"It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too."
Which is why I think it's important for the USPTO to determine whether or not the methods in a patent are "obvious to a skilled practitioner" (or whatever the wording is).
This is easily accomplished in the current patent environment: submissions get held for, say, 3-5 years in secret. If another submission comes in during that time that is essentially the same, then both are rejected as obvious, as are any further such submissions.
This only works if everyone tries to patent everything, as they do right now.
This bill must be addressed on its constitutionality, not its effects. You can convince someone (like your congressman) to not vote for a bill based on effects, but it doesn't seem that we have the ear of those who make such decisions at the moment. Bringing up the illegality of such a bill, if possible, is the only way I think legislation like this can be fought.
That won't have any effect at all. Want proof? They passed the Communications Decency Act, didn't they? That one had to be struck down by the Supreme Court. They knew it was Unconstitutional when they passed it, and the President knew it was Unconstitutional when he signed it, because everyone and their brother was telling them this at the time, and they passed it anyway.
No, Congress doesn't give a shit about Constitutionality anymore. The only thing they care about anymore is economic effects. This should be obvious to you based on how quickly they passed the airline bailout scheme.
The reason that he didn't keep the funding at the old level was probably because he couldn't. Remember, congress wasn't exactly NASA's friend for quite a while. They thought of NASA as big, bloated, and a waste of money.
And you know what? Congress was right. I mean, come on...it costs what, $700 million or so to do a space shuttle launch? It doesn't get much more insane than that!
And we continue to use the shuttle because a couple of billion dollars (or, about as much money as is spent on 3 shuttle launches) obviously isn't enough to research and develop a much cheaper alternative! Or so they claim. Bleah.
Frankly, I think it's truly amazing, to the point of being miraculous, that NASA is still alive at all.
What with all the promising shuttle replacements that have been killed and all the research that obviously isn't being done, I can't help but think that perhaps the reason is that the government does not want a large human population in space. And I think I know why: such a population would have enormous power, what with the ability to shove asteroids and such into the earth and all, and worse would be difficult if not impossible to control from the ground. It would be the best thing going for the survivability of the human race, and the worst, most frightening thing for a power-hungry U.S. government. And obviously the survival of the human race isn't nearly as important as making sure that the U.S. government retains its power!
Murray Hill, NJ -- Today AT&T sued IBM for patent infringement, noting that IBM's patent on web templates is an infringement of AT&T's patent on #include.
#include, found in the C language's preprocessor, was invented in the early 1970's by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. "The #include directive is really a very innovative invention", said John Law, director of language sales at AT&T. "The technology landscape just wouldn't be the same without it".
Representatives from IBM were unavailable for comment, but were heard muttering something about how they "can't stand it when someone beats us to it".
The purpose of the U.S. is to provide a safe place for the people where their liberties are maximized (see the preamble to the U.S. Constitution if you don't believe me). Thus, the purpose of the law in the U.S. is to more clearly define where one person's rights and liberties end and another's rights and liberties begin. It is for this reason that it has been traditionally viewed that laws in the U.S. should be crafted to have as little impact as possible, to restrict the people as little as possible.
This is clearly not how things are in the U.S. today, and that needs to be fixed (can't see how to do it, though, since the government is 0wn3d by the corporations). But in any case, if the purpose of the law is as I state, then morality legislation has no place in U.S. law, because a law is, in the general case, a restriction on a person's freedom. One may use "morality" to help define the boundary between one person's rights and liberties and another's, but pure "morality legislation", i.e. making something illegal simply because the society believes it should be, has no place in a society that values liberty above all else.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
And what is liberty, but the right to do what you want as long as you don't infringe on the rights of another?
Letting the government take away your freedom, your liberty, is completely contrary to one of the biggest reasons the United States was founded to begin with!
If you don't want your liberties, don't want your freedom, then what the hell are you living here in the United States for? Move to China or something! In the meantime, those of us who actually value our liberty will protest every curtailment of it.
For the United States is powerful enough, in military and economic terms, to take the entire world down into the sewers of police statehood, and a worldwide government with the surveillance powers we're developing combined with the millions to one advantage in firepower provided by the weapons the U.S. government currently possesses is a stable form of government that can last thousands of years.
If you give up your freedom so willingly, you (along with others like you) may be damning the entire world to a life of slavery.
Is that what you really want? Think hard. The way things are going, you might not be free long enough to get another chance to answer the question.
Re:Perhaps War is what's needed (read below)
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
I completely agree.
And I don't think it's going to happen. I'll tell you why: back when we rebuilt Germany and Japan, the U.S. government was still at least somewhat responsive to the people. The people of the U.S. want democracy and freedom for others.
So why is it that we haven't done this in the last 40 years and instead have installed and/or supported countless oppressive dictatorships and despots as long as they were "friendly" to us ("us" being our beloved CIA)? I think the answer is relatively simple: at some point the U.S. government stopped listening to the wishes of its people. Ask any American and he'll tell you that he'd like to see democracy, freedom, comfort, and happiness for all people. You don't get those things when you install an oppressive puppet dictatorship.
So who did the U.S. government start listening to, if it wasn't the people? I think we all know: large corporations. Large corporations want cheap goods, raw materials, and labor, and they don't give a damn what kind of government runs the show in some other country as long as that government is happy to give these large corporations access to those things. It's much easier to guarantee those things when said government is a dictatorship beholden to the U.S.
Some will say that our government is just giving the people what they want: cheap oil, cheap goods, etc. But I can tell you that the people would not approve of the tradeoff if they knew of the cost.
We have the power to change governments. We've done it countless times. I think it's time that we started doing so with an eye to what the people in those regions we're affecting want, because it's their home, not ours.
Until we start doing that, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if we start reaping what we have sown.
And then when the people in the government need replacing , it can only be done with sheep people?
