It seems to me that because copyright is intangible, that the public domain is immeasurable, and because expanding copyright takes no money out of the budget, that IP laws are the pork barrel legislation of the Digital Millennium. Senators and legislators see no problem with enlarging copyright beyond its traditional boundaries, past fair use and first sale, because there is no means of accounting for the theft. Is there a sense in Washington that wrapping new copyright restrictions with a bow and handing them to entertainment conglomerates has no downside politically or economically?
If this is the case, how can we change the climate in Washington to make our representatives accountable for diminishing the public domain and enlarging copyright?
Imagine driving on the freeway at 65 mph, and getting pulled over because the speed limit in the alley behind your house is 10 mph.
This concept used to be called jurisdiction--that a law has certain an area of geographical effect beyond which it doesn't apply. The 10 mph limit is only in effect on streets designated as 10 mph zones. Apparently the IP Patrol of the US feels it can enforce it's 10 mph limit on other country's freeways.
What we're learning (that military types always knew) is that a law's jurisdiction has nothing to do with it's claimed geographical borders, and everything to do with sheer ability to enforce the law. All the explicit and implicit limitations on laws stand only until a more powerful will chooses to ignore them. To say that the 10 mph limit only applies to the alleyway is just an empty promise, not a physical certainty. If an enforcement body chooses to enforce the laws of one jurisdiction on another, only political or physical resistance would stop them.
I'm no constitutional scholar, but the US constitution only applies to US Citizens and those on US soil. Dmitry never broke a law on US soil. Your reading would imply that that phrase has the meaning "Congress shall have the power... to regulate commerce _in_ foriegn nations," which is patently incorrect.
If the US doesn't want people *buying* circumvention devices, they should have put that in the DMCA and prosecuted Americans for buying the program sold by Elcomsoft. That would have eliminated any nasty jurisdiction problem. Nowadays, the economy's global until an industry lobby group throws a few soirees in the nation's capitol. Then it's jingoism time.
Right, I just don't understand the motivation behind arbitrary selfishness. Rather, there is no motivation by definition because it is arbitrary.
I guess if you could justify your selfishness, I would understand. If you can't, well... I'm just of the opinion that the default policy should be unselfishness unless there is logical justification for selfishness.
Libertarians like ESR and me are very suspicious of attempts to use laws to force companies to behave a certain way;
It's just funny to me that *laws* are coersion, but market operations are not coersion. I guess the libertarian can argue that the market is a natural law, while law-laws are not... But so what?
Libertarians just favor one flavor of coersion over another, and claim that one's okay because it's the invisible hand doing the coersion. Fine. So let's let all the powerful monopolies and oligopolies incorporate arbitrary licensing schemes into every commercial transaction of semi-durable goods, rather than selling it outright. The market makes it possible, so it must be OK! Collusion is OK! Predatory pricing is OK! Bribery is OK!
And, like I mentioned in a previous post, you have just as much (if not more) choice WRT a law as you do WRT market forces. Just because there's a law against it doesn't preclude you from doing it. Laws make actions very costly. Just like market forces.
The government is not the only way to control people's lives. The market does a fine job of it. Libertarians just prefer one over the other. They're not worse or better than beaurocrats, they just prefer a different poison (and that's probably the most damning criticism of Libertarianism that can be made).
In the libertarian sense, coersion doesn't actually remove choice, either. You're free to violate laws or initiate force, you're just faced with sizeable economic or other disincentives (such as the future limitation of your flerb.)
I can punch you in the face, but I am provided disincentives in the form of prison time and monetary ruin. In the same way, I can "choose" linux, but am disincented by the economic reality that is the Microsoft monpoly.
So, our choices of Operating System are flerb in much the same way that our choices to stop making mortgage payements is flerb. Sure, we are flerb to make such choices... but we only very rarely will. That's the market's way of depriving you of your flerb.
Libertarianism, in this case, is only decieving itself and its adherents about what is actually "flerb" about the choices we claim to make.
If you are developing software for general distribution, wouldn't you accept suggestions for improvement? I think it is perticularly libertarian to view a suggestion as a coersion.
