Don't forget that you also need a technological component. As it is, that's pretty damn hard -- a program will have difficulty implementing standard obscenity tests (testing for prurient interest, judging literary/artistic/political/scientific value, et al), so to get good accuracy you'd need to rely on human judgement, which just doesn't scale very well with the number of porn sites, I'd suspect.
Of course, it might have been interesting if the law had been upheld, and libraries simply walked away from e-rates and instead raised more funding locally or from private sources. *shrug* It would have sent a message about blackmail politics, and that wouldn't have been such a bad thing at all.
a) Does it appeal to prurient nature (community standards)?
b) Does it depict or describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner?
c) Is it devoid of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?
All three conditions must be met for something to be considered obscene under the Miller test, judging from some Google searches.
So, unless it's something like serious studies of the long-term psychological impact of BDSM on its participants with respect to learned helplessness, the answer is often going to be "yes, they're obscene".
So? It's also a historical, proven fact that the IRS, military, and police forces were also all exploited for political and personal reasons by various people in the past, with powers they already have. It's also true that the income tax amendment could be horribly abused -- it'd be perfectly legal for Congress to tax everybody's income 120% and thus eventually make criminals out of everybody. It's also true that people have killed other people with fists, gasoline, and shoes.
I don't see many people arguing for having no military, no police, no IRS, no hands or feet, no vehicles, and no taxation on the basis that they have been abused in the past and will continue to do so. What IS done is punishing the abuses when they occur.
Face it. If you're meeting and dicussing things that the government legitimately has the power to act on -- such as initiating prosecution or other REAL LEVERAGE that does not contravene other regulations on their behavior -- you probably owe it to yourself to vette everybody present, because you're probably handing over blackmail material to everybody else. Smart people don't discuss their plans to rob banks plans on USENET, for instance, even if they know law enforcement isn't looking. If you're discussing something legally actionable in a meeting, it behooves you to do a little checking on your audience... and if it's not legally actionable, and you're harrassed anyway, then there are countless publicity-hungry lawyers, pundits and reporters who'd be thrilled with a juicy tale of government persecution and harrassment.
Maybe SiS marketing was smokin' the same crack that caused them to pair up with a company named "Triplex" -- say the three-syllable pronunciation for that name, instead of the two-syllable one they probably intended.
Hm. A demon-slaying knight who creates a visual paradise and partners with *cough* Triplex *cough* I wonder what sort of visual feast was intended, really.
There's always the TBS classic Xconq. Unfortunately, although the engine appears to be quite flexible (supply lines, unit regeneration, zones of control, stacking rules, different combat models, et al), the AI (at least in the most recent version) appears to be extremely fubar when it comes to concentration of force. You know the AI is weak when one can easily wipe out the AI in multiple scenarios (Gettysburg, Magnuszew, Operation Cobra, Cherbourg...) with minimal losses... from either side, first time through.
Sure, repressive countries use their laws to, er, repress people. Solution? Don't go there, and perhaps actively work to change their government if you care enough. I wouldn't recommend, for instance, criticizing Pres. Mobuto in a prominent column and then travelling to Zaire, 'cos there, journalists basically have no rights if they oppose ZANU-PF.
Hm, most terrorists don't seem to relish fighting ARMED people, like presumably that US Army recruiting game would involve. It's much safer to blow up random unarmed civvies and then whine about oppression and casualties when troops come after you.
Apparently, there was a 1996 law that barred federal funding for research in which human embryos are "destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death". It was only until 2000 -- the lame-duck last year of Clinton's term, amusingly enough -- that the rules were relaxed to allow some federally-funded stem cell research.
So, basically, for at least 4 years, Pres. Clinton was content for a HARSHER stance against embryonic stem-cell research than was Pres. Bush -- when he was about to leave, he changed the rules and decided to let his successor reap the political consequences. Interesting, eh?
Well, one's a patent and one's a copyright. Patents might get less protection in general because they cover procedures and systems, which in some cases are useful or even critical for derivative work within a section.
