So Mr. "Information wants to be free, please quit your job, live off of your savings and write a screenplay or a novel and get it published. Never mind that you have bet your families future on it selling and you getting a royalty check.
So while you are watching your savings deplete and your wife get really pissed off because the bills are not getting paid and your children wearing ratty clothes you can rejoice in the fact that Information is free as I put your hard work on a bit torrent and just give it away,
What a tragic story.
Can you name a single, real, person that it might describe?
In the real world, screenwriters are paid advances when a producer wants to option their script, and receive a lump sum when a movie begins shooting. Some may get a share of income, but that's pretty iffy, due to the well-known ability of studio accountants to minimise income and profits.
As for novelists, 99% of novelists earn pocket change. Not because anyone is cheating them, much less pirating their work, because the competition is very tough. (And very few writers are half as good or sellable as they imagine.) The "starving writer in a garret" stereotype was around, and true, long before the Internet. Only a complete fool would bet his family's future on royalties from a book or script unless he has a contract and advance in hand. Most popular writers have a day job to pay the bills.
Because you are using a resource someone else has bought and paid for without their explicit - nor reasonably assumed - permission.
That's perhaps impolite, not "dishonest". The law cited requires dishonesty (lying, cracking a password, etc), not impoliteness.
because that's exactly how most people feel about every other piece of property they own (or service they have paid for).
My "feeling" that you should not look at me does not give me the right to demand you not do so. And analogies with "property" fail because there is no degradation (usually) of the owner's service (if there is, go ahead and charge the leech with denial of service). Further, the signal being used is being transmitted into public space, not limited to the owner's property. If you want an analogy, I'm reading a newspaper by the light from yout porch light, while sitting on a bench in the street. You don't like it? Put a shade on your light.
Yes, I understand that many, perhaps most, open WAP points are so by default. Nevertheless, if NO HARM IS DONE, and there is no way to distinguish WAPs open by choice from those open by neglect, I feel no moral qualms, and I really wish someone would take it to court to argue the legal case. The very few cases cited have all, I think, been settled by a guilty plea and thus no argument of the merits. Just because a defendant was intimidated into taking a plea does not prove anything.
I live in Hong Kong. Here broadband is cheap and ubiquitous. There is a monthly fee, but no data cap. When wandering around with my laptop and Netstumbler I find perhaps half the access points open. But recently travelling in Australia I was rather inconvenienced to find that there are hardly any open WAPs. There most Internet services have a very low monthly cap, perhaps 2 GB of data. Consequently people with WAPs have a strong incentive to lock them down. My point is that people, even "Joe Sixpacks", who do care about limiting access can and will easily lock them down. If they haven't it means they've decided, explicitly or implicitly, that locking their WAP down is not necessary.
(1) A person who-
(a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service...
So it's "illegal" if it's "dishonest". How is it "dishonest" to connect to an open wifi point? No misrepresentations are made. Your PC/laptop requests access and it is granted. No hacking, cracking or dishonesty is involved. No dishonesty, no illegality, it seems to me.
Here are a few occasions instructing that using a wireless connection without payment, or without permission is illegal
These don't prove the illegality of anything. Both cases are of peopel charged. No mention of any convictions. And even if they were convicted, were they plea bargains in which case the law is never tested? The few cases I've heard of seem to be really "loitering" that was being punished, the cops or prosecutors added in the "unauthorised access" charge to beef up the charges.
Quite likely. But that doesn't stop anyone from mentioning the name or making a website about him. "Apple" (computers) is a trademark, I can make a web site about Apple computers without their permission. I just can't sell a computer under that name.
I think that is the key difference. I can write a book ABOUT Harry Potter and Rowling would have no case. This site is based ON her work, not ABOUT her work.
You can't write a book "about" Harry Potter (or Bond, etc) that is not "based on" the original works. So I don't see your distinction.
Books (and sites) that discuss the original works are clearly fair use. These are classified as scholarship, no matter how geeky they may seem. The grey area comes when you write fiction using another writer's characters. If it does not quote large tracts verbatim, it may well be quite legal. Authors have built on each others' works for centuries. It's only quite recently that corporate ownership of "media properties" (Star Wars (TM), etc) have tried, and often succeeded, in making it seem that they own any and all concepts related to a fictional story. Star Wars, and Trek, both "borrowed" heavily from pulp SF of earlier decades and movies. But now if anyone wants to build on their versions, they are threatened by C&D letters. Few have the gumption or resources to challenge these claims. And as for Harry Potter, it is clearly very much descended from popular fiction of earlier times (Tom Brown's Schooldays; The Sword in the Stone, etc). Nothing wrong with that, but it really means JKR has no moral right to block any others in turn from building on her work. And legally, I doubt she could make a case.
