The fact is, anti-spam laws WILL work if enforced,...
The crucial element here is "if enforced".
I'm also not sure how you plan to get companies to produce self-incriminating evidence that they paid for a spam run. The only means I can think of is to file a lawsuite and then use discovery to subpeona the records, but this would be prohibitively expensive. Few people would spend $1000 or more for a chance to collect a $500 judgement.
The point is that there is no point in a spammer sending out an email that does not contain instructions on how to obtain the product/service being advertised. And, therefore, it should always be possible to track down the person responsible for the spam.
There's a little flaw in this logic: It ignores the "joe job", which is spam that is sent to get someone else in trouble by making it look like they are spamming. What do you do when the apparent beneficiary of the spam claims they were joe-jobbed?
Too bad they didn't mention one of the bummers about the Matrox G550: It only supports video playback to the S-Video output when you set your whole desktop to 1024 x 768 16-bit color. This is a major disappointment if you're used to running your display at 1600 x 1200 24-bit.
It violates the ninth, tenth, and first amendments. How is that a good law?
And which of these amendments gives unwanted intruders the right to invade my privacy to deliver their sales pitches? This law is does nothing more than create the equivalent of a "No Trespassing" sign for my telephone. I see no constitutional problems with this.
"Attempt" to download a copyrighted work from Kazaa and email someone about it using PGP = 5+ years in federal prison.
How about: Use a Palladium-type computer to create *any* protected document that later turns out to be related to criminal activity? If Microsoft has their way and Palladium becomes widely used, the encryption provision of Patriot II could easily turn countless petty crimes into felonies.
Umm, no. For example I am running 32-bit Solaris on a 64-bit UltraSPARC. And applications compiled 32-bit.
So am I, but my understanding is that such a strategy will NOT be available to Itanic users, or will come with a heavy performance penalty. That's AMD's big selling point: Their 64-bit chips run existing 32-bit apps better than existing 32-bit chips, but Itanic doesn't.
Suppliers almost always emerge who will take that competitive opportunity.
I think there's a problem with this statement: Movies are not truly a competitive market.
If I want a copy of one of the Lord of the Rings films, there's just one company that controls the ways it will be available. I don't really have any choices except those offered by that company.
Is it possible that the MPAA is intentionally pushing the home theater as the Theater of the Future(tm)?
I think so. The filmmakers get rid of an entire distribution system and it's costs, and replace it with equipment that the customer has to buy. The shifting of cost to the customer results in increased profits.
If they get away with the first step, the next thing I'd expect is movie rental prices that vary depending on the playback equipment. IE, you pay one price for playback on plain TV's with up to 30 inch sceens, and higher prices for bigger screens, HTDV and/or better audio. They'll justify this by claiming that you use a bigger screen because you're playing back to a bigger audience. Eventually, they'll demand that the playback equipment be able to count the number of viewers and refuse to play if you didn't pay a suffucent rental fee.
I'm hoping that Congress does the obvious thing to benefit themselves: If they drag their feet,
hem and haw, and otherwise prolong the legislative process, they get the maximum amount of campaign contributibtions from the opposed lobbying groups while doing what I want: Nothing.
I'd like to suggest a pragmatic approach: What definition does more to advance the cause of promoting the use of open-source systems? If we say that linking to system libraries makes an application subject to GPL, we can expect the makers of proprietary software to avoid open-source platforms in droves. This would help M$ to maintain the "applications barrier to entry" that has so far discouraged many people from switching to Linux.
In my opinion, we should say that calling library routines does not make the calling program subject to GPL.
It's refreshing to see one other person on Slashdot that understands this concept.
Microsoft understands this concept all too well; That's why their knickers are in such a twist over India. The last thing M$ wants to see is a large population of Unix desktops available for app developers to sell products to.
The loss of sales in India is going to be the least of Microsoft's problems. Imagine what's going to happen when all the new Linux expertise from India goes looking for jobs in other countries. Microsoft's argument about Linux being more expensive to operate is going to go down the flusher very fast.
