Re:Who gets the float...as if I need to ask
on
Cashless Society
·
· Score: 1
I suspect that the banks are not getting money from the customer as a result of recharge fees - that would ensure that the cards have extremely poor takeup. Rather, the better move would be to have merchant fees as with existing Credit Cards.
As for using your ATM card, do you never carry cash around at all? I'm sure there's got to be a $20 in your wallet somewhere sometime, right? If you've got that in your wallet, neither you nor the bank is getting that earning power, so what do you lose out if that $20 is on the card instead of in note form?
Yes, you're right - antitrust law is not part of the true free market. However, the true free market only produces the most optimal outcome when (a) there are no entry or exit costs for competitors, and (b) there are no positive or negative externalities of consumption of the good produced by that industry.
Microsoft's trade practices created additional entry costs for its competitors (e.g. the agreements with retailers that they pay for Windows on every box, not just those with it installed). The free market option ceased to be the best for the community at that point, because it allowed Microsoft to earn monopoly rents while raising the price and thus reducing the total social surplus.
If you think there should be no antitrust laws whatsoever, then come back to me when the electricity company realises their strong position of power, buys up all the generator sales companies and then refuses to supply you with electricity unless you only use electrical appliances they have specifically approved. Without restrictions on vertical integration and market concentration in certain industries, that is not an unreasonable scenario.
Actually, one of the old antitrust cases implied that there was a Microsoft 'tax' on PCs, as they would charge the retailer _whether or not_ you got the Microsoft OS &/or GUI. The only way to not end up giving money to MS when you bought a computer was to buy a non-PC.
Don't know whether anyone has successfully investigated whether these practices are still effectively going on although they've been ruled illegal.
Freedom of Speech and Press: the US is one of the few countries in their world where we don't have government operated newspapers, radio and television stations.
Are you saying that having dozens of independently owned newspapers, multiple privately owned TV networks and several private radio stations in each city doesn't make your press free if there's even _one_ government owned station?
I'm sure the people of Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, France, Italy and a lot of other European nations would be happy to hear that.
The issue is not what the government puts on the airwaves itself. The issue is what it does to restrict or prevent private individuals using the airwaves.
If you don't absolutely NEED a piece of information, you have no business knowing it, or attempting to get your hands on it. Anyone who has a problem with this is aiding terrorist and is exactly the type of person we need to fight.
I find the above two sentences extremely dangerous. Taken on their own, they appear to equate ignorance with patriotism and intellectual curiosity with terrorism.
In the extreme, the second sentence appears to say that anyone trying to learn new things that aren't necessary for their survival is aiding and abetting terrorism. That would include every single research student anywhere in the world, not to mention scientists whose job is research.
To say that people should only be allowed to know what they NEED to know is to deny people the opportunity to find out more things they might LIKE to know. Would you want libraries and art galleries closed because people might learn something they don't NEED?
I didn't NEED to hear your opinion - I wanted to learn what it was, and what other people's opinions are, by reading Slashdot. Perhaps Slashdot should be limited to a "need to know" basis.
If your statements are not saying that these restrictions should apply to civilian information, but only to governmental secrets which could damage the effectiveness of the US government, then specify that.
Oh, and if you are, you should be very careful about an Official Secrets Act-like piece of legislation. It is far too easy to turn it into a blanket cover-up act, by which any government excess, regardless of whether it was committed domestically or overseas, can be kept out of the public spotlight for 30 years or more. Imagine if the Watergate break-in had been ruled to be subject to an Official Secrets Act restriction.
The US government already has (especially regarding the military) a significant amount of existing security protection. To say that an Official Secrets Act is needed, when existing legislation does not prevent the government blocking publication of data "against the national interest" is to give the government more power to block the public's knowledge of its own representative's activities than should be allowed.
The note in the article that Australian law may not recognise some of the exclusions in the GPL (using standard GPL wording) raises an interesting set of questions.
1. Can you break the GPL by working on a GPLed piece of software in a country where some important GPL exclusions cannot legally be excluded, releasing the resulting software under another license (assuming one of the exclusions blocked by law is that forcing release of derivative products under the GPL), and then modifying that software back in the USA into a proprietary version containing GPLed code?
