There's nothing special about the software industry. Plenty of industries that offer services not needed or wanted or which can not do so to a degree that the free market can support them continue to survive, thanks to government (tax payer) subsidies. If you have a big union that wields a lot of votes, you're even more likely to long out live your usefulness, without suffering from it.
However, I'm not really sure what any of that has to do with a million people using a commercial piece of software without paying for it. Unlike typewriters, people *need* anti-virus software (well, most of them, at least). Comparing typewriters which nobody wants or uses anymore to a piece of software that everyone wants and does use (just doesn't want to pay a few bucks for) doesn't exactly make sense. The fact that it was copied and used almost a million times sort of invalidates the idea that it's an unwanted service.
Of course they will. So will most domain registrars. Your city meter maid could just sneeze in the direction of most domain registrars and they'd cut your domain. Don't expect pushback from them on your behalf.
Right. Which is why the original poster said that using an alternative DNS (such as the one proposed by the piratebay founders, among other projects out there) is a good solution to being relieved of the censorship and control of government controlled DNS:
Of course, I'm not sure how that solves the problem. What are there, like three backbones in the nation? Or at worse, at the ISP level, a few ISPs blocking traffic to any non-sanctioned resolver solution would probably block 95% of the traffic in the country, so . . . sort of doesn't really solve anything, when it comes down to it.
No, it only proves that whether there is any damage and how much is unknowable. You can determine how many sales resulted because of their response to it, but you can in no way determine how many sales were lost to getting it for free. People may have purchased, but from other companies. Or gone with free and open source options. Or used nothing. Certainly, one can't honestly say it doesn't do damage, but there's no way you can quantify it legally, say, to charge the culprit $580,000,000.00 in damages (the number of copies, by $750).
How can we stop users from doing all this web browsing stuff that sends them all over the internet - even to small people and non-commercial, non-business, non-monetizable places?
I know! We'll build a browser that only lets them browse Facebook, Twitter, Google, and any other website with multi-billion dollar valuation that slips us a few million dollars!
Besides, anyone who wants to go to a website that isn't facebook or twitter is probably a terrorist or a pedophile!
If you read the fucking article, you would realize that they're actual cameras trained on the audience to gauge their reaction to the entire film presentation, to gather data for marketers and film producers. The service is offered by the same company that offers infra-red camera systems for monitoring for recording devices in the theater, but that service and purpose has absolutely nothing to do with the article.
More importantly, how exactly are they going to get away with this? Are they going to have every patron read and sign a release form when buying their ticket?
I couldn't agree more. I've been looking forward to StarCraft 2. I pre-ordered it and installed it and played through most of the single player. I figured I'd be living on the multiplayer for years. In truth, I have yet to play a single game online. Perhaps part of it is just that I'm getting older (thirties, now) . . . but I suddenly find the whole "game ends in three minutes and you can tell who is going to lose, often, in the first ten seconds". It's not just Star Craft, though. There are a lot of games that I also find off-putting, because they devolve into exactly what this article describes. The knowledge that there is one perfect chain of actions you should take and the entire point of the game is to take those actions faster than the other guy. It takes the fun of discovery, surprise, variety out of it.
Law does not exist to protect me from you calling me names. It protects me from you physically attacking me. It protects me from you stealing from me. It protects me from you libeling or slandering me. It even protects me from you defrauding me. What it does not (and should not) do is protect me from you calling me names and telling me the world would be better off without me. Even if that drives me to do something terrible to myself. Even if I'm not a grown adult, but am a twelve year old girl.
I completely agree that in the Lori Drew case (which is the easiest to comment on here, since it's what we know the most about so far) is sickening and that it would be wonderful if the community shunned her and her reputation and actions follow her for the rest of her pitiful life . . . but as much as I'd find glee in terrible things happening to her, I can't take the step of using the law to punish her for being a "shitty human being" as the precedent it sets for thought crime and free speech are far more vile than the action it is punishing.
They weren't implying that Korea is as it was depicted in the animation. How that went over people's heads astounds me. When I saw it the week it came out, I just sort of shrugged and thought it was sad how many years it has been since the Simpsons had managed to be edgy and interesting and how this was such a bland attempt at humor.
