And you think that making it illegal to be a potential criminal is a good thing.
The insanity of that statement is self-evident.
Oh, but nearly perfect copies which could then be distributed flawlessly would be ok?
No, fair use copies are OK, and devices that aren't primarily designed to circumvent technological measures which effectively control access to copyrighted works are OK.
Face it; trying to keep people from copying data that is in their hands or on their computers is futile. Trying to do it with a piece of legislation is futile and stupid.
So all copyright law is stupid. I guess you release everything you own into the public domain?
And yet, oddly enough, there are quite a number of large US-based companies selling those items without fear of being arrested for it. Tools to copy books are legal. Tools to copy ebooks are illegal. Anyone else see the problem here?
You are a troll.
How do they achieve "the same protections" by prosecuting people for doing what you describe as the equivalent of scanning and OCRing a book?
You missed my point. You can still scan and OCR an e-book without breaking the law. Just put your handheld scanner up to the screen. What you can't do is create a device which allows consumers to bypass technological measures to instantly make perfect digital copies. This law puts the two media at an equal playing field.
Of course, it's partly a matter of how long you have your e-mail address, and how well you secure it and keep it hidden.
Not on hotmail. I've set up email addresses on hotmail such as "sdjkleiojsel" and never used them for anything. Within a week I am receiving spam. The addresses are leaking out somehow.
Actually almost all of Sendmail's security holes are directly due to its obscurity. Just because the source code is released doesn't mean it's easy to understand.
Oh, now I see why I might have gotten modded as a troll. By "It's not an excuse" I meant that "The fact that there will be more cracks does not excuse them from having to release the API."
And when the wholesaler starts requiring a data dump of your customers' purchase habits before he will make a delivery?
I'll start my own wholesaler.
Or your bank requires same before it will give you a letter of credit, which you will need to be able to import all those exotic beers?
I find that far-fetched, but I guess I just wouldn't carry exotic beers. I dunno.
When "just about everyone" starts capturing data, it really won't be feasible to be the only one who doesn't.
As long as there are a significant number of people who value their privacy, it will be. Personally I don't care if what food I buy is made public. I have a discount card, and I use it. But there are a lot of people who do care, and as long as the government doesn't make privacy illegal (which is not what it's doing here), there will be a market for privacy, and those who are willing to pay for it will get it.
Salon has an amusing little wire article claiming that Microsoft argues that were they to provide any greater technical detail about protocols and APIs, it would make computers running their operating system far more vulnerable to cracking attacks.
It would. It's not a good excuse, but it is true. In the short term, Microsoft cracks would increase.
I vow that if all other stores have discount cards which track your purchases, I will personally open a store which doesn't. So for my lifetime at least, those opinions are wrong.
As a person who reads the fine print on all the "Terms and Conditions" junk sent to me by organizations with which I do business, I really can't agree.
Credit card companies have an oligopoly with much fewer members than "stores".
I think we are about 5 years from having every transaction tracked.
Guess I'll be dead in 5 years. Killed by the government so that they can track people?
And cash won't be an out (in the USofA), since the "USA Patriot Act" has greatly ratcheted down the threshhold for tracking and reporting cash transactions to the government.
What's it down to now? I thought it was still at $10,000.
And this is without the national ID card which I suspect is coming fairly soon.
We already have this national ID card. It's called the license. I once had a Wisconsin sherriff track me down (with help from the FBI) from my domain name, which listed an old address, from which I did not have mail forwarding, to my NJ driver's license, linked that to my NY drivers license, and got my unlisted phone number in NY. All this so he could ask me the name of someone who had a website on my system, and he suspected was sending threatening letters through the USPS.
As an aside, check out this proposal. Congress wants to make it a crime with a 5 year sentence for lying to your registrar when you register your domain name.
But e-books are no harder to use fairly than their paperback analogue. Although RMS might want there to be, there's no requirement that paperback manufacturers distribute latex versions of their books on floppy. You have to use scanners and OCR software to exert your right to read the book on your laptop. E-book manufacturers are merely trying to receive the same protections.
Then you have the "choice" of getting a discount card and being tracked, or not eating.
Or opening up your own store, and only getting tracked in aggregate with all the other people who buy from your store. That is, if the "all stores have discount cards" thing actually happens, which it won't.
Are these two points within the same state though?
