Freedom to live safely vs. Freedom to be criminal?
Oh man I wanted to scream when I read this.
That's what the Patriot Act is all about, getting these systems to finally work properly so that we can stop another 9/11.
You don't know that, and the fact that you spew your nonsense as if you did makes it all the more frustrating.
That may have been the initial intention, from the persons who authored the bill, or even the worried lawmakers who hurredly passed it, but in the hands of the enforcement arm of the law, they have been twisted and manipulated beyond comprehension.
How many terrorists have been apprehended as a result of the Patriot Act passing? I bet its less than 2!
How many average American citizens have been harrassed, subjected to inconviences, had their privacy stripped away (without them knowing it), etc?
I bet a hell of a lot more than 2.
I hope this election someone runs with the balls (or lack thereof) to openly revoke such draconian measures. If noone else does, perhaps I will.
Or maybe I'll just get the hell outta this ever-more-repressive country (again, with the HIGHEST of incarceration rates) before it's too late.
It would be a shame to have to leave, as I really love it here.
I'm not a drug maker, but I am a drug user. More than once I've caught "the wrath" for smoking pot. Most of the time I've managed to worm my way out without any penalties, as I believe, I should.
The plain and simple truth is that the Govt (and generally Govt officials as well) will always abuse any powers it is given, or rather, will use any powers it has at its disposal to ensure its own survival.
Unfortunately, this includes the revenue generating streams such as the war on drugs, etc.
Man I hope I am on the jury for one of these cases sometime soon!
I think that many people are finally latching onto the concept that freedom to live safely is more important than freedom to be a criminal.
Yes I am a criminal drug user. However, I have a job, pay taxes, don't "leech" off society (that I know of) and in general am a nice person to everyone and everything. Draconian laws like this worry me tremendously. Views like yours bother me more.
It all comes down to who imposes upon whom. I don't want to impose upon you where possible, but you obviously don't mind imposing upon me unnecessarily.
Addiction is commonly accepted to mean being so dependant on something that you just can't give it up. Addiction is normally accepted to mean that an addicted person trying to stop whatever behaviour or substance they are addicted to will suffer severe repurcussions and be unable to function during this period.
Bah!
Addicted to:
Breathing
Eating
Sh*ting
Walking
Thinking
Why aren't those illegal? =)
(Obviously...)
People are sooo stupid!
Ya know what the problem really is?
Stupid People just don't get how little they understand things, and these mobs fall for stupid "Save the Children" and "Buying pot==terrorism" style rants, which ruins it for the rest of us. (Sigh)
In the same line, I am hosting multiple copies of this data on Gnutella, DMCA take-down notices be damned. This is too important to trust in the "good intentions" of this company. Our freedoms are at stake!
Anyone interested in your own copy can get it here from this dedicated node:
"Since ink is generally transparent to terahertz waves the privacy of the correspondence is not violated while the identification of concealed drugs is possible."
I gotta call BullShit here!
That's not to say that finding drugs isn't more profitab^H^H^H^H^H^H interesting for those using such devices, but I don't believe this for a second.
That's not the point of the spot system. The whole purpose of the MPAA doing this is to ruin the MPEG compression so that you won't want to upload it to the web. A movie will go from being 1.5 GB to >3GB if the spots are left in the movie.
You won't see the spots because they will only be in one or two frames (which might be illegal in some contries) every few seconds, but when your encoder tries to compress the movie, it will have to create an I-Frame (completely uncompressed) because the frame with a spot in it is sufficiently different from the frame before it that the compression won't save any space. So you will get three I-Frames in a row where you would have only one and two compressed frames.
So yes, you could still get the film videoed and on the web, but with your ADSL or cable modem, it will take signifigantly longer to upload, and likewise much longer to download (thus deterring "piracy").
Mod parent down -1 WRONG!
When I read this, all I could say was:
HAHA HAHA HAHA HAHA!
Nice try though. Those are some magic dots (you) are seeing there. Each "dot" being some 50-100MB, right? heh
Despite 99th percentile ASVAB scores in all categories(!), the three recruiters I spoke to basically said that IT type positions were all (or mostly) contracted to private corps, and therefore there wasn't really any chance for me to avoid being a front line grunt/target through military programs, only through private-sector work.
I can think of no reason for you to defend child pornography unless you are a consumer of it.
I'm turning you in.
No, I'm not kidding.
You troll!
You can't tell the difference between committing an action and disagreeing with the flawed logic used by an ignorant person opposed to said action?
Better turn me in as a terrorist as well, then. After all, I am highly opposed to the way the government has so openly imposed itself upon the rights of american citizens in the name of terrorism. By your reasoning, I must therefore be a terrorist.
...I do not think it is possible to hide the address of a server from a client when they are connected by TCP...
