Indeed - it's nice to see a country using a more sensible definition of access versus possession, rather than one based on computer technicality.
The UK goes in completely the opposite direction however - the courts ruled that downloading not only counts as possession, but it counts as making child porn. And copy constitutes "making" it. So now we have the media talking about people being arrested for making child porn, with most people assuming that means the actual production, but in many cases that may be the same as downloading. (I'm not bothered if downloading is illegal, but it's nonsense to try to twist the terms - and anyhow, if downloading child porn is so obviously wrong, why do they have to pretend that they were making instead?)
What is this target market? (It's not anyone right now, since it's not even released. It's the new Duke Nukem Forever in terms of absurd hype over an unreleased product - 5 years at least of Apple tablet rumours.)
And, as TFA was trying to point out, such tablets have been around for years, so the Ipad still isn't doing anything new here.
There have been multitouch tablets and netbooks. And anyhow, what happened to all the "But one mouse button is so much easier, and therefore better"? Now Apple fans are telling me that complex multiple hand gestures are something that your grandmother has to learn? I prefer my one touch phone (and it has the added advantage I can use it with any stylus, or when I'm wearing gloves).
Sorry, phones - including smartphones - were fashion accessories long before the Iphone phones were released. Your claim is especially dubious, given that there isn't even a clear definition of "smartphone" (can you give me one? The problem is that even among non-smartphones, by 2005, bog standard phones were also full computers with Internet access, and that was still years before even the very first Iphone, which itself lacked many basic commonplace features such as copy/paste, MMS, Java and 3G).
The Blackberry phones were traditionally associated with business use, but this wasn't at all the case for all the other companies such as Nokia or Palm. I'm not sure where you claim of Nokia only being for business use comes from - they're the world's biggest phone company (including for "smart" phones), and that includes consumer use.
No, kids want to be seen with an iPhone.
Well, a small percent of the market want to be seen with one, judging by actual sales figures.
I don't even see that - it's not an e-reader anyway, and costs far more than a netbook without offering anything extra. And basically, the whole idea of tablets in their current form (including the Islate) sucks for the reasons given in TFA.
An interesting idea - although surely one could say that convergence also happened on the PC. It was the opposite way round to what was expected - rather than doing computer-like things on a TV, instead people started watching TV on computers.
We're also seeing convergence with the Internet - it wouldn't surprise me if in say ten years' time, watching TV and making phone calls all happens through the Internet. The products we used diverged, but they use a common technology.
And a PVR is basically a computer - I take the point about divergence, but one could equally view it as convergence, in that a different technology (VHS) was replaced with one using computers and hard disks, in common with desktop PCs.
Note that the Iphone wasn't really "so successful"; most phone companies in the market are still far bigger than Apple. It didn't flop simply because phones were already known to be successful, but it was nothing special.
Indeed, if you're saying that there are still concerns over Oyster, I do entirely agree. It is annoying the way they've tried to indirectly force people into it, by increasing the ticket prices significantly, and in some cases reducing the available ticket machines so the queues are massive.
But chrb's claim was nonsense - his viewpoint seemed to be that Oyster wasn't something to worry about at all, and that therefore ID cards weren't anything to worry about either.
From the link, "two surveys of college students showed that sexual intercourse often involved deeper and more vigorous penile thrusting following periods of separation"
There I was puzzled as to why having a good hard fuck seemed a good idea after a period of separation, but now I know - obviously it's just to remove someone else's semen.
Anybody who knows anything about tools knows that brands like Ryobi and King are crap.
But if you don't know that, it's okay to have your hand mangled, because you should have known not to use them?
I don't think we know enough to say whether it's fair for them to be liable or not. But regarding patents, it's unfair to blame the jury here. The fact is that neither solution is fair - it's unfair for the company to be liable when the technology is patented, but equally it's unfair that patents mean someone can't claim damages when they are injured!
