Apple has admitted, on several occasions, that they make very little money off of the iTunes music store. Their RIAA fees and operating costs eat up almost all of the 99 cents per song. The iTunes music store is nothing more than a way to sell iPods. (As an added bonus, iTunes introduces people to Apple's look-and-feel and creates a few more potential iMac buyers.)
You really should think about it first before parroting it. Just because that is what Apple says does not really mean that is what Apple thinks.
If Apple really thought its revenue and profit was linked to the device and not the service, then Apple would be licensing everything to every music service it could. That would only sell more devices.
So far, iTMS has generated only a little bit of profit for Apple. Fine. Now think 5 years out. Apple still owns the device market and is now selling almost a billion tracks a month globally. Think that is optimistic? In 5 years, there will in excess of 100 million iPods in people's hands. A billion songs means, on average, each user buys 10 songs more month.
Compare those numbers to CDs. Right now, online music represents a paltry 4% of global music sales. It will fast go towards 100% if for no other reason than, with DRM, that is what the music companies want. No distribution costs, a single reseller, and total control over what people can do with the music.
Apple knows that the iPod's success and the success of iTMS are intertwined and dependent. They feed each other. Today it is the iPod that is generating the revenue. In a few years, iTMS will easily outstrip it. But they are very dependent on each other.
There is a real problem with Yahoo's model (and every other service that is building a WMA-based solution). Apple owns the online music distribution market, and not just by a little. They sell the primary device out there by such a huge margin that it leaves only a small part of the potential customer base who might buy a WMA-based service.
Make whatever you wish of it, but Apple is in no hurry to open up the iPod to other online music stores. The device works fine for users. It supports an online store and also the user's own music library through.mp3 and.m4a formats.
Until there is a change in market conditions that address the iPod's dominance, any store that uses WMA as its file format has an inherent flaw in its business model.
But arguing that Apples DRM in any way means "Gives you freedoms/etc at our expense" for RIAA, is the epitome of hypocrisy. It gives you exactly what freedom? The "freedom" to have exactly one choice of online music?
I assume you are only referring to music sold by RIAA member music companies. There are quite a few online music stores that sell music without DRM, usually in the MP3 format which works absolutely fine on the iPod.
Personally, I just use Hymn and immediately remove Playfair from the few tracks I have purchased from iTMS.
I am not intending to be an Apple apologist. DRM and copyprotection are simply backhanded ways to restrict people's legally established fair use rights. I think some people just cut Apple more slack because their DRM is somewhere in the middle of no restrictions on redistribution and the RIAA's Holy Grail of being able to resell the same content to people over and over again.
When cable was rolled out in communities, the local municipalities gave monopolies to the cable companies. I really do not understand why such a narrow minded approach needs to be taken again, especially with wireless.
Why not allow private companies and governments both to setup wireless networks? Whichever one can do it more efficiently and effectively will win the business. I do not agree that everyone will automatically flock to the "free" wireless networks provided by municipalities, which are just paid for with taxes or even by charging fees. Most people are very willing to pay for superior services, and this kind of competition would only drive the offering of such services.
To me, it sounds like the private companies want to repeat the cable scenario. Namely, they want to be granted an effective monopoly in a municipality to avoid any competition whatsoever. The difference now being that the capital investment of implementing a wireless network is getting cheaper and cheaper, thereby eliminating the high cost of entry (and capital investment) that has been such a barrier in other network access methods. Competition, therefore, has less obstacles on the technical and business side. It seems that the only obstacle left to build up is a governmental restriction.
Now that this law is passed, unauthorized peer-to-peer filesharing of copyrighted materials will be stopped and we can move on to more important subjects.
You (and apparently John Ashcroft and a fair number of other "legal researchers" in the Bush Administration) seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Geneva Convention. The Convention does not provide guarantees for combatants from countries who signed the Convention. The Geneva Convention is a legally binding agreement by the signatory nations on how they will treat captured combatants
You actually have it completely backwards. There are no protections found in the Convention, at least for those who are captured. Actually, the protections are just extensions from the fact that the Convention prohibits nations from engaging in certain mistreatment of prisoners. The prisoners do not have to be from a nation who also signed the Convention.
