Why isn't anyone pirating ebooks? A question based on a false premise. Lots of people are pirating ebooks. Check Usenet (you know, the unmoderated discussion forum used before everyone moved to clunky web-based things with central control...)
Some of them are even pirating stuff in the Baen Free Library, which is pretty amusing. All that work scanning and correcting for no purpose...
I remain unconvinced; there is another likely explanation for the increase in sales, and that was the release of the sequels. The third Belasarius book came out in paperback in June 2000, as did the fourth in hardcover. Seems to me these sequels probably kept up interest in the first of the series.
However, it does seem clear that sales are not hurt by the Free Library. Probably not even in my case; I don't buy books in the Free Library. But usually books in the free library are those I wouldn't have bought anyway. And when I find a good one in the Free Library, I'm more likely to buy those author's later books.
*sigh*. Yes, I know this is off topic but someone up-modded the Coward into visibility so it's worth responding to.
Sklyarov was not arrested for attempting to pitch his products here. He was arrested while he was here merely out of convenience; he could have gone surfing here and if the FBI and Adobe had heard about it they would have grabbed him.
While the US was able to establish jurisdiction over Sklyarov's employers, that was because, among other things, they hired a US company to sell their products. Because the case against Sklyarov itself is on hold (and will be dismissed after one year if he testifies to the actions of Elcomsoft), the question of whether he personally actually did anything to subject himself to US jurisdiction will not be answered.
Why did the FBI arrest Sklyarov rather than going after Elcomsoft directly? I don't know, but I can make a guess: Terrorism, of the state-sponsored type. They wanted to send a message to programmers that if you break the DMCA, they'll put you in a cage. The intent was to put a damper on both civil disobedience activities and ordinary disobedience. Worked against me.
As for the current case... doesn't much matter. Suppose DB wins against Google. Google takes the page off http://www.google.de. They leave it on http://www.google.com and everywhere else, relying on the French govt v. Yahoo case. And in the meantime, a whole bunch more people mirror the document and those mirrors end up in Google's (even google.de) caches.
It is NOT unreasonable to expect the patent office to judge patent claims before awarding patents. That's part of what they are there for. That's why patents are PRESUMED VALID once you get before a judge. Sure, patents as silly as this are no real threat because if the guy sues he'll get laughed out of court. But similarly dumb patents, such as the one Microsoft is attempting to use to prevent Open Source implementation of CIFS, are quite dangerous.
The number of open public services on a default OS X install is on the close order of zero. (There is one service, but it's bound to the loopback interface)
I actually wrote to chillingeffects.org a short time ago and asked if they'd ever been DMCA'd over a cease-and-desist letter. They said they hadn't but that they think they'd have a good fair use defense if someone tried.
Of course, L. Ron's religion would be among the most likely suspects to try such a dodge.
I once accidentally disconnected the monitor cable and left it hanging from the computer. The monitor still worked fine except I didn't have color. Probably at about the same range, though the Apple did have somewhat less resolution.
Sure. But (legal) reverse engineering only tells you how a program works, not how it is supposed to work. So if you can see (based on the inputs and outputs) that a program works in a certain way and you make your reverse-engineered program work the same way, you'll duplicate the bug without copying the code.
Vivendi doesn't really expect to win this suit. All it does is let them keep bnetd.org off the air for a few more months or years. Classic abuse of the legal system.
I wonder if it's possible to make one of these things in an analog version. As in, it makes a pit-for-pit copy based on continuously variable information from the reading laser. Would probably cost a fortune, but wouldn't the RIAA freak from seeing the laws they bought and paid for "finessed" like that?
King's method of civil disobedience is not the only acceptable method of fighting for your rights. In the case of the DMCA, it simply won't work. What will happen if you openly and flagrantly violate the DMCA is you will be arrested, and jailed and you will rot in prison forgotten by everyone but a few geeks (who will be terrorized by your example), while your opponents remain free.
Don't celebrate yet; there are any number of tricks that can get a bill around a stubborn chairperson. I suspect we'll see Hollings offer this one up as a substitute on the Senate floor for a broadband bill that he dislikes -- Tauzin-Dingell.
Quantum Computing and Digital Copyright
on
Stopping Light
·
· Score: 1
Since quantum computers aren't, strictly speaking, "digital", quantum devices aren't subject to the DMCA and CBDTPA. Anyone want to build a quantum DVD player? As a bonus, you can brute-force the title key really quickly.
P.S. don't tell Sen Hollings or he'll close the loophole.
