I've always understood the Internet to be a private endeavor, however. My ISP is a private company that lets me connect my computer to their computer for a fee. At a minimum, most of the wires and machines on which the Internet "exists" are also private already.
It is a good idea to distinguish between 'content' and 'transport' when talking about the Internet. With regards to 'content', its definitely lots of small private spaces, but when looking at 'transport', things are somewhat different.
The thing that the Internet compares to is neither private or public space, rather, it is a lot of small private spaces being joined for community access, similar to for example a group of small farms sharing their small plots of grassland together so that all of them can have a bit more cattle due to better use of the land.
Protecting the 'community access' aspect is of major importance to keep that thing that makes the Internet different from all the proprietary networks that came before it.
At the other end of the spectrum, would an open-internet law require specific site-owners to refrain from regulating the posts of their users?
Freedom of speech is freedom from the government controlling what is said. It is NOT freedom from all entities to control what is said in all situations.
The intention of freedom of speech is to ensure that any opinion that might have any kind of relevance can be voiced and heard. Since it is not upto the government to decide what is relevant, they are specifically limited in suppressing freedom of speech. That in no way means that it should be allowed to have huge entities (telcos) do the suppressing instead. You still end up not forfilling the purpose of 'freedom of speech' in that case.
Companies limiting what people can say while on their job is an entirely different matter from companies trying to restrict who can publish their own work and get it seen been people. The first is perfectly fine and within their good rights, the later is definitely not fine, and if as you sugegst current law doesn't cover that properly, then current law is incorrect/incomplete because to achieve the purpose of freedom of speech it is absolutely required that this area is covered.
It is the providers ISP that carries the burden in your case, so they are well in their rights to charge for the bandwidth.
Lets see:
1. You rent a connection (and rackspace) at some hosting center. You pay per bandwidth. 2. Your hosting provider in turn pays whomever provides him with a connection, they also pay per bandwidth. This is basicly true for all the networks you pass (tho there are often special deals in place to cover this). 3. Your ISP (for your home connection) pays for its bandwidth use to whomever provides its uplink, and you as a customer pay your ISP for a connection with a certain amount of bandwidth.
Tell me again, who is not being payed and who has a legitimate claim for compensation?
You are not entitled to a neutral internet, just as you are not entitled to download music for free, or use other peoples' intellectual property in ways they don't approve. Get used to it.
Neither are you entitled to make proffits based on lying to your customers. (free ride argument by ISPs)
Not to mention, I pay for something, and that something is called 'internet access'. Paying for it indeed entitles me to get... internet access. I assume you can in fact see why that is different from feeling entitled to get free music...
Isn't that the case right now? Bandwidth isn't free. If your site gets too popular, you have to pay more.
Yes, I have to get a bigger pipe and so pay more to my hosting provider.
Now a few questions..
- How many ISPs are there on this planet? - Which of them service one or more of your customers?
And consequentely:
- How many ISPs do you have to pay for getting 'fast' service?
I'll leave it to your own interlect to figure out why exactly this idea is unworkable for any medium/small company, regardless of what the exact fees are.
Is the two tier setup meaning that currently available sites would continue with the current level of bandwidth, and only certain people would get better bandwidth service if they pay for it? or would the quality of their service decrease?
If ISPs want to give faster accss to specific sites, they have 2 options: 1. add more bandwidth to their pipes to support the extra bandwidth 2. use QOS to give preference to the sites that should be faster.
Everything so far points at 2. and yes, the direct consequence is a decreased quality of service for everyone else.
If it decreases, how is this different from having a low bandwidth server like geocities? or getting slashdotted?
I PAY for a high bandwidth server, I pay my provider for that every month, and quite a bit more then I'd have to pay to say geocities or lycos or such.
I pay my ISP for the bandwitdh I use at home.
So, both sides are being payed for the bandwidth already.
If my site becomes too popular, I'll have to buy more bandwidth, again I pay for that.
It probably is not fair to be marginalized. But is this censorship?
It is creating barriers for those who do not have lots of money. Not censorship perse, but it quite goes into the direction by creating a guaranteed to be unequal playing field.
Is the lack of a free ride censorship?
What are you talking about? As can be seen above, there is NO free ride here whatsoever. Everything is already being payed for. The ISPs who want the 2 tiered internet want to get payed twice for the same thing, and are lying bigtime when they claim any 'free rides' for anyone in this.
Hey...the system isn't prefect, but it's better than doing nothing.
It doesn't prevent any terrorism, but it does insult people and damage relations.. I really believe that doing nothing would have been a lot better.
The 'it is better to do something then doing nothing' which is often heard in such cases is a way to quell your emotions, doing something makes you feel better, but it is also a way that has a very good chance on doing more damage then good.
Not to mention that there are games written for very simple hardware that keep people busy (with building clones and playing them, or running an emulator to play the original).
Stunning graphics and sound can quite contribute to a game when used well, but in no way predict playability and fun of games in general.
Fortunately, Apple was kind enough to open source Darwin, but it didn't need to,
Not only that, they also contribute code back to FreeBSD, which they also don't have to. It is directly to their advantage to do this however (if it gets accepted it means it gets maintained without Apple having to pay developers to do so). Now, Apple isn't exactly alone in this either, considering things like FreeBSD's netgraph and jails just to name some other things contributed by conpanies who could also have decided to keep those things to themselves.
and it choose not to open source the Aqua UI and the Finder shell. I could be mistaken, but I don't think they would have been able to do this had Darwin been based on GPL'ed software.
You are wrong.
Those are applications runniong on top of the core system, and they can be kept closed source just as much as you can have a closed source application for the GPLed Linux, and it is legal to create a CD that distributes both.
For that matter, there exist closed source X implementations and desktops that run on Linux as well, giving you a near equivalent (as in, a gui 'engine' and a desktop environment, not judging that they are of eqivalent quality)
From a strategy point of view it just made BSD's that much more competitive with Solaris and Sun offers.
Now, last time I checked, Sun regards Redhat as one of its main competitors for 'enterprise unix' systems. So, since you are saying is that due to dtrace, FreeBSD became more competitive with Solaris, doesn't that mean it became that much more competitive with at least Redhat Linux?
With the GPL you at least get some improvemnts back if your contribution is of value and nobody can close its acess.
What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Ah, I see, you were just looking for a reason to do some 'GPL advocacy'.. Let me make some small suggestion: Advocacy like this is just annoying the hell out of people, and makes you look like a fanatic idiot.
Not to mention that the fud you are spreading is just that, fud. Nobody can close access to existing BSD licenced code EVER, got that? (and yes, people can derive from a BSD licenced work, and keep their source changes private while distributing the binaries. If people want to do that with GPLed code, they cannot distribute, or have to obtain an alternative licence from the authors, see the Trolltech business model)
As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code, as it means no-one can take your work, close the source, and sell it as their own.
Now, the modern BSD licence only contains 2 clauses, is really easy to read, and yet you fail to understand it. You think anyone should take your advice?
You can NOT take a BSD licenced work and claim it as your own, that is basicly the one and only thing that licence prevents you from doing. All you can do which you cannot do with the GPL is keep changes to the source private while distributing the binary result. You may believe that is bad, and you are entitled to your own beliefs there. I happen to believe otherwise, and with me, there seem thousands of people who believe otherwise, but again, that is a matter of opinion, and not a matter of fact.
It means every change is visible to you,
No, it does not. It only guarantees that if you get back a binary of some derived program, that you also have a right on getting the source with the changes. You have no right to see anyones changes if they decide to not distribute the result but use it for their own internal work for example.
and that you are free to incorporate the changes other people have made to your product back into it, or into other projects you are working on.
Not if you are for example called Trolltech (qt), Sun (OpenOffice) or anyone else who deals with dual licencing, but generally that is the idea of the GPL indeed. It is a good argument for it, despite it not always working out.
This encourages collaboration, and thus helps the advancement of software engineering.
The fact that all TCP/IP (ip4) implementations are mostly compatible, that most of the basic protocols used on it are compatible between vendors and such are pretty much because there is good and for any purpose usable BSD code around to implement those things, which was either used directly or used as a reference implementation to test against.
This single tiny detail makes that there is actually some choice instead of having ended up with a proprietary network owned by either aol, microsoft, ibm or some other big entity.
I leave it to your imagination what this means for software development.
I will give you one more suggestion, learn to appreciate someone elses work, esp. when that work is pretty good and they actually insist on publishing that work such that everyone can use it. If you just feel that instead of appreciating such things, you must use the occation to spread lies and fud then I call you a moron.
It requires that Company C KNOW that Company B hired Company A.
Which just requires them to get an earlier mailing sent by company A for company B. Not very difficult so far.
AND It requires that Company C KNOW the spamtrap addresses of SpamCop.
No, it requires knowledge of one spamtrap, tho still highly unlikely, its by far not as difficult as you seem to suggest.
AND It requires that Company A be running a regular double-opt in mailing list.
No, it requires company A to be running any kind of mailing list.. 'double-opt-in' or verified opt-in as I prefer, is considered better, but won't help here.. but just sending any mail will do really.
AND It requires that Company A (an "EMail marketing company") be unable to check its own email logs to find the recent subscription requests.
That may at least help prevent future listings, and expose a spamtrap (see how difficult that really is?), but well.. try arguing with spamcop about a listing..
So what if the EFF's IP address is blocked AFTER the mailing?
The EFF, like many such groups isn't exactly a one time afair you know..
Want more? That's easy. Not only would the listing not be in effect until AFTER the mailing, but it would only affect those people who's servers block in-bound email based off of that list.
In other words, the net effect would be NOTHING.
Thanks to the fact that most mail admins with any clue whatsoever avoid spamcop, indeed.
The listing would go into effect AFTER the mailings were already received AND The listing would only have affected those users who's email servers blocked based off of that listing PRIOR to accepting based off of a whitelist.
Any reason for you to repeat your correct but pretty silly comment? want to look twice as stupid maybe?
But I guess you didn't think of that before you flamed the grandparent to a crispy golden brown, huh.
You'd be wrong. I deal with this every day.
And so do I.
But I deal with it from the point of view of an email admin who is trying to reduce the in-bound spam while making sure that all the legitimate email is allowed through.
Good luck with your job, but maybe get it into your mind that there are thousands of valid email lists around, and there are also companies running such lists for a whole bunch of reasons. That is legitimate mail, and with the attitude you display here, you would end up blocking quite some of that.
I think the problem lies in the business model of the service providers rather than general ineptitude on the part of phone makers.
Living in another part of the world, where most mobile phone providers have a bit less insane business models (amazing what actual competition does..), I can tell you you are completely wrong. While the business models you are talking about cause additional issues, they are nowhere the root of the problem the article is about. The phones themselves are the problem.
I for one would be perfectly happy with a phone with a billion unnecessary gizmos, doodad, and whatnots, as long as there's a way to get them out of sight the minute they become intrusive. However, I think a lot of the clutter of most mobile phones comes from the exorbitant pay-out-the-ass-for-data plans that service providers are making a killing on. I doubt it would be difficult to design a phone interface that provides a "simple" mode that hides all unnecessary or obtrusive functions out of sight. But ask yourself the question, would it be as profitable?
1. If my phone has a camera, I can leave it at home most of the time, because I am not allowed to carry any form of camera on me in many locations where I have to work, so having a camera on it simply makes it USELESS.
2. A color screen wastes energy and battery life. To witness ancient t39m with bluetooth enabled has approx the same standby time on its standard battery as a much newer k300i with a standard battery (and yes, the batteries are comparable in capacity, with a slight advantage for the k300i, not to mention 3 years less battery lifetime, which matters a lot for a li-ion). When bluetooth is turned off, the battery lifetime is approx 80% better (!), not to mention using a high-capacity battery (having upto 2 weeks standby time, or over 10 hours talking time is kinda nice)
3. Everything that is there that I don't need can break and cause the phone to malfunction without ever having been usefull.
Instead you should be arguing for more open telecommunitcations and cable industry and removing regulation.
The 'mistake' to regulate telecoms was made a long time ago, tho at the time it seemed it was needed to get telephones out to the small places out there.
This created a situation where there are established players in the market that have such an advantage that the market never becomes 'free' when you just drop regulation.
Instead you do need proper regulation to establish such a free market and then remove unneeded regulation.
If you want to see how such a situation can actually cause more competition and better choice for customers, just compare the broadband internet and mobile phone situation in say Europe or the USA, or say Japan and the USA.
But the question does not specify 'chicken egg', just egg. Not to mention that we can argue about your definition of chicken egg as you correctly suggest yourself.. but well.. nice but irrelevant argument:)
Last time I checked, neither was copyright infringement.
Argument was that the example given would be illegal regardless of copyright, I don't see how your comment is relevant to that at all.
But just in case, you may find that copyright is governed by a different set of laws then privacy, and considering one to be invalid does not make for considering all of them invalid.
Exactly... And it is also not considered legal to freely distribute someone else's copyrighted work. I'm having real difficulty here understanding why people can't put together the facts on this issue.
Nicely ignoring that the example I give is NOT illegal because of distribution.. Are you capable of reading at all? or can you just post rants without ever listening..
Simple breakdown: (we'll use a music CD as an example)
You have a writer that pens the lyrics to the next great chart topping song. You have the performer who sings it. You have the producer that records it. You have the record label that presses it onto CDs, packages it and sells it. Together, they have created a series of rules as to how the product of their work can be used. They generally state that you can listen to their product privately, and not for profit. They have separate agreements with radio stations and other broadcasters who pay other fees for the usage.
No, they did not create that set of rules together, rather, society encoded a set of rules into law, believing it would help promoting progress of art. Those rules were then hijacked by the recording industry to maximize proffit.
The recording industry needs society for enforcing said rules, so society definitely has a say about what this protection is and is not.
They offer their product to you under these terms for a certain amount of money. If you agree to the terms that they offer, you give them the money, and they give you a CD which contains a copy of their work. You own the CD, but your purchase agreement doesn't give you ownership of the recorded work on the CD, just the right to use that work in a manner consistent with the agreement that you made.
No, I did not sign any agreement when buying a CD, so there is NO agreement any recording company can hold me to. I do need to keep to the local laws however. Again, it is not the recording industry who can set the rules (other then by 'bribing' politicians of course)
Then someone decides to break the agreement by making copies of the work and giving it away for free. I understand that there are people on Slashdot who believe that they can do whatever they want simply because they want to do it, but the fact is that what is happening is violating the rights of the people who own the recording.
