Perhaps the problem is that we do hold people like sports stars, movie stars, and the like on such a high pedestal that it makes it unconscionable to hold elected officials to a high standard. When your sports stars are murderers, rapist, animal torturers, and all around thugs, and your movie stars are bigots, drug addicts, and it's questionable whether they have any ethics or morality at all can we really expect so much from our elected officials? Perhaps if we started to demand more from our entertainment sources we could demand more from our elected officials without sounding hypocritical.
Yay! Someone (sic) who actually has a clue! I hear a lot of rants on Slashdot about net neutrality, most of which are clueless. Even people who profess to be network engineers, but who are not necessarily experienced in VoIP or QoS, don't really have a clue. Just because you know EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, doesn't mean you know jack about QoS. For a primer there are eight things that would add to the delay of a packet. In order they are serialization, propagation, queuing, forwarding, shaping, network, codec, and compression. By far the biggest concern, and the largest delay, is serialization. However, serialization is a fixed value based on the bandwidth of the link (and each hop between the destinations would add a serialization delay). On speeds over T3 the serialization delay is so small that QoS engineers usually don't take it into consideration, so the major serialization delay would be on the first hop out to the ISP and the last hop to the destination user. You would hope that all of the hops in-between would be at least T3 speeds.
Propagation is just what it says, how long it takes the signal to go down the line. Most people use 70% c for this value, and it's based on distance, so it's also a fixed value. Skip queuing for now, as that's where the main problem comes in. Forwarding is how much it takes the network gear to process and forward the packet from the input interface/queue to the output queue. This should be negligible give current day hardware switched packet gear. Shaping is self-imposed delay of the sending of traffic so that you don't go over the CIR on links such as Frame Relay, and shouldn't be applicable to what we are discussing. "Network" is some unknown delay within a service provider's network, such as a Frame Relay network. Since we are talking about service providers' networks network delay is not applicable. Codec and compress, these are VoIP specific delays in coding the voice patterns by the DSP in the VoIP device, compressing it if applicable, and putting it in the VoIP phone's output queue. They are not applicable to this discussion.
So we are left with going back to queuing. Queuing delay is the amount of delay sitting in an output queue because there are other packets being transmitted, or waiting to be transmitted before yours. Why would they be waiting, because the bandwidth is exceeded, the utilization for the link is at 100%. The service provider over-proscribed their links, etc. How much is the delay? Well, it's the serialization delay for all of the packets waiting before you to be transmitted. Since serialization delay is usually ignored for links over T3 speeds you wouldn't think that they would add up to much, unless the link were really, really, over-proscribed. Here's where the major QoS tools come into play, where you can maybe have two queues serviced by the outbound interface. Say you have one priority queue for VoIP traffic and one other queue for all other traffic. If there is ever any traffic in the VoIP queue you would always transmit that next instead of a packet in the regular queue. Maybe you designate a specific bandwidth available for the higher priority traffic for a particular interface. Maybe you have more than just one class of packets, more than just high priority and normal, and maybe you do weighted early random dropping of packets in the normal priority queue, base on the classification, so that bulk transfer protocols such as FTP would back off sooner, reduce the TCP window size, and not effect the other traffic.
Keep in mind what we are talking about here though. If the pipe isn't full there is generally no reason for QoS or tiering of network traffic on high speed links. Are the links full now? I don't know, you'd have to ask the service providers. Will they become full soon? Possibly, this could just be a preemptive step by the service providers to avoid any issue as the links fill up. However, I suspect this is a major push by service providers to be able to increase revenue and charge for what
Yes and no. It would be a no brainer if the majority of demand were for live broadcasts, or recorded broadcasts that were played to everyone at the same time. However, it would do nothing, and probably make things worse, if you were to multicast all media, as I believe the vast majority are on-demand, like when an individual user clicks on a YouTube video. Setting up various "channels" that are broadcast on specific multicast addresses, and then using IGMP on the edge devices to join the multicast group to receive that particular live broadcast channel would of course minimize that traffic and reduce bandwidth. But as far as I know the percentage of bandwidth being used for broadcast multimedia of that type is minimal; I believe the vast majority of media bandwidth is individual on-demand transfers.
Plus, you'd have to get everyone to agree on the multicast routing protocol to use, and all of the edge devices ("consumer" cable modem router, DSL router, wireless router etc) would all have to be replaced or upgraded to provide the multicast capability. As far as I know, none of them will proxy the IGMP join messages from your inside network at home to the ISP connection.
It's called nonrepudiation, and yes it is usually a desired if not required feature of public key encryption. There have been some recent issues with in-the-clear messages that are signed with a private key in that the hash algorithm used (MD5 and/or SHA-128) have particular known weaknesses. If you sign a message/file like a PDF that can contain comments that are usually not shown in a viewer then someone could possible add in comments with the appropriate "garbage" text that would make a modified message produce the same hash key. However, for encrypted messages this has not been shown to be as big of a deal, that I'm aware of, because you'd not only have to decrypt the message in order to edit it you'd also have to be able to re-encrypt the message with the necessary added junk bytes required in order to produce the same hash.
In any case, NIST sent out a notice and request for comments for the development and/or selection of a new, more secure, hash. You'll probably see it out in products in 5 years or so, as most hardware-acceleration gear out there is specifically designed for MD5/SHA-128. Just as a lot of people had to replace crypto hardware when AES was developled as the replacement of DES, you will likely see a similar upgrade required in the future for a new hash algorithm.
For normal encryption protocols to work correctly nonrepudiation is required. Otherwise it would be easy to launch man-in-the-middle attacks. This particular protocol, from what I gather from other posts, has things confused. They seem to desire the ability to identify the other end, and supposedly encrypt the sessions, yet have no mechanism for nonrepudiation. So the only comparison I could make would be sending a "signed" message in the clear without the critical hash of the plaintext message. So you'd send the message and attach your signature but anyone could modify the message en-route.
I think people are confusing the encryption protocol with the application program. I'd hazard to guess that there is nonrepudiation in the actual encryption protocol being used. However, it sounds like the application program stores logs of the unencrypted messages in plaintext on the hard drive. The messages are, at that point, out of the scope of an encryption protocol. How messages are handled may be part of an encryption standard, but not really a single encryption protocol. If unencrypted messages are stored in plaintext someone could steal or break into your computer and put all kinds of incriminating material in your logs. Since they are not signed there is no way you could repudiate the contents, which you would want to be able to do if they were faked. I could also edit the stored messages myself and make it look like you sent me anything I desired, even something that would incriminate you and shift the blame from me, which you would certainly want to repudiate.
For a proper encryption standard, something which encompasses more than just the transmission of messages between two endpoints and may address other issues such as message storage, the messages should be stored in encrypted format, and/or at least including the sender's original hash signed with their private key. This way someone that sent you a message would not be able to deny the contents of that message, which you would want if say you were sent a threatening message or something similar.
For those thinking of privacy and dissidents, etc, nonrepudiation would also be something that people would want. Say you were part of a secret organization that was working to overthrow some fictional evil government. If you had a mole in your group you wouldn't want them to be able to deny that they sent particular messages to their contact. Or, you wouldn't want them to deny that they received particular messages, saying that you just planted them there yourself because you are the mole.