No, of course not. Obviously the ruling class will breed as it sees fit, and the children of the ruling class will have no incentive to dissent because they will be the recipients of all the benefits of being at the top, and will of course take the place of their parents in time. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That might have worked during the time of the American Revolution, when the most powerful weapon they had at the time was small artillery. The citizenry at the time had a reasonable expectation that they could overthrow the government if they needed to because they'd be fighting against people armed with roughly equivalent weaponry. Despite this, the U.S. won the American Revolution only because it had help from the outside (e.g., the French).
Fast-forward to today. The government has weapons that give them a millions to one advantage in firepower (nuclear, biological, etc.). Such weapons are hideously expensive (so only the most insanely rich could afford them) and require exotic manufacturing techniques (so very few can manufacture them). And an oppressive government would have no problems using such weapons on its own population if that government decided it was necessary for it to remain in control. Of course, it's likely that the situation wouldn't get that bad since the regime would be able to (through intelligence and snitching) track down the dissenters and assassinate them.
So good luck in your efforts to keep your freedom against a government that has the weapons that the U.S. government currently has. You're going to need as much of it as you can get.
Of course, that very same government will remove the guns from the population first. No sense in making things more difficult down the road than they have to be...
Oh, one other thing: they'll probably kill not just the dissenters, but their entire family tree as well. That way, the process of artificial selection (controlled evolution) will cause the population to breed more sheep and fewer dissenters over time, thus strengthening the grip of the government.
Yeah right. Anyone here remember the consent decree MS signed with the DOJ in what, 1995 or 1996? Anyone remember how well MS adhered to it?
Yeah, exactly: they didn't adhere to it at all.
So what exactly makes you think that MS will behave any better this time around?
Behavioral restrictions are of no use whatsoever if the target of them is determined not to adhere to them and is big enough to get away with not adhering to them. MS is easily big enough and powerful enough to get away with not adhering to any behavioral restrictions and has shown itself willing to ignore any such thing.
So the only thing this will do is delay the inevitable necessity of either breaking them up or taking them down.
There are other things that can be done that don't fall under the category of "behavioral restrictions". For instance, take IE and Office away from Microsoft and give them to someone else (or release them as GPLed software), and keep Microsoft from developing competitors to them under the penalty of billions of dollars a day worth of fines (anything less is too wussie to do the job). After all, if someone is hurting someone else with a weapon, you don't let them keep the weapon, do you? But somehow I don't think these things are what the Bush administration/DOJ has in mind...
Accept the $5 million. Consider that money as research
funds. Build a company. Hire engineers. Learn as much as you can, and
work as much as you can. Be glad that you have a roof over your
head. Acquire valuable experience. The engineers that you umbrella
will be grateful.
No. Tempting as it may be, don't do it. Otherwise it's just a shot
in the dark. You might get lucky and discover a business that is
sustainable and profitable, but then again you probably won't.
Why do you think the economy sucks right now? It's precisely
because VCs are sheep and invested in any "business" that came
along, whether or not doing so made sense (because after all, other
VCs managed to do the same and made a boatload of cash on the IPO.
Monkey see, monkey do). Worse, these same VCs encouraged many of
these "businesses" to do stupid things, like grow the company rather
than focus on being profitable. They did so because they wanted to
cash in on a superstar IPO, even if the value of the company was
doomed to drop through the floor soon afterwards. I know. I was
there, and saw it with my own eyes.
Back to the economic consequences, however. The economy sucks right
now because lots of VCs invested in lots of stupid startups whose
"management" had no clue about how to turn it into a profitable,
sustainable business, and the VCs didn't care about that, either.
Again, they just encouraged the companies to grow to make them look
good for IPO, so they could make a quick buck.
Because these companies grew, they bought lots of things: talent,
equipment, etc. This caused a spike in the demand for talent and
equipment, so salaries spiked. Equipment sales spiked. Equipment
manufacturers ramped up production, thinking that the trend would
continue (and, after all, if they didn't, then their competitors would
get the business instead), and hired people to do this. Everybody
grew, and everybody was happy.
Furthermore, you now had a lot of people (engineers, support staff,
etc.) out there who were being paid a lot of money. Such people tend
to spend that money, and they did. They bought houses, cars, went to
restaurants, and bought lots of goods and services. The parts of the
economy that service them grew to fulfill the increased demand.
Again, everybody grew, and everybody was happy.
Then the inevitable happened. VC-backed businesses started to fail
because they ran out of money. Oh, they did exactly what the VCs told
them to do: grow and worry about being profitable later. Don't worry
about spending the money to grow the company because that's what it's
there for. Except the VCs were too stupid to figure out that if you
don't worry about being profitable, then nothing else matters in the
long run. They were concerned only about short-term returns (from an
IPO) rather than being concerned about the health of the business, and
the increased prices of goods, services, and people caused companies
to burn through their money a lot faster than was anticipated. All
the money these companies wasted on parties, doodads, etc. didn't help
that situation either.
So VC-backed startups began to fail. VCs began to realize that a lot
of these businesses wouldn't make them the quick buck they were after
and stopped their funding. When the funding dried up, these companies
went bankrupt, fired all their employees, and closed up shop. And, in
the process, sold off all their equipment for cheap.
Which brings us to where we are today. There's a surplus of equipment
on the market at bargain-basement prices because all these failed
companies (or whoever acquired their assets) are selling it off. So
as a result, equipment manufacturers are unable to sell their stock of
equipment at a profit. And remember all those people they hired in
order to ramp up production? They've had to get rid of them, and all
the support staff they needed to deal with the increase of customer
support calls and all the things associated with that (field
engineers, etc.), since the number of customers who need support (and
who can buy support contracts) has dropped through the floor.
There's a surplus of people in the market because they're no longer
working for the startups (who went under) nor are they working for
the equipment manufacturers (who are getting rid of people because
demand for their products and services has dried up).
And the companies that provided all those goods and services that
people were buying? They're starting to hurt, too, since there are
now a lot fewer people with money to spend on such things. Worse, the
supply of such things increased to meet the increased demand. But now
the demand is down significantly. That means prices will fall through
the floor and most providers will go out of business.
It's a self-adjusting situation, to be sure. But don't kid yourself:
the adjustment hurts. And because the economy has a strong positive
feedback component (think about it: drop in demand means drop in
prices, which means more people with less money, which means further
drop in demand), the downward adjustment can easily go a lot further
than it should.
So no, he shouldn't have taken the money. You think the money
grows on trees or something? That money represents the fruits of the
labor of countless individuals. When it's not spent wisely (on things
that people need now or in the future), bad things happen to the
economy. As has been proven by the dot-bomb fiasco. The people who
took VC money knowing that they couldn't achieve a sustainable and
profitable business are at least partially guilty of causing the
economy to go into the toilet.
If you want to do research, apply for a research grant. Such money is
expected to be used for such purposes, and isn't expected to
gain any real return (research, after all, is by its nature a very
uncertain thing -- a shot in the dark). That's why it's a "grant" and
not an "investment".
But to see why, you have to first know the reason the DMCA exists to begin with. I talk about that here.
Now, it's important to realize that the corporations behind the DMCA want to use it as a terror weapon. How else can you prevent people from creating and trafficking in copyright circumvention devices (software or otherwise)? A law which nobody behaves is a useless law. But a terror weapon isn't effective if people don't believe you'll use it.
If the prosecution were to drop this case, it would make it clear that the DMCA is a law that the government isn't willing to enforce (after all, if they're not going to enforce it against a foreign national, what chance is there that they'll enforce it against a U.S. citizen?).
So they'll take this case as far as the defense is willing to go, hoping that the defense runs out of resources or time before this gets to the Supreme Court.
And trust me, the government will put a lot of money and resources into this case. They want to get and keep a conviction as long as possible, because that's what the government's masters (the corporations) want. so expect to see this case drag on for years, if not decades.
The details of the hole...
on
Hotmail Hacked
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· Score: 5, Funny
% telnet www.hotmail.com 80
Trying 64.4.43.7...
Connected to 64.4.43.7.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET/root.exe
What is thy bidding, my master?
Guess they haven't gotten rid of Code Red yet!:-)
(For the humor impaired: no, I did not actually do the telnet session.)
By constrast, Intellectual Property Law serves the
legitimate purpose of attempting to guarantee that the originator of
an idea or creative work can earn income based on his creation without
competing with others who grasp what it is he has done. Unfortunately
quite often digital technology circumvents this process my allowing
people free access to music, art, books, software, etc. without ever
compensating the inventor.
While what you say is true as far as it goes, it's not the original
purpose of intellectual property law, at least here in the States.
Here in the States, the original purpose of intellectual property law
is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
In light of that, then, fair use comes from the principle that IP laws
are to benefit the public at large, and the public's interest is
ultimately the reason for the IP laws' existence to begin
with.
If market conditions have changed such that the market no longer
provides the means to encourage people to advance the arts and
sciences, then other means need to be explored. But morphing the
market through IP law, as is being done right now, is not the
way to do it.
Those who care have been fighting this sort of thing
on an emergency basis. We have to shoot down ever single encroachment
on our rights in response to those encroachments.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" sounds remarkably similar,
don't you think?
If we start sponsoring bills or what have you, I guarantee you that
they'll consistently be stalled in committees, tabled, etc.,
indefinitely. The only way to win this is to have more money to throw
at the politicians than the big corporations. Kinda difficult to do,
don't you think?
And how many times have we seen people saying that they've done exactly these things without any effect whatsoever?
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to waste my time and effort when there's no evidence that it will do any good and plenty of evidence that it won't.
If your congresscritter is 0wn3d by the corps, then you're an idiot if you think writing a letter is going to do a damned thing.
The only way a congresscritter is going to take you seriously is if you either:
happen to be someone who will, at election time, have a bigger voice than him (bigger advertising budget, better access to the media, etc.) and threaten to take him down, in which case why the hell aren't you going to run against him at election time? Or
include a fatter check with the letter than what he's likely to get from the companies that 0wn him.
That is, unless said congresscritter is actually one of the tiny, miniscule few who actually have integrity. How many of us can say that our congresscritter is one of these few?
No. Having a patent on X means that anyone who wishes to make X or use X must first obtain your permission (i.e., a license).
That means that if you own a patent on X, then anyone who needs to use X in order to do their research must obtain a license from you. It means that you can prevent their research if their research requires that they be able to use X.
U of W has, from what I've read, a patent on the growth and maintenance (among other things) of human stem cells. Obviously such growth and maintenance are required if you want to do research on them!
A patent isn't like a trademark. It's a monopoly on a product or a process or a method.
So if, for instance, you wish to research other ways of growing stem cells, you still have to either obtain a license from U of W, obtain stem cells from someone who has licensed the patent, or obtain them from somewhere outside the country, since you need stem cells to experiment with. In short, this patent is a roadblock in front of stem cell research in general.
Because its role can be only to hinder research and development, this patent should be ruled as unconstitutional as it blatently flies in the face of the Constitutional purpose of patents.
Too bad only laws can be ruled unconstitutional...
Even if they gave me "written assurance" that I wouldn't be prosecuted by anyone, I wouldn't necessarily believe it. I'm sure that the wording of the "assurance" would go something like
We warrant that we will make every effort to ensure that you will not be prosecuted under state or federal laws for the actions we are soliciting from you.
...
\<MICROSCOPIC\>The terms and conditions of this contract may be modified at our discretion without notice or consent.\</MICROSCOPIC\>
Yeah, but my point is that the judge may well say "Chilling effect? What chilling effect?" as a result of Felten's decision to present his findings.
Some would argue that a "chilling effect" isn't even there unless it causes some people to not speak out when they otherwise would have. Since that condition doesn't apply to Felten anymore, the judge may simply dismiss his suit as being a case where someone is "crying wolf".
