Seems to me like the EFF just lost its last shred of credibility.
There has always been a pretense that they were defending against the RIAA, MPAA, etc, because they wanted to protected the innocent bystanders. But now they've come straight out and said "if you're doing something illegal then don't admit it". Plain and simple, defending the guilty.
You do realise that the RIAA will win this war, don't you?:-)
If they copied photos from his web site or anywhere else and used them in the game then they've infringed someone's copyright. Certainly the photographer's, possibly the artist's too.
But if they went out and took a photo of grafitti that had been sprayed on walls/trains/whatever in a public place then I don't think they've done anything wrong, either legally or morally.
Just adding a quick "me too!" to the opinion that Microsoft have done nothing wrong here, and indeed are doing something right.
There's an ethos on Slashdot that you should mod the comment, not the poster. People should remember that when talking about Microsoft. Just because it's Microsoft doing something, that doesn't make it wrong, evil, anti-competitive, greedy, subversive, or whatever. Sometimes it's just a fair and reasonable thing to do.
It's their network! Other messengers weren't invited.
Off-topic: There was a story the other day about new Dell systems having an EULA on start-up. My mum and dad have both bought new Dells this week and my mum's had the EULA. Unbelievably the Dell-certified installer who set-up the system for her just clicked through the EULA without her having chance to read it! My dad's system hasn't been set-up yet but I assume it will be the same as it was purchased at the same time. So the EULAs have already spread to Europe. (I'm in the UK.)
I don't want to make any comment on the issue itself, but I do want to ask, why does the CCIA rep feel the need to quote a Washington Post editorial in his open letter?
Quoting someone to add weight to your argument, whether it's a philosopher, pop star or journalist, generally removes credibility from what you're saying because it suggests that you don't feel your argument is strong enough on its own.
If I were posting a comment on Slashdot about security, for example, and I quoted a security expert, then that would be fair enough because the intention would be to reference knowledge that I couldn't personally have.
But the CCIA published their open letter because, supposedly, their opinion is important and should be taken seriously. Quoting a journalist, especially at the conclusion of the letter, seems inappropriate and even a little desperate.
The boys wrote letters to apologize to the victims' families that were read in court Thursday.
"I didn't want to hurt anyone," Joshua wrote. "This will stick with me the rest of my life."
I don't think a 13-year-old would write that without prompting.
Sure it's conceivable for a 13-year-old to have a concept of "the rest of my life", and for him to imagine the guilt he will feel over that length of time, but could that maturity and self-awareness really exist in the sort of kid who shoots at cars because he did it in a computer game?
Methinks an adult had a hand in writing that letter.
The ESRB rating for GTA3 and VC is 17+. What were these kids doing with a game that they shouldn't be playing? They should sue the parents for negligence.
Or maybe they should sue games publishers and developers for actively fighting any attempts to make retailers obey the rating "recommendations". Industry representatives and trade associations claim the ratings system works but then they go to court to make sure the ratings aren't legally enforced. Hmm, why is that?
Okay as much as I agree with a lot of the prioritisation advice that has been given so far, I'm going to offer some different advice.
Wild guess... you're a perfectionist?
Me too.
It's a problem.
Seriously, aiming for perfection is a genuine personality problem in a work environment. Why? Because perfectionists can never achieve their goal but they'll spend twice as long as everyone else trying.
Here's the solution, tried and tested.
Follow the 90% rule.
Know exactly what you instinctively want to do to complete any task, and then aim for 90% of it.
Do this once.
Then ask yourself, honestly, have I really done a bad job here? The answer will be no, you've done a job that is the same as you'd have achieved if you'd aimed for perfection. But it took you half the time.
Perfectionists waste so much time aiming for that extra 10% and they never achieve it because it's a form of psychological self-punishment.
Get one thing absolutely clear in your mind -- you are NOT aiming to cut corners or be lazy. You're going to achieve exactly what you would normally, you're just freeing yourself from that nagging burden of an impossible goal.
Finally, consider this...
When you wonder about "how to say no" to people, are you worried about letting them down or letting yourself down?
Also, at the end of six months or a year, maybe you can use the resulting log as evidence that you need an assistant or a pay raise or both. It's also good for remembering what to put on your resume, if your small company decides to lay you off and replace you with two kids who just graduated and also happen to be related to the VPs...
After all that calm, good advice, was this where your blood suddenly started to boil over?
I could almost hear your teeth gritting... "those bastards!":-)
What if someone in Iran/China reads/downloads something that violates the DMCA? Or any other similar law. Does that make Anonymizer an accessory to the crime?
The real irony starts when the Internet un-blocker starts blocking parts of the Internet...
