ISTR that WIPO rules allow (could be wrong, it might be WTO), for a limited duration, poorer countries to *legally* produce their own versions of vital drugs for at least several more years. The NYT had a series on an Indian company which is doing just this, for instance; and they're even thinking of exporting. This is all perfectly legal, unlike what South Africa appears to be trying to do (namely, ignore IP law whenever it feels like it).
Er, more than a few hours of sales, unless the IT people are incompetent; they need to isolate, wipe, reinstall, analyze, and correct, because even an obvious exploit may only have been used to mask something more subtle.
Plus, notifying customers that their CC numbers, addresses and so forth may have been compromised -- which isn't that unusual a procedure now -- also can cost quite a bit in the long run.
Um, they're sterile. Sterile moths don't pass on their genes; hence, there won't be a second generation about which you can ask whether their mutations will persist. The whole point is to reduce the number of offspring, all of whom will be between normal-normal pairs. Read the article next time.
The point is that they hope there will be no differences in, say, behavior, that impair its reproductive capabilities up until fertillization itself.
Introducing a large number of sterile, but otherwise identical, male moths into a moth population should in theory make it more difficult for the non-sterile males to mate, which means that there should be fewer fertillizations and perhaps a smaller second generation. Then the sterile strain dies out, since it fails to actually have any young; new ones can be introduced (by people) the next breeding season if need be. At least that's how the theory should work.
The glowing bit just helps the scientists track them better and check for any behavioral differences during this phase.
No. The breeding -- namely, trying to combine African honeybees (for their better honey production skills) with European honeybees (for their relative placidity) was completely deliberate.
Unfortunate point 1 -- they ended up with the African bees' aggressiveness and the European bees' lower honey production.
Explanation of that mispelled, incomplete "Virgina... hrm" thought -- AOL has operations in Virginia, right? I don't know whether they'd have anything in his district, 'tho, not living in that state and not being affiliated in any way with AOL. My bad.
He gets a decent amount of money from communications people (and Verizon, SBC, and BellSouth rank high on his list), but more from energy and finance. Virgina... hrm.
Here is his home page. He doesn't list his committee memberships, but he's member of the Energy and Commerce one, which explains the energy and banking money.
Here we see PAC contributions from computer equipment/services manufacturers. AOL, Intel, and so forth show up -- but these contributions are fairly minor. The National Assn. of Broadcasters did give him $7k via a PAC, interestingly. Whereas the MPAA didn't give much at all...
It's useful to know what's being broadcast by foreign powers, and who's being featured. The presence or absence of important figures and so forth can be quite useful data...
You can't really rely on, say, most American news media for good in-depth international coverage, after all -- especially not our television. It's not like ours are state-run and therefore constrained to present, at length, the party line of a ruling government.
Oh, they're not being THAT nice. It appears that they're not rejecting John Doe lawsuits and their related subpoenas outright; they just want the plaintiffs to have to demonstrate damages/harm before revealing the John Doe. Which seems to be a reasonable thing to ask, since whether or not damages have occurred isn't necessarily all that connected to John Doe's identity.
On the other hand, we have contractual obligations; if somebody releases proprietary information, it may be difficult to prove a violation unless it can be shown that John Doe was somebody who signed an NDA -- and doing so without knowing who John Doe is might be tricky. Perhaps reasonable doubt allows for the possiblity that John Doe really is an anonymous journalist who didn't violate the NDA himself, but received unsolicited information from someone who did? So in that case, it might be difficult or perhaps impossible for the plaintiff to make a case without knowing the JD's identity.
One wonders whether a compromise would work -- identity can be revealed via subpoena to the judge, who withholds the actual identity and merely confirms or denies relevance (for instance, whether or not the person has, in fact, signed an NDA) unless and until the case is decided in favor of the plaintiffs?