Felten might still win. But as I said, I think he's managed to reduce his chances by doing this.
Felten and company have a lawsuit pending over the DMCA's chilling effect on free speech. But how much credibility is the judge going to give the case now that Felten has published his findings? We all know the RIAA isn't going to do anything to Felten while the lawsuit is an issue, because they don't want to give the other side any ammunition for their case.
But now that Felten has presented his findings, it seems to me there's a reasonable chance that the judge will ask "so how exactly has the DMCA proven to be chilling, given that you've presented your work?".
Felten may still win his case, but it seems to me that by presenting his findings he's reduced the odds of winning significantly...
What's this "force?" It's very easy, and a rather
inexpensive option, not to even have a televison, not to subscribe to
cable, not to order pay-per-view movies, not to listen to music with a
label, not to buy dvd's.
Perhaps that's so. But remember that we're talking about the average
person here. The average person isn't going to "do without" just to
satisfy someone else's ideology, or even their own. As an example,
how many people here run Windows on their systems even though they
have strong leanings towards Free Software?
As has been shown repeatedly, people will buy something if it's
convenient and cheap in the short term, even if it's expensive in the
long term. If you don't believe me, then look at how many people
lease their car instead of buying it. Leasing is less expensive per
month compared to the monthly loan payment on the same car, but the
difference is that at the end you don't own the car. You're basically
renting it, just like you rent an apartment. But in any case, the
point is that people will do what is cheaper in the short term, even
if it's more expensive in the long term.
Now, given that you have a large audience of people who will
pay for your content, the only question is how to get them to do so on
a pay-per-view basis. And that's a question of controlling the format
that the content comes in.
Remember: the copyright holder can choose whichever distribution
mechanisms he wants to use, and can change them at any time (subject
to any contracts that have been signed). As such they can, and will,
slowly change the format of the content towards one which will make
pay-per-view possible.
The DIVX experience showed that people aren't willing to pay more for
pay-per-view equipment than for DVD equipment. It showed that people
aren't going to give up a capability that they already have. But if
you can get them to buy something new, you can take advantage of it.
So here's what I predict will happen: people will eventually
move to digital TV, once it provides the same capability as VCRs
currently give people. No, not the ability to record shows,
but rather the ability to view previously-shown content on-demand.
Once that ability is there and the equipment is cheap, people will no
longer have any reason to not switch, and will have some
incentive (better quality) to switch.
And once they've switched, then the content providers can stop
providing content via permanent media such as DVD and get away with
it. Instead, it'll be offered through the digital TV network. On a
pay-per-view basis. And you won't be able to get it any other way.
So what about other forms of media, such as books? Well, obviously
book publishers are highly interested in the idea of e-books, but the
current implementation just isn't there yet.
But it's only a matter of time before that changes. Part of the
problem is that everyone is used to standard books, and those are what
e-books are up against. E-books have limitations that are significant
right now, but it's only a matter of technology to fix most of those
limitations.
But probably the biggest hurdle is psychological. People are used to
having access to books and reading books in printed form. So the
first step will be to get people used to e-books. That'll happen in
schools and universities: publishers will start making certain titles
available only in e-book form and, since such books are
required for classes, students will have no choice but to pay.
This will provide a way for publishers to test the waters and for the
manufacturers of e-book readers to refine the readers. They'll figure
out what features are required and which ones aren't.
Eventually, people will get used to e-books. Resistance to them will
drop over time, as it does with any new technology. Eventually enough
people will be used to them that publishers will be able to start
publishing new books only as e-books. People at that point will still
be used to being able to lend books, so e-book publishers will make
that possible. And eventually, publishers will stop providing books
in printed form. Once that happens, they'll start removing the
ability of people to lend books. They'll start to tie e-books to
readers, so if you lose the reader you'll have to buy all your e-books
all over again. Because they're a monopoly on the content (thanks to
essentially limitless copyright), they won't care. They won't have
to. People will have no choice but to deal.
Yeah, there are a lot of technological and psychological issues with
these things. They'll be worked through. Time and acclimation, if
nothing else, ensure that. People are highly adaptable. They'll
adapt to a corporate police state just as they've adapted to every
other form of government that has been foisted on them.
And we, who see this coming, won't be able to do a damned thing to
stop it, because we
can't compete against the government's firepower, even if we
outnumbered the government military forces by 10000:1 (which we don't).
...and yet all of these companies still think that the
DMCA is good for them.
It is good for them.
Look, these guys aren't after The Ultimate Unbreakable Encryption
Mechanism. They're after something that will prevent the average
person from gaining "unauthorized access" to their content. And as
you note yourself, they aren't after the guys generating bootleg
copies. They want to prevent the average person from being able to
make useful copies of their content.
Why?
Simple: their goal is pay-per-view/use. They want to be able to
rent their content out to people, and prevent said people from
ever having a permanent copy. Because a permanent copy obviously
defeats their ability to rent that same content to whoever has that
permanent copy.
The reason this will work is that most people (obviously) aren't
technically inclined and aren't capable or even interested in cracking
copy protection schemes, nor are they interested in going through the
trouble of "going around" the problem (e.g., by recording to analog
media). They just want to view the content.
The Big Corporations know this. They're counting on it. But they
need something like the DMCA to pull it off. Why?
Because they know that it's fundamentally impossible to create
a crackproof system. So instead of directing their energies towards
that goal, they directed it towards creating the DMCA. If people are
prevented by law from creating or distributing the means to crack
content control systems, then companies can successfully force
pay-per-view content down the throats of the people.
The corporations also know that eventually a content control cracking
mechanism will become available to the general public anyway. So when
it does, they know that it can't do anybody any good if the general
public can't easily get its hands on it. Why do you think they're
working so hard to shut down P2P distribution mechanisms? By doing
so, they successfully remove the means for the average person to get
their hands on content-control cracking mechanisms and the
content that would result from the use of said mechanisms.