And no, escalating past second level will not get you what you want, but it might make you feel good hearing the exact same thing from the management, right?
I think it depends on what type of support you are talking about. If you get someone who doesn't know what they are talking about at Cisco TAC I can tell you it does make a difference to ask for another engineer, or even talk to the Duty Manager. It doesn't help if you are an ass about it.
You are describing another synchronous token system, everyone else is describing a more familiar synchronous token system. Both are valid and existing technologies. There are also asynchronous token systems. TFA says:
"VeriSign was expected to announce a deal Tuesday with Innovative Card Technologies Inc."
and
"That code constantly changes, meaning the customer needs to have possession of the card to access the account."
Now, ICT says this:
"InCard has embedded an operating system into the card - the press of a button on the card activatesa battery, circuit, and chip, which sends an algorithm-generated passcode to an embedded display. Each time the button is pressed, another passcode is generated. This passcode is good for only one use during a limited time, thus proving possession of the card and guarding against electronic fraud."
and:
"OTP generated with OATH or custom algorithm"
This certainly sounds like a counter based synchronous system, but is it? How can it be "good for only one use during a limited time" if time is not a factor? What would stop you from generating a code, writing that down, and using it days or weeks later. I'm not pointing this out to question the security of the device, as I believe they would still be secure (just don't generate codes and write them down where they can be stolen along with your card number!). I'm pointing it out because it leaves one to question whether this is truely a counter based synchronous system.
OATH's definition of a OTP token is the industry standard:
"OTP (One Time Passwords) authentication (commonly used today) can be divided in two types; synchronous (based on a transformation of a common shared secret and a moving value that is synchronous on both the server side and the client side. This method is what usually is referred to as OTP) and challenge-response (in which a server generates a challenge value that will be transformed by the client based on a secret shared between the client and the server)."
They call asynchronous authentication challenge-response, it it's all the same. The OATH Reference Model does say this:
"OATH has endorsed a new OTP algorithm standard called HMAC-based OTP [HOTP], based on the HMAC SHA-1 algorithm. It is an event-based OTP algorithm, in which a counter value is used in the OTP calculation and incremented on the client and server after each use. The algorithm has been submitted to the IETF for standardization as an Informational RFC. Areas of future work include possible extensions to the current HOTP algorithm, such as:
Time-based OTP algorithm variant
Counter-based re-synchronization method for clients that can send the count value to the server along with the OTP value
Composite shared secrets (e.g., based on user PIN or other deterministic data for computing the shared secret)
Addition of a data field for computing OTP values Additionally, OATH will also look to promote standardization of other low cost authentication technologies, specifically targeted towards consumer usage scenarios. Some of the areas that OATH is investigating include scratch-cards and methods derived from battleship or bingo cards."
So it certainly looks like your guess that we are talking about a counter based system rather than a time based system is accurate. However, it's still a guess; until more information is available we just won't know. Did Verisign specify their own algorithm that is time based as ICT says they can support (the alternative algorithm, not necessarily anything that requires a clock)?
It's even worse than that. You don't actually need a "valid" copyright notice in the US anymore. Works are copyrighted automatically. It certainly helps to have a copyright notice. It also helps to have your works registered with the government, but that is usually not necessary unless you are about to sue someone (just like Novell and SCO scrambled to register their claimed copyrights in the Unix source; funny they didn't feel the need to register them before the lawsuits).
Now one can argue that as soon as the owner places a work on a publicly accessible location, such as a blog or on Slashdot, that you implicitly grant others the right to copy that work. That may be a stretch, and would depend on the situation. If the acceptable use policy of the site says that all submissions are reproducible that is much different than if you have a site in which you have to login and pay a fee in order to retrieve documents or other works (think DRM free pay music sites). However, just because some information is "leaked" one way or another, such as the LDS document sited, it does not mean that the owner of the work gave the permission or relinquished their rights. Hence, even the "fair use" of a small part of their work may not pass muster. One could argue that their internal documents on how they treat homosexuality are not only copyrighted, but in fact Trade Secrets, and there is no fair use of Trade Secrets. As long as they took reasonable steps to protect those items the leaking of them does not change their status. So it could be said that the web site should not have published the documents has they done something as simple as read the beginning which indicated they were confidential internal documents.
1) To be a cert authority, don't you need at least a medium-sized farm of supercomputers to mine very large prime numbers [Œ
No. If you're unaware of how CA's work, they just sign certificates. That's their primary purpose. The end-user or RA may generate the certificate that the CA signs. Or you may have the CA generate the certificate for the user. Or the CA can download a small applet and have the end-user do the work as far as generating the keys. However, the preferred method is to have the end-user generate the keys in the certificate. There is no reason why the CA needs to know the private key for the user's certificate (which they would necessarily need to know if they generated all keys for all certificates). You can run a CA on open source software now. Ever heard of OpenSSL? Just create a self-signed certificate and wala, you're a CA. Whether anyone recognizes you as a CA is another question, but you have all of the certificate signing capabilities that any other CA has.
As others replied to other posts, you are not the target demographic. You have 4-6 hours per DAY during the week? I'm lucky if I have 4-6 hours per WEEK to play the Wii. And I do like playing games, I'd play them all day if I could. I haven't finished Zelda, haven't finished Rayman, haven't finished Monkey Ball, Wii Sports and Wii Play are "simple" games, but fit in with my schedule of having 20-30 minutes a day, at most, or a few hours on the weekends. Come to think of it, I haven't finished any games on the Wii.
Another thing that struck me was that it seems your playing time is mostly single-user, granted with on-line play. That's not the target demographics of the Wii. The Wii is designed for the rest of us, who enjoy playing games with the rest of the family or friends who are right there, rather than some on-line friends who can't enjoy the same kinds of dynamics that are present with group play. It's a slight difference, and I'm not putting down on-line play, but in my opinion it is much more enjoyable to play with other people actually present. Again, different preferences and different demographics.
So, enjoy your 360 or your PS3. For the little time I have available to play games, I much prefer to play them in a group setting with my family and friends instead of solo or by myself with others on-line. To each their own...
Exactly. Contrary to many posts and comments on news programs over the last few days, this is NOT a First Amendment Issue. The First Amendment only addresses the action of government with respect to Free Speech, among other things. It has nothing to do with the actions or behaviors of individuals. As long as someone doesn't do anything illegal, such as sending threatening letters or physically assaulting someone for what they say, they are free to do whatever they want as a response to what someone says. In fact, this right is another First Amendment guarantee, the freedom of Association.
If I'm an advertiser, I'm not forced to advertise on programs that I find offensive. If I'm a viewer/listener, I'm not forced to view or listen to a program I find offensive. It was a business decision by the advertisers to pull their business with the media companies because they themselves or they believed their customers didn't want to associate with the host of the show. It was a business decision by the media companies to fire the host because they themselves didn't want to associate with the host, they believed their customers didn't want to associate with the host, or they made a financial decision based on the actions of the advertisers. In any case, it's all legal, and I'd suggest, perfectly ethical and moral.
