2. The Supreme Court has also managed to further protect the bacon by making it so that cops can't be sued based on how poorly they enforce, or fail to protect people with restraining orders.
Not fully true; they're saying that it's not a federal civil rights violation, but must be adjudicated under the law of the state that issued the restraining order. Which sucks (since there generally isn't such law yet), but does make sense in the context of states rights (despite the current administration only paying attention to them when they like the decisions the states make).
What this means is that you should get on the phone to your local representative to the state legislature, and make it damn clear that some sort of law needs to be passed to provide this protection in your home state.
4. Reporters can no longer protect their sources due to [another] ruling today. They can, but they'll face jail time. In the long run this'll mean less people will come forward with info on wrongdoing's, which means big money gets away with more illegal activities....
This depends on whether or not the journalists cave. Based on my acquaintance with several in a state that does not have a newspaperman's shield law, the journalists are probably prepared to catch up on their reading for a while. The disincentive will be less on those coming forward, than on the potential reporters they might come forward to.
in the united states, it's legal to sell armour-piercing ammuniction
My understanding was that 18 USC 44 section 922 (part a; 7 and 8) prohibited manufacture or sale of armor piercing ammo except for the use of and sale to either state or federal government.
Essentially they _are_ ruling that the promotion is the illegal bit - since without it or other "affirmative steps", the distribution of the device is not (for this reason) illegal.
More exactly, they are ruling that the illegal bit is the intent to assist or encourage copyright infringement, and that such promotion (or other affirmative steps) constitutes tangible evidence for the illegal intent.
As I said below, without being able to distribute a piece of software, you're effectively prohibited from making that software at all.
It appears you're still missing a nuance in that sentence from the ruling. Justices of the Supreme Court do not as a rule put idle words into their rulings; as with the constitution, no word is given to idle purpose.
Distribution is not prohibited. What is prohibited is distribution "with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement" -- emphasis added. You can create and even distribute software package that can be used for either lawful or unlawful purposes, but you can't do it going "wink, wink, nudge nudge say no more say no more"-- even inside the company.
Please remember what you're talking about here -- a few, maybe 20 SHA hashes of chunks of a Copyright work.[...]This is so negligable as to fall under 'fair use' for sampling [...]
I remember, and am quite familiar with the insides of a torrent file. Heck, I've even posted a uuencoded.torrent file to/. just to see if it could be done.
So, since I haven't found the specific code for Australia, let's consider US law . The definition of fair use is covered by 17 USC 1 section 107, and while "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" is one of the criteria, it is not the only one. Consideration must also be given to "the purpose and character of the use" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" (as well as "the nature of the copyrighted work", which is not overly relevant here).
Since the "purpose and character of the use" in creating a torrent is (aside from hypothetically very strange home network usage) facilitiating the widescale distribution of the original, and given that "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is without remunerating the copyright holder to provide duplicates of the original to anyone with a network connection, some patience, and a tranquil conscience... yeah, I think you'll need a really good lawyer to get a judge to swallow that elephant.
Now, these guys are Aussies. And, while I haven't found the on-line equivalent of the USC (Cornell rocks!), I did find this little blurb noting that AU law recognition of fair use is limited to "research or study", "criticism or review", "reporting of news", and "professional advice given by a legal practitioner or patent attorney". Which would likely rule out any fair use claims in this case.
Other countries laws vary-- and may in fact allow torrents under fair use. Feel free to point out a country and its copyright law if you have a particular one in mind. But it won't fly in the US or the Land of OZ.
I guess the law is full of this kind of stuff though - that's what "judges" are for.
Not quite; this is what juries are for. Judges decide questions of law ("is there any evidence of intent"), juries decide questions of fact ("was there intent?")
True, pretty much the entire court thought that Grokster was a bunch of putrid slimeballs who deserve what they have coming. However, if you take the trouble to read through the actual findings (the ETF page includes it), you see that there were three opinions given-- all concurring, but with different emphasis. Souter wrote the main opinion, to which presumably Thomas and Scalia agree. Ginsburg, Renquist, and Kennedy gave one separate concurring opinion; Breyer, Stevens, and O'Connor another.
As I read it (IANAL), the main opinion emphasizes that the evidence shows Grokster's aims to encourage infringement were clear. "The record is replete with evidence that from the moment Grokster and StreamCast began to distribute their free software, each one clearly voiced the objective that recipients use it to download copyrighted works, and each took active steps to encourage infringement." It furthermore notes that the Sony ruling only limited "liability resting on imputed intent", not "displacing other theories of secondary liability", and held "that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."
