I would assume then that by your arguments you are also quite in favor of the MPAA and RIAA's stance on intellectual property. To wit:
a) Property either means something, or it does not. . ..
Just because they like to call it "intellectual property" (which is vague and misleading, besides its other faults) doesn't automatically make it real property (in an economic or legal sense). Property is fundamentally defined by scarcity. The patterns that are the basis of "IP" are not scarce; ergo, they are not property; QED. Our government has (unwisely) decided to grant limited exclusivity (i.e. monopoly) in distribution rights to select individuals for a finite duration in hopes of subsidising the creation of works of artistic and scientific merit. The success of this approach is debatable, but that it was never intended to create a new form of real property is clear. "IP" shares very few attributes with real property (exclusivity being the only one I can think of at the moment).
The physical materials the patterns are recorded on are scarce, and are thus property. The work that went into the initial recording of those patterns is scarce, and is similarly "owned" by the individuals who performed the work (under basic anti-slavery principles). There is money to be made from both the actual work of creating the recordings (including any special skill the artist possesses for doing so), and from the actual work of marketing and distributing the material in which the recording has been imprinted (including the markup for the recording itself; a pre-recorded CD is worth more than a blank one to a person looking for music, for example, though not much more than the opportunity cost of recording the CD oneself). Any additional subsidies can only serve to distort the balance of the system, encouraging an over-supply of laborers in artistic and scientific endeavors beyond the natural demand for such labor and draining said laborers from other useful industries.
Of course not. The street performer sets the terms: watch my performance. Pay if you like, or don't. Likewise, an artist sets their terms. Some musicians release their music on a payment-optional basis, much like that street performer. Others don't. You're not violating the terms if you don't tip the street performer. Likewise, you're not violating the terms of the musician who releases MP3s with a voluntary donation system, and you opt not to donate. But if that musician releases their stuff only on a for-sale basis, and you pirate it, you're violating their terms. Do you understand the difference?
Just out of curiosity, would you consider it reasonable for a street performer to set the terms differently, perhaps on a non-payment-optional basis? Perhaps by putting up a sign or some such, so that anyone passing by who isn't wearing sound-blocking earplugs would be violating the terms by failing to pay? The means employed by every other profession in setting the terms of a sale is ultimately based on the scarcity of physical property (which doesn't apply to copies) or labor (by choosing not to perform the work in the first place, which isn't happening here). Someone who performs work without any promise of payment in any other profession is not considered somehow "entitled" to compensation from everyone who may benefit.
As for the rest ("the poor, starving artists deserve to be subsidized"), I have only one, simple response: if the conditions aren't to your liking, get out. Find a more profitable line of work! There are just too many "artists" today, drawn in by the lottery-like "star" system, competing for a limited (and decreasing) slice of the entertainment market share in the midst of a stagnating economy. What did they expect? Did they even bother to investigate the market before choosing art as a career? The arts in general are not exactly known for being reliable, profitable lines of work for most of those who choose it. Only those with the exceptional charisma, skill, and determination manage to turn a significant profit.
I don't think you understand the concept of a natural monopoly. If you wanted to compete with Ticketmaster in any meaningful way, you had to start 20 years ago. Now they have pretty much all of the venues locked down and many of the big acts as well. They're automatically in on the ground floor when any new big venue is proposed as well.
If your complaint is, as it appears to be, that venues are predisposed to choose a known, proven, reliable ticket broker such as TicketMaster rather than some start-up broker that could fold tomorrow and which will almost certainly end up costing them significantly more over the long run, then your problem is with the venues, not with TicketMaster itself. I suggest that you work with the performers and their fans to create a network of alternate venues which do not rely on TicketMaster -- but don't expect to benefit from their (huge) investments of time and finances in business relationships, infrastructure, and branding. You may actually succeed, provided that your assumptions about TM's profit margins and dearth of added value are correct, which is itself quite doubtful.
Thanks for clarifying that. It's nice to know that they (probably) won't be trying to enforce this law against makers of general-purpose software. However, I still think that it's badly worded, since someone reading the text of the law as plain English and not legalese could hardly help but come to the conclusions that I did.
I bet most NRA members would agree that owning a tank, bunker-buster or bazooka should be illegal.
Well, I'm not an NRA member, but I would say that none of those items should be banned outright. To say that they have no valid self-defense purpose makes the sometimes-faulty assumption that self-defense need only be practiced against a single attacker at any given time. On the contrary, there are certainly occasions where it may be necessary to defend one's self, one's family, and one's property[1] against an invasion from an organized, well-equiped enemy (think civil war/totalitarian regime/foreign invasion), and under those circumstances it would be quite reasonable to own such weapons (assuming that you believe in the whole "the best defense is good offense" theory[2]).