The Simpsons poking fun at the idea that they are responsible for some sort of animation-sweat-shop from the dark ages operating in Korea that tortures unicorns is the same style of humor as if Barack Obama made a joke about his birth certificate. Not because he's saying "I'm not really an American har har har!", but because he'd be attempting to humorously highlight ludicrous the implication is.
The intro wasn't aiming at garnering sympathy and calling attention to some horrible situation in Korea. It was a piece of satire which poked fun at the whole "Simpsons farm out animation to Korean sweatshops" thing.
Seriously, did the fact that it was so ridiculously over the top not make it clear to people that it was satire and self-parody? The entire POINT of the intro was how silly the perception some people have of the Korean animation-shops supposedly is.
'The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatize the index, commercialize the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder.'
Google is a business and they're doing all the indexing work, so *no* their index ought *not* be owned by us all. Further, they can advertise on their own system all they like, since it's their own product and the result of their own work. If some group of people wants to produce a wikipedia-esque version of the same thing, they're more than welcome to do so. Of course, they won't have the resources of a Google, so . . . good luck with that.
Of course, isn't that what the Mozilla Open Directory was?
Also, the entire internet is spammed with endless fucking advertising, right down to every jackhole and his blog read only by himself. What is more representative of humanity and the internet than a search index that is also filled with advertising on every square inch? Not to mention, the ads are being served in real time. They're not part of some "archive" somewhere. And even if they were, stripping them out would be very simple (hell, I can do it in real time with Adblock Plus . . . which everyone should be using so they won't have to deal with these ads to begin with).
Google should have strong competition, true, but they shouldn't be forced to open everything to the world out of some sort of altruistic goal. I also shouldn't be forced to foot the bill, as a tax payer, for your little pet project to "reproduce google, but without ads". Again, you can already get google without ads. It's called an adblocker.
No, the biggest threat to democracy is selfish voters. Vote on principal and employ abstract thinking rather than "is this going to reinforce my beliefs or directly reward me with some goodies". You don't have to be extraordinarily empathetic to think that people like the guy in this story (or Lori Drew) are vile human beings that disgust you and make you feel awful for their "victims". It takes a little effort to step outside yourself and recognize that just because something isn't nice or doesn't directly benefit you doesn't mean it isn't right.
The Lori Drew case is a great example of that. Many people found themselves in the shitty position of wanting to see that bitch punished for being an awful human being to a little kid but also comprehending that sometimes doing the right thing means not being satisfied with some sort of retribution.
The world is full of vile douchbags. Not really any point to pondering their existence. The only thing we can really consider is why one would support and encourage censorship.
I know it's in the UK, so we're talking about different laws here, but in the end it all comes down to either supporting free speech or not supporting it. The true test of freedom of speech is not in allowing people who agree with your viewpoints to express them but in allowing those who you disagree with and who say even the most vile and atrocious things the right to say them.
Fred Phelps and his repulsive clan of inbred idiots are some of the most disgusting people on earth who truly put free speech to the test. As much as I would enjoy seeing them struck by a meteor (or a bus) while picketing across the street from some poor kid's funeral or some highschool -- I would never dream of restricting right to say what they like (or the right of countless people to show up and counter their assembly with their own thoughts and expressions).
Libel and slander and serious threats and harassment are one thing. Posting obscene or mean things is another. If you don't like it, don't read it. Or block the user. Or don't use facebook. The world is full of horrible people and there's no karmic point accumulation where if something bad enough happens to you in life, you're therefore protected from those horrible people.
I've tried to make the point repeatedly under this story that we wrongly excuse people's regard toward technology in a way we would never do toward other aspects of life. If you ignored the "idiot lights" in your car and even ignored the fuel gauge, to the point that you found yourself on the side of the highway with an empty tank or you left your kid in the car on a hot summer day or you left your car running on the sidewalk while you ran into the convenience store -- we'd label you an ignorant idiot who lacked any common sense whatsoever and deserved the problems you attracted to yourself.
