You don't share a disease, you transfer a disease. You lose part of the bacteria/virus and they gain part. Compare it to sharing a bowl of cereal. I give half the bowl to my friend, and I have less.
This is biologically false. Infecting someone else does not make one better, not even by a little bit. By contracting a disease, a person acquires (copies) the disease. The copying performed by pathogens and of copyrighted mp3s are analogous: both consist primarily of information, and my ownership is not in any way diminished by your acquisition. One would never say you had stolen a disease.
Sharing a thought would probably fall under definition 3 instead of 2, but in any case, I'd argue that you're both using the thought at the same place and time (be it a virtual place or a physical one, you're interacting and using the thought together). Sure, the person you share with will take it with them in a way, but it won't be your thought at that point because it'll be modified inside their head.
Nonsense. As an example, take Plato's Allegory of the Cave. That thought was shared among his followers, in his Academy, and in his writings. Particularly in his writings, the idea has been preserved for millenia. It's ludicrous to suggest that the billions of people with whom Plato's shared his idea have a time or place in common. And you really can't argue that the Allegory of the Cave is my idea (that is, distinct from Plato's) just because I've comprehended it. So would you suggest we've "stolen" Plato's idea?
We've agreed that it's not an argument over legal definitions; rather, it's one of common usage. And it seems pretty clear to me that "sharing" is a much better verbal approximation of the action of filesharing than is "stealing." I would call it correct. Whether or not you agree that that is the way it should be, I think it's clear that the vernacular supports it.
Of course not. Not only do I block pop-up ads, I use Privoxy to block banner ads, flash ads, and all sorts of other obnoxious content. The only thing that actually gets through is text ads, which I really don't mind.
My point was, pop-ups (and banners) are the only thing about NYT's current articles that could possibly be considered a cost.
If it really were free, why would you need to register in the first place?
It's really simple, actually. Everyone who views their content has to register, so they know exactly how many unique eyeballs land on each article. This tells them how much to charge their advertisers.
So yes, unless you consider popup ads as an economic cost, you are viewing the NYT pages absolutely free.
The reason they're trying to stop this is because with NYT reputation, they keep retracting stories all the time.
Nonsense. The reason they're trying to stop caching is because it lets people see their content without registering. Registering lets them know how many eyeballs hit their site. And their advertisers pay per eyeball. So if people view their content without having registered, their bottom line feels it.
"[Microsoft's recent Unix license deal with SCO] proves that Microsoft and proprietary software vendors have a great deal to fear from intellectual property held by others. Maybe Microsoft felt it had something in its software to fear, and perhaps that's maybe why it took out that license."
Or perhaps, maybe, dare I suggest, that Microsoft's public endorsement of SCO's products are meant to reward its loyalty in dealing OSS in general such a blow.
MS leaked an internal memo a while ago that reported on some consumer focus groups they'd conducted to find which arguments against Linux were most effective. People largely ignored philosophical appeals about the nature of OSS, and they didn't really care about the so-called "viral nature of the GPL." The only thing that really worked was MS's suggestion that they could be legally liable for using OSS if -- unbeknownst to them -- it had been tainted by copyright infringement. That result was documented, and MS is well aware that legally-inspired terror is their best weapon against OSS.
Lo and behold, a puppet dances onto the stage and engages in an outrageously publicized lawsuit against a company backing Linux. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe there's no connection, maybe SCO really is just in it for the money. Nevertheless, I think I'm catching glimpses of a four-color butterfly pulling SCO's strings.
Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
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If you want to understand genuine liberalism, read John Locke, Adam Smith, or basically anything written by the founding fathers of the US.
Actually, at that point, the US had federalists (little F) and Federalists (big F). The two parties have tangoed through a panoply of dichotomies since then, manifesting opposite views on such issues as national deficit spending, government size, socialism (and the so-called welfare state), trusts and anti-trust regulation, and corporate benefit. To claim that any given issue is "genuine liberalism" is to live miguidedly in the past.
The two-party system is remarkably adaptable, tending to align itself to the polarity of the largest contemporary political issue. It's my theory that such is the reason the Democratic Party is floundering right now -- having adopted a large deficit and a welfare state as its poster issues, it was flummoxed when Bush (recklessly, IMO) incorporated both into his more conservative agenda. The parties are realigning; perhaps in ten years' time, the central voting issue will be the comparative priorities of national security and civil liberties.
