It forbids states from outlawing publicly-run ISPs, cable TV services, or telecommunications services, which means that all those municipal wifi projects that states (read: cable and phone company lobbyists) keep trying to shut down will be able to live in peace. It also orders studies on broadband-over-power-line interference issues as well as the possibility of constructing a "seamlessly mobile" internet service.
It also enacts national cable franchising, which would potentially provide consumers with more choice in their cable TV and/or broadband service. The section governing that is pretty big, though, so I currently can't make a judgment as to whether that part of the bill is good or bad.
Those who care about it will have the choice to buy from someone else
What your diatribe fails to take into account is that broadband consumers have only three choices: one, their current broadband provider, be it their local phone or cable company; two, the other company not specified by number one; and three, no broadband at all.
If we had true consumer choice in network providers, then we wouldn't need network neutrality laws - the market would work things out for itself. But that's not the case. As with any oligopoly, the government may need to intervene to ensure that the lack of competition isn't being leveraged at the expense of the consumer.
Actually, Googling for web hosts makes the process of shopping around even more confusing. A lot of these outfits are either in cahoots or owned by the same person, and they set up websites that purport to offer impartial reviews of several web hosts but which are actually just shills. The way they network the sites together, they get a high pagerank without being obvious link farms.
As far as I can tell, one of the best ways to find a decent hosting provider is to already be a member of a small online (or RL) community where a few other people are web hosting subscribers, and ask their opinions. No, Slashdot doesn't count;)
What genius put "bigbrother" as a tag for this article? If you read anything in the submission beyond the horribly-written title, you find out that what the display actually does is differentiate between the people using it at a particular time, thus allowing several people to simultaneously use the same interface device.
This has nothing to do with ascertaining your identity, and this time you didn't even have to RTFA to figure that out.
BTW, the Jeff Han mentioned in TFA has a site where you can see a much more impressive demo video.
I could go on about how the only rights we have by default are those we can defend for ourselves, meaning that the instantiation of government can grant us rights we otherwise wouldn't have, but I already beat that dead horse at length in another thread.
The difference is that, in general, the corporate world is allowed to throw you out on your ass for whatever reason they feel like. But a public school, as a government institution, must conform to the rights granted by the Constitution - which in this case means protecting this student's freedom of speech, as long as said speech doesn't impair the ability of students at the school to learn.
Judging from the e-mail address on the submitter's name, I'm guessing the point of the article is actually a political statement meant to make the RIAA/MPAA look stupid for (a) their obsession with DRM and (b) suing file sharers when actual for-profit pirates are so brazen.
But if Little Timmy uses the game without being able to legally agree to the license agreement, doesn't that mean he's using the software illegally? In other words, if the contract is void, isn't it void in both directions?
The government will be lobbied to the point where the bill actually does more damage than having a law in the first place.
If you need proof of this just look at the anti-spam laws around the world that safe-guard "e-marketing".
What kind of argument is this?
"The government will be lobbied to the point where the bill actually does more damage than having a law in the first place. If you need proof of this, just look at the laws that prohibit dumping of toxic chemicals into waterways, or the laws that prevent false advertising, or the laws that forbid discrimination in getting loans/housing/jobs."
Yes, lobbying can ultimately have a negative impact on laws. But it's ridiculous to say, "Hey, the government screws things up sometimes, so we're best off having the government do nothing, just in case they screw this up, too."
As for "pennies on the gigabyte", just how many gigabytes do you think AT&T, Sprint, Level3, and other top tier ISPs transmit and receive per day? For example, this article estimates that YouTube alone transmits 200TB of data each day, paying possibly as much as a penny per minute for this bandwidth, or in the ballpark of $1000 a day. They're currently being charged by their ISP based solely on bandwidth. But what if, say, Time Warner could take their pound of flesh, saying that since YouTube hosts video, they should pay a premium to deliver content to TW's end users (the ones, mind you, who are already paying $40 a month for Internet service)? Claiming this kind of money from the top content providers on the 'net adds up fast, and when combined with the additional incentive that the cable and phone companies have to prevent competing VoD and VoIP services from using their networks, you better believe that they'll implement whatever procedures are necessary to make it work.