The second opinion chose instead to emphasize the error in the summary judgement given (in these justices' view) there was an issue of material fact (which would thus need to be decided by a jury) as to whether there was substantial non-infringing use, and noting that "if the absolute number of noninfringing files copied using the Grokster and StreamCast software is large, it does not follow that the products are therefore put to substantial noninfringing uses and are thus immune from liability. The
number of noninfringing copies may be reflective of, and
dwarfed by, the huge total volume of files shared." This comment suggests that the Ginsburg group would be inclined to consider any protocol used more widely for piracy than legitimate traffic to be unlawful in future court cases.
In contrast, the Breyer group, while agreeing that actively pushing the infringing uses of a dual use technology confers liablility, chose to counter emphasize that the fraction of non-infringing traffic on these services was similar to the corresponding fraction from the Sony ruling.
This thus gives a hint at how the current court would view a direct challenge to future direct assault on other p2p applications, such as BitTorrent. Moreover, it is worth noting that the two justices supporting Breyer are widely expected to be retiring shortly. The importance of Bush's hypothetical appointments is increasing.
Derived works are in fact *not* under the same purview as the originals, but that's beside the point.
IANAL, I only know what I read over at Cornell. True, US law is mostly irrelevant to these Aussies, but I doubt what you're saying makes any more sense under AU law.
While 17 USC 1 seems to imply that you may be correct insofar that copyright on a derived work may be held separately from the original, this requires that creation of the derivative work be legally authorized (section 103a). The right to authorize derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of a copyright holder (section 106). Without that, the creation is illegal.
When the collecting of the preexisting material that makes up the compilation is a purely mechanical task with no element of editorial selection, [...] copyright protection for the compilation or abridgment as a new version is not available.
Considering that the creation of a torrent is based on a mechanical mathematical algorithm to checksum the various portions of the file, this would suggest that no separate copyright as a derived work is possible, and that copyright is reserved to and retained by the copyright holder of the original work. While fair use might cover the process of ripping CDs to MP3s for personal use, or even the creation of a torrent file, publishing either for public use fairly clearly exceeds the scope of coverage of section 107. Once you add in that it's not clear Australian law recognizes such fair use exceptions, and you'll want to put your psychiatrist on danger money as well as your lawyer.
A representative fingerprint of the blocks of the original work has not been deemed a Copyright issue yet, despite its use in multiple protocols and digital signature systems.
Merely because no-one has tried the argument in court, does not mean the judge will not have to recess for an hour while he tries to stop laughing when someone presents it. Just because lawyers are trained in straining at gnats and swallowing elephants does not imply the judge must swallow that elephant.
At the time (1983) the media learned to use "hacker" to describe computer intrusion, it was the correct term for such, and alternate terms such as "cracker" had not been coined. That there were other meanings to "hacker" has continued to escape them... or at least, they don't give a damn. But compaining about it, and trying to insist that the media should use the term "cracker" instead, is trying to close the barn after the horse has left.
Mind you, I also thing "cracker" is a bad choice if you really want to get the media to change terms. I'm a fan of Vernor Vinge's work; his book "Marooned in Real Time" included a cracker character who had been "head of Systems Penetration and Perversion at USAF, Inc." I think "systems penetration and perversion" nicely describes most of the scummy activities the media classes as "hacking", including but not limited to virus writing; deployment of spyware, adware, and trojan backdoors and rootkits; and WAR3Z cracking. Thus, the obvious term for a perpetrator of such is a "pervert."
Sex sells, so there's a better chance that the media will pick up this usage than the uninteresting (and too similar sounding) "cracker". It also allows for nice shadings of morality involved-- EG, breaking into systems you actually own might be categorized as "kinky". Adopting this term would allow us a much more comprehensive metaphor space for describing such activity... not to mention expanding the wide range of abusive insults that can be applied to those who commit such crimes.
Of course, I'm a lone weirdo, so I doubt such usage will actually spread. Still, it would be nice....
As for extra sturdiness use a road case with internal padding, you know those case that are reinforced with metal, are usually black and are kept close with those cool twist-latches, they are expensive but they are also worth it.
The best known brand of such is Pelican. They can protect against fairly high drops, are watertight and durable, and float pretty well... assuming you close the case after putting in the camera. However, if you visit the Everglades, remember the case does not always remain watertight after demonstrating its alligator resistance. =)
See, that's where the heart of the problem is-- specifically, transportation, especially of food.
