I think it's a fair point though. The studios, rather than hitting every market they can--DVD, iTMS, cable--have decided to forego certain sectors of the demand curve in order to curve demand as they want.
It's a battle between how studios want to deliver their content and how consumers want to receive it. Before the web, there weren't options. Now there are, and the studios have to realize that this is a battle they will eventually lose. They could offer cheap, protected, legal access to their content, but instead they're daring users to circumvent the law. Aquinas noted centuries ago that human law cannot compel the obedience of conscience. It's not like they don't know they're going to lose--they just don't want to realize it. Screw 'em.
Internet detectives are successful and creepy enough as it is even WITH "closed networks."
Nevermind the fact that he's wrong and you can make your Facebook page (or at the very least your photo albums) open to the whole web. I found this out after mine was accidentally indexed in Google.
Who has been *called* a Second Life terrorist to debunk this rumor.
The SLLA isn't a real "terrorist" organization. It's a bunch of unfunny people who think that exploding picture replicators near buildings in SL comprises some sort of Jacobin revolution. I'm serious. Look at their white paper.
As for real terrorists: frankly, I hope they're practicing in Second Life. Because with all the other, harder-to-track ways they could be communicating information--IRC channels, encrypted and hidden forums, custom IM software, etc--they choose to use a public program in which anyone can access anywhere by default and the company religiously logs any and all chats that pass through their network and make it a point to discipline people on the basis of chatlogs.
So we should be so lucky to have terrorists so stupid that they'd communicate using SL--a clunky graphically terrible product that can't even properly form eyebrows, much less a complex trigger mechanism--as opposed to, say, sending a real video over some other quicker undetectable means.
Mod parent up. Facebook, in opening up and allowing these applications, has sacrificed much of the KISS mentality that so endeared it to its early adopter rabid userbase. While the site/service has enjoyed fantastic traffic and use, it is clear that its userbase is changing.
Whereas college students used to log into the site up to twelve times a day, that is no longer the case. Many college students that I know speak of being "tired" of Facebook. They only use it because there is nothing else with Facebook's utility or critical mass.
Facebook is the best social networking service out there, save perhaps the professional paradise of LinkedIn. That said, their old niche--a student "insider" network with at least lip service to a closed collegiate enclave--is now opening up.
You heard it here first: within two years, a smart startup is going to recapitalize on the fickle college student market. They won't replace Facebook for overall social networking, but they will fill the college student college based niche, and make a lot of money doing it.
Hey thats a great idea! Take a soundbyted, media driven exchange of ideas and make it even more worthless by removing any semblence of intellectual discussion of the question at hand! Fantastic!
"You need to think about WHY laws make things illegal, and why we have so many of them."
Never once in any of these comments have I articulated a need to criminalize anything. In fact, multiple times I have stated that I am not commenting on the legal state of things, but merely describing differences that distinguish (if not in a legal sense) real life roleplaying from second life ageplay.
I'm also a civil libertarian. As I said, I don't mean to impute criminality. I just think that perhaps there should be some distinctions drawn where currently there are none, and that the media is now beginning to report on the social downsides of SL after building it up for so long.
"You've confused me about how you're linking two points you've tried to make. Age players in a private area of a virtual world who are all adults are just that -- age players. Whether they use makeup or tape themselves down in real life or dress up virtually, its still age-play."
No, I think there is a difference between people who investigate age based power structure as part of their sexual experience (real life) and people whose attraction is to naked children (sexual ageplayers in SL or other virtual worlds).
"You then mention something about using 'real' kiddie porn images. This I object to of course, but if you still mean in terms of virtual hand-made avatars and not those made from images of real kids, then I think we're still in age-play land here."
Again, if you RTFA, it says that part of the reason this is such a big story is because there is real child pornography involved, as in actual pictures of actual children. The press, through my articles and others, has known about the seedier side of Second Life for some time now. This is just another level, because now people are realizing that since you can do "anything you want" in Second Life that might include some activities others find distasteful.
"That last bit of course comes into play on Second Life, should the renditions seem realistic enough to be "artistically" created child porn."