Now, if you wrote some code, and I thought I could use it somehow else, we'll I'd like to see it changed. I might do it if the source were available and I could leave you alone... but if the source is closed (under NDA, shielded by the DMCA), then I have no recourse but to ask you to make the changes for me.
It just smacks as selfish that you'd write some reasonable code for public use and then keep the source all to yourself, not even letting me modify it for my purposes for no other reason that "gee that's coersion, somehow."
The author of the article happly ignores one monkeywrench: economics.
The rules of economics aren't "laws," just predictors of how people will behave to further their interests. Unfortunately, the predictions of economics imply a necessary reduction of our "flerbage" in the case of a monopoly.
Specifically, ESR carries the libertarian mantle blind to the "Network Effect" of proprietary software that makes the Windows Monopoly so powerful. By flouting standards Microsoft makes their proprietary software more valuable because there is no adequate substitute in the marketplace. They have an interest in breaking campatibility with all but their own products or those they sanction in order to maintain and strengthen their monopoly (ignoring government regulation or anti-trust lawsuits that modify their behavior).
The Network Effect means that my flerbage is certainly decreased in the case of proprietary software. Microsoft operates in their best interest to break compatibility, and in order to do business I am forced to purchase their product whenever they do. My choice appears "flerb," but is really "double-plus-unflerb" because of economics. Sure, I'm free to use linux, it's just that I have to expend by precious time and resources circumventing Microsoft's artifical barriers to compatibility. That's not flerb at all.
I'm not sure if this is endemic to the libertarian view, but from my standpoint being forced to do something by the market is just as bad as being forced to do it by the government. Sure, the market can't put me in "prison" with "guns" but it sure feels like it when I don't have any *actual* choice.
Imagine trying to decipher the hidden messages in "The 5000 fingers of Dr. T.". It is a movie and as such contains the symbolism and iconography and messages of many individuals. Some of them are apparent, some of them covert, and some of them downright indecipherable.
Also, think about the Blade Runner/Ridley Scott "Is Deckard a replicant" business that lasted, well, right up until he told the world the answer. It is that sort of interpretation that someone hoping to decipher steganography would have to perfect. It's not just stuff like: Hi Everyone Likes Punch!
The only way to get messages out of such texts is intimate knowledge of the author(s) or intended recipients of the hidden meanings. By asking them, or sodium pentothal, or the NSA's computer simulation of everybody's brain.
I'm no cryptographer, but the most reliable and cost effective way to discover a secret is likely to investigate the people that know the secret, rather than try to divine meaning from a text that came into your hands.
Your post wins the awards for most invalid argument of the day and laziest troll of the day.
1. How does one "break copyrighted material?"
2. What relevance has other software he develop[s/ed]?
Copyrighted material can't be "broken." Technological protection mechanisms can be removed or ignored, however, they have no protection under Russian law. Furthermore, even us lowly Americans have the right to remove or ignore TPMs at will to exercise our constitutional rights--we just can't tell other people how to do it.
Now you tell me, what exactly do you think is right with his arrest?
Let me see if I've got this straight: Your mom creates an humanoid format for carbon-based lifeforms, and someone develops something very massive, like a sledgehammer, allowing people to apply great force to the back of your skull. Your mom wants the sledgehammer inventer brought to justice for this affront to your very life, and you find something wrong with this?
You mean that if I invented the copy machine and get paid by companies to sell it to them, I would be stealing?
Everyone who's against the right to invent tools with positive and negative uses, please post your address so I can send you textbooks to full up your empty brain. And put your keyboard in the oven and set it to 450 degrees.
I had a few people like you walk past me on Monday. "No, I don't want to read about why you're protesting." What, is your brain too full? Simply don't have the time to learn about injustice and erosion of the US constitution?
I admit, putting fliers on cabin doors might be less effective than knocking on them and talking to the occupants; but face it: if it is the wrong time to tell you about how the DOJ is arresting innocent foriegn nationals while you walk to and from lunch, or while you are at your cabin, or while you are at a bar... When is the right time? When you sit in front of the TV and have it fed to you?
I don't know what to do about people like you, but I'm determined to find out. In the mean time, I'll talk to the people whose brains aren't full yet.
The FBI and the DOJ are going to be unwitting accomplices in the death of the DMCA. Civil Rights meets Human Rights meets censorship meets international law = fucking firestorm.
