YouTube and Google are not supposed to demand proof. The DMCA is very specific: The party who believes their copyright has been infringed must send a signed statement stating that the copyright is theirs, under penalty of perjury. Once that has happened, the ISP must take down the content if they don't want to risk being held liable for having the content.
So if Viacom sent the DMCA request, then the beef of the actual copyright owner is with Viacom, not with the ISP.
My bank started doing this. They way I was introduced to it is when I logged in they asked me to select a picture and then pick a label for it. There was no explanation whatsoever.
Now, like most Slashdot readers, I'm a tech guy, but I didn't know what they were trying to do. My GUESS was that they were going to have me enter in the caption each time I logged in as a sort of separate password. It wasn't until I read some news article about it much later that I understood what the point of it was. I can't imagine your average user would have any idea either.
But, lack of explanation aside, the 'solution' is technically useless as well. So when I go to log in you display a picture and I have to not enter my password if my picture doesn't show up. but *ANYONE* trying to log in gets to see that picture. So all you've done is add a little work for the phishing site - when they're pretending to be the bank, they just have to go to BoA's site and start your login process and Bank of America will kindly display the picture that the phishing site needs to show you to make you think the phishing site is legitimate. If anything, this makes the phishing site look *MORE* legitimate. "Well, this site looks fishy, but it's got my photo, so there must not be a problem."
Yahoo has a better system - they show you a captcha you've picked, and they explain what it is, AND they only show it to you if you're logging in from a computer you've registered to see the captcha. Doesn't help you when you're not at your home computer, but works for most people most of the time and is thus an improvement without any drawbacks.
It would be much better if you could vote on all the major issues, such as major bills, decisions to start wars, etc.
I agree that it would be a drastic improvement if I got to vote on every major issue. It's letting everyone else vote where I think we might run into trouble.
The only thing worse than George Bush running the country is a country full of people just like George Bush trying to run the country by committee.
Eliminating the election official's handling of a marked ballot reduces the opportunity they have to mess with it. No sleight of hand tricks are even remotely possible.
Nor necessary. Who do you think handles the scanners?
The REAL reason this works for the drug companies is the patients don't have to pay for the drugs, or only pay a small portion of the cost. Their insurance company hides the real cost of the drug from the patient.
If patients are spending their own money on drugs they don't need, no biggie. But when they use their insurance to pay for drugs they don't need, everyone ends up paying more for insurance.
This doesn't need to be solved by the government. Insurance companies just need to reduce or eliminate their reimbursements for drugs that are advertised. Put an ad for your drug on television? Fine - but my insurance company won't cover it anymore.
You can't blindly extrapolate the anecdotal experience of one user in one environment to the potential experience of all users in a different environment. Well, I suppose you CAN, but it is stupid to do so.
Just because it didn't work last time doesn't mean there isn't a market for it, especially if the last time it was done poorly - as an add-on to existing planes (expensive) that didn't have a way for people to power their laptops.
Did it perhaps occur to you that JUST MAYBE, in these brand-spanking-new ultra-modern planes, they might give people a way to power their laptop in order to sell them internet service?
Did it occur to you that maybe, if the cost of installing the hardware in the plane is half as much, they can get away with charging the passenger half as much, and then nearly everyone with a laptop pays for the service?
Plus, AGAIN, you're not even reading what you're quoting. The guy didn't even say that the service was too expensive. He was willing to pay $30 for internet on the flight. The PROBLEM was that his laptop ran out of power. Sounds like all they need to do to get the $30 is put some power outlets under the seats - very easy to do if you're building a NEW plane.
If his claims are found legally true then their lawsuits are technically illegal themselves.
No they're not. An owner of a copyright can sue you for violating that copyright, and if they demostrate that you did in fact violate their copyright, they will win. An owner of a copyright acting in collusion with other copyright owners can STILL sue you for violating their copyright, and will STILL win if they demonstrate that you violated the copyright.
