That's not how I read it. The bit you highlighted is editorial commentary; it does have serious implications for US retailers, but that doesn't mean they are the only people it has implications for. If 'first sale' doesn't apply, then the copyright holder retains control over all subsequent distribution of their copyrighted work, public or private.
since it was a tie vote, it could come up again.
Which is, at least, a small mercy. The fact it was a tie is absolutely unbelievable, though - even with my healthily embittered view of the world I didn't expect the protectionism to reach these depths, especially when it actively harms others with very deep pockets.
The prohibition is on distribution of copies or derivative works. Not resale of the original.
Specifically due to the 'first sale' doctrine - the copyright holder controls distribution only through the first transaction, not through subsequent transactions. Since this ruling says that 'first sale' does not apply to goods procured outside the US, it means that the copyright holder does retain distribution control of the original copyrighted work.
It's an absolutely unforgivably terrible ruling, but that's what it says.
I don't think that's quite the issue, since this appears designed to be enforced against businesses more than individuals. This case was actually brought against Costco, and it's designed to let manufacturers (Omega, in this case) enforce arbitrary price distinctions between territories.
Basically, before this, if Omega sold Costco a bunch of watches for $700/each (hypothetical figure) and said that they can only resell in the US for $1000+, the first sale doctrine says that Costco owns the watches and can do what they damn well please with them (although nobody's forcing Omega to continue supplying them, if Costco keep ignoring their terms, of course). That's what 'first sale' means - Omega controls only the first transaction (from them to the Chinese distributor, or to Costco, or whatever) and they can't leverage their copyright on the tiny little logo on the watch face to limit any subsequent distribution. Omega might want watches to only sell for $1000+ in the US, but if Costco can buy them in China at $300 then they can undercut Omega's US pricing and still make a good profit. Omega would, of course, stop selling direct to Costco, but Costco can then still buy at a big discount from Chinese resellers and undercut the American market.
This ruling says that first sale only applies to sales made in America. If Costco buys Omega watches from a Chinese distributor, Omega still retains control over them through all subsequent transactions, via a bizarre stretch of copyright law that 'first sale' was specifically intended to combat. This is an absolutely, unequivocally bad ruling.
No, the position of the government is that Wikileaks doesn't have the right to publish those documents.
I don't see how that affects my argument.
Claiming they documents should be decalsified because wikileaks published them is like claiming that because some buisness sold your SSN and email address without your permissiosn you may as well put both in your Slashdot signature since the info is already out there.
There's a difference between me taking an effort to publish the data, and me cutting my losses and not taking further effort to keep it secret. If my personal details had been published by some of the world's leading press organisations and distributed to millions, I'd certainly stop spending money on (hypothetical) secure storage of the documents, for example.
You seem to have missed my point. I'm not saying it's illogical for a security guy to cover their ass by blocking these sites given the current situation (and current framework of legislation), nor am I saying that classified documents should be treated lightly. The 'rules' being followed to prevent this classified information from contaminating unsecured systems aren't the problem in themselves.
What I'm saying is illogical is that documents which are released publicly can remain classified when the underlying purpose of that classification (secrecy) can no longer possibly be achieved.
Given the choice I'd go for one of Sony's readers. Although the nook also supports ePub (with or without DRM), I've found that the vested interests of B&N led them to opt for an irritating level of lockdown even when it doesn't seem to serve any logical purpose, presumably because they want to retain control over the device just in case.
Whatever you do buy, vote with your wallet on DRM. Gutenberg has a great selection, and although digital library books (which also aren't supported by the Kindle AFAIK) do come with DRM, I consider the enforcement of a short term, free loan to be a reasonably valid use. I also have absolutely no moral qualms about downloading a copy of a book I already own on paper - it's no different to having someone else rip one of your CD on your behalf and send you the files.
The average prices paid are comparable to those offered on Steam when they do discounted game bundles (in fact, I already have Machinarium and Osmos for precisely that reason, although I threw in some cash to a good cause and grabbed a copy of this bundle anyway). If Valve (and the developers) are willing to take those kind of prices on a commercial basis, it seems reasonable to call this a success.
Classification is simply a means to an end; specifically: to limit access to certain data. Obviously publication can't remove the classification (despite what many of the other replies to your posts seem to think), but if the data is widely disseminated, the classification is no longer serving its purpose. Now, I agree with you that the NYT in no way have the ability to declassify information, and that whoever made this particular decision to block the sites (and thus keep material which is still classified from 'contaminating' unsecured machines) is probably just following the rules to the letter and covering their ass. The rules, however, are illogical in this case. To attempt to retain the means (classification) when the ends are no longer achievable simply undermines the consistency and integrity of the classification system. The logical procedure would be to declassify the data as released by Wikileaks, and to pursue any legal claims on the basis that the data was released while still under classification, and only subsequently declassified 'under duress', to maintain consistency.