Many have simultaneously expressed great regret that Dmitry has to sit in prison, and fear that the anti-DMCA sentiments will whither once he is released. This ambivalence is not dangerous unless it is self-fulfilling. Releasing Dmitry does not prevent another corp from having their rent-a-cops (FBI) from arresting another programmer.
Tell people Dmitry's story, celebrate his eventual release, and use it as a reminder when you start to think you don't have to get the DMCA repealed. Until it is repealed, there is still work to do.
Heck, if you're closer to Mpls. than Chicago, join. If you live in Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead or Albert Lea, join. You don't have to drive all the way to the cities to change the minds of people around you. The protest groups are sources for information and materials. Signs, fliers, postcards, letters... Hold a one-person sympathy protest in Emily, MN. Put fliers on all the cabin doors in Lutsen. Change people's minds.
Declan's article reads a little like propaganda, but I have no issues with being manipulated by it's message: our elected representatives have issued a challenge to the American people. They want to hear that we're upset about losing our rights to free speech and fair use. Like petulant Gods, they are toying with our lives to see if we will offer sacrifices, request forgiveness, or openly defy them in our evolution as a democracy. Only defiance will get the DMCA to go away. Any other course of action will doom us to greater injustice as they extend the boundaries of their unconstitutional behavior.
Americans do not think about copyright, Americans would rather not think about people in prison. Americans have a tendency to think circularly: people arrested must be criminals. All laws passed by congress are legitimate. We have an uphill battle convincing them that Dmitry has done nothing wrong, and that the DMCA is unconstitutional.
Don't accept "the Supreme Court will handle it." Who says they will? Why wait for the justice system? Once a sufficient number of Americans are informed about the existence of the DMCA and the erosion of their rights, we can make congress uphold their oaths and protect the constitiution like they should have done in the beginning.
The system is being challenged in court. Fine. But that is not justification for twiddling our thumbs in the mean time. Action now makes it easier for the judges to strike down the DMCA. Action now makes it easier for shy, right-thinking congress people to speak out about what a travesty the DMCA is.
Tell 3 people today about the DMCA. Join a protest next week, and tell 1,000. Make people think, encourage people to reason.
By the time Saint Paul had been added to the list of "organized" sites, the EFF had already called the whole deal off. So we were left to our own devices (none).
This issue is not ended when the protesters go home this evening. I'm going to take a nap, and then start a more organized campaign to have another protest.
We had some great responses from passers by, and about 90% of people took and actually read the flier. I had printed prewritten, preaddressed postcards to send to our senators, and we gave a hundred or so of those away. I still have boxes of preaddressed envelopes for the letters I made (justifying our next protest).
There are so many reasons for people to identify with this issue (big govt., big corps., prison, reading, speech), that it is hard not to be upset. The truth is our most damaging weapon, and we spread some of it in Saint Paul.
Send your real email address to freedima@underwhelm.org and you will be in the know next time (which will be sooner, not later).
Well, my first laptop I spent $3000 on and it was obsolete within a year, but I think you're right now. I gave that laptop (a Gateway solo 2100) to a relative, and found myself justifying protable computing again.
This one is like coming out of the stone age. USB firewire, active matrix screen... The only thing I miss is the DB9 serial port.
said it before, saying it again
on
Transmeta Webpad
·
· Score: 4
The Powerbook G4 is my webpad.
For nearly the same price, you get an actual computer. It is light and thin enough to bring on the toilet (the main purpose of a webpad) backpack or airplane (the main purpose for a laptop), and the powerbook keeps your legs warm on winter nights to boot.
2x HD space, State of the art Unix-based OS, larger screen, DVD player, more RAM... I can't think of a comparison where the Tibook comes out behind this product.
I bought the G4 because I was done waiting for the webpad of my dreams to come. This webpad has the right specs for a webpad, but the price-performance ratio is still beaten by the Tibook. 6 months have passed without obsolescing this purchase, I'd say a that's pretty good ROI. I'm impressed, anyway, and that's all that matters.
The Minneapolis/Saint Paul protest will take place from 11-1 at the Saint Paul Federal Courthouse at 316 N Robert Street downtown.
