According to the story, they say it has an opt-in approach, clearly not unsolicited. The documentation, no longer publicly available, had one complaint. It is possible that perhaps this person wanted to unsubscribe, and they had a glitch in their software or something - accidents do happen. I don't know the details - and neither do you. I do know that I believe in innocent until proven guilty and I feel that the many people who complained about not being able to access the web site have a more pressing gripe than the one complaint of unwanted newsletters. If I had wanted to go and buy Flash, I'd have been very frustrated that without my consent and with completely self-granted authority a private group is preventing me from doing this. If I ran a major backbone provider and I suddenly became a born again christian - would it be legitimate for me to suddenly drop all traffic to or from porn sites and non-christian religious groups? I don't think so - I think backbone providers have a duty to act as a common carrier whether this is codified in law or not. Of course since they're not, as RBL blackout supporters always point out, I could do the above and there is nothing anyone could do to stop me. The problem with the RBL vigilantism lies in the fact that there is no oversight or review, we are asked to 'just trust' this group whose actions are totally opaque to the public.
Meta mod this down at once. The person that wrote it a) clearly is using the incorrect meaning of state, b) clearly does not know what a truck is, c) talks about political ties rather than network congestion. This needs to be marked off-topic as it clearly is.
You say: Copyrighted material must either lose its copyright when used as the text of laws, or governments must be prohibited from using copyrighted laws.
Why? The original point of copyright was for publishing houses to defend against each other. And I think that this group should be able to prevent other commercial enterprises from publishing their code for profit. BUT - the ability of the government to print a law, and the ability of the press or private individuals to freely disseminate a law should be declared part of the definition of 'fair use' when applied to copyrighted laws. Fair use is allowed of copyrighted works. We've all talked about what this means with a cd you buy. But what does it mean with a law? We haven't talked about that. I think it means ANYTHING the gov't wants to do or private citizens who are subject to that law want to do AS LONG AS they aren't making money from it. Copyright is industrial legislation - it was meant to curb theft in the publishing industry. I have no problem with it as applied in its original intent.
So this group has a copyright on a section of law - good for them. Fair use is allowed of copyrighted material. Couldn't we just argue that any and all free dissemination of any law to the public is in the bounds of fair use? So that they could keep their copyright to let them sell the hardbound books to contractors to fund their work... but that any government or citizen acting as the press has a fair use right to disseminate that work if it's not for profit? They naturally don't want other publishing houses copying the law from the county register and selling it - but incredibly this was actually the point of copyright in the beginning - as an instrument to use to restrain publishing houses - not as an instrument to restrict the rights of private citizens - DEFINITELY not to restrict the right or ability of government to report to the governed about the laws under discussion.
I see this group as being able to use their copyright to keep others from publishing their code (in the traditional for-sale hardbound sense) but don't see that copyright can be used to limit the ability of the press or government to provide the text of the law to the public.
No new system is needed - just the proper reading of the rules and principles we already have.
Uh.... no. This is what businesses want. That is NOT the same thing as 'what we need'. I as an American citizen want to be bound by American laws which I have a say in, and have companies that do business here be bound by those laws as well. Our patent system is one of the worst in existence and needs to be overhauled. We allow patenting of genes, of software, of a lot of stuff that makes no sense to me. What would this 'international' patent board grant patents on? Will it grant them on unaltered human genes? What if there's a member country that doesn't want to recognize those on ethical grounds? Will it be forced to? Are you going to tell Vatican City 'Shut up, we dont care about your so-called morals, theres business to be done here'?
The WTO does equally evil things all the time.... don't invite them into this please.
Remember also that a patent is supposed to be non-obvious. Even if nobody else has made something before - like a toaster with a spoiler on the back - if it's an obvious change it is not eligible for patent protection. The problem a lot of people have with software and business patents isn't necessarily related to prior art, but instead comes from the fact that what's being patented is obvious.
The real issue - is why are they allowed to copyright their database? It's just a collection of publicly available information. It is not a creative work. If this database weren't copyrighted they wouldn't be able to use the DMCA at all.
So an example of why this is insidious... the human genome is supposed to be free for mankind to use... but what do you want to be the database that holds the information about the entire sequence will be copyrighted by someone? And anyone who tries to provide a free version will be DMCA'd to death?
Collections of facts don't qualify as expression to me. Especially just a giant list of cds. Can I copyright my grocery list? How is that different? People will pay to access a database if it provides a worthwhile service. If there is an equivalent database being maintained by volunteers, there is no utility gained by paying the commercial enterprise. And especially when the cddb began as a community volunteer effort, the company that emerged to take it over has no grounds to complain when new volunteers emerge to replace the community service that had previously existed. There was obviously community interest in this before (leading to cddb) and there is still obviously community interest - if this company failed to realize that and based their business plans on the community just abandoning the project (with no particular reason to believe this to be the case) then they deserve the ultimate Darwinian punishment.