In your example, the USA is a signatory to the Convention and therefore must abide by it. And when hostilities end (as they have in Afghanistan where most of these people were captured) you either need to set up a war crimes tribunal (which provides them their due process) or you need to repatriate them to their home countries.
Consider the opposite (and non-USA centric) view. If a US soldier is captured in Vietnam in 1972, under your theory the Vietnamese government could imprison that soldier forever. Or, if the uniform is your safety argument, take the CIA operative who is caught by the Nicaraguan government in 1986.
And finally, I come to your claim of what is illegal and what is not illegal. I will just leave that to the Supreme Court. And they already decided the issue last year. Illegal. It is illegal to detain someone indefinitely who is being held within US jurisdiction without providing due process rights. And yes, US courts have jurisdiction in Gitmo. That was already decided. The Bush Administration lost that one. And they also have lost their claim of absolute authority to imprison someone by declaring them dangerous to society. Due process, despite being assailed in recent years, is alive and kicking.
Guantanamo is outside of the US, so it's not officially under US juridiction. So it's not illegal to detain these people there even if it's indeed a concentration camp for deported war prisoner, except that the Geneva Convention is not respected there.
That statement is incorrect and is only based on the Bush Administration's position regarding Guantanamo. The Supreme Court quite clearly ruled that this position is utterly false. Guatanamo is legally established by the Supreme Court to be under both US control and jurisdiction.
Furthermore, just because the property is outside the standard US borders does not necessarily mean that US jurisdiction does not apply. It definitely does. US military bases, embassies, and consulates are clear examples where US law does apply (and US courts have jurisdiction).
Detention is not the real issue. Detention without any due process, including habeas corpus (the right to be charged with an actual crime), is the real issue. What the US Supreme Court reiterated was that there is no power grant which allows the President to imprison someone indefinitely and that some type of due process has to be provided. In this case, they did allow for a military court to hear the petitions because the people being detained were captured on the field of battle, which in legal terms means that they were captured under combat conditions.
Sorry, but that defense sucks. The best defense is, of course, the Chewbacca defense:
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
You are right. I will not even address the fact that the patent is bogus and there is so much prior art that it should be pretty easy to defend against it (so long as you have the money to actually afford the legal defense).
There are two defenses:
1) The definition in the patent is "A method for protecting publicly distributed software from unauthorised use". This is not publicly distributed software. It is privately distributed.
2) Software, in the definition of this patent, is executing code. The patent is for an authorization system to enable the execution of specific software. With iTunes and every other DRM, the authorization is to access the content, not execute software code. There is quite a difference. Not all bits are the same. Different bits do different things.
Yes, you have to execute code to access the content but that is not the information in the patent. In fact, this particular patent seems more focused on authorization to access and use software program updates. I think Microsoft's update service is closer to this patent, as Microsoft checks your product ID before allowing you to obtain things like Service Pack 2 for XP. However, MS doesn't do any user specific authorization so that would exclude it anyway.
The same things that are defined as "standards" in the PC hardware world are also the "standards" in the Mac world. PCI, AGP, IDE, SATA, USB, Ethernet, FireWire, etc.
However, you tried to change the whole point. You went from using the term "proprietary hardware" to mandating open source behind all the software inside. I will give you that you cannot build a clone Mac, but you cannot build a clone PC either under your definition. There is no open source BIOS (that really works). You usually purchase a proprietary one when you buy the motherboard.
And then you've just ridden up an OS blind alley (proprietary MAC OSX) on a blind horse (proprietary closed Mac hardware).
Ummm. Well. No. OS X is built on NetBSD. A *nix OS. Hardly a blind ally. And if you bothered to use a OS X based computer, you would realize that it is caters to both people who love the command line but is also by far the absolute best platform for the average human being who wants to use a computer.
I think it is grossly unfair to also still claim that Mac hardware is proprietary and closed. With and architecture which includes AGP, PCI, IDE, SATA, Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g, USB, and FireWire support it pretty much specs out just like the x86 boxes out there. The only difference is the PowerPC CPU. I can buy standard memory modules and use them in either machine type. I can take almost any USB device and plug it into the Mac.
