I think the point about progressive taxation was less an attempt to confer legitimacy on illegal file copying and more an attempt to open up the question of whether there is a social value to file sharing networks. If more of the little guys were to gain benefit through increased exposure at the expense of large entertainment conglomerates some would argue that this is socially positive. A good for some, levied at the cost of others.
Some independence exists in more niche-like markets, like the market for military strategy games. See www.battlefront.com for a thoughtful turn-based "think-em-up" with pretty good 3D graphics. The original version was written by just two guys.
"The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings."
The report doesn't mention the flak journalists receive from other private individuals or groups, although what you describe is an important limitation on what people can in practice say. Being able to protect the anaonymity of sources is vital if journalists are ever to be able to get at controversial information and publicise it; it's worrying that people have gone to prison for trying to do just that.
If they charged the Russian crackers with offences relating to the actions they invited them to do that would be entrapment. Surely they just conned them out of evidence relating to other crimes that was on their computers in Russia.
I thought the really seminal thing about Doom (apart from the graphical stuff) was FEAR. PLaying Doom back in the good ol' days you felt a definite shiver when you were about to go in a room where you could HEAR THEM. Hopefully Doom 3 will be more disturbing - then I'll be happy!
The potential scenario described would indeed be unfortunate, and could hurt the spread of open source. Perhaps the impact could be reduced if the applications were capable of supporting at least one shared file format - so at least if you do pick a product that dies on the vine later on, at least your documents are still useful and your only problem is your training overheads...
I think that sometimes cultures do require and deserve a little protectionism as witnessed in the report. Despite the "benign paternalism" practised in Bhutan, 95 percent of people who travel abroad to get an education return - presumably because they like it. Is this matched anywhere on the Indian sub-continet? Ultimately cultures are vulnerable because they generally don't represent a revenue stream (unless it's Disney merchandise) so they have no lobbying influence. It's rare to see a country have so much culturally-based legislation and I think it is a good thing.
Re:But spam itself is just a symptom of fraud
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 1
Spammers do indeed seem to be getting increasingly sly as a mater of survival necessity. Although anti-spam laws will never have global applicability, surely they will be effective in reducing the intimidating threats of legal action against ISPs who try and move against spammers. For those ISPs who say the anti-spam stuff but take the money, they will now be breaking the law.
I have serious doubts about mainstream mail clients really caring about cryptography. The usabality of public key encryption in Outlook isn't exactly great.
The thing is, there are plenty of times when a stranger who would never have my public key to start with sends me an email that I actually want.
Re:Death penalty for Spammers
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Why not suggest it to George "Pro-life/Pro-death" Bush while he's in his current belligerent mood. Maybe convince him spammers are terrorists or something...
I agree with some of that. I used a kind of extreme example as well... I guess what I would suggest would be primarily shorter exploitation times for ideas. I think what might be good would be to have IP pass into the public domain much faster. Obviously people need time to profit from their own creativity or gain the edge in their market, but I think such a system might rule out many of the extreme cases like the one I raise.
With all this said, I'm afraid I'd be more sympathetic to these movie and music lobbies if they weren't so damn powerful and profitable. In the UK the major Hollywood Studios control every aspect of films playing in local cinems from casting to the price of the popcorn. Record pricing operates under cartel-like conditions. I feel that a lot of this legal thrashing is because the content industries have not been able to come to grips with these new uses of technology in an accommodating manner and have adopted an adversarial and highly combative stance. I think DRM for music will do more harm than good because it will involve greater interference with people's computers (witness the Palladium stuff at Redmond) for very little benefit. The question is are we buying less music than before; we certainly have more music on our hard drives, but to me this only matters if I would have bought the CD if I hadn't found the MP3. On anything other than PC speakers, MP3s are rubbish and I've discovered a lot of stuff I'd never have heard (and bought) otherwise.
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have set up their home page so you can stream one song from their new album every day. This might open them up to a few rip-offs but it's also good marketing, and I think this is more the direction the industry should be moving in.
I would add something to that; I find that mp3 file sharing helps one to discover new music because it costs nothing to try stuff. Since getting into MP3s I've actually purchased more CDs and been more satisfied with the CDs that I've bought. I dare say I would have bought even more if they were a reasonable price (they are even more of a rip-off in the UK). I think that if the recording industry wasn't trying to force music consumers through a narrow business model that begins with some attractive person's jingle on commercial radio and ends with you buying a CD on the mistaken assumption that the other 11 songs will be worthwhile then I'd have more sympathy. "Try before you buy" hurts bad music but benefits good music.
Never mind the exact legal intricacies, since US federal law will vary from other countries with IP laws anyway. At issue is a moral question, and it is unlikely that a satisfactory answer is to be found by inspecting the statute books, since the law on these matters is more likely to track business interest and lobbying power rather than a commonsense notion of right and wrong on the subject.
In my view IP rules generally do protect the interests of large organisations as opposed to the individual. Undoubtedly one must be able to profit preferentially from an idea for some period of time, but you have to draw a line. Suppose I reverse engineer some drug and sell it at cost to Africans who can't afford the patent-protected official product. I guess that's theft too, but I'm not sure how shameful that would be.
So there's the question: I think that innovators should be able to profit from ideas (I work in software too) but how far should this be taken and do we take it further than that in this day and age?
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing left-wing about the UK government. The Conservatives are nowhere coz Blair stole all their voters.