I am always very annoyed when our government posts documents in.pdf format. The Supreme Court publishes their decisions in this format. Why? When I want to discuss a decision with someone, I would like to be able to copy and paste this public record, but can't do it from their site. Findlaw does a great job of converting this annoying format to html so legal professionals can actually use it.
And when the open source alternative to Carnivore was proposed - one that actually, verifiably, ONLY did the things they claimed Carnivore only to do - the rejection of it lent credence to the idea that their closed proprietary software was doing more than they acknowledged. Whether it is or not, the preference to hide their methods simply in and of itself invites suspicion. A government that offers to let you see their inner workings will probably rarely actually be examined.
You used Nissan in an example of how first come first served conflicts with trademark law. Nissan the car company is currently suing Nissan Computers over the nissan.com address. Now let's be clear - Nissan computers (a family name) registered their company according to all legal guidelines, started a computer business, later added the nissan.com web site and registered the nissan.com url. According to trademark law - they have every right to it. Because there's allowed to be a Nissan computer, Nissan cars, Nissan beverage company, etc. as long as they're in separate industries. But how does this fit into the tld system already in place? It doesn't. There is total conflict. Two (or more likely 15, 20, more) companies have the 'right' according to trademark law to register companyname.com. But there's only one url. Who gets it? Trademark law offers no guidelines on this.
The only solution that could bring tlds into alignment with tradmark law is if ICANN were to issue a tld for each industry - so that you could have a nissan.car, nissan.computer, nissan.beverage, etc. without creating conflict between the companies. This is in fact ICANN's job - they exist to create new tlds. Well.... we're still waiting for them. They finally agree to a very small number, decide on them with unknown rules, and approve ZERO of the useful new ones (.xxx,.kids, etc). What guided them? Who knows?
First come first served DOESN'T work, but the only solution i see to ending the url conflict with trademark law is a flood of new tlds, one per industry, that ICANN has absolutely and unconsionably refused to perform. So the first come first served rule is bad, yes. But a slew of new root operators are necessary. One of the new commercial ventures exploring this is planning a browser plug-in to allow users to see their sites - so much more user friendly than manually configuring DNS options. I think AlterNic, et al. should explore this option as well.
In fact the riaa argues that the temporary buffer copy made of streaming media means that not only are you experiencing a public performance but the you also are getting a copy. They don't seem to care that its not a copy you can use or access in any way (unless you use a technology specifically made to circumvent access controls on copyrighted material - which is banned by the DMCA). They want to be compensated for you getting this 'use' out of their work. I expect that soon they will start arguing that when you hear a singer sing a song that they hold the copyright to that the 'copy' stored in your brain is their rightful property too.
ignore these other comments. you did buy something. you DO have the right of first sale (or first giveaway). only of the physical thing you bought, and without having installed the software on it.
copyright only affects copies. period.
and the right to make you agree to eula's comes from copyright law (since you're copying to your hard drive - a flimsy ass reason in the first place).
the copyright affects the data on the cds. but you DO own the physical copy of the software outright. you can smash the cds, stick them in bags of manure, set fire to them, whatever you want. you did buy something. not much.... just the cds, but the property (versus copyright) laws that apply to purchasing actual physical goods apply here, there is absolutely no copyright issue.
any of you who don't see this are being rather obtuse and voluntarily ceding rights to software makers that they can't possibly have. over-geekified i think. please spend some time in the real world where 'things' are actually 'bought'.
what if i record a song and name it 'asdfasdf' by 'lkjljljj' and share it, saying it's mine.
and give everyone i know the program to decode by song and artist names - revealing that it is in fact 'enter sandman' by 'metallica'. how are you going to check? obviously not by file name as all these scrambling systems have been set up. the only other way is to listen to the sound file and compare it to a base, allowing for degradation
filtering napster on 'opt-in' is almost impossible. we won't trust the riaa to approve songs that should be approved. they won't trust us to not submit songs that shouldn't get approved.
And anyone who has any kind of music software doesn't care either (Sound Forge, Cool Edit, etc.). You can always play the cd and capture the output as wav files. Which then burn easily to cd or compress to mp3. If you're after mp3s anyway, a slight possible loss of quality obviously isn't your main concern. And besides, that gives you the opportunity to add some reverb, back-mask in 'Fuck the RIAA', etc.
Will this cd bear the 'compact disc digital audio' logo? CAN it if it varies from the standard and won't play in some devices that say they play standard compact disc digital audio cds? Someone grants the right to print that logo on cd's, anyone have any idea who? I'm sure they have published standards that do NOT include faulty TOC's.