The problem is that your opinion is based on old information. That is fine, but don't start sharing it like it is fact. It would be no more fair than to continue the "Windows is unstable" message because the last time you used it was when Windows 95 or 98 was released. The world has continued to develop. You might want to update your knowledge about it.
This is all coming to you from the Windows, Linux, OS X, and Netware using guy.
The only thing that happened is that the oral arguments in the case happened yesterday. During the questioning, two of the judges made statements to the point that the FCC had stepped beyond its authority. This was NOT a decision. A decision will come later. These were only questions and statements during a hearing.
I get the slashdotters do not understand the distinction, but the reporters should be more clear about it.
Did anyone bother to notice that the article only referred to the oral arguments in the case? This was not a decision. These were only statements and questions from two of the judges sitting on the panel hearing the case.
If you need to run Windows, than you can afford to do VMWare. I paid 200 for it so that I could run several linux instances (modeling network equipment).
Obviously you are referring to VMware Workstation. There is also VMware GSX (for workgroup level server virtualization) and VMware ESX (for more enterprise level functionality like management and moving live virtual servers to other physical servers).
VMware is not just targeted at development environments. It is a robust and capable virtualization platform. While it does things differently than Xen, VMware already supports any mainstream x86-based OS. No doubt that Xen will perform better for any OS that supports it and it will be a great next generation virtualization platform.
We are currently deploying a large scale VMware-based global infrastructure. The great thing is, if you need more servers then you just add a virtual one. If you need more actual hardware resources (CPU, RAM, disk space) then you can add that separately. But those resources are better pooled.
"The more you tighten your grip, the more... ahem... piracy... ahem... will slip through your fingers."
I worked at a large entertainment company about 10 years ago. It seems strange to watch the reaction today, as I thought their behavior then showed they had learned that they only way to combat true piracy (that is, lost sales to piracy as opposed to piracy for piracy's sake) is to offer a product with superior quality. It seems those people have moved on.
I have heard it argued that the reason HDTV hasn't taken off as quickly as expected is because porn just can't stand up to such high quality images. Those 'perfect' bodies show their many flaws when displayed under high definition, and for most porn 'connaisseurs' , that ruins the fantasy aspect. If ms. X suddenly has zits all over her ass and acne scars on her face, it just ain't that sexy anymore.
Although it kills me to post a serious reply in this article, I will only remind you that by far the largest and fastest growing porn segment is amateur porn. And when I say amateur, I don't mean a bunch of lipstick lesbians in a film collective that are making their own films. These girls are often the ones you might casually pass on the street, and the reason you pass them is because there is nothing worth stopping for. The idea that consumers who already like watching such porn would be offended by seeing the flaws in all their glory seems a bit suspect.
Apple's suit against the Tiger leak defendants is a civil lawsuit. It does not involve criminal charges. Therefore, there is no right to remain silent to prevent self-incrimination.
Close, but wrong.
You are correct that, in relation to the purely civil matter, there is no Fifth Amendment right.
However, you always have your Constitutional right against self-incrimination for criminal prosecution. In this situation, while the lawsuit is a civil one, you can still exercise your Fifth Amendment right if the information being sought would expose you to criminal prosecution. In this case, that is definitely the situation as copyright violations can also be criminally prosecuted.
As an aside, I don't think you implied incorrectness - "people just think of it doing X" isn't necessarily bad, "foo does X, Y and Z but most people just think of it as doing X" parses equally well.
Incorrectness is not bad or good. It is simply the opposite of correct. The statement was about what people perceived Passport to be and do. The fact is that Passport does not actually do what people perceive it to be and do. That is what makes the perception incorrect. I guess if I had added a follow-on sentence that said "This perception is incorrect." then it would have saved some misunderstanding you had.
As to your example, you made my point. A single authentication system for all third party sites is therefore a single point of failure when it is breached. Once the authentication piece is being shared, then anything sharing it is at equal risk. The point is that there is no real benefit to sharing the authentication component. The underlying data is what you are trying to protect and the best way to protect it is to set up a trusted federation where data is shared appropriately. With a single authentication source, this approach is unachievable because your data, regardless of who has it, is at risk when the master key is breached. In a federated system, there is no master key.