Other popular universes might be Star Wars, Star Trek, the Discworld etc etc. How many of these have books published that are NOT sanctioned by the original copyright holder?
All those Star Trek tech manuals, or star wars art books, or the discworld science books are ALL published with the blessing of Paramount, Lucasfilm and Terry Pratchet. (The ones I got at least)
So are there any books out there that do something similar that were NOT officially sanctioned. I am not talking about parodies like Star Wrecked, these fall under different laws.
Movies spawn novells, these also seem to be often written with the blessing of the studio.
So where is the evidence that this kinda of thing is common practice?
I've read a dozen books about Tolkien's Middle Earth, none "licensed" by Tolkien or his heirs. And many similar books, eg about Tarzan, James Bond, etc. Note that these are originally or primarily literary works. When it comes to other media, as you cite, it becomes more complicated. Partly because when big media companies get involved, they tend to make lots of trademarks and such. Also, most books about, say, Star Trek, would want to use photos or illustrations from the original shows. While you can indeed use slabs of text as "fair use", photos are a lot more restricted. As for books, with the studio's "blessing" comes the right to use images and trademarked items ("USS Enterprise", "light saber", etc.). Nevertheless, there is a huge amount of fanfic online, and occasionally in print. Rarely have these been challenged legally, if they were and defended competently, I think many would be quite legal.
Seperate partitions for your os, paging, games, and apps works well for you? Get a clue - your killing your real world read performance seeking across four different partitions.
I have a similar structure, not for performance, but because when Windows crashes it can trash the partition table. If I don't have any files on the other partitions open when the crash occurs, they're pretty safe even if the OS partition is screwed. It also makes backing up simpler.
Why not just have people use their driver's license every time?
A lot of people in Japan don't have driver's licences.
Anyway, the whole idea is to make the transaction quick and not require the purchaser to find a card. It's an initiative by the cigarette machine makers to make their machines more acceptable, not by the government to reduce cigarette smoking by youngsters.
One thing a lot of people keep forgetting is that Taiwan actually does quite a lot of business with China. Currently China gets all the benefits of Taiwan's capitalism without actually having to control it politically.
Just as the US and China have no desire to go to war with one another, China doesn't *really* want to go to take over Taiwan.
I live in Hong Kong and have lived in Taiwan a few years ago. So I'm aware of the situation. Which is why I said "the military" want to invade Taiwan. Not "China". Chinese businessmen have an ever larger influence on the government, and they obviously don't want to rock the boat. Nevertheless, the military have a lot of influence and as the country gets richer they've massively increased their spending to modernise their equipment. There are a thousand missiles targetted at Taiwan now, and there are more every year. And like any military, they look for enemies to justify their existence. They play the "Unify the Motherland" card to build support, which is like "Democracy and Apple Pie" in America, a slogan you cannot question. Though we might hope that China is past doing irrational things, like the Cultural Revolution, as it's bad for business, if a faction felt that an external enemy was necessary to preserve their power, economic rationalism can go out the window.
So the best hope for peace is that China gets richer and if not democratic, too invested in economic stability to endanger it.
Crush China?
They can't even get a pissy little fight in Afghanistan/Iraq/Vietnam sorted out,
Crushing a country is not hard. Iraq was crushed in days. Rebuilding it afterwards into a democracy/puppet regime (whatever it is you're trying to do there) is the hard part.
All China has to do is release it's US funds to the open market. Pop goes the US financial system,
Right. An then pop goes the Chinese financial system. And if China did something like that, the US would be far more likely to aggressively respond to any Chinese military moves.
no money no Navy, Army, Air Force or USMC
The military is the last thing to get cut. Even if their budget were reduced, it would have the capacity to crush China for years, if not decades.
Much better for China if they can suggest, by demonstrations like this, that confronting them militarily would be an expensive exercise, and that the US and China should just do business as usual if China decides to invade Taiwan (after some token protests).
I am guessing that China is a lot closer to a war with the west then is assumed in the west.
I think the message is more "Don't fuck with us if we invade Taiwan". China doesn't want war with the West. They're getting rich selling stuff to the West now. But at the same time, the Chinese military is chafing to take back the "rogue province" of Taiwan.