In certain countries, yes. But with an international audience eating up Second Life, Linden Lab is placed in the difficult position of needing to pay lip service to other laws or risk using their international userbase.
And again, with this article we're talking about *real child pornography* in SL. Which is nothing new to the Internet, by any means--but with the golden reputation Second Life has received from the MSM, one wouldn't expect such nasty things to take place inside it!
"This is where you're wrong. The normal Second Life "grid" - which is pretty much unmoderated, and where all this takes place - is explicitly designated as adults-only. Ostensibly, when you meet another avatar in SL, no matter what they look like, a user is meant to be secure in the knowledge that there is an adult at the controls of said avatar. It's the one thing you're guaranteed by the TOS."
It's by no means guaranteed--they have no practically meaningful prevention scheme in place. While legally protective, it is about as effective as the drop-down birthday selection menus on porn sites.
But it doesn't matter. My point was not that an ACTUAL child was under your power, but a VIRTUAL child, who speaks, looks, and acts like a child. This is, after all, a virtual world.
"So fantasy is only alright if you do it badly? Should we jail Anthony Hopkins because he was really good at playing a crazed murdering psycopathic cannibal in that movie?"
No. What I'm saying is that there is a difference between dressing your real partner--who may have varicose veins, cellulite, a birthday coming up, even pubic hair, anything to remind you that she or he is in actuality an adult--as a school girl and creating a virtually realistic fantasy centered on an avatar who, within the limits of the virtual reality system, is for all intents and purposes and appearences a child.
Again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, legal or illegal. I'm just saying it's different, and the analogy to real-life sexual roleplaying are a priori and unconvincing.
As I corrected in another comment, I meant to say that the permissions were restricted in that particular sim. Sexually explicit material, while not more prevalent than on the Internet as a whole, more *evident* in Second Life.
On the Internet, if you build a website, you can set pretty good controls on it to keep people from screwing with it.
In Second Life, the old joke goes, if you build a house you can pretty much guarantee at one point you will return to find people having sex in it.
Whoops.
I meant to say that it was a highly "restricted" area, because it had a ton of rules about what you could place or what you could create. It had a lot of false walls on the outside, but it was easy enough to enter.
In any case, my latter comment was directed towards sexually explicit material in general, not any particular ageplay club. You *can* merely meander through Second Life and be accosted by obscenity.
I suppose it is "safer" to allow such people to operate "only in a virtual world." But with all due respect, that is predicated on the rather naive assumption that people will keep these predatorial fantasies locked within the rather unsatisfying realm of virtual reality.
Another useful question:
Linden Lab is attempting to claim common carrier status in order to avoid legal prosecution. They say they are providing a communications service.
However, if they begin to actively censor content based on content alone, doesn't that revoke such status (if indeed they ever had it)?
To clarify, I'm not casting moral judgment on sexual roleplayers. I am no Jack Thompson or Rick Santorum, imputing impurity with the accuracy of scattershot.
I do not feel qualified to defend or decry America's relatively puritan sexual mores. Nor do I think Internet-based obscenity is punishable by law.
At the same time, I'm not sure I feel comfortable further normalizing pedophilia. Many academics argue that events in Second Life, for a variety of reasons, are experienced as "real". I'm not sure I want to go that far, but I do believe that there is a reason people conduct explicit sexual ageplay and I doubt it is entirely benign. Remember: this is not you and your girlfriend, who hopefully is not prepubescent, dressing up like principal and naughty schoolgirl. Sexual ageplay in Second Life is about the fact that it is a child who is under your power. If you're into that, I suppose it's your roleplaying right. But let's not confuse it with more benign real-life roleplaying, where fantasies are paradoxically less convincing.
For a few months now, lazy and hyperbolic media coverage has built Second Life up into some sort of utopian incarnation of human creativity, embellishing the pros without investigating what the average American might see as a con.
Now that the pendulum of public opinion is swinging back the other way, let's see how Linden Lab responds. So far, it hasn't done particularly well. Their proposed solution has been to institute a real-life identification system, in which people, in order to enjoy full access to the system, must supply their personal information to a company whose primary business is selling information to political campaigns. Doesn't sound like a great PR move to me.