While there is risk of attack at the communication level between federated sites, the risk is still limited to that data being shared. Still no master key.
I did not say that Passport sent passwords to the third party sites. I said that people think of Passport as a central repository for storing their passwords. By implication, I was pointing out that this is incorrect.
Yes, Passport authenticates you by sending a secure token to the third party and the third party trusts Passport.
My point was that the Passport architecture is inherently flawed because it allows an independent source (the Passport system) to authenticate you to the third party. The third party then assumes whoever Passport just authenticated is the full user. That is a flawed architecture because it uses a centralized trusted source for authentication to all third parties (at least, that was Microsoft's goal). The third party no longer has any restrictions on accessing it once Passport has authenticated. The problem gets exponentially worse as more systems use Passport.
Take the scenario where Passport is breached. Any system that uses Passport is therefore breached FULLY at the user level. A federated system, on the other hand, still has restriction about what can be supplied and shared between systems. In addition, there is no central system to breach. There is no master key. It is only a web of systems sharing information as defined.
So technically Passport does not store passwords, but it might as well. The result is the same.
Passport was not intended as just an authentication system. That was only one piece for Microsoft. The real benefits eventually would be in all of the data they would collect about you from each of their Passport partners.
Once you understand how Passport works and would work in the future, it is so clearly a horrible idea that it is not funny. People often only think of it as a central repository for storing their passwords. Some like this idea for its convenience but the Passport model is so half-baked it is not even funny.
If you want to understand how a truly well-designed system will work, take a look at the Liberty Alliance. Instead of the central repository method, it uses a federated approach to the problem.
For example, if you have a bank account, a utility provider, and your employer, there is no need for those three entities to share all information about you. It should be up to you to define which information is shared, but you should only have to maintain it in one place.
If your employer knows your home address, why not allow this data to be shared automatically to the other entities? Don't want to? Then you don't have to. You employer may know your bank account number to deposit your salary. Your utility provider may know your bank account number to deduct your monthly bill. Why not tell your bank to share this information with your employer and utility provider? If you change your bank, then your new bank will automatically update this information.
Of course all of this has to be done in a secure way. But it is more likely that your bank will have secure connections to other entities than the layer where you inform those entities yourself.
Best of all, the approach from the Liberty Alliance does not leave one vendor with the master key. The keys are still with you, you just might give certain keys to some of your vendors.
Sorry, the tsunami didn't effect me and maybe I'm just a cold, calloused bastard, but I'm not giving any of my meager savings to any relief fund for it.
I'm an 18 year old college student and it's hard enough for me to figure out where my next meal is coming from. Why isn't anyone donating any money to me? Because it doesn't effect them in the least whether I live or die.
You know, if you had simply said that you were a college student and did not have extra money to donate, that would have been one thing. Or perhaps an add-on statement that you would love to donate money and hope those who can afford it do. But there is something just a bit fucked up about taking pride in the fact that, even if you did have money, you would not donate because the tsunami did not effect you. Maybe one thing you will learn in college is compassion. I sure hope so.
And to see you equate torrents which allow you to download digital materials to helping save people's lives, I have to wonder what kind of shitty person your parents brought into this world.
This isn't bias in American Media, this is bias in human brains.
Sorry, but I call bullshit. I am an American living in Austria and was in Madrid, Spain during the weekend. This story is getting covered big time in Europe.
The mainstream American press does not cover such a story in the scope it should because most Americans do not care about Thais, Sri Lankans, Indians, and Africans dying.
If you find that sentiment offensive, at least it is a start.
Slashdot Mirror
You really should think about it first before parroting it. Just because that is what Apple says does not really mean that is what Apple thinks.
If Apple really thought its revenue and profit was linked to the device and not the service, then Apple would be licensing everything to every music service it could. That would only sell more devices.
So far, iTMS has generated only a little bit of profit for Apple. Fine. Now think 5 years out. Apple still owns the device market and is now selling almost a billion tracks a month globally. Think that is optimistic? In 5 years, there will in excess of 100 million iPods in people's hands. A billion songs means, on average, each user buys 10 songs more month.
