Basically, it says, "Aw heck, write whatever you like to any memory address anywhere. I mean, we're all friends here. Right?"
Effectively, any installed app can ignore pretty much every single security setting on the phone and do whatever it likes to the running system. Worse, this could be coupled with a vulnerability in an otherwise well-intentioned app to create a remote root exploit.
On the WTF scale, this ranks with the 2008 Debian SSL hole in terms of rank stupidity.
Who stops to type emoticons in the middle of a natural disaster (including switching to the alternate keyboard to get those characters)?
It happens. When the Rabaul Queen capsized[*] in heavy seas, killing an estimated 321 people, there were dozens of tweets and facebook posts from people on board. They used emoticons because it's a lot easier to write:-( than it is to write 'I'm really frightened right now.' Let me tell you, when I was assigned to write about the disaster, it was very, very difficult to read those posts and remain unmoved.
Moral: Don't make assumptions about people's state of mind unless you have some insight into what they're experiencing.
---------
[*] Of course, you've never heard of it, because nobody important was killed, just a bunch of dark people from nowhere important. Not a First World Problem....
>>>Having a business facing site on Facebook/Google+ and even using Twitter can be great for self promotion, and can open up your business to a huge audience
actually increases sales?
That's a really good question.
I've run a photography website for 9 years, promoting Vanuatu, a tiny but beautiful chain of islands in the South Pacific. Traffic has always been low but steady, and Google image search gives me a decent ranking for my decidedly niche category.
In August, I got recruited to manage the Humans of Vanuatu Facebook page. The page is still tiny by global standards, but I get people visiting from around the world, a ton of positive feedback and a steadily increasing and solid fan base. I've been featured in an online culture magazine, and now have a regular series in a decent (4 color glossy) lifestyle magazine that focuses on the South Pacific. Three musicians have asked to use my work in their cover art, the local newspaper has offered me a regular feature and I've been solicited to shoot more weddings than I want to[*].
In terms of actual revenue, the jury's still out. I have seen an uptick in website visits, but the vast majority of people prefer to wait for my daily posts. I haven't tried to leverage it much yet, but I've been asked to do an exhibition early next year, with the proceeds going to charity. If that goes well, then maybe I'll try selling prints or a book online.
Best I can suggest at the moment is that a Facebook presence emphatically does increase your exposure, mostly because of what they call 'virality' - the fact that whenever someone Likes a photo of mine, all their friends see it too. This means that I get about ten times as many eyes as I have fans. Will this translate to money? Not sure yet. Why not Like my page and follow me to find out? 8^)
--------
[*] In fairness, I just loathe shooting weddings. So one would be too many.
I don't think you understood my post at all. Please re-read it, and the response by MysteriousPreacher. If you still don't get it, ask again and I'll try to explain it using different words.
I've re-read it twice. Your claim, if I read it correctly, is that atheists (or rather, non-religious people) aren't accustomed to the integration of charitable works into their quotidian existence. Frankly, from my limited experience, that's bullshit. I find it offensive personally because I've spent my life living by the principle of being of service to others.
My inspiration, by the way, was provided by my uncle, who was one of the most senior members of his religious order, but who chose to devote his life to living in seclusion in East Africa, providing spiritual counsel to people struggling to find their way in the world. I spent my early life doing everything in my power to become a good Christian, until finally I came to the understanding that all the magical parts of the Christian faith were extraneous to the fundamental message of love, sharing and peace. To my surprise, my utter loss of faith (as it's understood by Christian scholars) did nothing whatsoever to quench my desire to devote myself to being useful to others.
I work side by side with Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists and at least one person who leans more toward a Pantheistic view of the world. I can see no distinction whatsoever between us, in terms of the moral value of our actions. We are all devoted to our work, we all give as much of our time and money as we can, and we all struggle with the question of whether we've done right, whether we've done enough.
Some Second Day Adventist friends of mine give their tithes on a scheduled, organised basis, and I won't deny that this gives their church a solid foundation for their work. I may wish they didn't spend so much of their time seeing Satan in the dark corners of human consciousness, but I have a deep well of respect for the work they do helping the community. Please don't read anything I've written here as a denigration of the power of churches to harness and focus of the virtue of their members.