Now, it is true that you can see the source address in a TCP packet. However, your next statement is quite alarming. Let me repeat it here:
...Only the packet header information is needed, not the packet body...
This is quite true, at least to locate the source address. However, to be used as proof in a civil or criminal case? I doubt it! After all, the claim of wrongdoing is that the CONTENT isn't allowed to be sent, not that the SENDER isn't allowed to send a packet.
What about a scheme that has the sender send you essentially "random" ecrypted data, as encrypted via a third party, requiring the third party key to unlock it.
Certainly it would be unreasonable to give pretend "rights ownership" of said "random data" to a music company.
Which brings up another point.
Aren't there essentially limitless ways to encode the same piece of audio data? Are we as a society ready to give away "exclusive rights" to data (and all encodings) that can be encoded in infinite ways?
I hope to god not!. I for one, am not willing to, and will do everything in my power to prevent this. Alas, that which I can do is limited, but the combined efforts of hundreds of geeks will be noticed.
And so, I ask again: Which slashgeek is going to run for office this election? You will (probably) have my vote, just because you will be aware of technical issues, and not totally clueless of technical issues, or willing to cave into the first company willing to throw thousands of dollars at you.
us
Aren't many of you/.ers also software developers like me?
Yes. I, for one, am.
...then why is it acceptable for people to take my product w/o compensating me?
I think this is how you are using the word take:
Take:
11. To appropriate for one's own or another's use or benefit; obtain by purchase; secure or buy: We always take season tickets.
27. To remove from a place: take the dishes from the sink.
Appropriate:(v)
To take possession of or make use of exclusively for oneself, often without permission
Exclusive: 3. Not divided or shared with others: exclusive publishing rights.
Remove: 1. To move from a place or position occupied: removed the cups from the table
2. To transfer or convey from one place to another: removed the family to Texas.
Semantics, I know, but you are using obviously tainted words, intended to draw an emotional reaction, by linking a non-physical item to actions that, when taken with physical items, have a completely differant effect (duplication vs. appropriation).
Would you support a company protecting its rights if there were only dozens of thieves instead of scores of millions?
There is no natural right to profit, nor is there a natural right to "prevent other people from using my ideas" (copyright).
Remember why we have copyright in the first place: At the time of the founding of this country, there was a very real barrier to innovation: Cost of Communication! In order for your great idea to be used & accepted, people have to get it (the idea). This requires distrobution, and (at the time) a very real cost was involved in the physical media necessary to allow this distrobution.
As such, someone with more funding than I, who heard my idea, could easily take advantage of that fact, by producing many times more "physical couriers" for "my" idea, and therefore could beat me to the punch, or even take complete credit & financial gain by being there first, or more cheaply (due to high volumes of medium purchased), etc.
I submit that there is no longer the need for this type of exclusive protection anymore.
Information can now be distributed to society without the need for a physical medium.
Since copyright is not a natural right, instead it is a social contract (We give you limited monopoly, then you MUST release all information and all claims to all information to ANYONE who wants it, so that THEY can build upon YOUR ideas like YOU built upon someone else's), and the contract is not being upheld by the "other" party.
Furthermore, I (and many others) find that this contract is being abused in horrible ways, even to the point of prosecution and extortion. As such, I cannot in good consience allow this to continue. I do everything I can to oppose this.
Let me take this opportunity to say, although I author a p2p program, I myself have not bought a RIAA CD or downloaded an RIAA MP3 in years (at least 3).
Believe it or not, it's true.
Remember: The usefulness of copyright was To Get Information (art, science, inventions, etc) to the PEOPLE of society.
Wait a minute, are you sure? Wasn't it to give those artists/inventors/musicions/whatever a livelihood? NO NO NO a thousand times NO!
Everything that a human being produces, in terms of information or art or stories or whatever, has has (implicit
Yet you apparently think the "consumers" of child porn--the ultimate reason for its existence, and for the exploitation of helpless innocent children--are blameless to the extent we can't even consider them "creeps" if they are friends or relatives?
Har har har.
Be careful, your reasoning cuts both ways:
Automobile accidents cause more than 40,000 deaths each year in the US alone (far more than child pornography and terrorism combined!!), and yet you, the consumer, are the ultimate reason for the existance of these horribly deadly "Automobiles!", and ultimately, the death and destruction of millions of dollars of property and loss of countless lives.
Does that mean you are a creep because you use said product? NO!
In fact, the (by far) most likely scenario (that I can see) is that you are a nice, "normal" person who doesn't use his car for bank robbery, vehicular homicide, etc.
However, since those creeps cause deaths and destruction, and you use the same end product, by your logic YOU ARE THE CREEP WHO SHOULD BE LOCKED UP!
What kind of creep did your parents raise? How can you (the consumer, and ultimate reason for the existence of these automobile tools-of-death) live with yourself?
Right?
Of course not.