However, replace "car" with "computer, and we suddenly excuse that mentality. You are no longer a stupid fool exhibiting a lack of common sense or at least interest in understanding things (for example "I should check the manual to see what this idiot light means"). No, when it's a computer -- you're suddenly *the victim*. A victim of complex, baffling, impossible to understand (because you willfully refuse to try), scary technology.
About twenty years ago, I remember Oprah having some "safety specialist" on her show. They videotaped him in a park, approaching young children when their parents weren't paying attention and then talking the child into going away with them. They would then approach the parent with the child and the video of them absconding with their child, pointing out to the parents that the only reason their child isn't dead in the back of some van somewhere, is that they weren't that person . . . THIS TIME.
Comparing these things to something as trivial as "your shit isn't encrypted, so you might want to fix that" is silly. The entire hacker ethos is about helping the community -- both of hackers and the world overall -- with their actions.
It's the "who the fuck are you to tell me what I'm doing wrong?!" reactions that are bullshit. It seems to be the typical reaction of people who have a certain mindset, though. You find a toddler wandering around in a busy intersection. You grab the kid and help him back to his home and knock on the door to find his oblivious parents inside and rather than thanking you and being embarrassed by their own negligence, they react by getting pissed at you, because in helping them not have a dead child, you have somehow insulted and offended them and their precious parenting skills.
When it comes to technology, people suddenly have no interest in understanding things or figuring things out or having any responsibility for things --- but if you try and help them out, then fuck you for being so pompous as to think you're better than them! You intellectual elitist twat! How dare you!
Seriously . . . Think about it . . . I recently bought my first house and have had to educate myself on countless things. It is my obligation. If I bought a house and then didn't bother to learn about things and how to take care of them and seek out knowledge and advise and help when appropriate (and to figure out what I don't know, when I start out not even knowing what it is that I don't know) . . . people would rightly agree that I'm a lazy ignorant idiot. But, replace "house" with "computer" and suddenly I don't have to apply any of that to it. I no longer have to have even the most basic understanding or interest. I can just punch buttons and play with shit presuming absolutely no consequence.
It's the same logic of anyone else in any other environment and ignoring network security is just as stupid as ignoring all other types of security.
Go ahead and play the odds. Until the day that it bites you in the ass. I figured my lojak was a waste of money, because it's not like my car was ever going to be stolen. Especially considering where I live. Until it was stolen and it was returned a few hours later, when it was located by our police department via the lojak system.
And then the time my apartment was robbed of about $30,000 worth of items. Hey, what are the odds? There are tens of thousands of people in this city, so the odds of a bad guy being in my area and focusing on my dwelling and actually going through it is so tiny! Except when it actually happens.
Protecting your local network from something like firesheep is trivial. Will it protect everything from end to end? Of course not. Logging into sites via HTTP/plaintext will still leave you exposed at some point of the transaction, but you can at least protect yourself on your own local network. You don't need "VPN" and you don't need expensive or difficult to configure applications and utilities. You need three minutes. That's it. You are not weighing unlikely security violation versus hundreds or thousands of dollars of equipment and labor. You're weighing security against three minutes of your time to protect it. That's it.
You protect your network for the same reason you don't operate your computer directly plugged into the internet, with no form of firewall between the two of you so that you are exposed to bots and trojans and viruses of all types. It's trivial to protect against, so we protect against it.
What we NEED to do is stop excusing people's laziness and lack of interest, because it's "technology" and therefore we are just "elitists" for calling ignorant people ignorant and advising them to take precautions. Reminds me of all those idiots who got themselves into mortgage problems. Well, gosh, I couldn't be expected to make any effort to understand things for myself! I just do stuff and hope that the statistics are always in my favor!
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There's nothing special about the software industry. Plenty of industries that offer services not needed or wanted or which can not do so to a degree that the free market can support them continue to survive, thanks to government (tax payer) subsidies. If you have a big union that wields a lot of votes, you're even more likely to long out live your usefulness, without suffering from it.