"So the long and short of it is that yes, pretty much everything on the CDDB is, in fact, copyrighted by someone. "
I create music as an amateur. I want no restrictions placed on its use. I want everybody else to be able to sample it, remix it, use it in their songs, use it in dj mixes, etc. I want it to be part of the public domain. What mechanism is there to let me do this? When I turn my songs into mp3, in the spots where you can put artist name, copyright, etc, I write 'use freely for any purpose'. Is this enough?
Surely I have the right to release my creations into the public domain. If I as author have the right to specify how copies are created, I want to specify that any and all forms of copying are allowed. There is no equivalent of the GPL or the Free Software movement in music. Even in electronica and hip-hop - which is odd since they are mostly based on sampling other's works. Which is of course how folk music disappeared and somehow became corporate property.
When I used Napster, I did in fact put my songs in the available-to-napster folder, and other people did in fact grab them. With my blessing. But when I re-recorded my cd (after a crash) I used RealJukebox instead of the music creation software I had used originally, and I entered in titles for the songs. Why not? It put them on the disc which is what I was after, having it sent to CDDB was a side effect I paid no attention to. So now the RIAA is going to act to suppress my songs from being distributed on Napster. HOW!!! They have NO legal right to do so! The RIAA is acting to suppress the transfer of amateur music, using, of course, the 'tax' money I paid to it when I bought my blank cds, even though they were NOT used to copy copyrighted material. So they force me to pay them money and use that money to deprive me of my rights and shut down a channel I use to distribute my music. What can I do about this? Once again, peoples' actual, important, first amendment rights are being trampled to prevent 'piracy' of Britney Spears. Sorry, but I think my constitutional rights should have more weight than the continued profit making of media corporations who exist only on public sufferance. Corporate charters can be revoked, and in fact only in recent times have they been granted for unlimited periods. We need to start revoking the charters of corps that act to deprive of us our rights. The same coprs that are, of course, making huge record profits thanks to the very technology they fear and lash out against.... it just frustrates me.
there are already anonymous cell phones
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drug dealers can already buy phones at 7-11 for $100 and add air time to them with the 7-11 air time cards. all bought with cash, all as anonymous and untraceable as these are.
Charters used to be revoked all the time. If a corporation wasn't advancing a public interest it was disbanded. If the charter were for a specific time period, at the end of that period the corporation was disbanded. Today's system is not inevitable. Remember from history class when Congress established a national bank? It acted in a way against the public interest, the time came to renew it's charter, and the charter was not renewed. Corporations that exist indefinitely are relatively new. They cause as many problems as copyrights that are extended indefinitely.
Patents held by a company on a product it didn't create and used only to sue people - this doesn't advance any public interest (basis of a corporation's right to exist), doesn't promote the progress of science (basis for patent law). So how did it come to be accepted?
Corporations didn't used to be viewed as 'people'. The basis of this holding is one throw away line in a Supreme Court case from the 1800's. They didn't used to be allowed to be involved in politics before this.
We are now seeing the effects of immortal corporations holding perpetual copyrights that are allowed to use the money they've made from the system to ensure more protection for the system. This has really never been seen before. The people who allowed it to happen didn't really know what the results would be. We do now. They suck. The laws need to be changed.
Corporations don't have a right to make a profit. Corporations don't have rights. They're a legal fiction. No entity created through laws can have 'inalienable rights'. That is reserved for humans in our unique ability to act as moral agents. Corporations are usually legally forbidden to have any goal other than profit. Certainly doesn't sound like any kind of moral agent to me.
We aren't consumers. We are citizens. We live in a representative republic, and we can make any damn laws we want. We can change the system. But the system doesn't want to change because those profiting from it funnel money to those in power. Really, allowing corporations to become involved in politics is the only critical flaw that makes the whole structure unworkable. Campaign finance reform, and lobbying reform, are not usually seen as political causes dear to geeks - but I feel that nothing geeks care about will be addressed honestly until those issues are dealt with. Many of you are frustrated because you clearly see what is right and what is wrong. Guess what? So do most of the politicians voting for evil shit. They just don't care, they're looking for the money. Take away the money, and you'll restore their ability to make judgements on the actual issues.
Give me a break. Can you show me the law that's being violated? Guess what buddy, intangible thing like network resources, intellectual property, etc. ARE NOT covered by property laws.
I am amazed that you think that denying people whose http requests just happened to pass through above.net's network access to peacefire.org's web page is anything other than censorship. It clearly states on the MAPS page 'give each site an ip so that we don't have to block hundreds to block one'. The assumption being that your entire client base wouldn't be added to the list for the actions of one site - since just that site's ip can be added to the list. You remind me of the hacker groups that are out shutting down warez sites - who brag and brag about their severely criminal behavior in shutting down international sites in countries that may or may not be signatories to the treaties that make copyright infringement a crime at all.
The solution is worse than the problem. I think it has now been clearly shown that the rbl list can be abused for purposes that have nothing to blocking spam, the only reason anyone decided to implement it in the first place.
