I loved his casual assumption that "tracking" would keep up with piracy. He doesn't seem to realize that Napster made their job easy. Try tracking a file distribution through freenet even with anon FTPs from warez sites.
Oh well, he never needs to worry about being too informed.
This would be a wild guess, but I'm suspecting that the reason the restrictions are still in place is because of the very reasons you stated. They're right next door to us and they're using a governing model that some folks high up in the power structure feel is not a good one.
The fear is probably that Cuba will align with China or Iraq or somesuch place and once again become a staging area.
Re:The new century is in for some nastiness
on
Fahrenheit 451
·
· Score: 1
Join Freenet.
http://freenet.sourceforge.net
Set up a server and become your own little island of freedom.
They are not talking about banning file sharing. If anything, it would be a narrow ban restricting companies from aiding criminals who move around copyrighted material. Right now there is a gray area in the law where a service provider can claim they are only providing a service, and it's the users who are breaking the law (Napster, of course, is appalled that anyone would use their service to break the law, *wink* *wink*).
While I would agree that Napster is a thinly disguised mechanism for pirating music (although it has legitimate uses as well), your argument is not applicable to all incidents of service providers.
ISPs in general can (and most do) provide services for sharing files. Many people can and do exchange files that are not legally redistributable on these ISPs, using their services. Napster is an extreme example of this and facilitates the process considerably, but you seem to have forgotten we still have FTP like we did before Napster showed up.
Should we ban all services capable of sharing files? Obviously not, as this would cripple the internet.
Should we make ISPs liable for all content? Only if we want to have a net regulated by litigation. This type of environment is being previewed nicely by the UK's libel laws. Imagine if all you had to do to get a file/account revoked was to claim it infringed a copyright. Do you really want it that easy to take away somebody's little corner of the net?
Napster is not the problem. Making ISPs liable for content is not the solution. Until somebody actually goes to the trouble of identifying the problem (or perhaps realizing that "problem" is perhaps not the correct term) then all this will be resorting to (immoral) bullying tactics in an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.
To leave you with some things to think about: - what are the governing factors that lead to theft? - what is the most successful way of dealing with theft?
The services you mention (except for universal file compression) already exist on freenet. Freenet already provides a mechanism to circumvent any and all file transfer restrictions. The solution proposed, to disallow any distributed file transfer system, is clearly ludicrous. The internet itself is so highly dependent on protocols of this type that to remove the existing services because of this capability would effectively nullify the entire net.
PPI's solution is bad for couple of reasons:
- It puts a burden on all service providers. One that they will not be willing to shoulder. What will happen is identical to what is happening with "libel" cases in the UK. If somebody complains that some material is copyrighted, then the ISP will be forced to remove that material without review. To do otherwise would incur legal expenses beyond the resources of the average ISP.
- It does not allow for speech to be protected. As previously mentioned, I could claim that somebody's "rant" about a product was actually a stolen product review from some obscure (possibly non-existent) magazine and force their ISP to take it down.
Further, current law that allows for prosecution of copyright offenders is adequate. If you can prove that somebody has illegally distributed copies of protected material, then current law allows you to prosecute them. To allow prosecution of ISPs is only being bandied about because it allows corporations to bully ISPs with little effort. An ISP is not liable for distribution of data, as they can hardly be counted on to know what is being distributed on their networks. Even scarier, forcing ISPs to monitor data on their networks, would both require more manpower than many of them could afford and it would be a gross invasion of privacy.
The genie is out of the bottle. Data is no longer protectable unless it is secret. Current solutions, including yours and PPIs, are not feasible because they adress a paradigm that is no longer applicable to reality. To try to force reality to conform with the paradigm will only force us to abandon the internet. What do you think the chances of that happening are?
I agree with your comments in spirit, but I think that such a viewpoint would be flawed (not that this has stopped MS in the past). Many large IT departments don't have the flexibility to adopt a pure microsoft solution, nor is it likely that MS will be able to provide a reasonable solution for many business/operating needs.
To enforce this will actually drive markets away from them. Interoperability is a foundation of so much business that they could well disqualify themselves by failing to be interoperable.
In what way does this book hurt the victims of the Columbine shootings? Deification of the shooters is far from any comment I saw posted on the original series (although I did have my threshhold on 2). The "worst" I saw in that respect was sympathy for them, not vindication of their actions.
The point of the book is to point out an injustice. What better way than to use ACTUAL EXAMPLES of injustice (ie. those stories that were submitted). The correlation with Columbine is merely that the backlash from shootings there caused a bad situation to become worse in an intolerable way. *You* may wish that the stories were completely unrelated, but that does not make it so. Wrong is wrong, whether it's out of the blue, because of traditional teenager callousness, or because of a some pretty sick people taking out a bunch of their classmates.