However, I'm not really sure what any of that has to do with a million people using a commercial piece of software without paying for it. Unlike typewriters, people *need* anti-virus software (well, most of them, at least). Comparing typewriters which nobody wants or uses anymore to a piece of software that everyone wants and does use (just doesn't want to pay a few bucks for) doesn't exactly make sense. The fact that it was copied and used almost a million times sort of invalidates the idea that it's an unwanted service.
Of course they will. So will most domain registrars. Your city meter maid could just sneeze in the direction of most domain registrars and they'd cut your domain. Don't expect pushback from them on your behalf.
Right. Which is why the original poster said that using an alternative DNS (such as the one proposed by the piratebay founders, among other projects out there) is a good solution to being relieved of the censorship and control of government controlled DNS:
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91415/pirate-bay-co-founder-proposes-alternative-p2p-dns/
Of course, I'm not sure how that solves the problem. What are there, like three backbones in the nation? Or at worse, at the ISP level, a few ISPs blocking traffic to any non-sanctioned resolver solution would probably block 95% of the traffic in the country, so . . . sort of doesn't really solve anything, when it comes down to it.
WTV?
Is there some reason the blurb couldn't have just said "Amazon launches new DNS service for sites hosted on their cloud services"?
No, it only proves that whether there is any damage and how much is unknowable. You can determine how many sales resulted because of their response to it, but you can in no way determine how many sales were lost to getting it for free. People may have purchased, but from other companies. Or gone with free and open source options. Or used nothing. Certainly, one can't honestly say it doesn't do damage, but there's no way you can quantify it legally, say, to charge the culprit $580,000,000.00 in damages (the number of copies, by $750).
AVAST, ye mateys!
Am I right or am I right?
How can we stop users from doing all this web browsing stuff that sends them all over the internet - even to small people and non-commercial, non-business, non-monetizable places?
I know! We'll build a browser that only lets them browse Facebook, Twitter, Google, and any other website with multi-billion dollar valuation that slips us a few million dollars!
Besides, anyone who wants to go to a website that isn't facebook or twitter is probably a terrorist or a pedophile!
And those security tapes are usually rotated rather than archived, sold, distributed, analyzed, etc.
If you read the fucking article, you would realize that they're actual cameras trained on the audience to gauge their reaction to the entire film presentation, to gather data for marketers and film producers. The service is offered by the same company that offers infra-red camera systems for monitoring for recording devices in the theater, but that service and purpose has absolutely nothing to do with the article.
More importantly, how exactly are they going to get away with this? Are they going to have every patron read and sign a release form when buying their ticket?
I couldn't agree more. I've been looking forward to StarCraft 2. I pre-ordered it and installed it and played through most of the single player. I figured I'd be living on the multiplayer for years. In truth, I have yet to play a single game online. Perhaps part of it is just that I'm getting older (thirties, now) . . . but I suddenly find the whole "game ends in three minutes and you can tell who is going to lose, often, in the first ten seconds". It's not just Star Craft, though. There are a lot of games that I also find off-putting, because they devolve into exactly what this article describes. The knowledge that there is one perfect chain of actions you should take and the entire point of the game is to take those actions faster than the other guy. It takes the fun of discovery, surprise, variety out of it.
Law does not exist to protect me from you calling me names. It protects me from you physically attacking me. It protects me from you stealing from me. It protects me from you libeling or slandering me. It even protects me from you defrauding me. What it does not (and should not) do is protect me from you calling me names and telling me the world would be better off without me. Even if that drives me to do something terrible to myself. Even if I'm not a grown adult, but am a twelve year old girl.
I completely agree that in the Lori Drew case (which is the easiest to comment on here, since it's what we know the most about so far) is sickening and that it would be wonderful if the community shunned her and her reputation and actions follow her for the rest of her pitiful life . . . but as much as I'd find glee in terrible things happening to her, I can't take the step of using the law to punish her for being a "shitty human being" as the precedent it sets for thought crime and free speech are far more vile than the action it is punishing.
They weren't implying that Korea is as it was depicted in the animation. How that went over people's heads astounds me. When I saw it the week it came out, I just sort of shrugged and thought it was sad how many years it has been since the Simpsons had managed to be edgy and interesting and how this was such a bland attempt at humor.
The Simpsons poking fun at the idea that they are responsible for some sort of animation-sweat-shop from the dark ages operating in Korea that tortures unicorns is the same style of humor as if Barack Obama made a joke about his birth certificate. Not because he's saying "I'm not really an American har har har!", but because he'd be attempting to humorously highlight ludicrous the implication is.
The intro wasn't aiming at garnering sympathy and calling attention to some horrible situation in Korea. It was a piece of satire which poked fun at the whole "Simpsons farm out animation to Korean sweatshops" thing.
Seriously, did the fact that it was so ridiculously over the top not make it clear to people that it was satire and self-parody? The entire POINT of the intro was how silly the perception some people have of the Korean animation-shops supposedly is.
Does anyone in Korea understand what SATIRE fucking is?
'The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatize the index, commercialize the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder.'
Google is a business and they're doing all the indexing work, so *no* their index ought *not* be owned by us all. Further, they can advertise on their own system all they like, since it's their own product and the result of their own work. If some group of people wants to produce a wikipedia-esque version of the same thing, they're more than welcome to do so. Of course, they won't have the resources of a Google, so . . . good luck with that.
Of course, isn't that what the Mozilla Open Directory was?
Also, the entire internet is spammed with endless fucking advertising, right down to every jackhole and his blog read only by himself. What is more representative of humanity and the internet than a search index that is also filled with advertising on every square inch? Not to mention, the ads are being served in real time. They're not part of some "archive" somewhere. And even if they were, stripping them out would be very simple (hell, I can do it in real time with Adblock Plus . . . which everyone should be using so they won't have to deal with these ads to begin with).
Google should have strong competition, true, but they shouldn't be forced to open everything to the world out of some sort of altruistic goal. I also shouldn't be forced to foot the bill, as a tax payer, for your little pet project to "reproduce google, but without ads". Again, you can already get google without ads. It's called an adblocker.
No, the biggest threat to democracy is selfish voters. Vote on principal and employ abstract thinking rather than "is this going to reinforce my beliefs or directly reward me with some goodies". You don't have to be extraordinarily empathetic to think that people like the guy in this story (or Lori Drew) are vile human beings that disgust you and make you feel awful for their "victims". It takes a little effort to step outside yourself and recognize that just because something isn't nice or doesn't directly benefit you doesn't mean it isn't right.
The Lori Drew case is a great example of that. Many people found themselves in the shitty position of wanting to see that bitch punished for being an awful human being to a little kid but also comprehending that sometimes doing the right thing means not being satisfied with some sort of retribution.
You think they aren't close to doing this in the states, too?
The 36-year-old "preyed on bereaved families" for his "own pleasure," Manchester Magistrates Court heard.'"
As opposed to the media and politicians, which prey on bereaved families for the pleasure of their viewers and ratings.
Asperger's is the new sheik.
The world is full of vile douchbags. Not really any point to pondering their existence. The only thing we can really consider is why one would support and encourage censorship.
I know it's in the UK, so we're talking about different laws here, but in the end it all comes down to either supporting free speech or not supporting it. The true test of freedom of speech is not in allowing people who agree with your viewpoints to express them but in allowing those who you disagree with and who say even the most vile and atrocious things the right to say them.
Fred Phelps and his repulsive clan of inbred idiots are some of the most disgusting people on earth who truly put free speech to the test. As much as I would enjoy seeing them struck by a meteor (or a bus) while picketing across the street from some poor kid's funeral or some highschool -- I would never dream of restricting right to say what they like (or the right of countless people to show up and counter their assembly with their own thoughts and expressions).
Libel and slander and serious threats and harassment are one thing. Posting obscene or mean things is another. If you don't like it, don't read it. Or block the user. Or don't use facebook. The world is full of horrible people and there's no karmic point accumulation where if something bad enough happens to you in life, you're therefore protected from those horrible people.
EXACTLY.