Do you know what peacefire is? You think they should switch isps because they're being censored. Yeah, right. That's exactly what peacefire will do, just roll over and do exactly what their censor wants them to. I don't think so.
I saw nothing in this article about Media3 allowing spammers, nothing about open relay mail servers, nothing like that. When did the RBL come to include companies that sell spam software? I thought it was a list of spammers. What else does this company sell? Do you know? Beats me. They probably sell a lot of other evil shit, ways to track users, etc. The spam software is probably a minor part of the company. I don't think this falls into the original mission of the rbl. What about companies that sell real world mailing lists? Should their ip be blocked? What about companies that do anything else we dont like? It's a slippery slope. This company is never accused of spamming. Just of provideing software. What about the companies that sell the hardware the program runs on? Guess we'd better blacklist Sun and Dell, someone could be using their machines to send spam. Once the mission creeps, they lose credibility. Period.
MAPS blocks nothing. It IS commonly used to drop email from ip addresses in it. BUT THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE is that Above.net was using it in their router tables to drop ALL packets, including http. Get it?
I hate people that don't read the article and then call the writer a lunatic. Does that seem like a sane thing to do to you?
I sent email to earthlink asking if they use MAPS when I first read about it. The people answering me had no idea what I was talking about. They thought I wanted help setting up my email account. After going back five or six times and sending them a ton of info on what I was talking about they said no. I don't believe them. I think they just got tired of me and could tell that I wanted them to say no. I don't think my inquiry ever made it to anyone who could tell me the answer to my question.
By the way.... DID YOU READ THE ARTICLE ASSHOLE? This wasn't an issue of one ip being added, this was an issue of they added the first three sets of numbers 999.999.999.xxx AND ALL THE POSSIBLE last sets of numbers. So, to answer your question, it took NO EFFORT for peacefire.org to get their ip added, because it was added wrongly. Not that anyone dares argue with maps about it, lest they get added also.
I've been looking forward to this adaptation of Dune for a really long time. I watched the trailers, i read about it, totally geeky. And just in time for the weekend my local cable company decides that's the ideal time to rip up the cables running to my area, and leave them ripped up until yesterday. Until Dune, I could watch tv. Of course, there was noting i wanted to watch. After Dune, I could watch tv. Of course there is nothing I want to watch. The only thing I've been interested in watching in months is Dune. Sigh. I hate comcast......
Sega had a console. They made millions selling it and the games they developed. Then they made a new one. They ditched the old one. They make no more games for it. They don't sell the old games anymore. The only place you can find games or consoles is from ebay or a yard sale - both places where sega will make no money from you getting the system. They have one page for 'legacy system support' on their site. Nowhere that you can buy the legacy systems or games. So Sega is basically refusing to sell me a genesis or master system. They have deliberately chosen to not continue making money from it.
This is a good example of why copyright should have to be defended the way that trademarks are. After abandoning a product for a certain time their copyrights should dissolve so that others can fill the very very small niche market that wants the retro games. Now Disney is still using Mickey Mouse, and making money off of him. They can make a case for continuing to have protection for that. But what case could Sega make for continuing to have copyrights on Genesis games? 'Well we refuse to sell them to the public but its our right. We dont want anyone to have these products so there, nyaa nyaa na boo-boo.' This doesn't affect the bottom line for sega at all. Why would they even WANT to try to defend their rights? Right now they're making zero from genesis. Tomorrow they can choose to launch an expensive legal battle, out of which they could get...... nothing, and be out a chunk of cash. Or they can ignore it and not spend that money. The only sensible thing for them to do is offer dulux a license at a very modest cost - the only way they can get any money out of the deal.
Buying material that infringes on someone's copyright is not the same as buying stolen material. People get all caught up in this copyright infringement == theft mindset and get carried away. There are laws on copyright infringement. There are some VERY different laws on actual theft. One is a felony. One is not. And I continue to believe that if roms were acceptable to sega on the pc, they should be equally acceptable on another device.
Dvd players shouldn't require support, so support is not my first worry. And it makes no difference, really. I bought a completely legal Smart & Friendly cd burner, 2 months later the company was out of business and my warranty worthless. It looks like the machine that is the guts of the Dulux box costs the same as theirs, minus the sega games. So which would I rather have - tech support for my dvd player, or 721 sega games, given that the hardware will be essentially identical? It's up to Sega to protect their interests, I have no duty to help them out. Their army of lawyers I'm sure does a good job looking out for them without volunteer help. Did anyone actually post anything factual from Sega about this?
