement is because of pressure from the US, who berate all their trading partners about this at the behest of the RIAAA et al.
For some reason, however, HK wants 200,000 kiddies to start looking around the places that will introduce them to the underbelly of computing
Now let me ask you, what would China want with some 200,000 script-kiddies?
No one will learn even the minimal amount of knowledge required to be a "script kiddie" from writing down IP numbers from Bittorrent sites.
Considering that the US of A already has a computerized powergrid, huge internet backbone/banking systems/telephone/cellular networks/freaking traffic lights and building ACs? Half of Navy's networked computers still running Win 98?
Duh. Another Hong Kong fun fact: Hong Kong citizens can't join the PLA. In any case, if that was what they needed China has a hundred million people on the Internet already.
Oh, and if you absolutely MUST pack files together for a non-torrent reason, use something that is freely (in all senses) available to all people, not just to a select elite.
"Select elite"?
http://www.rarsoft.com/rar_add.htm UnRAR for OS/2 Command line freeware OS/2 UnRAR. UnRAR for Mac OS X Command line freeware Mac OS X universal binary UnRAR. UnRAR for Mac OS X Command line freeware Mac OS X UnRAR. UnRAR for PowerPC Linux Command line freeware PowerPC Linux UnRAR. UnRAR for x64 Linux Command line freeware x64 Linux UnRAR. UnRAR for Familiar Linux Command line freeware ARM/iPAQ/Familiar Linux UnRAR. UnRAR for Solaris 8 Sparc Command line freeware Solaris 8 Sparc UnRAR...
The UnRARs are completely free, and I have several free utilities that evidently use the dlls they also supply. (Eg, 7-Zip)
Aside from the philosophy, RARs just are more suited to large and/or segmented files, Zip has been stretched to manage that, but RAR is just smoother. But Real Men use tgz, I suppose.
1. They want to block access to sites that can potentially give rise to violence.
Even if you accept that, the way they're implementing it is to block entire domains. So because of one radical blog, hundreds of thousands of blogs hosted on the same server are blocked. But I don't accept that a webpage can give rise to violence. Your local firebrands are the ones who set it off. Rumour spreads the old fashioned way, by word of mouth, getting further from the truth at every step. Just because some bureaucrat at his desk can click on a link and read stuff he doesn't like, he wants to block it. It protects him from embarrassment, not anyone from violence.
Multi-nationals are bigger than nation states now.
Not bigger than European nations, even the smaller ones, let alone the EU collectively. Anyway, thay have armies. And more saliently, they have tax collectors.
Well, how long has this gone on now? 2 years, 5? Shall we make it 10? The EU unfortunately fits the old cliche about the flip-floppiness of the French, very well.
As compared to the swift, resolute action of the US Department of Justice. Thay sure didn't let MS get away with anything
No need to end that which does not exist. I've searched high and low for a place where Microsoft is the only company that offers OS
See the definition of "monopoly". The legal definition. And try "searching high and low" in offices and tell me how many non-MS OS and office suites you find on desktops.
And you may have misread my statement "And that would be the end of MS's monopoly everywhere"; by which I do not mean "the end of [MS's monopoly everywhere]" but "the end everywhere of [MS's monopoly]".
As I've said twice already, he describes that as "a ZDNet summary". Instead of "my summary", because he wants it to seem more authoritative and less like a story he submitted himself with two links to his pages that he earns money from hits; that's "sleazy".
continuing to run afoul of Slashdot groupthink
I don't know why anyone else doesn't like him, I just find his submissions parasitic; he cribs stuff from other, original articles and cites himself as the source. It's not quite plagiarism, but pretty close. He's changed his style somewhat since the earlier ones, when he ONLY linked to his version of the stories he copied. That's what drew attention to him and why I treat him with suspicion.
..Yes, if I were Microsoft, I'd simply have a so called "news leak" to the press suggeting that we, as Microsoft, are considering withdrawing our offending products from the European Union market
Some idiot suggests this every time this case is mentioned. No matter how big a company you are, you can't fuck with sovereign governements. They can unilaterally write their own contracts, and enforce them with the full power of the state (i.e., all the way to lethal force). If they want MS software, they can take it and pay whatever they like.
In any case, they could use existing software indefinitely, while assessing the several alternatives begging for a chance to take the market. And that would be the end of MS's monopoly everywhere.
To add another twist on that, it was ruled long, long ago that maps were not copyrightable since they were simply facts.