Don't read into these stories something that isn't there. This isn't about Columbine, it's about kids getting smacked down for being different.
``Napster is about facilitating piracy, and trying to build a business on the backs of artists and copyright owners,'' Rosen of the RIAA said.
If only we could make that illegal, then we might actually have reasonably priced music where the artist actually made money from sales of recordings.
That said, this isn't really a full judgement. Napster was requesting a summary judgement. IANAL but I believe that means that we still have several months of court battles ahead to see what's up with Napster.
I would say that transient copies being illegal would be a tricky business. Take any copyrighted material and send it to somebody (even a legitimate user) and anybody with a packet sniffer between you and the destination can grab a copy of it (assuming you're not encrypting).
It's in the same ballpark as making ISPs liable for content. If an ISP is not responsible as a publisher (like with recent UK ISPs in regard to libel) then you cannot hold them responsible for transient content.
Going against napster on these grounds would make life very difficult, as effectively all traffic would have to be monitored for content. Not a good outcome.
Actually, distributing the music is illegal, those that download it, however, are not liable. I could download a zillion unprotected files and never be liable for anything, no matter what they contained. Whoever made them available to me could get in trouble, but not I (unless I then made them available to others).
Metallica is actually doing more than shooting themselves in the foot here. They are trying to get people banned for something that is legal. They should only try to get people banned if they are distributing their music.
Incidentally, since many of these users are undoubtedly minors, wouldn't they be collecting data on minors without parental consent, something that is now illegal?
But with the Bible version of the quote, you'll have to agree that companies ARE evil - because their reason for being is the bottom-line - meaning, the corporation, though emotionless and amoral, by its very agenda for existence, is evil because it "loves" money. This kind of throws off the original post about companies not being evil, doesn't it?
I disagree. Amoral != evil, depending on how you choose to define evil (a difficult task in itself). Rocks are amoral, yet when a village is burried under a rock slide it is not evil. They simply behave according to the laws that govern their existence. Corporations are very similar. While they are directed by conscious entities, there are certain (market) laws that dictate how a corporation may behave and remain solvent. While I'm not particularly fond of the corporate entity, I happen to invest in a few of them that I believe do good work without harming people.
Corporations are about the bottom line, which in effect means maximizing shareholder return. Why does it mean maximizing shareholder return? Because for some strange reason, people tend to invest in companies that they believe will make them rich, regardless of what actions those companies take. I would say that calling corporations evil is a misdirection. The real evil lies with the investors that fund corporations that act in ways that are undesirable to society.
I work on (in part) financial analysis software that analyzes the behaviors of investment managers. We do track things like which managers will invest in environmentally clean companies over the inevitably cheaper unclean competitors. When compared to managers that don't give a damn about the environment, it's unsurprising to see how much lower their net assets are. More bang for the buck almost always pulls in the investors.
So to sum up: People are evil, corporations are only a visible manifestation of this that allows us to pretend that the responsiblity lies with a social/business construct instead of ourselves.
While I won't attempt to defend Dre for his brutality, your argument is a classic example of the "two wrongs" fallacy. To commit a crime, even if it is against a criminal, is still a crime. Crimes are defined by behavior, not who they're a crime against.
If Dre weren't still suing Napster I'd actually applaud this particular decision. It's not napster that is making illegal copies, it's the users that use napster. Unfortunately in this case I suspect he's just doing this to try to get more cash in addition to his suit against napster.
Unfortunatly, there are a number of other problems.
Napster doesn't just transfer music. It theoretically can be used to transfer any files. Digital sigs in the mp3s would be a new format, besides, what if you're dealing with mp3s from a garage band trying to give free samples?
More importantly, it would cut into the profit margins of the big record companies, thus it would never meet their approval.
The real solution is for record companies to stop charging $20 a pop for a CD. If a CD only cost $5, I'd be buying them in bushels, and they'd be making more money than they do now ($0).
As far as napster capitulating, why should they when they have done nothing wrong?
- Football, definitely violent. - Rugby, makes football players look like pansies (they wear padding after all) - Hockey, it's not a real hockey game until somebody bleeds - Driving in rushhour (damn near makes me psychotic every day) - Mothers/Mother in laws. 'nuff said. - Stupid studies performed so that congress can make spurious laws so that we all end up playing video games based on Barney the Dinosaur. Makes me feel downright treasonous.
I think you're entirely missing the point. