Doesn't Massachusetts have some sort of a technology institute? Wouldn't the intellectuals at such an institute be excellent people to have weigh in on such a debate?
Also, I don't know about Y!, but Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have branch offices in that area.
The best method is to get Cisco to bus you in, and then link up to a group IM service so that you can represent all the interested parties who WEREN'T able to get in because of Cisco's seat stuffing:)
Now, I'm by no means a photographic professional, but I know my way around Photoshop, and can think of dozens of things I'd like to do with these pictures, maybe now, maybe 20 years from now, I don't know. What I'd really like is a photographer whom I could pay for his/her time and the use of their equipment to produce pictures that I can do whatever the hell I want with. I've called around and can't find anyone who operates in such a way. The photographers I talked to all said I was nuts to be looking for such a service, because they were unwilling to enter into an "open ended contract" whereby they lose control over their own work. I don't think it's an unreasonable request. In all honesty, I know how much I spent on the print packages I got in the past, and I'd be willing to pay a premium above and beyond that for such a service. Nobody is losing money, and in fact some photographer could get more of my money for providing less of a service. (i.e. maybe they don't have to print so many prints up front because I know that I can get more printed later somewhere else, or maybe even with them if their work is good and prices are fair.)
Guess what... such photographers exist, and have for years. 8 years ago I needed a photographer for a special occasion, and found one who was willing to give me all his negatives 12 months after the initial shoot. He held on to them for that time and took orders from friends and family who wanted copies, and had my permission to use them in his own promotional material. He sold not only the photographs, but did the albums as well. He's one of the best photographers I've ever worked with (good people skills and great photos), and charged a reasonable rate.
So the moral of THAT story is: don't go to a modern photographer who isn't willing to give you copies of the RAW files for personal use and who doesn't provide value added service.
There are ways around the compliance issues, such as not storing credit card locally and using an ssl web-based transaction clearing house to perform and track your transactions. There are a number out there, and they generally have SDKs for writing your own Java or Perl-based local system to interface with their server if you don't want to use a web browser.
The other trick with credit cards is to use a hardware-dedicated reader.
Of course, if you want to add CC data to your datamining system, you'll have a LOT of compliance issues to deal with. Better to have a second "loyalty card" (which can use a bar code) and store the transactions locally against that number. For credit cards, you can store aggregate data instead (not retaining any actual card info in your local DB).
This is one of the reasons I like OpenDNS; it adds some diversity to the DNS solution, and often allows me to see domain names that vanish from the official DNS system.
First someone needs to make up a bunch of booklets (wallet CDs?) containing the 5 laws of information security. Color coded.
Personally, I think having IS Ed courses in highschool would be useful... seperate out the geeks and the non-geeks into different classes, go over "this is a firewall, this is antivirus software, and this is how you use them" with the non-geeks and talk about server hygiene with the geeks.
Actually, this brings up another tinfoil hat theory in my mind: At one time, Unix was THE operating system. For years. It was distributed all over the world, and the US Government must surely have had some dealings with AT&T etc. over SVRx. It isn't too loopy to conjecture that these dealings carried forward to the time of Caldera, and there's back room dirt that some really powerful people DON'T want to see the light of day. It might actually have nothing to do with Unixware and SVR5, but there might be something hidden in the company's closets that doesn't smell very nice. As long as everyone's looking at this lawsuit, there's no problem. As soon as the company itself comes under a deeper investigation, there be dragons.
You make a good point actually... Canada should respond with the fact that the US is in violation of Canada's gun laws, and that most illegal weaponry found inside Canada has been smuggled in from the US due to their shoddy (or in some cases absent) control regulations. It should further be pointed out that this actually affects people's lives, not just their livelihoods like IP violations.
THEN the discussion can turn to such harmonious issues as softwood lumber, fish and steel:)
When all that has been straightened out, there might be place for some discussion about harmonizing BOTH US and Canadian IP laws with WIPO (and not by changing the WIPO rules to reflect US law like has been done in the past).
