Not really. If I could make a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD and sell it, I would have violated the copyright, but not the decryption ban.
It's not a "decrypting ban", it is a ban on circumvention devices. DVD writers will not let you make a bit-for-bit copy of a copy-protected DVD unless you circumvent the device.
On a different note, doesn't my DVD player necessarily decrypt the data when it displays the picture on the screen? Are all DVD players therefore illegal? Or am I missing something else, too?
You are missing something else. The DVDCCA claims the exclusive right to license Content Scrambling System (CSS) technology. This would violate the DMCA, but the copyright holders have explicitely given the DVDCCA permission to do so (as a prerequisite for encrypting their movies).
Question, what would happen if I made a DVD, encrypted with CSS, but didn't give the DVDCCA permission to distribute decryption software? Would everyone have to stop selling DVD players?
If the author hasn't already, I plead with him to please GPL the code. With code all over the internet, they will be powerless to stop it.
This attitude did more damage to 2600 Enterprises than the DMCA ever could have. When 2600 received a preliminary injuction to take DeCSS off their website until the trial as over, 2600 started posting links to it instead.
That image solidified in Kaplan's mind the idea that 2600 is nothing but a bunch of thieving punks. As a direct result of 2600's contempt of the law, judge Kaplan ruled that it's illegal to even post a link to DeCSS (known in the pre-internet era as a footnote). Kaplan's extremely biased rant was one of the decisions Judge Illston "carefully read" and was "substantially persuaded by".
By the way, DVD copying software is already all over the internet; and would have been regardless of 2600's childish antics.
Now let's look at print media, specifically novels.
People do share novels. Many people read novels on their laptops and palmtops while travelling. The big difference is that people tend to share public domain novels, whereas virtually all recorded music is locked up behind copyright. Project Gutenberg has thousands of public domain novels to choose from, but there are very few public domain recordings (mostly because copyright extends back to the beginning of the record industry).
If songs from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and early 80's were already in the public domain, people would not be so sympathetic to those who distribute copyrighted works from the late 80's, 90's and 2000's.
Laws controlling devices are nothing new. There are laws about automobile safety that requires cars to meet certain standards and this allows the government to control technology. There are laws about FCC compliance and this allows the FCC to control devices. Etc. etc.
The constitution enumerates 18 powers (plus several amendments) which congress may exercise. In order for congress to do anything, they must exercise a power that the constitution grants them. With regards to cars and the FCC, that power is under the interstate commerce clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3).
The professors argue that congress can not use the interstate commerce clause if the intellectual property clause already restricts congress' behavior.
The intellectual property clause allows congress to grant patents only to inventors (not authors):
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries;
The distiction, for example, keeps congress from granting Random House a monopoly on the latest and greatest printing press. The constitution also requires that monopoly powers only be bestowed upon original works and only apply for limited times. Both of these requirements would preclude the DVDCCA from being the exclusive licenser of CSS. If they wanted that power, they should have applied for a patent.
Irregardless of whether or not the law is constitutional, the question still remains, does the DMCA create modern Stationer's Guilds? Suppose the RIAA creates a new alternative to MP3, complete with DRM. The technology proliferates everwhere. Next thing you know radios, TVs, and all other audio equipment use nothing but the RIAA's new encoding standard. How can anyone publish in this realm without the RIAA's permission?
The question I want answered, how do Lessig and Oppenheim feel about this argument? Forty-six professors of intellectual-property law argued that the DMCA's anti-device provision creates a modern Stationer's Guild. It allows copyright holders to control technology, much like the Stationer's Guild controlled the printing press. The court declined to address this argument and I have been itching for a good response to it.
it's about 700 megs per hour of footage, as opposed the 13 gig it'd take to losslessly compress it.
Has anyone analyzed how accurately lossy compression reproduces the original? The whole point of lossy compression is that it alters the image so that it's easier to compress. If the video shows you tossing something out the window, how do we know if you really tossed it, or if it's just an anomaly introduced by the compression algorithm?
These cameras should use two encoding systems. Lossy compression at 30+ fps to provide context, and lossless compression at 1-2 fps to provide trustworthy footage.
Think about it, what other business would do this? If you walked into a store and they started accusing you of stealing and would only sell you things in such a way where you were oblivious to most of what it contained and treated you like shit all around, who would come back?
