I was one of the first people to contact my elected officials upon hearing about the abomination that is the CBDPTA. I was outraged upon hearing how far-reaching it was and decided it was time to act. I e-mailed most of my elected officials and made a point to call the offices of Senator Wellstone (D-MN), who is up for reelection this year. What follows is my first experience writing my officials, what they've told me, and more importantly what they didn't tell me.
Upon calling Paul Wellstone's local office, I told the person working the phone how i was opposed to any legislation mandating draconian DRM solutions and made several valid points. I made a point to inform that I was planning on voting in my first election in 2002 and that my opinions on these issues helped form many of my peer's opinions. Tell some high school kids that this will make burning CDs or making copies of free over-the-air TV programs and they'll get interested real fast.
They said they would have the Senator write me back with a response as soon as possible, but being a Senator, he was a very busy man. Ok, I thought, I'm a reasonable man, what's a few weeks. I don't mind waiting a month or two? I took the form letters from The EFF and tailored them to my needs. I sent compies of this e-mail to recently-elected Senator Dayton (D-MN), and my Congressman, Representative Martin Sabo (D-MN).
Well my e-mail and phone campaign was way back in September and just now have I received a response from one of my elected officials. What follows is an e-mail I just received on April 29th from Senator Wellstone, seven months after my inquiries:
Dear Mr. ********:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S.2048, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, also known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act.
This bill was introduced in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and may be referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
While I am not a member of either of those committees, I appreciate having the benefit of your views. I also want to assure you that I will keep your views on digital creative works in mind should legislation on this issue reach the Senate floor.
Legislation should strive to protect the rights of creators and ensure that consumers enjoy a vast selection of new and different
products. This requires a careful balance among the rights and interests of consumers, creators and innovators.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I hope that you will continue to let me know about matters of interest to you.
Sincerely,
Paul David Wellstone
United States Senator
I liked the part where I he didn't really answer my question... It seems you are correct in thinking Capitol Hill is hell bent on passing legislation. I don't think ANY legislation is a good thing, but I feel that they [capitol hill] see us [letter-writing geeks] as meddlers who refuse to offer a solution. Who says there needs to be a solution? Has anyone had any other luck with their representatives?
The country's fourth-largest computer maker is taking to the airwaves in a bid to rally consumers against a copyright-protection bill that would prevent computers from playing pirated movies and music.
If the people at Reuters really think that is all this bill will do they are sorely misinformed.
From the Wired Article:
"If only they would devote a little bit of the millions of dollars they're spending on this ad campaign to help stop illegal downloading... but that wouldn't help them sell more CD burners, would it," said Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.
If only you would actually go after these supposed 'pirates' in the first place instead of trying to buy yourself laws. How many piracy rings have they busted up? How many IPs have they logged from music sharing programs? None? Or at least they choose not to even try to enforce them. I'll give them their damn law (over my dad body) when they actually try to enforce the ones already on the books dammit. And why the hell is the tech sector responsible for stopping this? Is my local baby bell responsible for stopping illegal activities from being planned over phone lines? Why don't we sue car companies for allowing drunk drivers on the road. I would really like to know where they get the balls to get off thinking piracy is someone elses problem. I really and truly do.
I'd say it's a system seller, and no, it's definently not GTA3 caliber, which is easily my favorite console game in the past year. What I was trying to say is that's the best reason to buy an X-Box, most of the other games are kind of bland.
Jet Set Radio Future is THE REASON to own an X-Box. I've owned a PS2 for about 6 months and I've played and finished what I think to be the 6 or 7 best games on the PS2. I have to say that quality games are seriously lacking on X-Box. My brother bought Halo and Munch's Odessey first thing. Halo was boring in my opinion and Munch was ok, if not a little formulaic.
But like, three weeks ago me and my bro each went halfway on Jet Set Radio Future and we can't get enough of it. Great gameplay, beautiful graphics, and tons to play. We've averaged about 26-27 hours of playtime, well worth the $50 price tag. It's absolutely gorgeous and there is only occasional slow down.
It may be slow going but X-Box will catch up as soon as it has more A+ titles like JSRF.
Knowing google, they're probably already working on such a thing. Also, I question how well it would work, I'm not saying it doesn't, as they've already shown it to work, but completely ignoring the website's text is like taking two steps forward and three steps back. Wouldn't the ideal search engine combine the best of both worlds? Checking text and links?