Besides, your analogy to the 19th century post office doesn't stand up, either. We have this nifty invention today called the computer, which "can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human" (and that was back in 1982). But seriously, the contract itself can be negotiated quickly - the ISPs are the ones calling the shots in most cases, so there's really not a lot of negotiation that has to happen - and the metering can all be achieved through the routing equipment.
Routing equipment which will be manufactured by companies like - guess who - "3M, Cisco, Corning and Qualcomm".
Well, the statute does say (upon closer reading) SCMS or equivalent. And it turns out that XM states it has complied with the AHRA anyway. Apparently, though, the RIAA isn't letting this stand in their way.
One minor detail in my previous post - if XM doesn't implement SCMS on their recording devices, the RIAA may have standing to sue them. But 17 USC 1008 specifically forbids suit from being filed solely for manufacturing/selling digital audio recording devices, and the RIAA doesn't have standing to sue regarding the royalties provided for by the AHRA, because they don't get those royalties in the first place.
XM might have some problems here, but it's not with normal copyright infringement. They may (or may not - I don't know XM's technology well enough) have violated the provisions of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which specifies certain requirements for digital recorders (including royalties) and also specifically grants particular recording privileges to individuals for private noncommercial use.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, they aren't the ones with standing to file such a suit. Various author and artist associations receive (and presumably distribute to their members) royalties enforced and collected by the US Copyright Office, and the RIAA is not among these.
That's like saying that every text box should have syntax highlighting just because some applications might find it handy. Sure, make it available as part of the GUI, but the app should have to ask the OS for the feature before it gets loaded and used.
The thing is, the link between cost and (public) benefit for child labor laws, environmental regulations, and occupational safety laws is plainly visible, and in most cases the cost of compliance is proportional to the size of the business. Not so for Sarbanes-Oxley, where the cost of compliance is, in general, greatest as a proportion of revenues for smaller businesses than for large ones, and where the public benefit is practically undetectable for small businesses as opposed to large ones. It's getting to the point where the motivation to small publicly-traded corporations is to either incorporate in a foreign country or to go private just to save costs.
I believe that Sarbanes-Oxley addresses a problem that needs to be addressed, but does so without consideration for the needs of the companies expected to stay in compliance with it. Low-income citizens are given disproportionately large tax breaks to account for their disproportionately greater needs, so why shouldn't something similar apply to small businesses when it comes to Sarbanes-Oxley?
Ordinary people will see you as a threat to themselves, and you will then be killed.
Thanks - this is exactly what I'm saying. Without society, those ordinary people can opt to kill me, and if they're successful, then obviously that so-called inalienable human right to life didn't exist in the first place.
But in the default state, there is no legal doctrine, no Constitution, no real society. If you are unable to protect yourself and establish rights for yourself physically, then you get eaten by lions or clubbed to death by Thog who lives in the cave next door. The entire point of society - and government, its organized manifestation - is that rights which you cannot protect for yourself are created and defended for you.
Without society, you can climb up on a rock and declare your right to free speech, but if I don't like what you're saying and I decide to kill you because of it, then ultimately, you were gravely mistaken. Society creates the right to free speech and grants it to you by defending you physically from any disapproval and wrath I might have.
And yes, even "basic human rights" are meaningless without a society to defend them for you. Universal declarations of human rights may look good on paper, but they mean nothing to millions of Sudanese whose society failed them, for example.
Actually, the default state is that the only "rights" you have are the ones you can physically defend for yourself. The concept of basic rights only comes about because societies collectively protect those rights, in essence creating them.
That said, society can also take rights away without abdicating those rights to the default state, and that's probably a better description of what's intended with this treaty.
Slashdot Mirror
H.R. 5252 actually does that.
It forbids states from outlawing publicly-run ISPs, cable TV services, or telecommunications services, which means that all those municipal wifi projects that states (read: cable and phone company lobbyists) keep trying to shut down will be able to live in peace. It also orders studies on broadband-over-power-line interference issues as well as the possibility of constructing a "seamlessly mobile" internet service.