You'd probably have to route the transfers through a Napster proxy as well, just to be sure that whatever content has been signed, verified and indexed beforehand is the same content that's being transferred later. Otherwise, one might be able to create a hacked client that offers up different content depending on the peer (a Napster server/verifier, or another client) is requesting the file.
Or try to change the laws -- but until they're changed, your obligated to obey them or accept the consequences. Thats part of the burden of being a citizen.
Your viewpoint has no relevance in the eyes of the law, except as far as it is involved in the ordinary legislative process -- such as writing your Congressmen.
Once upon a time, probably over 50M were overtaken with an apparent anti-communist hysteria; and probably that many agreed with the internment of the Japanese during WWII, as well. Once upon a time, women couldn't vote here, and blacks were treated as subhuman beasts of labor.
Popularity is irrelevant when it comes to right and wrong.
Remember that if you keep changing your naming schemes, then you cease to matter because nobody anymore can find your files -- they don't know the search keys.
And Napster would be illegal in any country that subscribes to the Berne conventions, I suspect -- well, any that also makes illegal a business designed pretty much soley to facilitate and profit from Berne violations.
Which is just fine from the RIAA's POV as long as it's difficult for users to find them.
Remember that if enough name-mangling schemes are used that nobody can find.MP3s, then Napster isn't very useful anymore. And if there are very few, or they're sufficiently well-known, then it's still trivial for the RIAA to generate a new list of filenames to block.
The RIAA might not be able to go after you, but is this compatible with _Napster's_ licensing terms? It seems like abuse of their system, and could constitute a DOS if organized (lots of bogus listings bollixing up their search engine).
One questions whether Napster and its creator had any legal strategy to begin with. If memory serves, internal memos subpoenaed for the trial showed that they were aware that it would be used primarily for illegally distributing copyrighted music... and yet, they pretty much chose to do nothing about it, except create a business model to exploit this. Bad move... I really don't have any sympathy for them due to the obtuseness of it all.
For instance, they could have used a public-key encryption system whereby MP3s weren't listed in the search server unless they'd been approved by Napster's systems, where approval was demonstrated by a valid digital signature with Napster's private key. The acceptance screening could have been simple at first -- some filename and header scans, plus perhaps spot checks (i.e. random manual inspection) and MD5 checksum comparison (with known unauthorized.MP3s; chances are that many servers share the exact same versions, and a match would be grounds for examination). Find a violation, boot the server -- quasi-permanently, by requiring a CC number tied to a verifiable address and name. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be relatively hard to claim that this system would be *negligent* -- which, right now, is a trivial claim to make.
Even simpler, they could have asked for licensing beforehand; they likely would have been denied, but perhaps they could have offered *their* IP to the RIAA, for a price, rather than the other way around.
I seem to recall that Napster's original story was that they couldn't; later, they changed their line, and said they could and would -- but perhaps they haven't yet. This injunction puts some legal compulsion behind it -- stop stalling and start blocking within a certain time period, or face definite, legal consequences.
Civil disobedience also normally entails being willing to turn yourself in and submit to punishment.
And the copyright laws, with extended durations, protect the artists -- the artists are selling their rights to songs through a perfectly legal process. If you weaken the copyright protections, you reduce the value of what the artists have to offer. Which matters, since they don't all have rich family or second jobs...
No. It's because the original artists sold their rights to to recording companies, who would really appreciate having actually *bought* something for their money that isn't taken by others for free.
For that matter, considering that if those rights ARE taken for free, there's no reason for a CD distribution company to pay an artist at all, ever; just do what everybody else does -- pirate the music and distribute it.
Ah, somebody who DOESN'T need to be clobbered with a clue stick. Good.
It's sad how many people here are missing this point -- that this is merely a nice little publicity stunt by AIMster, but pretty much irrelevant otherwise.
Nonsense. An inventory list isn't a creative or original work in the slightest. An list of contents could be a trade secret in certain cases (not MP3s; more like recipes for, say, Coca-Cola); but it's ludicrous to suggest that a list of MP3 titles -- a statement of fact -- is copyrighted.