The question still ultimately breaks down to how the tool is used -- was the action an aggressive first strike, or merely a reasonable response to a previous attack by an opponent? The tool used matters not at all in answering that question, except perhaps in determining whether the response was, in fact, reasonable given scale of the threat, which can only be known after the threat has presented itself.
[1] The mention of property here is simply a strategic issue: if you lose control of your "base", or your supplies, it becomes extremely difficult to defend yourself. It's a tactical matter only; I'm not saying that life is somehow less valuable than property by any means.
[2] There are many who would argue instead that good diplomatic relations are the best defence against attack. I do not necessarily disagree with them. However, the question is still far from decided, and I would not choose to take from anyone the right to defend themselves by responding to an attack in kind.
Except that the law in this case does not make any distinction between the primary use for a given piece of software, and the possible uses of the software. If the author believes that the software will be used to do something illegal at some point in the future -- which is pretty much a given for any general-purpose piece of software (compilers, operating systems, scripting languages, libraries) -- then creating that software would earn the author a criminal sentence. Perhaps they wouldn't choose to apply it that way, but there is no way to be sure. They certainly could choose to do so, under the current wording of the law, and that is what worries people (myself included). I would rather not see programming become a heavily regulated and licensed profession.
I know this is nearly heresy around here, but perhaps you should at least take a look at the proposed law before blindly stating that it will be unenforceable? The relevant part of the proposed text reads as follows:
A person is guilty of an offence if he makes, adapts, supplies or offers to supply any article --
(a) intending it to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3 [of the Computer Misuse Act]; or
(b) believing that it is likely to be so used.
It's part (b) that's the problem here. This law would make it illegal to make (etc.) not just programs intended for computer-related crimes, but also any programs which the author believes will be used to commit such crimes. That is just insane.
Here's an (hypothetical) example: I make a completely general-purpose program -- a C compiler. It is well known that I am the author of this compiler. Assuming that my compiler is popular enough to warrant attention, it is a near certainty that someone, somewhere, will use it to create a tool used in a computer-related crime. Under this law, I could be prosecuted for making a tool knowing that it was likely to be used by someone to commit a crime, regardless of other, legal, uses for the tool.
As the law is stated, all non-crippled development languages and programming environments would certainly qualify. The only way around it (that I can think of, anyway) would be to hold an irrational belief in the impossibility that anything one makes could be used to commit a computer-related crime -- <span class="humor">and that would probably just convince them that you're criminally insane instead.</span>
At this point, I prefer to ask a different question: Depending on what you mean by "the state," why is it necessary to think of the problem so globally? The entire nation doesn't have to enact such an ambitious program; what if small communities were to agree to providing universal health care for everyone who lived within the town or city?
Exactly. Why should any of these social programs have a nationwide scope? Why not let the local communities -- the towns and cities -- decide for themselves? Nations are too large to be considered cohesive communities; for that matter, so are states. Social programs should never be enacted on a scale that makes them difficult to opt out of by moving elsewhere.
The only question I would raise would be: how much difference is there between a municipal government and a private organization? The city collects rents in the form of property taxes, has a mayor (company president) and/or a city council (board of directors) to make decisions, enforces building codes (contracts/lease agreements in land rental), and provides social services to its citizens (leasees). Which part of that could not be performed just as competently -- in almost exactly the same manner, in fact -- by a private community co-op, or a for- or non-profit organization? Just something to think about.
Actually, if you don't pay your taxes, it would eventually just get taken out of your wages/bank account. No amred [sic] men involved. But don't let that spoil your paranoid fantasies.
And why do you think that is? Why would your bank, and/or your employer (assuming that said organizations are involved) choose to cooperate like that? What would happen if they refused? Their business licenses would be revoked, probably, and at least a portion of their assets seized (by force or threat of force, if necessary). What if they refuse to comply as well? What if everyone you do business with refuses? How would they impose their laws without applying actual force, or the threat of such force? Just because people generally comply rather than risk further trouble does not mean that their control isn't ultimately based on the ever-present threat of actual violence.
For that matter, forget the bank and employer. What if you're self-employed, and keep your assets in hard currency? They could revoke your business license (assuming you had one), but by itself that won't guarantee compliance. To get "their share" of the income, they will necessarily be forced to physically come and take your assets, in person. Should you refuse, they would be faced with a choice: give up (not likely), or use force. Anything but direct application of force would show their taxes to be unenforcable; ergo, to collect "their" taxes, they must be prepared to use force to ensure compliance.
I'm not assuming that he lives in a country with effective property protection, or for that matter any form of government at all. However, it seems rather backwards to complain about a lack of regulation on lenders when the supposed defender of his rights is incapable of (or unwilling to) protecting him against outright robbery. What reason is there to suppose that the lending regulations would be any more effective than his existing, and more fundamental, property rights?