I mean yes, there's an argument over whether a company is liable. But if we agreed that they otherwise would be, is it seriously fair to say that that is trumped by patent law, and the patent means an injured person deserves no damages?
The root problem here is patent law. The jury are not at fault, and their decision was reasonable. As Techdirt say at the end, "If the government is going to require companies to use a patented technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow competition in the market place."
I disagree that breaking the law is widely viewed as inherently evil - rather, it's that many cases of breaking the law are viewed as evil (simply because for most major crimes, there's a consensus).
Firstly, there is far less of a consensus on issues such as web hosting and copyright law.
But your logic is backward. Just because breaking the law is often viewed as evil, doesn't mean that all references to evil are about the law. The claim is "YouTube was evil" not "YouTube were breaking the law". So it's making a claim about a moral position, not a legal one.
Even if it is a legal claim - what law did they break?
That is exactly my point. Everything that's public now is pretty damning
You keep saying this - can you point me to an example of something that's "pretty damning"? And preferably with the full context, as it's already been demonstrated how things are being taken out of context.
As I posted in my other comment, most of the others are pointless too. Show me which one we should be looking at? And also please provide the original context for fairness.
Last time I looked, it was innocent until proven guilty, so the burden is on you to prove it.
Oh, so they used the phrase "copyright bastards". So company execs use naughty words too - how "evil". I don't think that using the phrase is unreasonable, when you consider how groups like the RIAA have operated. This doesn't mean they think copyright infringement should be supported.
On the whole, most of the emails seem to be about reducing their liability, which seems an entirely reasonable and sensible thing.
I'm not sure that knowing about it changes anything. E.g., when people defend p2p websites, they're not ignorant that there's bound to be copyrighted material illegal distributed there - that's a straw man. The argument is that a p2p website shouldn't be held liable for what the torrents point to.
There's also the difference between knowing that YouTube must have copyrighted material on it somewhere, and knowing exactly what all of them are. In the latter case, there's an argument that they should then remove those individual videos - but simply knowing that Youtube has copyrighted material on it doesn't help you find it!
It irritates me to no end that the open source community will frequently scream bloody murder over a GPL violation, then turn around and say stuff like this "isn't evil."
Ah, this straw man again. The "scream bloody murder" occurs when companies are distributing something commercially, and doing it themselves. This is not comparable to saying that the owners of a user-generated site should be responsible for what users upload. For all we know, there may be Creative Commons etc material on Youtube that doesn't follow the licence, but it isn't going to change my opinion of Google here.
I'm an open source author too. I'd be annoyed if someone making a profit didn't follow the licence. I wouldn't call a site owner "evil" simply because someone uploaded it in violation of the licence. Nor would I suggest that I deserve millions of dollars in damages, or that new laws be created to criminalise software to circumvent any protections on my software, or that people should be disconnected from the Internet if they distributed my GPL program without offering the source, or that websites doing this should be censored - you know, these are the actual things that people "scream bloody murder" about.
Can you imagine the story? "Linux binary uploaded to Google's server without source. Google are evil!" You really think people would give a damn, or conclude that Google are therefore at fault?
* Allow Tesco to know all purchases, at any shop, whether the shopper uses the card or not? (You do realise that if I was that worried on a particular occasion, I could simply not use the card - plus, Tesco isn't likely to be the main source of privacy concern in terms of shopping. Tesco can't see someone's private purchases made elsewhere.)
Do Tesco have the ability:
* To arrest shoppers based on suspicious purchaces?
* To fine you if you forget to notify them that your card was lost or damaged, or that you've moved house?
No. So your comparison is pointless. Just because some people are happy to let Tesco have access to data of what you buy at their shops for marketing purposes has nothing to do with the Government having access to all data, when you're not even buying from them, and it's none of their business. Your analogy couldn't be more wrong.
Not to mention that the OP isn't most people. Perhaps he, like I, chooses not to have a Tesco card?
Well there's the rather obvious point that they're not compulsory. You don't have to use them if you're worried, plus people can have different cards, which makes it harder to gather all the information. And if my credit card company blocks my card, I can go to another company.
And travel cards like the Oyster card?
I haven't registered mine, and pay with cash. How do they track me, exactly? Plus again, it's optional.
Seriously, it would actually be quite useful to have one standardised, secure card that could be used to authenticate with banks etc.
My bank gives me a secure physical device for authenticating for free. Remind me why it's better for me to pay £60-£123 for a card to do the same thing, as well as having to hand over my fingerprints?
My bank also doesn't prosecute me if the device stops working and I forget to tell them.
What they wont be interested in is a national role out and mandating of cards for everybody or further expansion of the scheme.
Given that many of us in the UK wish to have a passport, then that's still ID cards by the backdoor. If the Tories are saying they're going to cancel it, I expect them to do that - not say that passport holders still have to get one.
It's worth noting that the cost is really more like £60, as the published figures don't include the "processing fees", i.e., paying £30 to private companies for the privilege of being fingerprinted etc. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8036536.stm , "The cost of the cards will be capped at £30 for the two years but once retailers are brought in to collect the data stores will be able to charge for processing it, with the total cost to applicants expected to be £60 per card."
For reference, it was only a few years ago that a passport cost £33 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_passport#Fees ) (although there are processing fees, these are only a few pounds, less than £5 when I got mine). Most of the increases since then are due to them converting it into the ID card. The combined ID/passport will be at least £93 - but with the processing fees, expect it to be more like at least £123.
I see what you're saying, but the cost is an important issue - sadly a lot of people don't care about the civil liberty issues (you and I do, but that doesn't persuade people), but they do care about the immense cost, which the Government has been trying to hide. So it is an issue if, even after spending the £60 for a card, or £123 for the passport version (both figures include the £30 processing feeds, which the Government conveniently doesn't include), that's suddenly obsolete a few years later, with new versions being even more expensive.
Progress is fine, but forced compulsory expensive progress is not what everyone wants.
It's also worth watching this news, as the Government is bound to spin it the other way - "look how wonderful ID cards will be, you'll be able to do everything with them!"
was also appalled that it wasn't free; they wanted me to pay for it!
Note that Opera has been completely free for years (since 2005). (And even before that, long before Firefox existed, you had the option of paying or a small ad.) I'm not sure why the idea of commercial sortware is "appalling" - I mean, you're running this on Windows!
I'd certainly recommend trying it again - Opera has been continually improved, and it's not really fair to judge it today based on a five year old version. (Also it's unclear whether the webpage problems were due to bugs/limitations in Opera, or because of poorly written webpages that are only written for IE and Firefox.)
We already have standard forms of ID (in the UK, the passport). That's not an argument for making the passport/ID card much more expensive, and tying it to a national database, or introducing laws criminalising people who fail to notify about change of details, or lost/damaged cards, and so on.
It's also not an argument for making the ID compulsory.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed - it's nice to see a country using a more sensible definition of access versus possession, rather than one based on computer technicality.
The UK goes in completely the opposite direction however - the courts ruled that downloading not only counts as possession, but it counts as making child porn. And copy constitutes "making" it. So now we have the media talking about people being arrested for making child porn, with most people assuming that means the actual production, but in many cases that may be the same as downloading. (I'm not bothered if downloading is illegal, but it's nonsense to try to twist the terms - and anyhow, if downloading child porn is so obviously wrong, why do they have to pretend that they were making instead?)
What is this target market? (It's not anyone right now, since it's not even released. It's the new Duke Nukem Forever in terms of absurd hype over an unreleased product - 5 years at least of Apple tablet rumours.)
You can get netbooks in that weight range (e.g., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_netbooks ).
And, as TFA was trying to point out, such tablets have been around for years, so the Ipad still isn't doing anything new here.