They simply make the information available. The people who administrate email servers and spam filters on email servers are the ones who decided to use that list for blocking email.
True, but this creates a problem of trust followed by abuse of trust.
Anyone setting up a blacklist which is clearly being used to silence certain people would of course fail, because nobody would use that list. But what about the trusted, reliable list that *occasionally* censors a certain IP address because of what is being said or who is saying it?
In that scenario, one of two things would happen.
Either,
1. The world would immediately stop using that once-trusted list.
or,
2. The world would accept that the list will occasionally be abused, but they'll continue using it because it's usually reliable and trustworthy.
I think we both know which is more realistic.
And this assumes that the censoring is ever discovered. The owner of a trusted anti-spam blacklist is likely to be believed over the complaints of a critic who claims he is being censored.
We contacted Mr. Jared by phone who informed us that 'everyone needs to stop using Osirusoft and that he's going to be shutting the service down.' Then he says he's going to blacklist 'the world' (aka, ban *.*.*.*) to get his point across.
This sounds a lot like he's annoyed with the DDoSers, can't do anything to punish them, so he's taking out his anger on people who use his service. Nice attitude!
Personally the idea of privately-owned black/whitelists horrifies me. People complain about elected governments interfering with the Internet but then those same people trust un-elected and unaccountable individuals to decide who has the right to communicate by e-mail!
Oh and of course these individuals usually have a "no right to appeal" policy. Well any similarity to PayPal should ring a loud warning bell...
I wish I could offer some helpful advice but I can't, so instead I'll relate similar experiences I've had.
I have two domain names, one personal, one business.
The personal one was 'hijacked' in a very bizarre way a few years ago. I annoyed the owner of a popular site (by publishing an article about him swindling his visitors) so he posted my address dozens of times, all over the front page of his site. Obviously he wanted anyone who still believed his side of the story to send me hate mail, and that's exactly what happened. That was mailbombing though. The 'hijacking' was secondary, because of course my e-mail address is now in the address book of hundreds, if not thousands of people who are, let's say, not spectacularly bright. You can imagine how many e-mail viruses I get as a result of being in those address books.
The problem with my other domain is someone sending out viruses with my business address as the return address. This results in lots of auto-rejections from ISP spam filters. It's an inconvenience but it is NOTHING like as bad as the 30,000 you're getting, so you have my sincere sympathy. It must be very depressing to have something like this happen on such a large scale, and I do hope you figure out a way to prevent it.
Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here but why is a singer using pitch-correction any more fake than, say, an actor using a stunt double or a photographer taking several pictures and keeping only the best one?
All three 'tricks' create an impression of a person's talent that is different in some way from reality.
Sobig always makes me think of the film Independence Day. You know how the aliens positioned their ships at strategic points around the globe and then waited for the countdown to strike simultaneously?
It makes Sobig seem more 'sinister' when I think of it in these terms. Sure it's annoying, sure it's a drain on time and resources, but what's going to happen when all the ships are in position and the countdown hits zero?
Okay I just typed out a long explanation of why I thought I was right, and I've convinced myself that I'm wrong.
My mistake was that I thought the percentage applied to the number of known operating systems, but of course it would include the unknowns as well, so having a few Linux boxes in the unknown set would increase the overall percentage.
It has always struck me as disingenuous that Linux advocates claim Linux to be more secure than Windows. The common perception is that the entity "Linux" is inherently secure but the entity "Windows" constantly needs patching. This clearly isn't true, and it ignores the ongoing development cycle of *both* operating systems.
When a Linux advocate says "Linux is more secure than Windows" what they actually mean is: "When a flaw is discovered in Linux, someone fixes it quickly and a patch is released. It takes longer with Windows."
The quantity/severity of security flaws is not the issue. Both operating systems have security flaws and always will. The issue is the speed with which security flaws are fixed.
Don't fall into the trap of believing that Linux programmers are somehow "better" than Windows programmers, simply because the former are doing it for love and the latter work for Microsoft.
Similarly, don't forget that Linux is only secure because of it constantly being patched. This is exactly what people complain about with Windows!
Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus, it's been a long two weeks for Windows users. But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks
Apart from those Mac and Linux users who have been bombarded with Sobig e-mails.
However, www.msn.com has a lot fewer than half million. Fewer than a thousand even! In fact, there are only 51 (yes, Fifty One) People in the world who link to www.msn.com. www.MSNBC fares even worse with 7 (SEVEN) links to it. Compare this to www.cnn.com with 74,000 links.
The link search on Google isn't entirely reliable. Results can vary for several reasons, such as whether you include the "www" in the site address you're searching for.
For example, cnn.com gets 74,000 results whether you include the www or not. On the other hand, msnbc.com gets 7 results with the www and 2,140 without it. Conversely, msn.com gets 51 results with the www and 19 without it.
