I am French:-). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're saying this because you're thinking to the so-called "Nader effect" and related problems, like the fact that many people would not vote Nader because they were affraid to make Bush win. Well, having two rounds doesn't solve the problem correctly : here for presidential election, it usually boils down to a race between a social-democrat and two conservatives (why these people can never agree to have only one candidate is pretty mysterious if you ask me). Anyway, we still get the "don't waste your vote" stupidity, from the social-democrat to smaller left-wing parties for instance, because he's affraid not to make it to second round. Still, I think it helps "minor" candidates to get their fair share of votes on first round, as we usually have 5-6 candidates over 5%, never above 30 for the winner
Maybe it's more fair and maybe not;-) it's that for presidential
elections, it helps "minor" candidates get their
fair share of voters as most people will not prevent voting
for them out of fear that their vote might be "wasted".
This system explains IMHO why we usually get 5-6
candidates above 5% on first round (though the fact that the French can't ever agree on anything might have an influence there;-)
As for Assemblee Nationale... two-round elections don't really change a lot because you still need to get
more than 50% locally to have one deputy elected... so some party may have its member have say 20% of popular
vote, achieve 3rd place on each county and still
get no one elected. Doesn't really help to have a fair representation of what people voted for
If you really want that, you need to have a proportionnal representation : each party presents a(n) (ordered) list of N people (N being also the number of "congressmen" to be elected), and in the %vote * N first of each list get elected.
You really get a fair representation of popular vote. We used to have this, but the problem was that as votes were split between many parties,
it was nearly impossible to ever get a majority of congressmen to vote for any law.
Which is fine for me, but as governements need to pass laws to be taken seriously, they've changed the system.
All this to say : all systems have their flaws ; a good democracy should be more or less unstable, because ideally the system should be changed frequently to prevent politicians from abusing it too much. Hard to achieve, though.
(...)your browser will be the default browser for millions of AOL users.
Well, I've been on AOL for two weeks like 2 years ago, and they keep on sending their CDs via snail-mail. Told them to stop, but they don't seem to listen, well if they want to waste their money on me I don't really care:-)
Anyway, what's amazing is that the last two 'offers' I got were shipped with IE ! Hmmm, didn't they buy Netscape some time ago;-) ? They don't seem to trust their own product...
Of course no product is bug-free, but that's not the point. If I counted right, there are 6 out of 9 of these bugs that have fixes in Mozilla, but the Netscape people refuse to patch NS6 because they fear it might delay its release.
There is nothing in this article against Mozilla standards compliance. Reading it may have helped.
Well, correct me if I wrong old timer, but AFAIK Reti wasn't the one that beat Capablanca for world championship, it was Alekhin. And that guy wasn't into hypermodernism. Reti may have been the first to win a game against Capablanca in eight years though, this I don't know.
And to be even more annoying : in my "Chess Fundamentals" book (by JR Capablanca), it doesn't seem that he liked the king's gambit a lot. More queen's gambit I'd say.
Don't know about you but when I get to go to bed with a hot chick (a rather hypotetical example given my current life;-) ), I feel very happy to live like an animal. Same thing when I eat some really good food, when I get a bit drunk or stoned. I enjoy feeling the heat of the sun on my skin. There are good sides about having a body, don't you think ?
Of course the sleep, death and toilets stuff are quite death (huh especially death !), I'd be welcoming any improvements technology can offer me in these areas, but sorry, I'm not ready to leave my body behind. And anyway, I haven't seen technology making many steps towards me not having to go to the bathroom anymore 8-) . Still, I think that being a pure mind would just be too fucking boring.
I'd rather say that it was the/. + ZD-Net + C-Net + MS Beta testers effect. And let's not forget the recipients of those "informative" e-mails who complained to abuse@hotmail.com or whatever, just the way you do when you receive normal spam.
All these crowds combined helped in giving MS a "rude awakening". Cool !... but I wonder how these reactions can be so surprising to that "Microsoft representative". Come on, they were really expecting people to actually like that "feature" ? Are they stupid ? And how stupid do they think their customers are ?
And they're only planning to change the language. I wonder if it's really going to make a difference.
Hint for MS people out there : adding a "this is no spam" disclaimer would NOT be enough...