Please, PLEASE don't fall for (or propegate) the "save the children" rant. They are plenty safe, and people who view said pictures are NOT hurting them or causing them pain, anymore than you are responsible for other people's automobile deaths because you use a car.
Do you see the problem with your reasoning?
I doubt that you will, because it involves children, and (as politicians know) that is the way to influence anyone to agree with anything.
In the case of downloads, there is no physical media per se. The situation has changed significantly. Unfortunately, as I understand the law in this matter, one cannot resell a downnload unless the laws are rewritten...
So if I don't own it when i bought it because its not physical, and I cannot resell it because there is no substance, how can it be theft to make a copy of it?
The concentration of rights here is scary, and requires a drastic change. How many slashgeeks would vote for a fellow slashdotter on an IP-reform platform?
And they are entirely right.
Just as a bookseller in no way has to help you sell the book when you are done with it.
Ahh but wait...
Suppose the book was magnetically sealed shut, with a cover that scanned the fingerprints of the first person to open it.
From that moment forward, it would only unlock the book for one hour at a time, and then only when held by the fingerprints of the "original owner".
Now, the book creator's inaction would deny a customer the right of first sale, by forever impractically tying them to the book.
They could just as easily say "it is infeasable to transfer such a book, buy your own copy [from us, or else you're screwed]".
True, this is a little far fetched, but is a reasonable analogy.
Gee, that gives me an idea... what about a P2P app that only gives downloaders access to a part of the file, while making sure another peer elsewhere share the other parts. The client downloads and merges them automatically, of course, but the shares are never, at any time, providing access to a complete file. Coordinating who shares what might be difficult, maybe those with odd-numbered IP get to share parts 1 and 3, and the even-numbered share part 2 and 4 from a file chopped up into 4 bits? I wonder how lawsuit-proof this idea would be.;-)
Ya know, this is what I call the atomiticity issue (don't know the legal term), and I have been tugging [plug]behind the scenes[/shameless] to get this idea used for awhile:
A musical symphony could be protected.
A short musical phrase probably couldn't.
A chord, or the note C#, or the tone 1200hz certainly couldn't, though.
By breaking it up into smaller pieces recursively, common sense dictates that there must be some breaking point, or else All our tone are belong to them!
Others here have been less enthusiastic, though.
We'll see.
Any law is always subjected to general human values. And any law that limits the right to exchange information is a crime itself.
You may find my opinion radical, and alas it is not yet very generally accepted. But I am convinced that, once people see what the disastrous results of current "intellectual property" laws are, more and more opposition will come and one day we shall return to the situation like the 17th century where the concepts "patent", trade mark, copyright did not or hardly exist
You have just made my friends list. I agree with this wholeheartedly.
"KaZaA has done an incredible job of attracting young people to their site, and as a result they have been really able to attack children."(emphasis mine)
Give me a break...
I had to laugh when i read this though.
It examined 157 files downloaded in response to three search terms of interest to children -- Britney, Pokemon and Olsen twins. It classified 49 percent of those files as pornographic.
2 things.
1) Britney... No kiddin. Look to MTV for the reasons there! I believe that many outraged people (who wrote piles of letters to newspapers) would consider the 2-second kiss to be of that nature.
2) So, the lessons to be learned here are:
a) Files can have misleading search information associated with them, and
b) Some people will use "common" search terms to attract attention to specific files that have no association with them.
A study in March by the General Accounting Office found that KaZaA would be effective for someone looking for child pornography. The agency searched for 12 terms associated with child pornography, such as "incest" and "underage." It did not actually download the files it found, but it determined that 42 percent of them had titles or descriptions associated with pornographic images of children. (emphasis mine)
Well of course they say they didn't download them, admitting they did if they did would be a crime.
But wait, didn't we learn from 2a & 2b above that often people use search terms to attract attention to files that don't necessarily have any association, just to generate interest?
Non sequitur and propaganda, plain and simple.
So which US slashgeeks are going to run for office and replace these incompetent people?
Toss the two named terms in google and find dozens of "legitimate" sites seeking the same type of attention.
This is sad.
-dave-
Looking for YOUR peer-to-porn engine? Get it here!
Will they really be allowed to ruin the lives of hundreds (if not thousands, or tens of thousands) of people, just so some execs can make a little more cash? And also, don't college students have a tendency to rebel against things like this? There's going to be a gigantic uprising...
God I hope an uprising is in the works!
Our entire "Intellectual Property" based system that we (US and much of the world) is putting in place will merely continue to entrench the "privileged" in thier positions of privilege.
Large corporations who "own" the polititions will only continue to try and (successfully) force the masses into submission.
Governing by consent of the governed is no longer the case. Instead, it is governing by consent of those who would be most suited to profit by your governing.
We need a revolution of sorts.
Alternatively, we need tech-savvy reps and lawmakers!