My problem with your argument is not simply personal, however. You've reduced the argument to a statistical statement that serves no purpose other than to foist a quantified response onto a question whose answer is not 'how much?', but 'how?'. You've said, in essence, that atheists can and should do more. But you see, I can't respond to that in any other way than to ask, 'How? I've left my home and my family behind; I've accepted an income that's a fraction of what I used to earn, and what I do earn I spend supporting and protecting the people around me. I spent nearly every waking hour devoted to the development and improvement of the society I live in, in large ways and small. And you're willing to dismiss all of that because of the (uncorroborated) assertion that statistically non-believers are less virtuous than religious people?'
Do you see now why I take offense? You've argued that a religious life is more amenable to a virtuous existence because of its rituals and practices. And then you've thrown that (again, uncorroborated) assertion out as a 'challenge'. But that assertion doesn't even pass the sniff test, because I can just as quickly make the same argument for any number of secular welfare states, whose citizens are in the habit of giving a far more substantial proportion of their income than most churches require, all for the betterment of their fellow citizens.
And we'd both be wrong, because anyone who'd spent even a few moments reading the Gospels would know that thoughtless, unconsidered acts of any kind are not the measure of a person's soul.
Reducing the deep, lifelong question of what is required to live a virtuous existence to a statement about whose team is winning is a distraction at best, and in my opinion uncharitable too, because it discounts the very real efforts and sacrifices that I see daily among people across the spectrum of belief.
So yes, I think I did understand your post, because it touches on a question that torments me, and guides and inspires me every day: "How do I do good, and have I done enough?"
Nobody, as far as I know, has ever claimed that a non-religious person can't perform moral acts as religious people do, merely that they don't.
Statements like this make me despair for humanity. It's completely, utterly wrong, on the face of it. It doesn't even stand up to momentary scrutiny, and yet here you are, dismissing a very significant part of the world's population as morally bankrupt. Worse yet, you're claiming they do so by choice.
Look: If you want to have a good discussion on the nature of faith, on the things that drive us to perform selfless acts in the true tradition of Jesus[*], then read Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, and come back when you begin to understand that human motivation and morality are not nearly so clear-cut as some might think.
Living a life of decency and service to others is fucking hard, amigo, and it starts by not shitting on others just because they don't subscribe to your particular newsletter.
HTH, HAND
-------
[*] Yeah, atheists admire Jesus' teaching too. Amazing, isn't it? We just don't think the ascension to Heaven part is required in order for us to emulate his ways. How's your mind? Not too blown, I hope.
I agree with your point, but you're misusing the phrase "au fait".
Argh! It got all mashed together with de rigueur in my head.
The tragedy[*] in all this is that I grew up speaking as much French as English. There was a time I could write an entire essay without making a single spelling or grammatical error. In my defense, I spend most of my time speaking a third language these days....
-------
[*] Don't say it. I was using the word with tongue in cheek.
The Internet is basically define by the IP addresses that are reachable from anywhere. What they are really saying is that they don't want an Internet, they want local networks with government-controlled gateways.
Yes, but it's worse than that. In addition to sharing your every conversation with their Stasi buddies, they want national networks that work precisely like telephone networks. In other words, fuck the end-to-end principle; Ma Bell wants to get paid.
This is, after all, the International Telecommunications Union we're talking about.
One country can implement rules to abuse the whole world.
It can, yes. But the problem, you see, is that it doesn't.
Oh sure, it plays fast and loose with its own law enforcement against individual sites and services that piss it off, but it does not implement rules to abuse the world at large. In fact, it doesn't even implement rules at all, for the most part.
What you're suggesting here is that we trade the potential for abuse of power by a national government that has a track record of avoiding any egregious abuses, for the certainty of abuse of power by a bunch of governments whose history is riddled with examples of some of the most appalling derogations of human rights in the history of the world.
Don't pretend the US administration, donkey or elephant regardless, doesn't want this.
Okay, I won't pretend. They don't want this.