...well other then longer load times and sometimes annoying hard-to-use interfaces; is that I can't use my mousewheel to scroll through text imbedded in the Flash. That's really all I ask for, or maybe even a bar on the side of the text. Most of the time to scroll text you have to hit stupid little arrow buttons.
It's really sad that an article about the SSSCA, something EVERYONE should be enraged about barely nets over 500 comments, while an article about an entirely optional ad-free service for/. gets almost 1500 comments, mostly flames.
Re:wait a minute, what's the story here?
on
iWarez
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· Score: 1
And you could take a camera into a museum or a movie camera into a theatre. But actually you can't because you'll get caught.
You must be mistaken, I've taken cameras into art museums when I go on vacation because I know I'm never coming back. There's not a big market for bootleg museum photos, because part of the experience is being there. Yeah it's frowned upon, but you can do it. And apparently no one brings movie cameras into theatres. That's wierd, how is it I watched LOTR the day after it came out?
So computer store employees should just make sure kids don't plug hard drives into computers.
If you'd like to be frisked everytime you walk into CompUSA or Best Buy be my guest.
Call your damn senators, write your congressman (snail mail or through this form letter. I've already called the local offices of my senators and my congressman and have e-mail each with a copy of the form letter @ the link above.
What else can you do? I'm writing an editorial for the local pape so I can educate Joe Consumer on WHY HE SHOULD CARE. This is a MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE. Act now people please, or be prepared to have your favorite hobby regulated and policed.
Side note: You don't have to be a registered voter to make a difference, they most likely don't check voter registration rolls and if they do, you're probably in the position where you if you didn't vote for them last election, you WILL be able to vote against them in an upcoming election. Slashdotters young and old need to rise up and fight this monstrosity.
If my Democrat doesn't vote against this (Paul Wellstone), he won't get a single vote from me and my friends. He's already running a close race against a former St. Paul mayor, and he's going to need EVERY SINGLE voteto get a 3rd term. I just hope he gets my letter in time to make an informed experience.
This is exactly what I would expect a Chuck Jones cartoon in the 21st century to be like, I can't wait to see the other episodes. Makes you wonder if they'll continue making them. I'm sure Chuck story-boarded or at least thought out on paper a few more episodes for Thomas Timberwolf.
Mark each downloaded copy with registration information (the user's name and IP address they downloaded to). That is all the copy protection that is required, and it works beautifully (if not perfectly) in the digital world of software. People are much more reluctant to share illegal copies of software that are marked with their identity in some fashion than they are anonymous products (such as clean rips from a firewire port).
Well, what's stopping me from running it through virtualdub, removing the watermark or whatever. The only way they could get around that would be to brand your IP somewhere. If it was just in the corner, I'd be tempted to just crop it out. If they made it so big that you couldn't crop it out without missing important parts of the show I know I wouldn't stand for it; the same way I wouldn't stand for a FOX logo taking up a quarter of my television screen.
So yeah, you're right in saying that none of this is perfect, but I just don't see any way of it really working out so that both the content's creators and viewers are sufficiently satisfied.
But I was wondering, how exactly does Google make money? They serve up so many goddamn pages and their bandiwth, storage, power consumption must be through the roof; so how do they pay for it all? This is a good start, but $20k can't go too far @ google.
Slashdot Mirror
Upon calling Paul Wellstone's local office, I told the person working the phone how i was opposed to any legislation mandating draconian DRM solutions and made several valid points. I made a point to inform that I was planning on voting in my first election in 2002 and that my opinions on these issues helped form many of my peer's opinions. Tell some high school kids that this will make burning CDs or making copies of free over-the-air TV programs and they'll get interested real fast.
They said they would have the Senator write me back with a response as soon as possible, but being a Senator, he was a very busy man. Ok, I thought, I'm a reasonable man, what's a few weeks. I don't mind waiting a month or two? I took the form letters from The EFF and tailored them to my needs. I sent compies of this e-mail to recently-elected Senator Dayton (D-MN), and my Congressman, Representative Martin Sabo (D-MN).
