The right to a free press is (in my understanding) a right to write, for public consumption.
You're wrong. A press can be used for private consumption, for example.
It is not a right to take any random action in order to obtain facts for said writing.
Of course not.
If I have been assigned to write a story about the psychological condition of an executioner, am I justified in grabbing someone and "executing" them in the furtherance of my story? Of course not; it's both illegal and wrong.
Sure, murder is illegal. Speech is not. In fact, the 1st Amendment clearly speaks of Congress not abridging the right to speak. Hence, I'd be interested if you drew a better analogy to try to justify your position. As it stands, I've not heard of a reasonably justification or analogy that would somehow dissolve the right of the reporter to speak.
Reporters are not magic special people.
Guite true.
They should abide by the same laws
No kidding.
and rules of reasonable conduct as the rest of us.
Uh, yes and no. They *should* abide by rules of reasonable conduct, but there *shouldn't* be any legal consequences for ignoring them. It's unreasonable to codify rules of conduct into law and is the hallmark of a tolitarian regime.
Congratulations. You've established that the Constitution, as written, doesn't define the MN lawmakers' acts as treason. Nor did I claim what they did was legally treason. Instead, I stated I wish it *was* defined as treason. And I stand by that claim. It's hard to see it as simple stupidity when lawmakers *repeatedly* make versions of the *same* law and use it to try to squelch things they dislike. The fact that they're intentionally attacking groups based on their lower probability of defending themselves really tips the balance to make their action that of evilness.
Even without this stupidity, can you imagine the sort of public outrage if some state's lawmakers had made a law that demanded immediate execution of homosexuals who outted themselves? Do you think that after several people were killed and the law was eventually overturned, that people would be happy with the lawmakers making a tweaked law that only targetted those who outted themselves who weren't public figures? Would any of this warrant punishment in your eyes, as clearly the right of people to live was violated? You might say that banning speech is not in the same ball park, but the 1st and 5th amendments are both clearly in the bill of rights.
There simply is no reason for the MN lawmakers to have repeated their attempt to censor people; ignorance couldn't even be an excuse (and it isn't an excuse). They clearly were more interested in having their way, the rights of people be damned, even if it was for the short time until it was overturned. It is no better than the power trip of a police officer who arrests someone and releases them days later without charging them with a thing or when a court of law holds a person in contempt for days (or even months) simply because it chooses to, without any reprocussions for the act. The punishment of not being elected again or being simply fired just doesn't seem fit, given the same behavior for everyone else would be met with arrest, a trial, and quite probably months served in prison.
"Minnesota lawmakers hoped their approach - penalizing the minors who got the games, instead of the retailers who sold or rented them - would have fared better in court than overturned state laws that went after retailers in Illinois, California, Michigan and elsewhere."
Ie, Minnesota lawmakers decided to target minors with their unconstitutional law because minors (ie, their parents) have a harder time fighting back. It's times like this I wish lawmakers could be brought up on treason charges for intentionally (and in this case, repeatedly) making unconstitutional laws. It's stupid that they can literally modify a few words in an overturned law which have no real effect on the original claim against it (in this case, freedom of speech) and then make it a new law.
My point is that's what the GPL3 is *supposed* to do. The fact that the current draft is imperfect is only reason to improve the draft, not to scoff at the idea of trying to negate the effects of hashes, keys, etc. It's just the fact that keys seem the biggest threat since so far hardware makers haven't tried imprinting a hash into hardware that would tie it to one OS and its driver. I'd suggest you email rms to point out this problem, especially since P3s having individual serial numbers embedded in them is a sign that it's not out of the realm of mass-production to do as you suggest, even if it would be ultimately very costly and counter-productive for most companies (few companies can manage to make a driver that doesn't need upgraded for one reason or another, and many people would scoff at the idea of buying known-defective hardware (imagine a lawsuit requiring a recall because of those hardcoded hashes)).
The proper way is to not support DRM in any form. Just don't buy it.
The problem is the first and the latter aren't equivalent. Specifically, the GPL3 is being written to try to prevent GPLed software from supporting DRM. So, if your Tivo example required that all software on it be signed, Tivo would be unable to use a GPL3 licensed Linux kernel and would have to use some non-GPL3 software. And by buying/using/developing only GPL3 software, one is effectively assured that one's efforts don't support DRM.
... or alternatively just don't support those vendors. This does an end run, not only around them, but the DMCA as well.
Uh, why is this an alternative? If there are vendors that make drivers under the GPL2 or another another non-GPL3 compatible license, you don't buy from them. You buy from those who have GPL3 drivers. That's how the GPL works. It's not some sort of "and we're lawfully preventing other licenses from existing". The issue is some people are complaining about the GPL3 because of the "or later versions" that many GPL2 projects didn't remove and others are complaining and stating they won't relicense under the GPL3. That's of course their right, but Linus' argument for *why* he's doing doesn't make sense. (The fact that he'd have to get a sign-off on everyone who added to the Linux kernel is a good reason.)
Trying to legislate behaviour via the GPLv3 isn't going to work - all it does is provide a framework that adds restrictions to fair use that are "more-or-less" okay.
Uh, the GPL3 can't restrict fair use. No license can. All licenses are a subset of copyright law which allows fair use. If any thing, the GPL3 is a stake at expanding freedom beyond what the DMCA would otherwise restrict.
DRM goes against fair use.
No kidding.
The GPLv3, to the extent that it legitimizes this, is the camel's nose in the tent.
In the same way the GPL2 legitimizes copyright. The simple fact is, the GPL in itself will not stop copyright. Nor will it stop the DMCA. Only laws (or a court ruling that declares current laws unconstitutional) will stop it. The GPL is mainly* an attempt by people who don't believe they'll be able to change the law any time soon to use the law against its intent, for their own purposes. You can't spite the law by pretending it doesn't exist.
*Truthfully, the GPL was written to allow access to source code. If the GPL were really against copyright, then those for the GPL would like an end to copyright. But an end to copyright would almost certainly result in companies not releasing source code. The ability to legally modify those binaries, reverse engineer them, and modify the source code to have it again be captured, modified, and rereleased as binary only again would undoubtedly not sate many GPL fans (it'd be much like how the bsd license is now, at least the part that's current complained about by GPL fans).
Right, you can't prevent the cheating client from using your service because they're using a cheating client. You *can* punish them the same as any other user and you *can* write your software such that no cheat a client could commit would result in a cheat effect on the server. Ie, your server shouldn't rely on the security of the client to maintain a balance of power. That's rule #1 for most online games.:)
If they apply drm to anything I write, then *that* particular binary isn't modifiable, but so what? They still have to provide the source on demand to anyone they give the binary to. That, after modification, the source can't be compiled to run on that particular hardware isn't an issue. Why? Because when it happens enough times, people will say f*ck this and buy hardware w/o the lock-in. Nothing worse than a horde of pissed-off customers.
Oh yea, just like how Microsoft is falling all over themselves to release the source code of Windows to keep the "pissed-off customers" at bay. The point of the GPL was to prevent the sort of lock-in you speak of, yet clearly the GPL wasn't written with the concept in mind of a manufacturer creating a hardware based lock-out, especially with law based enforcement (GPL v2 came out in 1991, DMCA in 1998, so I can understand why it was an oversight). If you can't compile and use open source software given to you for a platform except with signifcant modifcation to run on *another* platform, then a major advantage of open source software is lost.