2. If software developed in a country where not all of the GPL can be legally applied is then exported to the US, is the US user bound by the full terms of the GPL, or just those which are legally binding in the other jurisdiction?
3. If the answer to (1) is YES or the answer to (2) is NO, how difficult will it become to successfully enforce the GPL in a US court, when there is the possibility of a "void where prohibited" defence about GPL provisions?
I don't know if the FSF has the time to consider these issues, but if not I would strongly urge EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Oz equivalent to the EFF) to look into the law and start evaluating these implications.
The last thing we need is a large corporation either (a) finding a jurisdictional end-run around the GPL in existence, or (b) lobbying a sufficiently small nation which is conveniently a signatory to all the appropriate treaties to modify its consumer-protection laws to enable the end-run.
Last time I checked, when someone else gets told how much money I have in my bank account, I don't automatically lose access to that information. Transfering information used to be called "communication" where I was from.
Sure, you may not feel that someone else has a right to communicate particular information about you, but the fact is that you are not physically harmed by the communication.
Plenty of communication can indirectly cause you harm, of course, whether physical, intellectual, emotional or financial, but I don't see why this particular set of personal information is automatically sacrosanct and remains entirely under your control.
Where along this line of increasingly private personal information do you want the shutters to be put down without any ability to have third-parties transfer that information?
1. I have brown hair (easy to tell without talking to me)
2. I am 24 (guessable, but not verifiable without talking to a contact of mine)
3. I have a Ph.D. (not guessable, but very hard to use against me)
4. I have a savings account with Egg
5. This savings account has £200 in it
6. The password for this savings account is pvponline
(If you feel these aren't in the right order, please let me know).
If you ban third parties from communicating about number 6, you ban the creation of aggregation websites, something people find very useful for tracking their accounts at multiple institutions.
Personal information itself is not an asset - the ability to transfer it is an asset (the information itself is unchanged, but if you start giving it out, the value of giving it out in the future decreases). If you can get money in exchange for something, it's an asset. The definition is as simple as that. If you want some information to be sacrosanct, then say what information qualifies, and why you think it qualifies.
You cannot own information, since it is not a tangible thing.
I guess that means I can't own stock in a company in the UK either - almost all the shares in the UK have been dematerialised (i.e. just tracked on computer in a central database at the depository institution).
It also probably means I can't own the money in my bank account - after all the total value of deposits in any developed country is a significant multiple of the amount of notes and coins in circulation, so the odds are that that money in my bank account cannot be directly representative of a set of notes and coins.
Perhaps there is another reason why the author of that quote believes information cannot be used?
People are talking about their loss of privacy from banks selling on personal data they have automatically collected. Some of these people are also saying that they have no choice but to go along with this because of the crap (yes, they are crap) provisions about opt-out in the new law.
OK - but why do you need a bank account at all?
Here are the main reasons I've seen it to be a necessity:
1. To get access to credit cards for ID purposes.
This isn't a necessity - get a passport and a Driver's License - if those stop being ID something is seriously wrong with the world.
2. To be able to borrow money.
Fair enough - but by asking for money from someone you have to pay. If it turns out that the market rate is 6% plus your personal information, then that's what the market rate is. If no-one offers 7% and no personal information cost, well there's not a lot you can do about it.
3. To conveniently keep your money in a 'safe' (well, reasonably safe) place and not on your person.
OK - this is a service that current (cheque/checking) accounts and savings accounts
provide. It's a service - the banks are under no obligations to provide it for free.
4. To earn interest on your money.
Again - if the rate of interest happens to be 6% in exchange for your personal information, that's the market rate.
Points to note:
None of the above uses are essential - you can survive without them.
The information you give up is an asset to somebody - it therefore has some value which is implicitly factored into the relative merits of these transactions.
If you do choose to go without banking services to protect your personal information, it will cost you (no interest-free credit card periods, no savings account interest) and so that personal information must have some value to you as well.
