ATMs certainly could know which serial number note was issued to which account holder, and money being paid into banks could be traced. Of course, they don't know what happened inbetween; but if you were on the opposite end of the chain from someone who was being watched, then you might get leant on for information.
It would be a good point about the vending machines (though the ones at my last place of work definitely weren't connected to a phone line or anything), but vending machines run on coins - and coins do not have serial numbers, so there's another definite break in the chain. Still, someone might get a photograph of you buying a Kit Kat, I suppose..... not sure quite what they would do with that information.....
The EU is talking about RFID-chipped banknotes. That would eventually make it possible to trace every transaction, if stores had banknote readers on their tills. They would be introduced gradually, of course; but, following a high-profile criminal case, the public would be more amenable to privacy invasion under the colour of fighting crime.
Yes, you have a right to equitable search engine placement: it's part of equal treatment, which I think most people would agree is a pretty fundamental human right.
Money paid for the purpose of securing an earlier listing in a search comes under the heading of "bakhsheesh".
I cited lack of infrastructure as a reason why it isn't already done. Putting the kit in place to track every transaction by means of serial numbers isn't going to be easy or subtle -- if store cashiers have to enter the serial number of each note into a keypad, then it will slow down everyday transactions beyond tolerability. While that d00d is punching in the serial numbers of your bunch of fivers and tenners, you could be thinking about why that's actually necessary, and what it all means; you don't get time for that if it's done instantaneously and automatically, and you might not even know it happened. After all, nobody would put up with security cameras if you had to hold still for a 30-second exposure.....
Coins are safe, because they are identical and are never going to be RFID-able. Banknotes are safe pro tem but only because nobody is routinely logging serial numbers.
Just as big a privacy concern, though not RFID-related, is that one day they will be taking DNA samples from every newborn baby {under the guise of some essential medical test} -- if they aren't already, of course.
First they demonstrated lack of clue by ending up deploying Windows quicker than Linux. From my personal experience I'd say the only way you could install Linux slower than Windows, is badly. Then they bought a bogus licence from someone who quite clearly has no right to sell it. Now one of their spokespeople is unable to spell the word "plagiarist". That speaks volumes.
who is going to protect you from all this?
Well, the law for one thing. All the schemes you have outlined would be unlawful if applied to statutory legal tender.
Yes, just like the law protects so many of your other rights. PATRIOT act, DMCA, &c. The law can be changed.....
All it takes is for some big enough and nasty enough event to happen which -- it can be claimed -- would have been able to have been prevented if the law were different, and popular opinion can be manipulated. Alternatively, a sudden discovery of something that has been going wrong for a long time, with no way of measuring the damage, can have the same effect {such as, if you bypass your electric meter, nobody will ever know just how much juice you have got away without paying for}.
Is this likely? Well, given the USA's popularity on the international scene, there probably would not even be any need to set up an international incident -- US foreign policy is motivation enough for someone, somewhere, sooner or later, to want to Have a Go. And despite the USA not having especially high taxes {things such as healthcare, education, pensions &c. being considered luxuries and therefore not simply stopped out of wages at source} there are still people who begrudge paying any taxes at all.
It's likely that RFID-ed cash {or even a transaction history database using the existing serial numbers on banknotes -- whose very existence is the sugar that will help the public swallow this particular pill} would be proposed initially as a tool to fight terrorism or tax evasion; but eventually would be used for surveillance and manipulation of ordinary citizens.
The anonymity of pound notes [or dollar bills] is a point in their favour. Imagine if it was possible to trace the history of every note in your wallet?
Suppose some supermarket chain decided not to accept money obtained by gambling; so, say, you couldn't spend money won fairly and squarely at William Hill's in Asda. Or a brewery decided that pubs selling their beer should not accept money that had been used to purchase, shall we say, products that compete with alcohol? If traders could refuse to accept money that had been won in a lawsuit, suing people would become less attractive {maybe there is an upside to this after all}.
There would be a brand new market for "clean" notes, which would go for more than their face value. Meanwhile, some establishments -- and I suspect they would be the posher ones -- would not be so fastidious about checking where money had been.
