I hope the next epoch of technologists is as interested in sharing information and the philosophical aspects of tech as the outgoing group. These are the folks who bootstrapped us from low-tech to high-tech lives.
First, I'm amazed that Google would stumble out of the blocks like this. Isn't this the same company that keeps things in "beta" and "labs" for years and years? Had this "feature" been available for the general public to play with for a month or three before bringing out the "big guns"--opt-out implementation for all gmail users--these shortcomings would have been caught and remedied before they were inflicted on unsuspecting non-power-users.
Second, I can certainly appreciate the difficulty of creating the spark of life in a new social network platform. Ordinary players in the market have to hope that lightning strikes. As Google already has learned with Orkut, if lightning doesn't strike, maybe your product can find a niche somewhere in the long tail. Or it will never come to life at all. With Buzz, Google decided they didn't want to risk a sunny day, and chose instead to play with the high voltage line. Insta-social network by compelling everyone to connect with their personal email addresses. Deservedly, they're now getting burned--Gmail was many people's default "real" personal email site. Compelling a connection between people's real personal email address to a social network (on an opt-out basis) might shake people free of that preference...
Lawrence Lessig went this way before him. There's no doubt that the state and direction of copyright law is problematic when the brightest and most qualified people with an understanding of the subject can't bear to think about it.
The Iowa Caucuses are not winner-take-all, but nor are they "instant runoff." Instead, people get to see the results of the first round of voting before making their second choice.
In my precinct, and in many others, Obama supporters saw the strength of his support, and supported a second candidate in the final tally. Had they stood firm after being joined by second choices from other candidates who were not viable--as instant runoff would have required--Obama's win would have been by a much larger margin.
The Iowa results just don't reflect the raw popular support Obama saw on Thursday.
This is why I always falsify the information I've given to a social networking site before I attempt to cancel or delete my account....the information I haven't falsified already.
I sure as hell wouldn't voluntarily install a trojan horse "update" from any hostile party, and in this case, were I a (modified) iPhone owner, that would include Apple.
I find your use of the word "anthropomorphize" in this context interesting.
It seems to me that in the context of artificial intelligence that word represents a set of values in the guise of a representation of some unspoken, well-defined set of characteristics that separate humans from whatever it is one is comparing humans to. It conveniently disposes of the really hard problem of establishing what it is that sets humans apart in a very neat linguistic package.
In other words, use of the word "anthropomorphize" belies a certain unwillingness among humans to truly introspect with regard to their own nature.
I just had one nit to pick, and it was an Apple-y nit:
All 3d party apps are going to be ugly in one important respect: they will have a browser address bar at the top. And all that goes with that. Will you be able to add an icon to the home screen? Or will all 3d party apps have to be accessed through a Safari bookmark?
For as great as AJAX is, it will just not result in the sort of Apple elegance I've come to expect. In exchange for "security" and "stability" Apple is willing to put up with ugly and inelegant? Maybe they should have poked a little less fun at Ballmer in the Keynote.
I wouldn't go so far as to say there will be no killer app, since the killer app could be bundled with the phone. But Apple is adding to the risk that there will never be a killer app simply by virtue of the fact that they are creating an artificial barrier to development.
Is the barrier to development infinitely high? That remains, too, to be seen. Look how quickly people cracked open the AppleTV and made it into a general purpose computer. But as a potential buyer, I have to add uncertainty to the cost of the iPhone: any application I may want/need for the iPhone may never be developed. An accommodating rather than hostile approach to third party development would reduce that cost significantly. And that's what it boils down to for me. I may be willing to pay $500 or $600 for the thing, but the hidden "costs" of Apple's walled garden may prove too steep to ignore.
Some people seem to think giving their songs to friends is fair use, but that is not the case
Au contraire. Anyone who tells you that X definitely is or or that Y definitely isn't fair use, more likely than not, is wrong. Fair use is defined in 17 USC 107. In relevant part, it reads:
. . . the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include-- (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
That statute, and the common law definition of fair use that underlies it is many things, but it is in no way clear or explicit about what uses qualify.