Well my e-mail and phone campaign was way back in September and just now have I received a response from one of my elected officials. What follows is an e-mail I just received on April 29th from Senator Wellstone, seven months after my inquiries:
I liked the part where I he didn't really answer my question... It seems you are correct in thinking Capitol Hill is hell bent on passing legislation. I don't think ANY legislation is a good thing, but I feel that they [capitol hill] see us [letter-writing geeks] as meddlers who refuse to offer a solution. Who says there needs to be a solution? Has anyone had any other luck with their representatives?
From the Wired Article:
If only you would actually go after these supposed 'pirates' in the first place instead of trying to buy yourself laws. How many piracy rings have they busted up? How many IPs have they logged from music sharing programs? None? Or at least they choose not to even try to enforce them. I'll give them their damn law (over my dad body) when they actually try to enforce the ones already on the books dammit. And why the hell is the tech sector responsible for stopping this? Is my local baby bell responsible for stopping illegal activities from being planned over phone lines? Why don't we sue car companies for allowing drunk drivers on the road. I would really like to know where they get the balls to get off thinking piracy is someone elses problem. I really and truly do.I'd say it's a system seller, and no, it's definently not GTA3 caliber, which is easily my favorite console game in the past year. What I was trying to say is that's the best reason to buy an X-Box, most of the other games are kind of bland.
But like, three weeks ago me and my bro each went halfway on Jet Set Radio Future and we can't get enough of it. Great gameplay, beautiful graphics, and tons to play. We've averaged about 26-27 hours of playtime, well worth the $50 price tag. It's absolutely gorgeous and there is only occasional slow down.
It may be slow going but X-Box will catch up as soon as it has more A+ titles like JSRF.
see also: 'onion gel tux'
see also: 'not ogle unix'
Knowing google, they're probably already working on such a thing. Also, I question how well it would work, I'm not saying it doesn't, as they've already shown it to work, but completely ignoring the website's text is like taking two steps forward and three steps back. Wouldn't the ideal search engine combine the best of both worlds? Checking text and links?
...well other then longer load times and sometimes annoying hard-to-use interfaces; is that I can't use my mousewheel to scroll through text imbedded in the Flash. That's really all I ask for, or maybe even a bar on the side of the text. Most of the time to scroll text you have to hit stupid little arrow buttons.
It's really sad that an article about the SSSCA, something EVERYONE should be enraged about barely nets over 500 comments, while an article about an entirely optional ad-free service for /. gets almost 1500 comments, mostly flames.
Definently magnets.
You must be mistaken, I've taken cameras into art museums when I go on vacation because I know I'm never coming back. There's not a big market for bootleg museum photos, because part of the experience is being there. Yeah it's frowned upon, but you can do it. And apparently no one brings movie cameras into theatres. That's wierd, how is it I watched LOTR the day after it came out?
If you'd like to be frisked everytime you walk into CompUSA or Best Buy be my guest.
What else can you do? I'm writing an editorial for the local pape so I can educate Joe Consumer on WHY HE SHOULD CARE. This is a MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE. Act now people please, or be prepared to have your favorite hobby regulated and policed.
Side note: You don't have to be a registered voter to make a difference, they most likely don't check voter registration rolls and if they do, you're probably in the position where you if you didn't vote for them last election, you WILL be able to vote against them in an upcoming election. Slashdotters young and old need to rise up and fight this monstrosity.
If my Democrat doesn't vote against this (Paul Wellstone), he won't get a single vote from me and my friends. He's already running a close race against a former St. Paul mayor, and he's going to need EVERY SINGLE voteto get a 3rd term. I just hope he gets my letter in time to make an informed experience.
RIP Chuck.
So yeah, you're right in saying that none of this is perfect, but I just don't see any way of it really working out so that both the content's creators and viewers are sufficiently satisfied.
Please don't tell me he's talking about his wang.
But I was wondering, how exactly does Google make money? They serve up so many goddamn pages and their bandiwth, storage, power consumption must be through the roof; so how do they pay for it all? This is a good start, but $20k can't go too far @ google.
I'm just a little bitter though because I submitted a similar story a week or so ago and was rejected. :o
The name of the book you're thinking of is __The Diamond Age __. Unless it was published under a different title outside of the US.
but god bless the Google cache.
I'm already downloading mp3's/divx movies/pr0n faster then I can listen to/watch/masturbate to them.