There have been multitouch tablets and netbooks. And anyhow, what happened to all the "But one mouse button is so much easier, and therefore better"? Now Apple fans are telling me that complex multiple hand gestures are something that your grandmother has to learn? I prefer my one touch phone (and it has the added advantage I can use it with any stylus, or when I'm wearing gloves).
Sorry, phones - including smartphones - were fashion accessories long before the Iphone phones were released. Your claim is especially dubious, given that there isn't even a clear definition of "smartphone" (can you give me one? The problem is that even among non-smartphones, by 2005, bog standard phones were also full computers with Internet access, and that was still years before even the very first Iphone, which itself lacked many basic commonplace features such as copy/paste, MMS, Java and 3G).
The Blackberry phones were traditionally associated with business use, but this wasn't at all the case for all the other companies such as Nokia or Palm. I'm not sure where you claim of Nokia only being for business use comes from - they're the world's biggest phone company (including for "smart" phones), and that includes consumer use.
No, kids want to be seen with an iPhone.
Well, a small percent of the market want to be seen with one, judging by actual sales figures.
I don't even see that - it's not an e-reader anyway, and costs far more than a netbook without offering anything extra. And basically, the whole idea of tablets in their current form (including the Islate) sucks for the reasons given in TFA.
An interesting idea - although surely one could say that convergence also happened on the PC. It was the opposite way round to what was expected - rather than doing computer-like things on a TV, instead people started watching TV on computers.
We're also seeing convergence with the Internet - it wouldn't surprise me if in say ten years' time, watching TV and making phone calls all happens through the Internet. The products we used diverged, but they use a common technology.
And a PVR is basically a computer - I take the point about divergence, but one could equally view it as convergence, in that a different technology (VHS) was replaced with one using computers and hard disks, in common with desktop PCs.
Note that the Iphone wasn't really "so successful"; most phone companies in the market are still far bigger than Apple. It didn't flop simply because phones were already known to be successful, but it was nothing special.
Indeed, if you're saying that there are still concerns over Oyster, I do entirely agree. It is annoying the way they've tried to indirectly force people into it, by increasing the ticket prices significantly, and in some cases reducing the available ticket machines so the queues are massive.
But chrb's claim was nonsense - his viewpoint seemed to be that Oyster wasn't something to worry about at all, and that therefore ID cards weren't anything to worry about either.
From the link, "two surveys of college students showed that sexual intercourse often involved deeper and more vigorous penile thrusting following periods of separation"
There I was puzzled as to why having a good hard fuck seemed a good idea after a period of separation, but now I know - obviously it's just to remove someone else's semen.
Anybody who knows anything about tools knows that brands like Ryobi and King are crap.
But if you don't know that, it's okay to have your hand mangled, because you should have known not to use them?
I don't think we know enough to say whether it's fair for them to be liable or not. But regarding patents, it's unfair to blame the jury here. The fact is that neither solution is fair - it's unfair for the company to be liable when the technology is patented, but equally it's unfair that patents mean someone can't claim damages when they are injured!
I mean yes, there's an argument over whether a company is liable. But if we agreed that they otherwise would be, is it seriously fair to say that that is trumped by patent law, and the patent means an injured person deserves no damages?
The root problem here is patent law. The jury are not at fault, and their decision was reasonable. As Techdirt say at the end, "If the government is going to require companies to use a patented technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow competition in the market place."
I disagree that breaking the law is widely viewed as inherently evil - rather, it's that many cases of breaking the law are viewed as evil (simply because for most major crimes, there's a consensus).
Firstly, there is far less of a consensus on issues such as web hosting and copyright law.
But your logic is backward. Just because breaking the law is often viewed as evil, doesn't mean that all references to evil are about the law. The claim is "YouTube was evil" not "YouTube were breaking the law". So it's making a claim about a moral position, not a legal one.
Even if it is a legal claim - what law did they break?