The primary reason is that it's simply bad for business. Secondarily, they simply don't want Internet governance to become a matter of political and diplomatic negotiation with countries that don't love them. Tertiarily: There's a reason the EU, Canada, Japan and Australia are all lined up against these proposals: They actually do occasionally give a shit about human rights. I know it's not au fait to think so, but it's true.
And regarding delegates' stupidity: Judge for yourself whether the US Ambassador to this event sounds stupid or not.
If the goal is not to curb internet freedom, then why are the foxes the ones at the forefront of the effort to build a henhouse?
It's a bit of rather disingenuous misdirection.
Touré claims that the ITU have no intention of touching anything to do with Internet governance, but this is not entirely honest: The treaty-making process starts with independent submissions from various national institutions and telecoms industry bodies. While none of them have any formal status at this point in time as ITU policy, a significant number of them speak specifically for the perceived need for transit fees for large content providers (e.g. Google). Were they to be taken up as components of the revised ITRs, they would indeed place limits on the growth of the Internet, especially in developing nations. The precedent of 'pay-to-play', for example, favours large incumbents far more than upstart content providers, especially those in the developing world, where cash flow is often limited and incomes small.
Given the rather stark opposition coming from the US and key EU countries, I still doubt whether any of the most contentious proposals will ever achieve the consensus required to become binding. And, as others have pointed out elsewhere, significant parts of the last (1988) set of ITRs have been ignored even by some of the ITUs strongest supporters.
As usual, MIchael Geist is the go-to guy to understand exactly what forces are at play here. His contention is that the 'UN takeover' spin conveniently hides a more insidious issue: Who pays for content?
I've never seen any "only while on the job" language in any contract. The language I see is more along the line of "as long as you are employed by XYZ, all your inventions are belong to us."
I and a number of other staff negotiated 'only on the job' language in our employment contracts back in 2000, so yeah, it happens.
These days, I require such language. I have no problem with works for hire, but I do have a problem with someone else taking credit for something in which they were never involved.
So don't kid yourself - AJ is likely as much a mouthpiece of the folks in charge as RT is. They're just a lot more subtle.
The difference between the two is this: While RT sins in the things it says, al Jazeera is guilty for its silence.
If I had to choose between the two - and the world being what it is, I do - I'd take the latter. At least one can fill in the holes from other sources.
... I am of the belief that it should be the right of a creator to, for a limited time, retain control over copies of his or her works....
Fair enough; I'm sympathetic to that. But the main thrust of my argument is that control is granted by society; it's not something that the creator can apply merely by fiat. So my objection is more utilitarian than principled.
Virtually everything I do (except for works for hire and some commissioned works[*]) is released under a Creative Commons license. (See my website's about page - the homepage link is at the top of this comment.) It's a compromise, and slightly awkward at that. Given that I'm inclined to argue the principle of a creator's right and to accept that the ability to assert that right is limited by society's willingness to allow it, I figure that this license is sufficient to assert my right of authorship, but not in a way that invites pushback from people who want to use my material.
------------
[*] It's noteworthy, by the way, that a lot of my journalism pieces are paid, but the publisher has no problem with me republishing on my own website under my own license. I voluntarily embargo the items until the print edition has been sold. So, in my experience, there are indeed ways to get paid and to share.
Copyright isn't worth dick-all if society will not, as a whole, respect it.
I hope you realise you're advancing both sides of the argument when you state this...?
I'm a writer/photographer/software developer who also consults in IT policy. Copyright, copying and rights of use of creative works on the internet are not only part and parcel of my professional life, they're also things that affect me very directly. But even with my strong vested interest in copyright protections, I cannot deny the reality of the situation: People want to share, and doing so over digital media makes sharing easier than at any other point in human history.
Your statement above supports your argument only if you consider that there's some inherent, innate value in copyright; that the right of a creator to be rewarded is axiomatic. I would willingly support you if you were arguing for the inherent, innate right of creators to decide whether or not to share their work, but their ability to control how widely the work is shared, and with whom, are utterly dependent on the goodwill of society at large. If society sees no value in copyright as previously understood, then we creators are left with little choice. We can either accommodate ourselves to society's wishes (albeit perhaps arguing for change), or we can stand on the shore, foolishly aping Canute[*], and order the tide to withdraw.