There's no sound reason why an entity that supports the "spirit" of the GPL would be against this. Excuses like "but I only want to support one version" don't work, as you'll always need to verify that they're using the versions you do support even with DRM (after all, you could have ported the source to a new platform without DRM). So, the only reasonable intention must be to stop people from using the software in a way the entity doesn't like, but that's clearly against the spirit of the GPL. The point of the GPL v3 is to codify this to no longer rely on the intentions of people to continue to support the desired outcome, as the GPL was written because it was shown that people will go against those desires without legal enforcement. And since people *choose* to use GPL v3 licensed software, it's not some darconian measure that people don't have a say in.
>>Yet Nintendo holds a nice monopoly on producing Gamecube discs. The same with Sony and PS2 discs.
>The term, "monopoly" does not really apply here. Nintendo competes with Sony in the console and game markets. They've become gatekeepers for ntheir own little market segment, but not monopolies.
>>>I'm generallizing. I realize there are exceptions to the rules, but children who watch violence* on TV tend to be more violent than those who do not*.
>>>The problem is this. Parents have a god-given right to not teach their children a damned thing.** Do we have a right to be subjected to those children who cannot tell right from wrong because the TV raised them, or can we do something about it.
>>You know, some parents raise their kids in a religion that I don't agree with. They let them read books* I don't agree with. Or even discuss political topics* I don't agree with. Do we have a right to be subjected to those children who are not raised the way I think they should be raised, or can we do something about it!
>I think the grandparent is fallacious in assuming that letting children consume violent entertainment is tantamount to encouraging them to fight, steal, etc. But, if we assume that the GP's assertion is true, then exposing children to this media* is completely different from raising them in a religion* you don't agree with, letting them read books you don't agree, and discussing political topics you don't agree with.
* Examples of how if watching violence begets violence, then exposure to religion (including books on it and political discussion about it) must beget a hell of a lot of violence, given how there's virtually no religion that *doesn't* involve violence.
** An ironic comment calling to God from a book the commenter probably shouldn't read, as it'd lead to violence.
For example, you can still make an independent video game and gain great monetary benefit distributing it yourself.
Yes, and you can still make an independent movie and gain great monetary benefit. Yet Nintendo holds a nice monopoly on producing Gamecube discs. The same with Sony and PS2 discs. The PC realm is much more open, especially with the invention of shareware effectively giving anyone the ability to be a distributor, but there are very few examples of authors manging success even in this market, let alone having much of a foothold. One can look at id as a perfect example of an independent company that did manage to be successful for quite a while, and then it eventually became a much more proprietary company relying on more standard distribution channels, releasing commercial demos instead of shareware (and do realize I'm not trying to rag on id for this; I'm just trying to point out that long standing independent companies tend to go under the wing of publishers precisely because it's the long-term ideal solution to maintaining at least some level of independence while insuring a means to sell your product).
There is actually a third, artificially restricting the available works. The average large publishing company or film company owns more works that it does not make available than it sells. By making sure these works are unavailable it channels all the buying to a smaller set of works, which has fewer infrastructure and distribution costs. Were copyright abolished a significant number of people would find a number of currently unavailable works to consume.
Yes, I forgot this obvious area which was the birth of DiVX. And it well explains the push for DRM and trying to push the idea that software is licensed, not sold. While companies (Disney is a great example) might be able to get away with not selling a product for long spans of time to drive up demand--the whole, "back in the vault", commercials seems like a horrible marketing blunder if people didn't realize that Disney isn't putting them "back in the vault" to protect them from wear but instead to protect from people buying them--there seems to be little sign that people are willing to accept a system where they can never truly own their music, videos, etc. And the format treadmill simply will not work on people, IMHO, because people are becoming more wise to the fact that they're paying multiple times for the same thing without any real added benefit and without any legitimate reason to have to pay again (there's no reason those DVDs shouldn't last for a lifetime).
So, I'm holding out hope that people eventually become wise to the aritifical limitation in marketing. The most humerous part is that the quest to make a smaller market has resulted in places like ebay allowing used game, music, etc collectors to make a killing selling off many legal copies of a work, bit by bit. Perhaps their plans to limit supply are backfiring.
Copyright law was designed to benefit artists and encourage them to make more works.
I'd have to disagree with this statement. Now, the Constitutional clause that allows copyright law to exist may have been with the intent to benefit artists and encourage them to make more works (really the latter, but the former was an accepted side-effect), but copyright law itself has never been designed to benefit artists. This may seem contradictory, but it is the case that publishing houses have existed since even before the US existed. In reality, copyright gives only the most marginal of benefits to the artist while giving publishers enormous benefit. As a result, publishing houses have gained enormous power compared to authors and have generally been able to dictate terms to them as a de facto cartel.
There's only two real motivation publishing houses have to keeping copyright around: preventing their competitors from printing their works and keeping the average person from distributing copies. For the most part, even without copyright each member of the cartel would likely avoid printing a competitors material to avoid their own material being printed as quid pro quo. Of course in the long term, enough treachery would make it an uneasy alliance, but most of the big players would still manage to hang around. On the other hand, with the average person distributing, at some point people would realize they no longer need the publishing houses at all. With something as cheap as a home press or, finally, the internet they'd have a major threat against them as their whole industry could be usurped.
It has been abused and morphed by powerful corporations so that it instead is a tool to control art and make sure artists in general make no money off their art.
Except I'd argue that it wasn't so much an abuse as a natural consequence of what copyright is. Authors weren't equipped, at least until very modern times, to distribute their works around the world. And even if they were, there would still be a vested interesting in having a single location to push their content (youtube, google video). Invariable, there will be some publisher involved and the publish, as the middle-man for almost all works, will grow in power over the many authors. So, copyright law and the clause that allows it were badly designed. Copyright law can't benefit authors like it is supposed to, so the promotion of arts and sciences is hindered more than it would be under a correctly designed system. Of course, that would mean altering the Constitution. But first one would have to figure out how to design such a system properly to fulfill the original intentions.
If copyright was abolished entirely it would be a boon to the average recording artist, since the RIAA would have no motivation to stop their distribution and they could still make money the way almost all of them do now, concerts and merchandise.
It would probably be a boon in the long term, but I don't think the RIAA's involvement would have much to do with it.
IE and the desktop run in the same security context - in the worst case, IE can't do anything more than the user can.
Yea, that was my main point. Remote execution is bad for most user accounts, even if Microsoft is including things like port restrictions for users.
Since the user isn't running in a privileged account on Vista (unlike XP, users on Vista run with admin privileges turned off), IE still can't do anything that the user can't do. That eliminates shatter attacks.
While it's true that many XP users run as admin privilege (or at least Power User, since that's the default for XP Pro), it isn't the case that users are required to run as such (though my use of Win 2k has shown it's a pain in the ass at times). But in any case, the reduction of privilege of users isn't what eliminates the shatter attacks. It just mitigates the possible/probable damage if one can still manage a shatter attack.
Shatter attacks happen when code running in a restricted security context is allowed to send window messages to code running in highly privileged security context, the UIPI feature is explicitly designed to stop that.