That's superficially logical, but it seems to centre around "keeping data secure because it has a classification attached to it", as opposed to the (subtly but importantly different) "keeping data secure in order to prevent it from being disseminated to the public". Surely classification is a means to an end; a way of limiting access? If that end has been compromised, the classification has already failed. It's accepted that these documents are widely available to the public already - wouldn't it make more sense from all perspectives, including that of the military, to declare the Wikileaks-redacted versions declassified?
If they do manage to bring any court cases for the leaks, the fact that they were classified at the time of release isn't changed by a subsequent declassification. They don't have to like it, and it's not an admission of defeat, it's just a logical action that actually enhances the consistency of the classification system by preventing situations where documents widely distributed to those without clearance can't be seen by those with clearance.
Does the same thing apply to a physical mailbox (assuming it's rented, not owned, of course)? Logically the same rules would apply to a third party storing your personal messages, whether on paper or electronic.
Sure, it's sometimes a problem to try to hammer new technologies into old legal frameworks, but this doesn't seem to be one of those cases.
I very, very strongly disagree. You're right, of course, that the fear and moreover the feeling of helplessness needed to be quelled, but pushing the fear behind a wall of psychological defence measures is not the same as taking away the terror.
Think of it this way: one child falls off their bike and the parent tells them that it's OK because this magic rock will stop it happening again. The second child falls off and their parent tells them that yes, it hurts, and it might happen again, but they should just do everything they can to avoid falling off and not worry about the tiny little chance that they might. One day the first kid's either going to ride off a cliff because they think they're safe, or lose the rock and go to pieces because they think they can't be safe without it.
As a society, hiding behind these measures is asking to be blindsided again if some attacker does manage to get through, and depending on an invasive and largely unnecessary myth the rest of the time. Accepting that the actual threat is tiny and that some measures are needed, but we can never mitigate all of the risk, would be the mature way to go about things.
The people needed to hear "all we have to fear is fear itself", not be told that "there are many nasty bogeymen out there but don't worry, the government will protect you".
Yet we don't go to the lengths of conscripting half our population and gearing our entire economy to defence. The metaphor's getting a bit stretched, but the point is that we've reached an almost absurd extreme (and I'm not just talking about these new scanners) when the threat does not in any way demand such a response.
I mentioned the failures almost as a side note, though. My main point was that there are very few attackers out there - I base this partially on the lack of attempted attacks (although you are quite right in saying that security which discourages attacks is still doing its job), but more on the fact that there are many, many unprotected targets which are simply ignored - as I said in another post, if you want to see what happens when you actually have a reasonable risk, look at Northern Ireland.
It's not enough to posit that there's something both less intrusive and more effective. You have to actually show such a thing.
I said the opposite - that a more effective process would have to be more intrusive. What I did say, though, was that a rudimentary system would have approximately the same effectiveness simply because there are so few attackers to bother protecting against.
I don't know if backscatter is optimal for the purpose, but I know it's more effective than taking no action.
Only if you are working on the hypothesis that the cost and inconvenience are proportionate to the actual threat.
I like the idea a lot, but I get the impression that if the politicians/general public/TSA got their hands on it we wouldn't see the hoped-for response of "So people could get this stuff through all along and there was no attack?! Maybe there isn't such a risk after all...". I'd be more inclined to expect "For your own safety, all airline passengers shall now be required to submit to a preflight full-body MRI scan. As we have seen, it is the only way to close these numerous attack vectors that have now been exposed to the terrorists. God bless America, 9/11, 9/11. "
Maybe these devices and this system isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternative, which is doing nothing.
Callous as it may sound, we balance convenience and cost against people's lives every day. Reducing the national speed limit to 10MPH would undoubtedly save lives, but people's need to travel is deemed to outweigh that benefit.
Having accepted that we as a society do allow some increased risk in exchange for our day-to-day rights, profits and convenience, the question becomes: "How does the potential for an attack balance against the cost and restriction presented by the security measures?"
A measure such as this is very expensive, only moderately effective, potentially risky (I haven't had a chance to read up properly on the radiation issues) and felt by many to be an unacceptable invasion of privacy. The risk presented by terrorists is minuscule (look at all the juicy unsecured targets in the US that simply aren't being attacked, then compare that to Northern Ireland - the latter is what you see if there are actually a reasonably sized core of determined attackers). To me, this seems like an unacceptable trade-off.