The law DOES make it illegal to promote the Nazi party/ideas, but it does not forbid to make a profit from anything Nazi related as long as the seller provides a proper context (e.g.) disclaimer with the item.
Entrance fees for museums about the Holocaust are NOT suspect ; there are plenty of such museums in France, many of them being government-funded. The spirit of the law is that Nazi memorabilia belongs to such places.
This goes to show that the common assumption in/. that the French want to censor anything Nazi-related is a gross oversimplification.
Hey, IANAL, but since the word "distribution" is used in all kinds of proprietary EULAs, how can its meaning possibly be so unclear ? I mean, these companies have lawyers, right ? So I wouldn't expect them to use that word if it isn't clearly defined by the law.
I don't law where to look for that kind of information, but I would expect that word to have been defined a long time ago in this or that lawsuit.
Yep, one of the many cool toys developped by the evil Bene Tleilax. Of course, emperor Muad'Dib didn't need those after losing his eyes in a nuclear explosion because of his precognition powers. I guess we now know what these Illinois scientists wille be up to once they'll have that project that project:)))
Hmm, I wonder what they were thinking back in the sixties. I mean, come on, if nobody can claim ownership to any part of space, what's to stop a bunch of alien pirates to exchange copyrighted MP3z in outer space ? Not to mention the fact clearly demonstrated by recent history that it's impossible to actually innovate(tm) on something if you cannot patent it. No wonder we don't many exciting new space missions these days.
I bet India hasn't signed that stupid treaty. I wish them good luck, though I think that a manned mission with a lawyer inside their space vehicle would have been better.
... at least one of the two directors of those got some kind of recognition since he was hired for Alien IV. I think it was Sigourney Weaver's idea.
Of course after the movie was done he said that working for Hollywood was a horrible experience, and that he'll never do it again:))). Having to fight to death whenever he has an idea that seems weird (e.g.)unusual to some corporate studio exec doesn't seem to be the way he likes to make films:-). I still think the result was rather nice, though definitely not as good as Delicatessen.
Anyway, I agree with you that there isn't anything good to be expected from those ludicrous Academy Awards. As for Cannes, it highly depends on the personnality of the president of the jury. Like last year it was David Cronenberg, and they elected "Rosetta" for the best film. The medias and the "profession" yelled that it was a scandal because it's an independant film with non-professional actors. Cronenberg couldn't care less about them, but it's not every president in Cannes' history that had the guts to do so.
Now, what are "Rosenkrants and Guildenstern are Dead" and "Pi" ? They're the only ones I don't know in your list. All the others I've seen and enjoyed (except maybe Doberman that looked a little bit too "hype seeking" for me).
Still, does anyone worldwide seriously pay any heed to the Oscars?
I (speaking from France, Europe:) ) know I don't, but there sure are many people down here that do. Oscar-winning movies are usually realeased right after the Oscars ; they oviously do that on purpose. I bet it's the same in many european countries, which is quite a decent market for a film.
Oscar winners get more advertised on tv. They are realeased in more theaters. I don't know whether movie trailers saying such thing as "this great motion picture has won x Oscars" really draw more people to the theaters, but I'm quite sure that tv advertising and massive realease do. Just like I'm quite sure that having won an Oscar helps the video to sell at least decently, even for movies that failed miserably at the theaters.
So I would not say that there's zero use for the Oscars : their purpose is to help the movie industry to make mo' money. Of course this does not take into account people like me who will have a negative prejudice against Academy Award winners because I've noticed that my kind of movies never seem to win anything. But I'm affraid I'm in the minority of the audience (who was the guy that said "never underestimate the bad taste of the public" ?:)) )
This is obviously flamebait, but still... actually it isn't France as a whole that thinks it is living in the pre-net world, it is the government, and the two plaintiffs in that lawsuit, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of French Jewish Students.
For the government, it simply does not understand what the Internet is all about. I don't think that's really specific to France. Any government will try to use its existing laws to "regulate" the Internet. In France's case there are laws that outlaw auctions against auctions of nazi memorabilia, so we get this lawsuit.