Yea. It was only after making my post that I learned what UIPI included. So, it does seem that at least shatter attacks should be stopped in MS Vista.
So in Vista for an ActiveX control to issue a shatter attack that would exploit the system, you would need to have:
1) A hostile ActiveX running in the browser (so the attacker first has to convince the user to execute their code).
Or for there to be an exploit that automatically runs the ActiveX control.
2) a vulnerability in UIPI that allows the ActiveX control to send a window message to a higher privileged application (like every other application running on the desktop).
True. UIPI blocks shatter attacks, so you'd have to circumvent that, which assumedly will be quite difficult.
3) An application running on the users desktop that is running with elevated privileges (to get an application running with elevated privileges requires a special action of the user), normally no application runs with elevated privileges.
Actually, if you managed to get to step 3, you've already commited a shatter attack. The user (and their desktop) has higher privilege than IE7. And for a lot of the worm activities that would occur, a regular user is more than enough privilege to do what is needed.
4) A vulnerability in that application that would allow an attacker to cause the application to allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code in the application.
It sounds like a lot of XP already allows this. If you can manage to usurp UIPI, almost every component on the desktop is probably a viable target to cause execution of arbitrary code at the user's privilege level.
The bottom line is that there are at least 4 levels of defense-in-depth that would have to be breached for code running in IE to be execute a shatter attack.
Actually, only three. And it sounds like step four is already done. And given how IE7 is specifically given a lower privilege than other apps, it can be assumed that there will probably be bugs in IE7 that allow it to be attacked in the future. So, it's really UIPI that is the key. One can only hope that it does well what it says it does.
There may be other ways of attacking the system that don't involve shatter attacks, but from what the Microsoft guys have said, I think that shatter attacks are gone.
It's quite possible. Shatter attacks may very well be impossible with UIPI. It all comes down to, I'd imagine, just how well UIPI works.
A stupid question, but isn't IE7 supposed to be designed to run in a less-than-user privilege level? And if IE7 is run on the same desktop, don't all these shatter attacks basically mean anything that can exploit IE7 can easily go back to the user privilege level (this ignoring other issues with the IE7 less-than-user privilege level scheme)? Of course, Vista may have resolved this by putting IE7 in its own desktop or something. If not, all those "non-security vulnerabilities" all of a sudden have become security vulnerabilities.
Large monolithioc systems are inherently more complex that smaller componant built systems. (Although those have problems too along the boundary interfaces.)... Microsoft puts lots of time and money into trying to make their software more secure.
Microsoft has, in many ways, designed a system from a very monolithic standpoint. This isn't very surprising in many ways. If GNU wasn't around to provide the userland tools that separate the monolith X from the monolith Linux kernel, I'd imagine the Linux community would be in a very similar position. This is because once a group has spent a good bit of time working on a project that they have a lot of confidence in, they begin to see a lot of parallels between it and the tasks they are about to complete.
Normally, it's the other competitors in the market place who force a rigid border that creates a separation which helps solidify the lines between the two. This is especially good because in a monolithic environment, you're still left with subgroups that otherwise form much weaker borders between components in the collective. This in turn creates something of a development nightmare, as major shifts in the fundamental design of the system cause a need to rewrite many componets of the system to remain compliant which invariable leads to even weaker borders as people write in hacks to keep everything working together (the Linux kernel is in the same boat, though thankfully it's a much smaller code base so there's less things that can go wrong). The end result is that people don't end up thinking through very clearly what the new borders are and assumptions that were true in the past become security gotchas.
The switch of Microsoft to managed code is, at best, a hack that will only help minimize the problems that will invariable occur as a result of this fundamental design (basically to make most code execution attacks impossible, reducing them to denial of service). But none of this fixes the problem that the Windows code base is so monolithic that the future development costs will continue to rise. Perhaps Microsoft should take a cue from Xorg and split up Windows into components (XP Embedded sounds like it might be along those lines, though I don't know enough about it to say that that's what it actually is). In the sort term, there would be a massive increase in the number of obvious exploits (many of them undoubted fixed in the modularization), but it is probably the best way to spend their money on security improvements. And an added bonus is that it will greatly improve their ability to develop in the future.
It's worse than that, really. It all comes down to CISC vs RISC design. CISC is great for its ability to do all sorts of nifty functions directly in hardware. At the same time, CISC having all these nifty functions directly in hardware makes it rather hard to have portable code with consistent speed as well as writing a compiler for all levels of languages that'll have reasonable results. Put simply, the die space dedicated to the extra functions in CISC processors that could have went towards more general improvements (ex. more registers) instead goes towards a specific function (say hardware sqrt) and then leaves it to each compiler to figure out how to exploit these special functions.
In the end, the very highest level languages have it best, as very high level languages remove the program from a lot of the low-level details, leaving the compiler to be able to more abstractly choose which instruction to choose. And the lowest level languages (ie, assembly) have it the next best, as a person can program exactly what they mean without having to pray that the compiler does the "right" thing, but they're also required to do all the hand optimizing themselves instead of having a compiler crunch through and make overall more optimal choices than they're likely to. (And yes, a person skilled enough will almost certainly beat the compiler, but those people are by far the exception). It's the middle languages, like C, which have overly explicit constructs that are left in a situation where, as others have stated, the compiler has to guess what is meant and hope that doing not exactly what was written but instead producing some probably expected result is the best manuever.
And why do I spit all this out? Mostly because RISC processors in general avoid this. They're designed to be simple enough that there's little advantage at any language level (at least, innately). But to differentiate each RISC processor requires the feature creep towards a CISC design which removes the chief design decision from the start. And it's always that trade-off of just how often programs really need that feature you're adding and whether the complexity, in the end, hurts a large group of developers. An ironic example of this, I would say, is the ARM line of processors, as the conditional execution in ARM mode comes at the cost of having all instructions as twice the size of the non-conditional execution in THUMB mode. Having a compiler try to figure out which is "optimal" is, except in situations where bus bandwidth gives you a clear winner, is just rife as an optimization problem without a simple answer.
The truth is, there's nothing modern about the difficultly of mapping C code efficiently to machine code. And for the most part, it's only marginally more difficult if you look at all extant processor lines.
In a DEMOCRATIC country, laws apply to the government as well.
Actually, no. In a republic, laws apply to the government as well. There's nothing stopping a democracy from making a government that's above the law.
In the US, the constitution only allows the taking of property (real, personal, or intellectual) in cases of public need, and requires the gov't to reimburse the private party for that property.
Okay, you're wrong on many levels. One, there is no such thing as intellectual property. There is, instead, the power (not the obligation) of Congress "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". Simply put, Congress could choose to rescend Microsoft copyright fully Constitutionally. And it could be argued that if they didn't rescend Microsoft's copyright, copyright law would be invalid, as a monopoly doesn't necessarily "promote the progress of science and useful arts".
Oh, but there's more. The part of the Constitution you seem to be trying to quote is the Fifth Amendment, specifically "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.". So, even if in some twisted way the courts found copyrighted works a form of "private property", the fact is that a court ruling (ie, Anti-Trust law) could be a basis to remove copyright from Microsoft Windows.