Fuel cells developements currently come in two flavors: hydrocarbon and hydrogen. Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism (with non-trivial engineering transport and storage problems), not an energy source. Since it's a gas at STP, hydrogen is more easily explosive than gasoline, and in liquid form has less than 1/3 the energy density per unit volume (although 3 times as much per unit weight). Economical methods for making it now are electrolysis (which wastes approximately 60-80% of the source energy), and synthesis from hydrocarbons... the depletion of which is the original problem
Most solar cells today, even Qdots, require nearly as much energy to manufacture as they generate over their useful lifetime. Ocean-wave generators have some of the NIMBY problems of nuclear, not to mention the difficulties of deploying in a corrosive environment, and working with fun things like Zebra Mussels gumming up operations. Wind power has promise (despite some avian environmental impacts), although the intermittency of load capacity makes it more suitable to generating energy for storage (EG: water storage or electrolysis of hydrogen). The losses inherent in such will increase the end price of such energy, but it may fill some premium nitches.
The best hope would be for the development of a effective crop (possibly a genetically modified algae) growable with "organic" methods (EG: no fertilizer-- those are petroproducts these days) that could serve as a biodiesel stock. An efficient solar to petroproduct energy storage method might allow a transition from current petroleum sources, both for fuel and plastics use. Redevelopment of rail cargo transport might help the energy economy as well. But I'm not convinced any of it is going to happen in a timely manner.
That doesn't mean that there will be software that runs on future computers that can decode jpeg. The average computer user won't be a coder that easily whip up a jpeg reader in F++ or F#.
True. But unless the open source movement gets completely massacred, the average computer user will be able to download something from the web that will display JPEGs.
As for the Wordstar file, what if the only remaining copy is electronic and on 5.25" floppy disk?
Well, the first thing you do is fire your records staff for gross negligence. (Preferably, fire them from a cannon.) Then, you make a backup copy. If this pertains to a legal issue, you have the backup made by a firm specializing in older media; this provides both expertise and witnesses. If a key piece of evidence exists only as a file on rewritable media, somebody has majorly screwed up, and it's probably not legally admissible. (IANAL)
From a technical viewpoint, however, Windows 5.25" isn't a major problem. My current 3GHz home desktop has a 5.25" drive, and they're easy to pick up on E-Bay. I've also picked up the means to deal with Orb, Jaz, LS240, Bernouili, and various SyQuest media over the years. Now, if your file is on an eight inch floppy disk, that's a larger challenge. Or if you're trying to get things off of some of even more obscure stuff, like a Mac formatted IOmega Floptical disk.
Courts and lawyers aren't as computer savvy as we are.
Depends on the laywer and on the court. Remember, the sterotypical lawyers are bastards, not morons.
These scans [were] in JPEG format. What happens 10 years from now when Microsoft Windowze no longer reads that file format and jpeg has been superceded by some other format. Is he and all the other millions of people with jpeg photos going to stay current? How about when CDs are obsoleted for the DVD format du jour?
Software is still easily available for reading Aldus Tag Image File Format (TIFF), which have been around since at least 1986, predating JPEG by a couple years (1990?). Ergo, you should probably worry more about that "vanishing" first. Additionally, JPEG is a well documented format; I have (buried somewhere in my dead tree material) C source code implementation for how to turn JPEG files back into colored pixels, and it's available in a LOT of places.
The concern about the physical media being displaced is better placed. There is usually a period of backward compatibility, however. More problematic is the uncertain durability of the media itself-- we don't know how long CDR and DVDR media will last, especially the ultra-cheap ones.
What if some your company's documents were first created in DOS on Wordstar 1.0 and the originals are needed for a lawsuit?
Well, leaving aside that prior to about the turn of the millenium dead tree was the only legally admissable "orginal document" you might have to worry about, Microsoft Office still imports Wordstar. Submitting a uuencode of the original file, a MS Office rendition of it, and perhaps the output of hitting it with a *nix "strings" utility should shut up any lawyer not working for SCO.
Now, if you know of any current software that will import Kaetron's TopDown and StencilIt files, let me know. Old Mac file types are more likely to be orphaned-- especially when the software company's Founder/CEO/Chief Programmer dies of cancer. =(
Now - the second problem is, the future might be much darker than we imagine.
I think it's the main problem. And here's my main objection to this manifesto: it's overlooking some very old and very depressing science itself. The "Club of Rome" folk have been criticized for the World3 model for 30 years... but most criticism has focused on global crisis not following simplistic dates from the base case model. This overlooks (1) that it's "only a model" with very uncertain input parameters, (2) that the simulation was run with a large range of values for the input parameters, and (3) that while the exact dates varied, the long term end result was generally disaster. Post-technological agrarian societies do not generally make for lots of interesting and novel stories that people want to read. (World3 doesn't always end that way, but scenarios set in the alternatives generally read like a depressing tract from a ZPG population control fringe movement.)