Nowhere in copyright law does is say "Do not copy copyrighted material, unless the copyright holder is acting as part of a cartel."
What is really going on here is not a defense in the sense of 'I didn't do it', it's a defense in the sense of 'Fine, you can sue me for $X, but if you don't cut it out, I'm going to sue you for $X+$Y, so maybe it's in your best interest to just leave me alone.'
For a candidate running for Senator or Representative.
For a presidential candidate, their stand on privacy really doesn't matter, just like their stand on a whole host of other things that Congress gets to determine doesn't matter.
Now, a stand on privacy is not to be confused with a stand on constitutional rights. Whether mailling lists are opt-in or not, or what kind of opt-in they have to be, isn't a constitutional issue. But having a president who believes being president doesn't give them the right to listen to my phone calls, or detain me without trial, is DEFINITELY a constitutional issue.
So, having a stand on privacy is a non-issue for me. If you want to grab my attention, promise to recind every invasive executive order from the Bush presidency. Promise to avoid signing statements. Promise to institute executive orders that prohibit you and future presidents and their respective executive branches from taking the same liberties with our liberties as this one has.
Taking a stand on who can see my credit report is a cop-out when the issue of when, and if, I get to see a lawyer is on the table.
Did you even read the article you linked to? It says:
Anyway, what killed this was cost. When I met with the Connextion team they told me it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to outfit a single plane with wifi.
Airlines didn't want to spend hundreds of thousands per plane to install the gear. So not only was it too expensive to put on planes, it was too expensive to maintain the satellite network to service the small number of planes with the service.
When ever 787 sold had the service installed standard, and has the power plug to run your laptop installed standard, the per-customer cost of providing the service is much, much lower, and the whole scheme becomes workable.
I used to run a MUD. I'd hate to think I was obligated to run the MUD *FOREVER* to avoid destroying the players' "property".
Clearly a company running an MMO is allowed to stop providing the service whenever they'd like. Since they have the ability to destroy the property whenever, it must be theirs.
That doesn't make any sense. If the item belongs to the game publisher before you "sell" it on eBay, then it still belongs to them after the sale, so why should they care?
There are a few reasons.
One, they don't want to lose customers who stop playing the game because they feel other people are buying success in the game that they can't afford.
Two, they don't want you selling things from their world when they could be selling those same things and keeping the money for themselves.
Considering every commercial airline's effort to offer WiFi to date has been scrapped either before takeoff (pun intended), or not long after launch. The costs are simply not supported by the revenue, simple as that. Other considerations like weight and maintenance complexity are secondary.
The costs for an ADD-ON system are not supported by the revenue. Putting a wireless system on an EXISTING plane means you have to:
- Take the plane out of service - Partially disassemble the plane - Run supplemental wiring - Install new access points and new compartments to hold them - Bolt-on trasmit/receive device - Reassemble plane
The costs of a system BUILT INTO the plane when it is FIRST CONSTRUCTED would be MUCH, MUCH lower. You just run your network wires at the same time you run all the other wiring for the plane. And you don't have to REPLACE receptacles etc with new ones, you just install the ones with ethernet jacks to begin with.
And, in this case, they're installing a wired network, not a wireless one. So even cheaper still.
With 100Mbps ethernet connections at every seat, I wonder if they could sponser some killer LAN parties. Maybe show the current best players on the main screen? : )
True, but the distinction I was going for was that PROGRAMMING was separated from RECEPTION. In TV, Programming is one group and transmission/reception is another group. In radio, programming and transmission is one group and reception is another group. Both cases you have two separate groups, and in both cases, you can get virtually all programming on your receiver.
In Satellite radio, programming/transmission/reception are all the same group, and as a result, you can only get half the programming on a given receiver.
It's like someone pushed a newspaper under my door and the FCC said I cannot read it unless I pay a $99.95/month subscription.
No, it's not like that. A newspaper is an object. By it's very nature, the only place it is is where you put it.