Please contact me at freedima@underwhelm.org or at my qwest address above if you want to help coordinate or provide services, or have questions about the location.
I've volunteered to be the Minneapolis/St. Paul contact for the Adobe/DOJ protests this Monday.
Please send an email to freedima@underwhelm.org, or my qwest email listed above, if you are in the area and would like to help coordinate or provide services. The protest will be at the Federal Courthouse at 301 Robert Street in downtown St. Paul from 11am - 1pm.
The EFF have stated that the lawsuit will not be withdrawn even if the RIAA binds themselves not to sue Felton. No matter what the RIAA and Verant do, the EFF can still sue the DOJ because of the threat of criminal penalties (not chimerical).
Furthermore, the defendant's claim that they never intended to sue is laregely irrelevant in light of their actions preceeding the withdrawl of Felton's paper. Actions speak louder than words, and while the RIAA may have never said "we'll sue," their pressure to review the publication before it was presented sure sounds like they were under the impression that something gave them the necessary leverage to even request such a thing.
At the very least, the trial judge will have a fact finding, review depositions, etc. to determine which party is more trustworthy. Did the RIAA pressure Felton with threat of lawsuit, or did Felton pull the paper to justify the suit? Judges adjudicate such questions every day. Which do you think the judge will more likely find?
I don't think it will be a problem for the issue to come to trial, but it will take a long time; and it will be a long time after that before a final decision is rendered.
So that's why my DSL router was crapping out every 10 minutes or so this afternoon, after several months of continuous uptime. I knew it couldn't be a configuration problem (there's only so much configuratin' one can do to those things.)
After reading about the trouble Slashdot ran into with their Cisco routers, and the tongue lashing they got for rebooting it without understanding the problem, I'm glad I powercycled it anyway. It did solve the problem, until I got hit again.
While I was rebooting the "turtle," as we call it, my girlfriend, Anne, for some reason got really upset, started crying and moved out. Really odd.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that because copyright is intangible, that the public domain is immeasurable, and because expanding copyright takes no money out of the budget, that IP laws are the pork barrel legislation of the Digital Millennium. Senators and legislators see no problem with enlarging copyright beyond its traditional boundaries, past fair use and first sale, because there is no means of accounting for the theft. Is there a sense in Washington that wrapping new copyright restrictions with a bow and handing them to entertainment conglomerates has no downside politically or economically?
If this is the case, how can we change the climate in Washington to make our representatives accountable for diminishing the public domain and enlarging copyright?
Imagine driving on the freeway at 65 mph, and getting pulled over because the speed limit in the alley behind your house is 10 mph.
This concept used to be called jurisdiction--that a law has certain an area of geographical effect beyond which it doesn't apply. The 10 mph limit is only in effect on streets designated as 10 mph zones. Apparently the IP Patrol of the US feels it can enforce it's 10 mph limit on other country's freeways.
What we're learning (that military types always knew) is that a law's jurisdiction has nothing to do with it's claimed geographical borders, and everything to do with sheer ability to enforce the law. All the explicit and implicit limitations on laws stand only until a more powerful will chooses to ignore them. To say that the 10 mph limit only applies to the alleyway is just an empty promise, not a physical certainty. If an enforcement body chooses to enforce the laws of one jurisdiction on another, only political or physical resistance would stop them.
I'm no constitutional scholar, but the US constitution only applies to US Citizens and those on US soil. Dmitry never broke a law on US soil. Your reading would imply that that phrase has the meaning "Congress shall have the power ... to regulate commerce _in_ foriegn nations," which is patently incorrect.
If the US doesn't want people *buying* circumvention devices, they should have put that in the DMCA and prosecuted Americans for buying the program sold by Elcomsoft. That would have eliminated any nasty jurisdiction problem. Nowadays, the economy's global until an industry lobby group throws a few soirees in the nation's capitol. Then it's jingoism time.
Maybe it's intentional.
Let all the FPs get got well in advance and easily, and you take all the challenge and fun out of getting FP.
A little applied psychology at work.
Right, I just don't understand the motivation behind arbitrary selfishness. Rather, there is no motivation by definition because it is arbitrary.
I guess if you could justify your selfishness, I would understand. If you can't, well... I'm just of the opinion that the default policy should be unselfishness unless there is logical justification for selfishness.