Apparently, the Slashdot crowd. Notice all the posts here of people who bought CDs only to find them copy-protected? Most Slashdotters are well aware of the RIAA's business tactics, but they can't help pulling out their wallets and paying the RIAA to continue their sleezy business practices.
The same is true of just about any other business. People get ripped off. They complain about it. They see a shiney new advertisement and forget all their past experiences. Suddently it's spend, spend, spend! That's why corporate America cares nothing about consumers.
Railroads are one of the few types of entities that aren't telcos that are likely to have continuous strips of land between metro/suburban areas.
After the breakup of AT&T in 1984, some railroads got together and formed Sprint. They build customized trains which laid fiber optic cable next to their tracks. Good luck convincing those railroads to help the competition.
If newspapers had historically been used to reprint unauthorized copies of creative works, i.e. poem, short stories, chapters of novels, they would have been stopped. As it stands, newspapers have always printed content created by the people who the newspapers employ and offer renumeration to.
So your weak historical analogy crumbles.
Seeing as you're wrong, you're weak retort crumbles. Newspapers can and have reprinted unauthorized copies of creative works. When that happens, we hold the newspaper accountable. We don't (any longer) go after the people who made the printing press.
There was a time when the British Monarchy tried to control the printing press. It didn't work, so in 1557, they created copyright. Their copyright was to grant the Stationer's Guild the exclusive right to publish. By 1710, England realized that letting publishers control the printing press was a bad idea, so they created the Statute of Anne which all modern copyright is founded upon.
The U.S. constitution carefully separates patents and copyrights. Congress has the power to grant authors the rights to their artistic creations, and congress may grant inventors the rights to their discoveries. The constitution very carefully does not allow congress to grant authors control of inventions.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries;
Letting copyright holders control p2p technology is similar to letting publishers control the photocopier, cassette recorder, VCR, radio, or any other publishing technology.
When the constitution was drafted, the Statute of Anne was less than 100 years old. The age of publishers controlling the printing press was very recent history. The constitution was carefully worded to prevent the recreation of another Stationer's Guild.
If that were true, then PGP would receive the same criticism as Palladium. Digital certificates can be used for MANY purposes, not just verification of real-life identities.
Any spammer can generate a new PGP signature for each message. Why would you trust it? You could maintain your own whitelist, but you can already do that. The alternative is to let somebody else maintain a whitelist. Someone you trust (a certificate authority) has to sign the author's signature saying, "this person doesn't send spam". If you only accept mail signed by a CA, that CA decides who can or cannot send mail to you.
If a CA signs a spammer's certificate, no one will trust them. So the whole scheme is going to require accountability, probably enforced by some well-known top-level CA. The top-level CA has to have some sort of power (e.g. power to revoke a certificate) to enforce the rules. When the rules are broken, people will demand regulation for CAs.
Regarding privacy, websites routinely ask for an email address. If everyone has an authenticated digital certificate, websites will start carding their visitors. They may even require people to sign the terms of service. Keep in mind, digital certificates are legally binding signatures.
Finally, considering how common identity theft is, your proposal won't make any difference with illegal spam (Nigerian money laundering, repair your credit, etc.).
That's a great idea...
I'm not sure if it's a great idea. Just something I got from another Slashdotter.
but how do you identify the "sender"?
You don't have to. Once they've solved the problem, you give them a signed certificate. From that point on, any time they send you mail, they attach the signed certificate proving they have sent you mail before. If that mail was spam, you can revoke their certificate.
It can be done via a cooperative, decentralized network. It can be done anonymously.
How are those systems going to keep someone from generating a bunch of keys and tossing them on the network?
The solution to spam is a technical one, involving distributed validation of digital certificates. If you think about it, this could be done while still preserving people's privacy
This is the same as having a national ID. If we implemented this crazy plan, web sites would require you to validate your identity before you could read the news, comment on politics, or listen to music. Federal regulations would make it a felony to forge your identity. The government would require service providers to log identities at discussion sites to crack down on copyright pirates and libelous accusations. Anyone who refused to "voluntarily surrender" their privacy would be treated like a second-class citizen.
A better solution is to require the sender to solve a time-consuming problem the first time they send something. The more people you initiate contact with, the more processing power you need.
Why don't we have people on campus letting people know about their freedoms, about the lies spread by the RIAA/MPAA, and about *what can be done to help* ?
The EFF is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. It is illegal for them to lobby. The organization you should point people to is Public Knowledge.