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According to the story, they say it has an opt-in approach, clearly not unsolicited. The documentation, no longer publicly available, had one complaint. It is possible that perhaps this person wanted to unsubscribe, and they had a glitch in their software or something - accidents do happen. I don't know the details - and neither do you. I do know that I believe in innocent until proven guilty and I feel that the many people who complained about not being able to access the web site have a more pressing gripe than the one complaint of unwanted newsletters. If I had wanted to go and buy Flash, I'd have been very frustrated that without my consent and with completely self-granted authority a private group is preventing me from doing this. If I ran a major backbone provider and I suddenly became a born again christian - would it be legitimate for me to suddenly drop all traffic to or from porn sites and non-christian religious groups? I don't think so - I think backbone providers have a duty to act as a common carrier whether this is codified in law or not. Of course since they're not, as RBL blackout supporters always point out, I could do the above and there is nothing anyone could do to stop me. The problem with the RBL vigilantism lies in the fact that there is no oversight or review, we are asked to 'just trust' this group whose actions are totally opaque to the public.
Meta mod this down at once. The person that wrote it a) clearly is using the incorrect meaning of state, b) clearly does not know what a truck is, c) talks about political ties rather than network congestion. This needs to be marked off-topic as it clearly is.
You say: Copyrighted material must either lose its copyright when used as the text of laws, or governments must be prohibited from using copyrighted laws.
Why? The original point of copyright was for publishing houses to defend against each other. And I think that this group should be able to prevent other commercial enterprises from publishing their code for profit. BUT - the ability of the government to print a law, and the ability of the press or private individuals to freely disseminate a law should be declared part of the definition of 'fair use' when applied to copyrighted laws. Fair use is allowed of copyrighted works. We've all talked about what this means with a cd you buy. But what does it mean with a law? We haven't talked about that. I think it means ANYTHING the gov't wants to do or private citizens who are subject to that law want to do AS LONG AS they aren't making money from it. Copyright is industrial legislation - it was meant to curb theft in the publishing industry. I have no problem with it as applied in its original intent.
Comments anyone?
So this group has a copyright on a section of law - good for them. Fair use is allowed of copyrighted material. Couldn't we just argue that any and all free dissemination of any law to the public is in the bounds of fair use? So that they could keep their copyright to let them sell the hardbound books to contractors to fund their work... but that any government or citizen acting as the press has a fair use right to disseminate that work if it's not for profit? They naturally don't want other publishing houses copying the law from the county register and selling it - but incredibly this was actually the point of copyright in the beginning - as an instrument to use to restrain publishing houses - not as an instrument to restrict the rights of private citizens - DEFINITELY not to restrict the right or ability of government to report to the governed about the laws under discussion.
I see this group as being able to use their copyright to keep others from publishing their code (in the traditional for-sale hardbound sense) but don't see that copyright can be used to limit the ability of the press or government to provide the text of the law to the public.
No new system is needed - just the proper reading of the rules and principles we already have.
Uh.... no. This is what businesses want. That is NOT the same thing as 'what we need'. I as an American citizen want to be bound by American laws which I have a say in, and have companies that do business here be bound by those laws as well. Our patent system is one of the worst in existence and needs to be overhauled. We allow patenting of genes, of software, of a lot of stuff that makes no sense to me. What would this 'international' patent board grant patents on? Will it grant them on unaltered human genes? What if there's a member country that doesn't want to recognize those on ethical grounds? Will it be forced to? Are you going to tell Vatican City 'Shut up, we dont care about your so-called morals, theres business to be done here'?
The WTO does equally evil things all the time.... don't invite them into this please.
Remember also that a patent is supposed to be non-obvious. Even if nobody else has made something before - like a toaster with a spoiler on the back - if it's an obvious change it is not eligible for patent protection. The problem a lot of people have with software and business patents isn't necessarily related to prior art, but instead comes from the fact that what's being patented is obvious.
The real issue - is why are they allowed to copyright their database? It's just a collection of publicly available information. It is not a creative work. If this database weren't copyrighted they wouldn't be able to use the DMCA at all.
So an example of why this is insidious... the human genome is supposed to be free for mankind to use... but what do you want to be the database that holds the information about the entire sequence will be copyrighted by someone? And anyone who tries to provide a free version will be DMCA'd to death?
Collections of facts don't qualify as expression to me. Especially just a giant list of cds. Can I copyright my grocery list? How is that different? People will pay to access a database if it provides a worthwhile service. If there is an equivalent database being maintained by volunteers, there is no utility gained by paying the commercial enterprise. And especially when the cddb began as a community volunteer effort, the company that emerged to take it over has no grounds to complain when new volunteers emerge to replace the community service that had previously existed. There was obviously community interest in this before (leading to cddb) and there is still obviously community interest - if this company failed to realize that and based their business plans on the community just abandoning the project (with no particular reason to believe this to be the case) then they deserve the ultimate Darwinian punishment.