Because it's about placating the public, appearing to have done something when the election rolls around, and perhaps scratching the backs of those campaign contributors in the security industry.
Reading that back I admit it sounds a little like something from the tinfoil-hat brigade, so I do hope I'm not devolving into one of them. It does seem that pandering to the voters (and perhaps a little low level corruption) is how much political business is done. It doesn't even have to be especially nefarious - "better safe than sorry" doesn't just apply to actually preventing attacks, it applies to how they're going to answer the voters if an attack does (by some million to one chance) actually occur; saying that security measures were put in place can easily save their career, even if those measures were (by definition, since this hypothetical attack occurred) ineffective.
Thing is, we don't even really need "a better way of detecting terrorists". The incidence of terrorism against airlines is practically a rounding error and as we've seen, the TSA has been unsuccessful in preventing the (very few) attempted bombings in the recent past yet the attacks still failed. If we removed the theatre and replaced it with nothing, maybe keeping a few basic and effective measures to discourage obvious attacks, we'd be better off, and the risk would still be negligible. If we replaced it with something actually effective then that'd theoretically be even better, but most effective methods are expensive, invasive or both and I'm unconvinced that they would be worthwhile considering how low the risk is.
But as I mentioned, I withhold judgment on this. It is entirely possible that Julian Assange is both a champion of transparency AND a rapist.
Entirely agreed.
The Swedish prosecutor claims that it is common for rape cases in Sweden to be dropped and reopened (Cue the conspiracy theorists yelling, "They WOULD say that!")
Some hard data would be good, here - it definitely seems like there are oddities about how this case was handled, but since the vast majority of cases don't get anything like this intense scrutiny we don't know if they are, in fact, perfectly normal legal or bureaucratic quirks. I wonder what percentage of Swedish rape cases are dropped and re-opened, or how many international warrants are rejected by the UK and resubmitted, for instance.
I'm far more interested in the charges leveled by John Young of Cryptome, that he is a mercenary selling access to unredacted source documents to the highest bidder on the black market.
Interesting accusation, and it's the first I've heard of it. Any chance of a link?
Slashdot Mirror
Your tone implies you consider this acceptable; I'd be interested to know why?
You can resell that watch as a private citizen
That's not how I read it. The bit you highlighted is editorial commentary; it does have serious implications for US retailers, but that doesn't mean they are the only people it has implications for. If 'first sale' doesn't apply, then the copyright holder retains control over all subsequent distribution of their copyrighted work, public or private.
since it was a tie vote, it could come up again.
Which is, at least, a small mercy. The fact it was a tie is absolutely unbelievable, though - even with my healthily embittered view of the world I didn't expect the protectionism to reach these depths, especially when it actively harms others with very deep pockets.
The prohibition is on distribution of copies or derivative works. Not resale of the original.
Specifically due to the 'first sale' doctrine - the copyright holder controls distribution only through the first transaction, not through subsequent transactions. Since this ruling says that 'first sale' does not apply to goods procured outside the US, it means that the copyright holder does retain distribution control of the original copyrighted work.
It's an absolutely unforgivably terrible ruling, but that's what it says.
I don't think that's quite the issue, since this appears designed to be enforced against businesses more than individuals. This case was actually brought against Costco, and it's designed to let manufacturers (Omega, in this case) enforce arbitrary price distinctions between territories.
Basically, before this, if Omega sold Costco a bunch of watches for $700/each (hypothetical figure) and said that they can only resell in the US for $1000+, the first sale doctrine says that Costco owns the watches and can do what they damn well please with them (although nobody's forcing Omega to continue supplying them, if Costco keep ignoring their terms, of course). That's what 'first sale' means - Omega controls only the first transaction (from them to the Chinese distributor, or to Costco, or whatever) and they can't leverage their copyright on the tiny little logo on the watch face to limit any subsequent distribution. Omega might want watches to only sell for $1000+ in the US, but if Costco can buy them in China at $300 then they can undercut Omega's US pricing and still make a good profit. Omega would, of course, stop selling direct to Costco, but Costco can then still buy at a big discount from Chinese resellers and undercut the American market.
This ruling says that first sale only applies to sales made in America. If Costco buys Omega watches from a Chinese distributor, Omega still retains control over them through all subsequent transactions, via a bizarre stretch of copyright law that 'first sale' was specifically intended to combat. This is an absolutely, unequivocally bad ruling.
No, the position of the government is that Wikileaks doesn't have the right to publish those documents.
I don't see how that affects my argument.
Claiming they documents should be decalsified because wikileaks published them is like claiming that because some buisness sold your SSN and email address without your permissiosn you may as well put both in your Slashdot signature since the info is already out there.
There's a difference between me taking an effort to publish the data, and me cutting my losses and not taking further effort to keep it secret. If my personal details had been published by some of the world's leading press organisations and distributed to millions, I'd certainly stop spending money on (hypothetical) secure storage of the documents, for example.
You seem to have missed my point. I'm not saying it's illogical for a security guy to cover their ass by blocking these sites given the current situation (and current framework of legislation), nor am I saying that classified documents should be treated lightly. The 'rules' being followed to prevent this classified information from contaminating unsecured systems aren't the problem in themselves.
What I'm saying is illogical is that documents which are released publicly can remain classified when the underlying purpose of that classification (secrecy) can no longer possibly be achieved.
Given the choice I'd go for one of Sony's readers. Although the nook also supports ePub (with or without DRM), I've found that the vested interests of B&N led them to opt for an irritating level of lockdown even when it doesn't seem to serve any logical purpose, presumably because they want to retain control over the device just in case.
Whatever you do buy, vote with your wallet on DRM. Gutenberg has a great selection, and although digital library books (which also aren't supported by the Kindle AFAIK) do come with DRM, I consider the enforcement of a short term, free loan to be a reasonably valid use. I also have absolutely no moral qualms about downloading a copy of a book I already own on paper - it's no different to having someone else rip one of your CD on your behalf and send you the files.
The average prices paid are comparable to those offered on Steam when they do discounted game bundles (in fact, I already have Machinarium and Osmos for precisely that reason, although I threw in some cash to a good cause and grabbed a copy of this bundle anyway). If Valve (and the developers) are willing to take those kind of prices on a commercial basis, it seems reasonable to call this a success.
Considering that you can pay what you like, I don't see how it can be a bad deal.
The order is logical within the context of the rules. The rules that led to the order being issued are not logical.
Classification is simply a means to an end; specifically: to limit access to certain data. Obviously publication can't remove the classification (despite what many of the other replies to your posts seem to think), but if the data is widely disseminated, the classification is no longer serving its purpose. Now, I agree with you that the NYT in no way have the ability to declassify information, and that whoever made this particular decision to block the sites (and thus keep material which is still classified from 'contaminating' unsecured machines) is probably just following the rules to the letter and covering their ass. The rules, however, are illogical in this case. To attempt to retain the means (classification) when the ends are no longer achievable simply undermines the consistency and integrity of the classification system. The logical procedure would be to declassify the data as released by Wikileaks, and to pursue any legal claims on the basis that the data was released while still under classification, and only subsequently declassified 'under duress', to maintain consistency.
That's superficially logical, but it seems to centre around "keeping data secure because it has a classification attached to it", as opposed to the (subtly but importantly different) "keeping data secure in order to prevent it from being disseminated to the public". Surely classification is a means to an end; a way of limiting access? If that end has been compromised, the classification has already failed. It's accepted that these documents are widely available to the public already - wouldn't it make more sense from all perspectives, including that of the military, to declare the Wikileaks-redacted versions declassified?
If they do manage to bring any court cases for the leaks, the fact that they were classified at the time of release isn't changed by a subsequent declassification. They don't have to like it, and it's not an admission of defeat, it's just a logical action that actually enhances the consistency of the classification system by preventing situations where documents widely distributed to those without clearance can't be seen by those with clearance.
Does the same thing apply to a physical mailbox (assuming it's rented, not owned, of course)? Logically the same rules would apply to a third party storing your personal messages, whether on paper or electronic.
Sure, it's sometimes a problem to try to hammer new technologies into old legal frameworks, but this doesn't seem to be one of those cases.
I very, very strongly disagree. You're right, of course, that the fear and moreover the feeling of helplessness needed to be quelled, but pushing the fear behind a wall of psychological defence measures is not the same as taking away the terror.
Think of it this way: one child falls off their bike and the parent tells them that it's OK because this magic rock will stop it happening again. The second child falls off and their parent tells them that yes, it hurts, and it might happen again, but they should just do everything they can to avoid falling off and not worry about the tiny little chance that they might. One day the first kid's either going to ride off a cliff because they think they're safe, or lose the rock and go to pieces because they think they can't be safe without it.
As a society, hiding behind these measures is asking to be blindsided again if some attacker does manage to get through, and depending on an invasive and largely unnecessary myth the rest of the time. Accepting that the actual threat is tiny and that some measures are needed, but we can never mitigate all of the risk, would be the mature way to go about things.
The people needed to hear "all we have to fear is fear itself", not be told that "there are many nasty bogeymen out there but don't worry, the government will protect you".
Based on their PR style and previous news coverage I'd say almost certainly yes, they would.