Maps are not "simply facts". Compare several maps of the same area and you'll see great variety in the representaton of these "facts": in terms of use of colour, hatching, fonts, etc. So a map is certainly a creative work and thus copyrightable. You often see a copyright notice in editions of classic (public domain) books. But if they're honest, the copyright is limited to their specific layout, so you can't just duplicate it. But if you retyped or OCRed it and laid it out yourself, you'd be free and clear.
have handed a competitive advantage to another firm (they didn't need to risk $10 million on doing the initial mapping against something that could have been a flop).
You're painting an overly simplistic picture of business if you think that it's just about how much money you can make - it's also always about denying your competitors air.
Denying your competitors air is fine as a business strategy. But it's not something society should facilitate because it leads to less wealth in total, even if possibly slightly more for you.
If I spend 3 billion dollars to map NYC to within a meter for a game I expect my data set to be legally protected. Really, that should be a no brainer.
So what if you blow 3 billion dollars? That's your problem. It's not a creative work so it can't be copyright. Better you just made a fictional map. A week or so ago some scientists cracked the encryption of the Galileo GPS signal, so they could use it for free. Their lawyers said it was fair game, as it was just data describing locations, even thjough it probably cost a few billion to get the satellites in orbit. Sounds similar to your hypothetical.
no one is wasting time with any bullshit about how he's robbing us with his good editing.
Because the lazy editors at Slashdot don't care how he's gaming the system with his regurgitated stories. And he links to his personal blog, describing it as "a ZDNet summary". Could I link to my home page and describe it as a "Yahoo summary"?
Slashdot Mirror
No, they don't. They're still around but get busted regularly. I believe you can also buy fake Rolexes in New York.
This is *Hong Kong* which has been capitalist since 1841, and the Communist Party is still forbidden (by Beijing) from operating there overtly. This is evidently new to you.
Not physical harm (though one never knows, an unwary person can be tracked down by his IP, let alone other clues, and Hong Kong is a small place). But it's intersting to consider how this could develop. What if some over-zealous kids decided to encourage others to upload movies/MP3s etc and then ratted them out? Seems like entrapment. Or what about kids who are accused who claim that THEY were investigating the site and were going to report it but had to upload to gain credibility?
I live in Hong Kong, and no, we are not freer than under British rule. Since 1997 democracy has been wound back, the Legislative Council is much less representative due to the restricted voting of functional constituencies whihc elect half the members. Free speech has declined, self-censorship of the media is observed daily. We're still miles ahead of the mainland, but many freedoms (except the freedom to make money) are quite limited.
You obviously know nothing about Hong Kong. China does not trust Hong Kong people politically, (having beeen tainted by British colonialism and western concepts of democracy) and they not allowed to join the PLA. For various reasons the Beijing govt keeps a hands-off policy with regard to HK governance (except for ruling out real elections, etc), and I can assure you this idea is entirely home-grown and in line with other of it's nany-state ideas.
Hong Kong is one of the major movie producing cities in the world; coming after Hollywood and Bombay. Its pop music (Cantopop) is also popular in Asia (and American Chinatowns). There are frequent ads fronted by these movie stars (perhaps you've heard of Jackie Chan?) and singers on the theme of piracy is theft, you'll go to jail, etc. Undoubtedly the local industry has suffered due to piracy (though many other factors come into it). But the main reason the Hong Kong govt is getting gung ho about copyright piracy enforcement is because of pressure from the US, who berate all their trading partners about this at the behest of the RIAAA et al.
For some reason, however, HK wants 200,000 kiddies to start looking around the places that will introduce them to the underbelly of computing Now let me ask you, what would China want with some 200,000 script-kiddies?
No one will learn even the minimal amount of knowledge required to be a "script kiddie" from writing down IP numbers from Bittorrent sites.
Considering that the US of A already has a computerized powergrid, huge internet backbone/banking systems/telephone/cellular networks/freaking traffic lights and building ACs? Half of Navy's networked computers still running Win 98?
Duh. Another Hong Kong fun fact: Hong Kong citizens can't join the PLA. In any case, if that was what they needed China has a hundred million people on the Internet already.
Wow; talk about circular reasoning.
Oh, and if you absolutely MUST pack files together for a non-torrent reason, use something that is freely (in all senses) available to all people, not just to a select elite.
"Select elite"?
http://www.rarsoft.com/rar_add.htm
UnRAR for OS/2 Command line freeware OS/2 UnRAR.
UnRAR for Mac OS X Command line freeware Mac OS X universal binary UnRAR.