I, personally, will vote for anyone who guarantees a priority of drastically reducing or eliminating the entire concept of "Intellectual Property" and the sham of goverment endorsement that accompanies it.
This endorsement is used and abused in situations such as these. Ask any 20 people on the street if a corporation should have the legal rights to behave in the fashion RIAA is. Should anyone have the legal rights that led up to this situation? I say no! There is no good reason that I should repress myself from consuming or otherwise using a piece of information.
Period.
If it can be reduced to bits, then you do NOT own it! Simple as that. Or, say that you "own" it if you want, but you do not own "exclusive rights" to it to the exclusion of others. At least, not any rights that *I* will recognise or support.
I know I am not alone in this either.
Lets get someone in office who agrees with this viewpoint and begin to push back the tide of "Intellectual Enslavement and Combat" that is occuring, waiting for newcomers into the barratry game.
My last post touched on the same ideas: We are moving out of the age of "scarcity-based value" quite rapidly.
It won't be long before you can "print" nearly everything from its atomic components.
We all (as a society) need to carefully consider the implications of the framework we are laying down now:
Single-entity (human, or worse: corporate) monopolistic control of "information" or "Intellectual Property" is leading towards the "worse" end of the spectrum, at least as far as I am concerned.
Call me a hippie, but I'm not.
Call me a communist, but I'm not.
Call me a StarTrek nut, but I'm not.
Call me anything you wish, but I firmly believe that everyone has an inherant (natural) right to use any and all information that enters their person.
This may be too over-the-top for most people, but:
Everyone has a inherant, 'natural' right to use information, including EMF radiation (radio/television signals passing *through* your body), genetic encodings (God help you, Monsonto!), Clever C++ code implementations (patented or not), or whatever.
We need to take back control of our information!
-dave-
Shameless plug:
Use BearShare for all your peer-to-peer needs!
ip address: 192.168.55.3 [dhcp77-1.example.com]
local ip address: 192.168.55.3
date/time: Mon May 05 07:22:22 EDT 2003
ethernet mac: censored
user name: censored
computer name: censored
license key: NONE - CRACKED VERSION
product: VisualRoute (build 1858)
zone: en_US-06:00
We should locate these companies, and start sending them this exact data in the format their servers require, from C64s (or some other sufficiently obsolete hardware), then wait for the C&Ds and lawsuits to start.
I would think the countersuit would bring in a minor fortune. =)
Product A checks for registration B.
If it finds B, continue. If not, end.
If B, test condition C, and take action D.
If D is too easy to spot (like program fails to load, uninstalls itself, etc) then it becomes OBVIOUS to a hacker that the desireable point of attack is C.
If, however, action D is fairly slight (at least as far as the end user is concerned, and "delayed phone home" counts) then it is *MUCH* more likely that the hacher who cracked the codes for "Registration B" won't notice D, and will therefore release the "partially cracked" program instead of a "fully cracked" one which doesn't do action D.
This is actually pretty simple stuff, and not at ALL original! heh
As someone who makes a living writing peer-to-peer software, I completely disagree that "STEALING IS STEALING" as you say.
I don't want to get into semantics with you, but here goes:
Stealing involves the deprivation of someone's property, removing thier ability to benefit from it. (paraphrase)
Information "theft" is not really theft or stealing.
Thousands of my users probably "steal" my software, but guess what! I DON'T CARE! It is information, which I CANNOT OWN!
Noone, corporation or individual, has a right to profit.
Everyone has a NATURAL right to consume and reproduce information. How do I know? Look how we are physically built, for crying out loud!
Let me close with this somewhat fanatical thought: Every month new ground is broken in the attempt to produce objects by piecing them together molecule by molecule.
Now, it will probably take longer than my lifetime to occur, but EVENTUALLY you all will be able build a generic THING from its component molecular pieces.
Consider this "future" world for a moment: No more scarcity, no more hunger, no more epidemics caused by lack of medicines.
Now consider the same world, with *your* "STEALING IS STEALING end of story" claim: Should the first person/company that creates a new molecular structure have a monopolistic control over said structure? Should you be able to produce (from scratch, not by "physically stealing") a replacement Brake Pad for your car without paying Ford for the privelidge? What about creating your very own "claritin-like" substance for your allergies? Should you have to pay Mosanto?
I stated before, and firmly believe, that information wants to be worthless, in an economic sense. Information has no "owner" that I recognize, and, as such, I do not consider the "copying" of information to be "theft".
If someone broke into my office and stole the computer I was writing my source code on, then THAT is theft of information, as it has deprived me of it.
If someone copies (without my permission) my program and uses it without paying me, oh well! I haven't been deprived of anything! I still have my program! The only thing I *may* have lost is potential profits, but NOONE HAS A NATURAL RIGHT TO PROFIT! NOONE!
