What Viacom wants:
Website operator is responsible for making sure material in violation of license never appears on their site.
And this is the most important part of the issue. Google, Youtube, et al, have exactly zero insight into the contractual arrangements of Viacom or anyone else. It's impossible for them to have access to the necessary information such that they may pass judgement over the validity of a submission.
If Viacom can shift the policing effort onto someone else, they might as well be able to print money directly.
The DMCA is probably the single worst piece of legislation on the books. Clearly no one took the prototype and demonstrated how to abuse it prior to issue.
However, the Constitution of the US is all about how the gub'ment interacts with the people. It has little to with how people interact with each other (anti-discrimination elements are an excption.) The government says I have a right to bear arms. That does not imply that you are powerless to prevent me from bringing a sidearm into your home or place of business. It only means that the government (and it's agents) are restricted in what they may do regarding my firearms.
Similarly, the government is obligated to provide a level playing field for the citizens regarding freedom of speech, liberty, pursuit of hapiness, etc, etc. The executive summary is basically "The government may not demonstrate a bias." You however, are free to "bias" all you like. If you run a coffee shop, and allow customers to use an open mic on "political rant night," you're not obligated to allow anyone equal time. You're not an agent of the state, so those rules don't apply directly to you. If someone takes the stage and says something you don't like, you may ask them to leave. If they don't, they're trespassing and you have the option of bringing in law enforcement folks. Said individual may cry "I'm being oppressed" at the top of his lungs, but an individual (you, the coffee-shop owner) is not held to the same standard as the government. Granted, tossing someone out on open mic night is probably a bad move with respect to the customer base, but that's an image-issue, not a government-regulation one.
If you can demonstrate that Viacom (or anyone else) is acting as an agent of the state, then you've got a valid claim of Nth Ammendment violation. That would be a government action by proxy, and I would fully expect any judge to get extremely angry at a government agency attempting such an end-run. Otherwise, it's just the DMCA being an overly-broad piece of crappy legislation. It could probably be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it horribly infringes on fair-use under copyright law. But that's a totally different fight. Perhaps that's the one Google wants to fight - "In order to exercize my fair-use rights, I'm required to obtain a circumvention device (my PC) and to disable the kindergarden-grade protection measure." That's a shell game - in order to have these rights over here, you're required to break this other law. The situation allows the government to arrest you for exercizing your rights... and that's the fundamentally-bad part. To quote Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"
Further, once your "content" is displayed/performed/exposed, you can't take it back. Therein lies the biggest motivation for the whole of copyright legislation. Without it, we as a society would end up being a bunch of information hoarders. There would be no open exchange of ideas. There would be no derivative works. Information would be exchanged under contract and NDA between interested parties. There would become a horrible social rift between the information-haves and the information-have-nots.
Copyright is a contract between you, the content producer, and "we the people." In exchange for a short-term monopoly, complete with "force of law" coverage, you agree to contribute said production to the "we the people" at the end of the term. During the short-term monopoly, it's up to you to make a buck (or not.) There's no guarantee of profits. You aren't entitled to anything other than fair treatment under the law.
Unfortunately, the **AA and their ilk are in material breach of this contract. Many works should have entered the public domain by now, but through lobbying and outright bribery, the content distribution cartels have stolen that content from the people. And yes, "stolen" is the correct word to use here, because I am deprived of access to the content. I've also paid taxes supporting the copyright enforcement during the term of the original agreement, so I'm out financially as well.
Finally, you're not obligated to participate in the copyright program. You're welcome to hoard information in your vault. You're also welcome to produce a work that is contributed directly into the public domain without restriction. You shouldn't expect compensation in either case. The current crop of content dstributors seem to think that they're entitled to something. They're not.
On the surface, this seems like a reasonable suggestion... until you consider that any number of factors (like seeding BitTorrents or playing WoW) will skew the results.
Also, this method only provides a measure of what you're paying for. It can't provide any insight into what the service provider's network is capable of, or what packages/plans they're offering. If they're offering 3Mbps DSL, but you only contracted for 768k, your 768k "measurement" only indicates what you paid for. You can't extrapolate the rate-coverage details from the billing records.