A major component of this news story was not just that it was virtual child pornography, but that *there was real child pornography also in the mix*. If you haven't played Second Life, you must understand that it is possible to do anything with images in SL. Wallpaper a building. Send it via the equivalent of a Private Message--a "notecard." Wrap it around a 3D object so that it can walk and talk.
A few weeks ago, there was an alarmist article that alleged terrorists might use Second Life to conduct virtual training sessions. It was ludicrous, and still is, to think that terrorist cells, who obviously value anonymity, would use an open and unprotected medium such as Second Life to conduct covert activity.
On the other hand, quite a few of these "ageplayers" feel that they are doing nothing wrong. And while I certainly don't begrudge anyone their sexual fetishes, and acknowledge that in the U.S. (unlike much of the rest of the world) virtual child pornography is legal, I think it is important to note that we're not talking about what you or I would consider "ageplay" in the real world.
Some people have compared this to dressing up your girlfriend like a schoolgirl while you play principal. While it is analogous, it is not by any means comparable to the actual content at hand.
After the Second Life Herald conducted a widely circulated interview with the operator of Jailbait, a couple SL griefers and I went into the sim to try to figure out exactly how we could fuck with it. It was difficult to enter--a highly protected area. When we finally got in, it was somewhat shocking, even by SL standards. There were apparently prepubuscent avatars screaming and crying in baby talk as they were tortured by older figures. There were "adoption agencies", so that the ageplayers--and yes, I will go out on a limb here and say "pedophiles"--could add a pinch of incest to the mix.
The ageplaying in Second Life is *on another level*.
Sure, none of that stuff is unheard of on the Internet.
But on the Internet, it is generally limited to dark, unknown, secret corners: password protected forums, underground Usenet groups, anonymous image boards.
Contrast this to Second Life, which is experienced as an open, freely accessible world, where one can walk around and see anything as it exists. No effort is needed to find these things--they can be found through mere wandering. It is experientially different, even if qualitatively similar, to the most depraved shit the Internet has to offer.
What is worth noting, in my opinion, is not whether or not this is thought crime or harming anyone or worthy of legal action. There are different traditions of jurisprudence--or, to use a term coined by the jurist Jeffrey Rosen, "jurisprurience"--that govern different areas, and we are unlikely to reconcile international obscenity laws when our own are so obfuscated.
Rather, it is interesting to note the widespread media and political reaction to the seedier side of Second Life, which is nothing new, but whose presence was glossed over or ignored in the initial rush to adopt virtual worlds technology based on media hyperbole.
The program has been getting some new support. At BAE this year, one of the founders of YouTube and the CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica spoke about further promoting FIRST through their respecitve outlets. Rhode Island just passed state law requiring all high schools to have FIRST teams by 2009 (IIRC).
I spoke with Dean there, and while he recognizes the success of the FIRST program in expanding to over 2000 teams, he wants it to be truly exponential growth. I don't know if it's possible. It's so hard to explain to people what FIRST is: I've been unsuccessful at establishing rookie teams at both colleges I've gone to, even though the latter was at a massive engineering university. It's difficult to get people hooked if you can't get them to the competition, but once they see a competition they've got the bug.
Slashdotters, even if you think the entire concept of "robots plus high school students" DOES "equal hilarity", please just go check out a local competition. They're easy to find on FIRST's website. It's an amazing program, and provides absolutely unparalled experience (and scholarship money) to budding engineers.
Disclaimer: I'm an alumnus of and mentor to Team 1073.
Not exactly. However, it goes to underscore the unreasonability of Viacom's request, and to further illustrate the fact that even the most stringent procedures in this arena will let stuff through.
I'm telling you, though, that under Grokster and Sony Viacom doesn't have a chance to win.
Lessig is an incredible figure in the field, but I think in this case he is misreading the law. I was amazed when Grokster came out, because it split hairs with incredible precision. We're not revisiting Sony, but we will show you that you can't get away with living by thievery. I don't see how that created new law--it just refined a previous decision.