(Thats why "Step 2: ???" is so common! heh)
In the above "idealistic copying world" example above, noone could profit! There would be no object scarcity, therefore (almost) no intrinsic value to *ANYTHING*, let alone "strictly informational things."
Time to end this rant, but PLEASE PLEASE consider:
The end result of personal "posession & ownership" of information, combined with monopolistic control, and the added "Lets consider artificial entities with the stated goal of financial wealth accumulation (corporations) the same as people, with the same 'rights' to own information, etc, is a CORPORATE FEUDAL SYSTEM, not the (what I consider) ideallic, everything-copying society that we COULD have then.
The road we are starting down today is leading us towards the scarier of the two, I believe.
It is not OUR place to tell copyright holders what they should do with their copyright though covert infringement; this is their right as the copyright holder to make this decision on their own.
I see that you have not finished reading the Constitution yet...
"The Congress shall have power . . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts"
You see? They are being offered temporary protection because... Wait for it... WAIT FOR IT...
...Because we (the people) felt that it benefits us!! Not because it benefits the Author/Artist/Copyright holder.
Let me repeat that copyright exists because (in theory) the people who do NOT hold copyrights feel it is beneficial.
Don't give me your crap about it not being OUR place to tell them what to do with "THIER" property.
Either you don't believe the principles of the Constitution, or it is NOT thier property! It is effectively on loan from US to THEM temporarily, because we felt (at the time) that we benefitted from that arrangement.
I for one, no longer feel that this is the case (that I benefit from others holding a copyright), and as such am going to FULLY EXERCISE my ability to COPY COPY COPY.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh man I wanted to scream when I read this.
You don't know that, and the fact that you spew your nonsense as if you did makes it all the more frustrating.
That may have been the initial intention, from the persons who authored the bill, or even the worried lawmakers who hurredly passed it, but in the hands of the enforcement arm of the law, they have been twisted and manipulated beyond comprehension.
How many terrorists have been apprehended as a result of the Patriot Act passing? I bet its less than 2!
How many average American citizens have been harrassed, subjected to inconviences, had their privacy stripped away (without them knowing it), etc?
I bet a hell of a lot more than 2.
I hope this election someone runs with the balls (or lack thereof) to openly revoke such draconian measures. If noone else does, perhaps I will.
Or maybe I'll just get the hell outta this ever-more-repressive country (again, with the HIGHEST of incarceration rates) before it's too late.
It would be a shame to have to leave, as I really love it here.
USAPATRIOT has been used against drug makers for crying out loud!
I'm not a drug maker, but I am a drug user. More than once I've caught "the wrath" for smoking pot. Most of the time I've managed to worm my way out without any penalties, as I believe, I should.
The plain and simple truth is that the Govt (and generally Govt officials as well) will always abuse any powers it is given, or rather, will use any powers it has at its disposal to ensure its own survival.
Unfortunately, this includes the revenue generating streams such as the war on drugs, etc.
Man I hope I am on the jury for one of these cases sometime soon!
Yes I am a criminal drug user. However, I have a job, pay taxes, don't "leech" off society (that I know of) and in general am a nice person to everyone and everything. Draconian laws like this worry me tremendously. Views like yours bother me more.It all comes down to who imposes upon whom. I don't want to impose upon you where possible, but you obviously don't mind imposing upon me unnecessarily.
-dave- (And not a single dead white guy quoted!)
Bah!
Addicted to:
Breathing
Eating
Sh*ting
Walking
Thinking
Why aren't those illegal? =) (Obviously...)
People are sooo stupid!
Ya know what the problem really is?
Stupid People just don't get how little they understand things, and these mobs fall for stupid "Save the Children" and "Buying pot==terrorism" style rants, which ruins it for the rest of us. (Sigh)
Well, thats my $0.02 anyway.
-dave-
Anyone interested in your own copy can get it here from this dedicated node:
Copy and paste that entire magnet link into your web browser's URL window.
Slashdot inserts spaces every 50 letters in that URL, so you may have to trim the spaces back out.
Note: You must be using a Magnet-capable program, like BearShare, Shareaza, etc, for this link to work.
-dave-
I gotta call BullShit here!
That's not to say that finding drugs isn't more profitab^H^H^H^H^H^H interesting for those using such devices, but I don't believe this for a second.
-dave-
Hopefully the first jury trial or two will set a precedent in *our* favor. =)
=dave=
Mod parent down -1 WRONG!
When I read this, all I could say was:
HAHA HAHA HAHA HAHA!
Nice try though. Those are some magic dots (you) are seeing there. Each "dot" being some 50-100MB, right? heh
-dave-
Despite 99th percentile ASVAB scores in all categories(!), the three recruiters I spoke to basically said that IT type positions were all (or mostly) contracted to private corps, and therefore there wasn't really any chance for me to avoid being a front line grunt/target through military programs, only through private-sector work.