Indeed, casual conversations I had with several workshop participants lead me to believe that the BSA is one of the greatest forces behind the spread of Open Source Software in the Middle East. The group's representatives in this part of the world may not consider increasing Open Source popularity a primary part of their mission, but it is one of the most visible results of their activities.
The seventh comment by Todd Colvin is interesting and suggests that technological protection isn't always good for IP owners. It got me wondering about MS Palladium: If Palladium can prevent unauthorized scrutiny of the executable code of a program, then how would anyone know if that program uses patented algorithms, perhaps without the patent owner's approval?
Helium is an inert gas. It doesn't burn, nor does it support combustion. Hydrogen fell out of favor as a balloon filling very quickly after the Hindenburg disaster.
Regulation of print journalism was necessary because the barriers to entry were so high; it was not reasonable to expect Joe Sixpack to purchase his own printing press and retaliate against libellous allegations...
I saw an interesting alternative reason (I wish I could remember where): It's not the expense of publishing a rebuttal that is significant, but rather the difficulty of bringing the rebuttal to the attention of people who may have seen the original libelous statement. I think this alternative argument *is* applicable to "publishing" on the internet.
Legal action? On what basis? SPEWS publishes a list of what they *think* are spam sources. Nobody is obliged to take their word for it, and nobody is obliged to consider their list when deciding whether or not to accept email.
I think that any attempt at legal action against SPEWS would founder on the rocks of the first amendment. The first amendment right of free speech is possibly the one most consistently defended by the courts, particularly the supreme court. It's also a cornerstone of the spammers' defense of their own activities. It would be amusing to see the spammers trying to convince the Supremes that the first amendment protects them, but not SPEWS.
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The fact is, anti-spam laws WILL work if enforced, ...
The crucial element here is "if enforced".
I'm also not sure how you plan to get companies to produce self-incriminating evidence that they paid for a spam run. The only means I can think of is to file a lawsuite and then use discovery to subpeona the records, but this would be prohibitively expensive. Few people would spend $1000 or more for a chance to collect a $500 judgement.
The point is that there is no point in a spammer sending out an email that does not contain instructions on how to obtain the product/service being advertised. And, therefore, it should always be possible to track down the person responsible for the spam.
There's a little flaw in this logic: It ignores the "joe job", which is spam that is sent to get someone else in trouble by making it look like they are spamming.
What do you do when the apparent beneficiary of the spam claims they were joe-jobbed?
FYI, visible light is roughly 400 to 700 terahertz.
Too bad they didn't mention one of the bummers about the Matrox G550: It only supports video playback to the S-Video output when you set your whole desktop to 1024 x 768 16-bit color. This is a major disappointment if you're used to running your display at 1600 x 1200 24-bit.
It violates the ninth, tenth, and first amendments. How is that a good law?
And which of these amendments gives unwanted intruders the right to invade my privacy to deliver their sales pitches? This law is does nothing more than create the equivalent of a "No Trespassing" sign for my telephone. I see no constitutional problems with this.
"Attempt" to download a copyrighted work from Kazaa and email someone about it using PGP = 5+ years in federal prison.
How about: Use a Palladium-type computer to create *any* protected document that later turns out to be related to criminal activity?
If Microsoft has their way and Palladium becomes widely used, the encryption provision of Patriot II could easily turn countless petty crimes into felonies.
The compression/decompression algorithms are stored on the media, not in the adapter,...
They're putting executable code on the media? This sounds like a promising virus propagation vector.
Do you know what a tardball you look like calling it 'Itanic' ?? It's almost like you're a little kid who needs to call people names to belittle them.
I haven't heard anyone use the word "tardball" since I was in third grade.
Umm, no. For example I am running 32-bit Solaris on a 64-bit UltraSPARC. And applications compiled 32-bit.
So am I, but my understanding is that such a strategy will NOT be available to Itanic users, or will come with a heavy performance penalty.
That's AMD's big selling point: Their 64-bit chips run existing 32-bit apps better than existing 32-bit chips, but Itanic doesn't.
I am sure the Enron executives share your viewpoint, and wonder why they are in jail...
Umm, how many Enron execs are in jail? The last time I counted, it was zero.
Suppliers almost always emerge who will take that competitive opportunity.