The government is not limiting the Free Speech of Don Imus. Neither are the media companies, advertisers, or listeners/viewers. Don Imus is free to say whatever he wants, but he has no inalienable right to get paid to say whatever he wants on a media program. Just as we are guaranteed a Freedom of Association, we are guaranteed a freedom FROM association. We can not be forced to associate with those that we do not wish to (this does not extend to government forced segregation, which of course would be violating freedom of association). Likewise, the Second Amendment says that we are allowed to own firearms, but it does not force everyone to own a firearm (although there's a county in Georgia that I believe has a law on the books that says everyone must own a firearm; I don't believe it is enforced, nor Constitutional).
I think everyone is missing the main problem with this idea by the IRS to require E-Bay and similar companies to report "income" or sales of their customer/vendors. HOW would E-Bay report such information? They would require your Social Security Number or Tax ID. I don't E-Bay, but I don't believe they collect that information now. Can you imagine the attacks and inevitable loss of SSN's by E-Bay due to this proposed requirement?
I can understand the IRS' motive, but their method is misplaced. E-Bay is not paying the sellers directly, they are a distant third-party when it comes to the actual transaction. They can't actually confirm how much each taxable individual is paid for sales. If the IRS wants to go after those who basically make their living on E-Bay, then it can open investigations on a case-by-case basis. I can see it legitimate to ask E-Bay to provide a list of individual sellers that supposedly closed deals over $50,000 in the last year, and then open cases on each one and go after them.
Or something else, but don't make E-Bay obtain and report on every users' SSN and the "income" each users is supposedly receiving (which E-Bay can't really prove anyway).
If the Japanese government were to file suit in US court against Google, and argue that Japanese law should prevail and that the content should not be available to anyone due to Japanese law, then you would be correct. That's not my understanding of the situation. My understanding is that Japan is telling Youtube/google to stop providing content it believes is illegal to Japanese territories, presumably or else they will get banned in Japan. That would be Japan enforcing Japanese laws in Japanese territory. Google/youtube would still be able to send the content to anywhere else in the world.
Yes, I actually agree that it is wrong (and stupid), but it is legal and the right thing for the government to do.
But it may be in Youtube's best interest to devise a system where they didn't send content to locations where it was illegal to avoid being totally banned. And the people posting the content may not come from or be in the country where it is illegal.
Japan would have no jurisdiction to sue Youtube if they were not located in Japan. And you can't sue them in US court using Japanese law. So any country can "sue you for a few bazillion" dollars but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Ever heard of the email spam black list fiasco? I think the company was in Ireland or Great Britian or whatever, and the company sued in US court. The spammer "won" because the company didn't show up to defend themselves, but they get nothing out of it. The blacklisting company is not covered by US laws. However, it is conceivable that the spammer could argue in court that the company is causing them irreparable harm and sue the ISP's that have connection out of the US to block traffic to the blacklist site. I doubt a court would agree in that instance, but could see a court forcing Internet exchanges to block sites that hosted illegal content. That's the commercial end of it. On the government end of it the government itself would determine if it thought particular content was illegal, and possibly get approval from some other branch of government to send a don't-delivery-here request. Back to commercial disputes, governments could have processes whereby they heard arguments before they forwarded a don't-deliver-here request. That way some left or right wing nut in the US couldn't send requests to take down legal content here that happened to be hosted in some other country.
So it's not a "oh some country is going to sue youtube or any other site" it's whether youtube or some other site is going to get blocked in entirety because of some content they are serving to where it is illegal. Most countries would give the host site a by and allow them to continue serving legal content to their territories if the host company blocked illegal content as asked. And since you would have to extradite anyone between countries it most likely would come down to a "oh, I didn't know that was illegal, promise I'll block it from now on" kind of situation.
The alternative to not following a countries laws as far as what is legal and not legal content to delivery in their territory is a total ban. It has happened before, ironically to youtube (Turkey, Austraila, Brazil, etc), and will likely happen again and with more frequency in the future.
As explained before, and alternative to not getting banned in a whole country is either to devise an internal service or subscribe to an as-yet unavailable service where you check the destination location where you are delivering the content and based on requests from the leading authority in a country ban specific content. It's not for a company in the US, or any other country you pick out of a hat, to determine whether the request is reasonable or not. The alternative would be a complete ban. At least you can get some content in, and you would likely get all content in for a particular time period until it was requested to be taken down. As far as who would determine if the request was legitimate or not, that would be up to the people of that country. They could challenge the request in their local court system, if they have one, protest, and if it comes down to it revolt and change their government.
No, it should not be as granular as "all video of X celebrity cannot be viewed between the hours of 10 and 2," the request would have to be for specific content. The countries laws may be that specific, but you can't expect content providers to be that granular and actually enforce the laws of each country. They shouldn't even be required to police their own content, it should be the individual countries' responsibility to police the content and send notices for each occurrence of illegal content. And it shouldn't be for local governments or areas, or specific locations, in a country, either a total ban on the content or not.
And remember, this could be a money generating business for Gootube, not some unreasonable crippling requirement. In addition to providing a clearing house service for other web sites, they could conceivably charge the requesting country a small fee for "processing" each request. They could even provide a service to the governments whereby they can view all new content, NOT to have them prescreen the content before it was made available, but so that they don't have to search for new content, and charge a larger reasonable fee for this. Do countries HAVE to do this? No, they could just ban the whole site, but Google can also negotiate.
There are laws in the US that would make banning or censoring this content, being political speech, illegal. I happen to agree with those laws, but apparently Japan does not have exactly the same laws. And we are talking about the delivery of content to Japan, which falls under Japanese law. Anti-US?!?! I'm FROM the US. If you believe that the US is sovereign and should be able to make our own laws, then you have to respect other countries laws as enforced on their territory as stupid as they may be (as long as they don't breach human rights, such as in WWII Germany and say Darfur).
Should Japanese law be enforced in the US? Of course not! But there's nothing wrong with the Japanese telling Youtube to stop delivering illegal content to their territories or else they will be banned. For the umpteenth time there is a technological way that Google can do that, and possibly make some money along the way.
And I agree with you on the 'fair' laws, especially for elections. But those laws are laws of a nation for that nation, not anywhere else.
Now, as far as Youtube and it being "decidedly anti-free speech" that's debatable. If you ignore the type of content and just treat it as content, then you'd have to agree that any country has the right to determine what content is legal or not on their soil, and Youtube is delivering supposedly illegal content to Japanese soil. Replace the political speech in this occurrence with some other questionable content such as child porn, top secret weapons plans, or something else and it changes the discussion, doesn't it?
Throwing questions in there about my beliefs as far as human rights is pretty low. No, I don't think human rights are just for some or are relative, and I don't believe I'm some sort of nut. I said in another post that I believe it is certainly justifiable to take action, such as sanctions, and ultimately war, against other countries if they are abusing human rights. Back to the "decidedly" part, that is debatable because a forum for political speech is apparently provided in Japanese law. Germany has laws with regard to content related to Nazis. Do you disagree with that? Good! Don't move to Germany then. (And I don't think I broke the USENET law, because I didn't compare anyone to Hitler or call them a Nazi, I just used it as an example of a law that I believe everyone would be familiar with).