The end result of knowing the full history of every piece of money would be a situation where money would have different nominal values in different establishments -- and the reason why money was invented in the first place was so that you had something whose nominal value was the same everywhere you went.
I guess it's already possible to do this sort of thing in theory, since every note already has a unique serial number; but the infrastructure just isn't in place to do it. However, you can bet that the infrastructure would find its way into place right as they were in the process of deploying RFID-ed currency.
And just who is going to protect you from all this? In the beginning, only criminals will be affected. That is the way all these new control-freak measures are introduced. But then, the effects will be extended to a group of law-abiding but universally disliked citizens; and then, gradually, throughout the whole of the working class. History has shown that the people will tolerate any abuse of liberties, as long as they can be persuaded that it will only affect those they consider as being somehow inferior to themselves.
But SCO are making their IP ownership claim in bad faith, or so many people believe: that is the point. In one breath, SCO condemn the GPL. In the next breath, they sell licences to run Linux, against the GPL*. And all along, they have been obstructing the speedy resolution that would result were the offending lines of code -- if, indeed, there are any -- to be disclosed. The body of the circumstantial evidence suggests that there is no SCO IP in Linux.
* Copyright law says you can't sell licences for other people's copyright material without permission from the copyright holder. The GPL gives you permission to do many things for which copyright law says you need to have permission; but changing the licence conditions to suit your own perverted ends is not among them. If you want to distribute Linux other than in accordance with the GPL, then you require a separate licence from the Linux Kernel Developers; just as you would need a separate licence from Microsoft if you wanted to do something with one of their products that their EULA would not ordinarily permit.
Every time they introduce a new hard drive size, they have to remake the image they're going to use.
No they don't. You don't really care where on the disk the files go, so you don't really need to use disk images at all. All you have to do is get up a reasonable system, then tar up each of the mountpoints (and modern drives are fast enough, and filesystems are robust enough, so as not to need separate partitions for everything anymore) onto a separate hard drive without gzipping them.
However big the target drives are, as long as they are big enough, all you need to do is set up your preferred partitioning scheme, untar the files into it and set up the boot manager. Make a bootable CD which will allow you to fdisk, mke2fs, set up and get on the network, mount the tarball drive, untar the files, run LILO and do the steps I forgot to mention; you can update the tarballs anytime, since they're on a read-write medium, and any fragmentation you create in the process will be ironed out when the files are rewritten to the target disk.
Patching is simplified if you standardise on one distribution, and set up one of your own servers as a package repository. What's a few extra gigs of storage for the time and effort it's going to save in the longer run?
The problem with caching sites is that it would lay Slashdot open to prosecution for copyright infringement. On the other hand, not caching results in overloading other people's servers -- and could even lay Slashdot open to prosecution for aiding and abetting misuse of a computer. Of course, it's a defence to a crime that you did it to prevent a greater crime being committed elsewhere. But this is the point where the lawyers go into a feeding frenzy.....
The valid reason against caching is that a page could contain highly dynamic content. The less valid reason is that it involves making a copy of the information {as does everyone else who views it}.
Perhaps the solution is a meta-tag that page creators can use, which would permit Slashdot {and others, if they so desired} to cache their site? This would require a deliberate act on the part of the cache-ee, and thus amount to explicit consent; but precisely by virtue of that requirement, it would nullify its own effectiveness. It's your classic paradox situation.....
Yes, BSD-style licencing is a serious pitfall; IMHO the BSD licence as it stands is overly permissive, in that it allows you to modify something ever so slightly and then lock up the source code. The GPL is unpopular with many corporations, almost certainly because it forbids precisely that.
Dual licencing, a la MySQL, might work; but it could lead to a division between the "paid" and the "Free" versions, depending on what the terms of the commercial licence say about distributing modified versions. But maybe I'm just being pessimistic; it would be nice to see something done well for once, and the ability to include a JVM as part of a downloadable Linux distribution would certainly be a Good Thing.
