Re:Slashdot: News for thieves. Like ethics matter.
on
What Free Cable?
·
· Score: 1
To people in the software industry who are stealing cable: don't get mad if you find out that the cable guy is pirating the software that your company sells.
You forget - everyone on slashdot does Open Source, and gives their software away for free. Seems like this is just enforcing the GPCableLicense!;-)
So who told you you had to subscribe? If you don't like the service, give it up and stop paying for it. If you don't like the policy overall, then ask them to modify it, rally public opinion, etc. But don't blame them for having a certain business model. The fact that some people will pay for multiple IP addresses means they can make money by restricting you to one address, or to one PC per address. In the end - you ante up, or you get out of the game. If enough people get out of the game (or go to a competitor), they'll change their policy (see also your long distance phone bill), or die (see also recent/. stories on DSL providers).
OK - I'm all for creative use of the resources that you can acquire, but WHAT DOES THE USER SERVICE CONTRACT SAY? For a lot of cable service provider contracts that I'm aware of, there are restrictions - no servers, or no pr0n/warez/games servers; no reselling bandwidth; no commercial services; limit to a single residential PC; etc. If the contract says "one PC only" (not one address only) then why shouldn't the service provider have the ability to terminate service that's clearly in use by multiple PCs? Don't tell me they can't tell, 'cause they can - or can have a good guess - and it's not the point. There's no Internet Access legislation that I know of guaranteeing the right to NAT traffic, so why get up in arms? Service contracts and SLA's are not just about bandwidth, even if that's the only thing most broadband users check for....
Free markets rely on the ability of parties to a contract to enforce that contract. If you don't like a particular contract, don't sign up! If you don't like a certain product (contract restrictions included) then buy another. If there isn't any other available, well, that's an unfortunate possibility - or a likihood when a particular clause makes it tough to make money on a product or service. And yes, you have the right to bitch about it in public if no one offers the product or service you want without restrictions you can't live with. But get off your high horse about "how can they DO this?!?!" and work to puclicize and promote productive goals. It's the difference between constructive criticism and whining or rabble-rousing.
Most VPN software packages aren't running over TCP/IP. From what I've seen, everything from Cisco-Cisco router tunnelling all the way to MS VPN software uses IP Protocol 47. (GRE/IP) In the case of MS's they also use a TCP/IP port (17xx something) to provide authentication.
Disallowing most VPNs would be as simple as blocking IP protocol 47 at their gateway router. Trivial. "gre deny any any" in Cisco's IOS parlance.
[....]
IPsec is also used, but I'm not as familiar with the details of that.
GRE is mostly a router-to-router tunneling protocol in my experience - IPSec and PPTP are much more common for VPN software and "appliances" - and also now implemented on most Cisco routers, for example.
In any of these cases, @Home could scan for the port numbers or protocol numbers/headers associated with the particular protocol, if they wanted to block this type of traffic. However, as another post points out, they haven't done much to date to pursue folks violating other Terms of Service - no HTTP servers, no Quake servers, etc. Mostly they care about exceptional use of bandwidth - which will bring them down on you regardless of the application.
I would be suprised if this were a response to Carnivore and the FBI - @Home's responsibility should end with helping to monitor email sent through their servers. Carnivore doesn't monitor telnet sessions (or Slashdot postings), and if the FBI wants to see the email you send from a work account (or another ISP) then they should deal with whomever owns that mail server, not your IP access provider.
Could this be a Free Speech issue, or Right to Privacy? @Home should not be able to enforce a contract that limits my freedom of expression, and they have no right to interfere with my (legal) communications to another party (e.g. my employer and the mail server there). Or, to take it further, maybe @Home should control what I can read, as well as say, and limit access to Yahoo in favor of Excite !?!?
If a book goes out of print for a certain amount of time, then even if the publishing company still owns the copyright at that time, the writer is given a legal ability to publish the book without the consent of the publishing company. Or something like that.