Actually, I'm not positive but I think those laws were changed quite a while back. Recently there was some big to-do because the Democrats were thinking of reintroducing the laws, and there was an uproar by the political right in the US because there are so many successful right-wing talk radio stations on the air and only one major, failing, left-wing station. So there may be laws still in effect as far as actual candidates that are going to be on a voting ticket, and there may be a long-standing industry practice left over, but as far as I know we have not yet fallen to the level of coerced equal time for ideas from every far left and far right nutwing out there.
Read my other posts. I think it's commendable that Japan notified Google that they need to take down particular content or they will get banned. I've suggested a way that Google can do this without taking down content for everyone in multiple other posts. I won't repeat it here.
Except to say this. Someone posted some flamebait about how they aren't going to edit their web site for every law in every country in the world, and that you can't censor in the 21st century. I won't credit the post with a direct response, but it did make me think of something else. I don't think it's unreasonable for a large global company like Google to check who they are delivering content to and filter based on requests from countries. However, it would be unreasonable for a small web site. And here's the idea (I claim first thought on anyone who attempts to patent this business idea - prior art): Create a company that is a clearing house for the request by governments and what content should not be served to them. Web sites could connect to the clearing-house server and get a quick read on what IP address goes in what country, and what content is prohibited in that country. A cache can be created, so that you don't have to check each and every packet. Hell, Google could even do this and offer it as a service, allowing the web sites to put Google adds on their site without reimbursement for payment.
Problem solved.
A discussion of what content would be appropriate for banning is not apropos. Remember that there is much more content than free speech type. We could be talking about programs, music files, documents, plans for weapons, etc. These items may be legal in some countries, and illegal in others. It's up for the individual countries to decide. It's not up to a company that serves content throughout the world to use their own local idea of what is right and wrong to determine whether a take-down request is reasonable or not.
I agree, and the solution is for Google to use a tool that determines what country a user is in and to be able to ban the delivery of content that a country says is illegal to that country, and nowhere else. Should this be the responsibility of every mom and pop internet site? No, because a small site most likely has content of a particular flavor and if some of it is deemed illegal then the whole content is likely illegal. In those cases the country can ban access to the sites in whole. For huge global sites such as Youtube, I believe the burden should be placed on the company, regardless of where their servers are located. Should any local "government" be able to send the request? No, it should come from the federal or whatever passes for the top government in the country. It would be up to the people of the country to use whatever method they provided themselves to challenge any particular don't-transmit order, not the web company.
No, it's not that easy. Read my other posts. You're thinking like sales tax law between different states. It doesn't make a difference where the server is located, they are doing business in Japan by providing the content there. If they were providing the questionable content anywhere else but Japan then I doubt the Japanese would give a rat's ass. Again, read my other posts.
If you change that around slightly and instead of asking if anyone should enforce foreign law to should anyone abide by foreign law then I think the answer is yes. Youtube should abide by foreign law when doing business in those foreign countries. It's not a question of where the servers are located. This is not a tax question as to whether you pay sales tax if you happen to live in New York and the company you purchase from resides in California with no office in New York. The company is still doing business with you in New York, and if they sell you something that happens to be legal in California but illegal in New York should they be able to? When you look at it like that, which I believe is the only logical way to look at it, then the only answer would be no, the company should not sell you those items that happen to be illegal where you are located. Can you go to California and purchase and say consume items which are illegal in New York? Certainly, just as Japanese people in other countries can watch whatever happens to be legal in that locale.
So out of all of this thought process I come up with the idea that just because it happens to be on the Internet does not make it exempt from local laws. There is technology already out there that can identify what country you are communicating from, if not a much more granular location. There is no reason why companies such as Gootube couldn't use that technology to filter what they deliver to make sure it is legal to transact in such business with the end user. Given all the hoopla about how many PHD's Google has in employment I'm surprised no one else has come up with this idea and already implemented it.
Unfortunately we can't all just "get along." There are some wicked bad people out there. To reuse my example that I hope everyone should agree on, should we have to have laws against pedophilia? Well, if we could all just "get along" then then answer would be no, we shouldn't have to have those types of laws. However, that is not reality. Reality is that there are people out there to which these laws apply. Now as you move your way from the laws that everyone can agree with, such as murder, etc, into laws in different areas where it becomes more gray, such as freedom of speech to include anything such as hate speech, inciting riots, etc, then not everyone agrees. Different cultures have different norms when it comes to these gray areas. It is a countries sovereign right to be able to make the laws that its population agree with.
It is only when countries make laws that their population does not agree with that other nations should get involved. Unfortunately, the involvement there is usually war and the death of many people, so it should be a darn good reason. A good example would be Germany in WWII era with their attempted genocide of Jewish people. Notice that I switch from citizens to population here, because I believe that there can be occasions where certain classes people are not even considered citizens with voting rights (referring to Jewish people in WWII era Germany, women in Taliban Afghanistan, etc).
So, everyone can have their opinion of whether this Japanese law is a good one or not. I happen to think that it is stupid and silly. However, only Japanese people would have standing to change the law via their system of government, either via making new law or challenging it in their court system. Express your opinion, sure! But don't construe the issue to be whether Japan has the right to enforce their own laws on their own soil.
You are missing the point. I'm not actually even talking about the US government in this discussion, rather people in the US who seem to feel that our laws (yes, I'm from the US) somehow trump laws in other countries. They do not. This is not the US forcing or not forcing Japan to permit people to say stuff in Japan. It's about allowing the Japanese their sovereign right to do what they want in their country, as in their case determined by their own people. Their laws apparently say that political speeches by candidates can only be broadcast by specific means. Their laws may be antiquated, and I'd guess that Japanese people would have standing to challenge those laws.
But the US isn't, in this case. Instead, it's the Japanese legal authorities that want to impose Japanese law on foreign soil.
Wrong. Japan is attempting to enforce their laws on their soil. If Youtube had some system to determine where the request was coming from geographically and could block all request from Japanese territory then I doubt Japan would be concern at all what Youtube does on other countries soil. In fact, this is probably the real solution that Youtube needs to devise, a system where they can restrict material that is illegal in specific countries from being served to addresses in those countries. It doesn't seem like an overly complex problem to fix.
If the company is doing business in Japan, then yes. I don't care where they are "operating out of" as in where their servers are located. They are doing business in Japan. Just like there may be countries where it is legal for some other activity (let's pick something reprehensible that hopefully we can all agree is "bad" like child pornography) that doesn't mean it is wrong or illegal for the US to try and stop that type of material from coming into the US, either by requesting the company hosting in the other country to stop or to just plain block the communications at the border. Now am I comparing the viewing of Japanese political speeches to child porn? Absolutely not. However, they do have laws about how their elections are run. I don't presume to know what they are, and take with blind faith that what they are doing is within their legal system. If it is not viewed by Japanese citizens then I presume that they could seek redress in Japanese court. That's not the discussion though, it's whether countries are sovereign or whether all countries are beholden to laws within other countries. It's Japanese law, on Japanese soil, let them do what they want. If you don't like it, move to Japan and become a citizen (if you even can, I don't know citizenship rules for Japan) and vote to change their laws.