The Union of French Jewish Students clearly does know about the Internet pretty much like RIAA and MPAA do know about it. They have an already long history of suing websites they dont'like. Of course, when it's a hosted homepage, they'll go after the host rather than the individual who created the page. Interestingly, a lot of their members seem to be law school students.
They're also tolerant people who will call you a nazi if you disagree with them. You might do a little babblefish on their website. Don't miss the forum, half of the messages are about how they censor it on a regular basis. Censored messages include one by another French anti-racist organization who was explaining his reasons for not joining in the Yahoo lawsuit...
I have much more respect for the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism. They really stand for their beliefs and do a lot more to promote their ideas than just suing websites. The problem here IMHO seems to be that this organization is ruled by rather old people (at least, those that speak on tv are old) who might indeed think that they are still in the pre-internet days.
Well I got a bit carried away. My point is, you shouldn't tag a whole country as "bad", "defensive" or whatever because of the wrongdoings of some of its citizens. Or if you really want to do that, please don't forget that Mr Bill Gates is American.
Not to mention the possiblity that users within the juridiction of this French court ruling can access Yahoo from an ISP or other provider not in the.fr domain.
To back that up, note that many French already are in domains not in.fr . A lot of corporate users have.com domains, just like many ISPs. There is also a few.org's.
Maybe Yahoo should block all.fr,.com and.org addresses, just in case:-)
That's not quite true. Actually the law doesn't define such thing as an illegal belief. The mind reading police isn't yet efficient enough anyway.
However, there is a law that forbids to publish material that denies the existence of the crimes against humanity as defined in the 1945 Nuemberg trial of the major nazi leaders. That law is an add-on to the 1881 "freedom(!) of press act" ; whether or not it may apply to the Internet is the leagal grey area that is used to sue websites like in that Yahoo nonsense.
So French law does define the historical truth. It has therefore been criticized by history reasearchers (I might have a link there but since the text is in French:)...), who said that it is definitely not up to the government to define the past.
And of course there are obvious free speech issues with such laws. The problem is that free speech isn't as highly valued down there as it is in the United States.
PS : I'm glad to hear that you believe the holocaust happened. So do I.
But the FruitsOfTheSea site and the Sealandgov.com sites, which both claim to be official, don't link to each other at all.
Wrong ; you might want to read more than three sentences from websites you review before you post. The FruitsOfTheSea site is linked in sealandgov.com in the front page. It was the first official Sealand website and they say they keep it for "historical purposes".
I don't find it surprising that their servers aren't located in Sealand since they're supposed to have just brought three generators powerfull enough to handle the load of some(?) computers. As for the pictures being fake or legit and the island being big enough to host a server farm, I really don't know. It seems to be hard to get to Sealand these days. Former terrorist attacks and the high controversy of their current project obviously didn't make the royal family feel like developping the local economy with mass tourism:=))
I don't want to sound *too* inflamatory, but the use of the words "Caldera" and "Open source leaders" in the same sentence doesn't seem very consistent to me. Since when has Caldera ever lead anything anyway ?
I mean, last time we've heard of Caldera on/. , it was because its CEO was bitching about Open source. Makes it kinda tough to say "great, these OSS Good Guys(tm) are in this Java commitee". Apache Software Foundation, yeah right, but Caldera...
More ontopic : they say in the article that these are interim comimittee who will work on Java specs "until the first general EC election, which is scheduled for later this fall.". Who's gonna vote for that ? Can I vote against Caldera ?
I find Lars's statement that Metallica isn't really supported by their record company in this both interesting and surprising. On previous Metallica stories, many posters assumed that in this case, the "masters" RIAA were pulling the strings of the Metallica puppet. The single facts that Lars answered the interwiew and insisted on having his answers published unedited proves that wrong (though the latter doesn't really help to make these answers understandable:))) ) ; had the label had any say in this, the responses would have gotten through heavy editing by an army of lawyers.
Now this is really surprising, since this lawsuit seems at first glance to perfectly fit the RIAA's goal to kill the online distribution of music. Why aren't they backing up then ? Some possible answers :
1) They don't think Metallic has a valid case in court. This'd be really great news , but unfortunately it is very unlikely given the current state of copyright laws.
