When I read this my first impression, though admittedly not an informed one, was "you mean people pay to use FAT?" I wish patents were more like trademarks, where if you don't vigorously defend them and instead let them go for a while, you lose them and they become public domain. Wouldn't that be nice, to get rid of all these situations as well as all of the "submarine patents" in one fell swoop?
There was one thing you said that resonated with me. I hope to give you a real answer to it.
My girlfriend often remarks to me when we see old American movies that 'that was when it was a much nicer America' not one so conditioned to lying to it's own people that no one knows what the truth is. Obviously I don't know what the actual truth is either.
I am under no illusions that America was ever some kind of utopia or anything like that. Throughout its history it has had problems, some of them quite egregious and shameful. What I think we can agree on is that it used to be a better, happier place than it is today and that there are reasons for this. I find most of those reasons to be mundane and not fully satisfying, so I will explain what I believe to be the one true principle from which all of those reasons are ultimately derived.
It was a nicer America because the people in general, from the most average to the most sophisticated, were more virtuous than they are today. I'll explain that another way. You cannot manipulate a virtuous man because he does not participate at all in that system of interpersonal control. That's my corollary to the old adage, "you cannot cheat an honest man." Indeed, you really cannot cheat an honest man because an honest man does not expect a reward that is out of porportion to his own contributions. If you're a really good liar, you can deceive him by simply failing to deliver, but you will never entice him with promises of easy money. That's half of it.
The other half of it is that compromised people demand compromised leaders. When people themselves are selfish, or deceitful, or manipulative, and believe that this is normal or acceptable, it's no surprise to the discerning that dishonest leaders can appeal to this. Lately in USA elections, it's become fashionable to discuss whether you can "have a beer" with the candidate. Compromised people who have maladaptive views of what is acceptable can really enjoy having a beer with a politician who knows how to tell them exactly what they want to hear. Honest people in the same situation would perceive that someone is trying to cater to a weakness that they do not possess.
The problem with truth is that in order to really appreciate it, you first have to be willing to look at yourself. This problem is compounded because people who are not honest, not virtuous, and are not actively trying to change that tend to have a lot of inner conflict. They usually don't know why. A few of them so thoroughly enjoy deceiving, manipulating and dominating others that they have no such conflicts. But most do at least give lip service to some kind of morality or some form of ethics because at least some small part of them believes or wants to believe in these things. The inner conflict is because this part of them finds itself in opposition to the desires and weaknesses that prevent them from responding to other people with true compassion and loving-kindness. In a way, that conflict (really the feeling of guilt it creates) can accumulate in that the longer it goes on, the tougher it can be to face it and call it what it is. In that way it develops a sort of momentum.
That momentum is more than mere inertia because this does not happen in isolation. It's viral in nature because angry, unhappy, or dissatisfied people lack grace and so their inner state is mirrored in what they say and do to others. As there are so few good examples and so little understanding of how to overcome this, the recipients of those negative words and actions react to and are influenced by them. They either retaliate or they want to retaliate and suppress it, substituting a negative judgment of some kind. The retaliation or the judgment have the same effect, which is to ensure that misery has its company. Incidentally, this is the wisdom behind the various religious prohibitions against "returning evil for evil". This describes the personal level.
But I guess that's the way it is around here anymore.
You certainly do seem to feel that way. As in, so far I have often seen you wait for someone to make a statement and then tell them what's wrong with it. This is a valuable service, and I do not intend to indicate otherwise, though I do wonder what you would say if it were you who began a thread and put forth your ideas.
I regret that a lot of people might say something like that to mock you. This makes it more difficult for me to say the same such that it doesn't come across that way. I don't intend to mock you at all, but I rather, to say that I see your point and feel that more good examples are needed if you really want to do something about it.
This requires the assumption that profitability is not in the interest of copyright holders.
I do disagree on this one point. It does not require the assumption that "profitability is not in the interest of copyright holders." It requires the belief (or the judgment call) that, after a relatively short period of time during which the copyright holder is allowed to enjoy thier monopoly, society's interest in the public domain carries more weight than the profit that could still have been earned by copyright holders had they been allowed to keep their monopoly for a longer time.
So long as the basic realities of this situation remain unrecognized, it is always going to seem like a hopelessly insoluble problem. So long as that is the case, it will appear to many that more and more restrictions are the only way to handle it.
If you have some great insight into this situation we'd all like to hear it. You're shooting down 99% of what anyone who supports any form of copyright says but you're not backing it up with anything.
For the most part, I addressed that two other comments (both of which were replies to you). The posts can be found here and here. The relevant portions:
Sure. That was once twelve years, and at a time when the mechanical printing press was the most technologically advanced method of distribution available. Just think of how many more copies of a work we can produce and sell in twelve years with modern technology and digital distribution. That would be a system that people can respect once again because it represents a good balance between the artists' temporary monopoly on their works and the public-domain benefit of society for being willing to grant that monopoly. When you make something respectable, people have a much higher chance of respecting it.
That's much better than making something unworthy of respect and grossly out of balance and then threatening people into going along with it. That's what the system is doing today, and gee, I just can't imagine why it's not working out...
That previous little paragraph is the part that especially the staunch "law and order" types often fail to understand. Continuing with quoting the other relevant portion:
Revamping your business model so that instead of being based on control, it is instead based on catering to your customers, giving them what they want the way they want it, at a reasonable price, and being a real joy to do business with, is another way to deal with the problem of piracy.
I'm going to address this a bit out-of-order because there was one point that I felt was most important.
Some people are just not capable of critical reasoning skills at the level you demonstrate - but are worthy contributors to our society.