Should Japan be able to enforce their laws on US soil? Of course not. They have no standing to say what material Youtube or anyone else makes available to anyone outside of their territory.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the problem is that we do hold people like sports stars, movie stars, and the like on such a high pedestal that it makes it unconscionable to hold elected officials to a high standard. When your sports stars are murderers, rapist, animal torturers, and all around thugs, and your movie stars are bigots, drug addicts, and it's questionable whether they have any ethics or morality at all can we really expect so much from our elected officials? Perhaps if we started to demand more from our entertainment sources we could demand more from our elected officials without sounding hypocritical.
Yay! Someone (sic) who actually has a clue! I hear a lot of rants on Slashdot about net neutrality, most of which are clueless. Even people who profess to be network engineers, but who are not necessarily experienced in VoIP or QoS, don't really have a clue. Just because you know EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, doesn't mean you know jack about QoS. For a primer there are eight things that would add to the delay of a packet. In order they are serialization, propagation, queuing, forwarding, shaping, network, codec, and compression. By far the biggest concern, and the largest delay, is serialization. However, serialization is a fixed value based on the bandwidth of the link (and each hop between the destinations would add a serialization delay). On speeds over T3 the serialization delay is so small that QoS engineers usually don't take it into consideration, so the major serialization delay would be on the first hop out to the ISP and the last hop to the destination user. You would hope that all of the hops in-between would be at least T3 speeds.
Propagation is just what it says, how long it takes the signal to go down the line. Most people use 70% c for this value, and it's based on distance, so it's also a fixed value. Skip queuing for now, as that's where the main problem comes in. Forwarding is how much it takes the network gear to process and forward the packet from the input interface/queue to the output queue. This should be negligible give current day hardware switched packet gear. Shaping is self-imposed delay of the sending of traffic so that you don't go over the CIR on links such as Frame Relay, and shouldn't be applicable to what we are discussing. "Network" is some unknown delay within a service provider's network, such as a Frame Relay network. Since we are talking about service providers' networks network delay is not applicable. Codec and compress, these are VoIP specific delays in coding the voice patterns by the DSP in the VoIP device, compressing it if applicable, and putting it in the VoIP phone's output queue. They are not applicable to this discussion.
So we are left with going back to queuing. Queuing delay is the amount of delay sitting in an output queue because there are other packets being transmitted, or waiting to be transmitted before yours. Why would they be waiting, because the bandwidth is exceeded, the utilization for the link is at 100%. The service provider over-proscribed their links, etc. How much is the delay? Well, it's the serialization delay for all of the packets waiting before you to be transmitted. Since serialization delay is usually ignored for links over T3 speeds you wouldn't think that they would add up to much, unless the link were really, really, over-proscribed. Here's where the major QoS tools come into play, where you can maybe have two queues serviced by the outbound interface. Say you have one priority queue for VoIP traffic and one other queue for all other traffic. If there is ever any traffic in the VoIP queue you would always transmit that next instead of a packet in the regular queue. Maybe you designate a specific bandwidth available for the higher priority traffic for a particular interface. Maybe you have more than just one class of packets, more than just high priority and normal, and maybe you do weighted early random dropping of packets in the normal priority queue, base on the classification, so that bulk transfer protocols such as FTP would back off sooner, reduce the TCP window size, and not effect the other traffic.
Keep in mind what we are talking about here though. If the pipe isn't full there is generally no reason for QoS or tiering of network traffic on high speed links. Are the links full now? I don't know, you'd have to ask the service providers. Will they become full soon? Possibly, this could just be a preemptive step by the service providers to avoid any issue as the links fill up. However, I suspect this is a major push by service providers to be able to increase revenue and charge for what
Yes and no. It would be a no brainer if the majority of demand were for live broadcasts, or recorded broadcasts that were played to everyone at the same time. However, it would do nothing, and probably make things worse, if you were to multicast all media, as I believe the vast majority are on-demand, like when an individual user clicks on a YouTube video. Setting up various "channels" that are broadcast on specific multicast addresses, and then using IGMP on the edge devices to join the multicast group to receive that particular live broadcast channel would of course minimize that traffic and reduce bandwidth. But as far as I know the percentage of bandwidth being used for broadcast multimedia of that type is minimal; I believe the vast majority of media bandwidth is individual on-demand transfers.
Plus, you'd have to get everyone to agree on the multicast routing protocol to use, and all of the edge devices ("consumer" cable modem router, DSL router, wireless router etc) would all have to be replaced or upgraded to provide the multicast capability. As far as I know, none of them will proxy the IGMP join messages from your inside network at home to the ISP connection.
Gotta go!
It's called nonrepudiation, and yes it is usually a desired if not required feature of public key encryption. There have been some recent issues with in-the-clear messages that are signed with a private key in that the hash algorithm used (MD5 and/or SHA-128) have particular known weaknesses. If you sign a message/file like a PDF that can contain comments that are usually not shown in a viewer then someone could possible add in comments with the appropriate "garbage" text that would make a modified message produce the same hash key. However, for encrypted messages this has not been shown to be as big of a deal, that I'm aware of, because you'd not only have to decrypt the message in order to edit it you'd also have to be able to re-encrypt the message with the necessary added junk bytes required in order to produce the same hash.
In any case, NIST sent out a notice and request for comments for the development and/or selection of a new, more secure, hash. You'll probably see it out in products in 5 years or so, as most hardware-acceleration gear out there is specifically designed for MD5/SHA-128. Just as a lot of people had to replace crypto hardware when AES was developled as the replacement of DES, you will likely see a similar upgrade required in the future for a new hash algorithm.
For normal encryption protocols to work correctly nonrepudiation is required. Otherwise it would be easy to launch man-in-the-middle attacks. This particular protocol, from what I gather from other posts, has things confused. They seem to desire the ability to identify the other end, and supposedly encrypt the sessions, yet have no mechanism for nonrepudiation. So the only comparison I could make would be sending a "signed" message in the clear without the critical hash of the plaintext message. So you'd send the message and attach your signature but anyone could modify the message en-route.
I think people are confusing the encryption protocol with the application program. I'd hazard to guess that there is nonrepudiation in the actual encryption protocol being used. However, it sounds like the application program stores logs of the unencrypted messages in plaintext on the hard drive. The messages are, at that point, out of the scope of an encryption protocol. How messages are handled may be part of an encryption standard, but not really a single encryption protocol. If unencrypted messages are stored in plaintext someone could steal or break into your computer and put all kinds of incriminating material in your logs. Since they are not signed there is no way you could repudiate the contents, which you would want to be able to do if they were faked. I could also edit the stored messages myself and make it look like you sent me anything I desired, even something that would incriminate you and shift the blame from me, which you would certainly want to repudiate.