This is not conspiracy, it's out in the open. GPS had (and has) a feature called "Selective Availability". This made the satellites behave as if their clocks were more unstable thant they were and their orbits not known quite so precisely as they are. For most of the time the GPS was active until May 2000, this was turned on at 50m resolution. The military receivers could remove this. Use of Selective Availability was discontinued in May 2000.
The GPS satellites also provide a separate signal than the civilian (or C/A, for coarse/acquisition) signal. This signal is higher resolution than the normal GPS signal, is provided on two frequencies to help correct for atmospheric properties, and is encrypted.
Note that there's nothing in there that says the recording you make for personal use has to have the bozo bits set to allow ANY sort of playback.
As a practical matter, I suspect they'd allow playback... on the same VCR, with the same TV connected, once only (or perhaps only within a week or a month of recording). And no fast-forwarding either.
AOL wasn't granted dismissal based on 17 USC 512(c), which is the part with all the notification and counternotification. That's the nasty private-gag-order provision of the DMCA which many (including myself) object to.
Rather, they were also claiming protection under 17 USC 512(a), "transitory digital network communications", and it is on that provision they obtained summary judgement. This doesn't include ANY takedown provision, and if this decision is affirmed by higher courts, it effectively exempts Usenet providers from liability for posts not made by their own customers.
IMO, this is a good thing, and Harlan Ellison can change his "KICK" campaign to "KICK ME". Note that he's also suing AOL for merely developing Gnutella!
Are going to be scratch one Tilly as soon as the economy improves a bit. And if the guy is good, which I assume he is or he wouldn't be writing core Perl modules, that's going to be a big loss. This is just really dumb on their part.
My employer doesn't claim anything that I don't do at work or related to the area the company works in (Sorry, I don't have the exact language handy). I'm an _employee_, not a slave. Yes, my employment is "for hire", and I'm a professional employee, but works done on my own time are NOT "for hire".
Child porn is not protected by the First Amendment. But the fact that the government has a compelling interest in stopping child porn does NOT give them carte blanche to use any means they wish to combat it.
I can see several reasons this law is unconstitutional. First and foremost (because it involves turf issues rather than something so minor as free speech) is that it might constitute an impermissible state regulation of interstate commerce -- presumably the web sites blocked won't be in PA, since the PA AG could just go after them if they were. Then there's the First Amendment issues:
1) The trigger for censorship is too low -- the AG merely need show "probable cause" in an ex parte proceeding.
2) Further, no procedure is provided to get a web site or other blocked item OFF the list; neither the ISP nor the provider of the blocked item nor any ISP customer is given a way to challenge the block.
3) Impermissible burden: to comply with the law, an ISP must have a way of blocking access to the material. Even with web sites, not all ISPs have such a way; this DOES require a filtering proxy. And the legislation isn't limited to websites -- FTP, Usenet, mailing lists are all affected. It seems likely a court would find this to be an unreasonable burden on free speech; it requires the ISP be an active partner in the state's censorship.
Even permissible regulations on speech must be narrowly tailored to meet their objectives. This one isn't.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, don't play one on the net.
Remember that a lot of TV production is done in Canada nowadays. That means a strong Hollywood presence. The US and Canadian governments also have an uncomfortably close relationship. If pressed, Canada probably would initially resist an SSSCA-like regime just to be contrary to the US -- but they'd eventually give in.
I think to get free of the SSSCA and related laws, moving to countries outside those most Americans would consider living in will be necessary. But Canada could be a stop along the way.
Lessig gave us all hell, but realistically, what are we to do? We don't have the cash to fight the RIAA/MPAA in Congress. We don't have the legal training to fight them in court. We're geeks, not lobbiests or lawyers. We can beat their protection methods every time in the technical arena, which is why they moved it out of the technical arena and into the political arena.
The MPAA/RIAA has ALREADY gotten the DMCA extended to the countries of the European Union, though it hasn't been implemented. Directive 2001/29/EC demands those countries implement something that's basically the DMCA minus the phony exceptions.
The age of freedom is over.
...The Haagen-Dazs versus Fruzen-Gladze case? (I may have spelled both names wrong) In it a court ruled sensibly that Haagen-Dazs's trademark did NOT cover all possible made-up vaugely scandanavian-sounding names.
Slashdot Mirror
Why isn't anyone pirating ebooks? A question based on a false premise. Lots of people are pirating ebooks. Check Usenet (you know, the unmoderated discussion forum used before everyone moved to clunky web-based things with central control...)
Some of them are even pirating stuff in the Baen Free Library, which is pretty amusing. All that work scanning and correcting for no purpose...
