Most people presented with a warrant will let the police in because they don't want their door to get knocked off its hinges. But that is their choice.
You are correct, sir. And in this case, you have the choice to turn over the encryption key or go to jail. I guess the major difference is that it's impossible to build a front door that the cops can't break down, whereas you can have encryption that is unfeasible to break. If the cops have a warrant to search your documents, then they can look through your diary to make sure that there aren't any of the things they're looking for in there. I agree if they've got a warrant to look for, say, a stolen stereo, they can't just riffle through your personal papers.
Want to bet? In the US, the privilege against self-incrimination doesn't apply to all documents, especially if the suspected crime relates to documents (e.g., you can be forced to turn over all your tax papers if you're suspected of tax evasion.)
Although I'm in favor of strong encryption, it's not as if this is an unreasonable idea, as long as you get due process. I mean, the cops can go to a judge and get a warrant to search your house if they have probable cause to think there is something illegal in there, and you have to let them in. This is just the equivalent of an unbreakable lock on your house. You shouldn't ever have to register your encryption keys with some authority, and no one should be able to unilateraly demand that you turn it over; but with a proper warrant it should be just like any other thing.
This isn't even bad for most of the reasons that people are mentioning. Most corporations give money to both political parties (although many do favor one or the other). I mean, you don't want your access cut off if one particular guy wins . ..
Hence this tactic, which I've heard used by Tom DeLay quite a bit. You tie legislative favors not only to donations to your party, but the absence to your opponent. Donate to a Democrat? Don't try lobbying to the Republican leadership in Washington right now. I read this as no more than that message -- we're in power, don't try to hedge your bets. It's worked on K Street, but Nokia may be another matter.
This is a perfect example of why you want competing products in the world. The Microsoft rep is being disingenuous when he says that their customers don't want new features; the Microsoft way is to wait for customers to decide what they want, then make something just like it.
A resurgence in the browser wars will just serve to make both browsers better, and that's the way customers get better products. Since Firefox is an open project, there is no central company for Microsoft to destroy this time. We'll have to see how it all works out, but no matter what, it's good for the user.
Even if IBM ripped off some SVR4 code from SCO and put it into some of its products, that does not implicate Linux. At all. All of the posturing from SCO is simply an attempt to obfuscate the following facts:
(1) SCO has all the SV code.
(2) SCO has access to all the code in Linux.
If there is no overlap between these two, then there is no copyright infringement, despite the crack-addled theories proposed. They may have a case against IBM for contract breach from one of their previous dealings, but I really doubt it.
Marketers might not want to embrace this too much; it might actually reveal that some of their favorite (read: profitable) techniques don't actually work. Remember how it turned out that no one clicked on banner ads? Like that.
But we really need to use it wisely. I don't think the Supreme Court is likely to take this particular case this term; the reasoning of the 9th Circuit is solid, and it's certainly in-line with what the SC itself has found copyright law to allow.
But this is no time to become complacent. Congress has the power to write/rewrite the copyright laws at its discretion, and the Supreme Court has largely decided that it can't (or won't) interfere with that power. Expect the fight to shift to the legislative arena, with all the lobbying ability at the **AA's disposal. The INDUCE act and PIRATE act are just the harbingers of what they might try.
The lesson is that we've got to take P2P mainstream! It's got to be built into important applications that are used on a daily basis, so that lobbyists line up on the other side when the fight comes. It's good that it's already being used to distribute Linux distros, but we need enough uses that it is no longer possible to talk about banning it. There's probably only about a 2-year window before the legislation starts coming, so people who are software developers need to get cracking.
It's probably bad form to comment on my own review, but I didn't mean to confuse anyone, so I'm just going to say that lowe0's interpretation is 100% correct. If you read the book, you'll see what I mean.
I really can't see this getting past the legal department of a major corporation, at least for everyday use.
"Let's see, you want to introduce a new technology to hundreds of thousands of people who have no expertise or training in flight. This technology will be almost certain to kill or maim its users, and possibly many passersby, each and every time there is a mechanical or user error. Well, I for one see no problems with this scenario!"
Yahoo! lost a court case in France, in a French court, under the laws of France. Yahoo! then comes to the US seeking protection against this French court order.