The corporations don't care about the rights of the people. They only
care about their money. They will do everything in their power to get
it. The only difference I see between them and the mafia is that the
corporations use law enforcement itself as their strong arm.
You think this was just a big misunderstanding on the part of our legislators?!?
No. This wasn't a misunderstanding at all. This was intentional. Why else would both the House and Senate have passed this piece of shit legislation with a voice vote? There's only one good answer I can think of: they individually didn't want to be held accountable. They wanted to be able to lie to their constituents if it came to that.
Happens that it passed unanimously in the Senate (99-0), or so I've heard, so fingering them is a bit easier. The same isn't true of the House, however.
It's not like the DMCA is a horribly complicated piece of legislation or anything. It's actually very simple compared to most of the legislation I've seen. So no, I don't think there's any reason to believe at all that they misunderstood anything.
Though people ask for it continually, people in the know, such as _BeOS Bible_ author Scot Hacker...
Ow... in this day and age of "3v1l Hax0rZ", it's gotta suck to have a name like that. Imagine all the horrible jokes that would circulate around your office. Stuff like
"So, Mr. Hacker, what site are you going to take down today?"
Look to the military and national interest to combat this mess. There are the military advantages of the internet as it exists and the case is not at all like TV. Distributed, dumb nets are nuke hard. Contoling mechanisms are weak. Philisophicaly, military folks should like the internet as it is too. Restrictions on publication and control of this new publishing media are simply UnAmerican. Weak OSes from MS have weakened things enough. I expect many of these efforts to be thwarted.
I don't. No way in hell is the military going to depend on a civilian network for their operations. For one thing, it's already subject to bottlenecks (some of which is the government's own making. Lots of traffic gets routed through Virginia, so that the NSA can look at it. For "national security" reasons, of course). Those bottlenecks will get a lot worse if one or more key points of the net get taken out.
So who's left to defend the net as it is right now? Nobody. Remember: there's no difference between "national interests" and corporate interests, because today the corps and the government are essentially the same thing, different only in name and appearance.
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Which is why I think it's important for the USPTO to determine whether or not the methods in a patent are "obvious to a skilled practitioner" (or whatever the wording is).
This is easily accomplished in the current patent environment: submissions get held for, say, 3-5 years in secret. If another submission comes in during that time that is essentially the same, then both are rejected as obvious, as are any further such submissions.
This only works if everyone tries to patent everything, as they do right now.
That won't have any effect at all. Want proof? They passed the Communications Decency Act, didn't they? That one had to be struck down by the Supreme Court. They knew it was Unconstitutional when they passed it, and the President knew it was Unconstitutional when he signed it, because everyone and their brother was telling them this at the time, and they passed it anyway.
No, Congress doesn't give a shit about Constitutionality anymore. The only thing they care about anymore is economic effects. This should be obvious to you based on how quickly they passed the airline bailout scheme.
And you know what? Congress was right. I mean, come on...it costs what, $700 million or so to do a space shuttle launch? It doesn't get much more insane than that!
And we continue to use the shuttle because a couple of billion dollars (or, about as much money as is spent on 3 shuttle launches) obviously isn't enough to research and develop a much cheaper alternative! Or so they claim. Bleah.
Frankly, I think it's truly amazing, to the point of being miraculous, that NASA is still alive at all.
What with all the promising shuttle replacements that have been killed and all the research that obviously isn't being done, I can't help but think that perhaps the reason is that the government does not want a large human population in space. And I think I know why: such a population would have enormous power, what with the ability to shove asteroids and such into the earth and all, and worse would be difficult if not impossible to control from the ground. It would be the best thing going for the survivability of the human race, and the worst, most frightening thing for a power-hungry U.S. government. And obviously the survival of the human race isn't nearly as important as making sure that the U.S. government retains its power!
Murray Hill, NJ -- Today AT&T sued IBM for patent infringement, noting that IBM's patent on web templates is an infringement of AT&T's patent on #include.
#include, found in the C language's preprocessor, was invented in the early 1970's by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. "The #include directive is really a very innovative invention", said John Law, director of language sales at AT&T. "The technology landscape just wouldn't be the same without it".
Representatives from IBM were unavailable for comment, but were heard muttering something about how they "can't stand it when someone beats us to it".
The purpose of the U.S. is to provide a safe place for the people where their liberties are maximized (see the preamble to the U.S. Constitution if you don't believe me). Thus, the purpose of the law in the U.S. is to more clearly define where one person's rights and liberties end and another's rights and liberties begin. It is for this reason that it has been traditionally viewed that laws in the U.S. should be crafted to have as little impact as possible, to restrict the people as little as possible.
This is clearly not how things are in the U.S. today, and that needs to be fixed (can't see how to do it, though, since the government is 0wn3d by the corporations). But in any case, if the purpose of the law is as I state, then morality legislation has no place in U.S. law, because a law is, in the general case, a restriction on a person's freedom. One may use "morality" to help define the boundary between one person's rights and liberties and another's, but pure "morality legislation", i.e. making something illegal simply because the society believes it should be, has no place in a society that values liberty above all else.
And what is liberty, but the right to do what you want as long as you don't infringe on the rights of another?
Letting the government take away your freedom, your liberty, is completely contrary to one of the biggest reasons the United States was founded to begin with!
If you don't want your liberties, don't want your freedom, then what the hell are you living here in the United States for? Move to China or something! In the meantime, those of us who actually value our liberty will protest every curtailment of it.
For the United States is powerful enough, in military and economic terms, to take the entire world down into the sewers of police statehood, and a worldwide government with the surveillance powers we're developing combined with the millions to one advantage in firepower provided by the weapons the U.S. government currently possesses is a stable form of government that can last thousands of years.
If you give up your freedom so willingly, you (along with others like you) may be damning the entire world to a life of slavery.