For a proper encryption standard, something which encompasses more than just the transmission of messages between two endpoints and may address other issues such as message storage, the messages should be stored in encrypted format, and/or at least including the sender's original hash signed with their private key. This way someone that sent you a message would not be able to deny the contents of that message, which you would want if say you were sent a threatening message or something similar.
For those thinking of privacy and dissidents, etc, nonrepudiation would also be something that people would want. Say you were part of a secret organization that was working to overthrow some fictional evil government. If you had a mole in your group you wouldn't want them to be able to deny that they sent particular messages to their contact. Or, you wouldn't want them to deny that they received particular messages, saying that you just planted them there yourself because you are the mole.
I think it depends on what type of support you are talking about. If you get someone who doesn't know what they are talking about at Cisco TAC I can tell you it does make a difference to ask for another engineer, or even talk to the Duty Manager. It doesn't help if you are an ass about it.
You are describing another synchronous token system, everyone else is describing a more familiar synchronous token system. Both are valid and existing technologies. There are also asynchronous token systems. TFA says:
"VeriSign was expected to announce a deal Tuesday with Innovative Card Technologies Inc."
and
"That code constantly changes, meaning the customer needs to have possession of the card to access the account."
Now, ICT says this:
"InCard has embedded an operating system into the card - the press of a button on the card activatesa battery, circuit, and chip, which sends an algorithm-generated passcode to an embedded display. Each time the button is pressed, another passcode is generated. This passcode is good for only one use during a limited time, thus proving possession of the card and guarding against electronic fraud."
and:
"OTP generated with OATH or custom algorithm"
This certainly sounds like a counter based synchronous system, but is it? How can it be "good for only one use during a limited time" if time is not a factor? What would stop you from generating a code, writing that down, and using it days or weeks later. I'm not pointing this out to question the security of the device, as I believe they would still be secure (just don't generate codes and write them down where they can be stolen along with your card number!). I'm pointing it out because it leaves one to question whether this is truely a counter based synchronous system.
OATH's definition of a OTP token is the industry standard:
"OTP (One Time Passwords) authentication (commonly used today) can be divided in two
types; synchronous (based on a transformation of a common shared secret and a moving
value that is synchronous on both the server side and the client side. This method is what
usually is referred to as OTP) and challenge-response (in which a server generates a
challenge value that will be transformed by the client based on a secret shared between
the client and the server)."
They call asynchronous authentication challenge-response, it it's all the same. The OATH Reference Model does say this:
"OATH has endorsed a new OTP algorithm standard called HMAC-based OTP [HOTP],
based on the HMAC SHA-1 algorithm. It is an event-based OTP algorithm, in which a
counter value is used in the OTP calculation and incremented on the client and server
after each use. The algorithm has been submitted to the IETF for standardization as an
Informational RFC. Areas of future work include possible extensions to the current HOTP
algorithm, such as:
Time-based OTP algorithm variant
Counter-based re-synchronization method for clients that can send the count value to
the server along with the OTP value
Composite shared secrets (e.g., based on user PIN or other deterministic data for
computing the shared secret)
Addition of a data field for computing OTP values
Additionally, OATH will also look to promote standardization of other low cost
authentication technologies, specifically targeted towards consumer usage scenarios.
Some of the areas that OATH is investigating include scratch-cards and methods
derived from battleship or bingo cards."
So it certainly looks like your guess that we are talking about a counter based system rather than a time based system is accurate. However, it's still a guess; until more information is available we just won't know. Did Verisign specify their own algorithm that is time based as ICT says they can support (the alternative algorithm, not necessarily anything that requires a clock)?
It's even worse than that. You don't actually need a "valid" copyright notice in the US anymore. Works are copyrighted automatically. It certainly helps to have a copyright notice. It also helps to have your works registered with the government, but that is usually not necessary unless you are about to sue someone (just like Novell and SCO scrambled to register their claimed copyrights in the Unix source; funny they didn't feel the need to register them before the lawsuits).
Now one can argue that as soon as the owner places a work on a publicly accessible location, such as a blog or on Slashdot, that you implicitly grant others the right to copy that work. That may be a stretch, and would depend on the situation. If the acceptable use policy of the site says that all submissions are reproducible that is much different than if you have a site in which you have to login and pay a fee in order to retrieve documents or other works (think DRM free pay music sites). However, just because some information is "leaked" one way or another, such as the LDS document sited, it does not mean that the owner of the work gave the permission or relinquished their rights. Hence, even the "fair use" of a small part of their work may not pass muster. One could argue that their internal documents on how they treat homosexuality are not only copyrighted, but in fact Trade Secrets, and there is no fair use of Trade Secrets. As long as they took reasonable steps to protect those items the leaking of them does not change their status. So it could be said that the web site should not have published the documents has they done something as simple as read the beginning which indicated they were confidential internal documents.
As others replied to other posts, you are not the target demographic. You have 4-6 hours per DAY during the week? I'm lucky if I have 4-6 hours per WEEK to play the Wii. And I do like playing games, I'd play them all day if I could. I haven't finished Zelda, haven't finished Rayman, haven't finished Monkey Ball, Wii Sports and Wii Play are "simple" games, but fit in with my schedule of having 20-30 minutes a day, at most, or a few hours on the weekends. Come to think of it, I haven't finished any games on the Wii.
Another thing that struck me was that it seems your playing time is mostly single-user, granted with on-line play. That's not the target demographics of the Wii. The Wii is designed for the rest of us, who enjoy playing games with the rest of the family or friends who are right there, rather than some on-line friends who can't enjoy the same kinds of dynamics that are present with group play. It's a slight difference, and I'm not putting down on-line play, but in my opinion it is much more enjoyable to play with other people actually present. Again, different preferences and different demographics.
So, enjoy your 360 or your PS3. For the little time I have available to play games, I much prefer to play them in a group setting with my family and friends instead of solo or by myself with others on-line. To each their own...
Exactly. Contrary to many posts and comments on news programs over the last few days, this is NOT a First Amendment Issue. The First Amendment only addresses the action of government with respect to Free Speech, among other things. It has nothing to do with the actions or behaviors of individuals. As long as someone doesn't do anything illegal, such as sending threatening letters or physically assaulting someone for what they say, they are free to do whatever they want as a response to what someone says. In fact, this right is another First Amendment guarantee, the freedom of Association.
If I'm an advertiser, I'm not forced to advertise on programs that I find offensive. If I'm a viewer/listener, I'm not forced to view or listen to a program I find offensive. It was a business decision by the advertisers to pull their business with the media companies because they themselves or they believed their customers didn't want to associate with the host of the show. It was a business decision by the media companies to fire the host because they themselves didn't want to associate with the host, they believed their customers didn't want to associate with the host, or they made a financial decision based on the actions of the advertisers. In any case, it's all legal, and I'd suggest, perfectly ethical and moral.
The government is not limiting the Free Speech of Don Imus. Neither are the media companies, advertisers, or listeners/viewers. Don Imus is free to say whatever he wants, but he has no inalienable right to get paid to say whatever he wants on a media program. Just as we are guaranteed a Freedom of Association, we are guaranteed a freedom FROM association. We can not be forced to associate with those that we do not wish to (this does not extend to government forced segregation, which of course would be violating freedom of association). Likewise, the Second Amendment says that we are allowed to own firearms, but it does not force everyone to own a firearm (although there's a county in Georgia that I believe has a law on the books that says everyone must own a firearm; I don't believe it is enforced, nor Constitutional).