Of course. The point is I can send a radio signal from my house to my neighbor's house, without affecting anyone outside of my state, and the federal government shouldn't be able to regulate that at all.
If my radio signals cannot be detected outside my state, then the government does not have beyond a reasonable doubt evidence that I have committed a federal crime.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said it in Feist v. Rural Telephone, and 5 of the current Supreme Court Justices (Rehnquist, Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter) joined:
The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
The monopoly privileges that Congress may authorize are neither unlimited nor primarily designed to provide a special private benefit. Rather, the limited grant is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired.
Even the dissent of Sony Corp. v. Universal City Sutdios, Inc., to which Justice Renquist joined, echos:
The purpose of copyright protection, in the words of the Constitution, is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Copyright is based on the belief that by granting authors the exclusive rights to reproduce their works, they are given an incentive to create, and that "encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors and inventors in `Science and the useful Arts.'" Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 219 (1954). The monopoly created by copyright thus rewards the individual author in order to benefit the public. Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S., at 156 ; Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 U.S. 123, 127 -128 (1932); see H. R. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2d Sess., 7 (1909).
There are situations, nevertheless, in which strict enforcement of this monopoly would inhibit the very "Progress of Science and useful Arts" that copyright is intended to promote. An obvious example is the researcher or scholar whose own work depends on the ability to refer to and to quote the work of prior scholars. Obviously, no author could create a new work if he were first required to repeat the research of every author who had gone before him. 28 The scholar, like the ordinary user, of course could be left to bargain with each copyright owner for permission to quote from or refer to prior works. But there is a crucial difference between the scholar and the ordinary user. When the ordinary user decides that the owner's price is too high, and forgoes use of the work, only the individual is the loser. When the scholar forgoes the use of a prior work, not only does his own [464 U.S. 417, 478] work suffer, but the public is deprived of his contribution to knowledge. The scholar's work, in other words, produces external benefits from which everyone profits. In such a case, the fair use doctrine acts as a form of subsidy - albeit at the first author's expense - to permit the second author to make limited use of the first author's work for the public good. See Latman Fair Use Study 31; Gordon, Fair Use as Market Failure: A Structural Analysis of the Betamax Case and its Predecessors, 82 Colum. L. Rev. 1600, 1630 (1982). [....] I recognize, nevertheless, that there are situations where permitting even an unproductive use would have no effect on the author's incentive to create, that is, where the use would not affect the value of, or the market for, the author's work. Photocopying an old newspaper clipping to send to a friend [464 U.S. 417, 482] may be an example; pinning a quotation on one's bulletin board may be another. In each of these cases, the effect on the author is truly de minimis. Thus, even though these uses provide no benefit to the public at large, no purpose is served by preserving the author's monopoly, and the use may be regarded as fair.
Now someone, please, explain to me how extending the monopoly granted on an already created work promotes the progress of science and the useful arts.
...to see how the real decision turns out. I actually think the retroactive portion of the law will be declared unconstitutional, but if not I'm very interested in seeing how the decision is phrased to justify the "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" clause.
I've found the description at PhysicsClassroom to be useful for explaining light. Now, it's geared toward high school students, and as such is not strictly accurate (most notably, light is a transverse wave, whereas the picture seems to imply that it is longitudinal), but at the least it answers the often asked question of "why does light only travel at c in a vacuum". It's a good site overall, I'd definately recommend it.
But the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that there is no ether.
The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the ether was not detectable by the Michelson-Morley experiment. Einstein hypothesized that the ether is not detectable at all, and that hypothesis is likely true. Whether or not the ether exists is purely a matter of definition. You can define ether as "the medium through which light propagates", or you can define the speed of light in a vacuum to be c. If you want to keep away from ether, then I'll modify my definition of wave to:
"A force through which energy is transferred from one particle to another."
Which is admittedly an out of my ass working definition, and is subject to change should you present a counter-example.
I'll settle for the dictionary.com definition of "A disturbance traveling through a medium by which energy is transferred from one particle of the medium to another without causing any permanent displacement of the medium itself." But then I'd have to define ether as a medium, which I'm comfortable doing.
Oh, I see what you're saying... I think you meant "Why is it that people seem to be so concerned about frequencies..." In any case, yeah, I guess it's the intensity, and maybe the frequencies aren't exactly the same? I don't know.