P.S. I'm not going to touch your statement that additional measures are necessary when 'copyright will not suffice', because you haven't even made the case for your interpretation of copyright yet.
------
[*] Canute meant his actions to be a cautionary tale, not a how-to.
What Steinberg is saying is that systems like that, that make the citizen more powerful, are far more impressive to him than systems which make a particular political party more effective.
It's a bit surprising that so far seemingly every poster here has missed Steinberg's point.
I understand his sympathies. I share them, too, both professionally and personally.
But just because the katana was used to express the coercive will of the shogun doesn't mean it's not an admirable piece of engineering, from which important lessons can be learned (even if it's only 'avoid being in the path of a moving blade').
Understanding how things work is the stock in trade of every self-respecting geek. Asserting one's morality as an excuse not to study demonstrably powerful and potentially useful tools is the height of intellectual laziness, IMO. (And yes, I know the argument cuts both ways; we should also take time to study MySociety closely, too.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yiu wins!
Sucks to be Yiu.
Damn that was vague.
If by 'vague', you mean 'detailed', then yes, it was. 8^)
Could you maybe explain what kind of bad things they can do without permission?
The most damning bit of code is this:
#ifdef CONFIG_EXYNOS_MEM [14] = {"exynos-mem", S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IWGRP | S_IROTH | S_IWOTH, &exynos_mem_fops}, #endif
Basically, it says, "Aw heck, write whatever you like to any memory address anywhere. I mean, we're all friends here. Right?"
Effectively, any installed app can ignore pretty much every single security setting on the phone and do whatever it likes to the running system. Worse, this could be coupled with a vulnerability in an otherwise well-intentioned app to create a remote root exploit.
On the WTF scale, this ranks with the 2008 Debian SSL hole in terms of rank stupidity.
Who stops to type emoticons in the middle of a natural disaster (including switching to the alternate keyboard to get those characters)?
It happens. When the Rabaul Queen capsized[*] in heavy seas, killing an estimated 321 people, there were dozens of tweets and facebook posts from people on board. They used emoticons because it's a lot easier to write :-( than it is to write 'I'm really frightened right now.' Let me tell you, when I was assigned to write about the disaster, it was very, very difficult to read those posts and remain unmoved.
Moral: Don't make assumptions about people's state of mind unless you have some insight into what they're experiencing.
---------
[*] Of course, you've never heard of it, because nobody important was killed, just a bunch of dark people from nowhere important. Not a First World Problem....
>>>Having a business facing site on Facebook/Google+ and even using Twitter can be great for self promotion, and can open up your business to a huge audience
actually increases sales?
That's a really good question.
I've run a photography website for 9 years, promoting Vanuatu, a tiny but beautiful chain of islands in the South Pacific. Traffic has always been low but steady, and Google image search gives me a decent ranking for my decidedly niche category.
In August, I got recruited to manage the Humans of Vanuatu Facebook page. The page is still tiny by global standards, but I get people visiting from around the world, a ton of positive feedback and a steadily increasing and solid fan base. I've been featured in an online culture magazine, and now have a regular series in a decent (4 color glossy) lifestyle magazine that focuses on the South Pacific. Three musicians have asked to use my work in their cover art, the local newspaper has offered me a regular feature and I've been solicited to shoot more weddings than I want to[*].
In terms of actual revenue, the jury's still out. I have seen an uptick in website visits, but the vast majority of people prefer to wait for my daily posts. I haven't tried to leverage it much yet, but I've been asked to do an exhibition early next year, with the proceeds going to charity. If that goes well, then maybe I'll try selling prints or a book online.
Best I can suggest at the moment is that a Facebook presence emphatically does increase your exposure, mostly because of what they call 'virality' - the fact that whenever someone Likes a photo of mine, all their friends see it too. This means that I get about ten times as many eyes as I have fans. Will this translate to money? Not sure yet. Why not Like my page and follow me to find out? 8^)
--------
[*] In fairness, I just loathe shooting weddings. So one would be too many.
No, the stable isotope, Cesium-133, is not mutagenic.