Making copies to give to your friends? Gotta run it through the test. Selling copies on the streets of Manhattan? Gotta run it through the test. Some outcomes can be easily predicted (e.g. "hahaha, nice try. Pay up.") But most small scale, private uses are not. . . and precisely because they are small scale, private uses, as the grandparent alluded to; nobody would drag you to court to have them run through the test, so there's no precedent and therefore no way to say with any certainty whether such a use is fair or not.
Copyright maximalists have their perspective on the issue, and that's fine, but it's not the law.
One of the contributors at Kotaku suggested that Rockstar simply require the hard drive to play. I think that would be a great solution, but I'd be surprised if Microsoft let them do something like that.
Every one of the words in your post can be used as a password. That doesn't justify prohibiting their publication.
The AACS key is a password that's, in effect, distributed to everyone who owns a HDDVD and is furthermore useless to you unless you possess an HDDVD. It's an open secret. In that respect it's different from a credit card, and your analogy is inapt.
And it's not illegal to post a string of digits that may or may not be a credit card, without more, and the same should apply in the case of the HDDVD key.
onerous indeed. We're going to have to hash everything ever published and compare it to a list of banned hashes, all to satisfy this isolated corner of the DMCA?
The problem with barring publication of an encryption key, without more, is that it really is impossible--and I don't mean in a "the internet will route around censorship" fashion.
One of the following series of hex values, according to the AACS, cannot be published by anyone besides them:
Trying to bar one of them from publication will necessarily reveal what it is. As Wikipedia is discovering, you have to be able to describe what you're not allowed to publish in sufficient detail in order to effectively prevent its publication.
With other forms of intellectual property, the problem is avoided in various ways: in order to obtain a patent, the description itself becomes public domain. In copyright, the description is bounded by the creative content of that which you create. Trademarks are delimited by "confusion in the marketplace," and trade secrets are delimited by that which is actually kept secret.
The DMCA purports to create a fifth type of intellectual property, not limited in time, that would bar distribution of information (rather than just physical devices), but has no boundaries on the AACS's theory of what constitutes a "part" of an circumvention device. The boundary becomes "whatever the AACS moves to protect as a part of a circumvention device." But in order to enforce that right, we all have to know what we're not allowed to distribute.
So maybe the AACS, in order to avoid the paradox, can seek to protect a *range* of values. The scenario just gets even more absurd.
No. The answer is really that the key, without more, cannot be afforded protection as "part" of a circumvention device. It has to be a accompanied by something more, at the very least a description of how it can be used to circumvent. Otherwise it's just a string of text.
And that's where the DMCA falls apart, as people with an interest in circumventing can always break apart the information to such a degree to avoid any one part being classified as a "part."
It's a tough problem, and it should be brought to a court to evaluate. The court in Remierdes had an easy time, because the circumvention device was whole. Fair use will have to be read into the DMCA at some point when it comes to these alleged partial circumvention devices.
I agree completely with your analysis of exactly what is alleged to be illegal about posting the number, but I'd point out the big difference between this and the 2600 case: the 2600 case was about an entire computer program (a device). This case would test the limits on what constitutes a "part" of a "device."
It's not at all clear that the AACS key, alone, would qualify in the same way as DeCSS did.
Digg won't get sued if there's no creditable lawsuit. Digg's users are forcing them to think carefully before capitulating to the sort of C&D letter that people often take at face value even if there's no legitimate legal peril.
I learned to type while I was a regular of several Citadel BBSes. They were room-based and had keyboard mnemonics that encouraged me to hold my left hand over S, F, G, N and my right hand over P and the spacebar.
I still type with my hands offset like that today, with my left hand responsible for more than half of the keyboard.
Unlimited data and unlimited bandwidth aren't the same. Why doesn't Verizon just throttle abusers? They can still have their unlimited data as advertised, just at a rate of 2400bps.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope the next epoch of technologists is as interested in sharing information and the philosophical aspects of tech as the outgoing group. These are the folks who bootstrapped us from low-tech to high-tech lives.
First, I'm amazed that Google would stumble out of the blocks like this. Isn't this the same company that keeps things in "beta" and "labs" for years and years? Had this "feature" been available for the general public to play with for a month or three before bringing out the "big guns"--opt-out implementation for all gmail users--these shortcomings would have been caught and remedied before they were inflicted on unsuspecting non-power-users.
Second, I can certainly appreciate the difficulty of creating the spark of life in a new social network platform. Ordinary players in the market have to hope that lightning strikes. As Google already has learned with Orkut, if lightning doesn't strike, maybe your product can find a niche somewhere in the long tail. Or it will never come to life at all. With Buzz, Google decided they didn't want to risk a sunny day, and chose instead to play with the high voltage line. Insta-social network by compelling everyone to connect with their personal email addresses. Deservedly, they're now getting burned--Gmail was many people's default "real" personal email site. Compelling a connection between people's real personal email address to a social network (on an opt-out basis) might shake people free of that preference...
Lawrence Lessig went this way before him. There's no doubt that the state and direction of copyright law is problematic when the brightest and most qualified people with an understanding of the subject can't bear to think about it.
It leaves little room for optimism.
Boucher has a bill in the house to revise the DMCA. Don't forget to contact your congressperson to encourage them to support this necessary reform.
I posted a diary about his on Daily Kos. I argue that it's likely the delegate results understate Obama's support in Iowa.
The Iowa Caucuses are not winner-take-all, but nor are they "instant runoff." Instead, people get to see the results of the first round of voting before making their second choice.
In my precinct, and in many others, Obama supporters saw the strength of his support, and supported a second candidate in the final tally. Had they stood firm after being joined by second choices from other candidates who were not viable--as instant runoff would have required--Obama's win would have been by a much larger margin.
The Iowa results just don't reflect the raw popular support Obama saw on Thursday.
This is why I always falsify the information I've given to a social networking site before I attempt to cancel or delete my account. ...the information I haven't falsified already.
The article is ok... but the movie adaptation is a thrill ride!
Maybe they were unnamed because there is No Such Agency?
I sure as hell wouldn't voluntarily install a trojan horse "update" from any hostile party, and in this case, were I a (modified) iPhone owner, that would include Apple.
I find your use of the word "anthropomorphize" in this context interesting.
It seems to me that in the context of artificial intelligence that word represents a set of values in the guise of a representation of some unspoken, well-defined set of characteristics that separate humans from whatever it is one is comparing humans to. It conveniently disposes of the really hard problem of establishing what it is that sets humans apart in a very neat linguistic package.
In other words, use of the word "anthropomorphize" belies a certain unwillingness among humans to truly introspect with regard to their own nature.
That happened on the inside cover of books too, before the days of 17 U.S.C. 109 (AKA First Sale).
No browser address bar, icons on the home screen, for two.
I'm not saying these are certain problems, but they seem likely given what we know so far.
I just had one nit to pick, and it was an Apple-y nit:
All 3d party apps are going to be ugly in one important respect: they will have a browser address bar at the top. And all that goes with that. Will you be able to add an icon to the home screen? Or will all 3d party apps have to be accessed through a Safari bookmark?
For as great as AJAX is, it will just not result in the sort of Apple elegance I've come to expect. In exchange for "security" and "stability" Apple is willing to put up with ugly and inelegant? Maybe they should have poked a little less fun at Ballmer in the Keynote.
I wouldn't go so far as to say there will be no killer app, since the killer app could be bundled with the phone. But Apple is adding to the risk that there will never be a killer app simply by virtue of the fact that they are creating an artificial barrier to development.
Is the barrier to development infinitely high? That remains, too, to be seen. Look how quickly people cracked open the AppleTV and made it into a general purpose computer. But as a potential buyer, I have to add uncertainty to the cost of the iPhone: any application I may want/need for the iPhone may never be developed. An accommodating rather than hostile approach to third party development would reduce that cost significantly. And that's what it boils down to for me. I may be willing to pay $500 or $600 for the thing, but the hidden "costs" of Apple's walled garden may prove too steep to ignore.
Are you afraid congress might change June to have only 28 days?