Peak oil is another tested scientific projection, which was accurate the first time in the 1970's, and which the general public is also ignoring. I don't blame them-- it's depressing. It's one big reason I dropped out of Nuclear Engineering a decade back-- I took a hard look at all of the solutions to the impending energy crisis in sight, and all are infeasible on a useful timescale for either political or engineering reasons. Arguably, if you want to stick with this "Mundane Manifesto" and write about anything more than 20 years down the road, you need to detail how the energy problem was solved-- if it was. (And agrarian SF is still boring....) And you need to solve it without violating the laws of thermodynamics, physics, or sociology.
And if you can do that, you shouldn't be writing Science Fiction, you should be starting a political campaign for public office. Or a military campaign-- the time table is a little close.
Science fiction is a literature of hope. And an unreasonable hope may be all that's left.
The press may co-opt our sub-cultural language for their own gross-oversimplification purposes.
The distinction between hacker and cracker was not made in computer geek culture (EG: Usenet) prior to the first mainstream media exposure circa 1983 (on CBS IIR?). The computer community didn't distinguish between "hacking" as (in)elegant writing of code and "hacking" as systems penetration and perversion; it was all part of the continuum. Anyone who practiced SP&P was at the time considered a "hacker", although not all hackers were in SP&P. This lack of foresight led to the mainstream use of "hacker" to describe anyone in SP&P, which has continued to the present even though while "script kiddies" practice a (crude) form of SP&P, most are not even larval "hackers" of the classic meaning.
Attempts to close the barn door after the horse has left, however, are futile-- and in this case, have been for decades. You will not get the mushroom cloud back into it's happy little plutionium sphere; live with it.
It's probably worth pointing out the obvious fact that the people do not directly control their Congresscritters, and you still need 2/3 of both houses.
Bzzt! You can also suffice with simply 2/3 (=34) of the state legislatures to force a constitutional convention, and 3/4 (=38) of the state legislatures to ratify the amendment(s); pesky congresscritters need not be bothered. But you're right about the lack of direct control of the state legislatures.
And thus I am left with only one obstacle remaining in my plot to be recognized as God-Emperor. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Wait, did I just say that out loud? Oh, good, no, I only posted it Slashdot. Err....
There is nothing that the governemt can do except for foceing all ISP to Virus Check the emails that they recieve, and keep their virus scanner up to date.
How about more aggressively pursing internet based fraud, such as identity theft?
If "most" American's really want the "government" hover over the internet and potentially tramp on rights, there is fairly simple way -- amend the Constitution. It's not EASY, but it is a simple solution.
Actually, that doesn't require "most" Americans. It requires "a majority of the population in 38 states". The relation between the two is left as an exercise for students of mathematics and politics.
Probably all that would do is cause them to pick a different name for the search engine.
Possible, but after studying their history I'd deem it a very good risk. They were using the name Google while based at Stanford, so they would have to change names, rather than simply pick a different one. Furthermore, the 1998 initial investment check of $100,000 was made to "Google, Inc"... before such a corporate entity existed, and probably prior to trying to register the domain. They would probably have been disinclined to change names at that point, and would have been willing to give serious consideration to such a reasonable level of extortion, especially if all three main TLDs were included in the offer. =)
2. Go back in time and bet as much as you can.
Too many successful wagers attract mob attention if you move forward in time, too many wagers on a single event warp the odds badly, and shipping growing amounts of money further and further back in time is difficult for amounts over $1M.
Step 1: Build Time Machine
Step 2: Go back to 1994 and register Google.com (and Google.net and Google.org) before Google does.
Step 3: Offer to sell the domains to them for 0.25% ownership of the company, and 0.5% of the stock to be issued in any "hypothetical" "future" IPO; this should be small enough they'll cough up without hesitating.
Step 4: Pop back to 1977 and pick up 100 shares of Berkshire Hathaway while you're about it.
Step 5: Profit!
Think Big. Win Small. --Darius Regulo, the King of Heaven, in Charles Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds (from Baen)
Hey, I'm right with you on wondering why, even if the oil all vanished tomorrow, it'd be a calamity for anything apart from transportation.
Well, petroleum is used in the production of plastics, so that's important. And pretty much all the goods in the United States, at least, are transported for a good portion of their journey via diesel truck.
Ding! Which means that only portion of the economy that are transported will be go up in price. Which is pretty much everything including, oh... food? The average food item in your grocery store has travelled about 1000 miles.
I suppose this is another reason to love the idea of electric cars---much easier to move the energy generation somewhere easier to replace than an enormous fleet of cars.
Three problems with that. First, current electric vehicles are unsuited to long-distance travel (over 100 miles). Second, you would need to increase power generation. Fortunately, the US coal supply is pretty good; and wind turbines have some possibilities. However, it's going to be a rough transition. And third: it takes energy to make a car-- and lighter electric cars tend to be made more out of plastics. Which as you noted, come from...