Needless to say, I didn't join the army.
Has this situation changed significantly?
-dave-
How nice!
Some of the menus have a "press 8 to repeat this [lengthy] menu" option.
Need a few modems to sit and press this repeatedly.
-dave-
Please go and feed the the cat.
Bet ya didn't see that, did ya?
Re-read it slowly.
-dave-
They already watermark many major movies, and will continue to do so.
This will, of course, not be effective.
When will they learn?
-dave-
You troll!
You can't tell the difference between committing an action and disagreeing with the flawed logic used by an ignorant person opposed to said action?
Better turn me in as a terrorist as well, then. After all, I am highly opposed to the way the government has so openly imposed itself upon the rights of american citizens in the name of terrorism. By your reasoning, I must therefore be a terrorist.
Dumbass!
-dave-
Now, it is true that you can see the source address in a TCP packet. However, your next statement is quite alarming. Let me repeat it here:
This is quite true, at least to locate the source address. However, to be used as proof in a civil or criminal case? I doubt it! After all, the claim of wrongdoing is that the CONTENT isn't allowed to be sent, not that the SENDER isn't allowed to send a packet.
What about a scheme that has the sender send you essentially "random" ecrypted data, as encrypted via a third party, requiring the third party key to unlock it.
Certainly it would be unreasonable to give pretend "rights ownership" of said "random data" to a music company.
Which brings up another point.
Aren't there essentially limitless ways to encode the same piece of audio data? Are we as a society ready to give away "exclusive rights" to data (and all encodings) that can be encoded in infinite ways?
I hope to god not!. I for one, am not willing to, and will do everything in my power to prevent this. Alas, that which I can do is limited, but the combined efforts of hundreds of geeks will be noticed.
And so, I ask again: Which slashgeek is going to run for office this election? You will (probably) have my vote, just because you will be aware of technical issues, and not totally clueless of technical issues, or willing to cave into the first company willing to throw thousands of dollars at you.
-dave-
Yes. I, for one, am.
I think this is how you are using the word take:
Take:
11. To appropriate for one's own or another's use or benefit; obtain by purchase; secure or buy: We always take season tickets.
27. To remove from a place: take the dishes from the sink.
Appropriate:(v)
To take possession of or make use of exclusively for oneself, often without permission
Exclusive:
3. Not divided or shared with others: exclusive publishing rights.
Remove:
1. To move from a place or position occupied: removed the cups from the table
2. To transfer or convey from one place to another: removed the family to Texas.
Semantics, I know, but you are using obviously tainted words, intended to draw an emotional reaction, by linking a non-physical item to actions that, when taken with physical items, have a completely differant effect (duplication vs. appropriation).
There is no natural right to profit, nor is there a natural right to "prevent other people from using my ideas" (copyright).
Remember why we have copyright in the first place: At the time of the founding of this country, there was a very real barrier to innovation: Cost of Communication! In order for your great idea to be used & accepted, people have to get it (the idea). This requires distrobution, and (at the time) a very real cost was involved in the physical media necessary to allow this distrobution.
As such, someone with more funding than I, who heard my idea, could easily take advantage of that fact, by producing many times more "physical couriers" for "my" idea, and therefore could beat me to the punch, or even take complete credit & financial gain by being there first, or more cheaply (due to high volumes of medium purchased), etc.
I submit that there is no longer the need for this type of exclusive protection anymore.
Information can now be distributed to society without the need for a physical medium.
Since copyright is not a natural right, instead it is a social contract (We give you limited monopoly, then you MUST release all information and all claims to all information to ANYONE who wants it, so that THEY can build upon YOUR ideas like YOU built upon someone else's), and the contract is not being upheld by the "other" party.
Furthermore, I (and many others) find that this contract is being abused in horrible ways, even to the point of prosecution and extortion. As such, I cannot in good consience allow this to continue. I do everything I can to oppose this.
Let me take this opportunity to say, although I author a p2p program, I myself have not bought a RIAA CD or downloaded an RIAA MP3 in years (at least 3).
Believe it or not, it's true.
Remember: The usefulness of copyright was To Get Information (art, science, inventions, etc) to the PEOPLE of society.
Wait a minute, are you sure? Wasn't it to give those artists/inventors/musicions/whatever a livelihood? NO NO NO a thousand times NO!
Everything that a human being produces, in terms of information or art or stories or whatever, has has (implicit
Be careful, your reasoning cuts both ways:
Automobile accidents cause more than 40,000 deaths each year in the US alone (far more than child pornography and terrorism combined!!), and yet you, the consumer, are the ultimate reason for the existance of these horribly deadly "Automobiles!", and ultimately, the death and destruction of millions of dollars of property and loss of countless lives.
Does that mean you are a creep because you use said product? NO!
