I've finally come to a decision. I'm going to use.htaccess to block links to my site from fark and slashdot - because my site will probably survive the slashdot, but my wallet won't.
I've run my personal website for the last 8 years. It's hosted on a good webhost, with fairly standard TOS, i.e. I have to pay penalty fees when my bandwidth exceeds my monthly allowance. I have no ads on my site, I don't sell anything, so it all comes out of my own pocket, and frankly, I can live without the several hundred pounds worth of penalty I'll have to cough up..
Here's my answers to some possible comments:
'it's on the web, you should expect to be linked'. Fine. I get 200 odd regular visitors, I know of several dozen links to my site. That's fair enough, in fact I like it. But there is a difference between a link that drives a little traffic to your site, and a LOT of traffic.
To draw a parallel, I invite my friends round to park outside my house when visiting, which is fine. It doesn't work if they bring 10,000 mates unexpectedly, and to whine about 'freedom of the internet' doesn't mitigate the damage that is knowingly done to smalltime hosters.
'just buy more bandwidth'.
Err. I use about 1/5 to a 1/4 of my available monthly bandwidth. I've never gone over 1/2. Why should I pay substantially higher hosting changes all the time, just for that one time someone decides my site has something funny/interesting/controverial on it enough to be worth sharing with 10,000 people at once? My site is a labour of love, not a paid-for commercial or public service.
'host it on your own link, then you won't have penalty charges'
Broadband only hit my area a few months ago. But frankly, I'm not going to switch to hosting my own because of the hassle of having a box up 24/7/365 plus the fire risk of running a server unattended at home, is too great - even though I've certainly got the skills to do so. (Linux admin is part of my job). Remote hosting is cheap, after all. Again, why should I have to go to the effort of having a hardened server setup up just in case it gets slashdotted?
Far as I'm concerned, it would be a matter of courtesy to cache ANY non major site, ESPECIALLY those without advertising. Google manages it, web proxy servers manage it without legal problems.
I honestly cannot see that cacheing a site that doesn't want to be cached is any greater of a legal risk than the risk that slashdot will get sued for DOS'ing a website.
Plus, slashdot would be a far better site if half the links posted weren't netdead before the 5th comment is posted!
But until slashdot, and it's kin, take action to mitigate the damage they do, they will not be welcome to link to my site.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html is a good faq (in english, not geek;)
A sample ----
2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English?
It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with the vendor. The obvious application is digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.
TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely. It will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buying it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: Palladium could be the answer to his prayer.
There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are `born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.
There is a downside too. There will be remote censorship: the mechanisms designed to delete pirated music under remote control may be used to delete documents that a court (or a software company) has decided are offensive - this could be anything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders. Software companies can also make it harder for you to switch to their competitors' products; for example, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor.
The reason we all receive a dozen spam a week offering low cost cartridges is because they only need a tiny number of people to actually clickthrough for them to make a profit on the deal.
So as long as you buy from (or even just clickthrough) spam, we will ALL receive tons of it.
The only real solution to spam is if NOBODY buys from, or clicks through spam. Then it become uneconomical to hire spammers, and they go out of business.
If you wanted want the spam is selling, fine. Google for it, you'll always be able to find another good supplier, and you won't be supporting the industry that means 3/4 of the email I receive is spam.
I must admit, I still think that telemarketing is about as low a job as you can go, while remaining inside in the warm.
Still, it's not the telemarkets fault they have to do such a crappy job, so I agree there's no need to blast them for it. Personally, as soon as I twig they're trying to sell me something (usually about halfway through the first sentence) I tell them that a) I rent, therefore am in no need of double glazing, to sell my property, or to have my carpets shampoo'd or b) I never use credit cards, so don't need one.
I rarely have to say anything else to make them quit and move on. All acomplished with minimal effort and politeness!
What is so wrong in enforcing software licensing? Well, here's one thing for starters.
Microsoft have been wanting to get out of the business of selling software for years. They want to get into the software rental business.
Let's say you use Microsoft Office on Windows. Pretty common. You've bought the software, so you've nothing to fear from TCPA checking your copy of office is legal. If microsoft bring out a new version, you don't have to buy it, you can carry on using your existing copy. That is microsoft's biggest problem, they can't make you buy the new version. You'll always be able to access your existing files. Even if Microsoft change the file format, you don't lose access to your old data.
Now, lets zoom forward 10 years. Office TCPA has switched to a licencing model. Instead of buying a CD and the rights to install it on only one machine, you download it from microsoft, and can install it on as many palladium machines as you like, as long as it's only in use on one machine at a time. Hardware backed encryption enforces that. So far so fair. But it's a rental, not a purchase.
At the end of the year, unless you cough up that annual licence fee, you can't use office any more. And here's the killer. You can't open your old files any more. Your unbeatably encrypted and trusted palladium machine won't let you open them. And the double whammy? The DMCA and it's worldwide cousins will make it illegal for other products, like open office to even look at your old files, as microsoft will have comingled encryption into that closed document spec, thus making your interoperable product a circumvention device.
So sure, you can switch to the competition. But only at the expense of losing access to all the files you have stored (yours and other peoples) in that closed format. Hell, if microsoft were really feeling their oats, they could make every document you ever wrote unaccessible to everyone until you cough up that 'nominal' licence fee.
Of course, there's nothing to stop microsoft doing this now - except that without hardware backed encryption and a trusted operating system running on it being the only way to run the software, the file formats and software would be cracked before it hit the public download section. With TCPA and palladium, we'll lose more that just fair use rights, we'll lose ever competitor that even TRIES to fight on microsoft turf.
And if you think the US DOJ will step in, I respectfully point you towards the events of the last few years as to how successful that will be.