Compare those numbers to CDs. Right now, online music represents a paltry 4% of global music sales. It will fast go towards 100% if for no other reason than, with DRM, that is what the music companies want. No distribution costs, a single reseller, and total control over what people can do with the music.
Apple knows that the iPod's success and the success of iTMS are intertwined and dependent. They feed each other. Today it is the iPod that is generating the revenue. In a few years, iTMS will easily outstrip it. But they are very dependent on each other.
Make whatever you wish of it, but Apple is in no hurry to open up the iPod to other online music stores. The device works fine for users. It supports an online store and also the user's own music library through .mp3 and .m4a formats.
Until there is a change in market conditions that address the iPod's dominance, any store that uses WMA as its file format has an inherent flaw in its business model.
I assume you are only referring to music sold by RIAA member music companies. There are quite a few online music stores that sell music without DRM, usually in the MP3 format which works absolutely fine on the iPod.
Personally, I just use Hymn and immediately remove Playfair from the few tracks I have purchased from iTMS.
I am not intending to be an Apple apologist. DRM and copyprotection are simply backhanded ways to restrict people's legally established fair use rights. I think some people just cut Apple more slack because their DRM is somewhere in the middle of no restrictions on redistribution and the RIAA's Holy Grail of being able to resell the same content to people over and over again.
The jokes just write themselves.
Why not allow private companies and governments both to setup wireless networks? Whichever one can do it more efficiently and effectively will win the business. I do not agree that everyone will automatically flock to the "free" wireless networks provided by municipalities, which are just paid for with taxes or even by charging fees. Most people are very willing to pay for superior services, and this kind of competition would only drive the offering of such services.
To me, it sounds like the private companies want to repeat the cable scenario. Namely, they want to be granted an effective monopoly in a municipality to avoid any competition whatsoever. The difference now being that the capital investment of implementing a wireless network is getting cheaper and cheaper, thereby eliminating the high cost of entry (and capital investment) that has been such a barrier in other network access methods. Competition, therefore, has less obstacles on the technical and business side. It seems that the only obstacle left to build up is a governmental restriction.
Then they probably don't need to use any antivirus software anyway. The McAfee license can be auctioned.
I think I just found the way to achieve the "Profit!" step.
Now that this law is passed, unauthorized peer-to-peer filesharing of copyrighted materials will be stopped and we can move on to more important subjects.
You actually have it completely backwards. There are no protections found in the Convention, at least for those who are captured. Actually, the protections are just extensions from the fact that the Convention prohibits nations from engaging in certain mistreatment of prisoners. The prisoners do not have to be from a nation who also signed the Convention.
In your example, the USA is a signatory to the Convention and therefore must abide by it. And when hostilities end (as they have in Afghanistan where most of these people were captured) you either need to set up a war crimes tribunal (which provides them their due process) or you need to repatriate them to their home countries.
Consider the opposite (and non-USA centric) view. If a US soldier is captured in Vietnam in 1972, under your theory the Vietnamese government could imprison that soldier forever. Or, if the uniform is your safety argument, take the CIA operative who is caught by the Nicaraguan government in 1986.
And finally, I come to your claim of what is illegal and what is not illegal. I will just leave that to the Supreme Court. And they already decided the issue last year. Illegal. It is illegal to detain someone indefinitely who is being held within US jurisdiction without providing due process rights. And yes, US courts have jurisdiction in Gitmo. That was already decided. The Bush Administration lost that one. And they also have lost their claim of absolute authority to imprison someone by declaring them dangerous to society. Due process, despite being assailed in recent years, is alive and kicking.
That statement is incorrect and is only based on the Bush Administration's position regarding Guantanamo. The Supreme Court quite clearly ruled that this position is utterly false. Guatanamo is legally established by the Supreme Court to be under both US control and jurisdiction.
Furthermore, just because the property is outside the standard US borders does not necessarily mean that US jurisdiction does not apply. It definitely does. US military bases, embassies, and consulates are clear examples where US law does apply (and US courts have jurisdiction).