The people that actually RTFA should have noticed that even Yahoo! wasn't too upset by this verdict. The reason is that if the French want to enforce the judgment, they'll have to bring an action in US court. When they do, Yahoo! will assert their First Amendment defense, and then they will win -- because a US court can't issue a ruling that would violate the Constitution. But they are not free from whatever sanctions that France imposes within France. Which despite the fact that this is a pretty stupid law, is probably the best result.
This is it! Of course we've seen things like this before, but Microsoft is preparing to ensure its eternal monopoly by making sure no one can leave its systems. It would be just fine by Redmond if no one could send e-mail without proper authorization.
But now that we've got patented standards, expect to see locked-in Office files, network protocols, the works. Most people and companies really couldn't switch from Windows if they could no longer open their files or network with a Windows machine.
The fact that Microsoft is willing to pull this now when some high-level spam solution is required is just reprehensible. In light of their withdrawal from the UN standards committee today I think we're seeing how the next 5 years is going to go.
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that "slander of title" is a really goofy cause of action to persue in this instance. A slander of title action is usually filed in the real estate context, where someone maliciously claims an interest in your property or files a lien against it, thus torpedoing your sale of the property. As far as I'm aware, it's never been used in an instance like this.
The suit that SCO should have filed was a breach of contract suit against Novell. Then they would make the arguments that they're making now -- e.g., that they paid so much money, that they need the copyrights, etc. -- and the relief they would seek would be a judicially recognized transfer of UNIX copyrights. I don't think they'd win, but they'd have a better shot than in any of the other litigation they're involved in. Honestly, this whole transaction was poorly drafted.
So the question now becomes why we've got this suit rather than the proper one. The reason is that filing that breach of contract suit eviscerates all of their other lawsuits. Remember IBM? AutoZone? Well, it'll be hard for SCO to be in one court arguing that they should be given copyrights and in others claiming violation of the copyrights that they will have Real Soon Now. (SCO's lawyers would argue this regardless.) Not to mention all those forms filed with the SEC and so forth. So the short answer is that if Novell can defeat the wrong lawsuit they probably won't ever have to face a proper one.
I'm as concerned about this technology as you are, but your idea about self-incrimination is not correct. The fifth amendment just protects you against testifying against yourself, it doesn't prevent you from having to turn over evidence that may tend to convict you, as that is not "testimony". It does not allow you to refuse authorities any evidence regarding a crime you've committed.
For instance, you may be compelled to give a blood sample in a paternity case. The police can take your fingerprints, and you can be required to speak or write something so a jury can see how your voice or handwriting compares to a recording or document in evidence. And possibly most apropos, if you've been committing some kind of fraud or other crime where it would matter, the authorities may seize your documents. (Remember Enron? Remember how they got in trouble for that shredding? Ever wonder why they didn't claim the privilege against self-incrimination? Because they couldn't.)
Re:Ultimately it comes down to human responsibilit
on
I, Robot Hits the Theaters
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I think that's a little overblown, especially since we don't know what an AI would look like.
Have you ever read "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter? In it he raises the interesting thought that AI will actually be located somewhere in a mass of software and that the "entity" will have no control over its lower level functions, in the same way that you are sentient but cannot will any particular neuron to fire. Rather, your sentience somehow congeals out of the neural activity, and the sentience of an AI would probably congeal out of complex software functioning.
So it's entirely possible that an AI might not be any smarter than a person, and also quite likely that AIs would have to learn, just like people do (i.e., no "memory dumps" from parents). Machines may very well revolt someday, but giving them superhuman attributes before ever seeing one is a bit paranoid.
They'd tell you that every farmer should go out and license a patented plant variant every year. That way if this happens to you, you'd be able to point at the license fee you'd already paid as evidence that you respected intellectual property, that you didn't intend for this other strain to be on your property, etc. etc.
Of course you'll be forbidden from collecting seed to replant the next year or doing any breeding experiments of your own, but you don't want to be a PIRATE, do you?
Ah, but that's the point, see? It used to be that a patent was something that you got in order to safeguard your important advance so as to avoid the "free rider" problem -- that your competitors wouldn't be able to mooch off your R&D costs.