Slashdot Mirror
I've run my personal website for the last 8 years. It's hosted on a good webhost, with fairly standard TOS, i.e. I have to pay penalty fees when my bandwidth exceeds my monthly allowance. I have no ads on my site, I don't sell anything, so it all comes out of my own pocket, and frankly, I can live without the several hundred pounds worth of penalty I'll have to cough up..
Here's my answers to some possible comments:
'it's on the web, you should expect to be linked'.
Fine. I get 200 odd regular visitors, I know of several dozen links to my site. That's fair enough, in fact I like it. But there is a difference between a link that drives a little traffic to your site, and a LOT of traffic.
To draw a parallel, I invite my friends round to park outside my house when visiting, which is fine. It doesn't work if they bring 10,000 mates unexpectedly, and to whine about 'freedom of the internet' doesn't mitigate the damage that is knowingly done to smalltime hosters.
'just buy more bandwidth'.
Err. I use about 1/5 to a 1/4 of my available monthly bandwidth. I've never gone over 1/2. Why should I pay substantially higher hosting changes all the time, just for that one time someone decides my site has something funny/interesting/controverial on it enough to be worth sharing with 10,000 people at once? My site is a labour of love, not a paid-for commercial or public service.
'host it on your own link, then you won't have penalty charges'
Broadband only hit my area a few months ago. But frankly, I'm not going to switch to hosting my own because of the hassle of having a box up 24/7/365 plus the fire risk of running a server unattended at home, is too great - even though I've certainly got the skills to do so. (Linux admin is part of my job). Remote hosting is cheap, after all. Again, why should I have to go to the effort of having a hardened server setup up just in case it gets slashdotted?
Far as I'm concerned, it would be a matter of courtesy to cache ANY non major site, ESPECIALLY those without advertising. Google manages it, web proxy servers manage it without legal problems.
I honestly cannot see that cacheing a site that doesn't want to be cached is any greater of a legal risk than the risk that slashdot will get sued for DOS'ing a website.
Plus, slashdot would be a far better site if half the links posted weren't netdead before the 5th comment is posted!
But until slashdot, and it's kin, take action to mitigate the damage they do, they will not be welcome to link to my site.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html is a good faq (in english, not geek ;)
A sample ----
2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English?
It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with the vendor. The obvious application is digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.
TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely. It will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buying it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: Palladium could be the answer to his prayer.
There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are `born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.
There is a downside too. There will be remote censorship: the mechanisms designed to delete pirated music under remote control may be used to delete documents that a court (or a software company) has decided are offensive - this could be anything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders. Software companies can also make it harder for you to switch to their competitors' products; for example, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor.
Sigh, there's always one...
The reason we all receive a dozen spam a week offering low cost cartridges is because they only need a tiny number of people to actually clickthrough for them to make a profit on the deal.
So as long as you buy from (or even just clickthrough) spam, we will ALL receive tons of it.
The only real solution to spam is if NOBODY buys from, or clicks through spam. Then it become uneconomical to hire spammers, and they go out of business.
If you wanted want the spam is selling, fine. Google for it, you'll always be able to find another good supplier, and you won't be supporting the industry that means 3/4 of the email I receive is spam.
I must admit, I still think that telemarketing is about as low a job as you can go, while remaining inside in the warm.
Still, it's not the telemarkets fault they have to do such a crappy job, so I agree there's no need to blast them for it. Personally, as soon as I twig they're trying to sell me something (usually about halfway through the first sentence) I tell them that
a) I rent, therefore am in no need of double glazing, to sell my property, or to have my carpets shampoo'd
or
b) I never use credit cards, so don't need one.
I rarely have to say anything else to make them quit and move on. All acomplished with minimal effort and politeness!
Try mldonkey , it's a linux client for the edonkey/emule network. Works for me.
What is so wrong in enforcing software licensing? Well, here's one thing for starters. Microsoft have been wanting to get out of the business of selling software for years. They want to get into the software rental business. Let's say you use Microsoft Office on Windows. Pretty common. You've bought the software, so you've nothing to fear from TCPA checking your copy of office is legal. If microsoft bring out a new version, you don't have to buy it, you can carry on using your existing copy. That is microsoft's biggest problem, they can't make you buy the new version. You'll always be able to access your existing files. Even if Microsoft change the file format, you don't lose access to your old data. Now, lets zoom forward 10 years. Office TCPA has switched to a licencing model. Instead of buying a CD and the rights to install it on only one machine, you download it from microsoft, and can install it on as many palladium machines as you like, as long as it's only in use on one machine at a time. Hardware backed encryption enforces that. So far so fair. But it's a rental, not a purchase. At the end of the year, unless you cough up that annual licence fee, you can't use office any more. And here's the killer. You can't open your old files any more. Your unbeatably encrypted and trusted palladium machine won't let you open them. And the double whammy? The DMCA and it's worldwide cousins will make it illegal for other products, like open office to even look at your old files, as microsoft will have comingled encryption into that closed document spec, thus making your interoperable product a circumvention device. So sure, you can switch to the competition. But only at the expense of losing access to all the files you have stored (yours and other peoples) in that closed format. Hell, if microsoft were really feeling their oats, they could make every document you ever wrote unaccessible to everyone until you cough up that 'nominal' licence fee. Of course, there's nothing to stop microsoft doing this now - except that without hardware backed encryption and a trusted operating system running on it being the only way to run the software, the file formats and software would be cracked before it hit the public download section. With TCPA and palladium, we'll lose more that just fair use rights, we'll lose ever competitor that even TRIES to fight on microsoft turf. And if you think the US DOJ will step in, I respectfully point you towards the events of the last few years as to how successful that will be.