The best you could do is make some inferences, with a healthy disclaimer about "nn-percent confidence level in the results." Credibility of the results would always be an issue.
I'll counter with "but a tank full of gasoline can ignite the asphalt road surface" and I'll raise you "a small leak in the air system won't burn down your garage in the middle of the night." We can argue, ad nauseum, that neither method is worth pursuing if you like...
But back to the matter at hand... So what? Put in a series of baffles internal to the air tank so a spontaneous catastrophic self-disassembly event results in a small "bang" and a longer-duration hiss. There is no reason to have an immediate-discharge capability on this particular air tank.
Instead of saying "that's unpossible" at the first sign of adversity... find a way to solve the problem.
If you dig around on MDI's website, you'll see that they're talking about filament-wound carbon fiber air tanks holding 400 bar pressures. Some folks are intimidated by such high pressures, but are completely comfortable sitting on top of a rather large gasoline or diesel tank. Considering the amount of energy stored in both cases, I'd rather have the compressed air and a proper scatter shield.
>Clearly you're an idiot.
>
No, I'm just a "night person"... we function perfectly well (sometimes better) without the daylight. The DST shift just places the maximum amount of daylight into the "morning people's" waking time. I suspect it's because they're afraid of the dark. Waking up just before sunrise seems to be a sort of catharsis for the morning-types. For the life of me, I don't comprehend why.
We "night people" are constantly being persecuted by the "morning people". If I show up to work at 10am, I recieve a reprimand for being a slacker, in spite of the fact that I was still working for about six hours past the time that The Man was asleep in his bed - he usually punches out at about 4pm, justified by his arrival at 8am. Me? I'm lucky if I get home for dinner at 10pm.
Clearly this legislations was thought up by a "morning person." You douchebag "morning people" and your silly daylight requirement may suck my left nut.
Absolutely. I also had the receipt notarized as doubleplusgood. I'm certain the Bureau of Records and Community Surveillance has the form on file. After all, compulsory self-surveillance is the first step toward maintaining Citizenship!
Funny, there hasn't been *any* activity on my home LAN for as long as I can remember. Yep, here are the printouts of the logs. See for yourself. Nuthin'. Backups? Got destroyed in the blizzard of aught-six. Sorry, nothing more I can help you with. You want to come in and see for yourself? I don't think Mr. Mossberg would like that...
I'm in the process of building a human-powered vehicle for the Baltimore Kinetic Art event. We've done some testing with semi-pro cyclists, and the conclusion we've come to is that the typical in-shape hyu-mohn can sustain a 1/10 hp output for a pretty long duration - that's about 75 watts. Peak output may reach 1/4 hp for short bursts - just short of 200W. If you've got access to a stationary bike at the gym, there's usually a display mode that'll show power in watts. 200W is a huge load.
My brother-in-law is tipping the scales at 450+ lbs. He goes out of his way to make eating easier. He stores food on the couch... days-worth of food, not just a bag of chips. He goes out of his way to eat poorly - fast-food and junk-food are at the top of his list. He was recently hospitalized due to a combination of sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and pneumonia - all related to his obesity.
He's not a bad guy, but he does have psychological issues. His obesity is completely elective - when he was dating several years ago, he got down to about 250 lbs. If he wishes to flush his life down the toilet, that's his preroggative. However, the moment it affects me, it becomes my problem. When he visits, we have to make all sorts of special accommodations for him. I don't recall ever making special accommodations for someone based on their religion, their skin color, their hair color, their sexual preference, etc. My next door neighbor has been in a wheelchair as long as I've known him, and he requires less "special attention" than my brother-in-law.
And the part that makes me furious, is that he's unwilling to accept responsibility for his situation. The denial and littany of excuses are monumental - it's glandular, it's an endocrine imbalance, it's a disease. Disease? How the hell do you "catch" obesity from someone else?
Here, I'll solve the problem with physics: (1) Eat less, you'll lose weight. Your body can't manufacture fat out of the aether. (2) Sell the TV. Now that you've freed up some time, go for a walk.
On Page 5 of the article, there's a wonderful summary of the situation:
The economics of mixtapes appeal to XL, and so do their politics; as he sees it, mixtapes undermine the power of major record labels and radio stations. "Most artists can't afford to get their music on the radio, but an artist has the right to let his fan base hear what he's done," XL said. "Who is the label to dictate how to feed the fan base?"
It's all about control. The RIAA's mission is about controlling the distribution channel. These individuals had gotten successful enough that they became a credible threat. The RIAA can't allow them to continue being successful. So the RIAA sent a rather thuggish message...
The truely disturbing element of all this is that the law enforcement folks allowed the RIAA representatives to play a pseudo-law-enforcement role. The defense attorneys should petition to discard all evidence that's come in contact with the RIAA representatives. At a minimum, the evidenciary chain of custody has been broken. The RIAA has a substantial interest in the outcome of the case, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the evidence. Law Enforcement officers are specially trained to be impartial. They're directly accountable through the courts. They're held to a higher standard. They're an element of "due process." The RIAA is none of these (though they pretend to be law enforcement on TV.)
If you know yourself and know your enemy, you will be victorious.
If you know yourself and do not know your enemy, you will sometimes be victorious.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will be defeated. - Sun Tzu
Many folks think than studying your enemy's tactics makes you a "bad guy." I believe it makes you more prepared (and a better warrior.)
Ignoring the burning bag-o-poo doesn't make it magically go away either. While stomping on it is probably the wrong solution, it does warrant an appropriate response. Extinguishing it and burying it in the back yard is a good start...
If left unattended, the burning bag-o-poo will set your front porch on fire.
If you're in orbit, you're moving at 7.5 km/s (16777 mph) minimum. If you're moving slower than that, you're ballistic, not orbital. So everything in orbit is moving at least that fast, up until about 11 km/s, at which point you may leave the orbital environment.
If you're concerned about relative velocities of spacecraft, then yeah, the collision of an equatorial-orbit spacecraft with a polar-orbit spacecraft would be... spectacular. But space (even LEO) is a pretty big place. I think it's quite the technological accomplishment for the Chinese to actually hit the target with a kinetic interceptor. (Note: I'm not commenting on the political implications of such an accomplishment.)
Slashdot Mirror
What is this "registry" of which you speak?
(man, I wish I could deliver that with a straight face)
If Viacom can shift the policing effort onto someone else, they might as well be able to print money directly.
The DMCA is probably the single worst piece of legislation on the books. Clearly no one took the prototype and demonstrated how to abuse it prior to issue.
... and that's the fundamentally-bad part. To quote Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"
However, the Constitution of the US is all about how the gub'ment interacts with the people. It has little to with how people interact with each other (anti-discrimination elements are an excption.) The government says I have a right to bear arms. That does not imply that you are powerless to prevent me from bringing a sidearm into your home or place of business. It only means that the government (and it's agents) are restricted in what they may do regarding my firearms.
Similarly, the government is obligated to provide a level playing field for the citizens regarding freedom of speech, liberty, pursuit of hapiness, etc, etc. The executive summary is basically "The government may not demonstrate a bias." You however, are free to "bias" all you like. If you run a coffee shop, and allow customers to use an open mic on "political rant night," you're not obligated to allow anyone equal time. You're not an agent of the state, so those rules don't apply directly to you. If someone takes the stage and says something you don't like, you may ask them to leave. If they don't, they're trespassing and you have the option of bringing in law enforcement folks. Said individual may cry "I'm being oppressed" at the top of his lungs, but an individual (you, the coffee-shop owner) is not held to the same standard as the government. Granted, tossing someone out on open mic night is probably a bad move with respect to the customer base, but that's an image-issue, not a government-regulation one.