I think everyone is missing the main problem with this idea by the IRS to require E-Bay and similar companies to report "income" or sales of their customer/vendors. HOW would E-Bay report such information? They would require your Social Security Number or Tax ID. I don't E-Bay, but I don't believe they collect that information now. Can you imagine the attacks and inevitable loss of SSN's by E-Bay due to this proposed requirement?
I can understand the IRS' motive, but their method is misplaced. E-Bay is not paying the sellers directly, they are a distant third-party when it comes to the actual transaction. They can't actually confirm how much each taxable individual is paid for sales. If the IRS wants to go after those who basically make their living on E-Bay, then it can open investigations on a case-by-case basis. I can see it legitimate to ask E-Bay to provide a list of individual sellers that supposedly closed deals over $50,000 in the last year, and then open cases on each one and go after them.
Or something else, but don't make E-Bay obtain and report on every users' SSN and the "income" each users is supposedly receiving (which E-Bay can't really prove anyway).
If the Japanese government were to file suit in US court against Google, and argue that Japanese law should prevail and that the content should not be available to anyone due to Japanese law, then you would be correct. That's not my understanding of the situation. My understanding is that Japan is telling Youtube/google to stop providing content it believes is illegal to Japanese territories, presumably or else they will get banned in Japan. That would be Japan enforcing Japanese laws in Japanese territory. Google/youtube would still be able to send the content to anywhere else in the world.
Yes, I actually agree that it is wrong (and stupid), but it is legal and the right thing for the government to do.
But it may be in Youtube's best interest to devise a system where they didn't send content to locations where it was illegal to avoid being totally banned. And the people posting the content may not come from or be in the country where it is illegal.
Japan would have no jurisdiction to sue Youtube if they were not located in Japan. And you can't sue them in US court using Japanese law. So any country can "sue you for a few bazillion" dollars but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Ever heard of the email spam black list fiasco? I think the company was in Ireland or Great Britian or whatever, and the company sued in US court. The spammer "won" because the company didn't show up to defend themselves, but they get nothing out of it. The blacklisting company is not covered by US laws. However, it is conceivable that the spammer could argue in court that the company is causing them irreparable harm and sue the ISP's that have connection out of the US to block traffic to the blacklist site. I doubt a court would agree in that instance, but could see a court forcing Internet exchanges to block sites that hosted illegal content. That's the commercial end of it. On the government end of it the government itself would determine if it thought particular content was illegal, and possibly get approval from some other branch of government to send a don't-delivery-here request. Back to commercial disputes, governments could have processes whereby they heard arguments before they forwarded a don't-deliver-here request. That way some left or right wing nut in the US couldn't send requests to take down legal content here that happened to be hosted in some other country.
So it's not a "oh some country is going to sue youtube or any other site" it's whether youtube or some other site is going to get blocked in entirety because of some content they are serving to where it is illegal. Most countries would give the host site a by and allow them to continue serving legal content to their territories if the host company blocked illegal content as asked. And since you would have to extradite anyone between countries it most likely would come down to a "oh, I didn't know that was illegal, promise I'll block it from now on" kind of situation.
All sensible questions.
The alternative to not following a countries laws as far as what is legal and not legal content to delivery in their territory is a total ban. It has happened before, ironically to youtube (Turkey, Austraila, Brazil, etc), and will likely happen again and with more frequency in the future.
As explained before, and alternative to not getting banned in a whole country is either to devise an internal service or subscribe to an as-yet unavailable service where you check the destination location where you are delivering the content and based on requests from the leading authority in a country ban specific content. It's not for a company in the US, or any other country you pick out of a hat, to determine whether the request is reasonable or not. The alternative would be a complete ban. At least you can get some content in, and you would likely get all content in for a particular time period until it was requested to be taken down. As far as who would determine if the request was legitimate or not, that would be up to the people of that country. They could challenge the request in their local court system, if they have one, protest, and if it comes down to it revolt and change their government.
No, it should not be as granular as "all video of X celebrity cannot be viewed between the hours of 10 and 2," the request would have to be for specific content. The countries laws may be that specific, but you can't expect content providers to be that granular and actually enforce the laws of each country. They shouldn't even be required to police their own content, it should be the individual countries' responsibility to police the content and send notices for each occurrence of illegal content. And it shouldn't be for local governments or areas, or specific locations, in a country, either a total ban on the content or not.
And remember, this could be a money generating business for Gootube, not some unreasonable crippling requirement. In addition to providing a clearing house service for other web sites, they could conceivably charge the requesting country a small fee for "processing" each request. They could even provide a service to the governments whereby they can view all new content, NOT to have them prescreen the content before it was made available, but so that they don't have to search for new content, and charge a larger reasonable fee for this. Do countries HAVE to do this? No, they could just ban the whole site, but Google can also negotiate.
There are laws in the US that would make banning or censoring this content, being political speech, illegal. I happen to agree with those laws, but apparently Japan does not have exactly the same laws. And we are talking about the delivery of content to Japan, which falls under Japanese law. Anti-US?!?! I'm FROM the US. If you believe that the US is sovereign and should be able to make our own laws, then you have to respect other countries laws as enforced on their territory as stupid as they may be (as long as they don't breach human rights, such as in WWII Germany and say Darfur).
Should Japanese law be enforced in the US? Of course not! But there's nothing wrong with the Japanese telling Youtube to stop delivering illegal content to their territories or else they will be banned. For the umpteenth time there is a technological way that Google can do that, and possibly make some money along the way.
And I agree with you on the 'fair' laws, especially for elections. But those laws are laws of a nation for that nation, not anywhere else.
Now, as far as Youtube and it being "decidedly anti-free speech" that's debatable. If you ignore the type of content and just treat it as content, then you'd have to agree that any country has the right to determine what content is legal or not on their soil, and Youtube is delivering supposedly illegal content to Japanese soil. Replace the political speech in this occurrence with some other questionable content such as child porn, top secret weapons plans, or something else and it changes the discussion, doesn't it?
Throwing questions in there about my beliefs as far as human rights is pretty low. No, I don't think human rights are just for some or are relative, and I don't believe I'm some sort of nut. I said in another post that I believe it is certainly justifiable to take action, such as sanctions, and ultimately war, against other countries if they are abusing human rights. Back to the "decidedly" part, that is debatable because a forum for political speech is apparently provided in Japanese law. Germany has laws with regard to content related to Nazis. Do you disagree with that? Good! Don't move to Germany then. (And I don't think I broke the USENET law, because I didn't compare anyone to Hitler or call them a Nazi, I just used it as an example of a law that I believe everyone would be familiar with).