Submarine warfare is limited to those nations that have the ability to have submarine fleets. Those countries aren't terribly hostile towards the United States. It's extremely doubtful we're going to fight a big naval battle anytime soon.
This is China. They're telling the US that if China decides to invade Taiwan, not to mess with them. The US fleet often travels in the Taiwan Strait just to show China that they control the sealanes and can protect Taiwan. China is saying, "No, you don't".
Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?
Because I just want to cary around a phone. Because I would rather not pay for the other features and have them making the phone heavier, more expensive, more complex and fragile and shorter battery life. Because I don't have or want a PDA, and when I need a laptop, I want a full size keyboard and screen. I only want a camera when I'm on vacation.
If soemeone wants a screwdriver, don't force them to buy a Swiss Army knife.
With the ease of taking business customer information with you, I don't blame MS, or any company for doing this. I don't think it is sour grapes, but a good business practice.
No, it's not. When I was about to quit my last job, I spent two weeks copying files (my personal files) and removing my personal things from the office. (As well as working late every night wrapping up my current projects.) Then I gave my notice and said goodbye. (Until the court case when I claimed my three months of overdue salary, but that's another story.) Anyway, if I had wanted to "steal" any company information, I would have done it long before I gave notice. So while you obviously will treat staff who give notice differently, treating them as if they have been unmasked as KGB moles is just dramatic posturing, and generates ill will. Not just in the departing staff, but everyone. What happens in three months time when the new staff have a problem they would like to consult with you about? You tell them to fuck off.
are any other non-american slashdotters noticing a rather alarming number of questionable political posts on this site recently?
Especially the little rider to the summary "we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it." There was nothing in the Yahoo article linked about censorship. So who is "we"? And how about the motives of countries that know that the US is spying on every byte that passes through its jurisdiction (and probably a lot that don't)? They have no reason to be concerned -- no, they must be only motivated by the desire to censor?
From an infrastructure perspective it would be better to be able to traceroute a site in Australia/Asia from Europe and not have it go trans-atlantic / trans-america / trans-pacific
Do you ralise how expensive that would be to the NSA? They'd have to tap into a lot more undersea cables that way.
Oh, I have no doubt about the babelfish translation
Duh. Babelfish DOES NOT TRANSLATE TO OR FROM HEBREW. The whole fucking article is an example of how fucked up things get when translated by amateurs.
The complete list of Babelfish options:
Chinese-simp to English Chinese-trad to English English to Chinese-simp English to Chinese-trad English to Dutch English to French English to German English to Greek English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Portuguese English to Russian English to Spanish Dutch to English Dutch to French French to English French to German French to Greek French to Italian French to Portuguese French to Dutch French to Spanish German to English German to French Greek to English Greek to French Italian to English Italian to French Japanese to English Korean to English Portuguese to English Portuguese to French Russian to English Spanish to English Spanish to French
FTFAdvertisement:
Hackers have become so adept at disguising malicious traffic to look benign that security systems now generate literally thousands of false positives, which Nemean virtually eliminates.
In a test comparing Nemean against a current technology on the market, both had a high detection rate of malicious signatures 99.9 percent for Nemean and 99.7 for the comparison technology. However, Nemean had zero false positives, compared to 88,000 generated by the other technology. Sure, but if his system went into use, the "hackers" would quickly adapt and it would not be any better than current systems. Lots of anti-spam ideas work fine for the originator, but when they become common enough to bother the spammers, they target them.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, once it gets to car analogies (not to mention violent crime) there's no hope of logic. I give up.
What a tragic story.
Can you name a single, real, person that it might describe?
In the real world, screenwriters are paid advances when a producer wants to option their script, and receive a lump sum when a movie begins shooting. Some may get a share of income, but that's pretty iffy, due to the well-known ability of studio accountants to minimise income and profits.
As for novelists, 99% of novelists earn pocket change. Not because anyone is cheating them, much less pirating their work, because the competition is very tough. (And very few writers are half as good or sellable as they imagine.) The "starving writer in a garret" stereotype was around, and true, long before the Internet. Only a complete fool would bet his family's future on royalties from a book or script unless he has a contract and advance in hand. Most popular writers have a day job to pay the bills.
That's perhaps impolite, not "dishonest". The law cited requires dishonesty (lying, cracking a password, etc), not impoliteness.
because that's exactly how most people feel about every other piece of property they own (or service they have paid for).