If you can demonstrate that Viacom (or anyone else) is acting as an agent of the state, then you've got a valid claim of Nth Ammendment violation. That would be a government action by proxy, and I would fully expect any judge to get extremely angry at a government agency attempting such an end-run. Otherwise, it's just the DMCA being an overly-broad piece of crappy legislation. It could probably be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it horribly infringes on fair-use under copyright law. But that's a totally different fight. Perhaps that's the one Google wants to fight - "In order to exercize my fair-use rights, I'm required to obtain a circumvention device (my PC) and to disable the kindergarden-grade protection measure." That's a shell game - in order to have these rights over here, you're required to break this other law. The situation allows the government to arrest you for exercizing your rights
Further, once your "content" is displayed/performed/exposed, you can't take it back. Therein lies the biggest motivation for the whole of copyright legislation. Without it, we as a society would end up being a bunch of information hoarders. There would be no open exchange of ideas. There would be no derivative works. Information would be exchanged under contract and NDA between interested parties. There would become a horrible social rift between the information-haves and the information-have-nots.
Copyright is a contract between you, the content producer, and "we the people." In exchange for a short-term monopoly, complete with "force of law" coverage, you agree to contribute said production to the "we the people" at the end of the term. During the short-term monopoly, it's up to you to make a buck (or not.) There's no guarantee of profits. You aren't entitled to anything other than fair treatment under the law.
Unfortunately, the **AA and their ilk are in material breach of this contract. Many works should have entered the public domain by now, but through lobbying and outright bribery, the content distribution cartels have stolen that content from the people. And yes, "stolen" is the correct word to use here, because I am deprived of access to the content. I've also paid taxes supporting the copyright enforcement during the term of the original agreement, so I'm out financially as well.
Finally, you're not obligated to participate in the copyright program. You're welcome to hoard information in your vault. You're also welcome to produce a work that is contributed directly into the public domain without restriction. You shouldn't expect compensation in either case. The current crop of content dstributors seem to think that they're entitled to something. They're not.
On the surface, this seems like a reasonable suggestion ... until you consider that any number of factors (like seeding BitTorrents or playing WoW) will skew the results.
Also, this method only provides a measure of what you're paying for. It can't provide any insight into what the service provider's network is capable of, or what packages/plans they're offering. If they're offering 3Mbps DSL, but you only contracted for 768k, your 768k "measurement" only indicates what you paid for. You can't extrapolate the rate-coverage details from the billing records.
The best you could do is make some inferences, with a healthy disclaimer about "nn-percent confidence level in the results." Credibility of the results would always be an issue.
Clean desk
I'll counter with "but a tank full of gasoline can ignite the asphalt road surface" and I'll raise you "a small leak in the air system won't burn down your garage in the middle of the night." We can argue, ad nauseum, that neither method is worth pursuing if you like ...
... So what? Put in a series of baffles internal to the air tank so a spontaneous catastrophic self-disassembly event results in a small "bang" and a longer-duration hiss. There is no reason to have an immediate-discharge capability on this particular air tank.
... find a way to solve the problem.
But back to the matter at hand
Instead of saying "that's unpossible" at the first sign of adversity
If you dig around on MDI's website, you'll see that they're talking about filament-wound carbon fiber air tanks holding 400 bar pressures. Some folks are intimidated by such high pressures, but are completely comfortable sitting on top of a rather large gasoline or diesel tank. Considering the amount of energy stored in both cases, I'd rather have the compressed air and a proper scatter shield.
... blah blah blah ... Royale with cheese ... blah blah BANG! Oh damn, where'd all these brains come from?
Repudiate it (i.e. "strike it down") and it will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
...}
{gawd, I am such a geek
Add a Bluetooth GPS module and a microcam and you've got a fully autonomous surveillance platform.
I think you misspelled "cruise missile."
>Clearly you're an idiot. ... we function perfectly well (sometimes better) without the daylight. The DST shift just places the maximum amount of daylight into the "morning people's" waking time. I suspect it's because they're afraid of the dark. Waking up just before sunrise seems to be a sort of catharsis for the morning-types. For the life of me, I don't comprehend why.
>
No, I'm just a "night person"
We "night people" are constantly being persecuted by the "morning people". If I show up to work at 10am, I recieve a reprimand for being a slacker, in spite of the fact that I was still working for about six hours past the time that The Man was asleep in his bed - he usually punches out at about 4pm, justified by his arrival at 8am. Me? I'm lucky if I get home for dinner at 10pm.
According to the moderation, I'm an "insightful clod" ... mostly.
Clearly this legislations was thought up by a "morning person." You douchebag "morning people" and your silly daylight requirement may suck my left nut.