While Java stays Sun's closed-source product, Sun retains control over it. Releasing it open-source would mean relinquishing that control forever. Imagine, if you will, the overthrow of an essentially benevolent dictator followed by a less desirable character seizing power.
The questions Sun needs to ask itself are (1) whether or not Java is ready for that -- or is it more likely that differing implementations would lead to fragmentation, and thus nullify the whole point of Java?; and (2) if Java is ready to go open-source {and I personally believe it is}, what would be the best licence to ensure against fragmentation whilst not putting off purists?
All these things being said, Java is only a programming language -- a means to an end. Programming languages come and go. There is no reason why another contender should not arise to solve the same problems for which Java was invented, and eventually displace Java. Mono may be that, of course. It is just as likely that something totally new could arrive on the scene and change the whole picture.
This was how I read it..... I saw it that he started out trying to make out that the open-source model was bad, but failed to convince even himself, and ended up blurting out -- quite by accident -- that it was actually good.
Just because you have a bunch folks out in the community that have the access to look at open-source product means that, by default, it will be more secure or higher quality. - Taylor
There, you heard it, folks. Microsoft just admitted closed source doesn't work!
Degrees C are easy to handle. Try my handy cut-out-and-keep guide to how many clothes to wear in what temperature weather.
-40 - every wannabe comedian's favourite temperature Minus figures - wear a coat
0 - triple point of water 0 - 5 - Wear long sleeves
5 - 15 - Wear short sleeves, long trousers
15 - 25 - Wear shorts and T-shirt
25 or hotter - melt
37 - body temperature 40 - delicates wash
60 - normal wash
100 - boiling point of demineralised water at sea level
This is bound to get the X-Files nutters talking about crop circles, Freemasons, aliens, the Illuminati, pyramids and so forth. A guy with a few metres of tinfoil and some isolated shacks in the woods could seriously cash in on a phenomenon like this.....
On the one hand I am disappointed, as this is clearly a swipe at fair dealing rights.
On the other hand, if it means I will get less spam advertising software that can copy any DVD {when I already have something similar as part of my Linux distribution, by the way} then I cannot help feeling a little prickle of delight.
I shave with a blade, and the nearest thing I've come to an electric hairdrier is pointing the flexi-flue from my mobile air conditioner at my flowing locks.
All the same, DNA damage isn't that big a deal. After all, DNA has error checking built-in, and small errors can be corrected transparently. Damaged DNA is most probably not viable, and therefore does not get reproduced. You'd have to damage a whole lot of DNA in one go to do real harm. Given the brain's rapid throughput of blood, it's more likely that the duff DNA will be dealt with long before enough of it gets together to form its own organism {i.e. a cancer}. In any case, for that to happen, you need every DNA molecule to be damaged in the same way {more likely with chemicals, I would have thought}, as opposed to random damage {more likely with radiation}.
It seems to me that the doom-and-gloom merchants want things to be bad for us.....
Doing anything that requires full alertness whilst impaired in any way is a bad idea. If that makes the thing that caused the temporary unfitness wrong, then by your logic it is wrong to catch the flu.
And I'm fairly sure that if they banned the eating of potato crisps, on the grounds that excessive consumption could lead to obesity, then all sorts of dodgy things would end up happening in the crisp supply chain. It's a simple consequence of illegality -- and incidentally, probably no worse than what goes on in the supply chain of fifty-pound DVD players.
If a computer that was designed by human beings can make sense of an obfuscated programme, then it stands to reason that a human being could make sense of the same programme. It's exactly the same idea as "if it can be played then it can be copied". If it can be executed then it can be examined.
Sooner or later, somebody will come up with a simple de-compiler that will produce a programme full of IFs and GOTOs from a binary executable, and allow you to rename the variables to have sensible names on deducing what they are for. Somebody else will further refine it to automatically recognise loops and functions, and extend the rename functions accordingly. For example, incrementing a variable and conditionally jumping back to an earlier point in the code if it is less than a certain value looks like a for loop.
And once that genie is out of the bottle, there's no putting it back.