I deplore the way the Act was written to deny people the ability to opt-out effectively despite appearing to offer opt-out rights. However, those who believe there should be a blanket ban on information selling are denying those who can place a value on their personal information the right to take advantage of that value.
If we saw a bank offering:
4% 12-month CDs*
*4% only if you consent to give out your personal information, 3.8% if you opt to retain privacy rights
what would we say?
Can any 'privacy is an intrinsic right' people come up with a debatable argument (i.e. one where they do not revert to their basic axiom) as to why the above offer is wrong?
Yes, it would prohibit freedom of association, in exactly the same way that sticking someone in prison deprives them of the right to vote and of freedom of movement.
To strip someone of some of their rights when they have broken the social contract in certain ways is commonplace. This simply puts crimes committed under the umbrella of a corporation in the same class as crimes committed when acting as an individual.
Their Webcasting FAQ explains the situation exactly:
Q. What happens if a webcaster cannot meet the conditions of the statutory licenses? A. If a webcaster does not qualify for the performance or ephemeral statutory license, it must obtain licenses from each of the copyright owners of the sound recordings that it wants to transmit or reproduce. For example, interactive services that permit a listener to choose a particular song and those that create a personalized program for the listener must obtain individual licenses. Unfortunately, there is no group or organization that grants licenses on behalf of copyright owners to webcasting services that do not qualify for the statutory license. Therefore, the webcaster must contact each copyright owner individually. Webcasters who do not qualify for the statutory license and who fail to obtain licenses directly from sound recording copyright owners risk infringement liability.
The interactivity is, as other people have said, what causes Launchcast to be ineligible for the statutory licence.
Interestingly, the webcast statutory licence rules appear to apply to simulwebcasting (i.e. taking the live radio station feed). It even notes that
Retransmitters of over-the-air radio broadcasts are required, upon notice, to cease retransmissions of digital broadcasts that regularly exceed the sound recording performance complement. For analog broadcasts, retransmissions must cease, upon notice, if a substantial portion of the broadcast transmissions exceed the complement.
and also says that the statutory licence applies to
webcasters that:
(1) offer non-interactive programming (i.e., not on-demand or personalized programming);
So - does this mean that a webcast of a radio station must be turned off when they go to "All Request Saturday" - otherwise the webcast listeners can effectively get on-demand?
Re:Another day, another lawsuit
on
Launchcast Sued
·
· Score: 1
Quick point - I don't know about the Backstreet Boys, but I do know that Savage Garden were around working at it for quite a while (and besides, both guys are late twenties). Sometimes the mainstream record labels produce mainstream music from bands who have been around and _like_ that stuff.
OK - so I'm a Savage Garden fan. So mod me.
Or will the RIAA sue me for not having a licence to play my own CD with the tracks out of order or something?
'Understand' was probably the wrong word from that previous poster. 'Have the right to inspect' is probably the more reasonable claim.
The only reason why ignorance of the law can reasonably be no excuse is that everyone has the right to find out what the law is stated to be, both legislation and executive regulations.
Closed-source software effectively restricts this right of inspection.
Have you heard of a guy called Riemann? 19th century pure mathematician. Came up with a generalisation of Euclidean geometry to surfaces of arbitrary shapes - extended it to four dimensions as well. Developed the concept of 'manifolds'. Completely useless, insane stuff with no everyday application, right, just like the rest of pure maths?
Oh, yeah, Einstein then came along and postulated that space was curved and behaved like a Riemannian manifold.
That's the thing about pure maths. It doesn't have to apply now - it might end up being the obvious thing to apply later. You have to keep coming up with new concepts, without necessarily having any obvious connection to reality, in order to provide the applied mathematicians and engineers with new theories on which to base more sophisticated models.
So before you say that pure mathematics is of no economic use, think about what it leads to down the line.
Yours,
Duncan Richer
Ph.D. (Pure Maths)
now working in the real world
Are you saying that if you haven't committed a crime and are not under strong suspicion of having committed one, the government has no right to hold data about you?
What about your name and address so you can vote?
What about your name, address and income so they can charge you income tax?
Governments need some data on everyone just to function.