I think the point about progressive taxation was less an attempt to confer legitimacy on illegal file copying and more an attempt to open up the question of whether there is a social value to file sharing networks. If more of the little guys were to gain benefit through increased exposure at the expense of large entertainment conglomerates some would argue that this is socially positive. A good for some, levied at the cost of others.
I'm slightly puzzled by why O'Reilly thinks a family piano is a "nostalgic affectation". I think it's good to play your own nice, FREE music!
Some independence exists in more niche-like markets, like the market for military strategy games. See www.battlefront.com for a thoughtful turn-based "think-em-up" with pretty good 3D graphics. The original version was written by just two guys.
"The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings."
The report doesn't mention the flak journalists receive from other private individuals or groups, although what you describe is an important limitation on what people can in practice say. Being able to protect the anaonymity of sources is vital if journalists are ever to be able to get at controversial information and publicise it; it's worrying that people have gone to prison for trying to do just that.
"The FBI isn't interested in spying on America"
Isn't that their job?
If they charged the Russian crackers with offences relating to the actions they invited them to do that would be entrapment. Surely they just conned them out of evidence relating to other crimes that was on their computers in Russia.
I thought the really seminal thing about Doom (apart from the graphical stuff) was FEAR. PLaying Doom back in the good ol' days you felt a definite shiver when you were about to go in a room where you could HEAR THEM. Hopefully Doom 3 will be more disturbing - then I'll be happy!
The potential scenario described would indeed be unfortunate, and could hurt the spread of open source. Perhaps the impact could be reduced if the applications were capable of supporting at least one shared file format - so at least if you do pick a product that dies on the vine later on, at least your documents are still useful and your only problem is your training overheads...
I think that sometimes cultures do require and deserve a little protectionism as witnessed in the report. Despite the "benign paternalism" practised in Bhutan, 95 percent of people who travel abroad to get an education return - presumably because they like it. Is this matched anywhere on the Indian sub-continet? Ultimately cultures are vulnerable because they generally don't represent a revenue stream (unless it's Disney merchandise) so they have no lobbying influence. It's rare to see a country have so much culturally-based legislation and I think it is a good thing.
Spammers do indeed seem to be getting increasingly sly as a mater of survival necessity. Although anti-spam laws will never have global applicability, surely they will be effective in reducing the intimidating threats of legal action against ISPs who try and move against spammers. For those ISPs who say the anti-spam stuff but take the money, they will now be breaking the law. I have serious doubts about mainstream mail clients really caring about cryptography. The usabality of public key encryption in Outlook isn't exactly great. The thing is, there are plenty of times when a stranger who would never have my public key to start with sends me an email that I actually want.
Why not suggest it to George "Pro-life/Pro-death" Bush while he's in his current belligerent mood. Maybe convince him spammers are terrorists or something...
I agree with some of that. I used a kind of extreme example as well... I guess what I would suggest would be primarily shorter exploitation times for ideas. I think what might be good would be to have IP pass into the public domain much faster. Obviously people need time to profit from their own creativity or gain the edge in their market, but I think such a system might rule out many of the extreme cases like the one I raise. With all this said, I'm afraid I'd be more sympathetic to these movie and music lobbies if they weren't so damn powerful and profitable. In the UK the major Hollywood Studios control every aspect of films playing in local cinems from casting to the price of the popcorn. Record pricing operates under cartel-like conditions. I feel that a lot of this legal thrashing is because the content industries have not been able to come to grips with these new uses of technology in an accommodating manner and have adopted an adversarial and highly combative stance. I think DRM for music will do more harm than good because it will involve greater interference with people's computers (witness the Palladium stuff at Redmond) for very little benefit. The question is are we buying less music than before; we certainly have more music on our hard drives, but to me this only matters if I would have bought the CD if I hadn't found the MP3. On anything other than PC speakers, MP3s are rubbish and I've discovered a lot of stuff I'd never have heard (and bought) otherwise. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have set up their home page so you can stream one song from their new album every day. This might open them up to a few rip-offs but it's also good marketing, and I think this is more the direction the industry should be moving in.
I would add something to that; I find that mp3 file sharing helps one to discover new music because it costs nothing to try stuff. Since getting into MP3s I've actually purchased more CDs and been more satisfied with the CDs that I've bought. I dare say I would have bought even more if they were a reasonable price (they are even more of a rip-off in the UK). I think that if the recording industry wasn't trying to force music consumers through a narrow business model that begins with some attractive person's jingle on commercial radio and ends with you buying a CD on the mistaken assumption that the other 11 songs will be worthwhile then I'd have more sympathy. "Try before you buy" hurts bad music but benefits good music.
Can we keep the tone respectful? This is an interesting issue that can be explored without heavy sarcasm...
Never mind the exact legal intricacies, since US federal law will vary from other countries with IP laws anyway. At issue is a moral question, and it is unlikely that a satisfactory answer is to be found by inspecting the statute books, since the law on these matters is more likely to track business interest and lobbying power rather than a commonsense notion of right and wrong on the subject. In my view IP rules generally do protect the interests of large organisations as opposed to the individual. Undoubtedly one must be able to profit preferentially from an idea for some period of time, but you have to draw a line. Suppose I reverse engineer some drug and sell it at cost to Africans who can't afford the patent-protected official product. I guess that's theft too, but I'm not sure how shameful that would be. So there's the question: I think that innovators should be able to profit from ideas (I work in software too) but how far should this be taken and do we take it further than that in this day and age?