Why is that people seem to be so unconcerned about frequencies that operate in their microwave to cook food, but are perfectly willing to put handsets that operate at similar frequencies right next to their head, or laptops that use Wi-Fi in their laps?
I think there's a typo there somewhere, but I can't figure out exactly where.
Microwaves cook food. My head is not food. So why should I think that microwaves will cook my head?
I'm not a big supporter of the FCC (who frequently overstep their bounds), but this is exactly why parts of the radio spectrum need to be regulated.
I agree that the radio spectrum needs to be regulated (like any other common good), but unless my photons are crossing state boundries, why should it be regulated by the federal government?
Slashdot Mirror
And you think that making it illegal to be a potential criminal is a good thing.
The insanity of that statement is self-evident.
Oh, but nearly perfect copies which could then be distributed flawlessly would be ok?
No, fair use copies are OK, and devices that aren't primarily designed to circumvent technological measures which effectively control access to copyrighted works are OK.
Face it; trying to keep people from copying data that is in their hands or on their computers is futile. Trying to do it with a piece of legislation is futile and stupid.
So all copyright law is stupid. I guess you release everything you own into the public domain?
And yet, oddly enough, there are quite a number of large US-based companies selling those items without fear of being arrested for it. Tools to copy books are legal. Tools to copy ebooks are illegal. Anyone else see the problem here?
You are a troll.
How do they achieve "the same protections" by prosecuting people for doing what you describe as the equivalent of scanning and OCRing a book?
You missed my point. You can still scan and OCR an e-book without breaking the law. Just put your handheld scanner up to the screen. What you can't do is create a device which allows consumers to bypass technological measures to instantly make perfect digital copies. This law puts the two media at an equal playing field.
Of course, it's partly a matter of how long you have your e-mail address, and how well you secure it and keep it hidden.
Not on hotmail. I've set up email addresses on hotmail such as "sdjkleiojsel" and never used them for anything. Within a week I am receiving spam. The addresses are leaking out somehow.
Several years ago, I made a typo in my email address when I was updating the contact info for a domain name.
Good thing this law hadn't passed yet, or you might be in jail!
Of course, I am speaking of Sendmail.
Actually almost all of Sendmail's security holes are directly due to its obscurity. Just because the source code is released doesn't mean it's easy to understand.
No they're not. It's an excuse.
Oh, now I see why I might have gotten modded as a troll. By "It's not an excuse" I meant that "The fact that there will be more cracks does not excuse them from having to release the API."
And when the wholesaler starts requiring a data dump of your customers' purchase habits before he will make a delivery?
I'll start my own wholesaler.
Or your bank requires same before it will give you a letter of credit, which you will need to be able to import all those exotic beers?
I find that far-fetched, but I guess I just wouldn't carry exotic beers. I dunno.
When "just about everyone" starts capturing data, it really won't be feasible to be the only one who doesn't.
As long as there are a significant number of people who value their privacy, it will be. Personally I don't care if what food I buy is made public. I have a discount card, and I use it. But there are a lot of people who do care, and as long as the government doesn't make privacy illegal (which is not what it's doing here), there will be a market for privacy, and those who are willing to pay for it will get it.
Not to toot slashdot's horn, but when slashdot screws up, they tend to admit it.
Plus I bet they've never edited a story to make it more fairly balanced. If anything, they'd edit it to make it more anti-microsoft.
Salon has an amusing little wire article claiming that Microsoft argues that were they to provide any greater technical detail about protocols and APIs, it would make computers running their operating system far more vulnerable to cracking attacks.
It would. It's not a good excuse, but it is true. In the short term, Microsoft cracks would increase.
Well, opinions on that can differ
I vow that if all other stores have discount cards which track your purchases, I will personally open a store which doesn't. So for my lifetime at least, those opinions are wrong.
As a person who reads the fine print on all the "Terms and Conditions" junk sent to me by organizations with which I do business, I really can't agree.
Credit card companies have an oligopoly with much fewer members than "stores".
I think we are about 5 years from having every transaction tracked.
Guess I'll be dead in 5 years. Killed by the government so that they can track people?
And cash won't be an out (in the USofA), since the "USA Patriot Act" has greatly ratcheted down the threshhold for tracking and reporting cash transactions to the government.
What's it down to now? I thought it was still at $10,000.
And this is without the national ID card which I suspect is coming fairly soon.