Au contraire. Anyone who tells you that X definitely is or or that Y definitely isn't fair use, more likely than not, is wrong. Fair use is defined in 17 USC 107. In relevant part, it reads:That statute, and the common law definition of fair use that underlies it is many things, but it is in no way clear or explicit about what uses qualify.
Making copies to give to your friends? Gotta run it through the test. Selling copies on the streets of Manhattan? Gotta run it through the test. Some outcomes can be easily predicted (e.g. "hahaha, nice try. Pay up.") But most small scale, private uses are not. . . and precisely because they are small scale, private uses, as the grandparent alluded to; nobody would drag you to court to have them run through the test, so there's no precedent and therefore no way to say with any certainty whether such a use is fair or not.
Copyright maximalists have their perspective on the issue, and that's fine, but it's not the law.
One of the contributors at Kotaku suggested that Rockstar simply require the hard drive to play. I think that would be a great solution, but I'd be surprised if Microsoft let them do something like that.
Every one of the words in your post can be used as a password. That doesn't justify prohibiting their publication.
The AACS key is a password that's, in effect, distributed to everyone who owns a HDDVD and is furthermore useless to you unless you possess an HDDVD. It's an open secret. In that respect it's different from a credit card, and your analogy is inapt.
And it's not illegal to post a string of digits that may or may not be a credit card, without more, and the same should apply in the case of the HDDVD key.
onerous indeed. We're going to have to hash everything ever published and compare it to a list of banned hashes, all to satisfy this isolated corner of the DMCA?
Yikes!
The problem with barring publication of an encryption key, without more, is that it really is impossible--and I don't mean in a "the internet will route around censorship" fashion.
One of the following series of hex values, according to the AACS, cannot be published by anyone besides them:
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-BF
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C1
Trying to bar one of them from publication will necessarily reveal what it is. As Wikipedia is discovering, you have to be able to describe what you're not allowed to publish in sufficient detail in order to effectively prevent its publication.
With other forms of intellectual property, the problem is avoided in various ways: in order to obtain a patent, the description itself becomes public domain. In copyright, the description is bounded by the creative content of that which you create. Trademarks are delimited by "confusion in the marketplace," and trade secrets are delimited by that which is actually kept secret.
The DMCA purports to create a fifth type of intellectual property, not limited in time, that would bar distribution of information (rather than just physical devices), but has no boundaries on the AACS's theory of what constitutes a "part" of an circumvention device. The boundary becomes "whatever the AACS moves to protect as a part of a circumvention device." But in order to enforce that right, we all have to know what we're not allowed to distribute.
So maybe the AACS, in order to avoid the paradox, can seek to protect a *range* of values. The scenario just gets even more absurd.
No. The answer is really that the key, without more, cannot be afforded protection as "part" of a circumvention device. It has to be a accompanied by something more, at the very least a description of how it can be used to circumvent. Otherwise it's just a string of text.
And that's where the DMCA falls apart, as people with an interest in circumventing can always break apart the information to such a degree to avoid any one part being classified as a "part."
It's a tough problem, and it should be brought to a court to evaluate. The court in Remierdes had an easy time, because the circumvention device was whole. Fair use will have to be read into the DMCA at some point when it comes to these alleged partial circumvention devices.
I agree completely with your analysis of exactly what is alleged to be illegal about posting the number, but I'd point out the big difference between this and the 2600 case: the 2600 case was about an entire computer program (a device). This case would test the limits on what constitutes a "part" of a "device."
It's not at all clear that the AACS key, alone, would qualify in the same way as DeCSS did.
Digg won't get sued if there's no creditable lawsuit. Digg's users are forcing them to think carefully before capitulating to the sort of C&D letter that people often take at face value even if there's no legitimate legal peril.
I still type with my hands offset like that today, with my left hand responsible for more than half of the keyboard.
I'm hoping this CATCHES ON and wet ransfer a11 sorts of information like this. It'11 be 1ike getting every thing in the form of a ransom n0te.
Unlimited data and unlimited bandwidth aren't the same. Why doesn't Verizon just throttle abusers? They can still have their unlimited data as advertised, just at a rate of 2400bps.