My biggest fear is that, since Congress has shown itself to be of a generation that does *not* understand *our* Internet paradigm, the Court will fall into the same trap and see the Internet as just another telecommunications commodity, like television or telephones.
"The real issue at hand is that copyright law is in complete disarray today"
Tell me about it.
We have extensions left and right. Fair use and the first sale doctrine are slowly disintegrating.
Someone needs to remind Congress and the Courts that the point of the intellectual property system is not to set the terms under which the public may redistribute artistic work, but rather ensure that the artist gets some renumeration.
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
The POINT is the promotion of science and useful arts, secured by the means of exclusive rights. Exclusive rights don't trump public good--and never should have.
I believe that if you read Grokster, you will find that the court's rationale is favorable to YouTube.
Let's look at the holding:
Held: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use
to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirma-
tive steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribu-
tion with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting
acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of
the deviceís lawful uses.
This does not apply to YouTube. YouTube, by actively discouraging infringers by being *overzealous* when pursuing alleged infringers (see Chung, Anshe; Crook, Michael), and plasting the site with warnings, and setting annoying upload limits that are shorter than television episodes, is not conducting itself in any manner remotely analogous to Grokster.
Technologically, YouTube is more analogous to the Napster case (centralized database, ability to terminate users). But Napster was never found guilty--it was just found that an injunction could be filed against them, and the legal costs forced bankruptcy.
I do not see Viacom winning this case, and I am surprised Lessig didn't opine similarly.
Are you kidding me? Even if they could terminate them at any time, there is no reason to believe the company didn't commit fraud by advertising their service as "unlimited bandwidth" and then termating his contract for bandwidth overage!
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's a fair point though. The studios, rather than hitting every market they can--DVD, iTMS, cable--have decided to forego certain sectors of the demand curve in order to curve demand as they want.
It's a battle between how studios want to deliver their content and how consumers want to receive it. Before the web, there weren't options. Now there are, and the studios have to realize that this is a battle they will eventually lose. They could offer cheap, protected, legal access to their content, but instead they're daring users to circumvent the law. Aquinas noted centuries ago that human law cannot compel the obedience of conscience. It's not like they don't know they're going to lose--they just don't want to realize it. Screw 'em.
Internet detectives are successful and creepy enough as it is even WITH "closed networks."
Nevermind the fact that he's wrong and you can make your Facebook page (or at the very least your photo albums) open to the whole web. I found this out after mine was accidentally indexed in Google.
you're a terrible troll :(
Who has been *called* a Second Life terrorist to debunk this rumor.
The SLLA isn't a real "terrorist" organization. It's a bunch of unfunny people who think that exploding picture replicators near buildings in SL comprises some sort of Jacobin revolution. I'm serious. Look at their white paper.
As for real terrorists: frankly, I hope they're practicing in Second Life. Because with all the other, harder-to-track ways they could be communicating information--IRC channels, encrypted and hidden forums, custom IM software, etc--they choose to use a public program in which anyone can access anywhere by default and the company religiously logs any and all chats that pass through their network and make it a point to discipline people on the basis of chatlogs.
So we should be so lucky to have terrorists so stupid that they'd communicate using SL--a clunky graphically terrible product that can't even properly form eyebrows, much less a complex trigger mechanism--as opposed to, say, sending a real video over some other quicker undetectable means.
Mod parent up. Facebook, in opening up and allowing these applications, has sacrificed much of the KISS mentality that so endeared it to its early adopter rabid userbase. While the site/service has enjoyed fantastic traffic and use, it is clear that its userbase is changing.
Whereas college students used to log into the site up to twelve times a day, that is no longer the case. Many college students that I know speak of being "tired" of Facebook. They only use it because there is nothing else with Facebook's utility or critical mass.
Facebook is the best social networking service out there, save perhaps the professional paradise of LinkedIn. That said, their old niche--a student "insider" network with at least lip service to a closed collegiate enclave--is now opening up.