We already have this national ID card. It's called the license. I once had a Wisconsin sherriff track me down (with help from the FBI) from my domain name, which listed an old address, from which I did not have mail forwarding, to my NJ driver's license, linked that to my NY drivers license, and got my unlisted phone number in NY. All this so he could ask me the name of someone who had a website on my system, and he suspected was sending threatening letters through the USPS.
As an aside, check out this proposal. Congress wants to make it a crime with a 5 year sentence for lying to your registrar when you register your domain name.
But e-books are no harder to use fairly than their paperback analogue. Although RMS might want there to be, there's no requirement that paperback manufacturers distribute latex versions of their books on floppy. You have to use scanners and OCR software to exert your right to read the book on your laptop. E-book manufacturers are merely trying to receive the same protections.
You opt-in by providing your information in the first place. BFD.
Then you have the "choice" of getting a discount card and being tracked, or not eating.
Or opening up your own store, and only getting tracked in aggregate with all the other people who buy from your store. That is, if the "all stores have discount cards" thing actually happens, which it won't.
Why even bother passing the law then? It doesn't seem to change the situation any.
Because by passing the law federally it overrides any state law.
Are these two points within the same state though?
Of course. The point is I can send a radio signal from my house to my neighbor's house, without affecting anyone outside of my state, and the federal government shouldn't be able to regulate that at all.
If my radio signals cannot be detected outside my state, then the government does not have beyond a reasonable doubt evidence that I have committed a federal crime.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said it in Feist v. Rural Telephone, and 5 of the current Supreme Court Justices (Rehnquist, Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter) joined:
Justice Stevens said it in the majority opinion of SONY CORP. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., and the current Supreme Court Justice O'Connor joined:
Even the dissent of Sony Corp. v. Universal City Sutdios, Inc., to which Justice Renquist joined, echos:
Now someone, please, explain to me how extending the monopoly granted on an already created work promotes the progress of science and the useful arts.
...to see how the real decision turns out. I actually think the retroactive portion of the law will be declared unconstitutional, but if not I'm very interested in seeing how the decision is phrased to justify the "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" clause.
Are you implying that radio signals observe state boundaries and just stop when they hit one?
No, I'm implying that it's possible to send a radio signal from one point to another without crossing state boundaries.
I've found the description at PhysicsClassroom to be useful for explaining light. Now, it's geared toward high school students, and as such is not strictly accurate (most notably, light is a transverse wave, whereas the picture seems to imply that it is longitudinal), but at the least it answers the often asked question of "why does light only travel at c in a vacuum". It's a good site overall, I'd definately recommend it.
But the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that there is no ether.
The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the ether was not detectable by the Michelson-Morley experiment. Einstein hypothesized that the ether is not detectable at all, and that hypothesis is likely true. Whether or not the ether exists is purely a matter of definition. You can define ether as "the medium through which light propagates", or you can define the speed of light in a vacuum to be c. If you want to keep away from ether, then I'll modify my definition of wave to:
"A force through which energy is transferred from one particle to another."
Which is admittedly an out of my ass working definition, and is subject to change should you present a counter-example.
Anything us silly humans determine as having a measurable mass.
Rest mass? Because then photons certainly don't appear to qualify.
This is why I get so confused with light.
What exactly do you find confusing? I don't mean that rhetorically, I'm actually wondering what you find confusing.
I'll settle for the dictionary.com definition of "A disturbance traveling through a medium by which energy is transferred from one particle of the medium to another without causing any permanent displacement of the medium itself." But then I'd have to define ether as a medium, which I'm comfortable doing.
Oh, I see what you're saying... I think you meant "Why is it that people seem to be so concerned about frequencies..." In any case, yeah, I guess it's the intensity, and maybe the frequencies aren't exactly the same? I don't know.
Why is that people seem to be so unconcerned about frequencies that operate in their microwave to cook food, but are perfectly willing to put handsets that operate at similar frequencies right next to their head, or laptops that use Wi-Fi in their laps?
I think there's a typo there somewhere, but I can't figure out exactly where.
Microwaves cook food. My head is not food. So why should I think that microwaves will cook my head?
I'm not a big supporter of the FCC (who frequently overstep their bounds), but this is exactly why parts of the radio spectrum need to be regulated.
I agree that the radio spectrum needs to be regulated (like any other common good), but unless my photons are crossing state boundries, why should it be regulated by the federal government?