I suppose I shouldn't really keep rising to all this bait. I have faith that anti-"piracy" protection is ultimately impossible, and that Open Source will end up prevailing over Closed Source; and that should be enough for me. All the same, I don't see how anybody could not believe these things -- which I suppose is what motivates me to preach my beliefs.
But there is something very morally wrong with proprietary software. RMS and co. have already written plenty about it; I have little to add, save that I feel it is one of my fundamental human rights to examine and improve on the source code for any software of my choice -- and if I do not agree to others exercising a similar right over any software I may write, then my remedy is limited to not writing that software in the first place.
Back in the days of drum memories, computer manufacturers would often offer you software gratis -- in return for which, you were expected to offer them something you had written, so they could pass it around to their other customers. This was a form of policed open source. With no such things as high-level languages, there was no distinction between source and binary; one line of assembly language translated directly to one word of machine code. Experienced programmers could read the ones and zeros as ups and downs on an oscilloscope screen and understand them as an instruction.
Then, somehow, sometime it all got stuffed up, when people began trying to treat ideas as property and earn money by litigation.....
The reason why we have the division between Legislature, Courts and Police is to provide for three levels of safety against miscarriage of justice {think: heat exchanger thermostat, over temperature cutout, pressure relief device on a gas boiler}.
If the government passes an unjust law, then the police can refuse to enforce it. If the police persist in enforcing an unjust law, then the courts can acquit those arrested. Either way, the government has to take notice.
But I think you are right, more people need to be informed of their rights. Ignorance of the law is no defence, but ignorance of your rights is sometimes all the ammo the prosecution needs.
The purchaser's fair use rights are as determined by the courts, and not set down in stone. If you can convince a jury that some use you made of a copyrighted work was "fair dealing" then you'll get acquitted. If enough people take this route, then the jury's decision eventually becomes law.
Smoking marijuana is illegal in some jurisduictions, but it is not wrong.
Closed source software is not illegal in many jurisdictions, but it is wrong.
Sex with a 15yr, 364day-old is illegal in some jurisdictions and will probably lead to you being branded a paedophile.
Exactly..... you recognise it just like you recognise your name..... even when it's the same as someone else's name nearby, and even if you don't recognise the voice, you always recognise your own name. Absolutely no reason why the same instinctive mechanism wouldn't work for your call sign, after all, it is your name when you're on the air.....
Slashdot Mirror
ATMs certainly could know which serial number note was issued to which account holder, and money being paid into banks could be traced. Of course, they don't know what happened inbetween; but if you were on the opposite end of the chain from someone who was being watched, then you might get leant on for information.
..... not sure quite what they would do with that information .....
It would be a good point about the vending machines (though the ones at my last place of work definitely weren't connected to a phone line or anything), but vending machines run on coins - and coins do not have serial numbers, so there's another definite break in the chain. Still, someone might get a photograph of you buying a Kit Kat, I suppose
The EU is talking about RFID-chipped banknotes. That would eventually make it possible to trace every transaction, if stores had banknote readers on their tills. They would be introduced gradually, of course; but, following a high-profile criminal case, the public would be more amenable to privacy invasion under the colour of fighting crime.
Yes, you have a right to equitable search engine placement: it's part of equal treatment, which I think most people would agree is a pretty fundamental human right.
Money paid for the purpose of securing an earlier listing in a search comes under the heading of "bakhsheesh".
I cited lack of infrastructure as a reason why it isn't already done. Putting the kit in place to track every transaction by means of serial numbers isn't going to be easy or subtle -- if store cashiers have to enter the serial number of each note into a keypad, then it will slow down everyday transactions beyond tolerability. While that d00d is punching in the serial numbers of your bunch of fivers and tenners, you could be thinking about why that's actually necessary, and what it all means; you don't get time for that if it's done instantaneously and automatically, and you might not even know it happened. After all, nobody would put up with security cameras if you had to hold still for a 30-second exposure .....
Coins are safe, because they are identical and are never going to be RFID-able. Banknotes are safe pro tem but only because nobody is routinely logging serial numbers.