That is exactly my point. Everything that's public now is pretty damning
You keep saying this - can you point me to an example of something that's "pretty damning"? And preferably with the full context, as it's already been demonstrated how things are being taken out of context.
As I posted in my other comment, most of the others are pointless too. Show me which one we should be looking at? And also please provide the original context for fairness.
Last time I looked, it was innocent until proven guilty, so the burden is on you to prove it.
What law did they break in that email, exactly?
I did RTFA, and I see how biased the article is. E.g., http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#youtube-tries-skirting-the-law-3 . This to me seems entirely reasonable and correct - if they try to police it themselves, it's harder to claim that they are ignorant, or that they should be treated like a common carrier. It is far better to leave it to the users, then it's their liability. If you think that's evil, then it's the law that's a problem, not Google. Similarly for http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#youtube-was-getting-too-good-at-removing-illegal-content-which-worried-the-founders-10 - anyone who thinks this means they supported copyright infringement is an idiot, who doesn't understand the law.
Oh, so they used the phrase "copyright bastards". So company execs use naughty words too - how "evil". I don't think that using the phrase is unreasonable, when you consider how groups like the RIAA have operated. This doesn't mean they think copyright infringement should be supported.
On the whole, most of the emails seem to be about reducing their liability, which seems an entirely reasonable and sensible thing.
Then there's this one - http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#this-doesnt-necessarily-kill-them-but-boy-is-it-embarrassing-5 . How's that embarrassing? It shows that they are against copyright infringement, as he was telling them not to do it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#we-have-to-make-our-site-as-entertaining-as-tv-6 - what does this have to do with copyright? If it's entertaining, it must be infringing copyright? Nice spin there.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#-17 - a company is evil if an engineer calls people "a-holes"? I suspect that makes most companies evil.
As for "evil", it's completely out of context. It comes from http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-damning-information-viacom-dug-up-on-google-and-youtube-2010-3#uh-ohhowever-evil-never-sounds-good-11 , but the "evil" does not mean copyright infringement, it means "user metrics" and "views"! This is not evil, and nothing to do with copyright, it's about spinning their publicity. I suspect "evil" is not intended seriously.
I'm not sure that knowing about it changes anything. E.g., when people defend p2p websites, they're not ignorant that there's bound to be copyrighted material illegal distributed there - that's a straw man. The argument is that a p2p website shouldn't be held liable for what the torrents point to.
There's also the difference between knowing that YouTube must have copyrighted material on it somewhere, and knowing exactly what all of them are. In the latter case, there's an argument that they should then remove those individual videos - but simply knowing that Youtube has copyrighted material on it doesn't help you find it!
It irritates me to no end that the open source community will frequently scream bloody murder over a GPL violation, then turn around and say stuff like this "isn't evil."
Ah, this straw man again. The "scream bloody murder" occurs when companies are distributing something commercially, and doing it themselves. This is not comparable to saying that the owners of a user-generated site should be responsible for what users upload. For all we know, there may be Creative Commons etc material on Youtube that doesn't follow the licence, but it isn't going to change my opinion of Google here.
I'm an open source author too. I'd be annoyed if someone making a profit didn't follow the licence. I wouldn't call a site owner "evil" simply because someone uploaded it in violation of the licence. Nor would I suggest that I deserve millions of dollars in damages, or that new laws be created to criminalise software to circumvent any protections on my software, or that people should be disconnected from the Internet if they distributed my GPL program without offering the source, or that websites doing this should be censored - you know, these are the actual things that people "scream bloody murder" about.
Can you imagine the story? "Linux binary uploaded to Google's server without source. Google are evil!" You really think people would give a damn, or conclude that Google are therefore at fault?
If it's not a need, then why are viacom etc whining about it?
Yeah, I agree the flamebait mods were unfair.
Opera works fine for me when I visit real sites. I guess I won't visit yours then, if you take that attitude to your customers.
