These kind of corps are simply not going to put ethics before a profit in a potential multi-billion dollar emerging market. Not until they are placed under a massive amount of pressure by their existing userbase anyway. It would be good idea for Yahoo, Google, etc to sign a defence pact of zero tolerance to foreign liberty abuses, and if they are so concerned about the liabilities for overseas staff, simply not invest in these geographies. If China cuts off Google et al then so be it; but it is the prerogative of the Chinese people to respond to that (or not) and western companies will have a clean conscience. It will only happen if we force it to happen, though.
It's for that very reason that this may come under "it's a crazy idea, but it might just work". People are often outraged by the crap that comes up on the major search engines and contributing citizens would work within their field of interest to keep a good signal-to-noise ratio going. In that sense, it is just like the WP - sure it's open to abuses but if enough people get involved civilisation might just be born. Enough people will be determined by the need, and good will, of a critical mass of users; again just like WP. It's an exciting experiment, if nothing else.
One issue that might arise is that bogus sites may have to work a lot harder to maintain a veneer of respectability in order to dupe the editors, and one foresees a potential "arms race". Another is that while WP is founded upon recording of facts that, at least theoretically, can be traced and established, ranking search enquires would be much more subjective. What is universally "good"? Is - oh the horror - the merely popular going to reign supreme in this wikisearch world?
I'm not so sure of that... if the US and Europe are planning to colonise/mine Luna and Mars - whatever the reasons - then the Chinese are going to want a piece of the pie. Taking their current political relationship and projecting that 20 or 100 years, it makes sense. I presume they are upping their manned missions to try and catch up so that by the time the US has a moon base, they won't be so far behind with their own. No one in China wants to look up at the moon and realise it amounts to the 51st state. Is that a pissing contest, or is that a reasonable strategic move?
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian court ruled on Monday that users of the Internet, a popular computer network, breached music, video, image, text and software copyright and ordered its owners to modify the software [so that nothing could be downloaded].
"The Internet authorised users to infringe everyones' copyright," Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox said in his ruling.
Australia's major companies sued the Internet's owners and developers, claiming the Internet had cost them millions of dollars in lost sales.
The music industry told the court that the Internet licensed users to access a network it knew was being used for piracy and hence it was authorising people to infringe copyright.
The Internet defended the use of the Internet to download stuff, but said it could not control the actions of estimated 450 million world-wide users.
As a result of this ruling, Australians will no longer be allowed to use the Internet until the Internet makes it impossible to download stuff.
Don't know if you are aware, but the Beeb is already starting to use RSS podcasts for some of their radio, likely they will do a similar thing with TV one day?
I most like the "Animation of images of the surface"; it looks like it is raining. Video rain on a very low res camera and it looks just the same. COULD it be rain?
Slashdot Mirror
Stop. You're confused. No-one claimed this was the future of music. This is clearly the future of music.
I think you've very neatly summarised the core of almost everything that's wrong with our society. +20 insightful.
Oh nos, I just spilled my monitor on my coffee. :(
These kind of corps are simply not going to put ethics before a profit in a potential multi-billion dollar emerging market. Not until they are placed under a massive amount of pressure by their existing userbase anyway. It would be good idea for Yahoo, Google, etc to sign a defence pact of zero tolerance to foreign liberty abuses, and if they are so concerned about the liabilities for overseas staff, simply not invest in these geographies. If China cuts off Google et al then so be it; but it is the prerogative of the Chinese people to respond to that (or not) and western companies will have a clean conscience. It will only happen if we force it to happen, though.
It's for that very reason that this may come under "it's a crazy idea, but it might just work". People are often outraged by the crap that comes up on the major search engines and contributing citizens would work within their field of interest to keep a good signal-to-noise ratio going. In that sense, it is just like the WP - sure it's open to abuses but if enough people get involved civilisation might just be born. Enough people will be determined by the need, and good will, of a critical mass of users; again just like WP. It's an exciting experiment, if nothing else.
One issue that might arise is that bogus sites may have to work a lot harder to maintain a veneer of respectability in order to dupe the editors, and one foresees a potential "arms race". Another is that while WP is founded upon recording of facts that, at least theoretically, can be traced and established, ranking search enquires would be much more subjective. What is universally "good"? Is - oh the horror - the merely popular going to reign supreme in this wikisearch world?
But will it break the back button?
I'm not so sure of that... if the US and Europe are planning to colonise/mine Luna and Mars - whatever the reasons - then the Chinese are going to want a piece of the pie. Taking their current political relationship and projecting that 20 or 100 years, it makes sense. I presume they are upping their manned missions to try and catch up so that by the time the US has a moon base, they won't be so far behind with their own. No one in China wants to look up at the moon and realise it amounts to the 51st state. Is that a pissing contest, or is that a reasonable strategic move?
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian court ruled on Monday that users of the Internet, a popular computer network, breached music, video, image, text and software copyright and ordered its owners to modify the software [so that nothing could be downloaded].
"The Internet authorised users to infringe everyones' copyright," Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox said in his ruling.
Australia's major companies sued the Internet's owners and developers, claiming the Internet had cost them millions of dollars in lost sales.
The music industry told the court that the Internet licensed users to access a network it knew was being used for piracy and hence it was authorising people to infringe copyright.
The Internet defended the use of the Internet to download stuff, but said it could not control the actions of estimated 450 million world-wide users.
As a result of this ruling, Australians will no longer be allowed to use the Internet until the Internet makes it impossible to download stuff.
Don't know if you are aware, but the Beeb is already starting to use RSS podcasts for some of their radio, likely they will do a similar thing with TV one day?
And yeah, it would so rock.
That's because the AI in them Knows Who You Are.
I most like the "Animation of images of the surface"; it looks like it is raining. Video rain on a very low res camera and it looks just the same. COULD it be rain?
You should publish the PHP, I think it's a bit above my skill level. ;)
That's good to know. Sadly, I can't get it to work yet. :(