Disclosure: I know. I was just making shit up.
Disclaimer: I never said it was a true disclaimer.
In addition to Bing Maps, NORAD is also using a new open source, WebGL-based, 3D globe called Cesium: http://cesium.agi.com/2012/11/30/NORAD-Tracks-Santa-Tech-Preview/
This is one of the most significant uses of WebGL to date and will hopefully do a lot to increase awareness of the technology.
Disclaimer: I work on Cesium.
No, that's a disclosure. A disclaimer is 'CAUTION. Cesium is a known mutagen.'
My guess is MS made an offer ($$) that Santa (NORAD) couldn't refuse.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But he's just a ho (ho ho).
Some Second Day Adventist friends....
Seventh Day.... Argh! I'm definitely going to Hell now....
I don't think you understood my post at all. Please re-read it, and the response by MysteriousPreacher. If you still don't get it, ask again and I'll try to explain it using different words.
I've re-read it twice. Your claim, if I read it correctly, is that atheists (or rather, non-religious people) aren't accustomed to the integration of charitable works into their quotidian existence. Frankly, from my limited experience, that's bullshit. I find it offensive personally because I've spent my life living by the principle of being of service to others.
My inspiration, by the way, was provided by my uncle, who was one of the most senior members of his religious order, but who chose to devote his life to living in seclusion in East Africa, providing spiritual counsel to people struggling to find their way in the world. I spent my early life doing everything in my power to become a good Christian, until finally I came to the understanding that all the magical parts of the Christian faith were extraneous to the fundamental message of love, sharing and peace. To my surprise, my utter loss of faith (as it's understood by Christian scholars) did nothing whatsoever to quench my desire to devote myself to being useful to others.
I work side by side with Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists and at least one person who leans more toward a Pantheistic view of the world. I can see no distinction whatsoever between us, in terms of the moral value of our actions. We are all devoted to our work, we all give as much of our time and money as we can, and we all struggle with the question of whether we've done right, whether we've done enough.
Some Second Day Adventist friends of mine give their tithes on a scheduled, organised basis, and I won't deny that this gives their church a solid foundation for their work. I may wish they didn't spend so much of their time seeing Satan in the dark corners of human consciousness, but I have a deep well of respect for the work they do helping the community. Please don't read anything I've written here as a denigration of the power of churches to harness and focus of the virtue of their members.
My problem with your argument is not simply personal, however. You've reduced the argument to a statistical statement that serves no purpose other than to foist a quantified response onto a question whose answer is not 'how much?', but 'how?'. You've said, in essence, that atheists can and should do more. But you see, I can't respond to that in any other way than to ask, 'How? I've left my home and my family behind; I've accepted an income that's a fraction of what I used to earn, and what I do earn I spend supporting and protecting the people around me. I spent nearly every waking hour devoted to the development and improvement of the society I live in, in large ways and small. And you're willing to dismiss all of that because of the (uncorroborated) assertion that statistically non-believers are less virtuous than religious people?'
Do you see now why I take offense? You've argued that a religious life is more amenable to a virtuous existence because of its rituals and practices. And then you've thrown that (again, uncorroborated) assertion out as a 'challenge'. But that assertion doesn't even pass the sniff test, because I can just as quickly make the same argument for any number of secular welfare states, whose citizens are in the habit of giving a far more substantial proportion of their income than most churches require, all for the betterment of their fellow citizens.
And we'd both be wrong, because anyone who'd spent even a few moments reading the Gospels would know that thoughtless, unconsidered acts of any kind are not the measure of a person's soul.
Reducing the deep, lifelong question of what is required to live a virtuous existence to a statement about whose team is winning is a distraction at best, and in my opinion uncharitable too, because it discounts the very real efforts and sacrifices that I see daily among people across the spectrum of belief.
So yes, I think I did understand your post, because it touches on a question that torments me, and guides and inspires me every day: "How do I do good, and have I done enough?"
Nobody, as far as I know, has ever claimed that a non-religious person can't perform moral acts as religious people do, merely that they don't.