Detention is not the real issue. Detention without any due process, including habeas corpus (the right to be charged with an actual crime), is the real issue. What the US Supreme Court reiterated was that there is no power grant which allows the President to imprison someone indefinitely and that some type of due process has to be provided. In this case, they did allow for a military court to hear the petitions because the people being detained were captured on the field of battle, which in legal terms means that they were captured under combat conditions.
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
There are two defenses:
1) The definition in the patent is "A method for protecting publicly distributed software from unauthorised use". This is not publicly distributed software. It is privately distributed.
2) Software, in the definition of this patent, is executing code. The patent is for an authorization system to enable the execution of specific software. With iTunes and every other DRM, the authorization is to access the content, not execute software code. There is quite a difference. Not all bits are the same. Different bits do different things.
Yes, you have to execute code to access the content but that is not the information in the patent. In fact, this particular patent seems more focused on authorization to access and use software program updates. I think Microsoft's update service is closer to this patent, as Microsoft checks your product ID before allowing you to obtain things like Service Pack 2 for XP. However, MS doesn't do any user specific authorization so that would exclude it anyway.
However, you tried to change the whole point. You went from using the term "proprietary hardware" to mandating open source behind all the software inside. I will give you that you cannot build a clone Mac, but you cannot build a clone PC either under your definition. There is no open source BIOS (that really works). You usually purchase a proprietary one when you buy the motherboard.
Ummm. Well. No. OS X is built on NetBSD. A *nix OS. Hardly a blind ally. And if you bothered to use a OS X based computer, you would realize that it is caters to both people who love the command line but is also by far the absolute best platform for the average human being who wants to use a computer.
I think it is grossly unfair to also still claim that Mac hardware is proprietary and closed. With and architecture which includes AGP, PCI, IDE, SATA, Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g, USB, and FireWire support it pretty much specs out just like the x86 boxes out there. The only difference is the PowerPC CPU. I can buy standard memory modules and use them in either machine type. I can take almost any USB device and plug it into the Mac.
The problem is that your opinion is based on old information. That is fine, but don't start sharing it like it is fact. It would be no more fair than to continue the "Windows is unstable" message because the last time you used it was when Windows 95 or 98 was released. The world has continued to develop. You might want to update your knowledge about it.
This is all coming to you from the Windows, Linux, OS X, and Netware using guy.
I get the slashdotters do not understand the distinction, but the reporters should be more clear about it.
Did anyone bother to notice that the article only referred to the oral arguments in the case? This was not a decision. These were only statements and questions from two of the judges sitting on the panel hearing the case.
Obviously you are referring to VMware Workstation. There is also VMware GSX (for workgroup level server virtualization) and VMware ESX (for more enterprise level functionality like management and moving live virtual servers to other physical servers).
VMware is not just targeted at development environments. It is a robust and capable virtualization platform. While it does things differently than Xen, VMware already supports any mainstream x86-based OS. No doubt that Xen will perform better for any OS that supports it and it will be a great next generation virtualization platform.
We are currently deploying a large scale VMware-based global infrastructure. The great thing is, if you need more servers then you just add a virtual one. If you need more actual hardware resources (CPU, RAM, disk space) then you can add that separately. But those resources are better pooled.
I guess that kind of idiotic disclaimer is inevitable when you compare an electronic device to a pack of chewing gum in a litigious society.
It could just be ... ummm ... a joke. Ya think? Huh? Maybe?
I worked at a large entertainment company about 10 years ago. It seems strange to watch the reaction today, as I thought their behavior then showed they had learned that they only way to combat true piracy (that is, lost sales to piracy as opposed to piracy for piracy's sake) is to offer a product with superior quality. It seems those people have moved on.
Although it kills me to post a serious reply in this article, I will only remind you that by far the largest and fastest growing porn segment is amateur porn. And when I say amateur, I don't mean a bunch of lipstick lesbians in a film collective that are making their own films. These girls are often the ones you might casually pass on the street, and the reason you pass them is because there is nothing worth stopping for. The idea that consumers who already like watching such porn would be offended by seeing the flaws in all their glory seems a bit suspect.
Close, but wrong. You are correct that, in relation to the purely civil matter, there is no Fifth Amendment right.