A writer, for instance, can probably get away with writing quite a bit without deriving from "Snow White", say -- there's nothing, besides constraints on imagination and effort, stopping a writer from designing his own distinct universe. And if they're REALLY creative, the universe might be so distinct that it won't involve axe-wielding dwarves, fair tree-loving elves with bows, and half-height people not named H*bbits to avoid the dreaded Lawyers of Mordor. Worst case? A creative work falls into oblivion, because the author refuses to license it to anybody else at prices that others will accept.
But systems and methods have to work in reality -- there may not be another satisfactory way around a problem. If, for instance, somebody designs a KSR/RGB Mars-style "treatment" that improves longevity by fixing long-term accumulated genetic damage, restores telomeres, and so forth, then that's a huge amount of IP. Some of the necessary methods may be the only effective solutions. So a long, closely-held patent could be used to throttle potential research in that area. What if, say, a radical anti-"playing God" group set up shell companies to quietly purchase IP, or even set up a biotechnology firm for the sole purpose of blocking applications by winning the research race? Imagine if a group tried to blackmail the world with a patented, 90-year-protected cure to cancer? The threat to society's potential welfare is much worse than that of, say, withholding "Steamboat Willie".
Theoretically, they get paid depending on their contracts, without which they shouldn't have transferred copyright. Of course, if there's a conspiracy among the labels to present only highly unfavorable contracts, then there's a bit of a problem.
The labels, of course, have a huge problem -- the public's tastes can be quite fickle, and advertising a new potential talent is likely quite expensive. Those costs have to be borne by somebody even if the music doesn't sell -- either because it's drek, or because the public simply didn't latch onto it in sufficient quantities to justify costs. I don't know what fraction of artists actually do well enough to justify marketing costs, but if it's low, ugh.
That means that, realistically, either the labels have to be extremely good at picking (or deliberately building bands -- for instance, composing new boy bands aimed specifically at female pre-teens and early teens, by choosing what they hope are photogenic young males of specific ages, et al, or choosing female artists according to jiggle factor and mid-riff exposure) bands, or artists should be willing to share the costs, because otherwise the marketing machines collapse.
And without marketing, many obscure artists won't have much of a chance. It may have worked for Wilco, but what happens when there are no major labels and everybody is in the same boat? Then there's no prevailing culture to be "counter-cultural" against; opposing the labels isn't anything special, because there aren't any. That means that bands trying Wilco's approach would no longer be entitled to free publicity because they're trying something different. End result: Probably many bands with smaller audiences and smaller releases driven by word of mouth.
Keep in mind that nobody's entitled to an income on only their own terms, no matter how much they think they deserve it. If an artist's work is niche, lousy, or underexposed -- then it doesn't matter how much he loves the music. Love != quality or appeal. I'm reminded of the Elaine character on "Seinfeld" -- she loved to dance, but only masochists would have paid to watch her at the Bolshoi. If an artist seems promising enough to get a favorable contract, however, more power to 'im.
Rest on their laurels? Hardly -- unless the work is of enduring quality. Even when something is of pretty lasting quality, such as MLK Jr's speeches (copyright strictly defended by the King family so they can make money selling King's image to be used in commercials, for instance), it's rarely going to be enough to justify stopping of work.
I don't think Judy Blume's descendants are idly living out their days on royalties from "Superfudge", for instance, nor did Electronic Arts stop after the days of "Pinball Construction Set".
If something IS so awe-inspiring that it'll really stand the test of time for ninety years, *shrug* I don't have a problem with that, especially with purely artistic works -- there's less public harm in, say, having a nigh-indefinitely copyrighted Mickey Mouse flick than there is in having an indefinitely-patented hypothetical rhinoviral cold vaccine. If Disney slams the door and people stop paying for Mickey Mouse, big deal -- it's only Mickey Mouse.
The justices had better not be swayed by petitions -- their job description includes interpreting the law as it is written, not as how anybody else (including the justices) thinks it should have been written.
Even if the justices think that a law is a pathetic, weak, idiotic law -- if it's Constitutional and all, they need to uphold it as is. It's the other two branches' job to reflect the populace and consider bending to petitions.