I still think that if you take something that you haven't paid for, that is theft. That includes making a digital copy of something that you haven't purchased.
Then you're a fool. Theft is prosecuted under different laws than copyright infringement. Theft is a different word from copyright infringement. Theft involves actions completely different from copyright infringement. Finally, theft introduces a class of economic losses wholly dissimilar to those introduced by copyright infringement.
Maybe you could make the case that the two are philosophically similar, in a universal-justice kind of way, but saying that one is the other is nothing but disingenuous.
I'm pretty sure that when you buy a CD you're just buying a CD. There's really no license involved. Because of the copyright on the material, you cannot copy it. The record labels can. Therefore, they do the copying and sell them to you.
The problem is that they sell this copy suggesting that it is an audio CD when it isn't. An audio CD should play in one's car CD player. It can't because it isn't an audio CD; hence, false advertising.
I'm no expert on RFID tags, but it seems that the signal they emit must be fairly faint if it is only a modified echo of the transmitted query. For passive tags, this means their emission can be no stronger (and in reality must be far weaker) than the strength of the query signal when it reached the tag. Transmitted through three dimensions, my college physics course tells me that these signals drop off proportionally to the inverse square of their distance -- and for RFID, whose query signal must be bounced back without additional power, the distance would have to be double that from interrogator to tag. And then we'd have to factor in the unavoidable inefficiency in the tag itself.
So the signal is going to be faint. Why can't we carry around a jammer? It wouldn't have to be very complicated to function quite elegantly -- it could passively monitor RFID query broadcasts and automatically reply with misleading noise. Since it can measure the signal strength of the query, it could use its own power source to magnify its response by, say, 20%. It seems that should be enough to drown the response from any tag in one's clothing, driver's license, or other effects. A switch could allow the user to disable it when he wants RFID signals to get through -- to have the cashier ring up his purchase, for example.
I can't imagine that the power requirement for extended usage would be that steep -- active (powered) RFID tags theoretically function for 10 years or longer. The circuitry, too, seems like it would be fairly trivial. I'd guess that they wouldn't be significantly more costly to produce than regular AA battery cases. Maybe they could even function for years on the juice of a button battery, and fit the form factor of a credit card.
So why doesn't CASPIAN or anyone else against RFID privacy violations mass-produce these things and sell them online for a couple bucks? I'd grab one just for the coolness factor, and I'm sure lots of privacy advocates would use them too. It'd certainly protect the privacy of anyone using one, and by making the collected data less reliable, even those without would indirectly benefit.
It wouldn't interfere with non-retail uses of RFID tags, since there is a specific spectrum range reserved for retail use -- something like 1.25-8.64mHz. And by introducing a degree of randomness into marketers' data, general trends (governed by the Central Limit Theorem) could still be deduced, whereas individual data points would be significantly less reliable. Hence, the data would be quite useful for tailoring goods to what most people want (a good thing) without allowing individual-level violation of privacy.
This bill was designed as it is because it's hard to find a downside -- the rich content oligarchs should have no problem extending those copyrights that are still relevant and therefore shouldn't mind if the rest pass into the public domain.
The problem is that they will mind. Consider the nature of entertainment content like movies and music. In today's society, people expect to be entertained. Shouting "Boycott the RIAA!" is easy to do, but ultimately most of us want to listen to music, and it's all locked up by copyright. Only the RIAA has the keys. Illegal actions aside, there is no real alternative. Right now, the public domain is so emaciated from its nigh fifty years of starvation that it offers no competition.
Now imagine if the RIAA had to compete with a well-endowed public domain. It would be a much less friendly market for them; when people get frustrated with high CD prices, bad-faith legal maneuverings, onerous DRM, and music that is all the same, it's much easier to bypass the RIAA completely. This is a future they will not want to allow.
An ingenious analogy (credit to another slashdotter, name forgotten) is the bottled water industry. Water is not a very rare substance, yet we all need it to survive. So the BWIAA (bottled water industry association of America) has a market, but it's very elastic. Price-fixing isn't a viable option for them. But imagine, thinks the CEO, if everyone lived in a desert. Imagine if municipal reservoirs and indoor plumbing shut down -- if we (the BWIAA) were the only source of water. Then our market would become rigidly inelastic and we could charge anything we want! A hundred bucks for a 24oz Sports Pack and we'd all be rich!