Just as big a privacy concern, though not RFID-related, is that one day they will be taking DNA samples from every newborn baby {under the guise of some essential medical test} -- if they aren't already, of course.
First they demonstrated lack of clue by ending up deploying Windows quicker than Linux. From my personal experience I'd say the only way you could install Linux slower than Windows, is badly. Then they bought a bogus licence from someone who quite clearly has no right to sell it. Now one of their spokespeople is unable to spell the word "plagiarist". That speaks volumes.
All it takes is for some big enough and nasty enough event to happen which -- it can be claimed -- would have been able to have been prevented if the law were different, and popular opinion can be manipulated. Alternatively, a sudden discovery of something that has been going wrong for a long time, with no way of measuring the damage, can have the same effect {such as, if you bypass your electric meter, nobody will ever know just how much juice you have got away without paying for}.
Is this likely? Well, given the USA's popularity on the international scene, there probably would not even be any need to set up an international incident -- US foreign policy is motivation enough for someone, somewhere, sooner or later, to want to Have a Go. And despite the USA not having especially high taxes {things such as healthcare, education, pensions &c. being considered luxuries and therefore not simply stopped out of wages at source} there are still people who begrudge paying any taxes at all.
It's likely that RFID-ed cash {or even a transaction history database using the existing serial numbers on banknotes -- whose very existence is the sugar that will help the public swallow this particular pill} would be proposed initially as a tool to fight terrorism or tax evasion; but eventually would be used for surveillance and manipulation of ordinary citizens.
The anonymity of pound notes [or dollar bills] is a point in their favour. Imagine if it was possible to trace the history of every note in your wallet?
Suppose some supermarket chain decided not to accept money obtained by gambling; so, say, you couldn't spend money won fairly and squarely at William Hill's in Asda. Or a brewery decided that pubs selling their beer should not accept money that had been used to purchase, shall we say, products that compete with alcohol? If traders could refuse to accept money that had been won in a lawsuit, suing people would become less attractive {maybe there is an upside to this after all}.
There would be a brand new market for "clean" notes, which would go for more than their face value. Meanwhile, some establishments -- and I suspect they would be the posher ones -- would not be so fastidious about checking where money had been.
The end result of knowing the full history of every piece of money would be a situation where money would have different nominal values in different establishments -- and the reason why money was invented in the first place was so that you had something whose nominal value was the same everywhere you went.
I guess it's already possible to do this sort of thing in theory, since every note already has a unique serial number; but the infrastructure just isn't in place to do it. However, you can bet that the infrastructure would find its way into place right as they were in the process of deploying RFID-ed currency.
And just who is going to protect you from all this? In the beginning, only criminals will be affected. That is the way all these new control-freak measures are introduced. But then, the effects will be extended to a group of law-abiding but universally disliked citizens; and then, gradually, throughout the whole of the working class. History has shown that the people will tolerate any abuse of liberties, as long as they can be persuaded that it will only affect those they consider as being somehow inferior to themselves.
But SCO are making their IP ownership claim in bad faith, or so many people believe: that is the point. In one breath, SCO condemn the GPL. In the next breath, they sell licences to run Linux, against the GPL*. And all along, they have been obstructing the speedy resolution that would result were the offending lines of code -- if, indeed, there are any -- to be disclosed. The body of the circumstantial evidence suggests that there is no SCO IP in Linux.
* Copyright law says you can't sell licences for other people's copyright material without permission from the copyright holder. The GPL gives you permission to do many things for which copyright law says you need to have permission; but changing the licence conditions to suit your own perverted ends is not among them. If you want to distribute Linux other than in accordance with the GPL, then you require a separate licence from the Linux Kernel Developers; just as you would need a separate licence from Microsoft if you wanted to do something with one of their products that their EULA would not ordinarily permit.
However big the target drives are, as long as they are big enough, all you need to do is set up your preferred partitioning scheme, untar the files into it and set up the boot manager. Make a bootable CD which will allow you to fdisk, mke2fs, set up and get on the network, mount the tarball drive, untar the files, run LILO and do the steps I forgot to mention; you can update the tarballs anytime, since they're on a read-write medium, and any fragmentation you create in the process will be ironed out when the files are rewritten to the target disk.