Just a simple FYI if anybody wants to track down the bill text on thomas.loc.gov -- it's S. 2201, otherwise known as the "Online Personal Privacy Act".
If you want a PDF version from the GPO, this link may work for you.
Rules are rules, and both parties have abused them quite often in the Senate, where the rules are written in such a way as to make obstruction relatively easy compared as in the House.
It wasn't just the use of the word "priceless" -- the entire Nader ad in question was clearly a derived work that mimicked the world-recognized Mastercard ad campaign. That fact was never in dispute.
The issue of contention was, basically, whether it fell under parody protection as a sarcastic use of the theme.
That's a rather bizarre claim to make. Trespassing consists of being on somebody else's land without their consent, and usually with their explicit demand to go away. Creativity, on the other hand, need not involve tired, old rehashes of somebody else's material -- and when reuse is necessary, you can always ask first.
Ask somebody else... I wouldn't know, since I never studied their history or culture in any great detail, especially pre-20th-century. Hell, off hand, I doubt I've read a single Middle Eastern-themed significant work of fiction (let alone non-fiction) that I've read, save for "The Satanic Verses", which is far too allegorical to safely draw upon.
Re:it's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonde
on
The Years of Rice and Salt
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· Score: 2, Informative
In that time period -- 15th to 18th century -- a strong mercantile class and a commercial culture developed, that would eventually result in dramatic decentralization of power. In addition, the power of the centralized church gradually waned, as secular institutions gained strength and leaders became more pragmatic and much more focused on temporal power rather than spiritual merit. Economic power became a major motivation for exploration and colonialization... and for science, with monarchs interested in such questions as how to determine longitudes at sea, or anything else that would provide an edge, in addition to prestige-motivated financial backing.
In short, Europe was undergoing massive societal changes between the 15th and 18th centuries. I'm not too familiar with Eastern cultures except, to some degree, with Japan and China, but IIRC, those two needed external stimulation (the arrival of colonialists with comparatively advanced technology and a willingness to use it) to really get going.
It might have something to do with Confucianism and Buddhism, both of which strike me as being a bit stability and contentment-oriented -- basically, don't rock the boat, release yourself from material greeds, make peace with yourself. Both of those two societies also were quite insular, and China at least had attained a sufficiently high level of technology (especially compared to their known neighbors) that it fueled complacency...
Hmmm. How good are e-book devices at displaying maps and diagrams? Reading a military history without good maps, especially with regards to a theatre in which I haven't spent vast amounts of time learning the geography thereof, can be painful (e.g. John Erickson's "Road to Moscow" is a bit agonizing unless you have an atlas showing detailed wartime maps, or you already know where even the villages and smaller rivers are...).
Read the definition of "harmful to minors" again. Covered material either is obscene (but transmitting obscene material over the wire is already covered by other laws, IIRC), or that fails the Miller test (which requires that it a depiction of sexual content that is designed to pander to prurient interest).
I suppose they might nail a site if it accepts Visa Buxx.;)
But yes, in some regards, the law is oddly written -- the good-faith defense and credit card verification are specifically mentioned, as are the commerce bits (and there's a definition of 'commercial purposes' in the law, as well. The harmful-to-minors communication apparently has to be a "regular course of such person's trade or business" with an objective of earning a profit as a result). So unless sites are accepting CC#s without age-checking (never having run a business, I wouldn't know how that works -- maybe the CC# vendor charges an additional fee for age checking?), few should fall under it...
...except sites that try to profit from advertising, like collecting e-mails for resale, or banners. If they don't use a CC#, then it'll be harder for them to check.
In addition, it has to be done with server-client hypertext protocols (or their successors), so something like text-based posts on USENET wouldn't be covered, AFAICT. I don't know why it's like that, but *shrug* it's there.
You're right only if those so-called amateur sites are distributing their porn for commerical purposes. Sites that do not involve commerce -- for instance, no fee and no attempted profiteering via banner ads -- aren't within the scope of the law.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that you also need a technological component. As it is, that's pretty damn hard -- a program will have difficulty implementing standard obscenity tests (testing for prurient interest, judging literary/artistic/political/scientific value, et al), so to get good accuracy you'd need to rely on human judgement, which just doesn't scale very well with the number of porn sites, I'd suspect.