The RIAA and MPAA, like the hypothetical BWIAA, aren't in the business of collecting water -- they're busy building deserts. In their ideal world, every droplet of entertainment comes in their bottles. The public domain is their enemy, and they will viciously oppose this bill.
Apple is always a little sketchy when it comes to speed measurements. I can't count how many questionable run-offs Steve Jobs has demonstrated during his keynotes.
They're always a little suspect. I love Apple as much as anyone, but their talk of the megahertz myth and the amazing clock cycle of the G4/G5 and the biased tests they use are starting to sound a little shrill. Apple needs to admit that their machines aren't as fast as the fastest Intel has to offer. They're much cleaner and much more elegant, though, and that's why they're in the market. That's what they should stress, since it actually attracts customers -- rather than THE NEED FOR SPEED.
I think if you're looking for a failing in the American political system, the place to point the finger is Congress, not the U.S. Supreme Court. It's my belief that the Court should rule with the Constitution even when that means something unjust stands, as it certainly did with the CTEA.
But if you're expressing a general frustration with American government as a whole, I am completely with you:)
It would seem that a more powerful case would be made by asking if the CTEA, DMCA, NET, etc. fulfill the constitutionally required purpose: "to promote science and the useful arts."
Actually, he argued this too. It was also unsuccessful. Justice O'Connor (I believe) concluded in her opinion that there is some additional incentive for artists when the term is life + 70 rather than life + 50. True, the impact is not great, and I believe the opinion even calls Congress's actions "wrong-headed," but Justice O'Connor recognizes that this is a difference in degree rather than category -- a quibble with the balance struck by Congress -- and as such is not the Court's place to regulate.
Like it or not, there is strong constitutional basis for her remarks.
The most interesting part of the article is the pictures. About half show Mr. Stenlund in his apartment, in a restaurant, or with his wife. The other half are screenshots of his character in-game. Both are captioned similarly.
The real life picture:"CELEBRITY - Richard L. Stenlund and his wife, Sarah A. Werner-Stenlund, at home."
The in-game screenshot: "WARRIOR - Accompanied by three minions, Thedeacon, with gun, prepares to attack a monster, left, in the game Anarchy Online.")
The article makes a salient (if subtle) point -- the twin worlds of real and simulated are converging. The bytes on a stick of RAM, the packets flung across Cable TV lines -- these coalesce into a spatial world depicting personality and (in this case) lending illustration to a personal article.
Oh? Show me where it says in the (US) Constitution you are entitled to unconditional privacy?
I wouldn't dream of showing you, since nine of the best legal minds in the nation have already created a detailed document doing exactly that. I couldn't hope to compete.
It's not unconditional privacy (nothing in law is "unconditional"), but I think it's what you're looking for.
The case is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and it unambiguously establishes a Constitutional right to privacy. It figured prominently in the much more famous Roe v. Wade decision. Read it; it might make you smarter.
There are no juries in a state Supreme Court. He was making the argument to a justice, who can be expected to understand issues enough not to fall for such rhetoric.
The "middle-class jury" you so disparagingly reference is not making any major policy changes; they're deciding on findings of fact and leaving the actual legal maneuverings to the trial judge. Beyond that, most sweeping decisions are appealed.
Judges should be educated about technology before trying cases like this, and then prevent counsel from either side from making misleading statements like this.
To a large extent, judges ARE educated about technology before trying cases like this. And why should they "prevent counsel from either side from making misleading statements like this" when they could simply RECOGNIZE them as misleading and NOT BE MISLED?
Yes, the system may have its faults, but the ignorance of your post makes it abundantly clear that you're not one to prescribe fixes.
I know that there are problems with how the music industry behaves when I am artificially prevented from ripping a CD I've purchased. But the article tells us that the cause of these problems is that software is too good at enforcing the law.
I say it's not good enough at enforcing the laws. Remember, the Fair Use clause of the copyright explicitly protects and makes legal much of what overzealous DRM prevents. The problem with DRM is really twofold:
It's a hassle even when you follow the laws
It's too willing to prevent legal actions.