In fact, the (by far) most likely scenario (that I can see) is that you are a nice, "normal" person who doesn't use his car for bank robbery, vehicular homicide, etc.
However, since those creeps cause deaths and destruction, and you use the same end product, by your logic YOU ARE THE CREEP WHO SHOULD BE LOCKED UP!
What kind of creep did your parents raise? How can you (the consumer, and ultimate reason for the existence of these automobile tools-of-death) live with yourself?
Right?
Of course not.
Please, PLEASE don't fall for (or propegate) the "save the children" rant. They are plenty safe, and people who view said pictures are NOT hurting them or causing them pain, anymore than you are responsible for other people's automobile deaths because you use a car.
Do you see the problem with your reasoning?
I doubt that you will, because it involves children, and (as politicians know) that is the way to influence anyone to agree with anything.
-dave-
So if I don't own it when i bought it because its not physical, and I cannot resell it because there is no substance, how can it be theft to make a copy of it?
The concentration of rights here is scary, and requires a drastic change. How many slashgeeks would vote for a fellow slashdotter on an IP-reform platform?
-dave-
Ahh but wait...
Suppose the book was magnetically sealed shut, with a cover that scanned the fingerprints of the first person to open it.
From that moment forward, it would only unlock the book for one hour at a time, and then only when held by the fingerprints of the "original owner".
Now, the book creator's inaction would deny a customer the right of first sale, by forever impractically tying them to the book.
They could just as easily say "it is infeasable to transfer such a book, buy your own copy [from us, or else you're screwed]".
True, this is a little far fetched, but is a reasonable analogy.
-dave-
Ya know, this is what I call the atomiticity issue (don't know the legal term), and I have been tugging [plug]behind the scenes[/shameless] to get this idea used for awhile:
A musical symphony could be protected.
A short musical phrase probably couldn't.
A chord, or the note C#, or the tone 1200hz certainly couldn't, though.
By breaking it up into smaller pieces recursively, common sense dictates that there must be some breaking point, or else All our tone are belong to them!
Others here have been less enthusiastic, though.
We'll see.
-dave-
You have just made my friends list. I agree with this wholeheartedly.
More and more people do and will agree, though...
-dave-
Give me a break...
I had to laugh when i read this though.
2 things.
1) Britney... No kiddin. Look to MTV for the reasons there! I believe that many outraged people (who wrote piles of letters to newspapers) would consider the 2-second kiss to be of that nature.
2) So, the lessons to be learned here are:
a) Files can have misleading search information associated with them, and
b) Some people will use "common" search terms to attract attention to specific files that have no association with them.
Well of course they say they didn't download them, admitting they did if they did would be a crime.
But wait, didn't we learn from 2a & 2b above that often people use search terms to attract attention to files that don't necessarily have any association, just to generate interest?
Non sequitur and propaganda, plain and simple.
So which US slashgeeks are going to run for office and replace these incompetent people?
Toss the two named terms in google and find dozens of "legitimate" sites seeking the same type of attention.
This is sad.
-dave-
Looking for YOUR peer-to-porn engine? Get it here!
God I hope an uprising is in the works!
Our entire "Intellectual Property" based system that we (US and much of the world) is putting in place will merely continue to entrench the "privileged" in thier positions of privilege.
Large corporations who "own" the polititions will only continue to try and (successfully) force the masses into submission.
Governing by consent of the governed is no longer the case. Instead, it is governing by consent of those who would be most suited to profit by your governing.
We need a revolution of sorts.
Alternatively, we need tech-savvy reps and lawmakers!
I, personally, will vote for anyone who guarantees a priority of drastically reducing or eliminating the entire concept of "Intellectual Property" and the sham of goverment endorsement that accompanies it.
This endorsement is used and abused in situations such as these. Ask any 20 people on the street if a corporation should have the legal rights to behave in the fashion RIAA is. Should anyone have the legal rights that led up to this situation? I say no! There is no good reason that I should repress myself from consuming or otherwise using a piece of information.
Period.
If it can be reduced to bits, then you do NOT own it! Simple as that. Or, say that you "own" it if you want, but you do not own "exclusive rights" to it to the exclusion of others. At least, not any rights that *I* will recognise or support.
I know I am not alone in this either.
Lets get someone in office who agrees with this viewpoint and begin to push back the tide of "Intellectual Enslavement and Combat" that is occuring, waiting for newcomers into the barratry game.
-dave-
Shameless plug:
Use BearShare for all your peer-to-peer needs!
My last post touched on the same ideas: We are moving out of the age of "scarcity-based value" quite rapidly.
It won't be long before you can "print" nearly everything from its atomic components.
We all (as a society) need to carefully consider the implications of the framework we are laying down now:
Single-entity (human, or worse: corporate) monopolistic control of "information" or "Intellectual Property" is leading towards the "worse" end of the spectrum, at least as far as I am concerned.