However, you always have your Constitutional right against self-incrimination for criminal prosecution. In this situation, while the lawsuit is a civil one, you can still exercise your Fifth Amendment right if the information being sought would expose you to criminal prosecution. In this case, that is definitely the situation as copyright violations can also be criminally prosecuted.
Incorrectness is not bad or good. It is simply the opposite of correct. The statement was about what people perceived Passport to be and do. The fact is that Passport does not actually do what people perceive it to be and do. That is what makes the perception incorrect. I guess if I had added a follow-on sentence that said "This perception is incorrect." then it would have saved some misunderstanding you had.
As to your example, you made my point. A single authentication system for all third party sites is therefore a single point of failure when it is breached. Once the authentication piece is being shared, then anything sharing it is at equal risk. The point is that there is no real benefit to sharing the authentication component. The underlying data is what you are trying to protect and the best way to protect it is to set up a trusted federation where data is shared appropriately. With a single authentication source, this approach is unachievable because your data, regardless of who has it, is at risk when the master key is breached. In a federated system, there is no master key.
While there is risk of attack at the communication level between federated sites, the risk is still limited to that data being shared. Still no master key.
I did not say that Passport sent passwords to the third party sites. I said that people think of Passport as a central repository for storing their passwords. By implication, I was pointing out that this is incorrect.
Yes, Passport authenticates you by sending a secure token to the third party and the third party trusts Passport.
My point was that the Passport architecture is inherently flawed because it allows an independent source (the Passport system) to authenticate you to the third party. The third party then assumes whoever Passport just authenticated is the full user. That is a flawed architecture because it uses a centralized trusted source for authentication to all third parties (at least, that was Microsoft's goal). The third party no longer has any restrictions on accessing it once Passport has authenticated. The problem gets exponentially worse as more systems use Passport.
Take the scenario where Passport is breached. Any system that uses Passport is therefore breached FULLY at the user level. A federated system, on the other hand, still has restriction about what can be supplied and shared between systems. In addition, there is no central system to breach. There is no master key. It is only a web of systems sharing information as defined.
So technically Passport does not store passwords, but it might as well. The result is the same.
Once you understand how Passport works and would work in the future, it is so clearly a horrible idea that it is not funny. People often only think of it as a central repository for storing their passwords. Some like this idea for its convenience but the Passport model is so half-baked it is not even funny.
If you want to understand how a truly well-designed system will work, take a look at the Liberty Alliance. Instead of the central repository method, it uses a federated approach to the problem.
For example, if you have a bank account, a utility provider, and your employer, there is no need for those three entities to share all information about you. It should be up to you to define which information is shared, but you should only have to maintain it in one place.
If your employer knows your home address, why not allow this data to be shared automatically to the other entities? Don't want to? Then you don't have to. You employer may know your bank account number to deposit your salary. Your utility provider may know your bank account number to deduct your monthly bill. Why not tell your bank to share this information with your employer and utility provider? If you change your bank, then your new bank will automatically update this information.
Of course all of this has to be done in a secure way. But it is more likely that your bank will have secure connections to other entities than the layer where you inform those entities yourself.
Best of all, the approach from the Liberty Alliance does not leave one vendor with the master key. The keys are still with you, you just might give certain keys to some of your vendors.
I'm an 18 year old college student and it's hard enough for me to figure out where my next meal is coming from. Why isn't anyone donating any money to me? Because it doesn't effect them in the least whether I live or die.
You know, if you had simply said that you were a college student and did not have extra money to donate, that would have been one thing. Or perhaps an add-on statement that you would love to donate money and hope those who can afford it do. But there is something just a bit fucked up about taking pride in the fact that, even if you did have money, you would not donate because the tsunami did not effect you. Maybe one thing you will learn in college is compassion. I sure hope so.
And to see you equate torrents which allow you to download digital materials to helping save people's lives, I have to wonder what kind of shitty person your parents brought into this world.
Sorry, but I call bullshit. I am an American living in Austria and was in Madrid, Spain during the weekend. This story is getting covered big time in Europe.
The mainstream American press does not cover such a story in the scope it should because most Americans do not care about Thais, Sri Lankans, Indians, and Africans dying.
If you find that sentiment offensive, at least it is a start.