I've tried to make the point repeatedly under this story that we wrongly excuse people's regard toward technology in a way we would never do toward other aspects of life. If you ignored the "idiot lights" in your car and even ignored the fuel gauge, to the point that you found yourself on the side of the highway with an empty tank or you left your kid in the car on a hot summer day or you left your car running on the sidewalk while you ran into the convenience store -- we'd label you an ignorant idiot who lacked any common sense whatsoever and deserved the problems you attracted to yourself.
However, replace "car" with "computer, and we suddenly excuse that mentality. You are no longer a stupid fool exhibiting a lack of common sense or at least interest in understanding things (for example "I should check the manual to see what this idiot light means"). No, when it's a computer -- you're suddenly *the victim*. A victim of complex, baffling, impossible to understand (because you willfully refuse to try), scary technology.
About twenty years ago, I remember Oprah having some "safety specialist" on her show. They videotaped him in a park, approaching young children when their parents weren't paying attention and then talking the child into going away with them. They would then approach the parent with the child and the video of them absconding with their child, pointing out to the parents that the only reason their child isn't dead in the back of some van somewhere, is that they weren't that person . . . THIS TIME.
Comparing these things to something as trivial as "your shit isn't encrypted, so you might want to fix that" is silly. The entire hacker ethos is about helping the community -- both of hackers and the world overall -- with their actions.
It's the "who the fuck are you to tell me what I'm doing wrong?!" reactions that are bullshit. It seems to be the typical reaction of people who have a certain mindset, though. You find a toddler wandering around in a busy intersection. You grab the kid and help him back to his home and knock on the door to find his oblivious parents inside and rather than thanking you and being embarrassed by their own negligence, they react by getting pissed at you, because in helping them not have a dead child, you have somehow insulted and offended them and their precious parenting skills.
When it comes to technology, people suddenly have no interest in understanding things or figuring things out or having any responsibility for things --- but if you try and help them out, then fuck you for being so pompous as to think you're better than them! You intellectual elitist twat! How dare you!
Seriously . . . Think about it . . . I recently bought my first house and have had to educate myself on countless things. It is my obligation. If I bought a house and then didn't bother to learn about things and how to take care of them and seek out knowledge and advise and help when appropriate (and to figure out what I don't know, when I start out not even knowing what it is that I don't know) . . . people would rightly agree that I'm a lazy ignorant idiot. But, replace "house" with "computer" and suddenly I don't have to apply any of that to it. I no longer have to have even the most basic understanding or interest. I can just punch buttons and play with shit presuming absolutely no consequence.
It's the same logic of anyone else in any other environment and ignoring network security is just as stupid as ignoring all other types of security.
Go ahead and play the odds. Until the day that it bites you in the ass. I figured my lojak was a waste of money, because it's not like my car was ever going to be stolen. Especially considering where I live. Until it was stolen and it was returned a few hours later, when it was located by our police department via the lojak system.
And then the time my apartment was robbed of about $30,000 worth of items. Hey, what are the odds? There are tens of thousands of people in this city, so the odds of a bad guy being in my area and focusing on my dwelling and actually going through it is so tiny! Except when it actually happens.
Protecting your local network from something like firesheep is trivial. Will it protect everything from end to end? Of course not. Logging into sites via HTTP/plaintext will still leave you exposed at some point of the transaction, but you can at least protect yourself on your own local network. You don't need "VPN" and you don't need expensive or difficult to configure applications and utilities. You need three minutes. That's it. You are not weighing unlikely security violation versus hundreds or thousands of dollars of equipment and labor. You're weighing security against three minutes of your time to protect it. That's it.
You protect your network for the same reason you don't operate your computer directly plugged into the internet, with no form of firewall between the two of you so that you are exposed to bots and trojans and viruses of all types. It's trivial to protect against, so we protect against it.
What we NEED to do is stop excusing people's laziness and lack of interest, because it's "technology" and therefore we are just "elitists" for calling ignorant people ignorant and advising them to take precautions. Reminds me of all those idiots who got themselves into mortgage problems. Well, gosh, I couldn't be expected to make any effort to understand things for myself! I just do stuff and hope that the statistics are always in my favor!