Is that what you really want? Think hard. The way things are going, you might not be free long enough to get another chance to answer the question.
And I don't think it's going to happen. I'll tell you why: back when we rebuilt Germany and Japan, the U.S. government was still at least somewhat responsive to the people. The people of the U.S. want democracy and freedom for others.
So why is it that we haven't done this in the last 40 years and instead have installed and/or supported countless oppressive dictatorships and despots as long as they were "friendly" to us ("us" being our beloved CIA)? I think the answer is relatively simple: at some point the U.S. government stopped listening to the wishes of its people. Ask any American and he'll tell you that he'd like to see democracy, freedom, comfort, and happiness for all people. You don't get those things when you install an oppressive puppet dictatorship.
So who did the U.S. government start listening to, if it wasn't the people? I think we all know: large corporations. Large corporations want cheap goods, raw materials, and labor, and they don't give a damn what kind of government runs the show in some other country as long as that government is happy to give these large corporations access to those things. It's much easier to guarantee those things when said government is a dictatorship beholden to the U.S.
Some will say that our government is just giving the people what they want: cheap oil, cheap goods, etc. But I can tell you that the people would not approve of the tradeoff if they knew of the cost.
We have the power to change governments. We've done it countless times. I think it's time that we started doing so with an eye to what the people in those regions we're affecting want, because it's their home, not ours.
Until we start doing that, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if we start reaping what we have sown.
No, of course not. Obviously the ruling class will breed as it sees fit, and the children of the ruling class will have no incentive to dissent because they will be the recipients of all the benefits of being at the top, and will of course take the place of their parents in time. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yeah, right.
That might have worked during the time of the American Revolution, when the most powerful weapon they had at the time was small artillery. The citizenry at the time had a reasonable expectation that they could overthrow the government if they needed to because they'd be fighting against people armed with roughly equivalent weaponry. Despite this, the U.S. won the American Revolution only because it had help from the outside (e.g., the French).
Fast-forward to today. The government has weapons that give them a millions to one advantage in firepower (nuclear, biological, etc.). Such weapons are hideously expensive (so only the most insanely rich could afford them) and require exotic manufacturing techniques (so very few can manufacture them). And an oppressive government would have no problems using such weapons on its own population if that government decided it was necessary for it to remain in control. Of course, it's likely that the situation wouldn't get that bad since the regime would be able to (through intelligence and snitching) track down the dissenters and assassinate them.
So good luck in your efforts to keep your freedom against a government that has the weapons that the U.S. government currently has. You're going to need as much of it as you can get.
Of course, that very same government will remove the guns from the population first. No sense in making things more difficult down the road than they have to be...
Oh, one other thing: they'll probably kill not just the dissenters, but their entire family tree as well. That way, the process of artificial selection (controlled evolution) will cause the population to breed more sheep and fewer dissenters over time, thus strengthening the grip of the government.
Yeah, exactly: they didn't adhere to it at all.
So what exactly makes you think that MS will behave any better this time around?
Behavioral restrictions are of no use whatsoever if the target of them is determined not to adhere to them and is big enough to get away with not adhering to them. MS is easily big enough and powerful enough to get away with not adhering to any behavioral restrictions and has shown itself willing to ignore any such thing.
So the only thing this will do is delay the inevitable necessity of either breaking them up or taking them down.
There are other things that can be done that don't fall under the category of "behavioral restrictions". For instance, take IE and Office away from Microsoft and give them to someone else (or release them as GPLed software), and keep Microsoft from developing competitors to them under the penalty of billions of dollars a day worth of fines (anything less is too wussie to do the job). After all, if someone is hurting someone else with a weapon, you don't let them keep the weapon, do you? But somehow I don't think these things are what the Bush administration/DOJ has in mind...
No. Tempting as it may be, don't do it. Otherwise it's just a shot in the dark. You might get lucky and discover a business that is sustainable and profitable, but then again you probably won't.
Why do you think the economy sucks right now? It's precisely because VCs are sheep and invested in any "business" that came along, whether or not doing so made sense (because after all, other VCs managed to do the same and made a boatload of cash on the IPO. Monkey see, monkey do). Worse, these same VCs encouraged many of these "businesses" to do stupid things, like grow the company rather than focus on being profitable. They did so because they wanted to cash in on a superstar IPO, even if the value of the company was doomed to drop through the floor soon afterwards. I know. I was there, and saw it with my own eyes.
Back to the economic consequences, however. The economy sucks right now because lots of VCs invested in lots of stupid startups whose "management" had no clue about how to turn it into a profitable, sustainable business, and the VCs didn't care about that, either. Again, they just encouraged the companies to grow to make them look good for IPO, so they could make a quick buck.
Because these companies grew, they bought lots of things: talent, equipment, etc. This caused a spike in the demand for talent and equipment, so salaries spiked. Equipment sales spiked. Equipment manufacturers ramped up production, thinking that the trend would continue (and, after all, if they didn't, then their competitors would get the business instead), and hired people to do this. Everybody grew, and everybody was happy.
Furthermore, you now had a lot of people (engineers, support staff, etc.) out there who were being paid a lot of money. Such people tend to spend that money, and they did. They bought houses, cars, went to restaurants, and bought lots of goods and services. The parts of the economy that service them grew to fulfill the increased demand. Again, everybody grew, and everybody was happy.
Then the inevitable happened. VC-backed businesses started to fail because they ran out of money. Oh, they did exactly what the VCs told them to do: grow and worry about being profitable later. Don't worry about spending the money to grow the company because that's what it's there for. Except the VCs were too stupid to figure out that if you don't worry about being profitable, then nothing else matters in the long run. They were concerned only about short-term returns (from an IPO) rather than being concerned about the health of the business, and the increased prices of goods, services, and people caused companies to burn through their money a lot faster than was anticipated. All the money these companies wasted on parties, doodads, etc. didn't help that situation either.
