Encrypt your passwords with a GPG secret key. Keep a copy of that key on your hard drive with a complex password that you can remember.
Make a copy of that secret key with a simpler password that all your friends will remember. Split it up into pieces. Put each piece on some fairly durable media and give that piece to a trusted friend, along with the password.
After that, whenever all of your trusted friends decide it's time to unlock your secrets, they can put their pieces together and recover your key. Since you're dead or incapacitated, they can then get to your computer and decrypt your password file.
I suppose that using a parity tool (e.g., "par2create"), you could even create some redundancy in those pieces and establish a quorum number. Your key could then be recovered if say, 5 of your 6 friends agree.
A wrapper could be written to handle the details of this.
If every voter gets a receipt showing who they voted for, then it becomes really easy for employers to retaliate against anyone who can't bring in a receipt for the company's favored candidate.
You could make that illegal, but you know it would still happen.
Does it leave traces behind? Do the outbound emails sent by the worm to propogate itself show up in the Sent folder? I know that I accidently opened one of those "New Graphic Site" emails the day before this hit the headlines; nothing strange happened at the time (e.g., no popups as some users have been mentioning).
I was using webmail on Mozilla on Linux, which usually makes me feel safe from things like this. There goes another false sense of security.
In the jurisdiction where I live, and probably many others, if you attempt to commit, or conspire to commit, a crime of any kind against a person you believe to be real, you have commited that crime. Out law specifically says that a "mistake of fact" does not negate culpability when the suspect actually intended to commit a crime, even when that mistake (e.g., victim doesn't really exist) would have prevented the crime from being committed at all.
So the answer is, yes, you are guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
It's a tough issue. I despise the RIAA and the insanely stupid and short-sighted approach they take to their business, but I still can't get past the fact that we're rising up to defend people who unquestionable and admittedly and knowingly broke a law and are now pissed that there are consequences for it. Sorry. Zero sympathy.
How about some sympathy for people who are justly found to have broken the law (or in this case, justly accused), but unjustly punished? In this situation, accused copyright-violators have the choice of either settling for more than they (and I) think they ought to have to pay, or going to court where they would have to pay even more for defense counsel than the settlement.
Even if we assume that all of these people are lawbreakers (and the author of TFA essentially admits he is), that makes having consequences befall him just, but it doesn't necessarily make these consequences just.
Imagine this: work on a huge file (greater than 2GB -- maybe much, much greater) in Windows or Linux, then take it over to the other OS for further work. Doesn't matter whether you're dual-booting or carrying hard drives around -- you won't be able to do it quickly or easily. What file system do those two OSes have in common that handles files larger than 2GB? I don't know of any. You're going to have to copy the file over a network, which will not be quick since the file is huge.
Linux needs NTFS write support now. This is not just a tinkerer issue.
How do you define "anti-GPL public statements by its executives"?
Which ones of these would count?
-Executive says to the employees: "GPL is valid, but it's a bad idea."
-Executive says to journalist: "GPL is invalid, but we follow it anyway."
-Executive gets drunk after work and tells people at the bar "GPL is stupid. Down with the GPL!"
I can think of hundreds of other ambiguous possibilities.
If you can't define "anti-GPL public statements by its executives" well enough to not be ambigious, then it doesn't belong in a software license.
I think the current scheme, whereby a company either accepts the GPL and gets to use GPL code or does not accept the GPL and doesn't get to use GPL code, works well enough. Adding more provisions to a license isn't going to scare people who believe the license isn't valid to begin with.
The reason that software so licensed is not considered open source is that things change. Some people used to put restrictions in their open-source-style licenses to prevent the government of South Africa from using their software. At that time, the government of South Africa was repressing the majority of South Africans and was certainly more evil than SCO. Now that the government of South Africa has changed hands and is more inclusive and less repressive, it probably should be able to use open source software like everybody else. Nevertheless, those apartheid-era restrictions still single out South Africa, blocking them from using the software.
Not that I'm saying that SCO is likely to become a bunch of good guys, but the principle remains. Software licenses are pragmatic documents, not places to make perpetual stands against transitory political and social problems like Darl McBride and SCO.