That "at the level you demonstrate" part is tricky for me. Yes, at the risk of sounding egotistical (though it is not meant that way) I am aware that I am more skilled at this than most. In fact, for just that reason, I feel something of a responsibility to share it with people who appreciate it, particularly those who just need to see a decent example to realize their own abilities. However, I don't think I am anything too special. I just think that so many others are so stupid. What I have a problem with is that most of them don't have to be.
I think that, barring any diagnosed physical or mental disabilities, all people are capable of critical reasoning. To see my point would require some research into the public education system that we have today, how it got there, what its original stated goals were, and an understanding of a turning point in American history (other countries followed suit) during the 1800s when the desires of industrial tycoons replaced community standards when determining how to educate children. Let's say that it is "desirable" (and not by me), for the maintainence of the current status quo, for people to be just smart enough to do useful work and absolutely no smarter; certainly no wiser. That way they believe what they are told all too readily, don't question very much or do so in shallow or pre-patterned ways, and will accept almost anything if told that it's for their own good.
One of the effects of this which is easiest to see for yourself is the way education is done primarily by rote memorization and certainly not by showing people how anyone with basic literacy and mathematics skills is fully capable of educating themselves. That amounts to nothing less than conditioned dependence or conditioned helplessness. If you want to see a simple real-world effect of this, look at how the average person gives up so easily when it comes to the most basic computer skills even though this information is widely and freely available to anyone who can reach Google. These are not folks who can grok "problem, reaction, solution" (aka "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" of Hegel) or "bread and circus" and do not understand why the constant supply of false dichotomies offered on mainstream news about most issues is not real debate but debate framing.
I know of no better single reference for modern education than John Taylor Gatto. He has an excellent essay and a completely free online book.
And who decides? "I'm sorry, you are not smart enough to know what companies are evil, therefore you are not permitted to buy stuff." Surely this approach is ludicrous to even the most socialized of first world societies - right?
Of course that would be ludicrous. I think the real "triumph" of the current system is that it has so thoroughly discarded reasonable solutions that we start asking questions like this for lack of apparent alternatives.
In short, the problem you have with free markets are that they are free for everyone involved, and those who lack the mental acumen to see that they are being abused will continue to be abused.
If that happened in isolation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In my more cynical days, I would say "yeah, stupidity is supposed to have a price." However, it does not happen in isolation. It helps to determine the kinds of business practices and expectations that we all must deal with whether or not we have the acumen to recognize abuse. When people who lack that capability constitute the majority of the population, they harm both themselves and th
The problem is that people have too much respect for the government. Most people I talk to trust the government implicitly, and do not think they would do anything bad. They think all this "think of the children" and "terrists!" rights-erosion is perfectly acceptable in order for them to be "safe".
I assumed that my comment would be interpreted a certain way and I admit I probably should have been more specific. The honorable and decent way for (any) government to operate is as transparently as possible. Adequate transparency would mean not having to just take their word for it because you could investigate the matter for yourself, to your own satisfaction.
The government doesn't scare me nearly as much as my co-citizens do.
Unfortunately, most of them got that way because of "public" (government) education. Even if you don't agree with me that this is quite deliberate (as a thorough study of the origins of government schooling in the USA would quite clearly show to you), it should not be a controversial position to say that the government has failed to deliver a quality education that would deal with what you are talking about. I see all the "for the children" and "terrorists" arguments and I also see that they are not worthy to lick the boots of the Founding Fathers and what they had to say about freedom. This is not a matter of taste or preference; one of these viewpoints is clearly superior and more correct than the other and widespread ignorance is the only reason why this is not universally recognized.
"Just reading the summery makes me worried about the slew of "Moon landing never happened!" posts that are on the way"
As for me, I think we did go to the moon. However I feel that these so called images will be doctored to remove evidence of the alleged "ruins" that are littered across its surface..
I don't think the problem is whether or not we went to the moon. The problem is that we have a government which has no problem lying to us. You really want to shut up the conspiracy theorists? Restore the honor and decency and respect for the citizens that the government of the USA once had. The way I see it, that's what this whole deal is really about.
Just to respond to your parenthetical, works are copyrighted, not copywritten, because copyright law applies, not copywrite law.
What I experienced there, well, if there is not a name for the effect there probably should be. It's where you know the correct usage, and all on your own, would use it automatically without thinking twice about it. Then you see a different usage and suddenly you question both yours and the different one.
Sure, I could moan about "grammar nazis!" and all of that but I don't feel that way and don't believe this describes you at all. I want to get things right as much as I can reasonably help it. So, thank you for clearing that up and reminding me of the correct term.
When copyright is so messed up that a company is making $2 million per year on five minutes of work "composing" a 6-note tune ripped off from someone else, written by someone back in the 1890's who's been dead for over 60 years, with words written by no-one-knows-who, then it's no surprise that the public blatantly disregards it.
It amazes me how so many people want to deny the cause-and-effect relationship there. You are exactly right that it is no surprise. It is patently obvious and should be easily predictable.
There is a great deal of propaganda that seems designed to portray the average person as an incurably lazy and unethical freeloader who just wants to "steal" anything that isn't nailed down. That just isn't the case at all. We can have some lively debate about whether engaging in a form of civil disobedience with regard to copyright is a valid way to protest against its abuses. But it is simply a lie to say that widespread infringement happens in a vacuum and that the business practices of the media companies and their legislative efforts have nothing to do with it. It's a lie that a lot of people really seem to want to believe, as though believing in it would make it true.
So long as the basic realities of this situation remain unrecognized, it is always going to seem like a hopelessly insoluble problem. So long as that is the case, it will appear to many that more and more restrictions are the only way to handle it.
That's a slippery slope - how would you define trade organizations?