Of course, it might have been interesting if the law had been upheld, and libraries simply walked away from e-rates and instead raised more funding locally or from private sources. *shrug* It would have sent a message about blackmail politics, and that wouldn't have been such a bad thing at all.
Probably the Miller test --
a) Does it appeal to prurient nature (community standards)?
b) Does it depict or describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner?
c) Is it devoid of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?
All three conditions must be met for something to be considered obscene under the Miller test, judging from some Google searches.
So, unless it's something like serious studies of the long-term psychological impact of BDSM on its participants with respect to learned helplessness, the answer is often going to be "yes, they're obscene".
So? It's also a historical, proven fact that the IRS, military, and police forces were also all exploited for political and personal reasons by various people in the past, with powers they already have. It's also true that the income tax amendment could be horribly abused -- it'd be perfectly legal for Congress to tax everybody's income 120% and thus eventually make criminals out of everybody. It's also true that people have killed other people with fists, gasoline, and shoes.
I don't see many people arguing for having no military, no police, no IRS, no hands or feet, no vehicles, and no taxation on the basis that they have been abused in the past and will continue to do so. What IS done is punishing the abuses when they occur.
Face it. If you're meeting and dicussing things that the government legitimately has the power to act on -- such as initiating prosecution or other REAL LEVERAGE that does not contravene other regulations on their behavior -- you probably owe it to yourself to vette everybody present, because you're probably handing over blackmail material to everybody else. Smart people don't discuss their plans to rob banks plans on USENET, for instance, even if they know law enforcement isn't looking. If you're discussing something legally actionable in a meeting, it behooves you to do a little checking on your audience... and if it's not legally actionable, and you're harrassed anyway, then there are countless publicity-hungry lawyers, pundits and reporters who'd be thrilled with a juicy tale of government persecution and harrassment.
Maybe SiS marketing was smokin' the same crack that caused them to pair up with a company named "Triplex" -- say the three-syllable pronunciation for that name, instead of the two-syllable one they probably intended.
Hm. A demon-slaying knight who creates a visual paradise and partners with *cough* Triplex *cough* I wonder what sort of visual feast was intended, really.
There's always the TBS classic Xconq. Unfortunately, although the engine appears to be quite flexible (supply lines, unit regeneration, zones of control, stacking rules, different combat models, et al), the AI (at least in the most recent version) appears to be extremely fubar when it comes to concentration of force. You know the AI is weak when one can easily wipe out the AI in multiple scenarios (Gettysburg, Magnuszew, Operation Cobra, Cherbourg...) with minimal losses... from either side, first time through.
Sure, repressive countries use their laws to, er, repress people. Solution? Don't go there, and perhaps actively work to change their government if you care enough. I wouldn't recommend, for instance, criticizing Pres. Mobuto in a prominent column and then travelling to Zaire, 'cos there, journalists basically have no rights if they oppose ZANU-PF.
Hm, most terrorists don't seem to relish fighting ARMED people, like presumably that US Army recruiting game would involve. It's much safer to blow up random unarmed civvies and then whine about oppression and casualties when troops come after you.
Oops.
Apparently, there was a 1996 law that barred federal funding for research in which human embryos are "destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death". It was only until 2000 -- the lame-duck last year of Clinton's term, amusingly enough -- that the rules were relaxed to allow some federally-funded stem cell research.
So, basically, for at least 4 years, Pres. Clinton was content for a HARSHER stance against embryonic stem-cell research than was Pres. Bush -- when he was about to leave, he changed the rules and decided to let his successor reap the political consequences. Interesting, eh?
And what would they do once the communications channels are jammed?
Well, one's a patent and one's a copyright. Patents might get less protection in general because they cover procedures and systems, which in some cases are useful or even critical for derivative work within a section.