Just like the GPL sets conditions for anyone using software
No, it doesn't. It sets conditions for anyone who copies, distributes or creates derivative works of software. You can completely repudiate the GPL and continue to use GPL-licensed software (except for copying, distributing, and deriving).
You're thinking of an End User License Agreement (EULA). EULAs take away users' rights. The GPL is not an EULA. The GPL gives you rights you would not have had without a license.
You may not impose any further
restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
If I take a GPL program, add in Microsoft's XML format under Microsoft's license, then distribute the resulting program, I will have to place a further restriction on redistribution (i.e., redistributors must include Microsoft's patent license notice in all source code and accept Microsoft's license). Section 6 says clearly that I can't add terms and conditions on top of the GPL that are more restrictive than the GPL.
That alone makes Microsoft's terms and conditions GPL incompatible.
Ridiculous! You do not need a license to use software (or any copyrighted thing). You need a license to make an otherwise illegal copy of the software legal.
In other words:
You make a copy of your software and give it to someone: it's legal and they can use it however they want (you had the right to make a copy, after all). If you want to restrict them in some way (e.g., your "the license is you can use it on christmas day" example), you need to get them to agree to a contract to that effect. Do that before you deliver the software, because they have no reason to agree after you've delivered it (unless they still want something from you, like a license so they can copy your software).
They make a copy of your software and give it to someone: it's illegalunless you've given them a license to copy your software or the end user a license to use it.
The understanding you have of US copyright law (i.e., copyrighted material is always illegal without a separate license) is exactly what the big software companies (and Hollywood, for that matter) want you to think, but it isn't true.
Without commenting on the truth or falsity of the theory, there are those who believe that the destruction of TWA flight 800 was a terrorist act and that the September 11, 2001 attacks occured on the scale they did so as to make it impossible to deny the involvement of the terrorists.
Even if you don't believe that TWA 800 was a terrorist bombing covered up by the Clinton Administration, you should consider the idea that the enemy reaction to being denied publicity might be to make it impossible for them to be denied, doing so at an even greater cost in life.
People keep saying that women cause most of these fires because they are more prone to getting back into the vehicle. That little factoid comes from a well-known urban legend; no statistics exist to back it up. Check out the urban legend site at snopes.com.
There is a certain video editing application for Windows that has a feature I need (direct VOB editing), a feature that I haven't found in any other editing app, proprietary or otherwise, on any of the platforms I use (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows). I will not, however, even bother to evaluate it because the download instructions make it clear that to use it beyond the 30 days, I will have to email in a number calculated by the demo and get a registration number back (thus locking the registration to my current hardware).
Moral of the Story: Everything counts when you make a decision to download and run a demo, even terms of sale that don't apply unless you decide to buy.
It's about Lessig's view that derivative rights should be restricted and that values for derivative uses should be set by law or committee.
I agree with you that Lessig's vision of compulsory licensing is too broad. But what about his example of The Wind Done Gone? Parody and satire, among other things, increase in artistic value the closer they approximate the original work before veering off into their own unique spin.
I would not agree with someone who wanted to take a copy of one of your photographs and incorporate it into their own work without your permission. If, however, one of your photographs because famous, and people started shooting photographs that look very much like yours, whether in tribute or in mockery, I would consider those works permissable. Big business almost never considers works like that permissable, and almost always sues to stop it. I think (and hope) that that's what Lessig was trying to get at.
This view is almost always espoused by people who don't actually create anything that has value.
Lessig does create things that have value. He's the author of at least two books, including the highly regarded Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.
...they are MINE. Period. End of story.
But it's not the end of the story. The US Constitution allows for copyright as a privilege that vests for a limited time (compare to rights to real property or personal property, which are theoretically eternal). I think the Constitutional view of copyright is more compatible with the phrase "intellectual privilege" or "intellectual lease" rather than "intellectual property", because in the English language we don't usually call something your property if it's only yours for a limited time.
My point, with which I hope Prof. Lessig would agree, is that Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is not "HIS. Period. End of story." He does have an exclusive right to control it, but only for a limited time.