Call me a hippie, but I'm not.
Call me a communist, but I'm not.
Call me a StarTrek nut, but I'm not.
Call me anything you wish, but I firmly believe that everyone has an inherant (natural) right to use any and all information that enters their person.
This may be too over-the-top for most people, but:
Everyone has a inherant, 'natural' right to use information, including EMF radiation (radio/television signals passing *through* your body), genetic encodings (God help you, Monsonto!), Clever C++ code implementations (patented or not), or whatever.
We need to take back control of our information!
-dave-
Shameless plug:
Use BearShare for all your peer-to-peer needs!
We should locate these companies, and start sending them this exact data in the format their servers require, from C64s (or some other sufficiently obsolete hardware), then wait for the C&Ds and lawsuits to start.
I would think the countersuit would bring in a minor fortune. =)
-dave-
Consider the following:
Product A checks for registration B.
If it finds B, continue. If not, end.
If B, test condition C, and take action D.
If D is too easy to spot (like program fails to load, uninstalls itself, etc) then it becomes OBVIOUS to a hacker that the desireable point of attack is C.
If, however, action D is fairly slight (at least as far as the end user is concerned, and "delayed phone home" counts) then it is *MUCH* more likely that the hacher who cracked the codes for "Registration B" won't notice D, and will therefore release the "partially cracked" program instead of a "fully cracked" one which doesn't do action D.
This is actually pretty simple stuff, and not at ALL original!
heh
-dave-
Help me out, and Use BearShare for all your peer-to-peer needs!
As someone who makes a living writing peer-to-peer software, I completely disagree that "STEALING IS STEALING" as you say.
I don't want to get into semantics with you, but here goes:
Stealing involves the deprivation of someone's property, removing thier ability to benefit from it. (paraphrase)
Information "theft" is not really theft or stealing.
Thousands of my users probably "steal" my software, but guess what! I DON'T CARE! It is information, which I CANNOT OWN!
Noone, corporation or individual, has a right to profit.
Everyone has a NATURAL right to consume and reproduce information. How do I know? Look how we are physically built, for crying out loud!
Let me close with this somewhat fanatical thought: Every month new ground is broken in the attempt to produce objects by piecing them together molecule by molecule.
Now, it will probably take longer than my lifetime to occur, but EVENTUALLY you all will be able build a generic THING from its component molecular pieces.
Consider this "future" world for a moment: No more scarcity, no more hunger, no more epidemics caused by lack of medicines.
Now consider the same world, with *your* "STEALING IS STEALING end of story" claim: Should the first person/company that creates a new molecular structure have a monopolistic control over said structure? Should you be able to produce (from scratch, not by "physically stealing") a replacement Brake Pad for your car without paying Ford for the privelidge? What about creating your very own "claritin-like" substance for your allergies? Should you have to pay Mosanto?
I stated before, and firmly believe, that information wants to be worthless, in an economic sense. Information has no "owner" that I recognize, and, as such, I do not consider the "copying" of information to be "theft".
If someone broke into my office and stole the computer I was writing my source code on, then THAT is theft of information, as it has deprived me of it.
If someone copies (without my permission) my program and uses it without paying me, oh well! I haven't been deprived of anything! I still have my program! The only thing I *may* have lost is potential profits, but NOONE HAS A NATURAL RIGHT TO PROFIT! NOONE!
(Thats why "Step 2: ???" is so common! heh)
In the above "idealistic copying world" example above, noone could profit! There would be no object scarcity, therefore (almost) no intrinsic value to *ANYTHING*, let alone "strictly informational things."
Time to end this rant, but PLEASE PLEASE consider:
The end result of personal "posession & ownership" of information, combined with monopolistic control, and the added "Lets consider artificial entities with the stated goal of financial wealth accumulation (corporations) the same as people, with the same 'rights' to own information, etc, is a CORPORATE FEUDAL SYSTEM, not the (what I consider) ideallic, everything-copying society that we COULD have then.
The road we are starting down today is leading us towards the scarier of the two, I believe.
-vDave-
{dave -at- bearshare -dotcom-}
Help me out, and use BearShare for all of your p2p (INFORMATION COPYING) needs!
You see? They are being offered temporary protection because... Wait for it... WAIT FOR IT...
Let me repeat that copyright exists because (in theory) the people who do NOT hold copyrights feel it is beneficial.
Don't give me your crap about it not being OUR place to tell them what to do with "THIER" property.
Either you don't believe the principles of the Constitution, or it is NOT thier property! It is effectively on loan from US to THEM temporarily, because we felt (at the time) that we benefitted from that arrangement.
I for one, no longer feel that this is the case (that I benefit from others holding a copyright), and as such am going to FULLY EXERCISE my ability to COPY COPY COPY.
Don't like it? Tough...
-dave-