Burned nearly over a grand in dodgy 'fees' and outright errors with little avenue for recourse over the past 12 months. [Emphasis added]
Well, there's your problem. Someone has apparently stolen your money from you, and your defense agency (government in this case) isn't doing anything about it? What are you paying them for, then (in taxes)? It would seem that your country is having trouble, not with a lack of regulation, but with a failure to enforce fundamental property rights. What makes you think they would be any better at enforcing these regulations if you had them?
On the other hand, perhaps your government isn't at fault at all here. Did you agree to a contract with these telcos that gave them the right to confiscate the balance in your account, and/or the ability to levy arbitrary usage fees? Maybe you just want the government to step in and save you from your own mistakes; that seems to be a common enough disease these days. Either way, additional, redundant regulations are not the answer.
I don't think the DMCA can be used to enforce restrictions on public domain content. The very first sentence of the anti-circumvention statute reads, "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" (emphasis added). "Title" refers to 17 USC, "COPYRIGHTS." So presumably the DMCA does not cover circumvention of a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work that is non protected under copyright, e.g., in the public domain.
Actually, so long as even one work still under copyright is "effectively protected" by a given technological measure, it would remain illegal to circumvent that measure -- even to access something in the public domain. If this were not the case, then it would be trivial to get around the restrictions on i.e. DeCSS -- just take something in the public domain and encode it with CSS. Anyone working on or distributing DeCSS would then have the excuse that they needed it to access the public-domain media.
Of course, the side-effect of this is that the MPAA has only to release one copyrightable, CSS-encoded DVD every 50 years or so to keep the DeCSS restrictions in perpetuity.
who do not have, and are not eligible to obtain a Social Security Number (SSN)
As the individual(s) in question did have social security numbers, I would say that they would probably be ineligible for ITINs. In your case the ITIN was necessary, as your wife was a non-citizen and thus not eligible for a SSN.
I never said that "study" and "memorization" were synonyms. In fact, I drew a distinct separation between the two: "look for existing solutions, which must be studied and understood"; "you don't have to [memorize all possible solutions] in order to avoid reinventing the wheel each time." What exactly were we disagreeing on, again?
To head off a huge argument: I agree with you. The point I was addressing was the GP's comment about forgetting one's own previous solutions. There are certainly cases where it can be helpful to have access to solutions developed by others, at least for non-commercial projects (as a result of runaway IP litigation, using others' solutions in for-hire projects is usually a violation of company policy, and could get one fired, even if it isn't actually illegal). None the less, the point of a code library is to act as a reminder, or perhaps a teaching tool, not as a substitute for understanding the solution.
Think of the personal code library as a local cache, containing all the solutions you've implemented previously and fully understand, regardless of where they came from. When you need a non-trivial solution, you look in the cache first. If it's a "cache miss", then you look for existing solutions, which must be studied and understood before they can be integrated into the project and the code library. If all else fails, you develop and integrate the solution yourself, and record the solution for future reference.
The point was supposed to be that you don't have to commit all possible solutions to memory in order to avoid reinventing the wheel each time. You just need a good reference.
And then forgetting all about how you did it, so you can solve the same problem in the same short-sighted way infinitely in the years to come. Way to go, cowboy!
That would be why you keep all your old projects around. Why waste concentration on memorization when you have instant access to all your past work right at your fingertips? After all, any solution complicated enough to be worth memorizing is probably too complicated to trust to all-too-fallible human memory.
Strangely enough, though, they have no problem with taxing individuals on gross income. After all, if my time is worth the going market rate, and I'm paid the going market rate, than I haven't actually made a profit, have I? I've just traded one item for another with an equivilent monetary value.
If you don't believe in regulation of 'free-trade', then do you think it would be ok for someone (like Microsoft) to bribe/coerce/blackmail the people with whom they trade in order to lock out competitors? Would it be ok for them to do a similar thing to force some DRM scheme to lock out open source? What if they bribed/blackmailed Intel into charging more for Apple to buy their chips? What about sending spies into rival organisations to poach employees? what about sending spies to steal trade secrets? what about sending spies to sabotage development?
(1) You can't "bribe" someone with whom you are in a trading relationship. You can give them a better deal as an incentive, but that isn't bribery. The closest you could come to true bribery would be to offer an incentive directly to the company's representative in hopes of cheating the company itself, but (if accepted) the primary concern would be that the representative failed in his duties to the company by accepting the bribe, not that the bribe was offered in the first place. It could be considered a conspiracy to violate a contract, though. That is a matter of regular contract law, not regulation.
(2) A contract entered into under the influence of coercion would not be considered binding in a free market (that's why they call it "free", after all).[1] Thus, no extra regulations are required to curtail such coercion.
(3) There are two kinds of blackmail: the legal kind, and the social kind. The former can only apply if you have actually done something illegal; the potential for blackmail should be considered part of the risk of taking such actions. The social kind can likewise be divided into two separate branches depending on whether the allegations are true or false. If they are false, then there are usually ways to hold the blackmailer accountable (even in the absence of libel or slander laws). On the other hand, if the allegations are true, why should anyone be prevented from saying so, regardless of their motives?
(4) The whole point of "trade secrets" is that they impose no obligations, in exchange for receiving no special protection. The majority of trade secret protection comes through contract law, which a free market would be obliged to protect regardless. Again, the situations you suggest do not required any special-case regulation, regular contract law will do nicely.
(5) If a company's employees ("spies" or otherwise) are sabatoging development, then they are violating their employment contracts and probably damaging company property. Any outside influence or motivation that they might have for doing so is irrelevant.
Government isn't great. It's corrupt. That doesn't make it inherently bad. Don't criticize the concept based on the implementation.
It's not a problem with the implementation. All governments, regardless of their initial intentions, eventually fall victim to corruption. It is part of their very nature -- "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" and all that. Governments exist to concentrate power; they have no other purpose. As a consequence, all governments are vulnerable to corruption.
[1] The term "voluntary market" would probably be a better representation of the intended meaning. It has far less to do with the lack of regulation than a refusal to recognize coercive practices as legitimate behavior. Regulation is simply one of those coercive practices.
Find us a sewer system built entirely without government intervention. That means no privatized, pre-existing, municipal systems, no government loans, no use of governmet force to acquire rights to lay pipe through private property without compensation, etc.
We really should draw a distinction here between the influence of state and/or federal government and that of municipal governments. Unlike state and national governments, city governments are both plentiful and widely varied, with relatively low barriers to migration from one city to another based on individual preferences. Most municipal governments could, in fact, be converted into private organizations without a great deal of trouble: change property taxes to land rents, the city government into a board of directors, and so-called "public property" into the property of the organization. City ordinances would become private contracts resulting from use of the city's land. The final result would be nearly identical in function to the original municipality. If we consider the two to be equivilent, then privitized or city-funded systems are actually privately funded. If the city exercises eminent domain, it is merely taking advantage of the fact that the city actually owns the land. (From a practical point of view, if you pay property taxes, then the city does own the land, and you're renting it from them.) The right to lay those pipes was merely part of the rental contract, similar to a landlord's contractual right to enter an apartment and make repairs. The authority of the city government is derived almost exclusively from the fact that the city owns the land within its boundaries.
State and national governments, on the other hand, claim ownership (control) over land they did not develop simply because it happens to fall within their self-proclaimed domain, which any rational system of land allocation[1] would prohibit. They derive their income not from trade, or from labor, or from renting out useful scare resources or goods, but rather from threat of force. They are in no way comparable to private organizations, and unlike municipal governments they have no non-coercive basis for their supposed authority.
[1] Most systems of economics recognize, in one form or another, the practice of "homesteading" as the only non-coercive scheme for allocating unowned scarce resources. In this system initial ownership of scare resources is assigned to the first individual to make use of those resources.
The software that you are talking about is the firmware -- it runs on a microcontroller on the device, not the host PC. According to the interview, the OpenBSD developers have no problems with firmware provided that the copyright license allows them to redistribute it with OpenBSD (i.e. they don't need the firmware's source code). IANAEE, but that ought to be sufficient to satisfy the FCC's requirements.
If there is some problem with having the firmware loaded by an open-source driver, then the hardware manufacturer should have put the firmware directly on the device (in a ROM, for example) rather than delegating the loading to the driver. Even with a closed-source driver the firmware image can be altered by a binary patch off the Internet, so I don't really see how making the host driver closed-source enforces the FCC's regulations.
As numerous other posters have already pointed out, Verizon isn't actually going to be sending you a bill for per-minute dial-up charges. What will happen is that Verizon will start charging your ISP's communications provider for use of the virtual "local" access numbers that most ISPs use[1]. In turn, the ISP will be forced to pay their provider an access fee for every minute that those virtual numbers are in use (i.e. while you're connected to your ISP). That fee will necessarily be passed back to you, the dial-up user, either in the form of an increased monthly fee and usage caps, or an extra per-minute surcharge. Alternately, the ISP could drop the "local" access numbers entirely, forcing their customers to connect through a long-distance number and pay the charge directly.
[1] If you are in the rare situation of connection directly to the ISP's modem bank through a truly local number, you can probably ignore this entire issue -- unless the ISP also serves other customers through these virtual access numbers and decides to charge a uniform access fee instead of giving local users cheaper access.