Radio signals are not objects. When you broadcast a radio signal, by definition, it goes EVERYWHERE. That's what makes it useful.
If they don't want me to decode their signal, they shouldn't beam that signal at me.
OK, they don't want you to decode their signal, *AND* they aren't beaming it at you either. The signal is broadcast. It goes everywhere. Since your apparent reasoning is that you should be allowed to decode signals that are beamed at you, and the signal is not beamed at you, I guess we agree that you don't have any inherent right to decode the signal now, do you?
We really shouldn't be talking about decoding the signal in the first place. You're not prohibited from decoding the signal because there's something special about signals themselves. What is being protected is the programming. The satellite company or whoever is providing programming to authorized recipients. The means of transmission happens to be EM radiation. You're not allowed to receive programming transmitted by EM radiation that happens to go through your house any more than you're allowed to receive programming transmitted by cable that happens to be buried in your back yard. And that's a MUCH better example than your newspaper one - it's like a cable company ran a cable through your backyard, and the law requires that you actually pay for cable to decode the signal.
There's also another way to look at this. And that is, the radio spectrum in your house IS NOT YOURS. By decoding signals on spectrum that you don't own without the spectrum owner's permission, you're stealing their spectrum. Remember that owning land doesn't afford you unlimited property rights to all space above and below that surface. Some things - like air - are common, and radio spectrum is one of those things.
I have an XM subscription. Kills regular radio dead.
- I live near Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Needless to say, the selection of stations is not exactly the broadest. Definite XM advantage here. - I frequently drive through areas with even LESS of a selection of stations than Eau Claire. XM is a godsend when you'd otherwise be spending hours driving through, say, Nebraska, listening to Country or Country. - No commercials on (most) XM stations! Listening to radio is much nicer when you're not constantly interrupted with whatever the radio promotion of the week is. - NO MORNING SHOWS! Well, actually, there are morning shows, but they don't TAKE OVER your regular radio stations and prevent you from listening to actual music.
Now, maybe you personally don't want to pay for radio. That's fine. But there is no shortage of reasons why someone would be willing to pay for the features satellite radio offers over regular broadcast stations.
I'll tell you what is unethical. The government telling me what I can and cannot do with electromagnetic signals that private companies beam right into my house without my permission.
What's not ethical about that?
The government is acting at the behest of the people. The people want broadcast services. Society is better off when we can send information around without having to use wires all the time. So, if we want to be able to send information without wires, we, as a society, need to have some rules about how that is done.
Now, I'm not saying that the rules are the right rules, or that they're necessarily enforced in the best interests of the public, but there is nothing inherently unethical about the government promulgating rules that allow a common resource to be used effectively.
Regular radio, there are multiple, independent stations that deliver content over a standard medium to standard receivers.
Television is distributed in that manner, as well as by cable and satellite distribution companies which are (mostly) separate from the stations.
Satellite radio is weird, because the entity you pay for distribution is the same entity providing the programming.
So, let XM and Sirius form and spin-off a third company that handles the satellite infrastructure.
Let various manufacturers sell satellite radio receivers.
Keep XM and Sirius as separate providers of programming, much like HBO and Cinemax. As a consumer, you can buy one, the other, or both, and get it all on one receiver.
Slashdot Mirror
YouTube and Google are not supposed to demand proof. The DMCA is very specific: The party who believes their copyright has been infringed must send a signed statement stating that the copyright is theirs, under penalty of perjury. Once that has happened, the ISP must take down the content if they don't want to risk being held liable for having the content.
So if Viacom sent the DMCA request, then the beef of the actual copyright owner is with Viacom, not with the ISP.
My bank started doing this. They way I was introduced to it is when I logged in they asked me to select a picture and then pick a label for it. There was no explanation whatsoever.