You have two problems here:
1. Your idea about what those rights are, and who decides on what they are is pretty wrong as pointed out above 2. Some of those people at least argue that current copyright law is unfair and unjust and in fact conflicts with
the purpose of copyright as mentioned in the constitution. 'Good men don't follow unjust law' is a founding
principe of the USA (being an important part of the justification of rebelling against England) so this is not
that easy to dismiss, regardless of what you believe the rights of the people who own the recording are.
It doesn't matter whether you believe that it isn't that big of a deal, or whether you believe that you aren't really stealing anything. It doesn't matter that you believe that you really own the contents of the CD you purchased. You can believe that you own the Golden Gate bridge, but just try crossing it without paying the toll...
As long as the USA is a democracy and the recording industry needs protection by law, yes it very much matters what the citizens of that country think.
Unlike you believe, copyright is not a natural right, it is a specific protection provided by society with a very specific purpose.
As long as you keep willingly ignoring how the recording industry has been abusing this protection (by withholding works from the public domain, so in effect withholding that what they have to pay for the rights they gained), you are ignoring a very important side of this discussion, and you will also never be able to understand why some people are in fact ignoring the law with a morally correct justification (while others are as you say just freeloading because they can, but that does not take away the issue I point at, it is another issue)
If what you say were true, it would be perfectly fine to use a telescope to peek into every window you could see.. You are not distributing anything there..
Last time I checked however, this is not considered legal..
but the fact is that I don't own such a video. Should I have a right to peek in her window? I'm just taking some reflected light, something which I don't see how anyone can miss...
Bad analogy, she did lose privacy there.
Get to think of it, the more I read from your arguments in this discussion, the more I have to agree with those who call you ignorant. For all clarity, I believe there are some good arguments to be made for copyright, but not the ones you have been making. They sound awlfully similar to the extremely bad and intentionally misguiding statements from the MPAA and friends (think about the artists!! wtf? ever seen how much an artist gets payed by them??)
If someone began copying Audis and distributing them, whether for free or for profit, they are harming the company that does own Audi, Volkswagen Audi Group of Germany.
For the moment ignoring all the other reasons why your analogy is a bad one.. You do realize that the difference between say a movie and a car is that duplicating and transporting the first takes virtually no efford, while duplicating and transporting the second does? You also realize that the MPAA and RIAA represent companies involved in recording, producing and distributing music and movies, but not the artists who actually create those?
For all I can tell, the MPAA is being sued for breaking into a computer system (or paying someone to do so for them) with the intent of obtaining data without permission. This data is not, and was never intended for publication.
The RIAA/MPAA material being copied on p2p networks however was (intended for being) published, no (virtual) breaking into mpaa/riaa computers is taking place etc.
In other words, the 2 situations are so different that compating them as you do and claiming they are in fact the same thing is imho extremely silly.
Dislike of RIAA/MPAA tactics is only one small part of this, you can also claim that "information wants to be free"
People actually make arguments as to why 'information wants to be free'. I suggest countering those arguments..
"their business model is obsolete"
This is pretty evident from the factual situation, yes. It happens quite often when a new technology appears that changes the basic 'rules', in this case, the 'rule' that distribution is difficult and expensive.
"people wouldn't pay for this stuff anyway"
That is a stupid argument indeed, obviously people still pay for it as long as it is being sold, regardless of piracy.
"their statistics lie"
Statistics don't lie, but they can show almost anything you want depending on how they are being made. A known flaw with the statistics of the recording and movie industries is counting every pirated copy as a lost sale.
"infringement is not (as bad as) stealing!!!!!!"
You see, this is where your bias is very obvious.
The argument being made is that copyright infringement is NOT THE SAME as stealing. Which one is worse is a call of judgement, which cannot even be made without realizing why those are really not the same thing.
or really any argument that happens to fit the bill and you'll be lauded because you've provided moral cover for someone.
'Moral cover' would be easier: Copyright term extensions in the past century result in 'stealing' from the public domain, I just return the favor.. It fails because two wrongs don't make a right, yet good men are supposed to not follow unjust laws... pick one.
While I think copyright can work, and should be respected, I also see there are substantial problems with the current way things work, and that what started as a very well balanced implementation of the concept 'copyright' has been turned into something that is completely unbalanced. If you want copyright to be respected, start with making copyright law fair and balanced again.
Currently the main issues making it unfair and unbalanced: 1. length 2. loopholes that effectively make 'fair use' a meaningless concept 3. loopholes that allow using copyright to make people buy the same thing over and over
Note that 2. and 3. are related (media shifting should be fair use imho) but are not the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always understood the Internet to be a private endeavor, however. My ISP is a private company that lets me connect my computer to their computer for a fee. At a minimum, most of the wires and machines on which the Internet "exists" are also private already.