If XML is a waste, then why are so many companies using XML as the basis for their B2B marketplaces? What about the fact that large numbers of existing EDI systems are performing a gradual transition to XML-compatible syntax? (SWIFT being an important example).
As with most of the recent Intel announcements, surely the most important question is "when are speeds like this going to be available in quantity?"
Without a decent answer to that, all of these announcements look more like an attempt to create FUD to work against AMD than like genuine advancements in the field.
Actually, given the existing RIP legislation, it would be a laugh for the UK Government to try implementing the equivalent of the DMCA.
view conversation with police officer...
Cop: Alright, sunshine - what's on this disk?
You: It's just a DVD of a home movie, officer.
C: I don't buy that. It's obviously encrypted information that we need to see. Hand over the decryption keys.
Y: I can't do that officer - I don't have an authorised DVD player, so revealing any decryption keys would be in breach of the Digital Recording Protection Act 2003.
C: Right. I am arresting you on suspicion of refusing to reveal an encryption key [under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.] You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not say something which you later rely on in court. Do you understand?
They would have you coming and going. Yes, I know that if the law forces you to commit a crime either way, you can probably get off, but that's still an awful lot to go through (especially if they decide to make it a Section 51 situation which means that it's an offence to even tell the Judge in your case that a decryption order exists).
I don't know if Ayn Rand considered the case of natural monopolies, but they are a good example of where government intervention is a good idea for a reason other than maintenance of private property rights.
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, a natural monopoly is an industry where fixed costs are high, but marginal costs are very close to zero. A good example is a distribution network, such as the electricity grid (note: NOT electricity production). The cost of building the grid is huge, but the cost of supplying people electricity over the grid is negligible.
If you leave a natural monopoly to unregulated private enterprise, then they can act as a monopolist and charge profit-maximising prices. They don't need to worry about other companies trying to enter - the fixed costs are huge and the rollout times are long, so they have plenty of time to respond.
With government regulation, prices can be brought down closer to marginal cost, maximising total utility and increasing overall production. So, before you say that government should do nothing but protect private property rights, think about what would happen if the electricity distribution company, the water company, the sewerage service, and all those other distribution networks, were private monopolies not subject to any price regulation.
It becomes a least-hated rather than a most-liked election. And the problem with this is...? What if you have one politician hated by 80% of the people, but loved by the other 20%. There are 5 other candidates, all of whom are hated by no-one, but each of them can only get 16%. First past the post elects a politician 80% of the country hate, when there are 5 alternatives who no-one hates. Yes, that's an extreme example, but to say that a least-hated election is a problem is to ignore such possibilities (and to say that three-cornered contests are irrelevant). Oh, and for all those who think that changing the voting system would make it "too difficult" for the majority of Americans, Australia has had preferential voting (number the boxes in order) for at least as long as I've been alive (22 years). Do you have evidence Americans are sufficiently more stupid than Australians for this to be inappropriate in the US?
I don't see why the State needs to take people at their word about having been legally enfranchised and not voting more than once. There's a very simple way to get around this.
Make registration (not necessarily voting, that's another issue) compulsory for everyone over the age of 18 legally entitled to vote. Then just have copies of the electoral roll at each polling booth, check off the names of those who vote (ask for ID if you feel that will help), then compare the results after the election and prosecute those who vote multiple times.
No mess, no worry, and if the vote fraud is significant enough to affect the result of the election then it can be annulled.
The over 18 years old requirement is a major error on the part of the government. I was 16 when I first got access to the Internet, and I basically had to get access for my academic work (the account was a shell account on the University of Adelaide's Computer Science Department computers). If someone is not 18, how can they start a degree in anything which requires them to get Internet access?
The Federal Government's "clever country" stuff is going out the window.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that the banks are not getting money from the customer as a result of recharge fees - that would ensure that the cards have extremely poor takeup. Rather, the better move would be to have merchant fees as with existing Credit Cards.
As for using your ATM card, do you never carry cash around at all? I'm sure there's got to be a $20 in your wallet somewhere sometime, right? If you've got that in your wallet, neither you nor the bank is getting that earning power, so what do you lose out if that $20 is on the card instead of in note form?