You heard it here first: within two years, a smart startup is going to recapitalize on the fickle college student market. They won't replace Facebook for overall social networking, but they will fill the college student college based niche, and make a lot of money doing it.
Hey thats a great idea! Take a soundbyted, media driven exchange of ideas and make it even more worthless by removing any semblence of intellectual discussion of the question at hand! Fantastic!
You moron.
"You need to think about WHY laws make things illegal, and why we have so many of them."
Never once in any of these comments have I articulated a need to criminalize anything. In fact, multiple times I have stated that I am not commenting on the legal state of things, but merely describing differences that distinguish (if not in a legal sense) real life roleplaying from second life ageplay.
You need to learn how to read.
I'm also a civil libertarian. As I said, I don't mean to impute criminality. I just think that perhaps there should be some distinctions drawn where currently there are none, and that the media is now beginning to report on the social downsides of SL after building it up for so long.
"You've confused me about how you're linking two points you've tried to make. Age players in a private area of a virtual world who are all adults are just that -- age players. Whether they use makeup or tape themselves down in real life or dress up virtually, its still age-play."
No, I think there is a difference between people who investigate age based power structure as part of their sexual experience (real life) and people whose attraction is to naked children (sexual ageplayers in SL or other virtual worlds).
"You then mention something about using 'real' kiddie porn images. This I object to of course, but if you still mean in terms of virtual hand-made avatars and not those made from images of real kids, then I think we're still in age-play land here."
Again, if you RTFA, it says that part of the reason this is such a big story is because there is real child pornography involved, as in actual pictures of actual children. The press, through my articles and others, has known about the seedier side of Second Life for some time now. This is just another level, because now people are realizing that since you can do "anything you want" in Second Life that might include some activities others find distasteful.
"That last bit of course comes into play on Second Life, should the renditions seem realistic enough to be "artistically" created child porn."
In certain countries, yes. But with an international audience eating up Second Life, Linden Lab is placed in the difficult position of needing to pay lip service to other laws or risk using their international userbase.
And again, with this article we're talking about *real child pornography* in SL. Which is nothing new to the Internet, by any means--but with the golden reputation Second Life has received from the MSM, one wouldn't expect such nasty things to take place inside it!
"This is where you're wrong. The normal Second Life "grid" - which is pretty much unmoderated, and where all this takes place - is explicitly designated as adults-only. Ostensibly, when you meet another avatar in SL, no matter what they look like, a user is meant to be secure in the knowledge that there is an adult at the controls of said avatar. It's the one thing you're guaranteed by the TOS."
It's by no means guaranteed--they have no practically meaningful prevention scheme in place. While legally protective, it is about as effective as the drop-down birthday selection menus on porn sites.
But it doesn't matter. My point was not that an ACTUAL child was under your power, but a VIRTUAL child, who speaks, looks, and acts like a child. This is, after all, a virtual world.
"So fantasy is only alright if you do it badly? Should we jail Anthony Hopkins because he was really good at playing a crazed murdering psycopathic cannibal in that movie?"
No. What I'm saying is that there is a difference between dressing your real partner--who may have varicose veins, cellulite, a birthday coming up, even pubic hair, anything to remind you that she or he is in actuality an adult--as a school girl and creating a virtually realistic fantasy centered on an avatar who, within the limits of the virtual reality system, is for all intents and purposes and appearences a child.
Again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, legal or illegal. I'm just saying it's different, and the analogy to real-life sexual roleplaying are a priori and unconvincing.
As I corrected in another comment, I meant to say that the permissions were restricted in that particular sim. Sexually explicit material, while not more prevalent than on the Internet as a whole, more *evident* in Second Life. On the Internet, if you build a website, you can set pretty good controls on it to keep people from screwing with it. In Second Life, the old joke goes, if you build a house you can pretty much guarantee at one point you will return to find people having sex in it.
Whoops. I meant to say that it was a highly "restricted" area, because it had a ton of rules about what you could place or what you could create. It had a lot of false walls on the outside, but it was easy enough to enter. In any case, my latter comment was directed towards sexually explicit material in general, not any particular ageplay club. You *can* merely meander through Second Life and be accosted by obscenity.