That would enable them to share music and movies. Hollywood would go bankrupt.
. . .
The sooner that Americans and Iranians realize that the other one is populated by people not that much different from them, the better off we will all be.
I know some people who emigrated from Iran and eventually moved back. Why? They thought that life in "the west" was just like it was in Hollywood movies. When they ended up working part time in a gas station and found themselves getting deeper and deeper in debt (Iran doesn't accept credit... it's a cash-based society), they faced their disillusionment, cut their losses, and moved back to Iran where they felt they had half a chance at getting ahead in life.
Iranians (to generalize profusely) aren't going to get the impression that Americans are similar to them from our popular fiction. It's the fictions (lies) that make them hate "the west" when they think about life outside of their own personal circles.
This dovetails quite nicely into what was making me go "huh?"
The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced.
So what they're saying is that along with the massive 5-year run-up in the military funding (not DARPA research, which IS needed, but funding to create and execute a war), scientific funding was recovering from the previous gutting it was given to fund the start of said military funding?
Or is this all really a way of taking attention away from the mismanagement of education and healthcare funding, which are closely tied to NIH and scientific funding?
Interesting point... the majority of people I know who are from Taiwan are for independence... but then, they're not living there anymore.
On the other hand, Taiwan holds democratic elections, and they never elect the party that wants to reabsorb Taiwan into Mainland China -- and the margin isn't narrow by any means. I would say that this means that the majority of people in Taiwan are for independence. Either that, or the majority don't vote or consider it a big issue one way or the other.
Sounds like the hunting section of Oregon Trail, which just about every school who had at least one Apple computer owned. Sadly, it is still one of the few games for the Apple ][ which the copyright holder refuses to release for free to the community.
Um... do you remember some of the protection mechanisms used on those games? I had one floppy where they physically damaged a sector after writing the game... the disk was not copyable to another medium as that sector always generated a read error, but the game wouldn't play without that sector existing.
Without the cracked version, you wouldn't have an archived version of that game once the original medium failed. I ended up snagging a cracked version when my disk finally died.
The equivalent would be having a version of the Mona Lisa that couldn't be photographed or copied in any other way without defeating some sort of anticopying device. You still have the original, but any copies, by definition, are cracked copies. Same goes for many of these games. It's not that not having a copy of the original is beneficial, it's that having a cracked copy that can be duplicated is beneficial... if nobody had cracked it, the game might no longer be available.
Thank you for the clarification. This makes a lot more sense.
It should probably also be pointed out that some of the equipment seized during the raid had nothing at all to do with TBP, but was part of their network hosting company only (hosting other legitimate businesses and non-profits).
This smacks of the "Drug Busts" in the US where all sorts of property has been confiscated by the police as it was seized for evidence and then kept by the police/municipality after the person was convicted of possession of narcotics.
I think you missed the point; copyright has nothing at all to do with the issue of downloading the material. Gulliver's Travels is under public domain, so it would be "authorized downloading of public material". Also a mouthful. What people are talking about is unauthorized downloading.
Period.
When you add copyright into the mix but ignore the unauthorized bit, you help to promote a culture that views the middlemen as the sole holders of enforceable copyright. The general public has been tricked into associating copyright with the **AA, which means they don't associate it with personally created works. This means that for the most part, corporations these days are able to "steal" works created by individuals and most individuals don't realize they had any rights over that material. It also means individuals who are aware that they have rights are still more willing to "sell out" to a corporation because they view the work as useless to them unless it is sold to a "copyright holder".
Just like the MPAA has released movies to the public but retains copyright over them, I have released this post to Slashdot but retain copyright over it (consider it licensed under Creative Commons). If anyone turned around and re-published this comment in a book, on another website, or used it as part of an advertising campaign, they would be using my creative work for profit. This is just as illegal -- I might even want to sell my own book of slashdot comments one day.
Does that sound silly? Probably. For two reasons: 1) I submitted the post to a public forum where others could view it, and 2) I'm not a corporation seeking to make a profit off of the post.
Think about that for a moment. Item 1 is exactly what happens with movies and songs. Item 2 shouldn't really make a difference, unless you belive that copyright should be enforceable without qualifaction, AND you have subscribed to the falsity pointed out above that only copyright-holding corporations should lay claim to copyright.
That's not how I read it -- it looks to me like they get fined their 25,000 euros apiece and have all their equipment confiscated. Of course, I'm not sure what "all their equipment" would be, as the site is no longer hosted by them in Sweden. Does it mean that their entire web hosting business is going to be confiscated? Every piece of electronic equipment they own? If either, this would be WAY more costly than the monetary fine.
It is also worthwhile to point out that ALL creative works are under copyright unless their copyright term has expired (hah) or they have been explicitly placed in the public domain.
Saying it is (il)legal to download copyrighted material is like saying it is (il)legal to hitchhike -- it doesn't take into consideration the local laws or whether the individual has been granted access by the owner.
This is actually a good question with a number of good answers: 1) If the ignorant masses complain in the wrong places, they'll get flamed. 2) More exposure to the ignorant masses might actually IMPROVE Ubuntu. Once we see what people actually want, someone can adapt the OS so that they can HAVE what they want (even if it is a point and click interface to 10 apps). With Windows, they just keep complaining and people make money charging them $5/minute to tell them to go buy a new computer to upgrade to the latest version of Windows.
Hmm if they're giving encrypted traffic a lower priority, that means that they are encouraging people to use http over https to connect to their bank, webmail and other online accounts that are usually encrypted to protect personal information. I can see a LOT of companies being upset with this (including Royal Bank, ScotiaBank, CIBC, HSBC, TD, etc.).
This isn't about winning the lawsuits... this is about companies paying them to go away -- usually paying them slightly less than it would cost to defeat them in court. If you can get enough companies to do this, you can make millions off of a bogus patent without ever going to court.
Of course, if one of the companies calls you on it, you lose in court and that patent's revenue dries up.
Actually, combined with your observations, the GP makes a good point.
Imagine this scenario: Music reverts to being a cultural artifact and is provided alongside advertising.
End result for the RIAA companies:
Start your own TV Show where people get to watch "music artists" compete to come up with the best track/album. Provide all the resulting tracks for free download on your site, which has official sponsors and ads for stereo equipment, headphones, MP3 players, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't Massachusetts have some sort of a technology institute? Wouldn't the intellectuals at such an institute be excellent people to have weigh in on such a debate?
Also, I don't know about Y!, but Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have branch offices in that area.
The best method is to get Cisco to bus you in, and then link up to a group IM service so that you can represent all the interested parties who WEREN'T able to get in because of Cisco's seat stuffing :)
Guess what... such photographers exist, and have for years. 8 years ago I needed a photographer for a special occasion, and found one who was willing to give me all his negatives 12 months after the initial shoot. He held on to them for that time and took orders from friends and family who wanted copies, and had my permission to use them in his own promotional material. He sold not only the photographs, but did the albums as well. He's one of the best photographers I've ever worked with (good people skills and great photos), and charged a reasonable rate.
So the moral of THAT story is: don't go to a modern photographer who isn't willing to give you copies of the RAW files for personal use and who doesn't provide value added service.
There are ways around the compliance issues, such as not storing credit card locally and using an ssl web-based transaction clearing house to perform and track your transactions. There are a number out there, and they generally have SDKs for writing your own Java or Perl-based local system to interface with their server if you don't want to use a web browser.
The other trick with credit cards is to use a hardware-dedicated reader.
Of course, if you want to add CC data to your datamining system, you'll have a LOT of compliance issues to deal with. Better to have a second "loyalty card" (which can use a bar code) and store the transactions locally against that number. For credit cards, you can store aggregate data instead (not retaining any actual card info in your local DB).
This is one of the reasons I like OpenDNS; it adds some diversity to the DNS solution, and often allows me to see domain names that vanish from the official DNS system.
...or like a phone company that produces a phone book that only contains numbers of insecure dialup access points to government networks.