These problems are nothing a free market shouldn't be able to combat. If a photocopier prevented me from photocopying any printed sheet with a copyright notice embedded, I would buy a different photocopier. If it could magically distinguish between an infringement and an instance of Fair Use perfectly and do it conveniently enough that I never knew the difference, I would have no problem using it. Thus there is motivation for the manufacturer to assure that any DRM included protects my rights as well as they copyright holders'.
That motivation doesn't exist in a monopolistic (or more accuratley oligopolistic) competition; if all the manufacturers are jacking me, I've got nowhere else to turn.
So I place all the blame with the Federal Trade Commission and the Powers That Be for allowing it to become increasingly irrelevant in protecting and promoting free market competition.
The problem is not with our laws, is not with the lack of altruism in the RIAA, and is not with a lack of "legal wiggle-room." No wiggling is necessary when the law explicitly permits something. The problem is with the collusion of the major record companies.
Why would we want the source code in the first place? It's probably not motivated by a GPL-like desire to build on it; rather, it's an attempt to verify the validity, honesty, or security of the code involved.
But at the point where one is concerned about a grand conspiracy to rig national elections and control the government, viewing the source is not nearly enough.
Imagine that we vote electronically in ominous black boxes once per year, and the boxes tell us who our leaders are. You request the source code to these voting machines, and the government gives you some source code. As far as you can tell, it's valid. But what guarantee do you have that that code is actually running the black boxes?
As I see it, there are three main possible points of failure. The manufacturers of the boxes could distribute the machines with false election code pre-installed, the government could substitute such malware to remain in office, or a technician specializing in the repair of the machines could covertly substitute the code. The three are not equiprobable, but in any of the three cases, requesting the source code does not address the problem. Even if you mandated that the boxes themselves display their own code, quinelike, on a screen before you vote, you still have no guarantee that the code displayed is the code in operation.
How is this any worse than a system of punch-cards or a mechanical voting box? Because these other mechanisms are hard-wired and validated locally before the election commences. Re-wiring them on a massive scale is not feasible. The same is not true of a more versatile solution like electronic voting; such could be rigged to behave correctly in all pre-election tests and revert to its more insidious behavior on election day during polling hours.
If you're worried about a conspiracy, requesting the source code is not nearly enough. You'd need a system designed specifically to thwart tampering, even by its creators. And even so, you can only solve for one or maybe two of the possible points of failure. Allowing electronic black box voting assumes a certain amount of trust in the system. I don't know how much trust is necessary, but if one is worried enough to request source code, one shouldn't accept the voting method to begin with.
Unless the consumer has the right to rip, mix, and burn, you can't say they 'own' anything but the right to listen to it, and even then only if they pay a recurring charge.
Faulty logic. First of all, he was talking about Apple's scheme, in which you actually do have the right and ability to mix and burn the song without a recurring charge. But even if you got the facts right, you still own the song; you just don't have copying rights (i.e. copyright) to it. Don't misrepresent the facts.
Your logic applied to other consumer goods:
"You don't own a twenty dollar bill unless you have the right to photocopy it"
"You don't own your basement unless you have the right to make bombs in it"
"You don't own a gun unless you have the right to rob a bank with it"
"You don't own that beer or that car unless you have the right to drive drunk"
Restrictions of property usage are a part of our life, and they do not signify a lack of ownership. Bandying about with terms like this is exactly what leads the RIAA to erroneously equate copyright infringement with theft. Don't sink to their level, please.
use the spammer's postal address as the return address.
I'm not absolutely certain (I'm no lawyer), but I believe that constitutes mail fraud. Unlike the email fraud spammers commit, mail fraud is a serious crime, perhaps a felony.
...is that it goes to trial and the judge rules in favor of the FSF but then assesses damages to be negligible. Sure, OpenTV would have to comply with the GPL thereafter, but I don't think anyone here cares about the OpenTV source specifically so much as the precedent it would set: that violating the GPL has no negative consequences, and the worst that can happen if you do is that you'll have to start following it later.
If companies realized that, there would be no deterrent to breaking the GPL, and mass disobediance could follow. And, as the RIAA can tell you, you can't sue everyone for copyright infringement.
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You don't share a disease, you transfer a disease. You lose part of the bacteria/virus and they gain part. Compare it to sharing a bowl of cereal. I give half the bowl to my friend, and I have less.
This is biologically false. Infecting someone else does not make one better, not even by a little bit. By contracting a disease, a person acquires (copies) the disease. The copying performed by pathogens and of copyrighted mp3s are analogous: both consist primarily of information, and my ownership is not in any way diminished by your acquisition. One would never say you had stolen a disease.
Sharing a thought would probably fall under definition 3 instead of 2, but in any case, I'd argue that you're both using the thought at the same place and time (be it a virtual place or a physical one, you're interacting and using the thought together). Sure, the person you share with will take it with them in a way, but it won't be your thought at that point because it'll be modified inside their head.
Nonsense. As an example, take Plato's Allegory of the Cave. That thought was shared among his followers, in his Academy, and in his writings. Particularly in his writings, the idea has been preserved for millenia. It's ludicrous to suggest that the billions of people with whom Plato's shared his idea have a time or place in common. And you really can't argue that the Allegory of the Cave is my idea (that is, distinct from Plato's) just because I've comprehended it. So would you suggest we've "stolen" Plato's idea?
We've agreed that it's not an argument over legal definitions; rather, it's one of common usage. And it seems pretty clear to me that "sharing" is a much better verbal approximation of the action of filesharing than is "stealing." I would call it correct. Whether or not you agree that that is the way it should be, I think it's clear that the vernacular supports it.
Sharing means one copy, used together in the same place at the same time, or used individually, taking turns
What about sharing a disease? Or sharing a thought with someone? Are those, too, not true sharing? I really want to hear your response.
So you actually ALLOW the popup ads?
Of course not. Not only do I block pop-up ads, I use Privoxy to block banner ads, flash ads, and all sorts of other obnoxious content. The only thing that actually gets through is text ads, which I really don't mind.
My point was, pop-ups (and banners) are the only thing about NYT's current articles that could possibly be considered a cost.
If it really were free, why would you need to register in the first place?
It's really simple, actually. Everyone who views their content has to register, so they know exactly how many unique eyeballs land on each article. This tells them how much to charge their advertisers.
So yes, unless you consider popup ads as an economic cost, you are viewing the NYT pages absolutely free.
Why should the RIAA change its business model to a pennies per song method
Because nothing else is going to work. If they refuse, they'll die.
The reason they're trying to stop this is because with NYT reputation, they keep retracting stories all the time.
Nonsense. The reason they're trying to stop caching is because it lets people see their content without registering. Registering lets them know how many eyeballs hit their site. And their advertisers pay per eyeball. So if people view their content without having registered, their bottom line feels it.
From the article:
"[Microsoft's recent Unix license deal with SCO] proves that Microsoft and proprietary software vendors have a great deal to fear from intellectual property held by others. Maybe Microsoft felt it had something in its software to fear, and perhaps that's maybe why it took out that license."
Or perhaps, maybe, dare I suggest, that Microsoft's public endorsement of SCO's products are meant to reward its loyalty in dealing OSS in general such a blow.
MS leaked an internal memo a while ago that reported on some consumer focus groups they'd conducted to find which arguments against Linux were most effective. People largely ignored philosophical appeals about the nature of OSS, and they didn't really care about the so-called "viral nature of the GPL." The only thing that really worked was MS's suggestion that they could be legally liable for using OSS if -- unbeknownst to them -- it had been tainted by copyright infringement. That result was documented, and MS is well aware that legally-inspired terror is their best weapon against OSS.
Lo and behold, a puppet dances onto the stage and engages in an outrageously publicized lawsuit against a company backing Linux. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe there's no connection, maybe SCO really is just in it for the money. Nevertheless, I think I'm catching glimpses of a four-color butterfly pulling SCO's strings.
If you want to understand genuine liberalism, read John Locke, Adam Smith, or basically anything written by the founding fathers of the US.
Actually, at that point, the US had federalists (little F) and Federalists (big F). The two parties have tangoed through a panoply of dichotomies since then, manifesting opposite views on such issues as national deficit spending, government size, socialism (and the so-called welfare state), trusts and anti-trust regulation, and corporate benefit. To claim that any given issue is "genuine liberalism" is to live miguidedly in the past.