The RIAA is a group made up of corporations. Something like the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is made up of mostly individuals, as I understand. Do you propose that we just let corporations stand alone as singleton entities, but let individual professionals join groups that help further their careers, share information, etc? How do you deal with someone who wholly owns a corporation? (I do). Could I personally join an association, but my corporation cannot?
Both the ACM and the RIAA are "associations", but I've never heard of the ACM running out and suing everything under the sun - in fact, they provide a ton of valuable information, awards, and knowledge sharing. Until I did some research this am, I had no idea that the RIAA was actually formed to ensure the quality of professionally produced recordings was consistent - and they still do this today, when they are not busy suing.
To answer your question in two parts: Would it benefit the population to outlaw all trade organizations? I don't know, as I am not aware of the activities of them all.
Do I think we should, if it is demonstrable that their activities harm the general population? No - I don't think we should outlaw all trade organizations, as I believe in unrestricted free market enterprise. If we can demonstrate that a particular group is having a negative impact on the rest of us, we should shout about it from the treetops, let everyone know what we have found and let the market take care of itself. If Joe Sixpack were aware of all the harm that came to him and his family by his patronizing a particular business, I believe he would stop patronizing, and tell his friends, who will stop as well, and before long, the business goes away.
Unless the idiots in US Govt bail them out.
Thank you for such a good response. What you wrote was valuable because it did cause me to think differently about the subject.
I will say that I have one and only one problem with free-market concepts. So far as I know, they all suffer from one fatal flaw: they assume that customers always act rationally and in their own best interests. What we have now is an unbalanced situation because corporations DO act rationally and in their own best interests while their customers do not. Over time, this guarantees that the customers are the losers. For lack of a better solution (that we're willing to use), we use government to try and make up for this and I don't like it.
The only real solution I know of won't happen anytime soon because it would threaten the status quo and render powerless a lot of people who have lots of wealth and power today, and if there's anything we as a culture don't believe in, that would be it. This would be to make very high-quality instruction in critical thinking, logic, reasoning, argumentation, and propaganda techniques (i.e. how to recognize them) a standard, universal part of even the most basic education. And I do mean that those courses should be *tough* and comprehensive. If that were the case, it would quite literally change the world and free markets would be the least of it.
DRM is a side effect of people who feel that theft is a valid response to copyright. It can be argued how effective it is but do you really think media producers enjoy producing DRM for their own amusement? And again, I agree that some aspects of copyright need redone, so let's redo it.
No, DRM is one way to deal with the problem of piracy and it's adversarial towards the paying customers. Revamping your business model so that instead of being based on control, it is instead based on catering to your customers, giving them what they want the way they want it, at a reasonable price, and being a real joy to do business with, is another way to deal with the problem of piracy. That's how I feel about the issue as I refuse to limit myself to "pro-DRM versus pro-infringement."
That's why I call for copyright reform and not the full abolition of all copyright. I think most of your response reflects that this did not occur to you. You really seem to be lumping me together with other people who make different arguments that superficially sound like mine, hence your repeated suggestions that my goal is to say that infringement ("theft") is fine and good. I have never claimed that copyright infringement is some kind of impeccably right or correct thing to do, only that it was quite predictable and that one need not be a student of human nature to recognize this.
I am not saying you are or are not doing this, but just that generally this is how I feel about these discussions. When someone denies that there is a connection between being a needlessly adversarial, universally reviled asshole on the one hand, and having people feel that it is justifiable to rip you off on the other hand, I feel that I am dealing with either a deluded person or an intellectually dishonest person. Just as soon as the media companies quit being their own worst enemies, then and only then is it reasonable to talk about whether the government should create new laws to help them out.
And don't give me this crap about respect. It has nothing to do with the issue. The issue is much simpler than that but people confuse the issue by bringing all kinds of false pretense to it. Respect for the customer is just one of those false pretenses. I know that if I feel a company doesn't respect me as a customer I stop buying from them. It's that simple and respect shouldn't be another crutch of defense for breaking the law.
I clearly indicated that the respect I was talking about was for copyright law. Y'know, as an institution. Whether or not I want to buy a CD from Sony won't rewrite copyright law. Whether our collective political priorities and goals change because enough people decide that the status quo isn't working very well for anyone, including the media companies, now that might do the trick. I'll say the same thing about this that I said about the companies themselves: anyone who denies that there is a connection between whether or not the average person respects copyright law because he can see that it is right and good (i.e. balanced) on the one hand, and the rate of infringement on the other, is either deluded or intellectually dishonest. If you think you can change this or make it go away by calling it crap, well, good luck with that.
If you think it's so offensive why do you deal with them or their product in the first place?
I don't think it's offensive. I think it's wrong. I generally do not deal with them or their products. However, what they are doing is wrong whether they do it to me or to someone else. So, I don't see the point in bringing up what I personally do or don't do.
The only people I feel bad for in all of this is the honest citizen who abides by the law but gets caught up in it all.
You have now identified the one and only subject of my entire post, the part that I consider to be wrong and not merely "offensive".
Something of that sort is already in place in Canada. There's an extra fee on blank media because it COULD be used to infringe.
Course, that's right now about the only thing saving us from the DMCA at the moment, so I'm not going to argue with it:P.
I do have some issues with the government deciding that whether a business model succeeds or fails should be their problem. However, having said that, I must concede that what Canada is doing is one of the neatest solutions to this problem. "Here's your money, now shut up and stop suing people." In a way it's much more like the old-style systems (think of the Renaissance) of having a "patron of the arts." That old-style system didn't depend on being able to sell a ton of copies in order to have some amazing works of art by some incredibly talented artists that future generations now enjoy freely.
I'm curious - we frequently hear of the RIAA suing this, that, and the other thing. Is there somewhere we can go to see just how many concurrent ongoing cases involve the RIAA on a global scale?
I'm guessing no.
Though I posit that if we had access to a simple count of current litigation broken down by who is suing whom, the RIAA would be somewhere near the top in terms of the number of suits they have filed and are currently working.
Makes me wonder one thing. Do you think it would benefit the general population or harm the general population if we simply outlawed all trade organizations and forced all companies in an industry to act as completely independent entities? Because personally, I have never seen them do anything that I found to be desirable though I admit that such things probably don't make the news.
Thank you. I am starting to feel about nytimes.com the same way I feel about tinyurl.com - if it appears in the URL, I know the link is probably not worth visiting.
You're not the victim. Downloading copywriten works is not your right nor do you have some special privilege to it.
I think the real problem is that people who don't download copywritten (copyrighted?) works are also being affected. Just look at the legions of users, particularly of PC games, who find to their dismay that the people who pirated the game have an easier time using it than the people who purchased the game. That's just one side-effect of DRM. Look at some of the other side-effects of DRM, such as the possibility of killing off the first sale doctrine (this is properly called a power grab) and the generally unfriendly practice of telling you what you may do with media after you purchase it and use it legally.
As the OP said, if you don't like the system, change the system.
Do you have millions of dollars that you're willing to part with, a small army of lawyers and lobbyists, and perhaps also the ability to run a national media campaign? Because that's what it would take to even have a chance.
I know that these facts aren't going to stop a single download but an artist should have some limited rights to the use and distribution of their works.
Sure. That was once twelve years, and at a time when the mechanical printing press was the most technologically advanced method of distribution available. Just think of how many more copies of a work we can produce and sell in twelve years with modern technology and digital distribution. That would be a system that people can respect once again because it represents a good balance between the artists' temporary monopoly on their works and the public-domain benefit of society for being willing to grant that monopoly. When you make something respectable, people have a much higher chance of respecting it.
That's much better than making something unworthy of respect and grossly out of balance and then threatening people into going along with it. That's what the system is doing today, and gee, I just can't imagine why it's not working out...
If you want to get an idea of what kind of people you're dealing with and why there is increasing resistance against them, try this link.
I'm sorry, but I've worked in this area for years. I was responsible for moving data and source files to and from Unix to DOS to VMS to OSs that are even deader than VMS
Sorry, but if that applied to me, I would say "hey, the vast majority of people don't need to do this, so this is (relatively) uniquely my problem and I should find my own solution, such as conversion programs". What I would not say is "hey, I need to modify a standard protocol that everyone uses to fit my (relatively) unique problem even though most of the users of that protocol don't need this functionality."
Now, since FTP already has this functionality, there's nothing wrong with using it. But that's a far cry from saying that this is really the job of a transport protocol or that it was really a good design decision to put it there. The correct solution for this problem is a standardized way to represent data or at the very least, the capability of recognizing multiple formats. Really, FTP worrying about this would be a little like Ethernet trying to detect and transcode streaming video. If I submitted a serious proposal that we modify Ethernet to transcode streaming video, I'd be told that this functionality does not belong at the link layer and that it's the application's problem to worry about this.
The crux of the disagreement is this: some people think that their convenience overrides what would otherwise be recognized as a poor or at least questionable design decision. Other people think that the soundness of a design decision should come first and convenience should be a secondary concern, particularly when there are other, quite viable options for handling the problem. I am in the latter group.
Doesn't that cover about anything on the internet, ftp, http, ssh.... Gee they could sue just on a grounds that the technology "maybe" used for illegal activity.
Hmmm.. sue the founders of tcpip because they allow for the "transport" of such illegal activities...
That would be the logically consistent position, yes.
They've got the talent, the resources, and the legal team. This seems like an excellent time for Google to "be evil" and take the law into their own hands.
Yeah. Take the law into their own hands! With... a team of lawyers.
The only times I've seen FTP report a successful file transfer and have a file discrepency is when a binary file has been transferred in ASCII mode and the CR/LF sequences are being swapped for just CRs, or visa versa. Nothing wrong with the protocol, PEBKAC...
Since ASCII files are also ultimately represented as particular sequences of binary data, why does FTP even have an ASCII transfer mode? Or, why would you want to download a file and receive anything other than an exact duplicate of the file that was sitting on the server?
I know that Windows uses CR/LF for line termination and *nix uses just LF. That's a very minor inconvenience at worst, though my reasoning should hold up even if it were a big deal. Most (all?) *nix text editors I've ever worked with had no problem reading both formats, and little standalone utilities to convert the formats are readily available and have been for some time now. Additionally, on Windows, Notepad is the only app I've ever seen that had trouble with the *nix format (the built-in Wordpad can handle it fine). So I don't understand why the lower-level transfer protocol is the best place to include this functionality, as it really doesn't seem to belong there. It just seems like it's not the job of a file transfer protocol to concern itself with what an independent, unrelated application can or cannot do with the file after it's transferred.
I think AC has the only correct response to this post. All of the people talking about CRs must not have any experience using FTP over a spotty connection, because it is quite common to run into these kinds of issues, especially on lengthy transfers.
Thanks, I was hoping for a real answer and I suspect that you are right about this. The only thing I can't help but wonder is, at what point does it make sense to address why that network is so unreliable, instead of finding clever solutions to deal with its lack of reliability? If I am correctly understanding the OP, it's not the microwave link but the "internal network". I am picturing a standard Ethernet LAN; if that's the case, it really should not be difficult to fix that network and should require neither unusual equipment nor special expertise. That is particularly true when the files transferred across it are described as "mission critical."
It's only inevitable if we allow it to happen. What everyone seems to forget is that the government is only as powerful as we let them be. We have the ability, and right as granted by the constitution, to go against any government that stops acting in our best interest. The real problem is when people stop caring and just let it happen. There are positives and negatives to every system, every idea, if we stopped every new technology from being used because of the possibility it could be used against us we would have no progress. Instead of fighting against an idea you should fight against the misuse of the ideas, that is what makes a society worth living in.
The problem is that a single distraction, a single moment of weakness, or even something as simple as a different ideology becoming a brief fad, is enough to get those kinds of laws passed. Once they are passed, they are NOT going to be repealed. Over enough time, there WILL inevitably be such an opening to get something like that passed. If nothing else, just one disaster (natural or otherwise) is often enough to temporarily change the direction the winds are blowing and people will accept things they otherwise would not. If the USA has not already proven this with recent events, I am not sure what standard of proof would ever suffice.
That's one way in which the deck is stacked against us. The people who want these kinds of restrictions can just keep trying, again and again, year after year, until they finally get what they want. Once they do, the rest of us are stuck with it. Meanwhile, those who don't want these things have to be ever-vigilent, constantly defeating the proposal over and over.
That's why it is better not to have these systems that somehow, we have managed to survive for centuries without.
The summary states that with FTP, the downloaded files were of the wrong size. Can anyone explain why TCP's efforts to to deal with unreliable networks, such as the retransmission of unacknowledged packets and their reassembly in proper order, would not already deal with this? I am familiar with the concepts involved but I think I lack the low-level understanding of how you would get the kind of results the story is reporting.
Slashdot Mirror
When I read this my first impression, though admittedly not an informed one, was "you mean people pay to use FAT?" I wish patents were more like trademarks, where if you don't vigorously defend them and instead let them go for a while, you lose them and they become public domain. Wouldn't that be nice, to get rid of all these situations as well as all of the "submarine patents" in one fell swoop?
I am under no illusions that America was ever some kind of utopia or anything like that. Throughout its history it has had problems, some of them quite egregious and shameful. What I think we can agree on is that it used to be a better, happier place than it is today and that there are reasons for this. I find most of those reasons to be mundane and not fully satisfying, so I will explain what I believe to be the one true principle from which all of those reasons are ultimately derived.
It was a nicer America because the people in general, from the most average to the most sophisticated, were more virtuous than they are today. I'll explain that another way. You cannot manipulate a virtuous man because he does not participate at all in that system of interpersonal control. That's my corollary to the old adage, "you cannot cheat an honest man." Indeed, you really cannot cheat an honest man because an honest man does not expect a reward that is out of porportion to his own contributions. If you're a really good liar, you can deceive him by simply failing to deliver, but you will never entice him with promises of easy money. That's half of it.
The other half of it is that compromised people demand compromised leaders. When people themselves are selfish, or deceitful, or manipulative, and believe that this is normal or acceptable, it's no surprise to the discerning that dishonest leaders can appeal to this. Lately in USA elections, it's become fashionable to discuss whether you can "have a beer" with the candidate. Compromised people who have maladaptive views of what is acceptable can really enjoy having a beer with a politician who knows how to tell them exactly what they want to hear. Honest people in the same situation would perceive that someone is trying to cater to a weakness that they do not possess.
The problem with truth is that in order to really appreciate it, you first have to be willing to look at yourself. This problem is compounded because people who are not honest, not virtuous, and are not actively trying to change that tend to have a lot of inner conflict. They usually don't know why. A few of them so thoroughly enjoy deceiving, manipulating and dominating others that they have no such conflicts. But most do at least give lip service to some kind of morality or some form of ethics because at least some small part of them believes or wants to believe in these things. The inner conflict is because this part of them finds itself in opposition to the desires and weaknesses that prevent them from responding to other people with true compassion and loving-kindness. In a way, that conflict (really the feeling of guilt it creates) can accumulate in that the longer it goes on, the tougher it can be to face it and call it what it is. In that way it develops a sort of momentum.
That momentum is more than mere inertia because this does not happen in isolation. It's viral in nature because angry, unhappy, or dissatisfied people lack grace and so their inner state is mirrored in what they say and do to others. As there are so few good examples and so little understanding of how to overcome this, the recipients of those negative words and actions react to and are influenced by them. They either retaliate or they want to retaliate and suppress it, substituting a negative judgment of some kind. The retaliation or the judgment have the same effect, which is to ensure that misery has its company. Incidentally, this is the wisdom behind the various religious prohibitions against "returning evil for evil". This describes the personal level.
When this goes on, unr
You certainly do seem to feel that way. As in, so far I have often seen you wait for someone to make a statement and then tell them what's wrong with it. This is a valuable service, and I do not intend to indicate otherwise, though I do wonder what you would say if it were you who began a thread and put forth your ideas.
I regret that a lot of people might say something like that to mock you. This makes it more difficult for me to say the same such that it doesn't come across that way. I don't intend to mock you at all, but I rather, to say that I see your point and feel that more good examples are needed if you really want to do something about it.
I do disagree on this one point. It does not require the assumption that "profitability is not in the interest of copyright holders." It requires the belief (or the judgment call) that, after a relatively short period of time during which the copyright holder is allowed to enjoy thier monopoly, society's interest in the public domain carries more weight than the profit that could still have been earned by copyright holders had they been allowed to keep their monopoly for a longer time.
So long as the basic realities of this situation remain unrecognized, it is always going to seem like a hopelessly insoluble problem. So long as that is the case, it will appear to many that more and more restrictions are the only way to handle it. If you have some great insight into this situation we'd all like to hear it. You're shooting down 99% of what anyone who supports any form of copyright says but you're not backing it up with anything.
For the most part, I addressed that two other comments (both of which were replies to you). The posts can be found here and here. The relevant portions:
That previous little paragraph is the part that especially the staunch "law and order" types often fail to understand. Continuing with quoting the other relevant portion:
I'm going to address this a bit out-of-order because there was one point that I felt was most important.