I think there's a problem with this statement: Movies are not truly a competitive market.
If I want a copy of one of the Lord of the Rings films, there's just one company that controls the ways it will be available. I don't really have any choices except those offered by that company.
Is it possible that the MPAA is intentionally pushing the home theater as the Theater of the Future(tm)?
I think so. The filmmakers get rid of an entire distribution system and it's costs, and replace it with equipment that the customer has to buy. The shifting of cost to the customer results in increased profits.
If they get away with the first step, the next thing I'd expect is movie rental prices that vary depending on the playback equipment. IE, you pay one price for playback on plain TV's with up to 30 inch sceens, and higher prices for bigger screens, HTDV and/or better audio. They'll justify this by claiming that you use a bigger screen because you're playing back to a bigger audience. Eventually, they'll demand that the playback equipment be able to count the number of viewers and refuse to play if you didn't pay a suffucent rental fee.
Diversity is good, but GPL is the wrong route as it kills diversity.
No, it doesn't kill diversity. It kills MS's "embrace and extend", and *that* kills diversity.
I'm hoping that Congress does the obvious thing to benefit themselves: If they drag their feet, hem and haw, and otherwise prolong the legislative process, they get the maximum amount of campaign contributibtions from the opposed lobbying groups while doing what I want: Nothing.
See for yourself at http://www.bsa.org/usa/
The actual member list is at http://www.bsa.org/usa/about/members/
I'd like to suggest a pragmatic approach: What definition does more to advance the cause of promoting the use of open-source systems? If we say that linking to system libraries makes an application subject to GPL, we can expect the makers of proprietary software to avoid open-source platforms in droves. This would help M$ to maintain the "applications barrier to entry" that has so far discouraged many people from switching to Linux.
In my opinion, we should say that calling library routines does not make the calling program subject to GPL.
It's refreshing to see one other person on Slashdot that understands this concept.
Microsoft understands this concept all too well; That's why their knickers are in such a twist over India.
The last thing M$ wants to see is a large population of Unix desktops available for app developers to sell products to.
The loss of sales in India is going to be the least of Microsoft's problems. Imagine what's going to happen when all the new Linux expertise from India goes looking for jobs in other countries. Microsoft's argument about Linux being more expensive to operate is going to go down the flusher very fast.
I love it. From the article:
Indeed, casual conversations I had with several workshop participants lead me to believe that the BSA is one of the greatest forces behind the spread of Open Source Software in the Middle East. The group's representatives in this part of the world may not consider increasing Open Source popularity a primary part of their mission, but it is one of the most visible results of their activities.
Am I the only person that thinks this is a massively stupid waste of time?
The seventh comment by Todd Colvin is interesting and suggests that technological protection isn't always good for IP owners. It got me wondering about MS Palladium: If Palladium can prevent unauthorized scrutiny of the executable code of a program, then how would anyone know if that program uses patented algorithms, perhaps without the patent owner's approval?
I *did* submit this yesterday, and it got rejected.
Helium is an inert gas. It doesn't burn, nor does it support combustion. Hydrogen fell out of favor as a balloon filling very quickly after the Hindenburg disaster.
Regulation of print journalism was necessary because the barriers to entry were so high; it was not reasonable to expect Joe Sixpack to purchase his own printing press and retaliate against libellous allegations...
I saw an interesting alternative reason (I wish I could remember where): It's not the expense of publishing a rebuttal that is significant, but rather the difficulty of bringing the rebuttal to the attention of people who may have seen the original libelous statement. I think this alternative argument *is* applicable to "publishing" on the internet.
Legal action? On what basis? SPEWS publishes a list of what they *think* are spam sources. Nobody is obliged to take their word for it, and nobody is obliged to consider their list when deciding whether or not to accept email.
I think that any attempt at legal action against SPEWS would founder on the rocks of the first amendment. The first amendment right of free speech is possibly the one most consistently defended by the courts, particularly the supreme court. It's also a cornerstone of the spammers' defense of their own activities. It would be amusing to see the spammers trying to convince the Supremes that the first amendment protects them, but not SPEWS.