I suppose it is "safer" to allow such people to operate "only in a virtual world." But with all due respect, that is predicated on the rather naive assumption that people will keep these predatorial fantasies locked within the rather unsatisfying realm of virtual reality.
Another useful question:
Linden Lab is attempting to claim common carrier status in order to avoid legal prosecution. They say they are providing a communications service.
However, if they begin to actively censor content based on content alone, doesn't that revoke such status (if indeed they ever had it)?
To clarify, I'm not casting moral judgment on sexual roleplayers. I am no Jack Thompson or Rick Santorum, imputing impurity with the accuracy of scattershot.
I do not feel qualified to defend or decry America's relatively puritan sexual mores. Nor do I think Internet-based obscenity is punishable by law.
At the same time, I'm not sure I feel comfortable further normalizing pedophilia. Many academics argue that events in Second Life, for a variety of reasons, are experienced as "real". I'm not sure I want to go that far, but I do believe that there is a reason people conduct explicit sexual ageplay and I doubt it is entirely benign. Remember: this is not you and your girlfriend, who hopefully is not prepubescent, dressing up like principal and naughty schoolgirl. Sexual ageplay in Second Life is about the fact that it is a child who is under your power. If you're into that, I suppose it's your roleplaying right. But let's not confuse it with more benign real-life roleplaying, where fantasies are paradoxically less convincing.
For a few months now, lazy and hyperbolic media coverage has built Second Life up into some sort of utopian incarnation of human creativity, embellishing the pros without investigating what the average American might see as a con.
Now that the pendulum of public opinion is swinging back the other way, let's see how Linden Lab responds. So far, it hasn't done particularly well. Their proposed solution has been to institute a real-life identification system, in which people, in order to enjoy full access to the system, must supply their personal information to a company whose primary business is selling information to political campaigns. Doesn't sound like a great PR move to me.
There are a couple importing things to note here:
A major component of this news story was not just that it was virtual child pornography, but that *there was real child pornography also in the mix*. If you haven't played Second Life, you must understand that it is possible to do anything with images in SL. Wallpaper a building. Send it via the equivalent of a Private Message--a "notecard." Wrap it around a 3D object so that it can walk and talk.
A few weeks ago, there was an alarmist article that alleged terrorists might use Second Life to conduct virtual training sessions. It was ludicrous, and still is, to think that terrorist cells, who obviously value anonymity, would use an open and unprotected medium such as Second Life to conduct covert activity.
On the other hand, quite a few of these "ageplayers" feel that they are doing nothing wrong. And while I certainly don't begrudge anyone their sexual fetishes, and acknowledge that in the U.S. (unlike much of the rest of the world) virtual child pornography is legal, I think it is important to note that we're not talking about what you or I would consider "ageplay" in the real world.
Some people have compared this to dressing up your girlfriend like a schoolgirl while you play principal. While it is analogous, it is not by any means comparable to the actual content at hand.
After the Second Life Herald conducted a widely circulated interview with the operator of Jailbait, a couple SL griefers and I went into the sim to try to figure out exactly how we could fuck with it. It was difficult to enter--a highly protected area. When we finally got in, it was somewhat shocking, even by SL standards. There were apparently prepubuscent avatars screaming and crying in baby talk as they were tortured by older figures. There were "adoption agencies", so that the ageplayers--and yes, I will go out on a limb here and say "pedophiles"--could add a pinch of incest to the mix.
The ageplaying in Second Life is *on another level*.
Sure, none of that stuff is unheard of on the Internet.
But on the Internet, it is generally limited to dark, unknown, secret corners: password protected forums, underground Usenet groups, anonymous image boards.
Contrast this to Second Life, which is experienced as an open, freely accessible world, where one can walk around and see anything as it exists. No effort is needed to find these things--they can be found through mere wandering. It is experientially different, even if qualitatively similar, to the most depraved shit the Internet has to offer.