Libertarians like ESR and me are very suspicious of attempts to use laws to force companies to behave a certain way;
It's just funny to me that *laws* are coersion, but market operations are not coersion. I guess the libertarian can argue that the market is a natural law, while law-laws are not... But so what?
Libertarians just favor one flavor of coersion over another, and claim that one's okay because it's the invisible hand doing the coersion. Fine. So let's let all the powerful monopolies and oligopolies incorporate arbitrary licensing schemes into every commercial transaction of semi-durable goods, rather than selling it outright. The market makes it possible, so it must be OK! Collusion is OK! Predatory pricing is OK! Bribery is OK!
And, like I mentioned in a previous post, you have just as much (if not more) choice WRT a law as you do WRT market forces. Just because there's a law against it doesn't preclude you from doing it. Laws make actions very costly. Just like market forces.
The government is not the only way to control people's lives. The market does a fine job of it. Libertarians just prefer one over the other. They're not worse or better than beaurocrats, they just prefer a different poison (and that's probably the most damning criticism of Libertarianism that can be made).
Let me put it another way:
In the libertarian sense, coersion doesn't actually remove choice, either. You're free to violate laws or initiate force, you're just faced with sizeable economic or other disincentives (such as the future limitation of your flerb.)
I can punch you in the face, but I am provided disincentives in the form of prison time and monetary ruin. In the same way, I can "choose" linux, but am disincented by the economic reality that is the Microsoft monpoly.
So, our choices of Operating System are flerb in much the same way that our choices to stop making mortgage payements is flerb. Sure, we are flerb to make such choices... but we only very rarely will. That's the market's way of depriving you of your flerb.
Libertarianism, in this case, is only decieving itself and its adherents about what is actually "flerb" about the choices we claim to make.
If you are developing software for general distribution, wouldn't you accept suggestions for improvement? I think it is perticularly libertarian to view a suggestion as a coersion.
Now, if you wrote some code, and I thought I could use it somehow else, we'll I'd like to see it changed. I might do it if the source were available and I could leave you alone... but if the source is closed (under NDA, shielded by the DMCA), then I have no recourse but to ask you to make the changes for me.
It just smacks as selfish that you'd write some reasonable code for public use and then keep the source all to yourself, not even letting me modify it for my purposes for no other reason that "gee that's coersion, somehow."
The author of the article happly ignores one monkeywrench: economics.
The rules of economics aren't "laws," just predictors of how people will behave to further their interests. Unfortunately, the predictions of economics imply a necessary reduction of our "flerbage" in the case of a monopoly.
Specifically, ESR carries the libertarian mantle blind to the "Network Effect" of proprietary software that makes the Windows Monopoly so powerful. By flouting standards Microsoft makes their proprietary software more valuable because there is no adequate substitute in the marketplace. They have an interest in breaking campatibility with all but their own products or those they sanction in order to maintain and strengthen their monopoly (ignoring government regulation or anti-trust lawsuits that modify their behavior).
The Network Effect means that my flerbage is certainly decreased in the case of proprietary software. Microsoft operates in their best interest to break compatibility, and in order to do business I am forced to purchase their product whenever they do. My choice appears "flerb," but is really "double-plus-unflerb" because of economics. Sure, I'm free to use linux, it's just that I have to expend by precious time and resources circumventing Microsoft's artifical barriers to compatibility. That's not flerb at all.
I'm not sure if this is endemic to the libertarian view, but from my standpoint being forced to do something by the market is just as bad as being forced to do it by the government. Sure, the market can't put me in "prison" with "guns" but it sure feels like it when I don't have any *actual* choice.
Imagine trying to decipher the hidden messages in "The 5000 fingers of Dr. T.". It is a movie and as such contains the symbolism and iconography and messages of many individuals. Some of them are apparent, some of them covert, and some of them downright indecipherable.
Also, think about the Blade Runner/Ridley Scott "Is Deckard a replicant" business that lasted, well, right up until he told the world the answer. It is that sort of interpretation that someone hoping to decipher steganography would have to perfect. It's not just stuff like: Hi Everyone Likes Punch!