Patching is simplified if you standardise on one distribution, and set up one of your own servers as a package repository. What's a few extra gigs of storage for the time and effort it's going to save in the longer run?
The problem with caching sites is that it would lay Slashdot open to prosecution for copyright infringement. On the other hand, not caching results in overloading other people's servers -- and could even lay Slashdot open to prosecution for aiding and abetting misuse of a computer. Of course, it's a defence to a crime that you did it to prevent a greater crime being committed elsewhere. But this is the point where the lawyers go into a feeding frenzy .....
.....
The valid reason against caching is that a page could contain highly dynamic content. The less valid reason is that it involves making a copy of the information {as does everyone else who views it}.
Perhaps the solution is a meta-tag that page creators can use, which would permit Slashdot {and others, if they so desired} to cache their site? This would require a deliberate act on the part of the cache-ee, and thus amount to explicit consent; but precisely by virtue of that requirement, it would nullify its own effectiveness. It's your classic paradox situation
Yes, BSD-style licencing is a serious pitfall; IMHO the BSD licence as it stands is overly permissive, in that it allows you to modify something ever so slightly and then lock up the source code. The GPL is unpopular with many corporations, almost certainly because it forbids precisely that.
Dual licencing, a la MySQL, might work; but it could lead to a division between the "paid" and the "Free" versions, depending on what the terms of the commercial licence say about distributing modified versions. But maybe I'm just being pessimistic; it would be nice to see something done well for once, and the ability to include a JVM as part of a downloadable Linux distribution would certainly be a Good Thing.
While Java stays Sun's closed-source product, Sun retains control over it. Releasing it open-source would mean relinquishing that control forever. Imagine, if you will, the overthrow of an essentially benevolent dictator followed by a less desirable character seizing power.
The questions Sun needs to ask itself are (1) whether or not Java is ready for that -- or is it more likely that differing implementations would lead to fragmentation, and thus nullify the whole point of Java?; and (2) if Java is ready to go open-source {and I personally believe it is}, what would be the best licence to ensure against fragmentation whilst not putting off purists?
All these things being said, Java is only a programming language -- a means to an end. Programming languages come and go. There is no reason why another contender should not arise to solve the same problems for which Java was invented, and eventually displace Java. Mono may be that, of course. It is just as likely that something totally new could arrive on the scene and change the whole picture.
This was how I read it ..... I saw it that he started out trying to make out that the open-source model was bad, but failed to convince even himself, and ended up blurting out -- quite by accident -- that it was actually good.
Bollocks, you are talking out of your arse.
Degrees C are easy to handle. Try my handy cut-out-and-keep guide to how many clothes to wear in what temperature weather.
-40 - every wannabe comedian's favourite temperature
Minus figures - wear a coat
0 - triple point of water
0 - 5 - Wear long sleeves
5 - 15 - Wear short sleeves, long trousers
15 - 25 - Wear shorts and T-shirt
25 or hotter - melt
37 - body temperature
40 - delicates wash
60 - normal wash
100 - boiling point of demineralised water at sea level
This is bound to get the X-Files nutters talking about crop circles, Freemasons, aliens, the Illuminati, pyramids and so forth. A guy with a few metres of tinfoil and some isolated shacks in the woods could seriously cash in on a phenomenon like this .....
On the one hand I am disappointed, as this is clearly a swipe at fair dealing rights.
On the other hand, if it means I will get less spam advertising software that can copy any DVD {when I already have something similar as part of my Linux distribution, by the way} then I cannot help feeling a little prickle of delight.
I shave with a blade, and the nearest thing I've come to an electric hairdrier is pointing the flexi-flue from my mobile air conditioner at my flowing locks.
.....