Most firearms aren't well-suited towards nonlethal control of a *crowd*.
For starters, a rifle round can have enough energy to
a) penetrate your immediate target and hit something beyond it, and
b) ricochet
unless you use something like HP rounds designed to fragment, but those are *not* meant to merely incapacitate; you're making a conscious decision to maximize kinetic energy delivery to the initial target by choosing that load.
In addition, a bullet wound to, say, a leg (think femoral artery, for instance; or you shatter the femur and spread bone fragments around, or sever a nerve, or...) or the rear can still easily kill, perhaps quickly; and those not killed, might be paralyzed or otherwise permanently harmed. Bullets, even rubber-coated bullets, aren't ideal for shooting at people whom you AREN'T willing to take down, permanently. There are too many possible complications.
Great way to *seriously* enrage a crowd. And in that case, what then? Spray with a 5.56mm M16 on full-auto? That ain't exactly nonlethal.
As for teargas, well, troublemakers just bring gas masks. Not good. And hoses need to be mounted on rather unwieldy vehicles, supplied with LOTS of water, and aren't THAT effective -- and definitely not out to, say, 2000' like they're claiming here.
Actually, depending on the penetration power, might it not be worthwhile in a war?
Sweep, say, heavy brush or jungle (be it natural or urban). If the weapon itself is quiet (why shouldn't it be?), then it'll be hard to find the sweeper; and you can flush 'em out without immediately killing them (Flushing out via frags, flash-bangs and M60 fire in a built-up, urban area with civillians and accepting lots of non-enemy casualties isn't going to win supporters in Congress. It's also more likely to endanger sweepers by revealing their location, and can't be done from as far away.). But that's only if it can penetrate, say, brush or walls.
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ISTR that WIPO rules allow (could be wrong, it might be WTO), for a limited duration, poorer countries to *legally* produce their own versions of vital drugs for at least several more years. The NYT had a series on an Indian company which is doing just this, for instance; and they're even thinking of exporting. This is all perfectly legal, unlike what South Africa appears to be trying to do (namely, ignore IP law whenever it feels like it).
Er, more than a few hours of sales, unless the IT people are incompetent; they need to isolate, wipe, reinstall, analyze, and correct, because even an obvious exploit may only have been used to mask something more subtle.
Plus, notifying customers that their CC numbers, addresses and so forth may have been compromised -- which isn't that unusual a procedure now -- also can cost quite a bit in the long run.
Um, they're sterile. Sterile moths don't pass on their genes; hence, there won't be a second generation about which you can ask whether their mutations will persist. The whole point is to reduce the number of offspring, all of whom will be between normal-normal pairs. Read the article next time.
The point is that they hope there will be no differences in, say, behavior, that impair its reproductive capabilities up until fertillization itself.
Introducing a large number of sterile, but otherwise identical, male moths into a moth population should in theory make it more difficult for the non-sterile males to mate, which means that there should be fewer fertillizations and perhaps a smaller second generation. Then the sterile strain dies out, since it fails to actually have any young; new ones can be introduced (by people) the next breeding season if need be. At least that's how the theory should work.
The glowing bit just helps the scientists track them better and check for any behavioral differences during this phase.
We're not trying to do Nature a favor; we're trying to do the farmers (and everybody else that uses cotton) a favor.
No. The breeding -- namely, trying to combine African honeybees (for their better honey production skills) with European honeybees (for their relative placidity) was completely deliberate.
Unfortunate point 1 -- they ended up with the African bees' aggressiveness and the European bees' lower honey production.
Unfortunate point 2 -- they escaped and spread.
Explanation of that mispelled, incomplete "Virgina... hrm" thought -- AOL has operations in Virginia, right? I don't know whether they'd have anything in his district, 'tho, not living in that state and not being affiliated in any way with AOL. My bad.