That "at the level you demonstrate" part is tricky for me. Yes, at the risk of sounding egotistical (though it is not meant that way) I am aware that I am more skilled at this than most. In fact, for just that reason, I feel something of a responsibility to share it with people who appreciate it, particularly those who just need to see a decent example to realize their own abilities. However, I don't think I am anything too special. I just think that so many others are so stupid. What I have a problem with is that most of them don't have to be. I think that, barring any diagnosed physical or mental disabilities, all people are capable of critical reasoning. To see my point would require some research into the public education system that we have today, how it got there, what its original stated goals were, and an understanding of a turning point in American history (other countries followed suit) during the 1800s when the desires of industrial tycoons replaced community standards when determining how to educate children. Let's say that it is "desirable" (and not by me), for the maintainence of the current status quo, for people to be just smart enough to do useful work and absolutely no smarter; certainly no wiser. That way they believe what they are told all too readily, don't question very much or do so in shallow or pre-patterned ways, and will accept almost anything if told that it's for their own good. One of the effects of this which is easiest to see for yourself is the way education is done primarily by rote memorization and certainly not by showing people how anyone with basic literacy and mathematics skills is fully capable of educating themselves. That amounts to nothing less than conditioned dependence or conditioned helplessness. If you want to see a simple real-world effect of this, look at how the average person gives up so easily when it comes to the most basic computer skills even though this information is widely and freely available to anyone who can reach Google. These are not folks who can grok "problem, reaction, solution" (aka "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" of Hegel) or "bread and circus" and do not understand why the constant supply of false dichotomies offered on mainstream news about most issues is not real debate but debate framing. I know of no better single reference for modern education than John Taylor Gatto. He has an excellent essay and a completely free online book.
Of course that would be ludicrous. I think the real "triumph" of the current system is that it has so thoroughly discarded reasonable solutions that we start asking questions like this for lack of apparent alternatives.
If that happened in isolation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In my more cynical days, I would say "yeah, stupidity is supposed to have a price." However, it does not happen in isolation. It helps to determine the kinds of business practices and expectations that we all must deal with whether or not we have the acumen to recognize abuse. When people who lack that capability constitute the majority of the population, they harm both themselves and th
I assumed that my comment would be interpreted a certain way and I admit I probably should have been more specific. The honorable and decent way for (any) government to operate is as transparently as possible. Adequate transparency would mean not having to just take their word for it because you could investigate the matter for yourself, to your own satisfaction.
Unfortunately, most of them got that way because of "public" (government) education. Even if you don't agree with me that this is quite deliberate (as a thorough study of the origins of government schooling in the USA would quite clearly show to you), it should not be a controversial position to say that the government has failed to deliver a quality education that would deal with what you are talking about. I see all the "for the children" and "terrorists" arguments and I also see that they are not worthy to lick the boots of the Founding Fathers and what they had to say about freedom. This is not a matter of taste or preference; one of these viewpoints is clearly superior and more correct than the other and widespread ignorance is the only reason why this is not universally recognized.
"Just reading the summery makes me worried about the slew of "Moon landing never happened!" posts that are on the way"
As for me, I think we did go to the moon. However I feel that these so called images will be doctored to remove evidence of the alleged "ruins" that are littered across its surface..
I don't think the problem is whether or not we went to the moon. The problem is that we have a government which has no problem lying to us. You really want to shut up the conspiracy theorists? Restore the honor and decency and respect for the citizens that the government of the USA once had. The way I see it, that's what this whole deal is really about.
Just to respond to your parenthetical, works are copyrighted, not copywritten, because copyright law applies, not copywrite law.
What I experienced there, well, if there is not a name for the effect there probably should be. It's where you know the correct usage, and all on your own, would use it automatically without thinking twice about it. Then you see a different usage and suddenly you question both yours and the different one.
Sure, I could moan about "grammar nazis!" and all of that but I don't feel that way and don't believe this describes you at all. I want to get things right as much as I can reasonably help it. So, thank you for clearing that up and reminding me of the correct term.
When copyright is so messed up that a company is making $2 million per year on five minutes of work "composing" a 6-note tune ripped off from someone else, written by someone back in the 1890's who's been dead for over 60 years, with words written by no-one-knows-who, then it's no surprise that the public blatantly disregards it.
It amazes me how so many people want to deny the cause-and-effect relationship there. You are exactly right that it is no surprise. It is patently obvious and should be easily predictable.
There is a great deal of propaganda that seems designed to portray the average person as an incurably lazy and unethical freeloader who just wants to "steal" anything that isn't nailed down. That just isn't the case at all. We can have some lively debate about whether engaging in a form of civil disobedience with regard to copyright is a valid way to protest against its abuses. But it is simply a lie to say that widespread infringement happens in a vacuum and that the business practices of the media companies and their legislative efforts have nothing to do with it. It's a lie that a lot of people really seem to want to believe, as though believing in it would make it true.
So long as the basic realities of this situation remain unrecognized, it is always going to seem like a hopelessly insoluble problem. So long as that is the case, it will appear to many that more and more restrictions are the only way to handle it.