Now, like most Slashdot readers, I'm a tech guy, but I didn't know what they were trying to do. My GUESS was that they were going to have me enter in the caption each time I logged in as a sort of separate password. It wasn't until I read some news article about it much later that I understood what the point of it was. I can't imagine your average user would have any idea either.
But, lack of explanation aside, the 'solution' is technically useless as well. So when I go to log in you display a picture and I have to not enter my password if my picture doesn't show up. but *ANYONE* trying to log in gets to see that picture. So all you've done is add a little work for the phishing site - when they're pretending to be the bank, they just have to go to BoA's site and start your login process and Bank of America will kindly display the picture that the phishing site needs to show you to make you think the phishing site is legitimate. If anything, this makes the phishing site look *MORE* legitimate. "Well, this site looks fishy, but it's got my photo, so there must not be a problem."
Yahoo has a better system - they show you a captcha you've picked, and they explain what it is, AND they only show it to you if you're logging in from a computer you've registered to see the captcha. Doesn't help you when you're not at your home computer, but works for most people most of the time and is thus an improvement without any drawbacks.
And then they can get caught if their county is randomly selected for a hand count and the numbers are seriously off.
Not when the people who do the 'random' hand count are the same people. Then you just 'randomly' select ballots that show no error.
It would be much better if you could vote on all the major issues, such as major bills, decisions to start wars, etc.
I agree that it would be a drastic improvement if I got to vote on every major issue. It's letting everyone else vote where I think we might run into trouble.
The only thing worse than George Bush running the country is a country full of people just like George Bush trying to run the country by committee.
Eliminating the election official's handling of a marked ballot reduces the opportunity they have to mess with it. No sleight of hand tricks are even remotely possible.
Nor necessary. Who do you think handles the scanners?
The REAL reason this works for the drug companies is the patients don't have to pay for the drugs, or only pay a small portion of the cost. Their insurance company hides the real cost of the drug from the patient.
If patients are spending their own money on drugs they don't need, no biggie. But when they use their insurance to pay for drugs they don't need, everyone ends up paying more for insurance.
This doesn't need to be solved by the government. Insurance companies just need to reduce or eliminate their reimbursements for drugs that are advertised. Put an ad for your drug on television? Fine - but my insurance company won't cover it anymore.
You can't blindly extrapolate the anecdotal experience of one user in one environment to the potential experience of all users in a different environment. Well, I suppose you CAN, but it is stupid to do so.
Just because it didn't work last time doesn't mean there isn't a market for it, especially if the last time it was done poorly - as an add-on to existing planes (expensive) that didn't have a way for people to power their laptops.
Did it perhaps occur to you that JUST MAYBE, in these brand-spanking-new ultra-modern planes, they might give people a way to power their laptop in order to sell them internet service?
Did it occur to you that maybe, if the cost of installing the hardware in the plane is half as much, they can get away with charging the passenger half as much, and then nearly everyone with a laptop pays for the service?
Plus, AGAIN, you're not even reading what you're quoting. The guy didn't even say that the service was too expensive. He was willing to pay $30 for internet on the flight. The PROBLEM was that his laptop ran out of power. Sounds like all they need to do to get the $30 is put some power outlets under the seats - very easy to do if you're building a NEW plane.
If his claims are found legally true then their lawsuits are technically illegal themselves.
No they're not. An owner of a copyright can sue you for violating that copyright, and if they demostrate that you did in fact violate their copyright, they will win. An owner of a copyright acting in collusion with other copyright owners can STILL sue you for violating their copyright, and will STILL win if they demonstrate that you violated the copyright.
Nowhere in copyright law does is say "Do not copy copyrighted material, unless the copyright holder is acting as part of a cartel."
What is really going on here is not a defense in the sense of 'I didn't do it', it's a defense in the sense of 'Fine, you can sue me for $X, but if you don't cut it out, I'm going to sue you for $X+$Y, so maybe it's in your best interest to just leave me alone.'
You do know that Elliot Spitzer (Governor, prior AG) and Andrew Cuomo are Democrats, right?