Clearly not all citizens are so entitled, if only those who are willing to use this all-in-one ID card have access to such benefits. Furthermore, why should "everyone earning anything over minimum wage" be forced to pay for these services, rather than just those who actually use said services? All such systems are inherently unfair -- their very nature is to make the healthy subservient to the unhealthy through income redistribution, a form of legal penury.
You need the card to get government health and welfare benefits. . . . If you have private health insurance or money, you don't need the card.
Fine by me -- as long as I don't have to pay for others to get those government health and welfare benefits as well.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
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CRIA Falling Apart?
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· Score: 1
Presumably the buyer would be under an NDA of some kind until the actual sale takes place. Copyright-by-contract (which is more like a trade secret, really) has many inherent limitations compared to a full copyright system, but one thing it can do is prevent a specific individual or organization from legally publicising the material prior to the sale.
Also, there are other ways of mitigating this particular risk. An artist with a reputation for quality work could require full or partial payment in advance, or over time during the creation of the material, as you yourself pointed out. Alternately, the artist could require a deposit from potential buyers, ensuring the if the unpublished material is leaked prematurely the artist will still receive some compensation. However, I believe that a simple NDA specifying appropriate terms of compensation would probably be sufficient. Unlike copyright, where practically anyone on the planet could be a potential infringer, there wouldn't be much trouble tracking down the one potential buyer that violated the NDA.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because they like to call it "intellectual property" (which is vague and misleading, besides its other faults) doesn't automatically make it real property (in an economic or legal sense). Property is fundamentally defined by scarcity. The patterns that are the basis of "IP" are not scarce; ergo, they are not property; QED. Our government has (unwisely) decided to grant limited exclusivity (i.e. monopoly) in distribution rights to select individuals for a finite duration in hopes of subsidising the creation of works of artistic and scientific merit. The success of this approach is debatable, but that it was never intended to create a new form of real property is clear. "IP" shares very few attributes with real property (exclusivity being the only one I can think of at the moment).
The physical materials the patterns are recorded on are scarce, and are thus property. The work that went into the initial recording of those patterns is scarce, and is similarly "owned" by the individuals who performed the work (under basic anti-slavery principles). There is money to be made from both the actual work of creating the recordings (including any special skill the artist possesses for doing so), and from the actual work of marketing and distributing the material in which the recording has been imprinted (including the markup for the recording itself; a pre-recorded CD is worth more than a blank one to a person looking for music, for example, though not much more than the opportunity cost of recording the CD oneself). Any additional subsidies can only serve to distort the balance of the system, encouraging an over-supply of laborers in artistic and scientific endeavors beyond the natural demand for such labor and draining said laborers from other useful industries.
Just out of curiosity, would you consider it reasonable for a street performer to set the terms differently, perhaps on a non-payment-optional basis? Perhaps by putting up a sign or some such, so that anyone passing by who isn't wearing sound-blocking earplugs would be violating the terms by failing to pay? The means employed by every other profession in setting the terms of a sale is ultimately based on the scarcity of physical property (which doesn't apply to copies) or labor (by choosing not to perform the work in the first place, which isn't happening here). Someone who performs work without any promise of payment in any other profession is not considered somehow "entitled" to compensation from everyone who may benefit.
As for the rest ("the poor, starving artists deserve to be subsidized"), I have only one, simple response: if the conditions aren't to your liking, get out. Find a more profitable line of work! There are just too many "artists" today, drawn in by the lottery-like "star" system, competing for a limited (and decreasing) slice of the entertainment market share in the midst of a stagnating economy. What did they expect? Did they even bother to investigate the market before choosing art as a career? The arts in general are not exactly known for being reliable, profitable lines of work for most of those who choose it. Only those with the exceptional charisma, skill, and determination manage to turn a significant profit.
If your complaint is, as it appears to be, that venues are predisposed to choose a known, proven, reliable ticket broker such as TicketMaster rather than some start-up broker that could fold tomorrow and which will almost certainly end up costing them significantly more over the long run, then your problem is with the venues, not with TicketMaster itself. I suggest that you work with the performers and their fans to create a network of alternate venues which do not rely on TicketMaster -- but don't expect to benefit from their (huge) investments of time and finances in business relationships, infrastructure, and branding. You may actually succeed, provided that your assumptions about TM's profit margins and dearth of added value are correct, which is itself quite doubtful.
Thanks for clarifying that. It's nice to know that they (probably) won't be trying to enforce this law against makers of general-purpose software. However, I still think that it's badly worded, since someone reading the text of the law as plain English and not legalese could hardly help but come to the conclusions that I did.