I remain unconvinced; there is another likely explanation for the increase in sales, and that was the release of the sequels. The third Belasarius book came out in paperback in June 2000, as did the fourth in hardcover. Seems to me these sequels probably kept up interest in the first of the series.
However, it does seem clear that sales are not hurt by the Free Library. Probably not even in my case; I don't buy books in the Free Library. But usually books in the free library are those I wouldn't have bought anyway. And when I find a good one in the Free Library, I'm more likely to buy those author's later books.
*sigh*. Yes, I know this is off topic but someone up-modded the Coward into visibility so it's worth responding to.
Sklyarov was not arrested for attempting to pitch his products here. He was arrested while he was here merely out of convenience; he could have gone surfing here and if the FBI and Adobe had heard about it they would have grabbed him.
While the US was able to establish jurisdiction over Sklyarov's employers, that was because, among other things, they hired a US company to sell their products. Because the case against Sklyarov itself is on hold (and will be dismissed after one year if he testifies to the actions of Elcomsoft), the question of whether he personally actually did anything to subject himself to US jurisdiction will not be answered.
Why did the FBI arrest Sklyarov rather than going after Elcomsoft directly? I don't know, but I can make a guess: Terrorism, of the state-sponsored type. They wanted to send a message to programmers that if you break the DMCA, they'll put you in a cage. The intent was to put a damper on both civil disobedience activities and ordinary disobedience. Worked against me.
As for the current case... doesn't much matter. Suppose DB wins against Google. Google takes the page off http://www.google.de. They leave it on http://www.google.com and everywhere else, relying on the French govt v. Yahoo case. And in the meantime, a whole bunch more people mirror the document and those mirrors end up in Google's (even google.de) caches.
It is NOT unreasonable to expect the patent office to judge patent claims before awarding patents. That's part of what they are there for. That's why patents are PRESUMED VALID once you get before a judge. Sure, patents as silly as this are no real threat because if the guy sues he'll get laughed out of court. But similarly dumb patents, such as the one Microsoft is attempting to use to prevent Open Source implementation of CIFS, are quite dangerous.
The number of open public services on a default OS X install is on the close order of zero. (There is one service, but it's bound to the loopback interface)
I actually wrote to chillingeffects.org a short time ago and asked if they'd ever been DMCA'd over a cease-and-desist letter. They said they hadn't but that they think they'd have a good fair use defense if someone tried. Of course, L. Ron's religion would be among the most likely suspects to try such a dodge.
I once accidentally disconnected the monitor cable and left it hanging from the computer. The monitor still worked fine except I didn't have color. Probably at about the same range, though the Apple did have somewhat less resolution.
The "public performance" issue is certainly novel, but I doubt it will fly. It appears they are claiming that
1) Playing Warcraft with others over a network is a "public performance" (debatable)
2) Public performances of illegal copies are a violation of copyright (true)
3) bnetd facilitates public performances of illegal copies (true iff 1) is true)
therefore
4) bnetd is contributory infringement.
The Betamax case rather effectively destroys this argument even if you do accept that playing a game over a network is a public performance.
Sure. But (legal) reverse engineering only tells you how a program works, not how it is supposed to work. So if you can see (based on the inputs and outputs) that a program works in a certain way and you make your reverse-engineered program work the same way, you'll duplicate the bug without copying the code.
Vivendi doesn't really expect to win this suit. All it does is let them keep bnetd.org off the air for a few more months or years. Classic abuse of the legal system.
I wonder if it's possible to make one of these things in an analog version. As in, it makes a pit-for-pit copy based on continuously variable information from the reading laser. Would probably cost a fortune, but wouldn't the RIAA freak from seeing the laws they bought and paid for "finessed" like that?
King's method of civil disobedience is not the only acceptable method of fighting for your rights. In the case of the DMCA, it simply won't work. What will happen if you openly and flagrantly violate the DMCA is you will be arrested, and jailed and you will rot in prison forgotten by everyone but a few geeks (who will be terrorized by your example), while your opponents remain free.
Don't celebrate yet; there are any number of tricks that can get a bill around a stubborn chairperson. I suspect we'll see Hollings offer this one up as a substitute on the Senate floor for a broadband bill that he dislikes -- Tauzin-Dingell.
Since quantum computers aren't, strictly speaking, "digital", quantum devices aren't subject to the DMCA and CBDTPA. Anyone want to build a quantum DVD player? As a bonus, you can brute-force the title key really quickly. P.S. don't tell Sen Hollings or he'll close the loophole.