The shuttle uses Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen. They get it by spliting water. What does peak oil have to do with it?
Well, for a direct connection: splitting water requires electricity. Peak oil, and the resulting energy crisis likely to result, would impact (but not preclude) production of the required electricity.
A bigger concern would be that the shuttle components use petroleum products in their manufacture, and the shuttle components are transported using conventional fuels-- EG: whenever they have to land at Edwards AFB instead of in Florida. Not to mention most of the support equipment at Kennedy launch center is conventionally fueled.
The biggest concern, however, is the potential impact on the US economy in general, and the food supply in particular. Modern fertilizers are produced using fossil foods, and it's a long (diesel-fueled) truck haul from the farm to the grocery store. If gasoline prices quadruple (such as occured during the ~5% shortfall during the 1970's), this will greatly increase consumer food costs, and cut into consumer discretionary spending-- and send major shocks across the economy. With the US government already having deficit problems, that doesn't look good for funding NASA.
Alternative fuels (EG: biodiesel) appear at least in potential able to replace the failing stocks of petroleum in its role as fuel and chemical source. However, that won't happen overnight. Furthermore, production needs to generate substantially more output than it requires in operational inputs.
Barring major breakthroughs, the picture gets ugly about five to ten years after peak.
Slashdot Mirror
Not fully true; they're saying that it's not a federal civil rights violation, but must be adjudicated under the law of the state that issued the restraining order. Which sucks (since there generally isn't such law yet), but does make sense in the context of states rights (despite the current administration only paying attention to them when they like the decisions the states make).
What this means is that you should get on the phone to your local representative to the state legislature, and make it damn clear that some sort of law needs to be passed to provide this protection in your home state.
4. Reporters can no longer protect their sources due to [another] ruling today. They can, but they'll face jail time. In the long run this'll mean less people will come forward with info on wrongdoing's, which means big money gets away with more illegal activities....
This depends on whether or not the journalists cave. Based on my acquaintance with several in a state that does not have a newspaperman's shield law, the journalists are probably prepared to catch up on their reading for a while. The disincentive will be less on those coming forward, than on the potential reporters they might come forward to.
My understanding was that 18 USC 44 section 922 (part a; 7 and 8) prohibited manufacture or sale of armor piercing ammo except for the use of and sale to either state or federal government.
More exactly, they are ruling that the illegal bit is the intent to assist or encourage copyright infringement, and that such promotion (or other affirmative steps) constitutes tangible evidence for the illegal intent.
It appears you're still missing a nuance in that sentence from the ruling. Justices of the Supreme Court do not as a rule put idle words into their rulings; as with the constitution, no word is given to idle purpose.
Distribution is not prohibited. What is prohibited is distribution "with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement" -- emphasis added. You can create and even distribute software package that can be used for either lawful or unlawful purposes, but you can't do it going "wink, wink, nudge nudge say no more say no more"-- even inside the company.
I remember, and am quite familiar with the insides of a torrent file. Heck, I've even posted a uuencoded .torrent file to /. just to see if it could be done.
So, since I haven't found the specific code for Australia, let's consider US law . The definition of fair use is covered by 17 USC 1 section 107, and while "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" is one of the criteria, it is not the only one. Consideration must also be given to "the purpose and character of the use" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" (as well as "the nature of the copyrighted work", which is not overly relevant here).
Since the "purpose and character of the use" in creating a torrent is (aside from hypothetically very strange home network usage) facilitiating the widescale distribution of the original, and given that "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is without remunerating the copyright holder to provide duplicates of the original to anyone with a network connection, some patience, and a tranquil conscience... yeah, I think you'll need a really good lawyer to get a judge to swallow that elephant.
Now, these guys are Aussies. And, while I haven't found the on-line equivalent of the USC (Cornell rocks!), I did find this little blurb noting that AU law recognition of fair use is limited to "research or study", "criticism or review", "reporting of news", and "professional advice given by a legal practitioner or patent attorney". Which would likely rule out any fair use claims in this case.
Other countries laws vary-- and may in fact allow torrents under fair use. Feel free to point out a country and its copyright law if you have a particular one in mind. But it won't fly in the US or the Land of OZ.
Not quite; this is what juries are for. Judges decide questions of law ("is there any evidence of intent"), juries decide questions of fact ("was there intent?")
As I read it (IANAL), the main opinion emphasizes that the evidence shows Grokster's aims to encourage infringement were clear. "The record is replete with evidence that from the moment Grokster and StreamCast began to distribute their free software, each one clearly voiced the objective that recipients use it to download copyrighted works, and each took active steps to encourage infringement." It furthermore notes that the Sony ruling only limited "liability resting on imputed intent", not "displacing other theories of secondary liability", and held "that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."