The two-party system is remarkably adaptable, tending to align itself to the polarity of the largest contemporary political issue. It's my theory that such is the reason the Democratic Party is floundering right now -- having adopted a large deficit and a welfare state as its poster issues, it was flummoxed when Bush (recklessly, IMO) incorporated both into his more conservative agenda. The parties are realigning; perhaps in ten years' time, the central voting issue will be the comparative priorities of national security and civil liberties.
I still think that if you take something that you haven't paid for, that is theft. That includes making a digital copy of something that you haven't purchased.
Then you're a fool. Theft is prosecuted under different laws than copyright infringement. Theft is a different word from copyright infringement. Theft involves actions completely different from copyright infringement. Finally, theft introduces a class of economic losses wholly dissimilar to those introduced by copyright infringement.
Maybe you could make the case that the two are philosophically similar, in a universal-justice kind of way, but saying that one is the other is nothing but disingenuous.
Can I borrow that CD? no, it's copyrighted. Ha, as if.
There's nothing illegal about loaning or borrowing copyrighted content. You've heard of libraries, haven't you?
I'm pretty sure that when you buy a CD you're just buying a CD. There's really no license involved. Because of the copyright on the material, you cannot copy it. The record labels can. Therefore, they do the copying and sell them to you.
The problem is that they sell this copy suggesting that it is an audio CD when it isn't. An audio CD should play in one's car CD player. It can't because it isn't an audio CD; hence, false advertising.
I'm no expert on RFID tags, but it seems that the signal they emit must be fairly faint if it is only a modified echo of the transmitted query. For passive tags, this means their emission can be no stronger (and in reality must be far weaker) than the strength of the query signal when it reached the tag. Transmitted through three dimensions, my college physics course tells me that these signals drop off proportionally to the inverse square of their distance -- and for RFID, whose query signal must be bounced back without additional power, the distance would have to be double that from interrogator to tag. And then we'd have to factor in the unavoidable inefficiency in the tag itself.
So the signal is going to be faint. Why can't we carry around a jammer? It wouldn't have to be very complicated to function quite elegantly -- it could passively monitor RFID query broadcasts and automatically reply with misleading noise. Since it can measure the signal strength of the query, it could use its own power source to magnify its response by, say, 20%. It seems that should be enough to drown the response from any tag in one's clothing, driver's license, or other effects. A switch could allow the user to disable it when he wants RFID signals to get through -- to have the cashier ring up his purchase, for example.
I can't imagine that the power requirement for extended usage would be that steep -- active (powered) RFID tags theoretically function for 10 years or longer. The circuitry, too, seems like it would be fairly trivial. I'd guess that they wouldn't be significantly more costly to produce than regular AA battery cases. Maybe they could even function for years on the juice of a button battery, and fit the form factor of a credit card.
So why doesn't CASPIAN or anyone else against RFID privacy violations mass-produce these things and sell them online for a couple bucks? I'd grab one just for the coolness factor, and I'm sure lots of privacy advocates would use them too. It'd certainly protect the privacy of anyone using one, and by making the collected data less reliable, even those without would indirectly benefit.
It wouldn't interfere with non-retail uses of RFID tags, since there is a specific spectrum range reserved for retail use -- something like 1.25-8.64mHz. And by introducing a degree of randomness into marketers' data, general trends (governed by the Central Limit Theorem) could still be deduced, whereas individual data points would be significantly less reliable. Hence, the data would be quite useful for tailoring goods to what most people want (a good thing) without allowing individual-level violation of privacy.
This bill was designed as it is because it's hard to find a downside -- the rich content oligarchs should have no problem extending those copyrights that are still relevant and therefore shouldn't mind if the rest pass into the public domain.
The problem is that they will mind. Consider the nature of entertainment content like movies and music. In today's society, people expect to be entertained. Shouting "Boycott the RIAA!" is easy to do, but ultimately most of us want to listen to music, and it's all locked up by copyright. Only the RIAA has the keys. Illegal actions aside, there is no real alternative. Right now, the public domain is so emaciated from its nigh fifty years of starvation that it offers no competition.
Now imagine if the RIAA had to compete with a well-endowed public domain. It would be a much less friendly market for them; when people get frustrated with high CD prices, bad-faith legal maneuverings, onerous DRM, and music that is all the same, it's much easier to bypass the RIAA completely. This is a future they will not want to allow.