Well, I'm not an NRA member, but I would say that none of those items should be banned outright. To say that they have no valid self-defense purpose makes the sometimes-faulty assumption that self-defense need only be practiced against a single attacker at any given time. On the contrary, there are certainly occasions where it may be necessary to defend one's self, one's family, and one's property[1] against an invasion from an organized, well-equiped enemy (think civil war/totalitarian regime/foreign invasion), and under those circumstances it would be quite reasonable to own such weapons (assuming that you believe in the whole "the best defense is good offense" theory[2]).
The question still ultimately breaks down to how the tool is used -- was the action an aggressive first strike, or merely a reasonable response to a previous attack by an opponent? The tool used matters not at all in answering that question, except perhaps in determining whether the response was, in fact, reasonable given scale of the threat, which can only be known after the threat has presented itself.
[1] The mention of property here is simply a strategic issue: if you lose control of your "base", or your supplies, it becomes extremely difficult to defend yourself. It's a tactical matter only; I'm not saying that life is somehow less valuable than property by any means.
[2] There are many who would argue instead that good diplomatic relations are the best defence against attack. I do not necessarily disagree with them. However, the question is still far from decided, and I would not choose to take from anyone the right to defend themselves by responding to an attack in kind.
Except that the law in this case does not make any distinction between the primary use for a given piece of software, and the possible uses of the software. If the author believes that the software will be used to do something illegal at some point in the future -- which is pretty much a given for any general-purpose piece of software (compilers, operating systems, scripting languages, libraries) -- then creating that software would earn the author a criminal sentence. Perhaps they wouldn't choose to apply it that way, but there is no way to be sure. They certainly could choose to do so, under the current wording of the law, and that is what worries people (myself included). I would rather not see programming become a heavily regulated and licensed profession.
Disclaimer: IANAL
I know this is nearly heresy around here, but perhaps you should at least take a look at the proposed law before blindly stating that it will be unenforceable? The relevant part of the proposed text reads as follows:
It's part (b) that's the problem here. This law would make it illegal to make (etc.) not just programs intended for computer-related crimes, but also any programs which the author believes will be used to commit such crimes. That is just insane.
Here's an (hypothetical) example: I make a completely general-purpose program -- a C compiler. It is well known that I am the author of this compiler. Assuming that my compiler is popular enough to warrant attention, it is a near certainty that someone, somewhere, will use it to create a tool used in a computer-related crime. Under this law, I could be prosecuted for making a tool knowing that it was likely to be used by someone to commit a crime, regardless of other, legal, uses for the tool.
As the law is stated, all non-crippled development languages and programming environments would certainly qualify. The only way around it (that I can think of, anyway) would be to hold an irrational belief in the impossibility that anything one makes could be used to commit a computer-related crime -- <span class="humor">and that would probably just convince them that you're criminally insane instead.</span>
Disclaimer: IANAL
Exactly. Why should any of these social programs have a nationwide scope? Why not let the local communities -- the towns and cities -- decide for themselves? Nations are too large to be considered cohesive communities; for that matter, so are states. Social programs should never be enacted on a scale that makes them difficult to opt out of by moving elsewhere.
The only question I would raise would be: how much difference is there between a municipal government and a private organization? The city collects rents in the form of property taxes, has a mayor (company president) and/or a city council (board of directors) to make decisions, enforces building codes (contracts/lease agreements in land rental), and provides social services to its citizens (leasees). Which part of that could not be performed just as competently -- in almost exactly the same manner, in fact -- by a private community co-op, or a for- or non-profit organization? Just something to think about.
And why do you think that is? Why would your bank, and/or your employer (assuming that said organizations are involved) choose to cooperate like that? What would happen if they refused? Their business licenses would be revoked, probably, and at least a portion of their assets seized (by force or threat of force, if necessary). What if they refuse to comply as well? What if everyone you do business with refuses? How would they impose their laws without applying actual force, or the threat of such force? Just because people generally comply rather than risk further trouble does not mean that their control isn't ultimately based on the ever-present threat of actual violence.
For that matter, forget the bank and employer. What if you're self-employed, and keep your assets in hard currency? They could revoke your business license (assuming you had one), but by itself that won't guarantee compliance. To get "their share" of the income, they will necessarily be forced to physically come and take your assets, in person. Should you refuse, they would be faced with a choice: give up (not likely), or use force. Anything but direct application of force would show their taxes to be unenforcable; ergo, to collect "their" taxes, they must be prepared to use force to ensure compliance.
I'm not assuming that he lives in a country with effective property protection, or for that matter any form of government at all. However, it seems rather backwards to complain about a lack of regulation on lenders when the supposed defender of his rights is incapable of (or unwilling to) protecting him against outright robbery. What reason is there to suppose that the lending regulations would be any more effective than his existing, and more fundamental, property rights?