First someone needs to make up a bunch of booklets (wallet CDs?) containing the 5 laws of information security. Color coded.
Personally, I think having IS Ed courses in highschool would be useful... seperate out the geeks and the non-geeks into different classes, go over "this is a firewall, this is antivirus software, and this is how you use them" with the non-geeks and talk about server hygiene with the geeks.
Actually, this brings up another tinfoil hat theory in my mind:
At one time, Unix was THE operating system. For years. It was distributed all over the world, and the US Government must surely have had some dealings with AT&T etc. over SVRx. It isn't too loopy to conjecture that these dealings carried forward to the time of Caldera, and there's back room dirt that some really powerful people DON'T want to see the light of day. It might actually have nothing to do with Unixware and SVR5, but there might be something hidden in the company's closets that doesn't smell very nice. As long as everyone's looking at this lawsuit, there's no problem. As soon as the company itself comes under a deeper investigation, there be dragons.
You make a good point actually... Canada should respond with the fact that the US is in violation of Canada's gun laws, and that most illegal weaponry found inside Canada has been smuggled in from the US due to their shoddy (or in some cases absent) control regulations. It should further be pointed out that this actually affects people's lives, not just their livelihoods like IP violations.
:)
THEN the discussion can turn to such harmonious issues as softwood lumber, fish and steel
When all that has been straightened out, there might be place for some discussion about harmonizing BOTH US and Canadian IP laws with WIPO (and not by changing the WIPO rules to reflect US law like has been done in the past).
I know some people who emigrated from Iran and eventually moved back. Why? They thought that life in "the west" was just like it was in Hollywood movies. When they ended up working part time in a gas station and found themselves getting deeper and deeper in debt (Iran doesn't accept credit... it's a cash-based society), they faced their disillusionment, cut their losses, and moved back to Iran where they felt they had half a chance at getting ahead in life.
Iranians (to generalize profusely) aren't going to get the impression that Americans are similar to them from our popular fiction. It's the fictions (lies) that make them hate "the west" when they think about life outside of their own personal circles.
This dovetails quite nicely into what was making me go "huh?"
The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced.
So what they're saying is that along with the massive 5-year run-up in the military funding (not DARPA research, which IS needed, but funding to create and execute a war), scientific funding was recovering from the previous gutting it was given to fund the start of said military funding?
Or is this all really a way of taking attention away from the mismanagement of education and healthcare funding, which are closely tied to NIH and scientific funding?
Interesting point... the majority of people I know who are from Taiwan are for independence... but then, they're not living there anymore.
On the other hand, Taiwan holds democratic elections, and they never elect the party that wants to reabsorb Taiwan into Mainland China -- and the margin isn't narrow by any means. I would say that this means that the majority of people in Taiwan are for independence. Either that, or the majority don't vote or consider it a big issue one way or the other.
Three words:
Personal Nuclear Reactors
Sounds like the hunting section of Oregon Trail, which just about every school who had at least one Apple computer owned. Sadly, it is still one of the few games for the Apple ][ which the copyright holder refuses to release for free to the community.
Um... do you remember some of the protection mechanisms used on those games? I had one floppy where they physically damaged a sector after writing the game... the disk was not copyable to another medium as that sector always generated a read error, but the game wouldn't play without that sector existing.
Without the cracked version, you wouldn't have an archived version of that game once the original medium failed. I ended up snagging a cracked version when my disk finally died.
The equivalent would be having a version of the Mona Lisa that couldn't be photographed or copied in any other way without defeating some sort of anticopying device. You still have the original, but any copies, by definition, are cracked copies. Same goes for many of these games. It's not that not having a copy of the original is beneficial, it's that having a cracked copy that can be duplicated is beneficial... if nobody had cracked it, the game might no longer be available.
Thank you for the clarification. This makes a lot more sense.
It should probably also be pointed out that some of the equipment seized during the raid had nothing at all to do with TBP, but was part of their network hosting company only (hosting other legitimate businesses and non-profits).