It is a good idea to distinguish between 'content' and 'transport' when talking about the Internet. With regards to 'content', its definitely lots of small private spaces, but when looking at 'transport', things are somewhat different.
The thing that the Internet compares to is neither private or public space, rather, it is a lot of small private spaces being joined for community access, similar to for example a group of small farms sharing their small plots of grassland together so that all of them can have a bit more cattle due to better use of the land.
Protecting the 'community access' aspect is of major importance to keep that thing that makes the Internet different from all the proprietary networks that came before it.
At the other end of the spectrum, would an open-internet law require specific site-owners to refrain from regulating the posts of their users?
Remember: Your right to "free speech" does NOT come with a corresponding right to be heard.
That is true, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
What this means is that anyone can decide to not want to listen to you. You cannot force anyone to listen.
What this does not mean is that it is okay for someone to deliberately stop others from being able to hear you while they'd want to.
You owe me a new keyboard!
Freedom of speech is freedom from the government controlling what is said. It is NOT freedom from all entities to control what is said in all situations.
The intention of freedom of speech is to ensure that any opinion that might have any kind of relevance can be voiced and heard. Since it is not upto the government to decide what is relevant, they are specifically limited in suppressing freedom of speech. That in no way means that it should be allowed to have huge entities (telcos) do the suppressing instead. You still end up not forfilling the purpose of 'freedom of speech' in that case.
Companies limiting what people can say while on their job is an entirely different matter from companies trying to restrict who can publish their own work and get it seen been people. The first is perfectly fine and within their good rights, the later is definitely not fine, and if as you sugegst current law doesn't cover that properly, then current law is incorrect/incomplete because to achieve the purpose of freedom of speech it is absolutely required that this area is covered.
It is the providers ISP that carries the burden in your case, so they are well in their rights to charge for the bandwidth.
Lets see:
1. You rent a connection (and rackspace) at some hosting center. You pay per bandwidth.
2. Your hosting provider in turn pays whomever provides him with a connection, they also pay per bandwidth. This is basicly true for all the networks you pass (tho there are often special deals in place to cover this).
3. Your ISP (for your home connection) pays for its bandwidth use to whomever provides its uplink, and you as a customer pay your ISP for a connection with a certain amount of bandwidth.
Tell me again, who is not being payed and who has a legitimate claim for compensation?
You are not entitled to a neutral internet, just as you are not entitled to download music for free, or use other peoples' intellectual property in ways they don't approve. Get used to it.
Neither are you entitled to make proffits based on lying to your customers. (free ride argument by ISPs)
Not to mention, I pay for something, and that something is called 'internet access'. Paying for it indeed entitles me to get... internet access. I assume you can in fact see why that is different from feeling entitled to get free music...
Isn't that the case right now? Bandwidth isn't free. If your site gets too popular, you have to pay more.
Yes, I have to get a bigger pipe and so pay more to my hosting provider.
Now a few questions..
- How many ISPs are there on this planet?
- Which of them service one or more of your customers?
And consequentely:
- How many ISPs do you have to pay for getting 'fast' service?
I'll leave it to your own interlect to figure out why exactly this idea is unworkable for any medium/small company, regardless of what the exact fees are.
Is the two tier setup meaning that currently available sites would continue with the current level of bandwidth, and only certain people would get better bandwidth service if they pay for it? or would the quality of their service decrease?
If ISPs want to give faster accss to specific sites, they have 2 options:
1. add more bandwidth to their pipes to support the extra bandwidth
2. use QOS to give preference to the sites that should be faster.
Everything so far points at 2. and yes, the direct consequence is a decreased quality of service for everyone else.
If it decreases, how is this different from having a low bandwidth server like geocities? or getting slashdotted?
I PAY for a high bandwidth server, I pay my provider for that every month, and quite a bit more then I'd have to pay to say geocities or lycos or such.
I pay my ISP for the bandwitdh I use at home.
So, both sides are being payed for the bandwidth already.
If my site becomes too popular, I'll have to buy more bandwidth, again I pay for that.
It probably is not fair to be marginalized. But is this censorship?
It is creating barriers for those who do not have lots of money. Not censorship perse, but it quite goes into the direction by creating a guaranteed to be unequal playing field.
Is the lack of a free ride censorship?
What are you talking about? As can be seen above, there is NO free ride here whatsoever. Everything is already being payed for. The ISPs who want the 2 tiered internet want to get payed twice for the same thing, and are lying bigtime when they claim any 'free rides' for anyone in this.
Hey...the system isn't prefect, but it's better than doing nothing.
It doesn't prevent any terrorism, but it does insult people and damage relations.. I really believe that doing nothing would have been a lot better.
The 'it is better to do something then doing nothing' which is often heard in such cases is a way to quell your emotions, doing something makes you feel better, but it is also a way that has a very good chance on doing more damage then good.
Three guesses who is being annoying and acting like a fanatical idiot, and it's not him.