2) Since the band has taken it upon themselves to tackle the issue, they've decided to stay out of it and watch for the outcome. They're happily using the action as a test case with somebody else taking the risks. This makes much sense when you know that...
3)...the overwhelming majority of musicians give up the IP of their works to the major when they get signed. On the contrary, Metallica owns the copyrights to their music. So there's less to win/lose in this than there'd have been if it were another band with a more "conventional" contract that were acting. The lablel's lawyers may be considering the case along the lines of : if you lose the battle, well, too bad, maybe you'd like to consider giving up your copyrights to us so that we can better defend your interests; if you win, cool, this clearly shows that it works, now let's have some fun doing the same with artists we really *own*.
Obviously Metallica isn't RIAA's puppet in this story. But they could be their crash-test dummy, and I find that to be much more frightening.
I have a lot more respect for Lars and Metallica than I used to have. I might even buy a CD. Recommendations anyone?
<irony> Yes : there's this great new service called Napster on the Internet. Just use that to download some MP3s and make up your mind. </irony>
As an ex-Metallica fan, I might as well also make some *real* recommendations... "Master of Puppets" has always been my favorite. The instrumental "Orion" on that LP is still one of the best songs I've ever heard. Anything pre-Black Album will do, after that it's just the average crap you get to hear on the radio.
Although I admit that Lars makes some good points, I still find it sad that what I first jokingly suggested is illegal.
Like many others you seem to be implying that copyright is a Good Thing(tm) because there would be no GPL without it ; this is nonsense. The GPL is a hack so that we can have free software in a world of copyright (and patents).The author of this license has several times stated that it would be much easier to write free software if there was no copyright law ; RMS, to name the man, is clearly against the current implementation of copyright.
Of course you can use and love the GPL without agreeing with RMS (I wonder where would the free software community be today if you couldn't:))) ). But please respect the philosophy behind that free license, and don't use it to justify a system whose ideas are completely different.
The auctions are on.com . However, you can start on.fr, select auctions and get transfered to.com. It's really hard to notice that you're now on.com , no more on.fr ; I guess it's part of the problem. Still, it's on.com
The court's decision is NOT an attempt to "forget the past". Come visit western Europe and you'll see if anybody's trying to forget the holocaust and WWII there. Talking about what I know best, France : there's this French/German television network that shows prime time documentaries on WWII about twice a week. Last year, a former collaborationnist's trial made top headlines for months. There are a lot of memorials/museums on WWII. WWII is the most important topic on the history test for the final exam in high school...
I don't think anybody tries to forget that dark era in western Europe, at least in France. In fact, the expression "memory duty" is the most commonly heard talking about these events.
Now, people have such terrible memories of the war that it has been generally acknowledged that the nazi ideology always leads to crime. It is IMHO the reason for the French laws excluding nazi propaganda from free speech. IIRC Germany and several western Europe countries that were involved in the war have similar laws
Now, why are those items illegal too ? It's not quite clear to me, but I see two possible reasons :
1) The memories of nazism being so bad, it's hard for the French to believe that anybody can buy such stuff out of anything else than nazi nostalgia. Sure researchers would need such items but the museums have plenty of those, they wouldn't buy it on Yahoo 2) The president of LICRA (league against racism and antisemitism) said on TV that he felt that selling those items without any historical explanations was wrong.
Well I still don't know whether it's good or bad to ban such auctions. But I really think that it is stupid to go after the content of an American website hosted by an American company with French laws.
OK, yes this is stupid because they sue the American Yahoo wrt French laws. This sure emphasizes one big problem of the Internet : it's an international media whereas there are no international laws. Every court of every country going after stuff considered illegal under their laws doesn't seem to be the right solution
Now I'd be glad if someone would explain me why this is a free speech story. This is about an auction, remember ? How can an auction be considered as speech ?
IMHO, free trade != free speech. To my understanding, under the American law, you're allowed to discuss child pornography, but you aren't allowed to sell it, are you ?