As usual, opensecrets.org has a per-sector breakdown.
He gets a decent amount of money from communications people (and Verizon, SBC, and BellSouth rank high on his list), but more from energy and finance. Virgina... hrm.
Here is his home page. He doesn't list his committee memberships, but he's member of the Energy and Commerce one, which explains the energy and banking money.
Here we see PAC contributions from computer equipment/services manufacturers. AOL, Intel, and so forth show up -- but these contributions are fairly minor. The National Assn. of Broadcasters did give him $7k via a PAC, interestingly. Whereas the MPAA didn't give much at all...
It's useful to know what's being broadcast by foreign powers, and who's being featured. The presence or absence of important figures and so forth can be quite useful data...
You can't really rely on, say, most American news media for good in-depth international coverage, after all -- especially not our television. It's not like ours are state-run and therefore constrained to present, at length, the party line of a ruling government.
National security exemption. 'Nuff said.
Oh, they're not being THAT nice. It appears that they're not rejecting John Doe lawsuits and their related subpoenas outright; they just want the plaintiffs to have to demonstrate damages/harm before revealing the John Doe. Which seems to be a reasonable thing to ask, since whether or not damages have occurred isn't necessarily all that connected to John Doe's identity.
On the other hand, we have contractual obligations; if somebody releases proprietary information, it may be difficult to prove a violation unless it can be shown that John Doe was somebody who signed an NDA -- and doing so without knowing who John Doe is might be tricky. Perhaps reasonable doubt allows for the possiblity that John Doe really is an anonymous journalist who didn't violate the NDA himself, but received unsolicited information from someone who did? So in that case, it might be difficult or perhaps impossible for the plaintiff to make a case without knowing the JD's identity.
One wonders whether a compromise would work -- identity can be revealed via subpoena to the judge, who withholds the actual identity and merely confirms or denies relevance (for instance, whether or not the person has, in fact, signed an NDA) unless and until the case is decided in favor of the plaintiffs?
You'd probably have to route the transfers through a Napster proxy as well, just to be sure that whatever content has been signed, verified and indexed beforehand is the same content that's being transferred later. Otherwise, one might be able to create a hacked client that offers up different content depending on the peer (a Napster server/verifier, or another client) is requesting the file.
Then renounce your citizenship and move.
Or try to change the laws -- but until they're changed, your obligated to obey them or accept the consequences. Thats part of the burden of being a citizen.
Your viewpoint has no relevance in the eyes of the law, except as far as it is involved in the ordinary legislative process -- such as writing your Congressmen.
Once upon a time, probably over 50M were overtaken with an apparent anti-communist hysteria; and probably that many agreed with the internment of the Japanese during WWII, as well. Once upon a time, women couldn't vote here, and blacks were treated as subhuman beasts of labor.
Popularity is irrelevant when it comes to right and wrong.
Remember that if you keep changing your naming schemes, then you cease to matter because nobody anymore can find your files -- they don't know the search keys.
And Napster would be illegal in any country that subscribes to the Berne conventions, I suspect -- well, any that also makes illegal a business designed pretty much soley to facilitate and profit from Berne violations.
Which is just fine from the RIAA's POV as long as it's difficult for users to find them.
.MP3s, then Napster isn't very useful anymore. And if there are very few, or they're sufficiently well-known, then it's still trivial for the RIAA to generate a new list of filenames to block.
Remember that if enough name-mangling schemes are used that nobody can find
*frown*
ITYM downloads?
The RIAA might not be able to go after you, but is this compatible with _Napster's_ licensing terms? It seems like abuse of their system, and could constitute a DOS if organized (lots of bogus listings bollixing up their search engine).
One questions whether Napster and its creator had any legal strategy to begin with. If memory serves, internal memos subpoenaed for the trial showed that they were aware that it would be used primarily for illegally distributing copyrighted music... and yet, they pretty much chose to do nothing about it, except create a business model to exploit this. Bad move... I really don't have any sympathy for them due to the obtuseness of it all.