What is worth noting, in my opinion, is not whether or not this is thought crime or harming anyone or worthy of legal action. There are different traditions of jurisprudence--or, to use a term coined by the jurist Jeffrey Rosen, "jurisprurience"--that govern different areas, and we are unlikely to reconcile international obscenity laws when our own are so obfuscated.
Rather, it is interesting to note the widespread media and political reaction to the seedier side of Second Life, which is nothing new, but whose presence was glossed over or ignored in the initial rush to adopt virtual worlds technology based on media hyperbole.
The program has been getting some new support. At BAE this year, one of the founders of YouTube and the CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica spoke about further promoting FIRST through their respecitve outlets. Rhode Island just passed state law requiring all high schools to have FIRST teams by 2009 (IIRC).
I spoke with Dean there, and while he recognizes the success of the FIRST program in expanding to over 2000 teams, he wants it to be truly exponential growth. I don't know if it's possible. It's so hard to explain to people what FIRST is: I've been unsuccessful at establishing rookie teams at both colleges I've gone to, even though the latter was at a massive engineering university. It's difficult to get people hooked if you can't get them to the competition, but once they see a competition they've got the bug.
Slashdotters, even if you think the entire concept of "robots plus high school students" DOES "equal hilarity", please just go check out a local competition. They're easy to find on FIRST's website. It's an amazing program, and provides absolutely unparalled experience (and scholarship money) to budding engineers.
Disclaimer: I'm an alumnus of and mentor to Team 1073.
Judging by recent events, I'm sure Karl Rove will sell you a United States Attorney for less than that.
At the risk of whoring my own link, YouTube will blindly follow DMCA requests made by people who are claiming copyright protection over video of their Second Life avatars.
I didn't fight it, but it took Steve Hutcheon of The Age an EFF lawyer and several weeks to get his video back up.
...I just really, really dig dragons.
Not exactly. However, it goes to underscore the unreasonability of Viacom's request, and to further illustrate the fact that even the most stringent procedures in this arena will let stuff through. I'm telling you, though, that under Grokster and Sony Viacom doesn't have a chance to win.
Bizarrely, you're right :)
Lessig is an incredible figure in the field, but I think in this case he is misreading the law. I was amazed when Grokster came out, because it split hairs with incredible precision. We're not revisiting Sony, but we will show you that you can't get away with living by thievery. I don't see how that created new law--it just refined a previous decision.
My biggest fear is that, since Congress has shown itself to be of a generation that does *not* understand *our* Internet paradigm, the Court will fall into the same trap and see the Internet as just another telecommunications commodity, like television or telephones.
"The real issue at hand is that copyright law is in complete disarray today"
Tell me about it.
We have extensions left and right. Fair use and the first sale doctrine are slowly disintegrating.
Someone needs to remind Congress and the Courts that the point of the intellectual property system is not to set the terms under which the public may redistribute artistic work, but rather ensure that the artist gets some renumeration.
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
The POINT is the promotion of science and useful arts, secured by the means of exclusive rights. Exclusive rights don't trump public good--and never should have.
I believe that if you read Grokster, you will find that the court's rationale is favorable to YouTube.
Let's look at the holding:
Held: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirma- tive steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribu- tion with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the deviceís lawful uses.
This does not apply to YouTube. YouTube, by actively discouraging infringers by being *overzealous* when pursuing alleged infringers (see Chung, Anshe; Crook, Michael), and plasting the site with warnings, and setting annoying upload limits that are shorter than television episodes, is not conducting itself in any manner remotely analogous to Grokster.
Technologically, YouTube is more analogous to the Napster case (centralized database, ability to terminate users). But Napster was never found guilty--it was just found that an injunction could be filed against them, and the legal costs forced bankruptcy.
I do not see Viacom winning this case, and I am surprised Lessig didn't opine similarly.
This is modded 3 for insightful?
Are you kidding me? Even if they could terminate them at any time, there is no reason to believe the company didn't commit fraud by advertising their service as "unlimited bandwidth" and then termating his contract for bandwidth overage!
You know, when I said I wanted lonelygirl15 in my living room, I didn't mean it that way.