The only real solid defense against the removal of copyright is whether if violates the "cruel or unusual" aspect of the Eighth Amendment. To that end, I'd claim that copyright is itself unusual (it's a government granted monopoly, afterall, not an innate way of things), so revoking it as punishment is very difficult to be called unusual. And it's hardly cruel (at least, it seems about as cruel as breaking up Microsoft into parts, and the break-up of Ma Bell occurred).
So, why, again, do you think that this is an impossible (at least in the US)?
Frankly, an unwarranted cavity search performed on a minor without the express permission of a legal de jure guardian is tantamount to child molestation. (emphasis mine)
I'm not sure how a legal guardian of any kind could permit a cavity search on a minor. Child molestation laws can ne targetted against primarily legal guardians, as they too could be the child molestors. It's hardly a stretch to say that an unwarranted cavity search without a court warrant is, pardon the pun, unwarranted. After all, if it were possible for a legal guardian to allow someone else to perform a cavity search, what would stop legal guardians from "swapping" children or pimping them as a legal loophole to child molestation laws?
Of course, it's also possible the courts/juries would decide to, again*, set a much lower standard based upon what the child feels and what the legal guardian and said cavity searcher claim as a basis for their actions. But, I can't imagine that the "Think of the Children" crowd would ever allow that to last.
*By again, I'm not refering to children but to adults. The 4th Amendent of the US Constitution speaks about having a warrant to do a search and seizure. To that end, we even have a word to speak about the actions in a situation (warranted/unwarranted). Yet courts seem to gladly accept evidence received not through a warrant but by complicit actions of individuals. Simply put, the 4th Amendent doesn't speak of "unless he said it's okay" nor is "his testimony would have been sufficient to get a warrant". The former is too prone to being abused by thuggish government officials. The latter doesn't wash because if his testimony was sufficient, you could get a warrant. And the excuse "but that'd be lots of extra work" doesn't wash because warrants of all kinds of a lot of work. That doesn't mean we should stopping using them.
To put it more bluntly, if it's warranted to do a search and seizure, then the government can get a warrant.
If memory servers, the US Congress has declared war twice since WWII: the Korean War, and the Gulf War.
Nope. The Korean War is official known as the Korean Conflict. And the Gulf War occurred after the War Powers Act, effectively an attempt by Congress and the President to mediate their powers given that the cold war seemed to require the ability to be able to attack in 5 minutes or less, which basically gave the President the power to do whatever he wanted, Congress declaration be damned (the old rule was that if nothing else Congress held the purse strings, but if you feel you "need" to have the sort of army that could in 5 minutes long a global assault, you can't very well control what the President did once you gave him all those weapons). Of course, the War Powers Act intrinsically is unconstitutional, as it tries to rewrite the powers the Constitution draws out without actually rewriting the Constitution. So, Congress has instead of declaring war merely given the authorization to use force.
So, in short, however you slice it, whatever we're in right now isn't a declared war. So, the whole thing is quite illegal.
Misappropriating and/or "stealing" things that don't belong to you, or just flat out breaking the law (in some jurisdictions), is okay if in someone else's estimation it's actually "helping" them?
It's not a question of if it's okay or not. The media's job isn't to report what's okay. It's to report what's true. If the media consistently neglects to mention the obvious positive aspects of a crime, then they're lying through omission.
What if it's my music, and I don't want you to have it for free, regardless of how else it might "help" me?
Then it sucks to be you. There's nothing stopping me from buying n copies of music from you and handing over n copies of music, for free, to others. Or is your complaint not that people are getting free music but that you don't feel you're being compensated in a 1:1 ratio of copies?
What if I've voluntarily signed on with a record label because I think that it's in my best interests (and no, I haven't been "brainwashed"), and that record label has a trade group that represents it, and what if the laws of my country support the protections of my creations?
Then good luck getting into your contract that radio play isn't allowed. Or, again, are you talking more compensation than the worry that people don't have to pay you (or your record label)?
I love how in the AllOfMP3.com story here recently, people talked about it as a new "business model" that the record labels and trade groups just hated. Um, huh?
Are you contending that the record labels and trade group *don't* hate AllOfMP3.com? Or are you trying to point out that it's not a new "business model"? I'd say it's obviously not a new "business model". And I'd say record labels and trade groups hate them anyways.
The Russian mob taking things that don't belong to them under the guise of a very weak argument that they can do it under radio license rules (which are designed, ironically, to get people to BUY the content, not as the mechanism for people to permanently obtain pristine digital copies) and selling them for 1/10 or 1/20 of what they sell for via legitimate channels is a "business model"?
Agreed, it's a very weak argument. But that's not that relevant. Why? Because in the long run, businesses are in it for the money. So, if AllOfMP3.com is able to sell 300x the content at 1/20th the price, there's a net gain in profit (assuming that the radio license rules are scaled reasonably to the sale price). That's the main reason people shrug about the legality of it.
I guess if you don't believe that anyone should be able to "own" content like that, ever, and that the "legitimate" distribution channels are nothing more than a state-sponsored and -backed mob, ok.
Even if I don't believe that, why should the record label care why they're now making 15x more than they used to when people were all being legal? Some faithful wish to enforce a law that they're not required to enforce?
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the the content owners might need to sell the content for 2 or 5 or 10 times more than AllOfMP3.com does to actually support the industry?
Sure. Except that it seems that AllOfMP3.com makes enough to support the industry.
Chances are, some of their promotion, advertising, distribution, marketing, and production is what made a particular artist - the popular ones people often pirate - desirable in the first place.
So? Nothing is stopping them from taking the money made through AllOfMP3.com and investing it into promotion, advertising, etc.
And how is it even an argument that, essentially, you can "steal"/copy something on your own and get it for cheaper, and if it's more expensive than some arbitrary value you've set in your head, it's okay to just take?
I don't know, how is that even an argument? I don't support it. But since you brought it up, feel free to.
But why is the anti-copyright argument always the one touted h
By in a collaborative environment, if you mean a "work environment", Microsoft does have a good solution for this.
No, I mean a collaborative environment. That can be a work environment. That can be an open source project. Because the latter exists, it is not sufficient to have the ability to control such in a "Group Policy". And the former might not even be reasonable if one considers that a work environment may very well mean multiple branches of a company collaborating, at least some of the time being where it doesn't make sense to have a "Group Policy" for all branches involved. Of course, truthfully, it's not sufficient to have a system-wide configuration either, as you very well might only want to dump and send for *some* programs.
If you have memory dumps turned on (My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery Settings, Write debugging information, Small Memory Dump (or better)), you do get to see the error message.
Seeing as how this configuration box is what determines whether the send/don't send box pops up, why isn't there an option to configure said send box (ie, always send, ask to send, never send; I can imagine that in a collaborative environment, it even makes sense to have the "Small Memory Dump (or better)" and "Always Send" enabled)? Either Microsoft is more interested in getting the naive to agree to sending them memory dumps, privacy be damned, or the people at Microsoft are stupid. Feel free to choose which one you believe. And feel free to speculate if their future privacy concerns will address this.
Slashdot Mirror
The right to a free press is (in my understanding) a right to write, for public consumption.
You're wrong. A press can be used for private consumption, for example.
It is not a right to take any random action in order to obtain facts for said writing.
Of course not.