My own site gets zero results and it's one of the most linked-to sites in its niche genre. Other sites in the same niche show up with plenty of links.
Glad to see the majority of comments expressing support for the actions of this software developer. I want to add my own voice to the crowd before the pro-piracy mob start shouting louder.
Two on-the-surface legitimate arguments have been raised but they don't stand up to scrutiny...
Legal owners of the software are being spied on too.
From the story: "their product is phoning home when it discovers it is running a cracked copy of itself"
It's an invasion of privacy because it can steal credit card numbers, bank details, etc.
From the story: "the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address"
So the bottom line is that there's no apparent risk to legitimate users, no theft of extraneous data, and no harm done. Hopefully a few software thieves get caught and some hard-working developers get the money they're entitled to.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me like the EFF just lost its last shred of credibility.
:-)
There has always been a pretense that they were defending against the RIAA, MPAA, etc, because they wanted to protected the innocent bystanders. But now they've come straight out and said "if you're doing something illegal then don't admit it". Plain and simple, defending the guilty.
You do realise that the RIAA will win this war, don't you?
Cool, just checking.
If they copied photos from his web site or anywhere else and used them in the game then they've infringed someone's copyright. Certainly the photographer's, possibly the artist's too.
But if they went out and took a photo of grafitti that had been sprayed on walls/trains/whatever in a public place then I don't think they've done anything wrong, either legally or morally.
People you steal from have a right to defend themselves.
Just adding a quick "me too!" to the opinion that Microsoft have done nothing wrong here, and indeed are doing something right.
There's an ethos on Slashdot that you should mod the comment, not the poster. People should remember that when talking about Microsoft. Just because it's Microsoft doing something, that doesn't make it wrong, evil, anti-competitive, greedy, subversive, or whatever. Sometimes it's just a fair and reasonable thing to do.
It's their network! Other messengers weren't invited.
Off-topic: There was a story the other day about new Dell systems having an EULA on start-up. My mum and dad have both bought new Dells this week and my mum's had the EULA. Unbelievably the Dell-certified installer who set-up the system for her just clicked through the EULA without her having chance to read it! My dad's system hasn't been set-up yet but I assume it will be the same as it was purchased at the same time. So the EULAs have already spread to Europe. (I'm in the UK.)
I don't want to make any comment on the issue itself, but I do want to ask, why does the CCIA rep feel the need to quote a Washington Post editorial in his open letter?
Quoting someone to add weight to your argument, whether it's a philosopher, pop star or journalist, generally removes credibility from what you're saying because it suggests that you don't feel your argument is strong enough on its own.
If I were posting a comment on Slashdot about security, for example, and I quoted a security expert, then that would be fair enough because the intention would be to reference knowledge that I couldn't personally have.
But the CCIA published their open letter because, supposedly, their opinion is important and should be taken seriously. Quoting a journalist, especially at the conclusion of the letter, seems inappropriate and even a little desperate.
Sure it's conceivable for a 13-year-old to have a concept of "the rest of my life", and for him to imagine the guilt he will feel over that length of time, but could that maturity and self-awareness really exist in the sort of kid who shoots at cars because he did it in a computer game?
Methinks an adult had a hand in writing that letter.
Funny...
Slashdot cares so little for Europeans that we aren't even allowed to use our own currency symbols and accented characters in our posts.
But when something happens in Europe that might affect the US, suddenly we're big news!
Okay as much as I agree with a lot of the prioritisation advice that has been given so far, I'm going to offer some different advice.
:-)
Wild guess... you're a perfectionist?
Me too.
It's a problem.
Seriously, aiming for perfection is a genuine personality problem in a work environment. Why? Because perfectionists can never achieve their goal but they'll spend twice as long as everyone else trying.
Here's the solution, tried and tested.
Follow the 90% rule.
Know exactly what you instinctively want to do to complete any task, and then aim for 90% of it.
Do this once.
Then ask yourself, honestly, have I really done a bad job here? The answer will be no, you've done a job that is the same as you'd have achieved if you'd aimed for perfection. But it took you half the time.
Perfectionists waste so much time aiming for that extra 10% and they never achieve it because it's a form of psychological self-punishment.
Get one thing absolutely clear in your mind -- you are NOT aiming to cut corners or be lazy. You're going to achieve exactly what you would normally, you're just freeing yourself from that nagging burden of an impossible goal.
Finally, consider this...
When you wonder about "how to say no" to people, are you worried about letting them down or letting yourself down?
See what I mean?
I could almost hear your teeth gritting... "those bastards!"
What if someone in Iran/China reads/downloads something that violates the DMCA? Or any other similar law. Does that make Anonymizer an accessory to the crime?