.MP3s; chances are that many servers share the exact same versions, and a match would be grounds for examination). Find a violation, boot the server -- quasi-permanently, by requiring a CC number tied to a verifiable address and name. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be relatively hard to claim that this system would be *negligent* -- which, right now, is a trivial claim to make.
For instance, they could have used a public-key encryption system whereby MP3s weren't listed in the search server unless they'd been approved by Napster's systems, where approval was demonstrated by a valid digital signature with Napster's private key. The acceptance screening could have been simple at first -- some filename and header scans, plus perhaps spot checks (i.e. random manual inspection) and MD5 checksum comparison (with known unauthorized
Even simpler, they could have asked for licensing beforehand; they likely would have been denied, but perhaps they could have offered *their* IP to the RIAA, for a price, rather than the other way around.
I seem to recall that Napster's original story was that they couldn't; later, they changed their line, and said they could and would -- but perhaps they haven't yet. This injunction puts some legal compulsion behind it -- stop stalling and start blocking within a certain time period, or face definite, legal consequences.
Civil disobedience also normally entails being willing to turn yourself in and submit to punishment.
And the copyright laws, with extended durations, protect the artists -- the artists are selling their rights to songs through a perfectly legal process. If you weaken the copyright protections, you reduce the value of what the artists have to offer. Which matters, since they don't all have rich family or second jobs...
No. It's because the original artists sold their rights to to recording companies, who would really appreciate having actually *bought* something for their money that isn't taken by others for free.
For that matter, considering that if those rights ARE taken for free, there's no reason for a CD distribution company to pay an artist at all, ever; just do what everybody else does -- pirate the music and distribute it.
Ah, somebody who DOESN'T need to be clobbered with a clue stick. Good.
It's sad how many people here are missing this point -- that this is merely a nice little publicity stunt by AIMster, but pretty much irrelevant otherwise.
Nonsense. An inventory list isn't a creative or original work in the slightest. An list of contents could be a trade secret in certain cases (not MP3s; more like recipes for, say, Coca-Cola); but it's ludicrous to suggest that a list of MP3 titles -- a statement of fact -- is copyrighted.
Most firearms aren't well-suited towards nonlethal control of a *crowd*.
For starters, a rifle round can have enough energy to
a) penetrate your immediate target and hit something beyond it, and
b) ricochet
unless you use something like HP rounds designed to fragment, but those are *not* meant to merely incapacitate; you're making a conscious decision to maximize kinetic energy delivery to the initial target by choosing that load.
In addition, a bullet wound to, say, a leg (think femoral artery, for instance; or you shatter the femur and spread bone fragments around, or sever a nerve, or...) or the rear can still easily kill, perhaps quickly; and those not killed, might be paralyzed or otherwise permanently harmed. Bullets, even rubber-coated bullets, aren't ideal for shooting at people whom you AREN'T willing to take down, permanently. There are too many possible complications.
Great way to *seriously* enrage a crowd. And in that case, what then? Spray with a 5.56mm M16 on full-auto? That ain't exactly nonlethal.
As for teargas, well, troublemakers just bring gas masks. Not good. And hoses need to be mounted on rather unwieldy vehicles, supplied with LOTS of water, and aren't THAT effective -- and definitely not out to, say, 2000' like they're claiming here.
Actually, depending on the penetration power, might it not be worthwhile in a war?
Sweep, say, heavy brush or jungle (be it natural or urban). If the weapon itself is quiet (why shouldn't it be?), then it'll be hard to find the sweeper; and you can flush 'em out without immediately killing them (Flushing out via frags, flash-bangs and M60 fire in a built-up, urban area with civillians and accepting lots of non-enemy casualties isn't going to win supporters in Congress. It's also more likely to endanger sweepers by revealing their location, and can't be done from as far away.). But that's only if it can penetrate, say, brush or walls.