So VC-backed startups began to fail. VCs began to realize that a lot of these businesses wouldn't make them the quick buck they were after and stopped their funding. When the funding dried up, these companies went bankrupt, fired all their employees, and closed up shop. And, in the process, sold off all their equipment for cheap.
Which brings us to where we are today. There's a surplus of equipment on the market at bargain-basement prices because all these failed companies (or whoever acquired their assets) are selling it off. So as a result, equipment manufacturers are unable to sell their stock of equipment at a profit. And remember all those people they hired in order to ramp up production? They've had to get rid of them, and all the support staff they needed to deal with the increase of customer support calls and all the things associated with that (field engineers, etc.), since the number of customers who need support (and who can buy support contracts) has dropped through the floor.
There's a surplus of people in the market because they're no longer working for the startups (who went under) nor are they working for the equipment manufacturers (who are getting rid of people because demand for their products and services has dried up).
And the companies that provided all those goods and services that people were buying? They're starting to hurt, too, since there are now a lot fewer people with money to spend on such things. Worse, the supply of such things increased to meet the increased demand. But now the demand is down significantly. That means prices will fall through the floor and most providers will go out of business.
It's a self-adjusting situation, to be sure. But don't kid yourself: the adjustment hurts. And because the economy has a strong positive feedback component (think about it: drop in demand means drop in prices, which means more people with less money, which means further drop in demand), the downward adjustment can easily go a lot further than it should.
So no, he shouldn't have taken the money. You think the money grows on trees or something? That money represents the fruits of the labor of countless individuals. When it's not spent wisely (on things that people need now or in the future), bad things happen to the economy. As has been proven by the dot-bomb fiasco. The people who took VC money knowing that they couldn't achieve a sustainable and profitable business are at least partially guilty of causing the economy to go into the toilet.
If you want to do research, apply for a research grant. Such money is expected to be used for such purposes, and isn't expected to gain any real return (research, after all, is by its nature a very uncertain thing -- a shot in the dark). That's why it's a "grant" and not an "investment".
But to see why, you have to first know the reason the DMCA exists to begin with. I talk about that here.
Now, it's important to realize that the corporations behind the DMCA want to use it as a terror weapon. How else can you prevent people from creating and trafficking in copyright circumvention devices (software or otherwise)? A law which nobody behaves is a useless law. But a terror weapon isn't effective if people don't believe you'll use it.
If the prosecution were to drop this case, it would make it clear that the DMCA is a law that the government isn't willing to enforce (after all, if they're not going to enforce it against a foreign national, what chance is there that they'll enforce it against a U.S. citizen?).
So they'll take this case as far as the defense is willing to go, hoping that the defense runs out of resources or time before this gets to the Supreme Court.
And trust me, the government will put a lot of money and resources into this case. They want to get and keep a conviction as long as possible, because that's what the government's masters (the corporations) want. so expect to see this case drag on for years, if not decades.
Guess they haven't gotten rid of Code Red yet!
(For the humor impaired: no, I did not actually do the telnet session.)
While what you say is true as far as it goes, it's not the original purpose of intellectual property law, at least here in the States. Here in the States, the original purpose of intellectual property law is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
In light of that, then, fair use comes from the principle that IP laws are to benefit the public at large, and the public's interest is ultimately the reason for the IP laws' existence to begin with.
There's a good article on this topic here.
If market conditions have changed such that the market no longer provides the means to encourage people to advance the arts and sciences, then other means need to be explored. But morphing the market through IP law, as is being done right now, is not the way to do it.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" sounds remarkably similar, don't you think?
If we start sponsoring bills or what have you, I guarantee you that they'll consistently be stalled in committees, tabled, etc., indefinitely. The only way to win this is to have more money to throw at the politicians than the big corporations. Kinda difficult to do, don't you think?
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to waste my time and effort when there's no evidence that it will do any good and plenty of evidence that it won't.
If your congresscritter is 0wn3d by the corps, then you're an idiot if you think writing a letter is going to do a damned thing.
The only way a congresscritter is going to take you seriously is if you either:
That is, unless said congresscritter is actually one of the tiny, miniscule few who actually have integrity. How many of us can say that our congresscritter is one of these few?
No. Having a patent on X means that anyone who wishes to make X or use X must first obtain your permission (i.e., a license).
That means that if you own a patent on X, then anyone who needs to use X in order to do their research must obtain a license from you. It means that you can prevent their research if their research requires that they be able to use X.
U of W has, from what I've read, a patent on the growth and maintenance (among other things) of human stem cells. Obviously such growth and maintenance are required if you want to do research on them!
A patent isn't like a trademark. It's a monopoly on a product or a process or a method.
So if, for instance, you wish to research other ways of growing stem cells, you still have to either obtain a license from U of W, obtain stem cells from someone who has licensed the patent, or obtain them from somewhere outside the country, since you need stem cells to experiment with. In short, this patent is a roadblock in front of stem cell research in general.
Because its role can be only to hinder research and development, this patent should be ruled as unconstitutional as it blatently flies in the face of the Constitutional purpose of patents.
Too bad only laws can be ruled unconstitutional...
Yeah, but my point is that the judge may well say "Chilling effect? What chilling effect?" as a result of Felten's decision to present his findings.
Some would argue that a "chilling effect" isn't even there unless it causes some people to not speak out when they otherwise would have. Since that condition doesn't apply to Felten anymore, the judge may simply dismiss his suit as being a case where someone is "crying wolf".
Felten might still win. But as I said, I think he's managed to reduce his chances by doing this.
Felten and company have a lawsuit pending over the DMCA's chilling effect on free speech. But how much credibility is the judge going to give the case now that Felten has published his findings? We all know the RIAA isn't going to do anything to Felten while the lawsuit is an issue, because they don't want to give the other side any ammunition for their case.
But now that Felten has presented his findings, it seems to me there's a reasonable chance that the judge will ask "so how exactly has the DMCA proven to be chilling, given that you've presented your work?".