Actually, I think this is a feature of the CONTRACT that the author signs with the publisher - giving the publisher unique rights to publish the work, but reclaiming those rights for the author when the publisher chooses to stop executing them. This is how it worked in situations with which I am familiar - a textbook author I know has been notified by his publisher that they will not reprint the book, ergo he is free to re-contract with another publisher (or self-publish)....
> Movie companies usually destroy films when the copyright expires rather than allow them to enter the public domain.
> How spiteful! It's a wonder how society limps along at all when nobody is willing to cooperate even minimally with others...
Looked at the right way, Copyrights (and all other laws) ARE an agreement to cooperate with each other. When you abide by the law because it's what you'd do anyway, it's worthless. When you abide by the law because it's the law, you are making a decision that the public good (being able to rely on certain rules of behavior) is worth sacrificing personal liberties (e.g. by not yelling "fire!" in a crowded room, or by not stealing music just because someone else CAN rip a CD and CAN post it on the web and you CAN download it for "free" (like beer)). Society CAN be tightly restricted by laws, but a basic level of law CAN insure that the majority of people have the elbow-room to live decent lives without someone sticking a gun in their face to get their wallet or selling bootleg copies of the CD their band works on.
Violating copyright is tresspassing on someone's Homestead (see ESR's page) on the Noosphere - people who care about software development should consider whether they think this is akin to tresspassing in their physical home. The answer will vary for each of us - but in some sense Copyright law does (or can) give each of us the right to make that choice (let people in - OSS; keep people out - traditional) just as physical property laws allow me to protect my home (or open it up, whether for a weekend party, or every day).
> As an interesting note: here, in Hungary, our copyright law says that copying is illegal if it
> hurts the copyright owner's interests. While that is quite vague, SW publishers still would have a hard
> time proving that a freely accessible copy of a SW that they do not sell any more, does hurt their
> interests.
Not so hard to prove, or at least claim, in my mind: every copy of Windows 3.1 someone runs is a copy of Windows WhatYearIsItNow that they're not running (or, depending on the application, OpenDOS or microLinux or VxWorks or...). Every minute I spend playing a ripped-off King's Quest I is a minute that I'm not playing King's Quest XVIII or whatever they're up to now.
I'm all for the availability of older games/programs, and (like bands allowing taping at shows or Id giving away the DOOM engine) I'd think that having older software available for free could drive interest in a company or author's newer work.
However, I also believe that current (US) copyright law gives the (US-based) company/author the right to make that choice, whether they're currently selling the title for money, or not.
MORE IMPORTANTLY - can anyone suggest an alternate copyright/patent system that would encourage creativity and innovation but recognize the realities of the digital age (massive interconnection/distribution, many smart minds on hand to break copy-protections, cheap storage and bandwidth, waning public recognition for restrictive intellectual property) ???
Suprised that most people missed this. I just got one of these as a suprise gift, and already I really like it. Had just been thinking about the MP3-portable thing, and here it is.
First off, the thing's got a disk. Upside: 4.6 GB. Yeah, like 4600 megabytes or about 80 hours. Downside: when's it going to headcrash and take me out? Oh, and by the way, the LIon battery is supposed to go 10 hours (the doc explains that although running the HD is taxing, they actually get 10 minutes of music loaded to RAM from a 10 second burst, then shut down the drive again - I guess this means they have at least 10 Mbytes of RAM in it for pre-cache).
Secondly, it's expensive (around $600-$700?), but the price per playtime minutes - something like $0.15 per min? Who wants to calculate out the others? From a quick look, it looks like they're all $3+ per minute for 1+ hour boxes (or, 1% of the storage for around a quarter the cost).
Third: I have a very no-frills unit actually produced by "Hy-Tek" and called the "Compressor Personal Jukebox". There's also Personal Jukebox PJB-100", which is the product name I remembered seeing on/. a while back. Both are licensed from Compaq (and Fraunhofer).
Last: the software is OK (not great), but does support CDDB lookups of the discs you rip, and I've had no real problems yet (like it killing files off my HD like I've heard other one do).
Anyway, I see no other large-scale device like this out there - what's the deal?