[Absurd, inflamatory assumptions about what I think deleted...]
But I have to laugh when Kazaa is equated to sharing with friends.
You said "many of the students bought it and copied it for friends.". I assumed you were referring to kids copying CDs for their friends. If you really meant kids spreading files around on Kazaa, you should laugh at yourself.
I write a song, I get...the right to distribte the sound recording the way I want to, and the right to [pursue] profit from public performance via radio and live. I will not give up these rights because of you.
Now I really am going to nitpick. Without copyright everyone has those rights. What you really mean are "exclusive rights". Also, the right to pursue a profit is not exclusive. A radio station can play your music for a profit and simply pay a compulsory license for it. Furthermore, I never said your exclusive rights should be taken away. Although I do believe they should be scaled back.
But I believe I have the right to a fair and equitable marketplace to either rise or fail in.
"Fair and equitable" is strongly debated. Some people consider a free market the only fair market. In a truely free market, copyright would not exist. Anyone could publish and sell a thousand copies of "Lord of the Rings". Competition would drive prices down to the cost of production.
The whole point of copyright is to provide authors with an incentive to create content which will enrich the public domain. The public temporarily gives up its rights to copy and publish certain original works in return for authors creating those works. By this measure of fair, once the author has had adequate encouragement to create a work, that encouragement may not be extended. Furthermore, congress can not offer encouragement that is not likely to effect an author's decision to publish.
Another philosophy suggests that authors 'own' their creations and have a natural right to control it. You seem to hail from this camp. Unfortunately for you, our contitution was founded on the previous philosophy.
No one has a right to profit. Oh, and the internet itself is a p2p network.
Symantics. Perhaps I should have said the right to persue profit which is happiness for me. What a nitpicker you are. Anything to win your arugument. As for the internet.... so? I'm talking about specific apps, Kazaa, et. al.
I don't agree with the person you responded to. I am not trying to 'nitpick' to win an argument. You are throwing around heavily abused rhetoric and I'm calling you on it.
In our legal system, a constitutional right has special significance above and beyond rights granted by congress. You are trying to elevate copyright to a level at which it does not belong.
Lobbyists run around pretending their sponsors have a right to profit and congress passes bad laws as a result. When it comes to setting policy, a right to profit, and a right to attempt to profit have completely different meanings.
I am not trying to nitpick by contrasting Kazaa, et. al. with the internet at large. Piracy was a problem on usenet a decade before anyone had ever heard of Napster. Yet no one ran around filing lawsuits to shut down usenet.
The real difference between Kazaa, et. al. and the internet is that Kazaa and friends have built-in search functionality which is difficult (perhaps even impossible) to censor. I happen to think built-in search functionality is a good thing.
Sales are down over 11% over all. The 12-25 year olds have seen the largest fall.
Sales are down now that Napster is no more. Many industries are seeing a drop in sales, due to the economy. It is no surprise that a recession hits young people the hardest (companies lay off the least experienced people first). It is also no surprise that a recession hits entertainment harder than other industries (who's going to buy a shiney new CD for their kids right after losing their job?).
We sold it at several High Schools but sales were not as high as we hoped.
So you were over-optimistic. Perhaps it's because people didn't like it as much as you'd hoped. Or perhaps it's because you failed to consider the Audio Home Recording Act in your calculations. Frankly, I think you're just looking for a scapegoat. It's like a grocery store blaming TV shows on gardening for a drop in sales.
By the way, this comes back to your flawed argument that you have a right to profit. You don't! The government is under no obligation to make sure you sell every CD you stamped. You had an opportunity to stamp the correct number of CDs. You miscalculated and ended up with more supply than demand. In other industries, management would lower the price to sell off excess inventory.
Turned out many of the students bought it and copied it for friends.
That is completely legal under the Audio Home Recording Act. You are entitled to royalties from CD and cassette tape sales. If you didn't collect your royalties, it's because the law unfairly distributes those royalties to the wrong people.
The constitution guarantees anyone the right to profit from their creative works for a limited time to protect against illegal copying of works.
The only thing the constitution says about intellectual rights, is that congress can grant them, with some restrictions. Unlike freedom of speech (a natural right which the constitution protects), copyright is granted by congress, and congress can take it away. The constitution simply gives congress the power to grant copyrights, much like it can grant the right to collect unemployment and welfare (interstate commerce clause). Copyright itself is not a constitutional right.
Better question: where is the moral right to profit from my own creativity???