The only way to get messages out of such texts is intimate knowledge of the author(s) or intended recipients of the hidden meanings. By asking them, or sodium pentothal, or the NSA's computer simulation of everybody's brain.
I'm no cryptographer, but the most reliable and cost effective way to discover a secret is likely to investigate the people that know the secret, rather than try to divine meaning from a text that came into your hands.
No decision has yet been rendered. I'm sure Slashdot will cover the result, even if CNN and MSNBC don't.
Whatever the result, expect an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Your post wins the awards for most invalid argument of the day and laziest troll of the day.
1. How does one "break copyrighted material?"
2. What relevance has other software he develop[s/ed]?
Copyrighted material can't be "broken." Technological protection mechanisms can be removed or ignored, however, they have no protection under Russian law. Furthermore, even us lowly Americans have the right to remove or ignore TPMs at will to exercise our constitutional rights--we just can't tell other people how to do it.
Now you tell me, what exactly do you think is right with his arrest?
Let me see if I've got this straight: Your mom creates an humanoid format for carbon-based lifeforms, and someone develops something very massive, like a sledgehammer, allowing people to apply great force to the back of your skull. Your mom wants the sledgehammer inventer brought to justice for this affront to your very life, and you find something wrong with this?
You mean that if I invented the copy machine and get paid by companies to sell it to them, I would be stealing?
Everyone who's against the right to invent tools with positive and negative uses, please post your address so I can send you textbooks to full up your empty brain. And put your keyboard in the oven and set it to 450 degrees.
I had a few people like you walk past me on Monday. "No, I don't want to read about why you're protesting." What, is your brain too full? Simply don't have the time to learn about injustice and erosion of the US constitution?
I admit, putting fliers on cabin doors might be less effective than knocking on them and talking to the occupants; but face it: if it is the wrong time to tell you about how the DOJ is arresting innocent foriegn nationals while you walk to and from lunch, or while you are at your cabin, or while you are at a bar... When is the right time? When you sit in front of the TV and have it fed to you?
I don't know what to do about people like you, but I'm determined to find out. In the mean time, I'll talk to the people whose brains aren't full yet.
The FBI and the DOJ are going to be unwitting accomplices in the death of the DMCA. Civil Rights meets Human Rights meets censorship meets international law = fucking firestorm.
Many have simultaneously expressed great regret that Dmitry has to sit in prison, and fear that the anti-DMCA sentiments will whither once he is released. This ambivalence is not dangerous unless it is self-fulfilling. Releasing Dmitry does not prevent another corp from having their rent-a-cops (FBI) from arresting another programmer.
Tell people Dmitry's story, celebrate his eventual release, and use it as a reminder when you start to think you don't have to get the DMCA repealed. Until it is repealed, there is still work to do.
Join DMCA-minnesota: DMCA-minnesota-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Heck, if you're closer to Mpls. than Chicago, join. If you live in Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead or Albert Lea, join. You don't have to drive all the way to the cities to change the minds of people around you. The protest groups are sources for information and materials. Signs, fliers, postcards, letters... Hold a one-person sympathy protest in Emily, MN. Put fliers on all the cabin doors in Lutsen. Change people's minds.
Declan's article reads a little like propaganda, but I have no issues with being manipulated by it's message: our elected representatives have issued a challenge to the American people. They want to hear that we're upset about losing our rights to free speech and fair use. Like petulant Gods, they are toying with our lives to see if we will offer sacrifices, request forgiveness, or openly defy them in our evolution as a democracy. Only defiance will get the DMCA to go away. Any other course of action will doom us to greater injustice as they extend the boundaries of their unconstitutional behavior.
Americans do not think about copyright, Americans would rather not think about people in prison. Americans have a tendency to think circularly: people arrested must be criminals. All laws passed by congress are legitimate. We have an uphill battle convincing them that Dmitry has done nothing wrong, and that the DMCA is unconstitutional.
Don't accept "the Supreme Court will handle it." Who says they will? Why wait for the justice system? Once a sufficient number of Americans are informed about the existence of the DMCA and the erosion of their rights, we can make congress uphold their oaths and protect the constitiution like they should have done in the beginning.
The system is being challenged in court. Fine. But that is not justification for twiddling our thumbs in the mean time. Action now makes it easier for the judges to strike down the DMCA. Action now makes it easier for shy, right-thinking congress people to speak out about what a travesty the DMCA is.