An ingenious analogy (credit to another slashdotter, name forgotten) is the bottled water industry. Water is not a very rare substance, yet we all need it to survive. So the BWIAA (bottled water industry association of America) has a market, but it's very elastic. Price-fixing isn't a viable option for them. But imagine, thinks the CEO, if everyone lived in a desert. Imagine if municipal reservoirs and indoor plumbing shut down -- if we (the BWIAA) were the only source of water. Then our market would become rigidly inelastic and we could charge anything we want! A hundred bucks for a 24oz Sports Pack and we'd all be rich!
The RIAA and MPAA, like the hypothetical BWIAA, aren't in the business of collecting water -- they're busy building deserts. In their ideal world, every droplet of entertainment comes in their bottles. The public domain is their enemy, and they will viciously oppose this bill.
Apple is always a little sketchy when it comes to speed measurements. I can't count how many questionable run-offs Steve Jobs has demonstrated during his keynotes.
They're always a little suspect. I love Apple as much as anyone, but their talk of the megahertz myth and the amazing clock cycle of the G4/G5 and the biased tests they use are starting to sound a little shrill. Apple needs to admit that their machines aren't as fast as the fastest Intel has to offer. They're much cleaner and much more elegant, though, and that's why they're in the market. That's what they should stress, since it actually attracts customers -- rather than THE NEED FOR SPEED.
I think if you're looking for a failing in the American political system, the place to point the finger is Congress, not the U.S. Supreme Court. It's my belief that the Court should rule with the Constitution even when that means something unjust stands, as it certainly did with the CTEA.
But if you're expressing a general frustration with American government as a whole, I am completely with you :)
It would seem that a more powerful case would be made by asking if the CTEA, DMCA, NET, etc. fulfill the constitutionally required purpose: "to promote science and the useful arts."
Actually, he argued this too. It was also unsuccessful. Justice O'Connor (I believe) concluded in her opinion that there is some additional incentive for artists when the term is life + 70 rather than life + 50. True, the impact is not great, and I believe the opinion even calls Congress's actions "wrong-headed," but Justice O'Connor recognizes that this is a difference in degree rather than category -- a quibble with the balance struck by Congress -- and as such is not the Court's place to regulate.
Like it or not, there is strong constitutional basis for her remarks.
The most interesting part of the article is the pictures. About half show Mr. Stenlund in his apartment, in a restaurant, or with his wife. The other half are screenshots of his character in-game. Both are captioned similarly.
The real life picture:"CELEBRITY - Richard L. Stenlund and his wife, Sarah A. Werner-Stenlund, at home."
The in-game screenshot: "WARRIOR - Accompanied by three minions, Thedeacon, with gun, prepares to attack a monster, left, in the game Anarchy Online.")
The article makes a salient (if subtle) point -- the twin worlds of real and simulated are converging. The bytes on a stick of RAM, the packets flung across Cable TV lines -- these coalesce into a spatial world depicting personality and (in this case) lending illustration to a personal article.
Oh? Show me where it says in the (US) Constitution you are entitled to unconditional privacy?
I wouldn't dream of showing you, since nine of the best legal minds in the nation have already created a detailed document doing exactly that. I couldn't hope to compete.
It's not unconditional privacy (nothing in law is "unconditional"), but I think it's what you're looking for.
The case is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and it unambiguously establishes a Constitutional right to privacy. It figured prominently in the much more famous Roe v. Wade decision. Read it; it might make you smarter.
There are no juries in a state Supreme Court. He was making the argument to a justice, who can be expected to understand issues enough not to fall for such rhetoric.
The "middle-class jury" you so disparagingly reference is not making any major policy changes; they're deciding on findings of fact and leaving the actual legal maneuverings to the trial judge. Beyond that, most sweeping decisions are appealed.
Judges should be educated about technology before trying cases like this, and then prevent counsel from either side from making misleading statements like this.
To a large extent, judges ARE educated about technology before trying cases like this. And why should they "prevent counsel from either side from making misleading statements like this" when they could simply RECOGNIZE them as misleading and NOT BE MISLED?
Yes, the system may have its faults, but the ignorance of your post makes it abundantly clear that you're not one to prescribe fixes.