Well, there's your problem. Someone has apparently stolen your money from you, and your defense agency (government in this case) isn't doing anything about it? What are you paying them for, then (in taxes)? It would seem that your country is having trouble, not with a lack of regulation, but with a failure to enforce fundamental property rights. What makes you think they would be any better at enforcing these regulations if you had them?
On the other hand, perhaps your government isn't at fault at all here. Did you agree to a contract with these telcos that gave them the right to confiscate the balance in your account, and/or the ability to levy arbitrary usage fees? Maybe you just want the government to step in and save you from your own mistakes; that seems to be a common enough disease these days. Either way, additional, redundant regulations are not the answer.
Actually, so long as even one work still under copyright is "effectively protected" by a given technological measure, it would remain illegal to circumvent that measure -- even to access something in the public domain. If this were not the case, then it would be trivial to get around the restrictions on i.e. DeCSS -- just take something in the public domain and encode it with CSS. Anyone working on or distributing DeCSS would then have the excuse that they needed it to access the public-domain media.
Of course, the side-effect of this is that the MPAA has only to release one copyrightable, CSS-encoded DVD every 50 years or so to keep the DeCSS restrictions in perpetuity.
Disclaimer: IANAL
As the individual(s) in question did have social security numbers, I would say that they would probably be ineligible for ITINs. In your case the ITIN was necessary, as your wife was a non-citizen and thus not eligible for a SSN.
I never said that "study" and "memorization" were synonyms. In fact, I drew a distinct separation between the two: "look for existing solutions, which must be studied and understood"; "you don't have to [memorize all possible solutions] in order to avoid reinventing the wheel each time." What exactly were we disagreeing on, again?
To head off a huge argument: I agree with you. The point I was addressing was the GP's comment about forgetting one's own previous solutions. There are certainly cases where it can be helpful to have access to solutions developed by others, at least for non-commercial projects (as a result of runaway IP litigation, using others' solutions in for-hire projects is usually a violation of company policy, and could get one fired, even if it isn't actually illegal). None the less, the point of a code library is to act as a reminder, or perhaps a teaching tool, not as a substitute for understanding the solution.
Think of the personal code library as a local cache, containing all the solutions you've implemented previously and fully understand, regardless of where they came from. When you need a non-trivial solution, you look in the cache first. If it's a "cache miss", then you look for existing solutions, which must be studied and understood before they can be integrated into the project and the code library. If all else fails, you develop and integrate the solution yourself, and record the solution for future reference.
The point was supposed to be that you don't have to commit all possible solutions to memory in order to avoid reinventing the wheel each time. You just need a good reference.
That would be why you keep all your old projects around. Why waste concentration on memorization when you have instant access to all your past work right at your fingertips? After all, any solution complicated enough to be worth memorizing is probably too complicated to trust to all-too-fallible human memory.
Strangely enough, though, they have no problem with taxing individuals on gross income. After all, if my time is worth the going market rate, and I'm paid the going market rate, than I haven't actually made a profit, have I? I've just traded one item for another with an equivilent monetary value.
(1) You can't "bribe" someone with whom you are in a trading relationship. You can give them a better deal as an incentive, but that isn't bribery. The closest you could come to true bribery would be to offer an incentive directly to the company's representative in hopes of cheating the company itself, but (if accepted) the primary concern would be that the representative failed in his duties to the company by accepting the bribe, not that the bribe was offered in the first place. It could be considered a conspiracy to violate a contract, though. That is a matter of regular contract law, not regulation.
(2) A contract entered into under the influence of coercion would not be considered binding in a free market (that's why they call it "free", after all).[1] Thus, no extra regulations are required to curtail such coercion.
(3) There are two kinds of blackmail: the legal kind, and the social kind. The former can only apply if you have actually done something illegal; the potential for blackmail should be considered part of the risk of taking such actions. The social kind can likewise be divided into two separate branches depending on whether the allegations are true or false. If they are false, then there are usually ways to hold the blackmailer accountable (even in the absence of libel or slander laws). On the other hand, if the allegations are true, why should anyone be prevented from saying so, regardless of their motives?
(4) The whole point of "trade secrets" is that they impose no obligations, in exchange for receiving no special protection. The majority of trade secret protection comes through contract law, which a free market would be obliged to protect regardless. Again, the situations you suggest do not required any special-case regulation, regular contract law will do nicely.
(5) If a company's employees ("spies" or otherwise) are sabatoging development, then they are violating their employment contracts and probably damaging company property. Any outside influence or motivation that they might have for doing so is irrelevant.
It's not a problem with the implementation. All governments, regardless of their initial intentions, eventually fall victim to corruption. It is part of their very nature -- "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" and all that. Governments exist to concentrate power; they have no other purpose. As a consequence, all governments are vulnerable to corruption.