All the same, DNA damage isn't that big a deal. After all, DNA has error checking built-in, and small errors can be corrected transparently. Damaged DNA is most probably not viable, and therefore does not get reproduced. You'd have to damage a whole lot of DNA in one go to do real harm. Given the brain's rapid throughput of blood, it's more likely that the duff DNA will be dealt with long before enough of it gets together to form its own organism {i.e. a cancer}. In any case, for that to happen, you need every DNA molecule to be damaged in the same way {more likely with chemicals, I would have thought}, as opposed to random damage {more likely with radiation}.
It seems to me that the doom-and-gloom merchants want things to be bad for us
Doing anything that requires full alertness whilst impaired in any way is a bad idea. If that makes the thing that caused the temporary unfitness wrong, then by your logic it is wrong to catch the flu.
And I'm fairly sure that if they banned the eating of potato crisps, on the grounds that excessive consumption could lead to obesity, then all sorts of dodgy things would end up happening in the crisp supply chain. It's a simple consequence of illegality -- and incidentally, probably no worse than what goes on in the supply chain of fifty-pound DVD players.
If a computer that was designed by human beings can make sense of an obfuscated programme, then it stands to reason that a human being could make sense of the same programme. It's exactly the same idea as "if it can be played then it can be copied". If it can be executed then it can be examined.
Sooner or later, somebody will come up with a simple de-compiler that will produce a programme full of IFs and GOTOs from a binary executable, and allow you to rename the variables to have sensible names on deducing what they are for. Somebody else will further refine it to automatically recognise loops and functions, and extend the rename functions accordingly. For example, incrementing a variable and conditionally jumping back to an earlier point in the code if it is less than a certain value looks like a for loop.
And once that genie is out of the bottle, there's no putting it back.
I suppose I shouldn't really keep rising to all this bait. I have faith that anti-"piracy" protection is ultimately impossible, and that Open Source will end up prevailing over Closed Source; and that should be enough for me. All the same, I don't see how anybody could not believe these things -- which I suppose is what motivates me to preach my beliefs.
If a jury of twelve of your own peers decide that you should not be punished, then you will not be punished. That is how the courts can save you.
But there is something very morally wrong with proprietary software. RMS and co. have already written plenty about it; I have little to add, save that I feel it is one of my fundamental human rights to examine and improve on the source code for any software of my choice -- and if I do not agree to others exercising a similar right over any software I may write, then my remedy is limited to not writing that software in the first place.
.....
Back in the days of drum memories, computer manufacturers would often offer you software gratis -- in return for which, you were expected to offer them something you had written, so they could pass it around to their other customers. This was a form of policed open source. With no such things as high-level languages, there was no distinction between source and binary; one line of assembly language translated directly to one word of machine code. Experienced programmers could read the ones and zeros as ups and downs on an oscilloscope screen and understand them as an instruction.
Then, somehow, sometime it all got stuffed up, when people began trying to treat ideas as property and earn money by litigation
The reason why we have the division between Legislature, Courts and Police is to provide for three levels of safety against miscarriage of justice {think: heat exchanger thermostat, over temperature cutout, pressure relief device on a gas boiler}.
If the government passes an unjust law, then the police can refuse to enforce it. If the police persist in enforcing an unjust law, then the courts can acquit those arrested. Either way, the government has to take notice.
But I think you are right, more people need to be informed of their rights. Ignorance of the law is no defence, but ignorance of your rights is sometimes all the ammo the prosecution needs.
The purchaser's fair use rights are as determined by the courts, and not set down in stone. If you can convince a jury that some use you made of a copyrighted work was "fair dealing" then you'll get acquitted. If enough people take this route, then the jury's decision eventually becomes law.
Wrong != illegal.
Legal != correct.
Smoking marijuana is illegal in some jurisduictions, but it is not wrong.
Closed source software is not illegal in many jurisdictions, but it is wrong.
Sex with a 15yr, 364day-old is illegal in some jurisdictions and will probably lead to you being branded a paedophile.
Exactly ..... you recognise it just like you recognise your name ..... even when it's the same as someone else's name nearby, and even if you don't recognise the voice, you always recognise your own name. Absolutely no reason why the same instinctive mechanism wouldn't work for your call sign, after all, it is your name when you're on the air .....