If I have been assigned to write a story about the psychological condition of an executioner, am I justified in grabbing someone and "executing" them in the furtherance of my story? Of course not; it's both illegal and wrong.
Sure, murder is illegal. Speech is not. In fact, the 1st Amendment clearly speaks of Congress not abridging the right to speak. Hence, I'd be interested if you drew a better analogy to try to justify your position. As it stands, I've not heard of a reasonably justification or analogy that would somehow dissolve the right of the reporter to speak.
Reporters are not magic special people.
Guite true.
They should abide by the same laws
No kidding.
and rules of reasonable conduct as the rest of us.
Uh, yes and no. They *should* abide by rules of reasonable conduct, but there *shouldn't* be any legal consequences for ignoring them. It's unreasonable to codify rules of conduct into law and is the hallmark of a tolitarian regime.
Congratulations. You've established that the Constitution, as written, doesn't define the MN lawmakers' acts as treason. Nor did I claim what they did was legally treason. Instead, I stated I wish it *was* defined as treason. And I stand by that claim. It's hard to see it as simple stupidity when lawmakers *repeatedly* make versions of the *same* law and use it to try to squelch things they dislike. The fact that they're intentionally attacking groups based on their lower probability of defending themselves really tips the balance to make their action that of evilness.
Even without this stupidity, can you imagine the sort of public outrage if some state's lawmakers had made a law that demanded immediate execution of homosexuals who outted themselves? Do you think that after several people were killed and the law was eventually overturned, that people would be happy with the lawmakers making a tweaked law that only targetted those who outted themselves who weren't public figures? Would any of this warrant punishment in your eyes, as clearly the right of people to live was violated? You might say that banning speech is not in the same ball park, but the 1st and 5th amendments are both clearly in the bill of rights.
There simply is no reason for the MN lawmakers to have repeated their attempt to censor people; ignorance couldn't even be an excuse (and it isn't an excuse). They clearly were more interested in having their way, the rights of people be damned, even if it was for the short time until it was overturned. It is no better than the power trip of a police officer who arrests someone and releases them days later without charging them with a thing or when a court of law holds a person in contempt for days (or even months) simply because it chooses to, without any reprocussions for the act. The punishment of not being elected again or being simply fired just doesn't seem fit, given the same behavior for everyone else would be met with arrest, a trial, and quite probably months served in prison.
"Minnesota lawmakers hoped their approach - penalizing the minors who got the games, instead of the retailers who sold or rented them - would have fared better in court than overturned state laws that went after retailers in Illinois, California, Michigan and elsewhere."
Ie, Minnesota lawmakers decided to target minors with their unconstitutional law because minors (ie, their parents) have a harder time fighting back. It's times like this I wish lawmakers could be brought up on treason charges for intentionally (and in this case, repeatedly) making unconstitutional laws. It's stupid that they can literally modify a few words in an overturned law which have no real effect on the original claim against it (in this case, freedom of speech) and then make it a new law.
My point is that's what the GPL3 is *supposed* to do. The fact that the current draft is imperfect is only reason to improve the draft, not to scoff at the idea of trying to negate the effects of hashes, keys, etc. It's just the fact that keys seem the biggest threat since so far hardware makers haven't tried imprinting a hash into hardware that would tie it to one OS and its driver. I'd suggest you email rms to point out this problem, especially since P3s having individual serial numbers embedded in them is a sign that it's not out of the realm of mass-production to do as you suggest, even if it would be ultimately very costly and counter-productive for most companies (few companies can manage to make a driver that doesn't need upgraded for one reason or another, and many people would scoff at the idea of buying known-defective hardware (imagine a lawsuit requiring a recall because of those hardcoded hashes)).
The proper way is to not support DRM in any form. Just don't buy it.
The problem is the first and the latter aren't equivalent. Specifically, the GPL3 is being written to try to prevent GPLed software from supporting DRM. So, if your Tivo example required that all software on it be signed, Tivo would be unable to use a GPL3 licensed Linux kernel and would have to use some non-GPL3 software. And by buying/using/developing only GPL3 software, one is effectively assured that one's efforts don't support DRM.
... or alternatively just don't support those vendors. This does an end run, not only around them, but the DMCA as well.
Uh, why is this an alternative? If there are vendors that make drivers under the GPL2 or another another non-GPL3 compatible license, you don't buy from them. You buy from those who have GPL3 drivers. That's how the GPL works. It's not some sort of "and we're lawfully preventing other licenses from existing". The issue is some people are complaining about the GPL3 because of the "or later versions" that many GPL2 projects didn't remove and others are complaining and stating they won't relicense under the GPL3. That's of course their right, but Linus' argument for *why* he's doing doesn't make sense. (The fact that he'd have to get a sign-off on everyone who added to the Linux kernel is a good reason.)
Trying to legislate behaviour via the GPLv3 isn't going to work - all it does is provide a framework that adds restrictions to fair use that are "more-or-less" okay.
Uh, the GPL3 can't restrict fair use. No license can. All licenses are a subset of copyright law which allows fair use. If any thing, the GPL3 is a stake at expanding freedom beyond what the DMCA would otherwise restrict.
DRM goes against fair use.
No kidding.
The GPLv3, to the extent that it legitimizes this, is the camel's nose in the tent.
In the same way the GPL2 legitimizes copyright. The simple fact is, the GPL in itself will not stop copyright. Nor will it stop the DMCA. Only laws (or a court ruling that declares current laws unconstitutional) will stop it. The GPL is mainly* an attempt by people who don't believe they'll be able to change the law any time soon to use the law against its intent, for their own purposes. You can't spite the law by pretending it doesn't exist.
*Truthfully, the GPL was written to allow access to source code. If the GPL were really against copyright, then those for the GPL would like an end to copyright. But an end to copyright would almost certainly result in companies not releasing source code. The ability to legally modify those binaries, reverse engineer them, and modify the source code to have it again be captured, modified, and rereleased as binary only again would undoubtedly not sate many GPL fans (it'd be much like how the bsd license is now, at least the part that's current complained about by GPL fans).
Right, you can't prevent the cheating client from using your service because they're using a cheating client. You *can* punish them the same as any other user and you *can* write your software such that no cheat a client could commit would result in a cheat effect on the server. Ie, your server shouldn't rely on the security of the client to maintain a balance of power. That's rule #1 for most online games. :)
You're thinking Super Mario World (on the SNES), not Super Mario Bros. (on the NES).
If they apply drm to anything I write, then *that* particular binary isn't modifiable, but so what? They still have to provide the source on demand to anyone they give the binary to. That, after modification, the source can't be compiled to run on that particular hardware isn't an issue. Why? Because when it happens enough times, people will say f*ck this and buy hardware w/o the lock-in. Nothing worse than a horde of pissed-off customers.
Oh yea, just like how Microsoft is falling all over themselves to release the source code of Windows to keep the "pissed-off customers" at bay. The point of the GPL was to prevent the sort of lock-in you speak of, yet clearly the GPL wasn't written with the concept in mind of a manufacturer creating a hardware based lock-out, especially with law based enforcement (GPL v2 came out in 1991, DMCA in 1998, so I can understand why it was an oversight). If you can't compile and use open source software given to you for a platform except with signifcant modifcation to run on *another* platform, then a major advantage of open source software is lost.