Felten may still win his case, but it seems to me that by presenting his findings he's reduced the odds of winning significantly...
Perhaps that's so. But remember that we're talking about the average person here. The average person isn't going to "do without" just to satisfy someone else's ideology, or even their own. As an example, how many people here run Windows on their systems even though they have strong leanings towards Free Software?
As has been shown repeatedly, people will buy something if it's convenient and cheap in the short term, even if it's expensive in the long term. If you don't believe me, then look at how many people lease their car instead of buying it. Leasing is less expensive per month compared to the monthly loan payment on the same car, but the difference is that at the end you don't own the car. You're basically renting it, just like you rent an apartment. But in any case, the point is that people will do what is cheaper in the short term, even if it's more expensive in the long term.
Now, given that you have a large audience of people who will pay for your content, the only question is how to get them to do so on a pay-per-view basis. And that's a question of controlling the format that the content comes in.
Remember: the copyright holder can choose whichever distribution mechanisms he wants to use, and can change them at any time (subject to any contracts that have been signed). As such they can, and will, slowly change the format of the content towards one which will make pay-per-view possible.
The DIVX experience showed that people aren't willing to pay more for pay-per-view equipment than for DVD equipment. It showed that people aren't going to give up a capability that they already have. But if you can get them to buy something new, you can take advantage of it.
So here's what I predict will happen: people will eventually move to digital TV, once it provides the same capability as VCRs currently give people. No, not the ability to record shows, but rather the ability to view previously-shown content on-demand. Once that ability is there and the equipment is cheap, people will no longer have any reason to not switch, and will have some incentive (better quality) to switch.
And once they've switched, then the content providers can stop providing content via permanent media such as DVD and get away with it. Instead, it'll be offered through the digital TV network. On a pay-per-view basis. And you won't be able to get it any other way.
So what about other forms of media, such as books? Well, obviously book publishers are highly interested in the idea of e-books, but the current implementation just isn't there yet.
But it's only a matter of time before that changes. Part of the problem is that everyone is used to standard books, and those are what e-books are up against. E-books have limitations that are significant right now, but it's only a matter of technology to fix most of those limitations.
But probably the biggest hurdle is psychological. People are used to having access to books and reading books in printed form. So the first step will be to get people used to e-books. That'll happen in schools and universities: publishers will start making certain titles available only in e-book form and, since such books are required for classes, students will have no choice but to pay. This will provide a way for publishers to test the waters and for the manufacturers of e-book readers to refine the readers. They'll figure out what features are required and which ones aren't.
Eventually, people will get used to e-books. Resistance to them will drop over time, as it does with any new technology. Eventually enough people will be used to them that publishers will be able to start publishing new books only as e-books. People at that point will still be used to being able to lend books, so e-book publishers will make that possible. And eventually, publishers will stop providing books in printed form. Once that happens, they'll start removing the ability of people to lend books. They'll start to tie e-books to readers, so if you lose the reader you'll have to buy all your e-books all over again. Because they're a monopoly on the content (thanks to essentially limitless copyright), they won't care. They won't have to. People will have no choice but to deal.
Yeah, there are a lot of technological and psychological issues with these things. They'll be worked through. Time and acclimation, if nothing else, ensure that. People are highly adaptable. They'll adapt to a corporate police state just as they've adapted to every other form of government that has been foisted on them.
And we, who see this coming, won't be able to do a damned thing to stop it, because we can't compete against the government's firepower, even if we outnumbered the government military forces by 10000:1 (which we don't).
Look, these guys aren't after The Ultimate Unbreakable Encryption Mechanism. They're after something that will prevent the average person from gaining "unauthorized access" to their content. And as you note yourself, they aren't after the guys generating bootleg copies. They want to prevent the average person from being able to make useful copies of their content.
Why?
Simple: their goal is pay-per-view/use. They want to be able to rent their content out to people, and prevent said people from ever having a permanent copy. Because a permanent copy obviously defeats their ability to rent that same content to whoever has that permanent copy.
The reason this will work is that most people (obviously) aren't technically inclined and aren't capable or even interested in cracking copy protection schemes, nor are they interested in going through the trouble of "going around" the problem (e.g., by recording to analog media). They just want to view the content.
The Big Corporations know this. They're counting on it. But they need something like the DMCA to pull it off. Why?
Because they know that it's fundamentally impossible to create a crackproof system. So instead of directing their energies towards that goal, they directed it towards creating the DMCA. If people are prevented by law from creating or distributing the means to crack content control systems, then companies can successfully force pay-per-view content down the throats of the people.
The corporations also know that eventually a content control cracking mechanism will become available to the general public anyway. So when it does, they know that it can't do anybody any good if the general public can't easily get its hands on it. Why do you think they're working so hard to shut down P2P distribution mechanisms? By doing so, they successfully remove the means for the average person to get their hands on content-control cracking mechanisms and the content that would result from the use of said mechanisms.
The corporations don't care about the rights of the people. They only care about their money. They will do everything in their power to get it. The only difference I see between them and the mafia is that the corporations use law enforcement itself as their strong arm.
You think this was just a big misunderstanding on the part of our legislators?!?
No. This wasn't a misunderstanding at all. This was intentional. Why else would both the House and Senate have passed this piece of shit legislation with a voice vote? There's only one good answer I can think of: they individually didn't want to be held accountable. They wanted to be able to lie to their constituents if it came to that.
Happens that it passed unanimously in the Senate (99-0), or so I've heard, so fingering them is a bit easier. The same isn't true of the House, however.
It's not like the DMCA is a horribly complicated piece of legislation or anything. It's actually very simple compared to most of the legislation I've seen. So no, I don't think there's any reason to believe at all that they misunderstood anything.
:-)
So who's left to defend the net as it is right now? Nobody. Remember: there's no difference between "national interests" and corporate interests, because today the corps and the government are essentially the same thing, different only in name and appearance.