[1] The term "voluntary market" would probably be a better representation of the intended meaning. It has far less to do with the lack of regulation than a refusal to recognize coercive practices as legitimate behavior. Regulation is simply one of those coercive practices.
DISCLAIMER: IANAL
We really should draw a distinction here between the influence of state and/or federal government and that of municipal governments. Unlike state and national governments, city governments are both plentiful and widely varied, with relatively low barriers to migration from one city to another based on individual preferences. Most municipal governments could, in fact, be converted into private organizations without a great deal of trouble: change property taxes to land rents, the city government into a board of directors, and so-called "public property" into the property of the organization. City ordinances would become private contracts resulting from use of the city's land. The final result would be nearly identical in function to the original municipality. If we consider the two to be equivilent, then privitized or city-funded systems are actually privately funded. If the city exercises eminent domain, it is merely taking advantage of the fact that the city actually owns the land. (From a practical point of view, if you pay property taxes, then the city does own the land, and you're renting it from them.) The right to lay those pipes was merely part of the rental contract, similar to a landlord's contractual right to enter an apartment and make repairs. The authority of the city government is derived almost exclusively from the fact that the city owns the land within its boundaries.
State and national governments, on the other hand, claim ownership (control) over land they did not develop simply because it happens to fall within their self-proclaimed domain, which any rational system of land allocation[1] would prohibit. They derive their income not from trade, or from labor, or from renting out useful scare resources or goods, but rather from threat of force. They are in no way comparable to private organizations, and unlike municipal governments they have no non-coercive basis for their supposed authority.
[1] Most systems of economics recognize, in one form or another, the practice of "homesteading" as the only non-coercive scheme for allocating unowned scarce resources. In this system initial ownership of scare resources is assigned to the first individual to make use of those resources.
The software that you are talking about is the firmware -- it runs on a microcontroller on the device, not the host PC. According to the interview, the OpenBSD developers have no problems with firmware provided that the copyright license allows them to redistribute it with OpenBSD (i.e. they don't need the firmware's source code). IANAEE, but that ought to be sufficient to satisfy the FCC's requirements.
If there is some problem with having the firmware loaded by an open-source driver, then the hardware manufacturer should have put the firmware directly on the device (in a ROM, for example) rather than delegating the loading to the driver. Even with a closed-source driver the firmware image can be altered by a binary patch off the Internet, so I don't really see how making the host driver closed-source enforces the FCC's regulations.
I much prefer this form myself:
...)
(let ((message (format nil "Error parsing ~A: ~A: ~A"
filename lineno (strerror errno))))
As numerous other posters have already pointed out, Verizon isn't actually going to be sending you a bill for per-minute dial-up charges. What will happen is that Verizon will start charging your ISP's communications provider for use of the virtual "local" access numbers that most ISPs use[1]. In turn, the ISP will be forced to pay their provider an access fee for every minute that those virtual numbers are in use (i.e. while you're connected to your ISP). That fee will necessarily be passed back to you, the dial-up user, either in the form of an increased monthly fee and usage caps, or an extra per-minute surcharge. Alternately, the ISP could drop the "local" access numbers entirely, forcing their customers to connect through a long-distance number and pay the charge directly.
[1] If you are in the rare situation of connection directly to the ISP's modem bank through a truly local number, you can probably ignore this entire issue -- unless the ISP also serves other customers through these virtual access numbers and decides to charge a uniform access fee instead of giving local users cheaper access.
Clearly not all citizens are so entitled, if only those who are willing to use this all-in-one ID card have access to such benefits. Furthermore, why should "everyone earning anything over minimum wage" be forced to pay for these services, rather than just those who actually use said services? All such systems are inherently unfair -- their very nature is to make the healthy subservient to the unhealthy through income redistribution, a form of legal penury.
Fine by me -- as long as I don't have to pay for others to get those government health and welfare benefits as well.
Presumably the buyer would be under an NDA of some kind until the actual sale takes place. Copyright-by-contract (which is more like a trade secret, really) has many inherent limitations compared to a full copyright system, but one thing it can do is prevent a specific individual or organization from legally publicising the material prior to the sale.
Also, there are other ways of mitigating this particular risk. An artist with a reputation for quality work could require full or partial payment in advance, or over time during the creation of the material, as you yourself pointed out. Alternately, the artist could require a deposit from potential buyers, ensuring the if the unpublished material is leaked prematurely the artist will still receive some compensation. However, I believe that a simple NDA specifying appropriate terms of compensation would probably be sufficient. Unlike copyright, where practically anyone on the planet could be a potential infringer, there wouldn't be much trouble tracking down the one potential buyer that violated the NDA.