That's a slippery slope - how would you define trade organizations? The RIAA is a group made up of corporations. Something like the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is made up of mostly individuals, as I understand. Do you propose that we just let corporations stand alone as singleton entities, but let individual professionals join groups that help further their careers, share information, etc? How do you deal with someone who wholly owns a corporation? (I do). Could I personally join an association, but my corporation cannot? Both the ACM and the RIAA are "associations", but I've never heard of the ACM running out and suing everything under the sun - in fact, they provide a ton of valuable information, awards, and knowledge sharing. Until I did some research this am, I had no idea that the RIAA was actually formed to ensure the quality of professionally produced recordings was consistent - and they still do this today, when they are not busy suing. To answer your question in two parts: Would it benefit the population to outlaw all trade organizations? I don't know, as I am not aware of the activities of them all. Do I think we should, if it is demonstrable that their activities harm the general population? No - I don't think we should outlaw all trade organizations, as I believe in unrestricted free market enterprise. If we can demonstrate that a particular group is having a negative impact on the rest of us, we should shout about it from the treetops, let everyone know what we have found and let the market take care of itself. If Joe Sixpack were aware of all the harm that came to him and his family by his patronizing a particular business, I believe he would stop patronizing, and tell his friends, who will stop as well, and before long, the business goes away. Unless the idiots in US Govt bail them out.
Thank you for such a good response. What you wrote was valuable because it did cause me to think differently about the subject.
I will say that I have one and only one problem with free-market concepts. So far as I know, they all suffer from one fatal flaw: they assume that customers always act rationally and in their own best interests. What we have now is an unbalanced situation because corporations DO act rationally and in their own best interests while their customers do not. Over time, this guarantees that the customers are the losers. For lack of a better solution (that we're willing to use), we use government to try and make up for this and I don't like it.
The only real solution I know of won't happen anytime soon because it would threaten the status quo and render powerless a lot of people who have lots of wealth and power today, and if there's anything we as a culture don't believe in, that would be it. This would be to make very high-quality instruction in critical thinking, logic, reasoning, argumentation, and propaganda techniques (i.e. how to recognize them) a standard, universal part of even the most basic education. And I do mean that those courses should be *tough* and comprehensive. If that were the case, it would quite literally change the world and free markets would be the least of it.
No, DRM is one way to deal with the problem of piracy and it's adversarial towards the paying customers. Revamping your business model so that instead of being based on control, it is instead based on catering to your customers, giving them what they want the way they want it, at a reasonable price, and being a real joy to do business with, is another way to deal with the problem of piracy. That's how I feel about the issue as I refuse to limit myself to "pro-DRM versus pro-infringement."
That's why I call for copyright reform and not the full abolition of all copyright. I think most of your response reflects that this did not occur to you. You really seem to be lumping me together with other people who make different arguments that superficially sound like mine, hence your repeated suggestions that my goal is to say that infringement ("theft") is fine and good. I have never claimed that copyright infringement is some kind of impeccably right or correct thing to do, only that it was quite predictable and that one need not be a student of human nature to recognize this.
I am not saying you are or are not doing this, but just that generally this is how I feel about these discussions. When someone denies that there is a connection between being a needlessly adversarial, universally reviled asshole on the one hand, and having people feel that it is justifiable to rip you off on the other hand, I feel that I am dealing with either a deluded person or an intellectually dishonest person. Just as soon as the media companies quit being their own worst enemies, then and only then is it reasonable to talk about whether the government should create new laws to help them out.
I clearly indicated that the respect I was talking about was for copyright law. Y'know, as an institution. Whether or not I want to buy a CD from Sony won't rewrite copyright law. Whether our collective political priorities and goals change because enough people decide that the status quo isn't working very well for anyone, including the media companies, now that might do the trick. I'll say the same thing about this that I said about the companies themselves: anyone who denies that there is a connection between whether or not the average person respects copyright law because he can see that it is right and good (i.e. balanced) on the one hand, and the rate of infringement on the other, is either deluded or intellectually dishonest. If you think you can change this or make it go away by calling it crap, well, good luck with that.
I don't think it's offensive. I think it's wrong. I generally do not deal with them or their products. However, what they are doing is wrong whether they do it to me or to someone else. So, I don't see the point in bringing up what I personally do or don't do.
You have now identified the one and only subject of my entire post, the part that I consider to be wrong and not merely "offensive".
Something of that sort is already in place in Canada. There's an extra fee on blank media because it COULD be used to infringe.
Course, that's right now about the only thing saving us from the DMCA at the moment, so I'm not going to argue with it :P.
I do have some issues with the government deciding that whether a business model succeeds or fails should be their problem. However, having said that, I must concede that what Canada is doing is one of the neatest solutions to this problem. "Here's your money, now shut up and stop suing people." In a way it's much more like the old-style systems (think of the Renaissance) of having a "patron of the arts." That old-style system didn't depend on being able to sell a ton of copies in order to have some amazing works of art by some incredibly talented artists that future generations now enjoy freely.
I'm curious - we frequently hear of the RIAA suing this, that, and the other thing. Is there somewhere we can go to see just how many concurrent ongoing cases involve the RIAA on a global scale? I'm guessing no. Though I posit that if we had access to a simple count of current litigation broken down by who is suing whom, the RIAA would be somewhere near the top in terms of the number of suits they have filed and are currently working.
Makes me wonder one thing. Do you think it would benefit the general population or harm the general population if we simply outlawed all trade organizations and forced all companies in an industry to act as completely independent entities? Because personally, I have never seen them do anything that I found to be desirable though I admit that such things probably don't make the news.
Use this link to avoid registration or see the same exact same story on CNET.
Thank you. I am starting to feel about nytimes.com the same way I feel about tinyurl.com - if it appears in the URL, I know the link is probably not worth visiting.
I think the real problem is that people who don't download copywritten (copyrighted?) works are also being affected. Just look at the legions of users, particularly of PC games, who find to their dismay that the people who pirated the game have an easier time using it than the people who purchased the game. That's just one side-effect of DRM. Look at some of the other side-effects of DRM, such as the possibility of killing off the first sale doctrine (this is properly called a power grab) and the generally unfriendly practice of telling you what you may do with media after you purchase it and use it legally.