He meant the Beverly Hills entertainment ones, not the Texas oil ones.
I doubt anybody really wants to start balancing the books on this - Microsoft included.
Especially when balancing the books is going to show that they got you to pay them more money than you should have.
For a candidate running for Senator or Representative.
For a presidential candidate, their stand on privacy really doesn't matter, just like their stand on a whole host of other things that Congress gets to determine doesn't matter.
Now, a stand on privacy is not to be confused with a stand on constitutional rights. Whether mailling lists are opt-in or not, or what kind of opt-in they have to be, isn't a constitutional issue. But having a president who believes being president doesn't give them the right to listen to my phone calls, or detain me without trial, is DEFINITELY a constitutional issue.
So, having a stand on privacy is a non-issue for me. If you want to grab my attention, promise to recind every invasive executive order from the Bush presidency. Promise to avoid signing statements. Promise to institute executive orders that prohibit you and future presidents and their respective executive branches from taking the same liberties with our liberties as this one has.
Taking a stand on who can see my credit report is a cop-out when the issue of when, and if, I get to see a lawyer is on the table.
Did you even read the article you linked to? It says:
Anyway, what killed this was cost. When I met with the Connextion team they told me it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to outfit a single plane with wifi.
Airlines didn't want to spend hundreds of thousands per plane to install the gear. So not only was it too expensive to put on planes, it was too expensive to maintain the satellite network to service the small number of planes with the service.
When ever 787 sold had the service installed standard, and has the power plug to run your laptop installed standard, the per-customer cost of providing the service is much, much lower, and the whole scheme becomes workable.
I used to run a MUD. I'd hate to think I was obligated to run the MUD *FOREVER* to avoid destroying the players' "property".
Clearly a company running an MMO is allowed to stop providing the service whenever they'd like. Since they have the ability to destroy the property whenever, it must be theirs.
That doesn't make any sense. If the item belongs to the game publisher before you "sell" it on eBay, then it still belongs to them after the sale, so why should they care?
There are a few reasons.
One, they don't want to lose customers who stop playing the game because they feel other people are buying success in the game that they can't afford.
Two, they don't want you selling things from their world when they could be selling those same things and keeping the money for themselves.
As a US Citizen who lives in the US, the *LAST* place I want my domains registered is in a foreign country.
If GoDaddy screws me, I have enforceable legal recourse. If joker.com screws me, it's is much, much, much harder to seek legal remedy.
Considering every commercial airline's effort to offer WiFi to date has been scrapped either before takeoff (pun intended), or not long after launch. The costs are simply not supported by the revenue, simple as that. Other considerations like weight and maintenance complexity are secondary.
The costs for an ADD-ON system are not supported by the revenue. Putting a wireless system on an EXISTING plane means you have to:
- Take the plane out of service
- Partially disassemble the plane
- Run supplemental wiring
- Install new access points and new compartments to hold them
- Bolt-on trasmit/receive device
- Reassemble plane
The costs of a system BUILT INTO the plane when it is FIRST CONSTRUCTED would be MUCH, MUCH lower. You just run your network wires at the same time you run all the other wiring for the plane. And you don't have to REPLACE receptacles etc with new ones, you just install the ones with ethernet jacks to begin with.
And, in this case, they're installing a wired network, not a wireless one. So even cheaper still.
With 100Mbps ethernet connections at every seat, I wonder if they could sponser some killer LAN parties. Maybe show the current best players on the main screen? : )
Whatever you do, do NOT play cs_747!
But also has massive latency.
Worst case, you can easily throttle bandwidth to a particular row or seat to keep one user from sucking up too much.
What will be interesting is if first class passengers get more bandwidth than cattle class.
What if XM said screw the FCC, would the US knock their satellites out of orbit?
No, they'd fine them until they gave in.
And if they were not a US company, they'd block the ability of any US financial institution to send them money.
Either way, XM wouldn't last very long.
True, but the distinction I was going for was that PROGRAMMING was separated from RECEPTION. In TV, Programming is one group and transmission/reception is another group. In radio, programming and transmission is one group and reception is another group. Both cases you have two separate groups, and in both cases, you can get virtually all programming on your receiver.
In Satellite radio, programming/transmission/reception are all the same group, and as a result, you can only get half the programming on a given receiver.
It's like someone pushed a newspaper under my door and the FCC said I cannot read it unless I pay a $99.95/month subscription.
No, it's not like that. A newspaper is an object. By it's very nature, the only place it is is where you put it.
Radio signals are not objects. When you broadcast a radio signal, by definition, it goes EVERYWHERE. That's what makes it useful.
If they don't want me to decode their signal, they shouldn't beam that signal at me.
OK, they don't want you to decode their signal, *AND* they aren't beaming it at you either. The signal is broadcast. It goes everywhere. Since your apparent reasoning is that you should be allowed to decode signals that are beamed at you, and the signal is not beamed at you, I guess we agree that you don't have any inherent right to decode the signal now, do you?
We really shouldn't be talking about decoding the signal in the first place. You're not prohibited from decoding the signal because there's something special about signals themselves. What is being protected is the programming. The satellite company or whoever is providing programming to authorized recipients. The means of transmission happens to be EM radiation. You're not allowed to receive programming transmitted by EM radiation that happens to go through your house any more than you're allowed to receive programming transmitted by cable that happens to be buried in your back yard. And that's a MUCH better example than your newspaper one - it's like a cable company ran a cable through your backyard, and the law requires that you actually pay for cable to decode the signal.
There's also another way to look at this. And that is, the radio spectrum in your house IS NOT YOURS. By decoding signals on spectrum that you don't own without the spectrum owner's permission, you're stealing their spectrum. Remember that owning land doesn't afford you unlimited property rights to all space above and below that surface. Some things - like air - are common, and radio spectrum is one of those things.
How do you define who will best serve society?
It's whoever bids the highest.
I have an XM subscription. Kills regular radio dead.
- I live near Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Needless to say, the selection of stations is not exactly the broadest. Definite XM advantage here.
- I frequently drive through areas with even LESS of a selection of stations than Eau Claire. XM is a godsend when you'd otherwise be spending hours driving through, say, Nebraska, listening to Country or Country.
- No commercials on (most) XM stations! Listening to radio is much nicer when you're not constantly interrupted with whatever the radio promotion of the week is.
- NO MORNING SHOWS! Well, actually, there are morning shows, but they don't TAKE OVER your regular radio stations and prevent you from listening to actual music.
Now, maybe you personally don't want to pay for radio. That's fine. But there is no shortage of reasons why someone would be willing to pay for the features satellite radio offers over regular broadcast stations.
I'll tell you what is unethical. The government telling me what I can and cannot do with electromagnetic signals that private companies beam right into my house without my permission.
What's not ethical about that?
The government is acting at the behest of the people. The people want broadcast services. Society is better off when we can send information around without having to use wires all the time. So, if we want to be able to send information without wires, we, as a society, need to have some rules about how that is done.
Now, I'm not saying that the rules are the right rules, or that they're necessarily enforced in the best interests of the public, but there is nothing inherently unethical about the government promulgating rules that allow a common resource to be used effectively.
Regular radio, there are multiple, independent stations that deliver content over a standard medium to standard receivers.
Television is distributed in that manner, as well as by cable and satellite distribution companies which are (mostly) separate from the stations.
Satellite radio is weird, because the entity you pay for distribution is the same entity providing the programming.
So, let XM and Sirius form and spin-off a third company that handles the satellite infrastructure.
Let various manufacturers sell satellite radio receivers.
Keep XM and Sirius as separate providers of programming, much like HBO and Cinemax. As a consumer, you can buy one, the other, or both, and get it all on one receiver.