But now that so many patents are granted where the major expense is the patent application itself, the whole point of the exercise is to assemble a huge portfolio so that no one in the world can do anything without infringing on one of them. Then none of your competitors can sue you for patent infringement because you swap licenses. The only person who doesn't benefit from this arrangement is someone who's come up with something brand new and has only one true innovation, putting the whole original idea of the patent system on its head.
Lord knows I hate the RIAA/MPAA as much as the next guy, but this is just stupid. Let's read between the lines here. The only reason that the author of this piece would be worrying about that letter from Comcast is if he's intending to download some copyrighted material himself, in which case he ought to be a man about it and fight The Man in court if it comes down to it and he believes it's within his rights to do. He's intending to lie, in other words.
Not only does he not have the courage to stand up for himself, he's causing trouble for the rest of us. People can use his connection to send out those penis-enlarging e-mails to the rest of us. And as mentioned above, the FBI isn't likely to be amused by his defense if he becomes the hub for a child-porn ring.
I'm generally a pro free trade person; I see the arguments to be made in favor of outsourcing.
What I do have a problem with is that consumers are not allowed to take advantage of the same competitive edges that these large companies are. Nike can hire Chinese workers because they're cheaper, OK, I can live with that. Why can't I buy a Chinese DVD (legitimate, not a knockoff) or an Indian pharmaceutical product if I want to? Instead I've got to pay American prices (highly inflated) even though these people have products to sell, advanced communication can get me in touch with them, and transportation can get it to me cheaply.
The Word planning team discovered that the WordPerfect sales force was going around to customers and showing Word opening a complex WordPerfect file (printer.tst) to show how bad the conversion was, and therefore how pointless it would be to try to switch to Word. So the Word team organized a special dev team that focused entirely on WordPerfect document import, "reverse-engineering" the WordPerfect file format (documentation for which was jealously guarded, as was the norm back then).
And of course Microsoft now uses open file formats, which mean that OpenOffice can seamlessly open Word files. Microsoft would certainly never try to keep people using its products by suggesting that other products would be unable to open its files. It's features and price that sell product today, boys and girls!
I call shennanigans on 1. above. Pilate's term as procurator of Judea was well documented by Josephus and Philo (the latter of whom complained to Caligula about his various excesses). In addition there are Roman records of his recall to Vitellius, the legate at Syria, and the subsequent return to Rome to face charges of excessive cruelty, which led to his exile. Plus he was as things stood a minor goverment official and wouldn't have coins or statuary in his image.
The claims of the Bible about how Pilate acted in the particular case of the trial of Jesus may be accurate or inaccurate, I can't say -- but no one ever claimed he wasn't a real person, as far as I am aware.
A victory by IBM on the motion for declaratory judgment would be fantastic, but it wouldn't be the end of this lawsuit. SCO is actually not making any copyright or trade secret claims against IBM as of their most recent amended complaint (which is centered on bizarre contract interpretations); IBM is simply trying to close that avenue down for them to try and use in the future. However, this is a Good Thing for other people, because if granted it will put the kibosh on many of SCO's other claims. If IBM didn't violate any copyrights, how could AutoZone? But it's not time to break out the champagne yet -- especially until the judge actually rules on the thing.
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You are correct, sir. And in this case, you have the choice to turn over the encryption key or go to jail. I guess the major difference is that it's impossible to build a front door that the cops can't break down, whereas you can have encryption that is unfeasible to break. If the cops have a warrant to search your documents, then they can look through your diary to make sure that there aren't any of the things they're looking for in there. I agree if they've got a warrant to look for, say, a stolen stereo, they can't just riffle through your personal papers.
Although I'm in favor of strong encryption, it's not as if this is an unreasonable idea, as long as you get due process. I mean, the cops can go to a judge and get a warrant to search your house if they have probable cause to think there is something illegal in there, and you have to let them in. This is just the equivalent of an unbreakable lock on your house. You shouldn't ever have to register your encryption keys with some authority, and no one should be able to unilateraly demand that you turn it over; but with a proper warrant it should be just like any other thing.
Hence this tactic, which I've heard used by Tom DeLay quite a bit. You tie legislative favors not only to donations to your party, but the absence to your opponent. Donate to a Democrat? Don't try lobbying to the Republican leadership in Washington right now. I read this as no more than that message -- we're in power, don't try to hedge your bets. It's worked on K Street, but Nokia may be another matter.
This is a perfect example of why you want competing products in the world. The Microsoft rep is being disingenuous when he says that their customers don't want new features; the Microsoft way is to wait for customers to decide what they want, then make something just like it.
A resurgence in the browser wars will just serve to make both browsers better, and that's the way customers get better products. Since Firefox is an open project, there is no central company for Microsoft to destroy this time. We'll have to see how it all works out, but no matter what, it's good for the user.
(1) SCO has all the SV code.
(2) SCO has access to all the code in Linux.
If there is no overlap between these two, then there is no copyright infringement, despite the crack-addled theories proposed. They may have a case against IBM for contract breach from one of their previous dealings, but I really doubt it.
Marketers might not want to embrace this too much; it might actually reveal that some of their favorite (read: profitable) techniques don't actually work. Remember how it turned out that no one clicked on banner ads? Like that.
But this is no time to become complacent. Congress has the power to write/rewrite the copyright laws at its discretion, and the Supreme Court has largely decided that it can't (or won't) interfere with that power. Expect the fight to shift to the legislative arena, with all the lobbying ability at the **AA's disposal. The INDUCE act and PIRATE act are just the harbingers of what they might try.
The lesson is that we've got to take P2P mainstream! It's got to be built into important applications that are used on a daily basis, so that lobbyists line up on the other side when the fight comes. It's good that it's already being used to distribute Linux distros, but we need enough uses that it is no longer possible to talk about banning it. There's probably only about a 2-year window before the legislation starts coming, so people who are software developers need to get cracking.
It's probably bad form to comment on my own review, but I didn't mean to confuse anyone, so I'm just going to say that lowe0's interpretation is 100% correct. If you read the book, you'll see what I mean.
"Let's see, you want to introduce a new technology to hundreds of thousands of people who have no expertise or training in flight. This technology will be almost certain to kill or maim its users, and possibly many passersby, each and every time there is a mechanical or user error. Well, I for one see no problems with this scenario!"
Yahoo! lost a court case in France, in a French court, under the laws of France. Yahoo! then comes to the US seeking protection against this French court order.
The people that actually RTFA should have noticed that even Yahoo! wasn't too upset by this verdict. The reason is that if the French want to enforce the judgment, they'll have to bring an action in US court. When they do, Yahoo! will assert their First Amendment defense, and then they will win -- because a US court can't issue a ruling that would violate the Constitution. But they are not free from whatever sanctions that France imposes within France. Which despite the fact that this is a pretty stupid law, is probably the best result.
This is it! Of course we've seen things like this before, but Microsoft is preparing to ensure its eternal monopoly by making sure no one can leave its systems. It would be just fine by Redmond if no one could send e-mail without proper authorization. But now that we've got patented standards, expect to see locked-in Office files, network protocols, the works. Most people and companies really couldn't switch from Windows if they could no longer open their files or network with a Windows machine. The fact that Microsoft is willing to pull this now when some high-level spam solution is required is just reprehensible. In light of their withdrawal from the UN standards committee today I think we're seeing how the next 5 years is going to go.
The suit that SCO should have filed was a breach of contract suit against Novell. Then they would make the arguments that they're making now -- e.g., that they paid so much money, that they need the copyrights, etc. -- and the relief they would seek would be a judicially recognized transfer of UNIX copyrights. I don't think they'd win, but they'd have a better shot than in any of the other litigation they're involved in. Honestly, this whole transaction was poorly drafted.
So the question now becomes why we've got this suit rather than the proper one. The reason is that filing that breach of contract suit eviscerates all of their other lawsuits. Remember IBM? AutoZone? Well, it'll be hard for SCO to be in one court arguing that they should be given copyrights and in others claiming violation of the copyrights that they will have Real Soon Now. (SCO's lawyers would argue this regardless.) Not to mention all those forms filed with the SEC and so forth. So the short answer is that if Novell can defeat the wrong lawsuit they probably won't ever have to face a proper one.