The second opinion chose instead to emphasize the error in the summary judgement given (in these justices' view) there was an issue of material fact (which would thus need to be decided by a jury) as to whether there was substantial non-infringing use, and noting that "if the absolute number of noninfringing files copied using the Grokster and StreamCast software is large, it does not follow that the products are therefore put to substantial noninfringing uses and are thus immune from liability. The number of noninfringing copies may be reflective of, and dwarfed by, the huge total volume of files shared." This comment suggests that the Ginsburg group would be inclined to consider any protocol used more widely for piracy than legitimate traffic to be unlawful in future court cases.
In contrast, the Breyer group, while agreeing that actively pushing the infringing uses of a dual use technology confers liablility, chose to counter emphasize that the fraction of non-infringing traffic on these services was similar to the corresponding fraction from the Sony ruling.
This thus gives a hint at how the current court would view a direct challenge to future direct assault on other p2p applications, such as BitTorrent. Moreover, it is worth noting that the two justices supporting Breyer are widely expected to be retiring shortly. The importance of Bush's hypothetical appointments is increasing.
IANAL, I only know what I read over at Cornell. True, US law is mostly irrelevant to these Aussies, but I doubt what you're saying makes any more sense under AU law.
While 17 USC 1 seems to imply that you may be correct insofar that copyright on a derived work may be held separately from the original, this requires that creation of the derivative work be legally authorized (section 103a). The right to authorize derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of a copyright holder (section 106). Without that, the creation is illegal.
Furthermore, according to this handy PDF copyright office circular (which is probably based on the US case law)
Considering that the creation of a torrent is based on a mechanical mathematical algorithm to checksum the various portions of the file, this would suggest that no separate copyright as a derived work is possible, and that copyright is reserved to and retained by the copyright holder of the original work. While fair use might cover the process of ripping CDs to MP3s for personal use, or even the creation of a torrent file, publishing either for public use fairly clearly exceeds the scope of coverage of section 107. Once you add in that it's not clear Australian law recognizes such fair use exceptions, and you'll want to put your psychiatrist on danger money as well as your lawyer.A representative fingerprint of the blocks of the original work has not been deemed a Copyright issue yet, despite its use in multiple protocols and digital signature systems.
Merely because no-one has tried the argument in court, does not mean the judge will not have to recess for an hour while he tries to stop laughing when someone presents it. Just because lawyers are trained in straining at gnats and swallowing elephants does not imply the judge must swallow that elephant.
At the time (1983) the media learned to use "hacker" to describe computer intrusion, it was the correct term for such, and alternate terms such as "cracker" had not been coined. That there were other meanings to "hacker" has continued to escape them... or at least, they don't give a damn. But compaining about it, and trying to insist that the media should use the term "cracker" instead, is trying to close the barn after the horse has left.
Mind you, I also thing "cracker" is a bad choice if you really want to get the media to change terms. I'm a fan of Vernor Vinge's work; his book "Marooned in Real Time" included a cracker character who had been "head of Systems Penetration and Perversion at USAF, Inc." I think "systems penetration and perversion" nicely describes most of the scummy activities the media classes as "hacking", including but not limited to virus writing; deployment of spyware, adware, and trojan backdoors and rootkits; and WAR3Z cracking. Thus, the obvious term for a perpetrator of such is a "pervert."
Sex sells, so there's a better chance that the media will pick up this usage than the uninteresting (and too similar sounding) "cracker". It also allows for nice shadings of morality involved-- EG, breaking into systems you actually own might be categorized as "kinky". Adopting this term would allow us a much more comprehensive metaphor space for describing such activity... not to mention expanding the wide range of abusive insults that can be applied to those who commit such crimes.
Of course, I'm a lone weirdo, so I doubt such usage will actually spread. Still, it would be nice....
The best known brand of such is Pelican. They can protect against fairly high drops, are watertight and durable, and float pretty well... assuming you close the case after putting in the camera. However, if you visit the Everglades, remember the case does not always remain watertight after demonstrating its alligator resistance. =)
See, that's where the heart of the problem is-- specifically, transportation, especially of food.
Fuel cells developements currently come in two flavors: hydrocarbon and hydrogen. Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism (with non-trivial engineering transport and storage problems), not an energy source. Since it's a gas at STP, hydrogen is more easily explosive than gasoline, and in liquid form has less than 1/3 the energy density per unit volume (although 3 times as much per unit weight). Economical methods for making it now are electrolysis (which wastes approximately 60-80% of the source energy), and synthesis from hydrocarbons... the depletion of which is the original problem
Most solar cells today, even Qdots, require nearly as much energy to manufacture as they generate over their useful lifetime. Ocean-wave generators have some of the NIMBY problems of nuclear, not to mention the difficulties of deploying in a corrosive environment, and working with fun things like Zebra Mussels gumming up operations. Wind power has promise (despite some avian environmental impacts), although the intermittency of load capacity makes it more suitable to generating energy for storage (EG: water storage or electrolysis of hydrogen). The losses inherent in such will increase the end price of such energy, but it may fill some premium nitches.