A writer, for instance, can probably get away with writing quite a bit without deriving from "Snow White", say -- there's nothing, besides constraints on imagination and effort, stopping a writer from designing his own distinct universe. And if they're REALLY creative, the universe might be so distinct that it won't involve axe-wielding dwarves, fair tree-loving elves with bows, and half-height people not named H*bbits to avoid the dreaded Lawyers of Mordor. Worst case? A creative work falls into oblivion, because the author refuses to license it to anybody else at prices that others will accept.
But systems and methods have to work in reality -- there may not be another satisfactory way around a problem. If, for instance, somebody designs a KSR/RGB Mars-style "treatment" that improves longevity by fixing long-term accumulated genetic damage, restores telomeres, and so forth, then that's a huge amount of IP. Some of the necessary methods may be the only effective solutions. So a long, closely-held patent could be used to throttle potential research in that area. What if, say, a radical anti-"playing God" group set up shell companies to quietly purchase IP, or even set up a biotechnology firm for the sole purpose of blocking applications by winning the research race? Imagine if a group tried to blackmail the world with a patented, 90-year-protected cure to cancer? The threat to society's potential welfare is much worse than that of, say, withholding "Steamboat Willie".
Theoretically, they get paid depending on their contracts, without which they shouldn't have transferred copyright. Of course, if there's a conspiracy among the labels to present only highly unfavorable contracts, then there's a bit of a problem.
The labels, of course, have a huge problem -- the public's tastes can be quite fickle, and advertising a new potential talent is likely quite expensive. Those costs have to be borne by somebody even if the music doesn't sell -- either because it's drek, or because the public simply didn't latch onto it in sufficient quantities to justify costs. I don't know what fraction of artists actually do well enough to justify marketing costs, but if it's low, ugh.
That means that, realistically, either the labels have to be extremely good at picking (or deliberately building bands -- for instance, composing new boy bands aimed specifically at female pre-teens and early teens, by choosing what they hope are photogenic young males of specific ages, et al, or choosing female artists according to jiggle factor and mid-riff exposure) bands, or artists should be willing to share the costs, because otherwise the marketing machines collapse.
And without marketing, many obscure artists won't have much of a chance. It may have worked for Wilco, but what happens when there are no major labels and everybody is in the same boat? Then there's no prevailing culture to be "counter-cultural" against; opposing the labels isn't anything special, because there aren't any. That means that bands trying Wilco's approach would no longer be entitled to free publicity because they're trying something different. End result: Probably many bands with smaller audiences and smaller releases driven by word of mouth.
Keep in mind that nobody's entitled to an income on only their own terms, no matter how much they think they deserve it. If an artist's work is niche, lousy, or underexposed -- then it doesn't matter how much he loves the music. Love != quality or appeal. I'm reminded of the Elaine character on "Seinfeld" -- she loved to dance, but only masochists would have paid to watch her at the Bolshoi. If an artist seems promising enough to get a favorable contract, however, more power to 'im.
Rest on their laurels? Hardly -- unless the work is of enduring quality. Even when something is of pretty lasting quality, such as MLK Jr's speeches (copyright strictly defended by the King family so they can make money selling King's image to be used in commercials, for instance), it's rarely going to be enough to justify stopping of work.
I don't think Judy Blume's descendants are idly living out their days on royalties from "Superfudge", for instance, nor did Electronic Arts stop after the days of "Pinball Construction Set".
If something IS so awe-inspiring that it'll really stand the test of time for ninety years, *shrug* I don't have a problem with that, especially with purely artistic works -- there's less public harm in, say, having a nigh-indefinitely copyrighted Mickey Mouse flick than there is in having an indefinitely-patented hypothetical rhinoviral cold vaccine. If Disney slams the door and people stop paying for Mickey Mouse, big deal -- it's only Mickey Mouse.
The justices had better not be swayed by petitions -- their job description includes interpreting the law as it is written, not as how anybody else (including the justices) thinks it should have been written.
Even if the justices think that a law is a pathetic, weak, idiotic law -- if it's Constitutional and all, they need to uphold it as is. It's the other two branches' job to reflect the populace and consider bending to petitions.
Just a simple FYI if anybody wants to track down the bill text on thomas.loc.gov -- it's S. 2201, otherwise known as the "Online Personal Privacy Act".