Slashdot Mirror
To people in the software industry who are stealing cable: don't get mad if you find out that the cable guy is pirating the software that your company sells.
;-)
You forget - everyone on slashdot does Open Source, and gives their software away for free. Seems like this is just enforcing the GPCableLicense!
So who told you you had to subscribe? If you don't like the service, give it up and stop paying for it. If you don't like the policy overall, then ask them to modify it, rally public opinion, etc. But don't blame them for having a certain business model. The fact that some people will pay for multiple IP addresses means they can make money by restricting you to one address, or to one PC per address. In the end - you ante up, or you get out of the game. If enough people get out of the game (or go to a competitor), they'll change their policy (see also your long distance phone bill), or die (see also recent /. stories on DSL providers).
OK - I'm all for creative use of the resources that you can acquire, but WHAT DOES THE USER SERVICE CONTRACT SAY? For a lot of cable service provider contracts that I'm aware of, there are restrictions - no servers, or no pr0n/warez/games servers; no reselling bandwidth; no commercial services; limit to a single residential PC; etc. If the contract says "one PC only" (not one address only) then why shouldn't the service provider have the ability to terminate service that's clearly in use by multiple PCs? Don't tell me they can't tell, 'cause they can - or can have a good guess - and it's not the point. There's no Internet Access legislation that I know of guaranteeing the right to NAT traffic, so why get up in arms? Service contracts and SLA's are not just about bandwidth, even if that's the only thing most broadband users check for....
Free markets rely on the ability of parties to a contract to enforce that contract. If you don't like a particular contract, don't sign up! If you don't like a certain product (contract restrictions included) then buy another. If there isn't any other available, well, that's an unfortunate possibility - or a likihood when a particular clause makes it tough to make money on a product or service. And yes, you have the right to bitch about it in public if no one offers the product or service you want without restrictions you can't live with. But get off your high horse about "how can they DO this?!?!" and work to puclicize and promote productive goals. It's the difference between constructive criticism and whining or rabble-rousing.
Most VPN software packages aren't running over TCP/IP. From what I've seen, everything from Cisco-Cisco router tunnelling all the way to MS VPN software uses IP Protocol 47. (GRE/IP) In the case of MS's they also use a TCP/IP port (17xx something) to provide authentication.
Disallowing most VPNs would be as simple as blocking IP protocol 47 at their gateway router. Trivial. "gre deny any any" in Cisco's IOS parlance.
[....]
IPsec is also used, but I'm not as familiar with the details of that.
GRE is mostly a router-to-router tunneling protocol in my experience - IPSec and PPTP are much more common for VPN software and "appliances" - and also now implemented on most Cisco routers, for example.
In any of these cases, @Home could scan for the port numbers or protocol numbers/headers associated with the particular protocol, if they wanted to block this type of traffic. However, as another post points out, they haven't done much to date to pursue folks violating other Terms of Service - no HTTP servers, no Quake servers, etc. Mostly they care about exceptional use of bandwidth - which will bring them down on you regardless of the application.
I would be suprised if this were a response to Carnivore and the FBI - @Home's responsibility should end with helping to monitor email sent through their servers. Carnivore doesn't monitor telnet sessions (or Slashdot postings), and if the FBI wants to see the email you send from a work account (or another ISP) then they should deal with whomever owns that mail server, not your IP access provider.
Could this be a Free Speech issue, or Right to Privacy? @Home should not be able to enforce a contract that limits my freedom of expression, and they have no right to interfere with my (legal) communications to another party (e.g. my employer and the mail server there). Or, to take it further, maybe @Home should control what I can read, as well as say, and limit access to Yahoo in favor of Excite !?!?
If a book goes out of print for a certain amount of time, then even if the publishing company still owns the copyright at that time, the writer is given a legal ability to publish the book without the consent of the publishing company. Or something like that.