The best hope would be for the development of a effective crop (possibly a genetically modified algae) growable with "organic" methods (EG: no fertilizer-- those are petroproducts these days) that could serve as a biodiesel stock. An efficient solar to petroproduct energy storage method might allow a transition from current petroleum sources, both for fuel and plastics use. Redevelopment of rail cargo transport might help the energy economy as well. But I'm not convinced any of it is going to happen in a timely manner.
True. But unless the open source movement gets completely massacred, the average computer user will be able to download something from the web that will display JPEGs.
As for the Wordstar file, what if the only remaining copy is electronic and on 5.25" floppy disk?
Well, the first thing you do is fire your records staff for gross negligence. (Preferably, fire them from a cannon.) Then, you make a backup copy. If this pertains to a legal issue, you have the backup made by a firm specializing in older media; this provides both expertise and witnesses. If a key piece of evidence exists only as a file on rewritable media, somebody has majorly screwed up, and it's probably not legally admissible. (IANAL)
From a technical viewpoint, however, Windows 5.25" isn't a major problem. My current 3GHz home desktop has a 5.25" drive, and they're easy to pick up on E-Bay. I've also picked up the means to deal with Orb, Jaz, LS240, Bernouili, and various SyQuest media over the years. Now, if your file is on an eight inch floppy disk, that's a larger challenge. Or if you're trying to get things off of some of even more obscure stuff, like a Mac formatted IOmega Floptical disk.
Courts and lawyers aren't as computer savvy as we are.
Depends on the laywer and on the court. Remember, the sterotypical lawyers are bastards, not morons.
Software is still easily available for reading Aldus Tag Image File Format (TIFF), which have been around since at least 1986, predating JPEG by a couple years (1990?). Ergo, you should probably worry more about that "vanishing" first. Additionally, JPEG is a well documented format; I have (buried somewhere in my dead tree material) C source code implementation for how to turn JPEG files back into colored pixels, and it's available in a LOT of places.
The concern about the physical media being displaced is better placed. There is usually a period of backward compatibility, however. More problematic is the uncertain durability of the media itself-- we don't know how long CDR and DVDR media will last, especially the ultra-cheap ones.
What if some your company's documents were first created in DOS on Wordstar 1.0 and the originals are needed for a lawsuit?
Well, leaving aside that prior to about the turn of the millenium dead tree was the only legally admissable "orginal document" you might have to worry about, Microsoft Office still imports Wordstar. Submitting a uuencode of the original file, a MS Office rendition of it, and perhaps the output of hitting it with a *nix "strings" utility should shut up any lawyer not working for SCO.
Now, if you know of any current software that will import Kaetron's TopDown and StencilIt files, let me know. Old Mac file types are more likely to be orphaned-- especially when the software company's Founder/CEO/Chief Programmer dies of cancer. =(
I think it's the main problem. And here's my main objection to this manifesto: it's overlooking some very old and very depressing science itself. The "Club of Rome" folk have been criticized for the World3 model for 30 years... but most criticism has focused on global crisis not following simplistic dates from the base case model. This overlooks (1) that it's "only a model" with very uncertain input parameters, (2) that the simulation was run with a large range of values for the input parameters, and (3) that while the exact dates varied, the long term end result was generally disaster. Post-technological agrarian societies do not generally make for lots of interesting and novel stories that people want to read. (World3 doesn't always end that way, but scenarios set in the alternatives generally read like a depressing tract from a ZPG population control fringe movement.)
Peak oil is another tested scientific projection, which was accurate the first time in the 1970's, and which the general public is also ignoring. I don't blame them-- it's depressing. It's one big reason I dropped out of Nuclear Engineering a decade back-- I took a hard look at all of the solutions to the impending energy crisis in sight, and all are infeasible on a useful timescale for either political or engineering reasons. Arguably, if you want to stick with this "Mundane Manifesto" and write about anything more than 20 years down the road, you need to detail how the energy problem was solved-- if it was. (And agrarian SF is still boring....) And you need to solve it without violating the laws of thermodynamics, physics, or sociology.
And if you can do that, you shouldn't be writing Science Fiction, you should be starting a political campaign for public office. Or a military campaign-- the time table is a little close.
Science fiction is a literature of hope. And an unreasonable hope may be all that's left.
Of course, Slashdot moderation being what it is, the parent will probably end up with a +5 moderation, and then what do you do?