It also enacts national cable franchising, which would potentially provide consumers with more choice in their cable TV and/or broadband service. The section governing that is pretty big, though, so I currently can't make a judgment as to whether that part of the bill is good or bad.
Let's tax masturbation, maybe that will work better than this...
Would that be the opposite of an income tax?
I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.
Those who care about it will have the choice to buy from someone else
What your diatribe fails to take into account is that broadband consumers have only three choices: one, their current broadband provider, be it their local phone or cable company; two, the other company not specified by number one; and three, no broadband at all.
If we had true consumer choice in network providers, then we wouldn't need network neutrality laws - the market would work things out for itself. But that's not the case. As with any oligopoly, the government may need to intervene to ensure that the lack of competition isn't being leveraged at the expense of the consumer.
Actually, Googling for web hosts makes the process of shopping around even more confusing. A lot of these outfits are either in cahoots or owned by the same person, and they set up websites that purport to offer impartial reviews of several web hosts but which are actually just shills. The way they network the sites together, they get a high pagerank without being obvious link farms.
;)
As far as I can tell, one of the best ways to find a decent hosting provider is to already be a member of a small online (or RL) community where a few other people are web hosting subscribers, and ask their opinions. No, Slashdot doesn't count
What genius put "bigbrother" as a tag for this article? If you read anything in the submission beyond the horribly-written title, you find out that what the display actually does is differentiate between the people using it at a particular time, thus allowing several people to simultaneously use the same interface device.
This has nothing to do with ascertaining your identity, and this time you didn't even have to RTFA to figure that out.
BTW, the Jeff Han mentioned in TFA has a site where you can see a much more impressive demo video.
I could go on about how the only rights we have by default are those we can defend for ourselves, meaning that the instantiation of government can grant us rights we otherwise wouldn't have, but I already beat that dead horse at length in another thread.
The difference is that, in general, the corporate world is allowed to throw you out on your ass for whatever reason they feel like. But a public school, as a government institution, must conform to the rights granted by the Constitution - which in this case means protecting this student's freedom of speech, as long as said speech doesn't impair the ability of students at the school to learn.
Judging from the e-mail address on the submitter's name, I'm guessing the point of the article is actually a political statement meant to make the RIAA/MPAA look stupid for (a) their obsession with DRM and (b) suing file sharers when actual for-profit pirates are so brazen.
But if Little Timmy uses the game without being able to legally agree to the license agreement, doesn't that mean he's using the software illegally? In other words, if the contract is void, isn't it void in both directions?
The government will be lobbied to the point where the bill actually does more damage than having a law in the first place.
If you need proof of this just look at the anti-spam laws around the world that safe-guard "e-marketing".
What kind of argument is this?
"The government will be lobbied to the point where the bill actually does more damage than having a law in the first place. If you need proof of this, just look at the laws that prohibit dumping of toxic chemicals into waterways, or the laws that prevent false advertising, or the laws that forbid discrimination in getting loans/housing/jobs."
Yes, lobbying can ultimately have a negative impact on laws. But it's ridiculous to say, "Hey, the government screws things up sometimes, so we're best off having the government do nothing, just in case they screw this up, too."
As for "pennies on the gigabyte", just how many gigabytes do you think AT&T, Sprint, Level3, and other top tier ISPs transmit and receive per day? For example, this article estimates that YouTube alone transmits 200TB of data each day, paying possibly as much as a penny per minute for this bandwidth, or in the ballpark of $1000 a day. They're currently being charged by their ISP based solely on bandwidth. But what if, say, Time Warner could take their pound of flesh, saying that since YouTube hosts video, they should pay a premium to deliver content to TW's end users (the ones, mind you, who are already paying $40 a month for Internet service)? Claiming this kind of money from the top content providers on the 'net adds up fast, and when combined with the additional incentive that the cable and phone companies have to prevent competing VoD and VoIP services from using their networks, you better believe that they'll implement whatever procedures are necessary to make it work.
Besides, your analogy to the 19th century post office doesn't stand up, either. We have this nifty invention today called the computer, which "can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human" (and that was back in 1982). But seriously, the contract itself can be negotiated quickly - the ISPs are the ones calling the shots in most cases, so there's really not a lot of negotiation that has to happen - and the metering can all be achieved through the routing equipment.