I know that there are problems with how the music industry behaves when I am artificially prevented from ripping a CD I've purchased. But the article tells us that the cause of these problems is that software is too good at enforcing the law.
I say it's not good enough at enforcing the laws. Remember, the Fair Use clause of the copyright explicitly protects and makes legal much of what overzealous DRM prevents. The problem with DRM is really twofold:
These problems are nothing a free market shouldn't be able to combat. If a photocopier prevented me from photocopying any printed sheet with a copyright notice embedded, I would buy a different photocopier. If it could magically distinguish between an infringement and an instance of Fair Use perfectly and do it conveniently enough that I never knew the difference, I would have no problem using it. Thus there is motivation for the manufacturer to assure that any DRM included protects my rights as well as they copyright holders'.
That motivation doesn't exist in a monopolistic (or more accuratley oligopolistic) competition; if all the manufacturers are jacking me, I've got nowhere else to turn.
So I place all the blame with the Federal Trade Commission and the Powers That Be for allowing it to become increasingly irrelevant in protecting and promoting free market competition.
The problem is not with our laws, is not with the lack of altruism in the RIAA, and is not with a lack of "legal wiggle-room." No wiggling is necessary when the law explicitly permits something. The problem is with the collusion of the major record companies.
"Oops." -- Enron
Why would we want the source code in the first place? It's probably not motivated by a GPL-like desire to build on it; rather, it's an attempt to verify the validity, honesty, or security of the code involved.
But at the point where one is concerned about a grand conspiracy to rig national elections and control the government, viewing the source is not nearly enough.
Imagine that we vote electronically in ominous black boxes once per year, and the boxes tell us who our leaders are. You request the source code to these voting machines, and the government gives you some source code. As far as you can tell, it's valid. But what guarantee do you have that that code is actually running the black boxes?
As I see it, there are three main possible points of failure. The manufacturers of the boxes could distribute the machines with false election code pre-installed, the government could substitute such malware to remain in office, or a technician specializing in the repair of the machines could covertly substitute the code. The three are not equiprobable, but in any of the three cases, requesting the source code does not address the problem. Even if you mandated that the boxes themselves display their own code, quinelike, on a screen before you vote, you still have no guarantee that the code displayed is the code in operation.
How is this any worse than a system of punch-cards or a mechanical voting box? Because these other mechanisms are hard-wired and validated locally before the election commences. Re-wiring them on a massive scale is not feasible. The same is not true of a more versatile solution like electronic voting; such could be rigged to behave correctly in all pre-election tests and revert to its more insidious behavior on election day during polling hours.
If you're worried about a conspiracy, requesting the source code is not nearly enough. You'd need a system designed specifically to thwart tampering, even by its creators. And even so, you can only solve for one or maybe two of the possible points of failure. Allowing electronic black box voting assumes a certain amount of trust in the system. I don't know how much trust is necessary, but if one is worried enough to request source code, one shouldn't accept the voting method to begin with.
Unless the consumer has the right to rip, mix, and burn, you can't say they 'own' anything but the right to listen to it, and even then only if they pay a recurring charge.
Faulty logic. First of all, he was talking about Apple's scheme, in which you actually do have the right and ability to mix and burn the song without a recurring charge. But even if you got the facts right, you still own the song; you just don't have copying rights (i.e. copyright) to it. Don't misrepresent the facts.
Your logic applied to other consumer goods:
Restrictions of property usage are a part of our life, and they do not signify a lack of ownership. Bandying about with terms like this is exactly what leads the RIAA to erroneously equate copyright infringement with theft. Don't sink to their level, please.
use the spammer's postal address as the return address.
I'm not absolutely certain (I'm no lawyer), but I believe that constitutes mail fraud. Unlike the email fraud spammers commit, mail fraud is a serious crime, perhaps a felony.
Just sayin...
...is that it goes to trial and the judge rules in favor of the FSF but then assesses damages to be negligible. Sure, OpenTV would have to comply with the GPL thereafter, but I don't think anyone here cares about the OpenTV source specifically so much as the precedent it would set: that violating the GPL has no negative consequences, and the worst that can happen if you do is that you'll have to start following it later.
If companies realized that, there would be no deterrent to breaking the GPL, and mass disobediance could follow. And, as the RIAA can tell you, you can't sue everyone for copyright infringement.