The distinction between hacker and cracker was not made in computer geek culture (EG: Usenet) prior to the first mainstream media exposure circa 1983 (on CBS IIR?). The computer community didn't distinguish between "hacking" as (in)elegant writing of code and "hacking" as systems penetration and perversion; it was all part of the continuum. Anyone who practiced SP&P was at the time considered a "hacker", although not all hackers were in SP&P. This lack of foresight led to the mainstream use of "hacker" to describe anyone in SP&P, which has continued to the present even though while "script kiddies" practice a (crude) form of SP&P, most are not even larval "hackers" of the classic meaning.
Attempts to close the barn door after the horse has left, however, are futile-- and in this case, have been for decades. You will not get the mushroom cloud back into it's happy little plutionium sphere; live with it.
Bzzt! You can also suffice with simply 2/3 (=34) of the state legislatures to force a constitutional convention, and 3/4 (=38) of the state legislatures to ratify the amendment(s); pesky congresscritters need not be bothered. But you're right about the lack of direct control of the state legislatures.
And thus I am left with only one obstacle remaining in my plot to be recognized as God-Emperor. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Wait, did I just say that out loud? Oh, good, no, I only posted it Slashdot. Err....
How about more aggressively pursing internet based fraud, such as identity theft?
Actually, that doesn't require "most" Americans. It requires "a majority of the population in 38 states". The relation between the two is left as an exercise for students of mathematics and politics.
Possible, but after studying their history I'd deem it a very good risk. They were using the name Google while based at Stanford, so they would have to change names, rather than simply pick a different one. Furthermore, the 1998 initial investment check of $100,000 was made to "Google, Inc"... before such a corporate entity existed, and probably prior to trying to register the domain. They would probably have been disinclined to change names at that point, and would have been willing to give serious consideration to such a reasonable level of extortion, especially if all three main TLDs were included in the offer. =)
2. Go back in time and bet as much as you can.
Too many successful wagers attract mob attention if you move forward in time, too many wagers on a single event warp the odds badly, and shipping growing amounts of money further and further back in time is difficult for amounts over $1M.
Successfully running a business is an art form.
The word is not "powerful." Re-read your copy of the New World Order story arc.
Step 2: Go back to 1994 and register Google.com (and Google.net and Google.org) before Google does.
Step 3: Offer to sell the domains to them for 0.25% ownership of the company, and 0.5% of the stock to be issued in any "hypothetical" "future" IPO; this should be small enough they'll cough up without hesitating.
Step 4: Pop back to 1977 and pick up 100 shares of Berkshire Hathaway while you're about it.
Step 5: Profit!
Think Big. Win Small. --Darius Regulo, the King of Heaven, in Charles Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds (from Baen)
Well, petroleum is used in the production of plastics, so that's important. And pretty much all the goods in the United States, at least, are transported for a good portion of their journey via diesel truck.
Ding! Which means that only portion of the economy that are transported will be go up in price. Which is pretty much everything including, oh... food? The average food item in your grocery store has travelled about 1000 miles.
I suppose this is another reason to love the idea of electric cars---much easier to move the energy generation somewhere easier to replace than an enormous fleet of cars.
Three problems with that. First, current electric vehicles are unsuited to long-distance travel (over 100 miles). Second, you would need to increase power generation. Fortunately, the US coal supply is pretty good; and wind turbines have some possibilities. However, it's going to be a rough transition. And third: it takes energy to make a car-- and lighter electric cars tend to be made more out of plastics. Which as you noted, come from...
Well, for a direct connection: splitting water requires electricity. Peak oil, and the resulting energy crisis likely to result, would impact (but not preclude) production of the required electricity.
A bigger concern would be that the shuttle components use petroleum products in their manufacture, and the shuttle components are transported using conventional fuels-- EG: whenever they have to land at Edwards AFB instead of in Florida. Not to mention most of the support equipment at Kennedy launch center is conventionally fueled.
The biggest concern, however, is the potential impact on the US economy in general, and the food supply in particular. Modern fertilizers are produced using fossil foods, and it's a long (diesel-fueled) truck haul from the farm to the grocery store. If gasoline prices quadruple (such as occured during the ~5% shortfall during the 1970's), this will greatly increase consumer food costs, and cut into consumer discretionary spending-- and send major shocks across the economy. With the US government already having deficit problems, that doesn't look good for funding NASA.
Alternative fuels (EG: biodiesel) appear at least in potential able to replace the failing stocks of petroleum in its role as fuel and chemical source. However, that won't happen overnight. Furthermore, production needs to generate substantially more output than it requires in operational inputs.
Barring major breakthroughs, the picture gets ugly about five to ten years after peak.