If you want a PDF version from the GPO, this link may work for you.
*shrug*
Rules are rules, and both parties have abused them quite often in the Senate, where the rules are written in such a way as to make obstruction relatively easy compared as in the House.
It's not "X windows". It's "X Window System", or "X11R{insert version number here}", or the "X Protocol"...
It wasn't just the use of the word "priceless" -- the entire Nader ad in question was clearly a derived work that mimicked the world-recognized Mastercard ad campaign. That fact was never in dispute.
The issue of contention was, basically, whether it fell under parody protection as a sarcastic use of the theme.
That's a rather bizarre claim to make. Trespassing consists of being on somebody else's land without their consent, and usually with their explicit demand to go away. Creativity, on the other hand, need not involve tired, old rehashes of somebody else's material -- and when reuse is necessary, you can always ask first.
Ask somebody else... I wouldn't know, since I never studied their history or culture in any great detail, especially pre-20th-century. Hell, off hand, I doubt I've read a single Middle Eastern-themed significant work of fiction (let alone non-fiction) that I've read, save for "The Satanic Verses", which is far too allegorical to safely draw upon.
In that time period -- 15th to 18th century -- a strong mercantile class and a commercial culture developed, that would eventually result in dramatic decentralization of power. In addition, the power of the centralized church gradually waned, as secular institutions gained strength and leaders became more pragmatic and much more focused on temporal power rather than spiritual merit. Economic power became a major motivation for exploration and colonialization... and for science, with monarchs interested in such questions as how to determine longitudes at sea, or anything else that would provide an edge, in addition to prestige-motivated financial backing.
In short, Europe was undergoing massive societal changes between the 15th and 18th centuries. I'm not too familiar with Eastern cultures except, to some degree, with Japan and China, but IIRC, those two needed external stimulation (the arrival of colonialists with comparatively advanced technology and a willingness to use it) to really get going.
It might have something to do with Confucianism and Buddhism, both of which strike me as being a bit stability and contentment-oriented -- basically, don't rock the boat, release yourself from material greeds, make peace with yourself. Both of those two societies also were quite insular, and China at least had attained a sufficiently high level of technology (especially compared to their known neighbors) that it fueled complacency...
Hmmm. How good are e-book devices at displaying maps and diagrams? Reading a military history without good maps, especially with regards to a theatre in which I haven't spent vast amounts of time learning the geography thereof, can be painful (e.g. John Erickson's "Road to Moscow" is a bit agonizing unless you have an atlas showing detailed wartime maps, or you already know where even the villages and smaller rivers are...).
Read the definition of "harmful to minors" again. Covered material either is obscene (but transmitting obscene material over the wire is already covered by other laws, IIRC), or that fails the Miller test (which requires that it a depiction of sexual content that is designed to pander to prurient interest).
Do you require payment via credit cards?
Do you do age verification on those CCs? Or, if you don't require just CCs, do you age-check other methods?
If so, and those are good-faith efforts (no suggestions to steal parents' cards, for instance...) you're in the clear, it would seem.
I suppose they might nail a site if it accepts Visa Buxx. ;)
But yes, in some regards, the law is oddly written -- the good-faith defense and credit card verification are specifically mentioned, as are the commerce bits (and there's a definition of 'commercial purposes' in the law, as well. The harmful-to-minors communication apparently has to be a "regular course of such person's trade or business" with an objective of earning a profit as a result). So unless sites are accepting CC#s without age-checking (never having run a business, I wouldn't know how that works -- maybe the CC# vendor charges an additional fee for age checking?), few should fall under it...
...except sites that try to profit from advertising, like collecting e-mails for resale, or banners. If they don't use a CC#, then it'll be harder for them to check.
In addition, it has to be done with server-client hypertext protocols (or their successors), so something like text-based posts on USENET wouldn't be covered, AFAICT. I don't know why it's like that, but *shrug* it's there.
You're right only if those so-called amateur sites are distributing their porn for commerical purposes. Sites that do not involve commerce -- for instance, no fee and no attempted profiteering via banner ads -- aren't within the scope of the law.