Does the Tesco card:
* Cost £60?
* Require fingerprints to be handed over?
* Allow Tesco to know all purchases, at any shop, whether the shopper uses the card or not? (You do realise that if I was that worried on a particular occasion, I could simply not use the card - plus, Tesco isn't likely to be the main source of privacy concern in terms of shopping. Tesco can't see someone's private purchases made elsewhere.)
Do Tesco have the ability:
* To arrest shoppers based on suspicious purchaces?
* To fine you if you forget to notify them that your card was lost or damaged, or that you've moved house?
No. So your comparison is pointless. Just because some people are happy to let Tesco have access to data of what you buy at their shops for marketing purposes has nothing to do with the Government having access to all data, when you're not even buying from them, and it's none of their business. Your analogy couldn't be more wrong.
Not to mention that the OP isn't most people. Perhaps he, like I, chooses not to have a Tesco card?
How is this different to debit and credit cards?
Well there's the rather obvious point that they're not compulsory. You don't have to use them if you're worried, plus people can have different cards, which makes it harder to gather all the information. And if my credit card company blocks my card, I can go to another company.
And travel cards like the Oyster card?
I haven't registered mine, and pay with cash. How do they track me, exactly? Plus again, it's optional.
Seriously, it would actually be quite useful to have one standardised, secure card that could be used to authenticate with banks etc.
My bank gives me a secure physical device for authenticating for free. Remind me why it's better for me to pay £60-£123 for a card to do the same thing, as well as having to hand over my fingerprints?
My bank also doesn't prosecute me if the device stops working and I forget to tell them.
What they wont be interested in is a national role out and mandating of cards for everybody or further expansion of the scheme.
Given that many of us in the UK wish to have a passport, then that's still ID cards by the backdoor. If the Tories are saying they're going to cancel it, I expect them to do that - not say that passport holders still have to get one.
It's worth noting that the cost is really more like £60, as the published figures don't include the "processing fees", i.e., paying £30 to private companies for the privilege of being fingerprinted etc. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8036536.stm , "The cost of the cards will be capped at £30 for the two years but once retailers are brought in to collect the data stores will be able to charge for processing it, with the total cost to applicants expected to be £60 per card."
For reference, it was only a few years ago that a passport cost £33 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_passport#Fees ) (although there are processing fees, these are only a few pounds, less than £5 when I got mine). Most of the increases since then are due to them converting it into the ID card. The combined ID/passport will be at least £93 - but with the processing fees, expect it to be more like at least £123.
I see what you're saying, but the cost is an important issue - sadly a lot of people don't care about the civil liberty issues (you and I do, but that doesn't persuade people), but they do care about the immense cost, which the Government has been trying to hide. So it is an issue if, even after spending the £60 for a card, or £123 for the passport version (both figures include the £30 processing feeds, which the Government conveniently doesn't include), that's suddenly obsolete a few years later, with new versions being even more expensive.
Progress is fine, but forced compulsory expensive progress is not what everyone wants.
It's also worth watching this news, as the Government is bound to spin it the other way - "look how wonderful ID cards will be, you'll be able to do everything with them!"
was also appalled that it wasn't free; they wanted me to pay for it!
Note that Opera has been completely free for years (since 2005). (And even before that, long before Firefox existed, you had the option of paying or a small ad.) I'm not sure why the idea of commercial sortware is "appalling" - I mean, you're running this on Windows!
I'd certainly recommend trying it again - Opera has been continually improved, and it's not really fair to judge it today based on a five year old version. (Also it's unclear whether the webpage problems were due to bugs/limitations in Opera, or because of poorly written webpages that are only written for IE and Firefox.)
We already have standard forms of ID (in the UK, the passport). That's not an argument for making the passport/ID card much more expensive, and tying it to a national database, or introducing laws criminalising people who fail to notify about change of details, or lost/damaged cards, and so on.
It's also not an argument for making the ID compulsory.