You
You
You
Now.. what do I win?
Not to mention that there are games written for very simple hardware that keep people busy (with building clones and playing them, or running an emulator to play the original).
Stunning graphics and sound can quite contribute to a game when used well, but in no way predict playability and fun of games in general.
Fortunately, Apple was kind enough to open source Darwin, but it didn't need to,
Not only that, they also contribute code back to FreeBSD, which they also don't have to. It is directly to their advantage to do this however (if it gets accepted it means it gets maintained without Apple having to pay developers to do so). Now, Apple isn't exactly alone in this either, considering things like FreeBSD's netgraph and jails just to name some other things contributed by conpanies who could also have decided to keep those things to themselves.
and it choose not to open source the Aqua UI and the Finder shell. I could be mistaken, but I don't think they would have been able to do this had Darwin been based on GPL'ed software.
You are wrong.
Those are applications runniong on top of the core system, and they can be kept closed source just as much as you can have a closed source application for the GPLed Linux, and it is legal to create a CD that distributes both.
For that matter, there exist closed source X implementations and desktops that run on Linux as well, giving you a near equivalent (as in, a gui 'engine' and a desktop environment, not judging that they are of eqivalent quality)
From a strategy point of view it just made BSD's that much more competitive with Solaris and Sun offers.
Now, last time I checked, Sun regards Redhat as one of its main competitors for 'enterprise unix' systems. So, since you are saying is that due to dtrace, FreeBSD became more competitive with Solaris, doesn't that mean it became that much more competitive with at least Redhat Linux?
With the GPL you at least get some improvemnts back if your contribution is of value and nobody can close its acess.
What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Ah, I see, you were just looking for a reason to do some 'GPL advocacy'.. Let me make some small suggestion: Advocacy like this is just annoying the hell out of people, and makes you look like a fanatic idiot.
Not to mention that the fud you are spreading is just that, fud. Nobody can close access to existing BSD licenced code EVER, got that? (and yes, people can derive from a BSD licenced work, and keep their source changes private while distributing the binaries. If people want to do that with GPLed code, they cannot distribute, or have to obtain an alternative licence from the authors, see the Trolltech business model)
As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code, as it means no-one can take your work, close the source, and sell it as their own.
Now, the modern BSD licence only contains 2 clauses, is really easy to read, and yet you fail to understand it. You think anyone should take your advice?
You can NOT take a BSD licenced work and claim it as your own, that is basicly the one and only thing that licence prevents you from doing. All you can do which you cannot do with the GPL is keep changes to the source private while distributing the binary result. You may believe that is bad, and you are entitled to your own beliefs there. I happen to believe otherwise, and with me, there seem thousands of people who believe otherwise, but again, that is a matter of opinion, and not a matter of fact.
It means every change is visible to you,
No, it does not. It only guarantees that if you get back a binary of some derived program, that you also have a right on getting the source with the changes. You have no right to see anyones changes if they decide to not distribute the result but use it for their own internal work for example.
and that you are free to incorporate the changes other people have made to your product back into it, or into other projects you are working on.
Not if you are for example called Trolltech (qt), Sun (OpenOffice) or anyone else who deals with dual licencing, but generally that is the idea of the GPL indeed. It is a good argument for it, despite it not always working out.
This encourages collaboration, and thus helps the advancement of software engineering.
The fact that all TCP/IP (ip4) implementations are mostly compatible, that most of the basic protocols used on it are compatible between vendors and such are pretty much because there is good and for any purpose usable BSD code around to implement those things, which was either used directly or used as a reference implementation to test against.
This single tiny detail makes that there is actually some choice instead of having ended up with a proprietary network owned by either aol, microsoft, ibm or some other big entity.
I leave it to your imagination what this means for software development.
I will give you one more suggestion, learn to appreciate someone elses work, esp. when that work is pretty good and they actually insist on publishing that work such that everyone can use it. If you just feel that instead of appreciating such things, you must use the occation to spread lies and fud then I call you a moron.
It requires that Company C KNOW that Company B hired Company A.
Which just requires them to get an earlier mailing sent by company A for company B. Not very difficult so far.
AND
It requires that Company C KNOW the spamtrap addresses of SpamCop.
No, it requires knowledge of one spamtrap, tho still highly unlikely, its by far not as difficult as you seem to suggest.
AND
It requires that Company A be running a regular double-opt in mailing list.
No, it requires company A to be running any kind of mailing list.. 'double-opt-in' or verified opt-in as I prefer, is considered better, but won't help here.. but just sending any mail will do really.
AND
It requires that Company A (an "EMail marketing company") be unable to check its own email logs to find the recent subscription requests.
That may at least help prevent future listings, and expose a spamtrap (see how difficult that really is?), but well.. try arguing with spamcop about a listing..
So what if the EFF's IP address is blocked AFTER the mailing?
The EFF, like many such groups isn't exactly a one time afair you know..