Actually, I'm not positive but I think those laws were changed quite a while back. Recently there was some big to-do because the Democrats were thinking of reintroducing the laws, and there was an uproar by the political right in the US because there are so many successful right-wing talk radio stations on the air and only one major, failing, left-wing station. So there may be laws still in effect as far as actual candidates that are going to be on a voting ticket, and there may be a long-standing industry practice left over, but as far as I know we have not yet fallen to the level of coerced equal time for ideas from every far left and far right nutwing out there.
Read my other posts. I think it's commendable that Japan notified Google that they need to take down particular content or they will get banned. I've suggested a way that Google can do this without taking down content for everyone in multiple other posts. I won't repeat it here.
Except to say this. Someone posted some flamebait about how they aren't going to edit their web site for every law in every country in the world, and that you can't censor in the 21st century. I won't credit the post with a direct response, but it did make me think of something else. I don't think it's unreasonable for a large global company like Google to check who they are delivering content to and filter based on requests from countries. However, it would be unreasonable for a small web site. And here's the idea (I claim first thought on anyone who attempts to patent this business idea - prior art): Create a company that is a clearing house for the request by governments and what content should not be served to them. Web sites could connect to the clearing-house server and get a quick read on what IP address goes in what country, and what content is prohibited in that country. A cache can be created, so that you don't have to check each and every packet. Hell, Google could even do this and offer it as a service, allowing the web sites to put Google adds on their site without reimbursement for payment.
Problem solved.
A discussion of what content would be appropriate for banning is not apropos. Remember that there is much more content than free speech type. We could be talking about programs, music files, documents, plans for weapons, etc. These items may be legal in some countries, and illegal in others. It's up for the individual countries to decide. It's not up to a company that serves content throughout the world to use their own local idea of what is right and wrong to determine whether a take-down request is reasonable or not.
I agree, and the solution is for Google to use a tool that determines what country a user is in and to be able to ban the delivery of content that a country says is illegal to that country, and nowhere else. Should this be the responsibility of every mom and pop internet site? No, because a small site most likely has content of a particular flavor and if some of it is deemed illegal then the whole content is likely illegal. In those cases the country can ban access to the sites in whole. For huge global sites such as Youtube, I believe the burden should be placed on the company, regardless of where their servers are located. Should any local "government" be able to send the request? No, it should come from the federal or whatever passes for the top government in the country. It would be up to the people of the country to use whatever method they provided themselves to challenge any particular don't-transmit order, not the web company.
No, it's not that easy. Read my other posts. You're thinking like sales tax law between different states. It doesn't make a difference where the server is located, they are doing business in Japan by providing the content there. If they were providing the questionable content anywhere else but Japan then I doubt the Japanese would give a rat's ass. Again, read my other posts.
If you change that around slightly and instead of asking if anyone should enforce foreign law to should anyone abide by foreign law then I think the answer is yes. Youtube should abide by foreign law when doing business in those foreign countries. It's not a question of where the servers are located. This is not a tax question as to whether you pay sales tax if you happen to live in New York and the company you purchase from resides in California with no office in New York. The company is still doing business with you in New York, and if they sell you something that happens to be legal in California but illegal in New York should they be able to? When you look at it like that, which I believe is the only logical way to look at it, then the only answer would be no, the company should not sell you those items that happen to be illegal where you are located. Can you go to California and purchase and say consume items which are illegal in New York? Certainly, just as Japanese people in other countries can watch whatever happens to be legal in that locale.
So out of all of this thought process I come up with the idea that just because it happens to be on the Internet does not make it exempt from local laws. There is technology already out there that can identify what country you are communicating from, if not a much more granular location. There is no reason why companies such as Gootube couldn't use that technology to filter what they deliver to make sure it is legal to transact in such business with the end user. Given all the hoopla about how many PHD's Google has in employment I'm surprised no one else has come up with this idea and already implemented it.
Unfortunately we can't all just "get along." There are some wicked bad people out there. To reuse my example that I hope everyone should agree on, should we have to have laws against pedophilia? Well, if we could all just "get along" then then answer would be no, we shouldn't have to have those types of laws. However, that is not reality. Reality is that there are people out there to which these laws apply. Now as you move your way from the laws that everyone can agree with, such as murder, etc, into laws in different areas where it becomes more gray, such as freedom of speech to include anything such as hate speech, inciting riots, etc, then not everyone agrees. Different cultures have different norms when it comes to these gray areas. It is a countries sovereign right to be able to make the laws that its population agree with.
It is only when countries make laws that their population does not agree with that other nations should get involved. Unfortunately, the involvement there is usually war and the death of many people, so it should be a darn good reason. A good example would be Germany in WWII era with their attempted genocide of Jewish people. Notice that I switch from citizens to population here, because I believe that there can be occasions where certain classes people are not even considered citizens with voting rights (referring to Jewish people in WWII era Germany, women in Taliban Afghanistan, etc).
So, everyone can have their opinion of whether this Japanese law is a good one or not. I happen to think that it is stupid and silly. However, only Japanese people would have standing to change the law via their system of government, either via making new law or challenging it in their court system. Express your opinion, sure! But don't construe the issue to be whether Japan has the right to enforce their own laws on their own soil.
You are missing the point. I'm not actually even talking about the US government in this discussion, rather people in the US who seem to feel that our laws (yes, I'm from the US) somehow trump laws in other countries. They do not. This is not the US forcing or not forcing Japan to permit people to say stuff in Japan. It's about allowing the Japanese their sovereign right to do what they want in their country, as in their case determined by their own people. Their laws apparently say that political speeches by candidates can only be broadcast by specific means. Their laws may be antiquated, and I'd guess that Japanese people would have standing to challenge those laws.
But the US isn't, in this case. Instead, it's the Japanese legal authorities that want to impose Japanese law on foreign soil.
Wrong. Japan is attempting to enforce their laws on their soil. If Youtube had some system to determine where the request was coming from geographically and could block all request from Japanese territory then I doubt Japan would be concern at all what Youtube does on other countries soil. In fact, this is probably the real solution that Youtube needs to devise, a system where they can restrict material that is illegal in specific countries from being served to addresses in those countries. It doesn't seem like an overly complex problem to fix.
If the company is doing business in Japan, then yes. I don't care where they are "operating out of" as in where their servers are located. They are doing business in Japan. Just like there may be countries where it is legal for some other activity (let's pick something reprehensible that hopefully we can all agree is "bad" like child pornography) that doesn't mean it is wrong or illegal for the US to try and stop that type of material from coming into the US, either by requesting the company hosting in the other country to stop or to just plain block the communications at the border. Now am I comparing the viewing of Japanese political speeches to child porn? Absolutely not. However, they do have laws about how their elections are run. I don't presume to know what they are, and take with blind faith that what they are doing is within their legal system. If it is not viewed by Japanese citizens then I presume that they could seek redress in Japanese court. That's not the discussion though, it's whether countries are sovereign or whether all countries are beholden to laws within other countries. It's Japanese law, on Japanese soil, let them do what they want. If you don't like it, move to Japan and become a citizen (if you even can, I don't know citizenship rules for Japan) and vote to change their laws.
Should Japan be able to enforce their laws on US soil? Of course not. They have no standing to say what material Youtube or anyone else makes available to anyone outside of their territory.