There's no sound reason why an entity that supports the "spirit" of the GPL would be against this. Excuses like "but I only want to support one version" don't work, as you'll always need to verify that they're using the versions you do support even with DRM (after all, you could have ported the source to a new platform without DRM). So, the only reasonable intention must be to stop people from using the software in a way the entity doesn't like, but that's clearly against the spirit of the GPL. The point of the GPL v3 is to codify this to no longer rely on the intentions of people to continue to support the desired outcome, as the GPL was written because it was shown that people will go against those desires without legal enforcement. And since people *choose* to use GPL v3 licensed software, it's not some darconian measure that people don't have a say in.
So, why are people so upset?
1-1 -> 1-2 -> 4-1 -> 4-2 -> 8-1 -> 8-2 -> 8-3 -> 8-4 (Kill bowser)
>>Yet Nintendo holds a nice monopoly on producing Gamecube discs. The same with Sony and PS2 discs.
>The term, "monopoly" does not really apply here. Nintendo competes with Sony in the console and game markets. They've become gatekeepers for ntheir own little market segment, but not monopolies.
Monpolistic Competition
>>>I'm generallizing. I realize there are exceptions to the rules, but children who watch violence* on TV tend to be more violent than those who do not*.
>>>The problem is this. Parents have a god-given right to not teach their children a damned thing.** Do we have a right to be subjected to those children who cannot tell right from wrong because the TV raised them, or can we do something about it.
>>You know, some parents raise their kids in a religion that I don't agree with. They let them read books* I don't agree with. Or even discuss political topics* I don't agree with. Do we have a right to be subjected to those children who are not raised the way I think they should be raised, or can we do something about it!
>I think the grandparent is fallacious in assuming that letting children consume violent entertainment is tantamount to encouraging them to fight, steal, etc. But, if we assume that the GP's assertion is true, then exposing children to this media* is completely different from raising them in a religion* you don't agree with, letting them read books you don't agree, and discussing political topics you don't agree with.
* Examples of how if watching violence begets violence, then exposure to religion (including books on it and political discussion about it) must beget a hell of a lot of violence, given how there's virtually no religion that *doesn't* involve violence.
** An ironic comment calling to God from a book the commenter probably shouldn't read, as it'd lead to violence.
For example, you can still make an independent video game and gain great monetary benefit distributing it yourself.
Yes, and you can still make an independent movie and gain great monetary benefit. Yet Nintendo holds a nice monopoly on producing Gamecube discs. The same with Sony and PS2 discs. The PC realm is much more open, especially with the invention of shareware effectively giving anyone the ability to be a distributor, but there are very few examples of authors manging success even in this market, let alone having much of a foothold. One can look at id as a perfect example of an independent company that did manage to be successful for quite a while, and then it eventually became a much more proprietary company relying on more standard distribution channels, releasing commercial demos instead of shareware (and do realize I'm not trying to rag on id for this; I'm just trying to point out that long standing independent companies tend to go under the wing of publishers precisely because it's the long-term ideal solution to maintaining at least some level of independence while insuring a means to sell your product).
There is actually a third, artificially restricting the available works. The average large publishing company or film company owns more works that it does not make available than it sells. By making sure these works are unavailable it channels all the buying to a smaller set of works, which has fewer infrastructure and distribution costs. Were copyright abolished a significant number of people would find a number of currently unavailable works to consume.
Yes, I forgot this obvious area which was the birth of DiVX. And it well explains the push for DRM and trying to push the idea that software is licensed, not sold. While companies (Disney is a great example) might be able to get away with not selling a product for long spans of time to drive up demand--the whole, "back in the vault", commercials seems like a horrible marketing blunder if people didn't realize that Disney isn't putting them "back in the vault" to protect them from wear but instead to protect from people buying them--there seems to be little sign that people are willing to accept a system where they can never truly own their music, videos, etc. And the format treadmill simply will not work on people, IMHO, because people are becoming more wise to the fact that they're paying multiple times for the same thing without any real added benefit and without any legitimate reason to have to pay again (there's no reason those DVDs shouldn't last for a lifetime).
So, I'm holding out hope that people eventually become wise to the aritifical limitation in marketing. The most humerous part is that the quest to make a smaller market has resulted in places like ebay allowing used game, music, etc collectors to make a killing selling off many legal copies of a work, bit by bit. Perhaps their plans to limit supply are backfiring.
Copyright law was designed to benefit artists and encourage them to make more works.
I'd have to disagree with this statement. Now, the Constitutional clause that allows copyright law to exist may have been with the intent to benefit artists and encourage them to make more works (really the latter, but the former was an accepted side-effect), but copyright law itself has never been designed to benefit artists. This may seem contradictory, but it is the case that publishing houses have existed since even before the US existed. In reality, copyright gives only the most marginal of benefits to the artist while giving publishers enormous benefit. As a result, publishing houses have gained enormous power compared to authors and have generally been able to dictate terms to them as a de facto cartel.
There's only two real motivation publishing houses have to keeping copyright around: preventing their competitors from printing their works and keeping the average person from distributing copies. For the most part, even without copyright each member of the cartel would likely avoid printing a competitors material to avoid their own material being printed as quid pro quo. Of course in the long term, enough treachery would make it an uneasy alliance, but most of the big players would still manage to hang around. On the other hand, with the average person distributing, at some point people would realize they no longer need the publishing houses at all. With something as cheap as a home press or, finally, the internet they'd have a major threat against them as their whole industry could be usurped.
It has been abused and morphed by powerful corporations so that it instead is a tool to control art and make sure artists in general make no money off their art.
Except I'd argue that it wasn't so much an abuse as a natural consequence of what copyright is. Authors weren't equipped, at least until very modern times, to distribute their works around the world. And even if they were, there would still be a vested interesting in having a single location to push their content (youtube, google video). Invariable, there will be some publisher involved and the publish, as the middle-man for almost all works, will grow in power over the many authors. So, copyright law and the clause that allows it were badly designed. Copyright law can't benefit authors like it is supposed to, so the promotion of arts and sciences is hindered more than it would be under a correctly designed system. Of course, that would mean altering the Constitution. But first one would have to figure out how to design such a system properly to fulfill the original intentions.
If copyright was abolished entirely it would be a boon to the average recording artist, since the RIAA would have no motivation to stop their distribution and they could still make money the way almost all of them do now, concerts and merchandise.
It would probably be a boon in the long term, but I don't think the RIAA's involvement would have much to do with it.
Nobody is guaranteed the right to make money, only the freedom to attempt it.
It's funny you say that. That's a primary argument on why copyright shouldn't exist.
IE and the desktop run in the same security context - in the worst case, IE can't do anything more than the user can.
Yea, that was my main point. Remote execution is bad for most user accounts, even if Microsoft is including things like port restrictions for users.
Since the user isn't running in a privileged account on Vista (unlike XP, users on Vista run with admin privileges turned off), IE still can't do anything that the user can't do. That eliminates shatter attacks.
While it's true that many XP users run as admin privilege (or at least Power User, since that's the default for XP Pro), it isn't the case that users are required to run as such (though my use of Win 2k has shown it's a pain in the ass at times). But in any case, the reduction of privilege of users isn't what eliminates the shatter attacks. It just mitigates the possible/probable damage if one can still manage a shatter attack.