My "feeling" that you should not look at me does not give me the right to demand you not do so. And analogies with "property" fail because there is no degradation (usually) of the owner's service (if there is, go ahead and charge the leech with denial of service). Further, the signal being used is being transmitted into public space, not limited to the owner's property. If you want an analogy, I'm reading a newspaper by the light from yout porch light, while sitting on a bench in the street. You don't like it? Put a shade on your light.
Yes, I understand that many, perhaps most, open WAP points are so by default. Nevertheless, if NO HARM IS DONE, and there is no way to distinguish WAPs open by choice from those open by neglect, I feel no moral qualms, and I really wish someone would take it to court to argue the legal case. The very few cases cited have all, I think, been settled by a guilty plea and thus no argument of the merits. Just because a defendant was intimidated into taking a plea does not prove anything.
I live in Hong Kong. Here broadband is cheap and ubiquitous. There is a monthly fee, but no data cap. When wandering around with my laptop and Netstumbler I find perhaps half the access points open. But recently travelling in Australia I was rather inconvenienced to find that there are hardly any open WAPs. There most Internet services have a very low monthly cap, perhaps 2 GB of data. Consequently people with WAPs have a strong incentive to lock them down. My point is that people, even "Joe Sixpacks", who do care about limiting access can and will easily lock them down. If they haven't it means they've decided, explicitly or implicitly, that locking their WAP down is not necessary.
(a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service...
So it's "illegal" if it's "dishonest". How is it "dishonest" to connect to an open wifi point? No misrepresentations are made. Your PC/laptop requests access and it is granted. No hacking, cracking or dishonesty is involved. No dishonesty, no illegality, it seems to me.
These don't prove the illegality of anything. Both cases are of peopel charged. No mention of any convictions. And even if they were convicted, were they plea bargains in which case the law is never tested? The few cases I've heard of seem to be really "loitering" that was being punished, the cops or prosecutors added in the "unauthorised access" charge to beef up the charges.
Quite likely. But that doesn't stop anyone from mentioning the name or making a website about him. "Apple" (computers) is a trademark, I can make a web site about Apple computers without their permission. I just can't sell a computer under that name.
You can't write a book "about" Harry Potter (or Bond, etc) that is not "based on" the original works. So I don't see your distinction.
Books (and sites) that discuss the original works are clearly fair use. These are classified as scholarship, no matter how geeky they may seem. The grey area comes when you write fiction using another writer's characters. If it does not quote large tracts verbatim, it may well be quite legal. Authors have built on each others' works for centuries. It's only quite recently that corporate ownership of "media properties" (Star Wars (TM), etc) have tried, and often succeeded, in making it seem that they own any and all concepts related to a fictional story. Star Wars, and Trek, both "borrowed" heavily from pulp SF of earlier decades and movies. But now if anyone wants to build on their versions, they are threatened by C&D letters. Few have the gumption or resources to challenge these claims. And as for Harry Potter, it is clearly very much descended from popular fiction of earlier times (Tom Brown's Schooldays; The Sword in the Stone, etc). Nothing wrong with that, but it really means JKR has no moral right to block any others in turn from building on her work. And legally, I doubt she could make a case.
I've read a dozen books about Tolkien's Middle Earth, none "licensed" by Tolkien or his heirs. And many similar books, eg about Tarzan, James Bond, etc. Note that these are originally or primarily literary works. When it comes to other media, as you cite, it becomes more complicated. Partly because when big media companies get involved, they tend to make lots of trademarks and such. Also, most books about, say, Star Trek, would want to use photos or illustrations from the original shows. While you can indeed use slabs of text as "fair use", photos are a lot more restricted. As for books, with the studio's "blessing" comes the right to use images and trademarked items ("USS Enterprise", "light saber", etc.). Nevertheless, there is a huge amount of fanfic online, and occasionally in print. Rarely have these been challenged legally, if they were and defended competently, I think many would be quite legal.
No, you are not. This is a common misconception. It applies, if at all, only to trademarks ("Kleenex". "Xerox"), not copyright (this case).
See & hear it in action: Video here
I have a similar structure, not for performance, but because when Windows crashes it can trash the partition table. If I don't have any files on the other partitions open when the crash occurs, they're pretty safe even if the OS partition is screwed. It also makes backing up simpler.
A lot of people in Japan don't have driver's licences.