Slashdot Mirror
(I am French :-) )
:-). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're saying this because you're thinking to the so-called "Nader effect" and related problems, like the fact that many people would not vote Nader because they were affraid to make Bush win. Well, having two rounds doesn't solve the problem correctly : here for presidential election, it usually boils down to a race between a social-democrat and two conservatives (why these people can never agree to have only one candidate is pretty mysterious if you ask me). Anyway, we still get the "don't waste your vote" stupidity, from the social-democrat to smaller left-wing parties for instance, because he's affraid not to make it to second round. Still, I think it helps "minor" candidates to get their fair share of votes on first round, as we usually have 5-6 candidates over 5%, never above 30 for the winner
Maybe it's more fair and maybe not ;-) it's that for presidential
elections, it helps "minor" candidates get their
fair share of voters as most people will not prevent voting
for them out of fear that their vote might be "wasted".
This system explains IMHO why we usually get 5-6
candidates above 5% on first round (though the fact that the French can't ever agree on anything might have an influence there ;-)
I am French
As for Assemblee Nationale... two-round elections don't really change a lot because you still need to get more than 50% locally to have one deputy elected... so some party may have its member have say 20% of popular vote, achieve 3rd place on each county and still get no one elected. Doesn't really help to have a fair representation of what people voted for
If you really want that, you need to have a proportionnal representation : each party presents a(n) (ordered) list of N people (N being also the number of "congressmen" to be elected), and in the %vote * N first of each list get elected. You really get a fair representation of popular vote. We used to have this, but the problem was that as votes were split between many parties, it was nearly impossible to ever get a majority of congressmen to vote for any law. Which is fine for me, but as governements need to pass laws to be taken seriously, they've changed the system.
All this to say : all systems have their flaws ; a good democracy should be more or less unstable, because ideally the system should be changed frequently to prevent politicians from abusing it too much. Hard to achieve, though.
(...)your browser will be the default browser for millions of AOL users.
:-)
;-) ? They don't seem to trust their own product...
Well, I've been on AOL for two weeks like 2 years ago, and they keep on sending their CDs via snail-mail. Told them to stop, but they don't seem to listen, well if they want to waste their money on me I don't really care
Anyway, what's amazing is that the last two 'offers' I got were shipped with IE ! Hmmm, didn't they buy Netscape some time ago
Of course no product is bug-free, but that's not the point. If I counted right, there are 6 out of 9 of these bugs that have fixes in Mozilla, but the Netscape people refuse to patch NS6 because they fear it might delay its release.
There is nothing in this article against Mozilla standards compliance. Reading it may have helped.
Well, correct me if I wrong old timer, but AFAIK Reti wasn't the one that beat Capablanca for world championship, it was Alekhin. And that guy wasn't into hypermodernism. Reti may have been the first to win a game against Capablanca in eight years though, this I don't know.
And to be even more annoying : in my "Chess Fundamentals" book (by JR Capablanca), it doesn't seem that he liked the king's gambit a lot. More queen's gambit I'd say.
Thank you. You may go to bed now.
Don't know about you but when I get to go to bed with a hot chick (a rather hypotetical example given my current life ;-) ), I feel very happy to live like an animal. Same thing when I eat some really good food, when I get a bit drunk or stoned. I enjoy feeling the heat of the sun on my skin. There are good sides about having a body, don't you think ?
Of course the sleep, death and toilets stuff are quite death (huh especially death !), I'd be welcoming any improvements technology can offer me in these areas, but sorry, I'm not ready to leave my body behind. And anyway, I haven't seen technology making many steps towards me not having to go to the bathroom anymore 8-) . Still, I think that being a pure mind would just be too fucking boring.
I'd rather say that it was the /. + ZD-Net + C-Net + MS Beta testers effect. And let's not forget the recipients of those "informative" e-mails who complained to abuse@hotmail.com or whatever, just the way you do when you receive normal spam.
... but I wonder how these reactions can be so surprising to that "Microsoft representative". Come on, they were really expecting people to actually like that "feature" ? Are they stupid ? And how stupid do they think their customers are ?
...
All these crowds combined helped in giving MS a "rude awakening". Cool !
And they're only planning to change the language. I wonder if it's really going to make a difference.
Hint for MS people out there : adding a "this is no spam" disclaimer would NOT be enough
Road B:
(1) Find DeCSS article.
(2) Skim quickly to make sure it's anti-DeCSS
(3) Click on "submit story."
Hum... wouldn't you achieve a better success ratio with pro-DECSS article ?
Nope.
/. that the French want to censor anything Nazi-related is a gross oversimplification.
The law DOES make it illegal to promote the Nazi party/ideas, but it does not forbid to make a profit from anything Nazi related as long as the seller provides a proper context (e.g.) disclaimer with the item.
Entrance fees for museums about the Holocaust are NOT suspect ; there are plenty of such museums in France, many of them being government-funded. The spirit of the law is that Nazi memorabilia belongs to such places.
This goes to show that the common assumption in
Hey, IANAL, but since the word "distribution" is used in all kinds of proprietary EULAs, how can its meaning possibly be so unclear ? I mean, these companies have lawyers, right ? So I wouldn't expect them to use that word if it isn't clearly defined by the law.
I don't law where to look for that kind of information, but I would expect that word to have been defined a long time ago in this or that lawsuit.
Yep, one of the many cool toys developped by the evil Bene Tleilax. Of course, emperor Muad'Dib didn't need those after losing his eyes in a nuclear explosion because of his precognition powers. I guess we now know what these Illinois scientists wille be up to once they'll have that project that project :)))
Hmm, I wonder what they were thinking back in the sixties. I mean, come on, if nobody can claim ownership to any part of space, what's to stop a bunch of alien pirates to exchange copyrighted MP3z in outer space ? Not to mention the fact clearly demonstrated by recent history that it's impossible to actually innovate(tm) on something if you cannot patent it. No wonder we don't many exciting new space missions these days.
I bet India hasn't signed that stupid treaty. I wish them good luck, though I think that a manned mission with a lawyer inside their space vehicle would have been better.
... at least one of the two directors of those got some kind of recognition since he was hired for Alien IV. I think it was Sigourney Weaver's idea.
:))). Having to fight to death whenever he has an idea that seems weird (e.g.)unusual to some corporate studio exec doesn't seem to be the way he likes to make films :-). I still think the result was rather nice, though definitely not as good as Delicatessen.
Of course after the movie was done he said that working for Hollywood was a horrible experience, and that he'll never do it again
Anyway, I agree with you that there isn't anything good to be expected from those ludicrous Academy Awards. As for Cannes, it highly depends on the personnality of the president of the jury. Like last year it was David Cronenberg, and they elected "Rosetta" for the best film. The medias and the "profession" yelled that it was a scandal because it's an independant film with non-professional actors. Cronenberg couldn't care less about them, but it's not every president in Cannes' history that had the guts to do so.
Now, what are "Rosenkrants and Guildenstern are Dead" and "Pi" ? They're the only ones I don't know in your list. All the others I've seen and enjoyed (except maybe Doberman that looked a little bit too "hype seeking" for me).
Still, does anyone worldwide seriously pay any heed to the Oscars?
:) ) know I don't, but there sure are many people down here that do. Oscar-winning movies are usually realeased right after the Oscars ; they oviously do that on purpose. I bet it's the same in many european countries, which is quite a decent market for a film.
:)) )
I (speaking from France, Europe
Oscar winners get more advertised on tv. They are realeased in more theaters. I don't know whether movie trailers saying such thing as "this great motion picture has won x Oscars" really draw more people to the theaters, but I'm quite sure that tv advertising and massive realease do. Just like I'm quite sure that having won an Oscar helps the video to sell at least decently, even for movies that failed miserably at the theaters.
So I would not say that there's zero use for the Oscars : their purpose is to help the movie industry to make mo' money. Of course this does not take into account people like me who will have a negative prejudice against Academy Award winners because I've noticed that my kind of movies never seem to win anything. But I'm affraid I'm in the minority of the audience (who was the guy that said "never underestimate the bad taste of the public" ?
This is obviously flamebait, but still... actually it isn't France as a whole that thinks it is living in the pre-net world, it is the government, and the two plaintiffs in that lawsuit, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of French Jewish Students.
For the government, it simply does not understand what the Internet is all about. I don't think that's really specific to France. Any government will try to use its existing laws to "regulate" the Internet. In France's case there are laws that outlaw auctions against auctions of nazi memorabilia, so we get this lawsuit.
The Union of French Jewish Students clearly does know about the Internet pretty much like RIAA and MPAA do know about it. They have an already long history of suing websites they dont'like. Of course, when it's a hosted homepage, they'll go after the host rather than the individual who created the page.
Interestingly, a lot of their members seem to be law school students.
They're also tolerant people who will call you a nazi if you disagree with them. You might do a little babblefish on their website. Don't miss the forum, half of the messages are about how they censor it on a regular basis. Censored messages include one by another French anti-racist organization who was explaining his reasons for not joining in the Yahoo lawsuit...
I have much more respect for the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism. They really stand for their beliefs and do a lot more to promote their ideas than just suing websites. The problem here IMHO seems to be that this organization is ruled by rather old people (at least, those that speak on tv are old) who might indeed think that they are still in the pre-internet days.
Well I got a bit carried away. My point is, you shouldn't tag a whole country as "bad", "defensive" or whatever because of the wrongdoings of some of its citizens. Or if you really want to do that, please don't forget that Mr Bill Gates is American.
Not to mention the possiblity that users within the juridiction of this French court ruling can access Yahoo from an ISP or other provider not in the .fr domain.
.fr . A lot of corporate users have .com domains, just like many ISPs. There is also a few .org's.
.fr, .com and .org addresses, just in case :-)
To back that up, note that many French already are in domains not in
Maybe Yahoo should block all
That's not quite true. Actually the law doesn't define such thing as an illegal belief. The mind reading police isn't yet efficient enough anyway.
:) ...), who said that it is definitely not up to the government to define the past.
However, there is a law that forbids to publish material that denies the existence of the crimes against humanity as defined in the 1945 Nuemberg trial of the major nazi leaders. That law is an add-on to the 1881 "freedom(!) of press act" ; whether or not it may apply to the Internet is the leagal grey area that is used to sue websites like in that Yahoo nonsense.
So French law does define the historical truth. It has therefore been criticized by history reasearchers (I might have a link there but since the text is in French
And of course there are obvious free speech issues with such laws. The problem is that free speech isn't as highly valued down there as it is in the United States.
PS : I'm glad to hear that you believe the holocaust happened. So do I.
But the FruitsOfTheSea site and the Sealandgov.com sites, which both claim to be official, don't link to each other at all.
:=))
Wrong ; you might want to read more than three sentences from websites you review before you post. The FruitsOfTheSea site is linked in sealandgov.com in the front page. It was the first official Sealand website and they say they keep it for "historical purposes".
I don't find it surprising that their servers aren't located in Sealand since they're supposed to have just brought three generators powerfull enough to handle the load of some(?) computers. As for the pictures being fake or legit and the island being big enough to host a server farm, I really don't know. It seems to be hard to get to Sealand these days. Former terrorist attacks and the high controversy of their current project obviously didn't make the royal family feel like developping the local economy with mass tourism
I don't want to sound *too* inflamatory, but the use of the words "Caldera" and "Open source leaders" in the same sentence doesn't seem very consistent to me. Since when has Caldera ever lead anything anyway ?
/. , it was because its CEO was bitching about Open source. Makes it kinda tough to say "great, these OSS Good Guys(tm) are in this Java commitee". Apache Software Foundation, yeah right, but Caldera...
I mean, last time we've heard of Caldera on
More ontopic : they say in the article that these are interim comimittee who will work on Java specs "until the first general EC election, which is scheduled for later this fall.". Who's gonna vote for that ? Can I vote against Caldera ?
I find Lars's statement that Metallica isn't really supported by their record company in this both interesting and surprising. On previous Metallica stories, many posters assumed that in this case, the "masters" RIAA were pulling the strings of the Metallica puppet. The single facts that Lars answered the interwiew and insisted on having his answers published unedited proves that wrong (though the latter doesn't really help to make these answers understandable :))) ) ; had the label had any say in this, the responses would have gotten through heavy editing by an army of lawyers.
Now this is really surprising, since this lawsuit seems at first glance to perfectly fit the RIAA's goal to kill the online distribution of music. Why aren't they backing up then ? Some possible answers :
1) They don't think Metallic has a valid case in court. This'd be really great news , but unfortunately it is very unlikely given the current state of copyright laws.
2) Since the band has taken it upon themselves to tackle the issue, they've decided to stay out of it and watch for the outcome. They're happily using the action as a test case with somebody else taking the risks. This makes much sense when you know that...
3)...the overwhelming majority of musicians give up the IP of their works to the major when they get signed. On the contrary, Metallica owns the copyrights to their music. So there's less to win/lose in this than there'd have been if it were another band with a more "conventional" contract that were acting. The lablel's lawyers may be considering the case along the lines of : if you lose the battle, well, too bad, maybe you'd like to consider giving up your copyrights to us so that we can better defend your interests; if you win, cool, this clearly shows that it works, now let's have some fun doing the same with artists we really *own*.
Obviously Metallica isn't RIAA's puppet in this story. But they could be their crash-test dummy, and I find that to be much more frightening.
I have a lot more respect for Lars and Metallica than I used to have. I might even buy a CD. Recommendations anyone?
<irony>
Yes : there's this great new service called Napster on the Internet. Just use that to download some MP3s and make up your mind.
</irony>
As an ex-Metallica fan, I might as well also make some *real* recommendations... "Master of Puppets" has always been my favorite. The instrumental "Orion" on that LP is still one of the best songs I've ever heard. Anything pre-Black Album will do, after that it's just the average crap you get to hear on the radio.
Although I admit that Lars makes some good points, I still find it sad that what I first jokingly suggested is illegal.
Like many others you seem to be implying that copyright is a Good Thing(tm) because there would be no GPL without it ; this is nonsense. The GPL is a hack so that we can have free software in a world of copyright (and patents).The author of this license has several times stated that it would be much easier to write free software if there was no copyright law ; RMS, to name the man, is clearly against the current implementation of copyright.
:))) ). But please respect the philosophy behind that free license, and don't use it to justify a system whose ideas are completely different.
Of course you can use and love the GPL without agreeing with RMS (I wonder where would the free software community be today if you couldn't
The auctions are on .com . However, you can start on .fr, select auctions and get transfered to .com. It's really hard to notice that you're now on .com , no more on .fr ; I guess it's part of the problem. Still, it's on .com
And gosh! recently they analysed the DNA from the heart of the son of Louis XVI. Eeegh!
Nope. It was DNA from his hair. There's not much left of the heart of somebody who died about 200 years ago...
The court's decision is NOT an attempt to "forget the past". Come visit western Europe and you'll see if anybody's trying to forget the holocaust and WWII there. Talking about what I know best, France : there's this French/German television network that shows prime time documentaries on WWII about twice a week. Last year, a former collaborationnist's trial made top headlines for months. There are a lot of memorials/museums on WWII. WWII is the most important topic on the history test for the final exam in high school...
I don't think anybody tries to forget that dark era in western Europe, at least in France. In fact, the expression "memory duty" is the most commonly heard talking about these events.
Now, people have such terrible memories of the war that it has been generally acknowledged that the nazi ideology always leads to crime. It is IMHO the reason for the French laws excluding nazi propaganda from free speech. IIRC Germany and several western Europe countries that were involved in the war have similar laws
Now, why are those items illegal too ? It's not quite clear to me, but I see two possible reasons :
1) The memories of nazism being so bad, it's hard for the French to believe that anybody can buy such stuff out of anything else than nazi nostalgia. Sure researchers would need such items but the museums have plenty of those, they wouldn't buy it on Yahoo
2) The president of LICRA (league against racism and antisemitism) said on TV that he felt that selling those items without any historical explanations was wrong.
Well I still don't know whether it's good or bad to ban such auctions. But I really think that it is stupid to go after the content of an American website hosted by an American company with French laws.
OK, yes this is stupid because they sue the American Yahoo wrt French laws. This sure emphasizes one big problem of the Internet : it's an international media whereas there are no international laws. Every court of every country going after stuff considered illegal under their laws doesn't seem to be the right solution
Now I'd be glad if someone would explain me why this is a free speech story. This is about an auction, remember ? How can an auction be considered as speech ?
IMHO, free trade != free speech. To my understanding, under the American law, you're allowed to discuss child pornography, but you aren't allowed to sell it, are you ?