Shatter attacks happen when code running in a restricted security context is allowed to send window messages to code running in highly privileged security context, the UIPI feature is explicitly designed to stop that.
Yea. It was only after making my post that I learned what UIPI included. So, it does seem that at least shatter attacks should be stopped in MS Vista.
So in Vista for an ActiveX control to issue a shatter attack that would exploit the system, you would need to have:
1) A hostile ActiveX running in the browser (so the attacker first has to convince the user to execute their code).
Or for there to be an exploit that automatically runs the ActiveX control.
2) a vulnerability in UIPI that allows the ActiveX control to send a window message to a higher privileged application (like every other application running on the desktop).
True. UIPI blocks shatter attacks, so you'd have to circumvent that, which assumedly will be quite difficult.
3) An application running on the users desktop that is running with elevated privileges (to get an application running with elevated privileges requires a special action of the user), normally no application runs with elevated privileges.
Actually, if you managed to get to step 3, you've already commited a shatter attack. The user (and their desktop) has higher privilege than IE7. And for a lot of the worm activities that would occur, a regular user is more than enough privilege to do what is needed.
4) A vulnerability in that application that would allow an attacker to cause the application to allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code in the application.
It sounds like a lot of XP already allows this. If you can manage to usurp UIPI, almost every component on the desktop is probably a viable target to cause execution of arbitrary code at the user's privilege level.
The bottom line is that there are at least 4 levels of defense-in-depth that would have to be breached for code running in IE to be execute a shatter attack.
Actually, only three. And it sounds like step four is already done. And given how IE7 is specifically given a lower privilege than other apps, it can be assumed that there will probably be bugs in IE7 that allow it to be attacked in the future. So, it's really UIPI that is the key. One can only hope that it does well what it says it does.
There may be other ways of attacking the system that don't involve shatter attacks, but from what the Microsoft guys have said, I think that shatter attacks are gone.
It's quite possible. Shatter attacks may very well be impossible with UIPI. It all comes down to, I'd imagine, just how well UIPI works.
A stupid question, but isn't IE7 supposed to be designed to run in a less-than-user privilege level? And if IE7 is run on the same desktop, don't all these shatter attacks basically mean anything that can exploit IE7 can easily go back to the user privilege level (this ignoring other issues with the IE7 less-than-user privilege level scheme)? Of course, Vista may have resolved this by putting IE7 in its own desktop or something. If not, all those "non-security vulnerabilities" all of a sudden have become security vulnerabilities.
Large monolithioc systems are inherently more complex that smaller componant built systems. (Although those have problems too along the boundary interfaces.) ... Microsoft puts lots of time and money into trying to make their software more secure.
Microsoft has, in many ways, designed a system from a very monolithic standpoint. This isn't very surprising in many ways. If GNU wasn't around to provide the userland tools that separate the monolith X from the monolith Linux kernel, I'd imagine the Linux community would be in a very similar position. This is because once a group has spent a good bit of time working on a project that they have a lot of confidence in, they begin to see a lot of parallels between it and the tasks they are about to complete.
Normally, it's the other competitors in the market place who force a rigid border that creates a separation which helps solidify the lines between the two. This is especially good because in a monolithic environment, you're still left with subgroups that otherwise form much weaker borders between components in the collective. This in turn creates something of a development nightmare, as major shifts in the fundamental design of the system cause a need to rewrite many componets of the system to remain compliant which invariable leads to even weaker borders as people write in hacks to keep everything working together (the Linux kernel is in the same boat, though thankfully it's a much smaller code base so there's less things that can go wrong). The end result is that people don't end up thinking through very clearly what the new borders are and assumptions that were true in the past become security gotchas.
The switch of Microsoft to managed code is, at best, a hack that will only help minimize the problems that will invariable occur as a result of this fundamental design (basically to make most code execution attacks impossible, reducing them to denial of service). But none of this fixes the problem that the Windows code base is so monolithic that the future development costs will continue to rise. Perhaps Microsoft should take a cue from Xorg and split up Windows into components (XP Embedded sounds like it might be along those lines, though I don't know enough about it to say that that's what it actually is). In the sort term, there would be a massive increase in the number of obvious exploits (many of them undoubted fixed in the modularization), but it is probably the best way to spend their money on security improvements. And an added bonus is that it will greatly improve their ability to develop in the future.
It's worse than that, really. It all comes down to CISC vs RISC design. CISC is great for its ability to do all sorts of nifty functions directly in hardware. At the same time, CISC having all these nifty functions directly in hardware makes it rather hard to have portable code with consistent speed as well as writing a compiler for all levels of languages that'll have reasonable results. Put simply, the die space dedicated to the extra functions in CISC processors that could have went towards more general improvements (ex. more registers) instead goes towards a specific function (say hardware sqrt) and then leaves it to each compiler to figure out how to exploit these special functions.
In the end, the very highest level languages have it best, as very high level languages remove the program from a lot of the low-level details, leaving the compiler to be able to more abstractly choose which instruction to choose. And the lowest level languages (ie, assembly) have it the next best, as a person can program exactly what they mean without having to pray that the compiler does the "right" thing, but they're also required to do all the hand optimizing themselves instead of having a compiler crunch through and make overall more optimal choices than they're likely to. (And yes, a person skilled enough will almost certainly beat the compiler, but those people are by far the exception). It's the middle languages, like C, which have overly explicit constructs that are left in a situation where, as others have stated, the compiler has to guess what is meant and hope that doing not exactly what was written but instead producing some probably expected result is the best manuever.
And why do I spit all this out? Mostly because RISC processors in general avoid this. They're designed to be simple enough that there's little advantage at any language level (at least, innately). But to differentiate each RISC processor requires the feature creep towards a CISC design which removes the chief design decision from the start. And it's always that trade-off of just how often programs really need that feature you're adding and whether the complexity, in the end, hurts a large group of developers. An ironic example of this, I would say, is the ARM line of processors, as the conditional execution in ARM mode comes at the cost of having all instructions as twice the size of the non-conditional execution in THUMB mode. Having a compiler try to figure out which is "optimal" is, except in situations where bus bandwidth gives you a clear winner, is just rife as an optimization problem without a simple answer.
The truth is, there's nothing modern about the difficultly of mapping C code efficiently to machine code. And for the most part, it's only marginally more difficult if you look at all extant processor lines.
In a DEMOCRATIC country, laws apply to the government as well.
... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.". So, even if in some twisted way the courts found copyrighted works a form of "private property", the fact is that a court ruling (ie, Anti-Trust law) could be a basis to remove copyright from Microsoft Windows.
Actually, no. In a republic, laws apply to the government as well. There's nothing stopping a democracy from making a government that's above the law.
In the US, the constitution only allows the taking of property (real, personal, or intellectual) in cases of public need, and requires the gov't to reimburse the private party for that property.
Okay, you're wrong on many levels. One, there is no such thing as intellectual property. There is, instead, the power (not the obligation) of Congress "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". Simply put, Congress could choose to rescend Microsoft copyright fully Constitutionally. And it could be argued that if they didn't rescend Microsoft's copyright, copyright law would be invalid, as a monopoly doesn't necessarily "promote the progress of science and useful arts".