Statements like this make me despair for humanity. It's completely, utterly wrong, on the face of it. It doesn't even stand up to momentary scrutiny, and yet here you are, dismissing a very significant part of the world's population as morally bankrupt. Worse yet, you're claiming they do so by choice.
Look: If you want to have a good discussion on the nature of faith, on the things that drive us to perform selfless acts in the true tradition of Jesus[*], then read Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, and come back when you begin to understand that human motivation and morality are not nearly so clear-cut as some might think.
Living a life of decency and service to others is fucking hard, amigo, and it starts by not shitting on others just because they don't subscribe to your particular newsletter.
HTH, HAND
-------
[*] Yeah, atheists admire Jesus' teaching too. Amazing, isn't it? We just don't think the ascension to Heaven part is required in order for us to emulate his ways. How's your mind? Not too blown, I hope.
What the fuck is with the science press in Britain / Australia about the word "boffins"?
Because if it didn't exist, the tech pundits wouldn't know how to tell the gurus from the wonks.
Vocabulary: Get used to it.
Most airliners don't have ejection seats for the passengers ;).
And parents of squalling babies the world over are grateful for this.
I agree with your point, but you're misusing the phrase "au fait".
Argh! It got all mashed together with de rigueur in my head.
The tragedy[*] in all this is that I grew up speaking as much French as English. There was a time I could write an entire essay without making a single spelling or grammatical error. In my defense, I spend most of my time speaking a third language these days....
-------
[*] Don't say it. I was using the word with tongue in cheek.
The Internet is basically define by the IP addresses that are reachable from anywhere. What they are really saying is that they don't want an Internet, they want local networks with government-controlled gateways.
Yes, but it's worse than that. In addition to sharing your every conversation with their Stasi buddies, they want national networks that work precisely like telephone networks. In other words, fuck the end-to-end principle; Ma Bell wants to get paid.
This is, after all, the International Telecommunications Union we're talking about.
One country can implement rules to abuse the whole world.
It can, yes. But the problem, you see, is that it doesn't.
Oh sure, it plays fast and loose with its own law enforcement against individual sites and services that piss it off, but it does not implement rules to abuse the world at large. In fact, it doesn't even implement rules at all, for the most part.
What you're suggesting here is that we trade the potential for abuse of power by a national government that has a track record of avoiding any egregious abuses, for the certainty of abuse of power by a bunch of governments whose history is riddled with examples of some of the most appalling derogations of human rights in the history of the world.
How can this possibly be a Good Thing(tm)?
Don't pretend the US administration, donkey or elephant regardless, doesn't want this.
Okay, I won't pretend. They don't want this.
The primary reason is that it's simply bad for business. Secondarily, they simply don't want Internet governance to become a matter of political and diplomatic negotiation with countries that don't love them. Tertiarily: There's a reason the EU, Canada, Japan and Australia are all lined up against these proposals: They actually do occasionally give a shit about human rights. I know it's not au fait to think so, but it's true.
And regarding delegates' stupidity: Judge for yourself whether the US Ambassador to this event sounds stupid or not.
How about Windows 95 with Microsoft Bob?
I think that's a violation of the Geneva Convention.
No, the Geneva Conventions covers prisoners of war.
The treaty you're thinking of is the Berkeley Convention of Dude That's Really Not Cool.
If the goal is not to curb internet freedom, then why are the foxes the ones at the forefront of the effort to build a henhouse?
It's a bit of rather disingenuous misdirection.
Touré claims that the ITU have no intention of touching anything to do with Internet governance, but this is not entirely honest: The treaty-making process starts with independent submissions from various national institutions and telecoms industry bodies. While none of them have any formal status at this point in time as ITU policy, a significant number of them speak specifically for the perceived need for transit fees for large content providers (e.g. Google). Were they to be taken up as components of the revised ITRs, they would indeed place limits on the growth of the Internet, especially in developing nations. The precedent of 'pay-to-play', for example, favours large incumbents far more than upstart content providers, especially those in the developing world, where cash flow is often limited and incomes small.
Given the rather stark opposition coming from the US and key EU countries, I still doubt whether any of the most contentious proposals will ever achieve the consensus required to become binding. And, as others have pointed out elsewhere, significant parts of the last (1988) set of ITRs have been ignored even by some of the ITUs strongest supporters.