Routing equipment which will be manufactured by companies like - guess who - "3M, Cisco, Corning and Qualcomm".
Well, the statute does say (upon closer reading) SCMS or equivalent. And it turns out that XM states it has complied with the AHRA anyway. Apparently, though, the RIAA isn't letting this stand in their way.
One minor detail in my previous post - if XM doesn't implement SCMS on their recording devices, the RIAA may have standing to sue them. But 17 USC 1008 specifically forbids suit from being filed solely for manufacturing/selling digital audio recording devices, and the RIAA doesn't have standing to sue regarding the royalties provided for by the AHRA, because they don't get those royalties in the first place.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html
XM might have some problems here, but it's not with normal copyright infringement. They may (or may not - I don't know XM's technology well enough) have violated the provisions of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which specifies certain requirements for digital recorders (including royalties) and also specifically grants particular recording privileges to individuals for private noncommercial use.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, they aren't the ones with standing to file such a suit. Various author and artist associations receive (and presumably distribute to their members) royalties enforced and collected by the US Copyright Office, and the RIAA is not among these.
All the people judging this game without even playing it should at the very least read the article linked by the parent.
Hands up if you can read your newspaper on your MP3 player...
I'm posting to Slashdot on my MP3 player. Does that count?
But they're adorable and they like Coca-Cola. How could they possibly be vicious?
That's like saying that every text box should have syntax highlighting just because some applications might find it handy. Sure, make it available as part of the GUI, but the app should have to ask the OS for the feature before it gets loaded and used.
My impartial advice to Microsoft is that you have no chance,' [Yahoo's Terry Semel] said.
When asked for comment, Google's representative, CATS, said, "Ohhh, no, no, no. All your search are belong to us."
The thing is, the link between cost and (public) benefit for child labor laws, environmental regulations, and occupational safety laws is plainly visible, and in most cases the cost of compliance is proportional to the size of the business. Not so for Sarbanes-Oxley, where the cost of compliance is, in general, greatest as a proportion of revenues for smaller businesses than for large ones, and where the public benefit is practically undetectable for small businesses as opposed to large ones. It's getting to the point where the motivation to small publicly-traded corporations is to either incorporate in a foreign country or to go private just to save costs.
I believe that Sarbanes-Oxley addresses a problem that needs to be addressed, but does so without consideration for the needs of the companies expected to stay in compliance with it. Low-income citizens are given disproportionately large tax breaks to account for their disproportionately greater needs, so why shouldn't something similar apply to small businesses when it comes to Sarbanes-Oxley?
Better than "Wii".
Here's a great idea:
Don't upgrade. You don't need Vista anyway.
Ordinary people will see you as a threat to themselves, and you will then be killed.
Thanks - this is exactly what I'm saying. Without society, those ordinary people can opt to kill me, and if they're successful, then obviously that so-called inalienable human right to life didn't exist in the first place.
I think we're all waiting for this Michael Tzez guy to make an appearance on Slashdot now.
Sooo, I have to ask........ is it you?
But in the default state, there is no legal doctrine, no Constitution, no real society. If you are unable to protect yourself and establish rights for yourself physically, then you get eaten by lions or clubbed to death by Thog who lives in the cave next door. The entire point of society - and government, its organized manifestation - is that rights which you cannot protect for yourself are created and defended for you.
Without society, you can climb up on a rock and declare your right to free speech, but if I don't like what you're saying and I decide to kill you because of it, then ultimately, you were gravely mistaken. Society creates the right to free speech and grants it to you by defending you physically from any disapproval and wrath I might have.
And yes, even "basic human rights" are meaningless without a society to defend them for you. Universal declarations of human rights may look good on paper, but they mean nothing to millions of Sudanese whose society failed them, for example.
Actually, the default state is that the only "rights" you have are the ones you can physically defend for yourself. The concept of basic rights only comes about because societies collectively protect those rights, in essence creating them.
That said, society can also take rights away without abdicating those rights to the default state, and that's probably a better description of what's intended with this treaty.