Want more? That's easy. Not only would the listing not be in effect until AFTER the mailing, but it would only affect those people who's servers block in-bound email based off of that list.
In other words, the net effect would be NOTHING.
Thanks to the fact that most mail admins with any clue whatsoever avoid spamcop, indeed.
The listing would go into effect AFTER the mailings were already received
AND
The listing would only have affected those users who's email servers blocked based off of that listing PRIOR to accepting based off of a whitelist.
Any reason for you to repeat your correct but pretty silly comment? want to look twice as stupid maybe?
But I guess you didn't think of that before you flamed the grandparent to a crispy golden brown, huh.
You'd be wrong. I deal with this every day.
And so do I.
But I deal with it from the point of view of an email admin who is trying to reduce the in-bound spam while making sure that all the legitimate email is allowed through.
Good luck with your job, but maybe get it into your mind that there are thousands of valid email lists around, and there are also companies running such lists for a whole bunch of reasons. That is legitimate mail, and with the attitude you display here, you would end up blocking quite some of that.
I think the problem lies in the business model of the service providers rather than general ineptitude on the part of phone makers.
Living in another part of the world, where most mobile phone providers have a bit less insane business models (amazing what actual competition does..), I can tell you you are completely wrong. While the business models you are talking about cause additional issues, they are nowhere the root of the problem the article is about. The phones themselves are the problem.
I for one would be perfectly happy with a phone with a billion unnecessary gizmos, doodad, and whatnots, as long as there's a way to get them out of sight the minute they become intrusive. However, I think a lot of the clutter of most mobile phones comes from the exorbitant pay-out-the-ass-for-data plans that service providers are making a killing on. I doubt it would be difficult to design a phone interface that provides a "simple" mode that hides all unnecessary or obtrusive functions out of sight. But ask yourself the question, would it be as profitable?
1. If my phone has a camera, I can leave it at home most of the time, because I am not allowed to carry any form of camera on me in many locations where I have to work, so having a camera on it simply makes it USELESS.
2. A color screen wastes energy and battery life. To witness ancient t39m with bluetooth enabled has approx the same standby time on its standard battery as a much newer k300i with a standard battery (and yes, the batteries are comparable in capacity, with a slight advantage for the k300i, not to mention 3 years less battery lifetime, which matters a lot for a li-ion). When bluetooth is turned off, the battery lifetime is approx 80% better (!), not to mention using a high-capacity battery (having upto 2 weeks standby time, or over 10 hours talking time is kinda nice)
3. Everything that is there that I don't need can break and cause the phone to malfunction without ever having been usefull.
Instead you should be arguing for more open telecommunitcations and cable industry and removing regulation.
The 'mistake' to regulate telecoms was made a long time ago, tho at the time it seemed it was needed to get telephones out to the small places out there.
This created a situation where there are established players in the market that have such an advantage that the market never becomes 'free' when you just drop regulation.
Instead you do need proper regulation to establish such a free market and then remove unneeded regulation.
If you want to see how such a situation can actually cause more competition and better choice for customers, just compare the broadband internet and mobile phone situation in say Europe or the USA, or say Japan and the USA.
But the question does not specify 'chicken egg', just egg. Not to mention that we can argue about your definition of chicken egg as you correctly suggest yourself.. but well.. nice but irrelevant argument :)
Last time I checked, neither was copyright infringement.
Argument was that the example given would be illegal regardless of copyright, I don't see how your comment is relevant to that at all.
But just in case, you may find that copyright is governed by a different set of laws then privacy, and considering one to be invalid does not make for considering all of them invalid.
Exactly... And it is also not considered legal to freely distribute someone else's copyrighted work. I'm having real difficulty here understanding why people can't put together the facts on this issue.
Nicely ignoring that the example I give is NOT illegal because of distribution.. Are you capable of reading at all? or can you just post rants without ever listening..
Simple breakdown: (we'll use a music CD as an example)
You have a writer that pens the lyrics to the next great chart topping song. You have the performer who sings it. You have the producer that records it. You have the record label that presses it onto CDs, packages it and sells it. Together, they have created a series of rules as to how the product of their work can be used. They generally state that you can listen to their product privately, and not for profit. They have separate agreements with radio stations and other broadcasters who pay other fees for the usage.
No, they did not create that set of rules together, rather, society encoded a set of rules into law, believing it would help promoting progress of art. Those rules were then hijacked by the recording industry to maximize proffit.
The recording industry needs society for enforcing said rules, so society definitely has a say about what this protection is and is not.
They offer their product to you under these terms for a certain amount of money. If you agree to the terms that they offer, you give them the money, and they give you a CD which contains a copy of their work. You own the CD, but your purchase agreement doesn't give you ownership of the recorded work on the CD, just the right to use that work in a manner consistent with the agreement that you made.