UnRAR for Mac OS X Command line freeware Mac OS X UnRAR.
UnRAR for PowerPC Linux Command line freeware PowerPC Linux UnRAR.
UnRAR for x64 Linux Command line freeware x64 Linux UnRAR.
UnRAR for Familiar Linux Command line freeware ARM/iPAQ/Familiar Linux UnRAR.
UnRAR for Solaris 8 Sparc Command line freeware Solaris 8 Sparc UnRAR...
The UnRARs are completely free, and I have several free utilities that evidently use the dlls they also supply. (Eg, 7-Zip)
Aside from the philosophy, RARs just are more suited to large and/or segmented files, Zip has been stretched to manage that, but RAR is just smoother. But Real Men use tgz, I suppose.
So, it protects your copy of Windows? The opposite, I think.
Even if you accept that, the way they're implementing it is to block entire domains. So because of one radical blog, hundreds of thousands of blogs hosted on the same server are blocked. But I don't accept that a webpage can give rise to violence. Your local firebrands are the ones who set it off. Rumour spreads the old fashioned way, by word of mouth, getting further from the truth at every step. Just because some bureaucrat at his desk can click on a link and read stuff he doesn't like, he wants to block it. It protects him from embarrassment, not anyone from violence.
Great. Since the bot is so trustworthy, I obviously must be a vandal. I'll turn myself in for reprogramming.
Not bigger than European nations, even the smaller ones, let alone the EU collectively. Anyway, thay have armies. And more saliently, they have tax collectors.
Sorry, call it a "compulsory licence".
As compared to the swift, resolute action of the US Department of Justice. Thay sure didn't let MS get away with anything
It's a government (or composed of governements) Thay can do anything they like.
See the definition of "monopoly". The legal definition. And try "searching high and low" in offices and tell me how many non-MS OS and office suites you find on desktops.
And you may have misread my statement "And that would be the end of MS's monopoly everywhere"; by which I do not mean "the end of [MS's monopoly everywhere]" but "the end everywhere of [MS's monopoly]".
As I've said twice already, he describes that as "a ZDNet summary". Instead of "my summary", because he wants it to seem more authoritative and less like a story he submitted himself with two links to his pages that he earns money from hits; that's "sleazy".
continuing to run afoul of Slashdot groupthink
I don't know why anyone else doesn't like him, I just find his submissions parasitic; he cribs stuff from other, original articles and cites himself as the source. It's not quite plagiarism, but pretty close. He's changed his style somewhat since the earlier ones, when he ONLY linked to his version of the stories he copied. That's what drew attention to him and why I treat him with suspicion.
MS can appeal, but they have to pay anyway. If their appeal is successful, they'll get a refund.
Some idiot suggests this every time this case is mentioned. No matter how big a company you are, you can't fuck with sovereign governements. They can unilaterally write their own contracts, and enforce them with the full power of the state (i.e., all the way to lethal force). If they want MS software, they can take it and pay whatever they like.
In any case, they could use existing software indefinitely, while assessing the several alternatives begging for a chance to take the market. And that would be the end of MS's monopoly everywhere.
His blog IS what he describes as "ZDNet's summary". The same link he spams in every one of his submissions.
Well, no one would use Taco as an authority on grammar, or anything else, come to think of it.
Maps are not "simply facts". Compare several maps of the same area and you'll see great variety in the representaton of these "facts": in terms of use of colour, hatching, fonts, etc. So a map is certainly a creative work and thus copyrightable. You often see a copyright notice in editions of classic (public domain) books. But if they're honest, the copyright is limited to their specific layout, so you can't just duplicate it. But if you retyped or OCRed it and laid it out yourself, you'd be free and clear.
Denying your competitors air is fine as a business strategy. But it's not something society should facilitate because it leads to less wealth in total, even if possibly slightly more for you.
So what if you blow 3 billion dollars? That's your problem. It's not a creative work so it can't be copyright. Better you just made a fictional map. A week or so ago some scientists cracked the encryption of the Galileo GPS signal, so they could use it for free. Their lawyers said it was fair game, as it was just data describing locations, even thjough it probably cost a few billion to get the satellites in orbit. Sounds similar to your hypothetical.
Because the lazy editors at Slashdot don't care how he's gaming the system with his regurgitated stories. And he links to his personal blog, describing it as "a ZDNet summary". Could I link to my home page and describe it as a "Yahoo summary"?
He's sleazy, but Slashdot deserves no better.