The real irony starts when the Internet un-blocker starts blocking parts of the Internet...
Anyone setting up a blacklist which is clearly being used to silence certain people would of course fail, because nobody would use that list. But what about the trusted, reliable list that *occasionally* censors a certain IP address because of what is being said or who is saying it?
In that scenario, one of two things would happen.
Either,
1. The world would immediately stop using that once-trusted list.
or,
2. The world would accept that the list will occasionally be abused, but they'll continue using it because it's usually reliable and trustworthy.
I think we both know which is more realistic.
And this assumes that the censoring is ever discovered. The owner of a trusted anti-spam blacklist is likely to be believed over the complaints of a critic who claims he is being censored.
Personally the idea of privately-owned black/whitelists horrifies me. People complain about elected governments interfering with the Internet but then those same people trust un-elected and unaccountable individuals to decide who has the right to communicate by e-mail!
Oh and of course these individuals usually have a "no right to appeal" policy. Well any similarity to PayPal should ring a loud warning bell...
I wish I could offer some helpful advice but I can't, so instead I'll relate similar experiences I've had.
I have two domain names, one personal, one business.
The personal one was 'hijacked' in a very bizarre way a few years ago. I annoyed the owner of a popular site (by publishing an article about him swindling his visitors) so he posted my address dozens of times, all over the front page of his site. Obviously he wanted anyone who still believed his side of the story to send me hate mail, and that's exactly what happened. That was mailbombing though. The 'hijacking' was secondary, because of course my e-mail address is now in the address book of hundreds, if not thousands of people who are, let's say, not spectacularly bright. You can imagine how many e-mail viruses I get as a result of being in those address books.
The problem with my other domain is someone sending out viruses with my business address as the return address. This results in lots of auto-rejections from ISP spam filters. It's an inconvenience but it is NOTHING like as bad as the 30,000 you're getting, so you have my sincere sympathy. It must be very depressing to have something like this happen on such a large scale, and I do hope you figure out a way to prevent it.
Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here but why is a singer using pitch-correction any more fake than, say, an actor using a stunt double or a photographer taking several pictures and keeping only the best one?
All three 'tricks' create an impression of a person's talent that is different in some way from reality.
Sobig always makes me think of the film Independence Day. You know how the aliens positioned their ships at strategic points around the globe and then waited for the countdown to strike simultaneously?
It makes Sobig seem more 'sinister' when I think of it in these terms. Sure it's annoying, sure it's a drain on time and resources, but what's going to happen when all the ships are in position and the countdown hits zero?
5, 4, 3...
Okay I just typed out a long explanation of why I thought I was right, and I've convinced myself that I'm wrong.
:-)
My mistake was that I thought the percentage applied to the number of known operating systems, but of course it would include the unknowns as well, so having a few Linux boxes in the unknown set would increase the overall percentage.
Sorry
It has always struck me as disingenuous that Linux advocates claim Linux to be more secure than Windows. The common perception is that the entity "Linux" is inherently secure but the entity "Windows" constantly needs patching. This clearly isn't true, and it ignores the ongoing development cycle of *both* operating systems.
When a Linux advocate says "Linux is more secure than Windows" what they actually mean is: "When a flaw is discovered in Linux, someone fixes it quickly and a patch is released. It takes longer with Windows."
The quantity/severity of security flaws is not the issue. Both operating systems have security flaws and always will. The issue is the speed with which security flaws are fixed.
Don't fall into the trap of believing that Linux programmers are somehow "better" than Windows programmers, simply because the former are doing it for love and the latter work for Microsoft.
Similarly, don't forget that Linux is only secure because of it constantly being patched. This is exactly what people complain about with Windows!
For example, cnn.com gets 74,000 results whether you include the www or not. On the other hand, msnbc.com gets 7 results with the www and 2,140 without it. Conversely, msn.com gets 51 results with the www and 19 without it.
My own site gets zero results and it's one of the most linked-to sites in its niche genre. Other sites in the same niche show up with plenty of links.
Glad to see the majority of comments expressing support for the actions of this software developer. I want to add my own voice to the crowd before the pro-piracy mob start shouting louder.
Two on-the-surface legitimate arguments have been raised but they don't stand up to scrutiny...
Legal owners of the software are being spied on too.
From the story: "their product is phoning home when it discovers it is running a cracked copy of itself"
It's an invasion of privacy because it can steal credit card numbers, bank details, etc.
From the story: "the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address"
So the bottom line is that there's no apparent risk to legitimate users, no theft of extraneous data, and no harm done. Hopefully a few software thieves get caught and some hard-working developers get the money they're entitled to.
Good Thing.