I am always very annoyed when our government posts documents in .pdf format. The Supreme Court publishes their decisions in this format. Why? When I want to discuss a decision with someone, I would like to be able to copy and paste this public record, but can't do it from their site. Findlaw does a great job of converting this annoying format to html so legal professionals can actually use it.
And when the open source alternative to Carnivore was proposed - one that actually, verifiably, ONLY did the things they claimed Carnivore only to do - the rejection of it lent credence to the idea that their closed proprietary software was doing more than they acknowledged. Whether it is or not, the preference to hide their methods simply in and of itself invites suspicion. A government that offers to let you see their inner workings will probably rarely actually be examined.
Why not use the tld to distinguish? So that the multiple companies with a similar name can still get web addresses?
Why can there only be Nissan.com, and not nissan.car, nissan.computer, nissan.personal, etc?
Oh.... because ICANN won't get off their ass and approve a slew of new tlds to allow making these?
You used Nissan in an example of how first come first served conflicts with trademark law. Nissan the car company is currently suing Nissan Computers over the nissan.com address. Now let's be clear - Nissan computers (a family name) registered their company according to all legal guidelines, started a computer business, later added the nissan.com web site and registered the nissan.com url. According to trademark law - they have every right to it. Because there's allowed to be a Nissan computer, Nissan cars, Nissan beverage company, etc. as long as they're in separate industries. But how does this fit into the tld system already in place? It doesn't. There is total conflict. Two (or more likely 15, 20, more) companies have the 'right' according to trademark law to register companyname.com. But there's only one url. Who gets it? Trademark law offers no guidelines on this.
.kids, etc). What guided them? Who knows?
The only solution that could bring tlds into alignment with tradmark law is if ICANN were to issue a tld for each industry - so that you could have a nissan.car, nissan.computer, nissan.beverage, etc. without creating conflict between the companies. This is in fact ICANN's job - they exist to create new tlds. Well.... we're still waiting for them. They finally agree to a very small number, decide on them with unknown rules, and approve ZERO of the useful new ones (.xxx,
First come first served DOESN'T work, but the only solution i see to ending the url conflict with trademark law is a flood of new tlds, one per industry, that ICANN has absolutely and unconsionably refused to perform. So the first come first served rule is bad, yes. But a slew of new root operators are necessary. One of the new commercial ventures exploring this is planning a browser plug-in to allow users to see their sites - so much more user friendly than manually configuring DNS options. I think AlterNic, et al. should explore this option as well.
In fact the riaa argues that the temporary buffer copy made of streaming media means that not only are you experiencing a public performance but the you also are getting a copy. They don't seem to care that its not a copy you can use or access in any way (unless you use a technology specifically made to circumvent access controls on copyrighted material - which is banned by the DMCA). They want to be compensated for you getting this 'use' out of their work. I expect that soon they will start arguing that when you hear a singer sing a song that they hold the copyright to that the 'copy' stored in your brain is their rightful property too.
ignore these other comments. you did buy something. you DO have the right of first sale (or first giveaway). only of the physical thing you bought, and without having installed the software on it.
copyright only affects copies. period.
and the right to make you agree to eula's comes from copyright law (since you're copying to your hard drive - a flimsy ass reason in the first place).
the copyright affects the data on the cds. but you DO own the physical copy of the software outright. you can smash the cds, stick them in bags of manure, set fire to them, whatever you want. you did buy something. not much.... just the cds, but the property (versus copyright) laws that apply to purchasing actual physical goods apply here, there is absolutely no copyright issue.
any of you who don't see this are being rather obtuse and voluntarily ceding rights to software makers that they can't possibly have. over-geekified i think. please spend some time in the real world where 'things' are actually 'bought'.
what is so complicated? well how about this....
what if i record a song and name it 'asdfasdf' by 'lkjljljj' and share it, saying it's mine.
and give everyone i know the program to decode by song and artist names - revealing that it is in fact 'enter sandman' by 'metallica'. how are you going to check? obviously not by file name as all these scrambling systems have been set up. the only other way is to listen to the sound file and compare it to a base, allowing for degradation
filtering napster on 'opt-in' is almost impossible. we won't trust the riaa to approve songs that should be approved. they won't trust us to not submit songs that shouldn't get approved.
And anyone who has any kind of music software doesn't care either (Sound Forge, Cool Edit, etc.). You can always play the cd and capture the output as wav files. Which then burn easily to cd or compress to mp3. If you're after mp3s anyway, a slight possible loss of quality obviously isn't your main concern. And besides, that gives you the opportunity to add some reverb, back-mask in 'Fuck the RIAA', etc.
Will this cd bear the 'compact disc digital audio' logo? CAN it if it varies from the standard and won't play in some devices that say they play standard compact disc digital audio cds? Someone grants the right to print that logo on cd's, anyone have any idea who? I'm sure they have published standards that do NOT include faulty TOC's.