As usual, MIchael Geist is the go-to guy to understand exactly what forces are at play here. His contention is that the 'UN takeover' spin conveniently hides a more insidious issue: Who pays for content?
He doesn't have a full deck of cards anymore.
That's true, but if he can hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!
Man, talk about flogging the cart before the horse....
I've never seen any "only while on the job" language in any contract. The language I see is more along the line of "as long as you are employed by XYZ, all your inventions are belong to us."
I and a number of other staff negotiated 'only on the job' language in our employment contracts back in 2000, so yeah, it happens.
These days, I require such language. I have no problem with works for hire, but I do have a problem with someone else taking credit for something in which they were never involved.
So don't kid yourself - AJ is likely as much a mouthpiece of the folks in charge as RT is. They're just a lot more subtle.
The difference between the two is this: While RT sins in the things it says, al Jazeera is guilty for its silence.
If I had to choose between the two - and the world being what it is, I do - I'd take the latter. At least one can fill in the holes from other sources.
... I am of the belief that it should be the right of a creator to, for a limited time, retain control over copies of his or her works....
Fair enough; I'm sympathetic to that. But the main thrust of my argument is that control is granted by society; it's not something that the creator can apply merely by fiat. So my objection is more utilitarian than principled.
Virtually everything I do (except for works for hire and some commissioned works[*]) is released under a Creative Commons license. (See my website's about page - the homepage link is at the top of this comment.) It's a compromise, and slightly awkward at that. Given that I'm inclined to argue the principle of a creator's right and to accept that the ability to assert that right is limited by society's willingness to allow it, I figure that this license is sufficient to assert my right of authorship, but not in a way that invites pushback from people who want to use my material.
------------
[*] It's noteworthy, by the way, that a lot of my journalism pieces are paid, but the publisher has no problem with me republishing on my own website under my own license. I voluntarily embargo the items until the print edition has been sold. So, in my experience, there are indeed ways to get paid and to share.
Copyright isn't worth dick-all if society will not, as a whole, respect it.
I hope you realise you're advancing both sides of the argument when you state this...?
I'm a writer/photographer/software developer who also consults in IT policy. Copyright, copying and rights of use of creative works on the internet are not only part and parcel of my professional life, they're also things that affect me very directly. But even with my strong vested interest in copyright protections, I cannot deny the reality of the situation: People want to share, and doing so over digital media makes sharing easier than at any other point in human history.
Your statement above supports your argument only if you consider that there's some inherent, innate value in copyright; that the right of a creator to be rewarded is axiomatic. I would willingly support you if you were arguing for the inherent, innate right of creators to decide whether or not to share their work, but their ability to control how widely the work is shared, and with whom, are utterly dependent on the goodwill of society at large. If society sees no value in copyright as previously understood, then we creators are left with little choice. We can either accommodate ourselves to society's wishes (albeit perhaps arguing for change), or we can stand on the shore, foolishly aping Canute[*], and order the tide to withdraw.
P.S. I'm not going to touch your statement that additional measures are necessary when 'copyright will not suffice', because you haven't even made the case for your interpretation of copyright yet.
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[*] Canute meant his actions to be a cautionary tale, not a how-to.
What Steinberg is saying is that systems like that, that make the citizen more powerful, are far more impressive to him than systems which make a particular political party more effective. It's a bit surprising that so far seemingly every poster here has missed Steinberg's point.
I understand his sympathies. I share them, too, both professionally and personally.
But just because the katana was used to express the coercive will of the shogun doesn't mean it's not an admirable piece of engineering, from which important lessons can be learned (even if it's only 'avoid being in the path of a moving blade').
Understanding how things work is the stock in trade of every self-respecting geek. Asserting one's morality as an excuse not to study demonstrably powerful and potentially useful tools is the height of intellectual laziness, IMO. (And yes, I know the argument cuts both ways; we should also take time to study MySociety closely, too.)
"Only a hundred thousand? Come on, you can do better than that."
Well, to be fair, that UK pounds, and a hundred thousand of those are worth about 42 billion US dollars now....
(Give or take.)