Do you have millions of dollars that you're willing to part with, a small army of lawyers and lobbyists, and perhaps also the ability to run a national media campaign? Because that's what it would take to even have a chance.
Sure. That was once twelve years, and at a time when the mechanical printing press was the most technologically advanced method of distribution available. Just think of how many more copies of a work we can produce and sell in twelve years with modern technology and digital distribution. That would be a system that people can respect once again because it represents a good balance between the artists' temporary monopoly on their works and the public-domain benefit of society for being willing to grant that monopoly. When you make something respectable, people have a much higher chance of respecting it.
...
That's much better than making something unworthy of respect and grossly out of balance and then threatening people into going along with it. That's what the system is doing today, and gee, I just can't imagine why it's not working out
If you want to get an idea of what kind of people you're dealing with and why there is increasing resistance against them, try this link.
Sorry, but if that applied to me, I would say "hey, the vast majority of people don't need to do this, so this is (relatively) uniquely my problem and I should find my own solution, such as conversion programs". What I would not say is "hey, I need to modify a standard protocol that everyone uses to fit my (relatively) unique problem even though most of the users of that protocol don't need this functionality."
Now, since FTP already has this functionality, there's nothing wrong with using it. But that's a far cry from saying that this is really the job of a transport protocol or that it was really a good design decision to put it there. The correct solution for this problem is a standardized way to represent data or at the very least, the capability of recognizing multiple formats. Really, FTP worrying about this would be a little like Ethernet trying to detect and transcode streaming video. If I submitted a serious proposal that we modify Ethernet to transcode streaming video, I'd be told that this functionality does not belong at the link layer and that it's the application's problem to worry about this.
The crux of the disagreement is this: some people think that their convenience overrides what would otherwise be recognized as a poor or at least questionable design decision. Other people think that the soundness of a design decision should come first and convenience should be a secondary concern, particularly when there are other, quite viable options for handling the problem. I am in the latter group.
Damn. I thought that was only for civil liberties issues.
Doesn't that cover about anything on the internet, ftp, http, ssh.... Gee they could sue just on a grounds that the technology "maybe" used for illegal activity.
Hmmm.. sue the founders of tcpip because they allow for the "transport" of such illegal activities...
That would be the logically consistent position, yes.
What do you think lawyers are for?
Hypothetically speaking, if someone "took the law into his own hands," the lawyers would probably be the first to go...
Yeah. Take the law into their own hands! With ... a team of lawyers.
The only times I've seen FTP report a successful file transfer and have a file discrepency is when a binary file has been transferred in ASCII mode and the CR/LF sequences are being swapped for just CRs, or visa versa. Nothing wrong with the protocol, PEBKAC...
Since ASCII files are also ultimately represented as particular sequences of binary data, why does FTP even have an ASCII transfer mode? Or, why would you want to download a file and receive anything other than an exact duplicate of the file that was sitting on the server?
I know that Windows uses CR/LF for line termination and *nix uses just LF. That's a very minor inconvenience at worst, though my reasoning should hold up even if it were a big deal. Most (all?) *nix text editors I've ever worked with had no problem reading both formats, and little standalone utilities to convert the formats are readily available and have been for some time now. Additionally, on Windows, Notepad is the only app I've ever seen that had trouble with the *nix format (the built-in Wordpad can handle it fine). So I don't understand why the lower-level transfer protocol is the best place to include this functionality, as it really doesn't seem to belong there. It just seems like it's not the job of a file transfer protocol to concern itself with what an independent, unrelated application can or cannot do with the file after it's transferred.
I think AC has the only correct response to this post. All of the people talking about CRs must not have any experience using FTP over a spotty connection, because it is quite common to run into these kinds of issues, especially on lengthy transfers.
Thanks, I was hoping for a real answer and I suspect that you are right about this. The only thing I can't help but wonder is, at what point does it make sense to address why that network is so unreliable, instead of finding clever solutions to deal with its lack of reliability? If I am correctly understanding the OP, it's not the microwave link but the "internal network". I am picturing a standard Ethernet LAN; if that's the case, it really should not be difficult to fix that network and should require neither unusual equipment nor special expertise. That is particularly true when the files transferred across it are described as "mission critical."
It's only inevitable if we allow it to happen. What everyone seems to forget is that the government is only as powerful as we let them be. We have the ability, and right as granted by the constitution, to go against any government that stops acting in our best interest. The real problem is when people stop caring and just let it happen. There are positives and negatives to every system, every idea, if we stopped every new technology from being used because of the possibility it could be used against us we would have no progress. Instead of fighting against an idea you should fight against the misuse of the ideas, that is what makes a society worth living in.
The problem is that a single distraction, a single moment of weakness, or even something as simple as a different ideology becoming a brief fad, is enough to get those kinds of laws passed. Once they are passed, they are NOT going to be repealed. Over enough time, there WILL inevitably be such an opening to get something like that passed. If nothing else, just one disaster (natural or otherwise) is often enough to temporarily change the direction the winds are blowing and people will accept things they otherwise would not. If the USA has not already proven this with recent events, I am not sure what standard of proof would ever suffice.
That's one way in which the deck is stacked against us. The people who want these kinds of restrictions can just keep trying, again and again, year after year, until they finally get what they want. Once they do, the rest of us are stuck with it. Meanwhile, those who don't want these things have to be ever-vigilent, constantly defeating the proposal over and over.
That's why it is better not to have these systems that somehow, we have managed to survive for centuries without.
The summary states that with FTP, the downloaded files were of the wrong size. Can anyone explain why TCP's efforts to to deal with unreliable networks, such as the retransmission of unacknowledged packets and their reassembly in proper order, would not already deal with this? I am familiar with the concepts involved but I think I lack the low-level understanding of how you would get the kind of results the story is reporting.