"So the long and short of it is that yes, pretty much everything on the CDDB is, in fact, copyrighted by someone. "
I create music as an amateur. I want no restrictions placed on its use. I want everybody else to be able to sample it, remix it, use it in their songs, use it in dj mixes, etc. I want it to be part of the public domain. What mechanism is there to let me do this? When I turn my songs into mp3, in the spots where you can put artist name, copyright, etc, I write 'use freely for any purpose'. Is this enough?
Surely I have the right to release my creations into the public domain. If I as author have the right to specify how copies are created, I want to specify that any and all forms of copying are allowed. There is no equivalent of the GPL or the Free Software movement in music. Even in electronica and hip-hop - which is odd since they are mostly based on sampling other's works. Which is of course how folk music disappeared and somehow became corporate property.
When I used Napster, I did in fact put my songs in the available-to-napster folder, and other people did in fact grab them. With my blessing. But when I re-recorded my cd (after a crash) I used RealJukebox instead of the music creation software I had used originally, and I entered in titles for the songs. Why not? It put them on the disc which is what I was after, having it sent to CDDB was a side effect I paid no attention to. So now the RIAA is going to act to suppress my songs from being distributed on Napster. HOW!!! They have NO legal right to do so! The RIAA is acting to suppress the transfer of amateur music, using, of course, the 'tax' money I paid to it when I bought my blank cds, even though they were NOT used to copy copyrighted material. So they force me to pay them money and use that money to deprive me of my rights and shut down a channel I use to distribute my music. What can I do about this? Once again, peoples' actual, important, first amendment rights are being trampled to prevent 'piracy' of Britney Spears. Sorry, but I think my constitutional rights should have more weight than the continued profit making of media corporations who exist only on public sufferance. Corporate charters can be revoked, and in fact only in recent times have they been granted for unlimited periods. We need to start revoking the charters of corps that act to deprive of us our rights. The same coprs that are, of course, making huge record profits thanks to the very technology they fear and lash out against.... it just frustrates me.
drug dealers can already buy phones at 7-11 for $100 and add air time to them with the 7-11 air time cards. all bought with cash, all as anonymous and untraceable as these are.
just not as disposable.
Charters used to be revoked all the time. If a corporation wasn't advancing a public interest it was disbanded. If the charter were for a specific time period, at the end of that period the corporation was disbanded. Today's system is not inevitable. Remember from history class when Congress established a national bank? It acted in a way against the public interest, the time came to renew it's charter, and the charter was not renewed. Corporations that exist indefinitely are relatively new. They cause as many problems as copyrights that are extended indefinitely.
Patents held by a company on a product it didn't create and used only to sue people - this doesn't advance any public interest (basis of a corporation's right to exist), doesn't promote the progress of science (basis for patent law). So how did it come to be accepted?
Corporations didn't used to be viewed as 'people'. The basis of this holding is one throw away line in a Supreme Court case from the 1800's. They didn't used to be allowed to be involved in politics before this.
We are now seeing the effects of immortal corporations holding perpetual copyrights that are allowed to use the money they've made from the system to ensure more protection for the system. This has really never been seen before. The people who allowed it to happen didn't really know what the results would be. We do now. They suck. The laws need to be changed.
Corporations don't have a right to make a profit. Corporations don't have rights. They're a legal fiction. No entity created through laws can have 'inalienable rights'. That is reserved for humans in our unique ability to act as moral agents. Corporations are usually legally forbidden to have any goal other than profit. Certainly doesn't sound like any kind of moral agent to me.
We aren't consumers. We are citizens. We live in a representative republic, and we can make any damn laws we want. We can change the system. But the system doesn't want to change because those profiting from it funnel money to those in power. Really, allowing corporations to become involved in politics is the only critical flaw that makes the whole structure unworkable. Campaign finance reform, and lobbying reform, are not usually seen as political causes dear to geeks - but I feel that nothing geeks care about will be addressed honestly until those issues are dealt with. Many of you are frustrated because you clearly see what is right and what is wrong. Guess what? So do most of the politicians voting for evil shit. They just don't care, they're looking for the money. Take away the money, and you'll restore their ability to make judgements on the actual issues.
Give me a break. Can you show me the law that's being violated? Guess what buddy, intangible thing like network resources, intellectual property, etc. ARE NOT covered by property laws.
I am amazed that you think that denying people whose http requests just happened to pass through above.net's network access to peacefire.org's web page is anything other than censorship. It clearly states on the MAPS page 'give each site an ip so that we don't have to block hundreds to block one'. The assumption being that your entire client base wouldn't be added to the list for the actions of one site - since just that site's ip can be added to the list. You remind me of the hacker groups that are out shutting down warez sites - who brag and brag about their severely criminal behavior in shutting down international sites in countries that may or may not be signatories to the treaties that make copyright infringement a crime at all.