Yes, you're right - antitrust law is not part of the true free market. However, the true free market only produces the most optimal outcome when (a) there are no entry or exit costs for competitors, and (b) there are no positive or negative externalities of consumption of the good produced by that industry.
Microsoft's trade practices created additional entry costs for its competitors (e.g. the agreements with retailers that they pay for Windows on every box, not just those with it installed). The free market option ceased to be the best for the community at that point, because it allowed Microsoft to earn monopoly rents while raising the price and thus reducing the total social surplus.
If you think there should be no antitrust laws whatsoever, then come back to me when the electricity company realises their strong position of power, buys up all the generator sales companies and then refuses to supply you with electricity unless you only use electrical appliances they have specifically approved. Without restrictions on vertical integration and market concentration in certain industries, that is not an unreasonable scenario.
Actually, one of the old antitrust cases implied that there was a Microsoft 'tax' on PCs, as they would charge the retailer _whether or not_ you got the Microsoft OS &/or GUI. The only way to not end up giving money to MS when you bought a computer was to buy a non-PC.
Don't know whether anyone has successfully investigated whether these practices are still effectively going on although they've been ruled illegal.
You could say this is a trade barrier, except that it actually _removes_ an inconsistency of treatment, rather than introduces one.
Currently, EU-based online retailers must charge VAT on goods shipped to EU addresses, non-EU-based retailers do not.
How is making everyone charge the same tax rates being protectionist?
Freedom of Speech and Press: the US is one of the few countries in their world where we don't have government operated newspapers, radio and television stations. Are you saying that having dozens of independently owned newspapers, multiple privately owned TV networks and several private radio stations in each city doesn't make your press free if there's even _one_ government owned station? I'm sure the people of Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, France, Italy and a lot of other European nations would be happy to hear that. The issue is not what the government puts on the airwaves itself. The issue is what it does to restrict or prevent private individuals using the airwaves.
If you don't absolutely NEED a piece of information, you have no business knowing it, or attempting to get your hands on it. Anyone who has a problem with this is aiding terrorist and is exactly the type of person we need to fight.
I find the above two sentences extremely dangerous. Taken on their own, they appear to equate ignorance with patriotism and intellectual curiosity with terrorism.
In the extreme, the second sentence appears to say that anyone trying to learn new things that aren't necessary for their survival is aiding and abetting terrorism. That would include every single research student anywhere in the world, not to mention scientists whose job is research.
To say that people should only be allowed to know what they NEED to know is to deny people the opportunity to find out more things they might LIKE to know. Would you want libraries and art galleries closed because people might learn something they don't NEED?
I didn't NEED to hear your opinion - I wanted to learn what it was, and what other people's opinions are, by reading Slashdot. Perhaps Slashdot should be limited to a "need to know" basis.
If your statements are not saying that these restrictions should apply to civilian information, but only to governmental secrets which could damage the effectiveness of the US government, then specify that.
Oh, and if you are, you should be very careful about an Official Secrets Act-like piece of legislation. It is far too easy to turn it into a blanket cover-up act, by which any government excess, regardless of whether it was committed domestically or overseas, can be kept out of the public spotlight for 30 years or more. Imagine if the Watergate break-in had been ruled to be subject to an Official Secrets Act restriction.
The US government already has (especially regarding the military) a significant amount of existing security protection. To say that an Official Secrets Act is needed, when existing legislation does not prevent the government blocking publication of data "against the national interest" is to give the government more power to block the public's knowledge of its own representative's activities than should be allowed.
The note in the article that Australian law may not recognise some of the exclusions in the GPL (using standard GPL wording) raises an interesting set of questions.
1. Can you break the GPL by working on a GPLed piece of software in a country where some important GPL exclusions cannot legally be excluded, releasing the resulting software under another license (assuming one of the exclusions blocked by law is that forcing release of derivative products under the GPL), and then modifying that software back in the USA into a proprietary version containing GPLed code?
2. If software developed in a country where not all of the GPL can be legally applied is then exported to the US, is the US user bound by the full terms of the GPL, or just those which are legally binding in the other jurisdiction?