Absolutely. I also had the receipt notarized as doubleplusgood. I'm certain the Bureau of Records and Community Surveillance has the form on file. After all, compulsory self-surveillance is the first step toward maintaining Citizenship!
Funny, there hasn't been *any* activity on my home LAN for as long as I can remember. Yep, here are the printouts of the logs. See for yourself. Nuthin'. Backups? Got destroyed in the blizzard of aught-six. Sorry, nothing more I can help you with. You want to come in and see for yourself? I don't think Mr. Mossberg would like that ...
My problem isn't fear, it's that I know what "family" means.
I'm in the process of building a human-powered vehicle for the Baltimore Kinetic Art event. We've done some testing with semi-pro cyclists, and the conclusion we've come to is that the typical in-shape hyu-mohn can sustain a 1/10 hp output for a pretty long duration - that's about 75 watts. Peak output may reach 1/4 hp for short bursts - just short of 200W. If you've got access to a stationary bike at the gym, there's usually a display mode that'll show power in watts. 200W is a huge load.
My brother-in-law is tipping the scales at 450+ lbs. He goes out of his way to make eating easier. He stores food on the couch
He's not a bad guy, but he does have psychological issues. His obesity is completely elective - when he was dating several years ago, he got down to about 250 lbs. If he wishes to flush his life down the toilet, that's his preroggative. However, the moment it affects me, it becomes my problem. When he visits, we have to make all sorts of special accommodations for him. I don't recall ever making special accommodations for someone based on their religion, their skin color, their hair color, their sexual preference, etc. My next door neighbor has been in a wheelchair as long as I've known him, and he requires less "special attention" than my brother-in-law.
And the part that makes me furious, is that he's unwilling to accept responsibility for his situation. The denial and littany of excuses are monumental - it's glandular, it's an endocrine imbalance, it's a disease. Disease? How the hell do you "catch" obesity from someone else?
Here, I'll solve the problem with physics: (1) Eat less, you'll lose weight. Your body can't manufacture fat out of the aether. (2) Sell the TV. Now that you've freed up some time, go for a walk.
It's all about control. The RIAA's mission is about controlling the distribution channel. These individuals had gotten successful enough that they became a credible threat. The RIAA can't allow them to continue being successful. So the RIAA sent a rather thuggish message
The truely disturbing element of all this is that the law enforcement folks allowed the RIAA representatives to play a pseudo-law-enforcement role. The defense attorneys should petition to discard all evidence that's come in contact with the RIAA representatives. At a minimum, the evidenciary chain of custody has been broken. The RIAA has a substantial interest in the outcome of the case, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the evidence. Law Enforcement officers are specially trained to be impartial. They're directly accountable through the courts. They're held to a higher standard. They're an element of "due process." The RIAA is none of these (though they pretend to be law enforcement on TV.)
Many folks think than studying your enemy's tactics makes you a "bad guy." I believe it makes you more prepared (and a better warrior.)
Ignoring the burning bag-o-poo doesn't make it magically go away either. While stomping on it is probably the wrong solution, it does warrant an appropriate response. Extinguishing it and burying it in the back yard is a good start ...
If left unattended, the burning bag-o-poo will set your front porch on fire.
She's definitely bitter right now. I'm working my way up to "cold and bitter." Gimme another month or two.
"Cold, bitter, and used as an ashtray by someone else" would be equally appropriate. If only I'd known about the emotional baggage.
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking." - Steve McCroskey
And I take my coffee the way I take my women
If you're in orbit, you're moving at 7.5 km/s (16777 mph) minimum. If you're moving slower than that, you're ballistic, not orbital. So everything in orbit is moving at least that fast, up until about 11 km/s, at which point you may leave the orbital environment.
... spectacular. But space (even LEO) is a pretty big place. I think it's quite the technological accomplishment for the Chinese to actually hit the target with a kinetic interceptor. (Note: I'm not commenting on the political implications of such an accomplishment.)
If you're concerned about relative velocities of spacecraft, then yeah, the collision of an equatorial-orbit spacecraft with a polar-orbit spacecraft would be