No one has a right to profit. Congress can grant you a limited monopoly on your work, which gives you more opportunities to try making a profit. If you fail to do so, tough luck.
we make a living creating material that people like to see and hear.
Most of the people at this site make their living creating content. They at least admit current copyright laws are ridiculous.
P2P is going to kill us.
Would you care to provide some evidence to back that up? The record industry reported record profits during a slumping economy while Napster was in full swing. Their revenue did not come into check with the economy until Napster was shut down. As far as anyone can tell, the advertising potential of p2p more than compensates for lost sales. This of course, is because most people are honest! If you were smart, you would put samples of your work on p2p networks and tell people where they can buy the whole thing.
By the way, blaming p2p networks for piracy is like blaming guns for bank robberies. They are tools, not criminals. Oh, and the internet itself is a p2p network.
The purpose of the executive branch of US government is to enforce the law, and not to judge its constitutionality.
It is up to all branches of government to support the constitution. All government officials from all branches, both state and federal, are required to take an oath to support the constitution. It is written into Article VI:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
There is a question as whether or not the courts should have power of judicial review. Thomas Jefferson argued that all branches of government should independently interpret the constitution.
"My construction of the Constitution is... that each department is truly independent of the others and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially where it is to act ultimately and without appeal." --Thomas Jefferson
Call me a Republican, but I don't want any more government monopolies. Broadband is catching on throughout the country and I doubt that it's not available in the cited town.
Broadband monopolies are catching on throughout the country. Laying cable is expensive. No one is going to run a cable across town when most of their potential customers already have a service provider. Even cable companies and phone companies aren't bothering to lay new cable.
Expensive infrastructure development naturally forms monopolies. Witness the phone company, cable company, and electric company monopolies. Besides that, creating key infrastructure is something well suited for the government.
I think the best thing to do, is for the government to lay the cable, and then lease it out to service providers. The government can lease the cable at cost, while service providers can compete on price, reliability, services, data rate, channels, etc..
Why is this potential profit being taken from the cable companies and given to the government?
1. Wide open internet. Nothing is filtered on the ISP end, as it stands today, and the customer is 100% liable for ANY traffic circulating between the internet and the customer, solicited or not.
There's a huge problem with this. Suppose the ISP has an OC-48. The day of an attack, the victim's server uses 75% (1.866 Gbps) of that OC-48. At $2/gigabyte, the victim would be responsible for $37,537.50 within 24 hours. On the other hand, if the ISP only had a T1, the victim would use 1.158Mbps at 75% utilization. That would come to $23.30 after 24 hours.
I would recommend a third option in which the customer can put a limit on the long-term transfer rate. Or cap the rate after they've transferred a certain amount of data. Based on your original proposal, the victim's liability would be based entirely on how big the ISP's pipe is (something the customer doesn't have a whole lot of control over).
Looking at the issue from another perspective, we are dealing with incoming traffic. Who sends that traffic? The ISP. Who sends to the ISP? Some backbone provider. Who sends to the backbone provider? Another ISP. Why should the end recipient pay for an attack, while all the middlemen make off like bandits?
If Caldera is using their Patents in their GPL OS, then they have to give open use of all patents to everyone
Sorry, that's not true. Caldera only has to grant rights to use their patents with GPL'd code. If you were to use one of Caldera's patents in a non-GPL'd project, you would violate the patent. That's probably why they picked IBM rather than Red Hat. Red Hat GPLs their code. IBM, on the other hand, sells several closed source operating systems which likely infringe.
Actually, the DMCA has an explicit provision allowing reverse engineering for compatibility. You can break encryption and everything. It's one of the only exceptions in the DMCA.
Based on Judge Kaplan's ruling, the compatibility provision only applies if you are making two programs interact. It does not apply if you are simply making a program to access a DRM restricted document.
I have to question if the DMCA applies at all. According to the DMCA:
(A) to ''circumvent a technological measure'' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure,
without the authority of the copyright owner;
So, if you just publish a DRM-restricted document, and give everyone permission to do anything they want with it, they should be able to circumvent the system.
Also, the DMCA only applies to works protected by copyright. If you distribute your own copyrighted work, and surrender the copyright after two weeks, anyone can circumvent the system to access your works.
Yes, that is the way to make micropayments take off: patent them.