Oh, but there's more. The part of the Constitution you seem to be trying to quote is the Fifth Amendment, specifically "No person shall
The only real solid defense against the removal of copyright is whether if violates the "cruel or unusual" aspect of the Eighth Amendment. To that end, I'd claim that copyright is itself unusual (it's a government granted monopoly, afterall, not an innate way of things), so revoking it as punishment is very difficult to be called unusual. And it's hardly cruel (at least, it seems about as cruel as breaking up Microsoft into parts, and the break-up of Ma Bell occurred).
So, why, again, do you think that this is an impossible (at least in the US)?
Frankly, an unwarranted cavity search performed on a minor without the express permission of a legal de jure guardian is tantamount to child molestation. (emphasis mine)
I'm not sure how a legal guardian of any kind could permit a cavity search on a minor. Child molestation laws can ne targetted against primarily legal guardians, as they too could be the child molestors. It's hardly a stretch to say that an unwarranted cavity search without a court warrant is, pardon the pun, unwarranted. After all, if it were possible for a legal guardian to allow someone else to perform a cavity search, what would stop legal guardians from "swapping" children or pimping them as a legal loophole to child molestation laws?
Of course, it's also possible the courts/juries would decide to, again*, set a much lower standard based upon what the child feels and what the legal guardian and said cavity searcher claim as a basis for their actions. But, I can't imagine that the "Think of the Children" crowd would ever allow that to last.
*By again, I'm not refering to children but to adults. The 4th Amendent of the US Constitution speaks about having a warrant to do a search and seizure. To that end, we even have a word to speak about the actions in a situation (warranted/unwarranted). Yet courts seem to gladly accept evidence received not through a warrant but by complicit actions of individuals. Simply put, the 4th Amendent doesn't speak of "unless he said it's okay" nor is "his testimony would have been sufficient to get a warrant". The former is too prone to being abused by thuggish government officials. The latter doesn't wash because if his testimony was sufficient, you could get a warrant. And the excuse "but that'd be lots of extra work" doesn't wash because warrants of all kinds of a lot of work. That doesn't mean we should stopping using them.
To put it more bluntly, if it's warranted to do a search and seizure, then the government can get a warrant.
If memory servers, the US Congress has declared war twice since WWII: the Korean War, and the Gulf War.
Nope. The Korean War is official known as the Korean Conflict. And the Gulf War occurred after the War Powers Act, effectively an attempt by Congress and the President to mediate their powers given that the cold war seemed to require the ability to be able to attack in 5 minutes or less, which basically gave the President the power to do whatever he wanted, Congress declaration be damned (the old rule was that if nothing else Congress held the purse strings, but if you feel you "need" to have the sort of army that could in 5 minutes long a global assault, you can't very well control what the President did once you gave him all those weapons). Of course, the War Powers Act intrinsically is unconstitutional, as it tries to rewrite the powers the Constitution draws out without actually rewriting the Constitution. So, Congress has instead of declaring war merely given the authorization to use force.
So, in short, however you slice it, whatever we're in right now isn't a declared war. So, the whole thing is quite illegal.
Misappropriating and/or "stealing" things that don't belong to you, or just flat out breaking the law (in some jurisdictions), is okay if in someone else's estimation it's actually "helping" them?
It's not a question of if it's okay or not. The media's job isn't to report what's okay. It's to report what's true. If the media consistently neglects to mention the obvious positive aspects of a crime, then they're lying through omission.
What if it's my music, and I don't want you to have it for free, regardless of how else it might "help" me?
Then it sucks to be you. There's nothing stopping me from buying n copies of music from you and handing over n copies of music, for free, to others. Or is your complaint not that people are getting free music but that you don't feel you're being compensated in a 1:1 ratio of copies?
What if I've voluntarily signed on with a record label because I think that it's in my best interests (and no, I haven't been "brainwashed"), and that record label has a trade group that represents it, and what if the laws of my country support the protections of my creations?
Then good luck getting into your contract that radio play isn't allowed. Or, again, are you talking more compensation than the worry that people don't have to pay you (or your record label)?
I love how in the AllOfMP3.com story here recently, people talked about it as a new "business model" that the record labels and trade groups just hated. Um, huh?
Are you contending that the record labels and trade group *don't* hate AllOfMP3.com? Or are you trying to point out that it's not a new "business model"? I'd say it's obviously not a new "business model". And I'd say record labels and trade groups hate them anyways.
The Russian mob taking things that don't belong to them under the guise of a very weak argument that they can do it under radio license rules (which are designed, ironically, to get people to BUY the content, not as the mechanism for people to permanently obtain pristine digital copies) and selling them for 1/10 or 1/20 of what they sell for via legitimate channels is a "business model"?
Agreed, it's a very weak argument. But that's not that relevant. Why? Because in the long run, businesses are in it for the money. So, if AllOfMP3.com is able to sell 300x the content at 1/20th the price, there's a net gain in profit (assuming that the radio license rules are scaled reasonably to the sale price). That's the main reason people shrug about the legality of it.
I guess if you don't believe that anyone should be able to "own" content like that, ever, and that the "legitimate" distribution channels are nothing more than a state-sponsored and -backed mob, ok.
Even if I don't believe that, why should the record label care why they're now making 15x more than they used to when people were all being legal? Some faithful wish to enforce a law that they're not required to enforce?
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the the content owners might need to sell the content for 2 or 5 or 10 times more than AllOfMP3.com does to actually support the industry?
Sure. Except that it seems that AllOfMP3.com makes enough to support the industry.
Chances are, some of their promotion, advertising, distribution, marketing, and production is what made a particular artist - the popular ones people often pirate - desirable in the first place.
So? Nothing is stopping them from taking the money made through AllOfMP3.com and investing it into promotion, advertising, etc.
And how is it even an argument that, essentially, you can "steal"/copy something on your own and get it for cheaper, and if it's more expensive than some arbitrary value you've set in your head, it's okay to just take?
I don't know, how is that even an argument? I don't support it. But since you brought it up, feel free to.
But why is the anti-copyright argument always the one touted h
By in a collaborative environment, if you mean a "work environment", Microsoft does have a good solution for this.
No, I mean a collaborative environment. That can be a work environment. That can be an open source project. Because the latter exists, it is not sufficient to have the ability to control such in a "Group Policy". And the former might not even be reasonable if one considers that a work environment may very well mean multiple branches of a company collaborating, at least some of the time being where it doesn't make sense to have a "Group Policy" for all branches involved. Of course, truthfully, it's not sufficient to have a system-wide configuration either, as you very well might only want to dump and send for *some* programs.
If you have memory dumps turned on (My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery Settings, Write debugging information, Small Memory Dump (or better)), you do get to see the error message.
Seeing as how this configuration box is what determines whether the send/don't send box pops up, why isn't there an option to configure said send box (ie, always send, ask to send, never send; I can imagine that in a collaborative environment, it even makes sense to have the "Small Memory Dump (or better)" and "Always Send" enabled)? Either Microsoft is more interested in getting the naive to agree to sending them memory dumps, privacy be damned, or the people at Microsoft are stupid. Feel free to choose which one you believe. And feel free to speculate if their future privacy concerns will address this.