This is not conspiracy, it's out in the open. GPS had (and has) a feature called "Selective Availability". This made the satellites behave as if their clocks were more unstable thant they were and their orbits not known quite so precisely as they are. For most of the time the GPS was active until May 2000, this was turned on at 50m resolution. The military receivers could remove this. Use of Selective Availability was discontinued in May 2000. The GPS satellites also provide a separate signal than the civilian (or C/A, for coarse/acquisition) signal. This signal is higher resolution than the normal GPS signal, is provided on two frequencies to help correct for atmospheric properties, and is encrypted.
Note that there's nothing in there that says the recording you make for personal use has to have the bozo bits set to allow ANY sort of playback. As a practical matter, I suspect they'd allow playback... on the same VCR, with the same TV connected, once only (or perhaps only within a week or a month of recording). And no fast-forwarding either.
Google should redirect all searches which would bring up the DMCA-banned pages to a copy of the DMCA notification (which lists all the banned URLs).
AOL wasn't granted dismissal based on 17 USC 512(c), which is the part with all the notification and counternotification. That's the nasty private-gag-order provision of the DMCA which many (including myself) object to.
Rather, they were also claiming protection under 17 USC 512(a), "transitory digital network communications", and it is on that provision they obtained summary judgement. This doesn't include ANY takedown provision, and if this decision is affirmed by higher courts, it effectively exempts Usenet providers from liability for posts not made by their own customers.
IMO, this is a good thing, and Harlan Ellison can change his "KICK" campaign to "KICK ME". Note that he's also suing AOL for merely developing Gnutella!
Are going to be scratch one Tilly as soon as the economy improves a bit. And if the guy is good, which I assume he is or he wouldn't be writing core Perl modules, that's going to be a big loss. This is just really dumb on their part. My employer doesn't claim anything that I don't do at work or related to the area the company works in (Sorry, I don't have the exact language handy). I'm an _employee_, not a slave. Yes, my employment is "for hire", and I'm a professional employee, but works done on my own time are NOT "for hire".
Child porn is not protected by the First Amendment. But the fact that the government has a compelling interest in stopping child porn does NOT give them carte blanche to use any means they wish to combat it. I can see several reasons this law is unconstitutional. First and foremost (because it involves turf issues rather than something so minor as free speech) is that it might constitute an impermissible state regulation of interstate commerce -- presumably the web sites blocked won't be in PA, since the PA AG could just go after them if they were. Then there's the First Amendment issues: 1) The trigger for censorship is too low -- the AG merely need show "probable cause" in an ex parte proceeding. 2) Further, no procedure is provided to get a web site or other blocked item OFF the list; neither the ISP nor the provider of the blocked item nor any ISP customer is given a way to challenge the block. 3) Impermissible burden: to comply with the law, an ISP must have a way of blocking access to the material. Even with web sites, not all ISPs have such a way; this DOES require a filtering proxy. And the legislation isn't limited to websites -- FTP, Usenet, mailing lists are all affected. It seems likely a court would find this to be an unreasonable burden on free speech; it requires the ISP be an active partner in the state's censorship. Even permissible regulations on speech must be narrowly tailored to meet their objectives. This one isn't. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, don't play one on the net.
The DMCA wouldn't prevent reverse engineering of Sorensen; it's not a copy protection technique. It's probably patented, though.
Remember that a lot of TV production is done in Canada nowadays. That means a strong Hollywood presence. The US and Canadian governments also have an uncomfortably close relationship. If pressed, Canada probably would initially resist an SSSCA-like regime just to be contrary to the US -- but they'd eventually give in. I think to get free of the SSSCA and related laws, moving to countries outside those most Americans would consider living in will be necessary. But Canada could be a stop along the way.
Lessig gave us all hell, but realistically, what are we to do? We don't have the cash to fight the RIAA/MPAA in Congress. We don't have the legal training to fight them in court. We're geeks, not lobbiests or lawyers. We can beat their protection methods every time in the technical arena, which is why they moved it out of the technical arena and into the political arena.
The MPAA/RIAA has ALREADY gotten the DMCA extended to the countries of the European Union, though it hasn't been implemented. Directive 2001/29/EC demands those countries implement something that's basically the DMCA minus the phony exceptions. The age of freedom is over.
...The Haagen-Dazs versus Fruzen-Gladze case? (I may have spelled both names wrong) In it a court ruled sensibly that Haagen-Dazs's trademark did NOT cover all possible made-up vaugely scandanavian-sounding names.
This case is on the same level.