No, I did not sign any agreement when buying a CD, so there is NO agreement any recording company can hold me to. I do need to keep to the local laws however. Again, it is not the recording industry who can set the rules (other then by 'bribing' politicians of course)
Then someone decides to break the agreement by making copies of the work and giving it away for free. I understand that there are people on Slashdot who believe that they can do whatever they want simply because they want to do it, but the fact is that what is happening is violating the rights of the people who own the recording.
You have two problems here:
1. Your idea about what those rights are, and who decides on what they are is pretty wrong as pointed out above
2. Some of those people at least argue that current copyright law is unfair and unjust and in fact conflicts with
the purpose of copyright as mentioned in the constitution. 'Good men don't follow unjust law' is a founding
principe of the USA (being an important part of the justification of rebelling against England) so this is not
that easy to dismiss, regardless of what you believe the rights of the people who own the recording are.
It doesn't matter whether you believe that it isn't that big of a deal, or whether you believe that you aren't really stealing anything. It doesn't matter that you believe that you really own the contents of the CD you purchased. You can believe that you own the Golden Gate bridge, but just try crossing it without paying the toll...
As long as the USA is a democracy and the recording industry needs protection by law, yes it very much matters what the citizens of that country think.
Unlike you believe, copyright is not a natural right, it is a specific protection provided by society with a very specific purpose.
As long as you keep willingly ignoring how the recording industry has been abusing this protection (by withholding works from the public domain, so in effect withholding that what they have to pay for the rights they gained), you are ignoring a very important side of this discussion, and you will also never be able to understand why some people are in fact ignoring the law with a morally correct justification (while others are as you say just freeloading because they can, but that does not take away the issue I point at, it is another issue)
If what you say were true, it would be perfectly fine to use a telescope to peek into every window you could see.. You are not distributing anything there..
Last time I checked however, this is not considered legal..
but the fact is that I don't own such a video. Should I have a right to peek in her window? I'm just taking some reflected light, something which I don't see how anyone can miss...
Bad analogy, she did lose privacy there.
Get to think of it, the more I read from your arguments in this discussion, the more I have to agree with those who call you ignorant. For all clarity, I believe there are some good arguments to be made for copyright, but not the ones you have been making. They sound awlfully similar to the extremely bad and intentionally misguiding statements from the MPAA and friends (think about the artists!! wtf? ever seen how much an artist gets payed by them??)
If someone began copying Audis and distributing them, whether for free or for profit, they are harming the company that does own Audi, Volkswagen Audi Group of Germany.
For the moment ignoring all the other reasons why your analogy is a bad one.. You do realize that the difference between say a movie and a car is that duplicating and transporting the first takes virtually no efford, while duplicating and transporting the second does? You also realize that the MPAA and RIAA represent companies involved in recording, producing and distributing music and movies, but not the artists who actually create those?
For all I can tell, the MPAA is being sued for breaking into a computer system (or paying someone to do so for them) with the intent of obtaining data without permission. This data is not, and was never intended for publication.
The RIAA/MPAA material being copied on p2p networks however was (intended for being) published, no (virtual) breaking into mpaa/riaa computers is taking place etc.
In other words, the 2 situations are so different that compating them as you do and claiming they are in fact the same thing is imho extremely silly.
Dislike of RIAA/MPAA tactics is only one small part of this, you can also claim that "information wants to be free"
People actually make arguments as to why 'information wants to be free'. I suggest countering those arguments..
"their business model is obsolete"
This is pretty evident from the factual situation, yes. It happens quite often when a new technology appears that changes the basic 'rules', in this case, the 'rule' that distribution is difficult and expensive.
"people wouldn't pay for this stuff anyway"
That is a stupid argument indeed, obviously people still pay for it as long as it is being sold, regardless of piracy.
"their statistics lie"
Statistics don't lie, but they can show almost anything you want depending on how they are being made. A known flaw with the statistics of the recording and movie industries is counting every pirated copy as a lost sale.
"infringement is not (as bad as) stealing!!!!!!"
You see, this is where your bias is very obvious.
The argument being made is that copyright infringement is NOT THE SAME as stealing. Which one is worse is a call of judgement, which cannot even be made without realizing why those are really not the same thing.
or really any argument that happens to fit the bill and you'll be lauded because you've provided moral cover for someone.
'Moral cover' would be easier: Copyright term extensions in the past century result in 'stealing' from the public domain, I just return the favor.. It fails because two wrongs don't make a right, yet good men are supposed to not follow unjust laws... pick one.
While I think copyright can work, and should be respected, I also see there are substantial problems with the current way things work, and that what started as a very well balanced implementation of the concept 'copyright' has been turned into something that is completely unbalanced. If you want copyright to be respected, start with making copyright law fair and balanced again.
Currently the main issues making it unfair and unbalanced:
1. length
2. loopholes that effectively make 'fair use' a meaningless concept
3. loopholes that allow using copyright to make people buy the same thing over and over
Note that 2. and 3. are related (media shifting should be fair use imho) but are not the same thing.