The screenshot web page, in particular, is very dangerous for a prospective defendant. Particularly by the use of the apple logo at the very bottom, it invites summary responses.
Oroborus isn't putting the Apple logo on the screen. That screenshot is of Oroborus running on Mac OS X; Apple's OS is putting Apple's logo on the screen. If I understand correctly what Oroborus does, all it's doing is making the X window apps try to look and act like OS X/Aqua apps.
The 434MHz version that transmits on cable Ch. 59 sounds great, but as the website says, you would need a ham radio license to operate it. Even if you had one, to stay legal you would have to include your call sign in the picture at least once every ten minutes and before you stop transmitting. Not terribly useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Encrypt your passwords with a GPG secret key. Keep a copy of that key on your hard drive with a complex password that you can remember.
Make a copy of that secret key with a simpler password that all your friends will remember. Split it up into pieces. Put each piece on some fairly durable media and give that piece to a trusted friend, along with the password.
After that, whenever all of your trusted friends decide it's time to unlock your secrets, they can put their pieces together and recover your key. Since you're dead or incapacitated, they can then get to your computer and decrypt your password file.
I suppose that using a parity tool (e.g., "par2create"), you could even create some redundancy in those pieces and establish a quorum number. Your key could then be recovered if say, 5 of your 6 friends agree.
A wrapper could be written to handle the details of this.
If every voter gets a receipt showing who they voted for, then it becomes really easy for employers to retaliate against anyone who can't bring in a receipt for the company's favored candidate.
You could make that illegal, but you know it would still happen.
Does it leave traces behind? Do the outbound emails sent by the worm to propogate itself show up in the Sent folder? I know that I accidently opened one of those "New Graphic Site" emails the day before this hit the headlines; nothing strange happened at the time (e.g., no popups as some users have been mentioning).
I was using webmail on Mozilla on Linux, which usually makes me feel safe from things like this. There goes another false sense of security.
In the jurisdiction where I live, and probably many others, if you attempt to commit, or conspire to commit, a crime of any kind against a person you believe to be real, you have commited that crime. Out law specifically says that a "mistake of fact" does not negate culpability when the suspect actually intended to commit a crime, even when that mistake (e.g., victim doesn't really exist) would have prevented the crime from being committed at all.
So the answer is, yes, you are guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
How about some sympathy for people who are justly found to have broken the law (or in this case, justly accused), but unjustly punished? In this situation, accused copyright-violators have the choice of either settling for more than they (and I) think they ought to have to pay, or going to court where they would have to pay even more for defense counsel than the settlement.
Even if we assume that all of these people are lawbreakers (and the author of TFA essentially admits he is), that makes having consequences befall him just, but it doesn't necessarily make these consequences just.
How many laptops do you want to carry around?
If your answer is "no more than one", but you need (or want) to run more than one operating system, then you need dual boot.
Imagine this: work on a huge file (greater than 2GB -- maybe much, much greater) in Windows or Linux, then take it over to the other OS for further work. Doesn't matter whether you're dual-booting or carrying hard drives around -- you won't be able to do it quickly or easily. What file system do those two OSes have in common that handles files larger than 2GB? I don't know of any. You're going to have to copy the file over a network, which will not be quick since the file is huge.
Linux needs NTFS write support now. This is not just a tinkerer issue.
How do you define "anti-GPL public statements by its executives"? Which ones of these would count? -Executive says to the employees: "GPL is valid, but it's a bad idea." -Executive says to journalist: "GPL is invalid, but we follow it anyway." -Executive gets drunk after work and tells people at the bar "GPL is stupid. Down with the GPL!" I can think of hundreds of other ambiguous possibilities. If you can't define "anti-GPL public statements by its executives" well enough to not be ambigious, then it doesn't belong in a software license. I think the current scheme, whereby a company either accepts the GPL and gets to use GPL code or does not accept the GPL and doesn't get to use GPL code, works well enough. Adding more provisions to a license isn't going to scare people who believe the license isn't valid to begin with.