3. If the answer to (1) is YES or the answer to (2) is NO, how difficult will it become to successfully enforce the GPL in a US court, when there is the possibility of a "void where prohibited" defence about GPL provisions?
I don't know if the FSF has the time to consider these issues, but if not I would strongly urge EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Oz equivalent to the EFF) to look into the law and start evaluating these implications.
The last thing we need is a large corporation either (a) finding a jurisdictional end-run around the GPL in existence, or (b) lobbying a sufficiently small nation which is conveniently a signatory to all the appropriate treaties to modify its consumer-protection laws to enable the end-run.
Why do we need to keep our credit card numbers secret?
Why do we want spammers not to send us email (and hence why do we want to limit who knows our email address)?
Just because we have something to hide doesn't mean we have done anything we should be ashamed of, or we should be prosecuted for.
Privacy is necessary to a functioning society - there are lots more examples than the ones I just mentioned.
Can I just say "Whoa! Faulty analogy" here.
Last time I checked, when someone else gets told how much money I have in my bank account, I don't automatically lose access to that information. Transfering information used to be called "communication" where I was from.
Sure, you may not feel that someone else has a right to communicate particular information about you, but the fact is that you are not physically harmed by the communication.
Plenty of communication can indirectly cause you harm, of course, whether physical, intellectual, emotional or financial, but I don't see why this particular set of personal information is automatically sacrosanct and remains entirely under your control.
Where along this line of increasingly private personal information do you want the shutters to be put down without any ability to have third-parties transfer that information?
1. I have brown hair (easy to tell without talking to me)
2. I am 24 (guessable, but not verifiable without talking to a contact of mine)
3. I have a Ph.D. (not guessable, but very hard to use against me)
4. I have a savings account with Egg
5. This savings account has £200 in it
6. The password for this savings account is pvponline
(If you feel these aren't in the right order, please let me know).
If you ban third parties from communicating about number 6, you ban the creation of aggregation websites, something people find very useful for tracking their accounts at multiple institutions.
Personal information itself is not an asset - the ability to transfer it is an asset (the information itself is unchanged, but if you start giving it out, the value of giving it out in the future decreases). If you can get money in exchange for something, it's an asset. The definition is as simple as that. If you want some information to be sacrosanct, then say what information qualifies, and why you think it qualifies.
Can I just add another criticism to the line:
You cannot own information, since it is not a tangible thing.
I guess that means I can't own stock in a company in the UK either - almost all the shares in the UK have been dematerialised (i.e. just tracked on computer in a central database at the depository institution).
It also probably means I can't own the money in my bank account - after all the total value of deposits in any developed country is a significant multiple of the amount of notes and coins in circulation, so the odds are that that money in my bank account cannot be directly representative of a set of notes and coins.
Perhaps there is another reason why the author of that quote believes information cannot be used?
Let's see if I understand the discussion here:
People are talking about their loss of privacy from banks selling on personal data they have automatically collected. Some of these people are also saying that they have no choice but to go along with this because of the crap (yes, they are crap) provisions about opt-out in the new law.
OK - but why do you need a bank account at all?
Here are the main reasons I've seen it to be a necessity:
1. To get access to credit cards for ID purposes.
This isn't a necessity - get a passport and a Driver's License - if those stop being ID something is seriously wrong with the world.
2. To be able to borrow money.
Fair enough - but by asking for money from someone you have to pay. If it turns out that the market rate is 6% plus your personal information, then that's what the market rate is. If no-one offers 7% and no personal information cost, well there's not a lot you can do about it.
3. To conveniently keep your money in a 'safe' (well, reasonably safe) place and not on your person.
OK - this is a service that current (cheque/checking) accounts and savings accounts
provide. It's a service - the banks are under no obligations to provide it for free.
4. To earn interest on your money.
Again - if the rate of interest happens to be 6% in exchange for your personal information, that's the market rate.
Points to note:
None of the above uses are essential - you can survive without them.
The information you give up is an asset to somebody - it therefore has some value which is implicitly factored into the relative merits of these transactions.