If Rivest were to use an intelligent license, a patent wouldn't pose all the large of a hurdle. Rivest could allow anyone to use the patent for free in perpetuity, except when they translate the payments into cash. All fees could be collected at banks. If Rivest guarantees the fees will never exceed a certain amount (such as the current fees on Visa cards), there should be no reason for the patent to get in the way.
I've been wondering why e-cash patent holders don't do this.
It's pretty easy. If you want to create a link, you do this:
<a href="URL">Link text</a>.
The <a> means anchor (although people rarely use it as an anchor). It tells the web browser there is a link coming. The href="URL" tells the browser where the link points. The </a> indicates the end of the anchor.
To make a new paragraph, just toss a <p> at the front of the paragraph. To make a new line, place a <br> for break at the beginning of the line.
So your post would look something like this in HTML:
Just a few links on the subject;
<br><a href="http://www.pafko.com/trips/norway/n10/"> about the sabotage</a>
<br><a href="http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/heavy.htm ">about heavy water and it's use</a>
<br><a href="http://www.lawzone.com/half-nor/haukelid.htm ">about Knut Haukelid; another of the heroes from Telemark</a>
<br><a href="http://www.390th.org/warstories/Rjukan.htm"> about how the USAF tried and failed to knock out the heavy water plant</a>
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a "decrypting ban", it is a ban on circumvention devices. DVD writers will not let you make a bit-for-bit copy of a copy-protected DVD unless you circumvent the device.
On a different note, doesn't my DVD player necessarily decrypt the data when it displays the picture on the screen? Are all DVD players therefore illegal? Or am I missing something else, too?
You are missing something else. The DVDCCA claims the exclusive right to license Content Scrambling System (CSS) technology. This would violate the DMCA, but the copyright holders have explicitely given the DVDCCA permission to do so (as a prerequisite for encrypting their movies).
Question, what would happen if I made a DVD, encrypted with CSS, but didn't give the DVDCCA permission to distribute decryption software? Would everyone have to stop selling DVD players?
This attitude did more damage to 2600 Enterprises than the DMCA ever could have. When 2600 received a preliminary injuction to take DeCSS off their website until the trial as over, 2600 started posting links to it instead.
That image solidified in Kaplan's mind the idea that 2600 is nothing but a bunch of thieving punks. As a direct result of 2600's contempt of the law, judge Kaplan ruled that it's illegal to even post a link to DeCSS (known in the pre-internet era as a footnote). Kaplan's extremely biased rant was one of the decisions Judge Illston "carefully read" and was "substantially persuaded by".
By the way, DVD copying software is already all over the internet; and would have been regardless of 2600's childish antics.
People do share novels. Many people read novels on their laptops and palmtops while travelling. The big difference is that people tend to share public domain novels, whereas virtually all recorded music is locked up behind copyright. Project Gutenberg has thousands of public domain novels to choose from, but there are very few public domain recordings (mostly because copyright extends back to the beginning of the record industry).
If songs from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and early 80's were already in the public domain, people would not be so sympathetic to those who distribute copyrighted works from the late 80's, 90's and 2000's.
The constitution enumerates 18 powers (plus several amendments) which congress may exercise. In order for congress to do anything, they must exercise a power that the constitution grants them. With regards to cars and the FCC, that power is under the interstate commerce clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3).
The professors argue that congress can not use the interstate commerce clause if the intellectual property clause already restricts congress' behavior.
The intellectual property clause allows congress to grant patents only to inventors (not authors):
The distiction, for example, keeps congress from granting Random House a monopoly on the latest and greatest printing press. The constitution also requires that monopoly powers only be bestowed upon original works and only apply for limited times. Both of these requirements would preclude the DVDCCA from being the exclusive licenser of CSS. If they wanted that power, they should have applied for a patent.
Irregardless of whether or not the law is constitutional, the question still remains, does the DMCA create modern Stationer's Guilds? Suppose the RIAA creates a new alternative to MP3, complete with DRM. The technology proliferates everwhere. Next thing you know radios, TVs, and all other audio equipment use nothing but the RIAA's new encoding standard. How can anyone publish in this realm without the RIAA's permission?
The question I want answered, how do Lessig and Oppenheim feel about this argument? Forty-six professors of intellectual-property law argued that the DMCA's anti-device provision creates a modern Stationer's Guild. It allows copyright holders to control technology, much like the Stationer's Guild controlled the printing press. The court declined to address this argument and I have been itching for a good response to it.