Anyway, the whole idea is to make the transaction quick and not require the purchaser to find a card. It's an initiative by the cigarette machine makers to make their machines more acceptable, not by the government to reduce cigarette smoking by youngsters.
I live in Hong Kong and have lived in Taiwan a few years ago. So I'm aware of the situation. Which is why I said "the military" want to invade Taiwan. Not "China". Chinese businessmen have an ever larger influence on the government, and they obviously don't want to rock the boat. Nevertheless, the military have a lot of influence and as the country gets richer they've massively increased their spending to modernise their equipment. There are a thousand missiles targetted at Taiwan now, and there are more every year. And like any military, they look for enemies to justify their existence. They play the "Unify the Motherland" card to build support, which is like "Democracy and Apple Pie" in America, a slogan you cannot question. Though we might hope that China is past doing irrational things, like the Cultural Revolution, as it's bad for business, if a faction felt that an external enemy was necessary to preserve their power, economic rationalism can go out the window.
So the best hope for peace is that China gets richer and if not democratic, too invested in economic stability to endanger it.
Crushing a country is not hard. Iraq was crushed in days. Rebuilding it afterwards into a democracy/puppet regime (whatever it is you're trying to do there) is the hard part.
Right. An then pop goes the Chinese financial system. And if China did something like that, the US would be far more likely to aggressively respond to any Chinese military moves.
no money no Navy, Army, Air Force or USMC
The military is the last thing to get cut. Even if their budget were reduced, it would have the capacity to crush China for years, if not decades.
Much better for China if they can suggest, by demonstrations like this, that confronting them militarily would be an expensive exercise, and that the US and China should just do business as usual if China decides to invade Taiwan (after some token protests).
I think the message is more "Don't fuck with us if we invade Taiwan". China doesn't want war with the West. They're getting rich selling stuff to the West now. But at the same time, the Chinese military is chafing to take back the "rogue province" of Taiwan.
This is China. They're telling the US that if China decides to invade Taiwan, not to mess with them. The US fleet often travels in the Taiwan Strait just to show China that they control the sealanes and can protect Taiwan. China is saying, "No, you don't".
Pine Gap.
Because I just want to cary around a phone. Because I would rather not pay for the other features and have them making the phone heavier, more expensive, more complex and fragile and shorter battery life. Because I don't have or want a PDA, and when I need a laptop, I want a full size keyboard and screen. I only want a camera when I'm on vacation.
If soemeone wants a screwdriver, don't force them to buy a Swiss Army knife.
No, it's not. When I was about to quit my last job, I spent two weeks copying files (my personal files) and removing my personal things from the office. (As well as working late every night wrapping up my current projects.) Then I gave my notice and said goodbye. (Until the court case when I claimed my three months of overdue salary, but that's another story.) Anyway, if I had wanted to "steal" any company information, I would have done it long before I gave notice. So while you obviously will treat staff who give notice differently, treating them as if they have been unmasked as KGB moles is just dramatic posturing, and generates ill will. Not just in the departing staff, but everyone. What happens in three months time when the new staff have a problem they would like to consult with you about? You tell them to fuck off.
He won't be. That's [60 years] a maximum sentence. Deals, good behaviour, remisssion, etc; I'll be amazed if he serves two years at most.
Especially the little rider to the summary "we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it." There was nothing in the Yahoo article linked about censorship. So who is "we"? And how about the motives of countries that know that the US is spying on every byte that passes through its jurisdiction (and probably a lot that don't)? They have no reason to be concerned -- no, they must be only motivated by the desire to censor?
Do you ralise how expensive that would be to the NSA? They'd have to tap into a lot more undersea cables that way.
Oh, I have no doubt about the babelfish translation
Duh. Babelfish DOES NOT TRANSLATE TO OR FROM HEBREW. The whole fucking article is an example of how fucked up things get when translated by amateurs.
The complete list of Babelfish options:
Chinese-simp to English
Chinese-trad to English
English to Chinese-simp
English to Chinese-trad
English to Dutch
English to French
English to German
English to Greek
English to Italian
English to Japanese
English to Korean
English to Portuguese
English to Russian
English to Spanish
Dutch to English
Dutch to French
French to English
French to German
French to Greek
French to Italian
French to Portuguese
French to Dutch
French to Spanish
German to English
German to French
Greek to English
Greek to French
Italian to English
Italian to French
Japanese to English
Korean to English
Portuguese to English
Portuguese to French
Russian to English
Spanish to English
Spanish to French