The solution is worse than the problem. I think it has now been clearly shown that the rbl list can be abused for purposes that have nothing to blocking spam, the only reason anyone decided to implement it in the first place.
Do you know what peacefire is? You think they should switch isps because they're being censored. Yeah, right. That's exactly what peacefire will do, just roll over and do exactly what their censor wants them to. I don't think so.
I saw nothing in this article about Media3 allowing spammers, nothing about open relay mail servers, nothing like that. When did the RBL come to include companies that sell spam software? I thought it was a list of spammers. What else does this company sell? Do you know? Beats me. They probably sell a lot of other evil shit, ways to track users, etc. The spam software is probably a minor part of the company. I don't think this falls into the original mission of the rbl. What about companies that sell real world mailing lists? Should their ip be blocked? What about companies that do anything else we dont like? It's a slippery slope. This company is never accused of spamming. Just of provideing software. What about the companies that sell the hardware the program runs on? Guess we'd better blacklist Sun and Dell, someone could be using their machines to send spam. Once the mission creeps, they lose credibility. Period.
MAPS blocks nothing. It IS commonly used to drop email from ip addresses in it. BUT THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE is that Above.net was using it in their router tables to drop ALL packets, including http. Get it?
I hate people that don't read the article and then call the writer a lunatic. Does that seem like a sane thing to do to you?
I sent email to earthlink asking if they use MAPS when I first read about it. The people answering me had no idea what I was talking about. They thought I wanted help setting up my email account. After going back five or six times and sending them a ton of info on what I was talking about they said no. I don't believe them. I think they just got tired of me and could tell that I wanted them to say no. I don't think my inquiry ever made it to anyone who could tell me the answer to my question.
By the way.... DID YOU READ THE ARTICLE ASSHOLE? This wasn't an issue of one ip being added, this was an issue of they added the first three sets of numbers 999.999.999.xxx AND ALL THE POSSIBLE last sets of numbers. So, to answer your question, it took NO EFFORT for peacefire.org to get their ip added, because it was added wrongly. Not that anyone dares argue with maps about it, lest they get added also.
ARGGH!!! How is blocking peacefire.org, who has never spammed anyone, or even been accused of it, stopping spam? And how is it not censoring?
I've been looking forward to this adaptation of Dune for a really long time. I watched the trailers, i read about it, totally geeky. And just in time for the weekend my local cable company decides that's the ideal time to rip up the cables running to my area, and leave them ripped up until yesterday. Until Dune, I could watch tv. Of course, there was noting i wanted to watch. After Dune, I could watch tv. Of course there is nothing I want to watch. The only thing I've been interested in watching in months is Dune. Sigh. I hate comcast......
Sega had a console. They made millions selling it and the games they developed. Then they made a new one. They ditched the old one. They make no more games for it. They don't sell the old games anymore. The only place you can find games or consoles is from ebay or a yard sale - both places where sega will make no money from you getting the system. They have one page for 'legacy system support' on their site. Nowhere that you can buy the legacy systems or games. So Sega is basically refusing to sell me a genesis or master system. They have deliberately chosen to not continue making money from it.
...... nothing, and be out a chunk of cash. Or they can ignore it and not spend that money. The only sensible thing for them to do is offer dulux a license at a very modest cost - the only way they can get any money out of the deal.
This is a good example of why copyright should have to be defended the way that trademarks are. After abandoning a product for a certain time their copyrights should dissolve so that others can fill the very very small niche market that wants the retro games. Now Disney is still using Mickey Mouse, and making money off of him. They can make a case for continuing to have protection for that. But what case could Sega make for continuing to have copyrights on Genesis games? 'Well we refuse to sell them to the public but its our right. We dont want anyone to have these products so there, nyaa nyaa na boo-boo.' This doesn't affect the bottom line for sega at all. Why would they even WANT to try to defend their rights? Right now they're making zero from genesis. Tomorrow they can choose to launch an expensive legal battle, out of which they could get
Buying material that infringes on someone's copyright is not the same as buying stolen material. People get all caught up in this copyright infringement == theft mindset and get carried away. There are laws on copyright infringement. There are some VERY different laws on actual theft. One is a felony. One is not. And I continue to believe that if roms were acceptable to sega on the pc, they should be equally acceptable on another device.
Dvd players shouldn't require support, so support is not my first worry. And it makes no difference, really. I bought a completely legal Smart & Friendly cd burner, 2 months later the company was out of business and my warranty worthless. It looks like the machine that is the guts of the Dulux box costs the same as theirs, minus the sega games. So which would I rather have - tech support for my dvd player, or 721 sega games, given that the hardware will be essentially identical? It's up to Sega to protect their interests, I have no duty to help them out. Their army of lawyers I'm sure does a good job looking out for them without volunteer help. Did anyone actually post anything factual from Sega about this?