Has anyone analyzed how accurately lossy compression reproduces the original? The whole point of lossy compression is that it alters the image so that it's easier to compress. If the video shows you tossing something out the window, how do we know if you really tossed it, or if it's just an anomaly introduced by the compression algorithm?
These cameras should use two encoding systems. Lossy compression at 30+ fps to provide context, and lossless compression at 1-2 fps to provide trustworthy footage.
Apparently, the Slashdot crowd. Notice all the posts here of people who bought CDs only to find them copy-protected? Most Slashdotters are well aware of the RIAA's business tactics, but they can't help pulling out their wallets and paying the RIAA to continue their sleezy business practices.
The same is true of just about any other business. People get ripped off. They complain about it. They see a shiney new advertisement and forget all their past experiences. Suddently it's spend, spend, spend! That's why corporate America cares nothing about consumers.
After the breakup of AT&T in 1984, some railroads got together and formed Sprint. They build customized trains which laid fiber optic cable next to their tracks. Good luck convincing those railroads to help the competition.
So your weak historical analogy crumbles.
Seeing as you're wrong, you're weak retort crumbles. Newspapers can and have reprinted unauthorized copies of creative works. When that happens, we hold the newspaper accountable. We don't (any longer) go after the people who made the printing press.
There was a time when the British Monarchy tried to control the printing press. It didn't work, so in 1557, they created copyright. Their copyright was to grant the Stationer's Guild the exclusive right to publish. By 1710, England realized that letting publishers control the printing press was a bad idea, so they created the Statute of Anne which all modern copyright is founded upon.
The U.S. constitution carefully separates patents and copyrights. Congress has the power to grant authors the rights to their artistic creations, and congress may grant inventors the rights to their discoveries. The constitution very carefully does not allow congress to grant authors control of inventions.
Letting copyright holders control p2p technology is similar to letting publishers control the photocopier, cassette recorder, VCR, radio, or any other publishing technology.
When the constitution was drafted, the Statute of Anne was less than 100 years old. The age of publishers controlling the printing press was very recent history. The constitution was carefully worded to prevent the recreation of another Stationer's Guild.
Any spammer can generate a new PGP signature for each message. Why would you trust it? You could maintain your own whitelist, but you can already do that. The alternative is to let somebody else maintain a whitelist. Someone you trust (a certificate authority) has to sign the author's signature saying, "this person doesn't send spam". If you only accept mail signed by a CA, that CA decides who can or cannot send mail to you.
If a CA signs a spammer's certificate, no one will trust them. So the whole scheme is going to require accountability, probably enforced by some well-known top-level CA. The top-level CA has to have some sort of power (e.g. power to revoke a certificate) to enforce the rules. When the rules are broken, people will demand regulation for CAs.
Regarding privacy, websites routinely ask for an email address. If everyone has an authenticated digital certificate, websites will start carding their visitors. They may even require people to sign the terms of service. Keep in mind, digital certificates are legally binding signatures.
Finally, considering how common identity theft is, your proposal won't make any difference with illegal spam (Nigerian money laundering, repair your credit, etc.).
That's a great idea...
I'm not sure if it's a great idea. Just something I got from another Slashdotter.
but how do you identify the "sender"?
You don't have to. Once they've solved the problem, you give them a signed certificate. From that point on, any time they send you mail, they attach the signed certificate proving they have sent you mail before. If that mail was spam, you can revoke their certificate.
It can be done via a cooperative, decentralized network. It can be done anonymously.
How are those systems going to keep someone from generating a bunch of keys and tossing them on the network?
This is the same as having a national ID. If we implemented this crazy plan, web sites would require you to validate your identity before you could read the news, comment on politics, or listen to music. Federal regulations would make it a felony to forge your identity. The government would require service providers to log identities at discussion sites to crack down on copyright pirates and libelous accusations. Anyone who refused to "voluntarily surrender" their privacy would be treated like a second-class citizen.
A better solution is to require the sender to solve a time-consuming problem the first time they send something. The more people you initiate contact with, the more processing power you need.
The EFF is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. It is illegal for them to lobby. The organization you should point people to is Public Knowledge.
That was argoff, not me.
[Absurd, inflamatory assumptions about what I think deleted...]
But I have to laugh when Kazaa is equated to sharing with friends.
You said "many of the students bought it and copied it for friends.". I assumed you were referring to kids copying CDs for their friends. If you really meant kids spreading files around on Kazaa, you should laugh at yourself.