If you do choose to go without banking services to protect your personal information, it will cost you (no interest-free credit card periods, no savings account interest) and so that personal information must have some value to you as well.
I deplore the way the Act was written to deny people the ability to opt-out effectively despite appearing to offer opt-out rights. However, those who believe there should be a blanket ban on information selling are denying those who can place a value on their personal information the right to take advantage of that value.
If we saw a bank offering:
4% 12-month CDs*
*4% only if you consent to give out your personal information, 3.8% if you opt to retain privacy rights
what would we say?
Can any 'privacy is an intrinsic right' people come up with a debatable argument (i.e. one where they do not revert to their basic axiom) as to why the above offer is wrong?
Yes, it would prohibit freedom of association, in exactly the same way that sticking someone in prison deprives them of the right to vote and of freedom of movement.
To strip someone of some of their rights when they have broken the social contract in certain ways is commonplace. This simply puts crimes committed under the umbrella of a corporation in the same class as crimes committed when acting as an individual.
Their Webcasting FAQ explains the situation exactly:
Q. What happens if a webcaster cannot meet the conditions of the statutory licenses?
A. If a webcaster does not qualify for the performance or ephemeral statutory license, it must obtain licenses from each of the copyright owners of the sound recordings that it wants to transmit or reproduce. For example, interactive services that permit a listener to choose a particular song and those that create a personalized program for the listener must obtain individual licenses. Unfortunately, there is no group or organization that grants licenses on behalf of copyright owners to webcasting services that do not qualify for the statutory license. Therefore, the webcaster must contact each copyright owner individually. Webcasters who do not qualify for the statutory license and who fail to obtain licenses directly from sound recording copyright owners risk infringement liability.
The interactivity is, as other people have said, what causes Launchcast to be ineligible for the statutory licence.
Interestingly, the webcast statutory licence rules appear to apply to simulwebcasting (i.e. taking the live radio station feed). It even notes that
Retransmitters of over-the-air radio broadcasts are required, upon notice, to cease retransmissions of digital broadcasts that regularly exceed the sound recording performance complement. For analog broadcasts, retransmissions must cease, upon notice, if a substantial portion of the broadcast transmissions exceed the complement.
and also says that the statutory licence applies to
webcasters that:
(1) offer non-interactive programming (i.e., not on-demand or personalized programming);
So - does this mean that a webcast of a radio station must be turned off when they go to "All Request Saturday" - otherwise the webcast listeners can effectively get on-demand?
Quick point - I don't know about the Backstreet Boys, but I do know that Savage Garden were around working at it for quite a while (and besides, both guys are late twenties). Sometimes the mainstream record labels produce mainstream music from bands who have been around and _like_ that stuff.
OK - so I'm a Savage Garden fan. So mod me.
Or will the RIAA sue me for not having a licence to play my own CD with the tracks out of order or something?
'Understand' was probably the wrong word from that previous poster. 'Have the right to inspect' is probably the more reasonable claim.
The only reason why ignorance of the law can reasonably be no excuse is that everyone has the right to find out what the law is stated to be, both legislation and executive regulations.
Closed-source software effectively restricts this right of inspection.
Has anyone considered the possibility of making it technically possible but _illegal_ for Napster to comply with the ruling?
1. Develop some fancy filtering technique which manages to pick up a particular style of munging of mp3 files.
2. Submit a patent for the filtering technique.
3. Start munging mp3 files that way (legal ones for best comic effect) and putting them on Napster.
Napster can't filter them effectively, although a way exists, thanks to the ludicrous nature of software patents.
Any comments? Why wouldn't this work?
Have you heard of a guy called Riemann? 19th century pure mathematician. Came up with a generalisation of Euclidean geometry to surfaces of arbitrary shapes - extended it to four dimensions as well. Developed the concept of 'manifolds'. Completely useless, insane stuff with no everyday application, right, just like the rest of pure maths?
Oh, yeah, Einstein then came along and postulated that space was curved and behaved like a Riemannian manifold.
That's the thing about pure maths. It doesn't have to apply now - it might end up being the obvious thing to apply later. You have to keep coming up with new concepts, without necessarily having any obvious connection to reality, in order to provide the applied mathematicians and engineers with new theories on which to base more sophisticated models.