Yet we don't go to the lengths of conscripting half our population and gearing our entire economy to defence. The metaphor's getting a bit stretched, but the point is that we've reached an almost absurd extreme (and I'm not just talking about these new scanners) when the threat does not in any way demand such a response.
I mentioned the failures almost as a side note, though. My main point was that there are very few attackers out there - I base this partially on the lack of attempted attacks (although you are quite right in saying that security which discourages attacks is still doing its job), but more on the fact that there are many, many unprotected targets which are simply ignored - as I said in another post, if you want to see what happens when you actually have a reasonable risk, look at Northern Ireland.
It's not enough to posit that there's something both less intrusive and more effective. You have to actually show such a thing.
I said the opposite - that a more effective process would have to be more intrusive. What I did say, though, was that a rudimentary system would have approximately the same effectiveness simply because there are so few attackers to bother protecting against.
I don't know if backscatter is optimal for the purpose, but I know it's more effective than taking no action.
Only if you are working on the hypothesis that the cost and inconvenience are proportionate to the actual threat.
I like the idea a lot, but I get the impression that if the politicians/general public/TSA got their hands on it we wouldn't see the hoped-for response of "So people could get this stuff through all along and there was no attack?! Maybe there isn't such a risk after all...". I'd be more inclined to expect "For your own safety, all airline passengers shall now be required to submit to a preflight full-body MRI scan. As we have seen, it is the only way to close these numerous attack vectors that have now been exposed to the terrorists. God bless America, 9/11, 9/11. "
Maybe these devices and this system isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternative, which is doing nothing.
Callous as it may sound, we balance convenience and cost against people's lives every day. Reducing the national speed limit to 10MPH would undoubtedly save lives, but people's need to travel is deemed to outweigh that benefit.
Having accepted that we as a society do allow some increased risk in exchange for our day-to-day rights, profits and convenience, the question becomes: "How does the potential for an attack balance against the cost and restriction presented by the security measures?"
A measure such as this is very expensive, only moderately effective, potentially risky (I haven't had a chance to read up properly on the radiation issues) and felt by many to be an unacceptable invasion of privacy. The risk presented by terrorists is minuscule (look at all the juicy unsecured targets in the US that simply aren't being attacked, then compare that to Northern Ireland - the latter is what you see if there are actually a reasonably sized core of determined attackers). To me, this seems like an unacceptable trade-off.
Because it's about placating the public, appearing to have done something when the election rolls around, and perhaps scratching the backs of those campaign contributors in the security industry.
Reading that back I admit it sounds a little like something from the tinfoil-hat brigade, so I do hope I'm not devolving into one of them. It does seem that pandering to the voters (and perhaps a little low level corruption) is how much political business is done. It doesn't even have to be especially nefarious - "better safe than sorry" doesn't just apply to actually preventing attacks, it applies to how they're going to answer the voters if an attack does (by some million to one chance) actually occur; saying that security measures were put in place can easily save their career, even if those measures were (by definition, since this hypothetical attack occurred) ineffective.
Thing is, we don't even really need "a better way of detecting terrorists". The incidence of terrorism against airlines is practically a rounding error and as we've seen, the TSA has been unsuccessful in preventing the (very few) attempted bombings in the recent past yet the attacks still failed. If we removed the theatre and replaced it with nothing, maybe keeping a few basic and effective measures to discourage obvious attacks, we'd be better off, and the risk would still be negligible. If we replaced it with something actually effective then that'd theoretically be even better, but most effective methods are expensive, invasive or both and I'm unconvinced that they would be worthwhile considering how low the risk is.
Good luck finding a copy under $500 dollars.
Surely an investor, of all people, should see the value in doing another print run!
There doesn't appear to be a +1: Awesome mod option...
When you put it like that, I think I'll pass on using a breathalyser that's open to Walmart customers...
But as I mentioned, I withhold judgment on this. It is entirely possible that Julian Assange is both a champion of transparency AND a rapist.
Entirely agreed.
The Swedish prosecutor claims that it is common for rape cases in Sweden to be dropped and reopened (Cue the conspiracy theorists yelling, "They WOULD say that!")
Some hard data would be good, here - it definitely seems like there are oddities about how this case was handled, but since the vast majority of cases don't get anything like this intense scrutiny we don't know if they are, in fact, perfectly normal legal or bureaucratic quirks. I wonder what percentage of Swedish rape cases are dropped and re-opened, or how many international warrants are rejected by the UK and resubmitted, for instance.
I'm far more interested in the charges leveled by John Young of Cryptome, that he is a mercenary selling access to unredacted source documents to the highest bidder on the black market.
Interesting accusation, and it's the first I've heard of it. Any chance of a link?