I write a song, I get...the right to distribte the sound recording the way I want to, and the right to [pursue] profit from public performance via radio and live. I will not give up these rights because of you.
Now I really am going to nitpick. Without copyright everyone has those rights. What you really mean are "exclusive rights". Also, the right to pursue a profit is not exclusive. A radio station can play your music for a profit and simply pay a compulsory license for it. Furthermore, I never said your exclusive rights should be taken away. Although I do believe they should be scaled back.
But I believe I have the right to a fair and equitable marketplace to either rise or fail in.
"Fair and equitable" is strongly debated. Some people consider a free market the only fair market. In a truely free market, copyright would not exist. Anyone could publish and sell a thousand copies of "Lord of the Rings". Competition would drive prices down to the cost of production.
The whole point of copyright is to provide authors with an incentive to create content which will enrich the public domain. The public temporarily gives up its rights to copy and publish certain original works in return for authors creating those works. By this measure of fair, once the author has had adequate encouragement to create a work, that encouragement may not be extended. Furthermore, congress can not offer encouragement that is not likely to effect an author's decision to publish.
Another philosophy suggests that authors 'own' their creations and have a natural right to control it. You seem to hail from this camp. Unfortunately for you, our contitution was founded on the previous philosophy.
Symantics. Perhaps I should have said the right to persue profit which is happiness for me. What a nitpicker you are. Anything to win your arugument. As for the internet.... so? I'm talking about specific apps, Kazaa, et. al.
I don't agree with the person you responded to. I am not trying to 'nitpick' to win an argument. You are throwing around heavily abused rhetoric and I'm calling you on it.
In our legal system, a constitutional right has special significance above and beyond rights granted by congress. You are trying to elevate copyright to a level at which it does not belong.
Lobbyists run around pretending their sponsors have a right to profit and congress passes bad laws as a result. When it comes to setting policy, a right to profit, and a right to attempt to profit have completely different meanings.
I am not trying to nitpick by contrasting Kazaa, et. al. with the internet at large. Piracy was a problem on usenet a decade before anyone had ever heard of Napster. Yet no one ran around filing lawsuits to shut down usenet.
The real difference between Kazaa, et. al. and the internet is that Kazaa and friends have built-in search functionality which is difficult (perhaps even impossible) to censor. I happen to think built-in search functionality is a good thing.
Sales are down over 11% over all. The 12-25 year olds have seen the largest fall.
Sales are down now that Napster is no more. Many industries are seeing a drop in sales, due to the economy. It is no surprise that a recession hits young people the hardest (companies lay off the least experienced people first). It is also no surprise that a recession hits entertainment harder than other industries (who's going to buy a shiney new CD for their kids right after losing their job?).
We sold it at several High Schools but sales were not as high as we hoped.
So you were over-optimistic. Perhaps it's because people didn't like it as much as you'd hoped. Or perhaps it's because you failed to consider the Audio Home Recording Act in your calculations. Frankly, I think you're just looking for a scapegoat. It's like a grocery store blaming TV shows on gardening for a drop in sales.
By the way, this comes back to your flawed argument that you have a right to profit. You don't! The government is under no obligation to make sure you sell every CD you stamped. You had an opportunity to stamp the correct number of CDs. You miscalculated and ended up with more supply than demand. In other industries, management would lower the price to sell off excess inventory.
Turned out many of the students bought it and copied it for friends.
That is completely legal under the Audio Home Recording Act. You are entitled to royalties from CD and cassette tape sales. If you didn't collect your royalties, it's because the law unfairly distributes those royalties to the wrong people.
The only thing the constitution says about intellectual rights, is that congress can grant them, with some restrictions. Unlike freedom of speech (a natural right which the constitution protects), copyright is granted by congress, and congress can take it away. The constitution simply gives congress the power to grant copyrights, much like it can grant the right to collect unemployment and welfare (interstate commerce clause). Copyright itself is not a constitutional right.
Better question: where is the moral right to profit from my own creativity???
No one has a right to profit. Congress can grant you a limited monopoly on your work, which gives you more opportunities to try making a profit. If you fail to do so, tough luck.
we make a living creating material that people like to see and hear.
Most of the people at this site make their living creating content. They at least admit current copyright laws are ridiculous.
P2P is going to kill us.