The reason that software so licensed is not considered open source is that things change. Some people used to put restrictions in their open-source-style licenses to prevent the government of South Africa from using their software. At that time, the government of South Africa was repressing the majority of South Africans and was certainly more evil than SCO. Now that the government of South Africa has changed hands and is more inclusive and less repressive, it probably should be able to use open source software like everybody else. Nevertheless, those apartheid-era restrictions still single out South Africa, blocking them from using the software.
Not that I'm saying that SCO is likely to become a bunch of good guys, but the principle remains. Software licenses are pragmatic documents, not places to make perpetual stands against transitory political and social problems like Darl McBride and SCO.
No, it doesn't. It sets conditions for anyone who copies, distributes or creates derivative works of software. You can completely repudiate the GPL and continue to use GPL-licensed software (except for copying, distributing, and deriving).
You're thinking of an End User License Agreement (EULA). EULAs take away users' rights. The GPL is not an EULA. The GPL gives you rights you would not have had without a license.
The goal of the GPL is not to give back to other licensing schemes; the goal of the GPL is to give back to other developers and other users.
That alone makes Microsoft's terms and conditions GPL incompatible.
Ridiculous! You do not need a license to use software (or any copyrighted thing). You need a license to make an otherwise illegal copy of the software legal.
In other words:
The understanding you have of US copyright law (i.e., copyrighted material is always illegal without a separate license) is exactly what the big software companies (and Hollywood, for that matter) want you to think, but it isn't true.
Without commenting on the truth or falsity of the theory, there are those who believe that the destruction of TWA flight 800 was a terrorist act and that the September 11, 2001 attacks occured on the scale they did so as to make it impossible to deny the involvement of the terrorists.
Even if you don't believe that TWA 800 was a terrorist bombing covered up by the Clinton Administration, you should consider the idea that the enemy reaction to being denied publicity might be to make it impossible for them to be denied, doing so at an even greater cost in life.
People keep saying that women cause most of these fires because they are more prone to getting back into the vehicle. That little factoid comes from a well-known urban legend; no statistics exist to back it up. Check out the urban legend site at snopes.com.
There is a certain video editing application for Windows that has a feature I need (direct VOB editing), a feature that I haven't found in any other editing app, proprietary or otherwise, on any of the platforms I use (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows). I will not, however, even bother to evaluate it because the download instructions make it clear that to use it beyond the 30 days, I will have to email in a number calculated by the demo and get a registration number back (thus locking the registration to my current hardware).
Moral of the Story: Everything counts when you make a decision to download and run a demo, even terms of sale that don't apply unless you decide to buy.
I agree with you that Lessig's vision of compulsory licensing is too broad. But what about his example of The Wind Done Gone? Parody and satire, among other things, increase in artistic value the closer they approximate the original work before veering off into their own unique spin.
I would not agree with someone who wanted to take a copy of one of your photographs and incorporate it into their own work without your permission. If, however, one of your photographs because famous, and people started shooting photographs that look very much like yours, whether in tribute or in mockery, I would consider those works permissable. Big business almost never considers works like that permissable, and almost always sues to stop it. I think (and hope) that that's what Lessig was trying to get at.
Lessig does create things that have value. He's the author of at least two books, including the highly regarded Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.
But it's not the end of the story. The US Constitution allows for copyright as a privilege that vests for a limited time (compare to rights to real property or personal property, which are theoretically eternal). I think the Constitutional view of copyright is more compatible with the phrase "intellectual privilege" or "intellectual lease" rather than "intellectual property", because in the English language we don't usually call something your property if it's only yours for a limited time.
My point, with which I hope Prof. Lessig would agree, is that Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is not "HIS. Period. End of story." He does have an exclusive right to control it, but only for a limited time.
Oroborus isn't putting the Apple logo on the screen. That screenshot is of Oroborus running on Mac OS X; Apple's OS is putting Apple's logo on the screen. If I understand correctly what Oroborus does, all it's doing is making the X window apps try to look and act like OS X/Aqua apps.
The 434MHz version that transmits on cable Ch. 59 sounds great, but as the website says, you would need a ham radio license to operate it. Even if you had one, to stay legal you would have to include your call sign in the picture at least once every ten minutes and before you stop transmitting. Not terribly useful.