Tell 3 people today about the DMCA. Join a protest next week, and tell 1,000. Make people think, encourage people to reason.
Free Dmitry.
Repeal the DMCA.
Why wait?
He didn't; his company did. We don't arrest people for things their company does.
By the time Saint Paul had been added to the list of "organized" sites, the EFF had already called the whole deal off. So we were left to our own devices (none).
This issue is not ended when the protesters go home this evening. I'm going to take a nap, and then start a more organized campaign to have another protest.
We had some great responses from passers by, and about 90% of people took and actually read the flier. I had printed prewritten, preaddressed postcards to send to our senators, and we gave a hundred or so of those away. I still have boxes of preaddressed envelopes for the letters I made (justifying our next protest).
There are so many reasons for people to identify with this issue (big govt., big corps., prison, reading, speech), that it is hard not to be upset. The truth is our most damaging weapon, and we spread some of it in Saint Paul.
Send your real email address to freedima@underwhelm.org and you will be in the know next time (which will be sooner, not later).
Well, my first laptop I spent $3000 on and it was obsolete within a year, but I think you're right now. I gave that laptop (a Gateway solo 2100) to a relative, and found myself justifying protable computing again.
This one is like coming out of the stone age. USB firewire, active matrix screen... The only thing I miss is the DB9 serial port.
The Powerbook G4 is my webpad.
For nearly the same price, you get an actual computer. It is light and thin enough to bring on the toilet (the main purpose of a webpad) backpack or airplane (the main purpose for a laptop), and the powerbook keeps your legs warm on winter nights to boot.
2x HD space, State of the art Unix-based OS, larger screen, DVD player, more RAM... I can't think of a comparison where the Tibook comes out behind this product.
I bought the G4 because I was done waiting for the webpad of my dreams to come. This webpad has the right specs for a webpad, but the price-performance ratio is still beaten by the Tibook. 6 months have passed without obsolescing this purchase, I'd say a that's pretty good ROI. I'm impressed, anyway, and that's all that matters.
The Minneapolis/Saint Paul protest will take place from 11-1 at the Saint Paul Federal Courthouse at 316 N Robert Street downtown.
Please contact me at freedima@underwhelm.org or at my qwest address above if you want to help coordinate or provide services, or have questions about the location.
Free Dmitry!
I've volunteered to be the Minneapolis/St. Paul contact for the Adobe/DOJ protests this Monday.
Please send an email to freedima@underwhelm.org, or my qwest email listed above, if you are in the area and would like to help coordinate or provide services. The protest will be at the Federal Courthouse at 301 Robert Street in downtown St. Paul from 11am - 1pm.
The EFF have stated that the lawsuit will not be withdrawn even if the RIAA binds themselves not to sue Felton. No matter what the RIAA and Verant do, the EFF can still sue the DOJ because of the threat of criminal penalties (not chimerical).
Furthermore, the defendant's claim that they never intended to sue is laregely irrelevant in light of their actions preceeding the withdrawl of Felton's paper. Actions speak louder than words, and while the RIAA may have never said "we'll sue," their pressure to review the publication before it was presented sure sounds like they were under the impression that something gave them the necessary leverage to even request such a thing.
At the very least, the trial judge will have a fact finding, review depositions, etc. to determine which party is more trustworthy. Did the RIAA pressure Felton with threat of lawsuit, or did Felton pull the paper to justify the suit? Judges adjudicate such questions every day. Which do you think the judge will more likely find?
I don't think it will be a problem for the issue to come to trial, but it will take a long time; and it will be a long time after that before a final decision is rendered.
So that's why my DSL router was crapping out every 10 minutes or so this afternoon, after several months of continuous uptime. I knew it couldn't be a configuration problem (there's only so much configuratin' one can do to those things.)
After reading about the trouble Slashdot ran into with their Cisco routers, and the tongue lashing they got for rebooting it without understanding the problem, I'm glad I powercycled it anyway. It did solve the problem, until I got hit again.
While I was rebooting the "turtle," as we call it, my girlfriend, Anne, for some reason got really upset, started crying and moved out. Really odd.