Actually, I think this is a feature of the CONTRACT that the author signs with the publisher - giving the publisher unique rights to publish the work, but reclaiming those rights for the author when the publisher chooses to stop executing them. This is how it worked in situations with which I am familiar - a textbook author I know has been notified by his publisher that they will not reprint the book, ergo he is free to re-contract with another publisher (or self-publish)....
> Movie companies usually destroy films when the copyright expires rather than allow them to enter the public domain.
> How spiteful! It's a wonder how society limps along at all when nobody is willing to cooperate even minimally with others...
Looked at the right way, Copyrights (and all other laws) ARE an agreement to cooperate with each other. When you abide by the law because it's what you'd do anyway, it's worthless. When you abide by the law because it's the law, you are making a decision that the public good (being able to rely on certain rules of behavior) is worth sacrificing personal liberties (e.g. by not yelling "fire!" in a crowded room, or by not stealing music just because someone else CAN rip a CD and CAN post it on the web and you CAN download it for "free" (like beer)). Society CAN be tightly restricted by laws, but a basic level of law CAN insure that the majority of people have the elbow-room to live decent lives without someone sticking a gun in their face to get their wallet or selling bootleg copies of the CD their band works on.
Violating copyright is tresspassing on someone's Homestead (see ESR's page) on the Noosphere - people who care about software development should consider whether they think this is akin to tresspassing in their physical home. The answer will vary for each of us - but in some sense Copyright law does (or can) give each of us the right to make that choice (let people in - OSS; keep people out - traditional) just as physical property laws allow me to protect my home (or open it up, whether for a weekend party, or every day).
> As an interesting note: here, in Hungary, our copyright law says that copying is illegal if it
...). Every minute I spend playing a ripped-off King's Quest I is a minute that I'm not playing King's Quest XVIII or whatever they're up to now.
> hurts the copyright owner's interests. While that is quite vague, SW publishers still would have a hard
> time proving that a freely accessible copy of a SW that they do not sell any more, does hurt their
> interests.
Not so hard to prove, or at least claim, in my mind: every copy of Windows 3.1 someone runs is a copy of Windows WhatYearIsItNow that they're not running (or, depending on the application, OpenDOS or microLinux or VxWorks or
I'm all for the availability of older games/programs, and (like bands allowing taping at shows or Id giving away the DOOM engine) I'd think that having older software available for free could drive interest in a company or author's newer work.
However, I also believe that current (US) copyright law gives the (US-based) company/author the right to make that choice, whether they're currently selling the title for money, or not.
MORE IMPORTANTLY - can anyone suggest an alternate copyright/patent system that would encourage creativity and innovation but recognize the realities of the digital age (massive interconnection/distribution, many smart minds on hand to break copy-protections, cheap storage and bandwidth, waning public recognition for restrictive intellectual property) ???
Suprised that most people missed this. I just
/. a while
got one of these as a suprise gift, and already
I really like it. Had just been thinking about
the MP3-portable thing, and here it is.
First off, the thing's got a disk. Upside: 4.6 GB. Yeah, like 4600 megabytes or about 80 hours.
Downside: when's it going to headcrash and take
me out? Oh, and by the way, the LIon battery is
supposed to go 10 hours (the doc explains that
although running the HD is taxing, they actually
get 10 minutes of music loaded to RAM from a 10 second burst, then shut down the drive again - I guess this means they have at least 10 Mbytes of RAM in it for pre-cache).
Secondly, it's expensive (around $600-$700?), but
the price per playtime minutes - something like
$0.15 per min? Who wants to calculate out the
others? From a quick look, it looks like they're
all $3+ per minute for 1+ hour boxes (or, 1% of
the storage for around a quarter the cost).
Third: I have a very no-frills unit actually
produced by "Hy-Tek" and called the
"Compressor Personal Jukebox". There's
also
Personal Jukebox PJB-100", which is the
product name I remembered seeing on
back. Both are licensed from
Compaq (and Fraunhofer).
Last: the software is OK (not great), but does
support CDDB lookups of the discs you rip, and
I've had no real problems yet (like it killing
files off my HD like I've heard other one do).
Anyway, I see no other large-scale device like
this out there - what's the deal?