I'm as concerned about this technology as you are, but your idea about self-incrimination is not correct. The fifth amendment just protects you against testifying against yourself, it doesn't prevent you from having to turn over evidence that may tend to convict you, as that is not "testimony". It does not allow you to refuse authorities any evidence regarding a crime you've committed. For instance, you may be compelled to give a blood sample in a paternity case. The police can take your fingerprints, and you can be required to speak or write something so a jury can see how your voice or handwriting compares to a recording or document in evidence. And possibly most apropos, if you've been committing some kind of fraud or other crime where it would matter, the authorities may seize your documents. (Remember Enron? Remember how they got in trouble for that shredding? Ever wonder why they didn't claim the privilege against self-incrimination? Because they couldn't.)
I think that's a little overblown, especially since we don't know what an AI would look like.
Have you ever read "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter? In it he raises the interesting thought that AI will actually be located somewhere in a mass of software and that the "entity" will have no control over its lower level functions, in the same way that you are sentient but cannot will any particular neuron to fire. Rather, your sentience somehow congeals out of the neural activity, and the sentience of an AI would probably congeal out of complex software functioning.
So it's entirely possible that an AI might not be any smarter than a person, and also quite likely that AIs would have to learn, just like people do (i.e., no "memory dumps" from parents). Machines may very well revolt someday, but giving them superhuman attributes before ever seeing one is a bit paranoid.
Of course you'll be forbidden from collecting seed to replant the next year or doing any breeding experiments of your own, but you don't want to be a PIRATE, do you?
But now that so many patents are granted where the major expense is the patent application itself, the whole point of the exercise is to assemble a huge portfolio so that no one in the world can do anything without infringing on one of them. Then none of your competitors can sue you for patent infringement because you swap licenses. The only person who doesn't benefit from this arrangement is someone who's come up with something brand new and has only one true innovation, putting the whole original idea of the patent system on its head.
Not only does he not have the courage to stand up for himself, he's causing trouble for the rest of us. People can use his connection to send out those penis-enlarging e-mails to the rest of us. And as mentioned above, the FBI isn't likely to be amused by his defense if he becomes the hub for a child-porn ring.
"Security through apathy". Yeah, right.
What I do have a problem with is that consumers are not allowed to take advantage of the same competitive edges that these large companies are. Nike can hire Chinese workers because they're cheaper, OK, I can live with that. Why can't I buy a Chinese DVD (legitimate, not a knockoff) or an Indian pharmaceutical product if I want to? Instead I've got to pay American prices (highly inflated) even though these people have products to sell, advanced communication can get me in touch with them, and transportation can get it to me cheaply.
The Word planning team discovered that the WordPerfect sales force was going around to customers and showing Word opening a complex WordPerfect file (printer.tst) to show how bad the conversion was, and therefore how pointless it would be to try to switch to Word. So the Word team organized a special dev team that focused entirely on WordPerfect document import, "reverse-engineering" the WordPerfect file format (documentation for which was jealously guarded, as was the norm back then).
And of course Microsoft now uses open file formats, which mean that OpenOffice can seamlessly open Word files. Microsoft would certainly never try to keep people using its products by suggesting that other products would be unable to open its files. It's features and price that sell product today, boys and girls!
I call shennanigans on 1. above. Pilate's term as procurator of Judea was well documented by Josephus and Philo (the latter of whom complained to Caligula about his various excesses). In addition there are Roman records of his recall to Vitellius, the legate at Syria, and the subsequent return to Rome to face charges of excessive cruelty, which led to his exile. Plus he was as things stood a minor goverment official and wouldn't have coins or statuary in his image. The claims of the Bible about how Pilate acted in the particular case of the trial of Jesus may be accurate or inaccurate, I can't say -- but no one ever claimed he wasn't a real person, as far as I am aware.
A victory by IBM on the motion for declaratory judgment would be fantastic, but it wouldn't be the end of this lawsuit. SCO is actually not making any copyright or trade secret claims against IBM as of their most recent amended complaint (which is centered on bizarre contract interpretations); IBM is simply trying to close that avenue down for them to try and use in the future. However, this is a Good Thing for other people, because if granted it will put the kibosh on many of SCO's other claims. If IBM didn't violate any copyrights, how could AutoZone? But it's not time to break out the champagne yet -- especially until the judge actually rules on the thing.