So before you say that pure mathematics is of no economic use, think about what it leads to down the line.
Yours,
Duncan Richer
Ph.D. (Pure Maths)
now working in the real world
Are you saying that if you haven't committed a crime and are not under strong suspicion of having committed one, the government has no right to hold data about you?
What about your name and address so you can vote?
What about your name, address and income so they can charge you income tax?
Governments need some data on everyone just to function.
If XML is a waste, then why are so many companies using XML as the basis for their B2B marketplaces? What about the fact that large numbers of existing EDI systems are performing a gradual transition to XML-compatible syntax? (SWIFT being an important example).
As with most of the recent Intel announcements, surely the most important question is "when are speeds like this going to be available in quantity?"
Without a decent answer to that, all of these announcements look more like an attempt to create FUD to work against AMD than like genuine advancements in the field.
Actually, given the existing RIP legislation, it would be a laugh for the UK Government to try implementing the equivalent of the DMCA.
...
view conversation with police officer
Cop: Alright, sunshine - what's on this disk?
You: It's just a DVD of a home movie, officer.
C: I don't buy that. It's obviously encrypted information that we need to see. Hand over the decryption keys.
Y: I can't do that officer - I don't have an authorised DVD player, so revealing any decryption keys would be in breach of the Digital Recording Protection Act 2003.
C: Right. I am arresting you on suspicion of refusing to reveal an encryption key [under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.] You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not say something which you later rely on in court. Do you understand?
They would have you coming and going. Yes, I know that if the law forces you to commit a crime either way, you can probably get off, but that's still an awful lot to go through (especially if they decide to make it a Section 51 situation which means that it's an offence to even tell the Judge in your case that a decryption order exists).
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, a natural monopoly is an industry where fixed costs are high, but marginal costs are very close to zero. A good example is a distribution network, such as the electricity grid (note: NOT electricity production). The cost of building the grid is huge, but the cost of supplying people electricity over the grid is negligible.
If you leave a natural monopoly to unregulated private enterprise, then they can act as a monopolist and charge profit-maximising prices. They don't need to worry about other companies trying to enter - the fixed costs are huge and the rollout times are long, so they have plenty of time to respond.
With government regulation, prices can be brought down closer to marginal cost, maximising total utility and increasing overall production. So, before you say that government should do nothing but protect private property rights, think about what would happen if the electricity distribution company, the water company, the sewerage service, and all those other distribution networks, were private monopolies not subject to any price regulation.
It becomes a least-hated rather than a most-liked election. And the problem with this is...? What if you have one politician hated by 80% of the people, but loved by the other 20%. There are 5 other candidates, all of whom are hated by no-one, but each of them can only get 16%. First past the post elects a politician 80% of the country hate, when there are 5 alternatives who no-one hates. Yes, that's an extreme example, but to say that a least-hated election is a problem is to ignore such possibilities (and to say that three-cornered contests are irrelevant). Oh, and for all those who think that changing the voting system would make it "too difficult" for the majority of Americans, Australia has had preferential voting (number the boxes in order) for at least as long as I've been alive (22 years). Do you have evidence Americans are sufficiently more stupid than Australians for this to be inappropriate in the US?
I don't see why the State needs to take people at their word about having been legally enfranchised and not voting more than once. There's a very simple way to get around this.
Make registration (not necessarily voting, that's another issue) compulsory for everyone over the age of 18 legally entitled to vote. Then just have copies of the electoral roll at each polling booth, check off the names of those who vote (ask for ID if you feel that will help), then compare the results after the election and prosecute those who vote multiple times.
No mess, no worry, and if the vote fraud is significant enough to affect the result of the election then it can be annulled.
The over 18 years old requirement is a major error on the part of the government. I was 16 when I first got access to the Internet, and I basically had to get access for my academic work (the account was a shell account on the University of Adelaide's Computer Science Department computers). If someone is not 18, how can they start a degree in anything which requires them to get Internet access?
The Federal Government's "clever country" stuff is going out the window.