Would you care to provide some evidence to back that up? The record industry reported record profits during a slumping economy while Napster was in full swing. Their revenue did not come into check with the economy until Napster was shut down. As far as anyone can tell, the advertising potential of p2p more than compensates for lost sales. This of course, is because most people are honest! If you were smart, you would put samples of your work on p2p networks and tell people where they can buy the whole thing.
By the way, blaming p2p networks for piracy is like blaming guns for bank robberies. They are tools, not criminals. Oh, and the internet itself is a p2p network.
It is up to all branches of government to support the constitution. All government officials from all branches, both state and federal, are required to take an oath to support the constitution. It is written into Article VI:
There is a question as whether or not the courts should have power of judicial review. Thomas Jefferson argued that all branches of government should independently interpret the constitution.
People are apprehensive because she was picked by Bush. She now joins the ranks of:
Thanks to goombah99 for the list.
Broadband monopolies are catching on throughout the country. Laying cable is expensive. No one is going to run a cable across town when most of their potential customers already have a service provider. Even cable companies and phone companies aren't bothering to lay new cable.
Expensive infrastructure development naturally forms monopolies. Witness the phone company, cable company, and electric company monopolies. Besides that, creating key infrastructure is something well suited for the government.
I think the best thing to do, is for the government to lay the cable, and then lease it out to service providers. The government can lease the cable at cost, while service providers can compete on price, reliability, services, data rate, channels, etc..
Why is this potential profit being taken from the cable companies and given to the government?
Who said anything about a profit?
There's a huge problem with this. Suppose the ISP has an OC-48. The day of an attack, the victim's server uses 75% (1.866 Gbps) of that OC-48. At $2/gigabyte, the victim would be responsible for $37,537.50 within 24 hours. On the other hand, if the ISP only had a T1, the victim would use 1.158Mbps at 75% utilization. That would come to $23.30 after 24 hours.
I would recommend a third option in which the customer can put a limit on the long-term transfer rate. Or cap the rate after they've transferred a certain amount of data. Based on your original proposal, the victim's liability would be based entirely on how big the ISP's pipe is (something the customer doesn't have a whole lot of control over).
Looking at the issue from another perspective, we are dealing with incoming traffic. Who sends that traffic? The ISP. Who sends to the ISP? Some backbone provider. Who sends to the backbone provider? Another ISP. Why should the end recipient pay for an attack, while all the middlemen make off like bandits?
Sorry, that's not true. Caldera only has to grant rights to use their patents with GPL'd code. If you were to use one of Caldera's patents in a non-GPL'd project, you would violate the patent. That's probably why they picked IBM rather than Red Hat. Red Hat GPLs their code. IBM, on the other hand, sells several closed source operating systems which likely infringe.
Since you asked, 369 Representatives. They also have 80 Senators for a total of 449 congresscritters. That's 84% of congress.
Based on Judge Kaplan's ruling, the compatibility provision only applies if you are making two programs interact. It does not apply if you are simply making a program to access a DRM restricted document.
I have to question if the DMCA applies at all. According to the DMCA:
So, if you just publish a DRM-restricted document, and give everyone permission to do anything they want with it, they should be able to circumvent the system.
Also, the DMCA only applies to works protected by copyright. If you distribute your own copyrighted work, and surrender the copyright after two weeks, anyone can circumvent the system to access your works.
And of course, IANAL.
If Rivest were to use an intelligent license, a patent wouldn't pose all the large of a hurdle. Rivest could allow anyone to use the patent for free in perpetuity, except when they translate the payments into cash. All fees could be collected at banks. If Rivest guarantees the fees will never exceed a certain amount (such as the current fees on Visa cards), there should be no reason for the patent to get in the way.
I've been wondering why e-cash patent holders don't do this.
It's pretty easy. If you want to create a link, you do this:
<a href="URL">Link text</a>.
The <a> means anchor (although people rarely use it as an anchor). It tells the web browser there is a link coming. The href="URL" tells the browser where the link points. The </a> indicates the end of the anchor.
To make a new paragraph, just toss a <p> at the front of the paragraph. To make a new line, place a <br> for break at the beginning of the line.
So your post would look something like this in HTML:
All of that would look something like this:
Considering all the people who put up links without proper HTML markup, Slashdot should set up a quick HTML primer for people.
In case you're curious, for bold, you would type:
For italics, you would type:
To indent a section of text:
To learn more, look at an HTML quick reference guide.
That sounds very interesting. Do you want to back it up with a couple references?