This smacks of the "Drug Busts" in the US where all sorts of property has been confiscated by the police as it was seized for evidence and then kept by the police/municipality after the person was convicted of possession of narcotics.
I think you missed the point; copyright has nothing at all to do with the issue of downloading the material. Gulliver's Travels is under public domain, so it would be "authorized downloading of public material". Also a mouthful. What people are talking about is unauthorized downloading.
Period.
When you add copyright into the mix but ignore the unauthorized bit, you help to promote a culture that views the middlemen as the sole holders of enforceable copyright. The general public has been tricked into associating copyright with the **AA, which means they don't associate it with personally created works. This means that for the most part, corporations these days are able to "steal" works created by individuals and most individuals don't realize they had any rights over that material. It also means individuals who are aware that they have rights are still more willing to "sell out" to a corporation because they view the work as useless to them unless it is sold to a "copyright holder".
Just like the MPAA has released movies to the public but retains copyright over them, I have released this post to Slashdot but retain copyright over it (consider it licensed under Creative Commons). If anyone turned around and re-published this comment in a book, on another website, or used it as part of an advertising campaign, they would be using my creative work for profit. This is just as illegal -- I might even want to sell my own book of slashdot comments one day.
Does that sound silly? Probably. For two reasons: 1) I submitted the post to a public forum where others could view it, and 2) I'm not a corporation seeking to make a profit off of the post.
Think about that for a moment. Item 1 is exactly what happens with movies and songs. Item 2 shouldn't really make a difference, unless you belive that copyright should be enforceable without qualifaction, AND you have subscribed to the falsity pointed out above that only copyright-holding corporations should lay claim to copyright.
That's not how I read it -- it looks to me like they get fined their 25,000 euros apiece and have all their equipment confiscated. Of course, I'm not sure what "all their equipment" would be, as the site is no longer hosted by them in Sweden. Does it mean that their entire web hosting business is going to be confiscated? Every piece of electronic equipment they own? If either, this would be WAY more costly than the monetary fine.
It is also worthwhile to point out that ALL creative works are under copyright unless their copyright term has expired (hah) or they have been explicitly placed in the public domain.
Saying it is (il)legal to download copyrighted material is like saying it is (il)legal to hitchhike -- it doesn't take into consideration the local laws or whether the individual has been granted access by the owner.
Good point... I'm thinking I should return my CD collection to the RIAA for a refund.
Either that, or see if I can catch them in possession of some of MY music (independently produced) and ask them to pay up.
If I play some of my music in the background while I call their customer relations line and they record and archive the call, can I sue them?
This is actually a good question with a number of good answers:
1) If the ignorant masses complain in the wrong places, they'll get flamed.
2) More exposure to the ignorant masses might actually IMPROVE Ubuntu. Once we see what people actually want, someone can adapt the OS so that they can HAVE what they want (even if it is a point and click interface to 10 apps). With Windows, they just keep complaining and people make money charging them $5/minute to tell them to go buy a new computer to upgrade to the latest version of Windows.
Hmm if they're giving encrypted traffic a lower priority, that means that they are encouraging people to use http over https to connect to their bank, webmail and other online accounts that are usually encrypted to protect personal information. I can see a LOT of companies being upset with this (including Royal Bank, ScotiaBank, CIBC, HSBC, TD, etc.).
This isn't about winning the lawsuits... this is about companies paying them to go away -- usually paying them slightly less than it would cost to defeat them in court. If you can get enough companies to do this, you can make millions off of a bogus patent without ever going to court.
Of course, if one of the companies calls you on it, you lose in court and that patent's revenue dries up.
Zondervan, among others, would probably disagree with you.
Actually, combined with your observations, the GP makes a good point.
Imagine this scenario: Music reverts to being a cultural artifact and is provided alongside advertising.
End result for the RIAA companies:
Start your own TV Show where people get to watch "music artists" compete to come up with the best track/album. Provide all the resulting tracks for free download on your site, which has official sponsors and ads for stereo equipment, headphones, MP3 players, etc.
Profit!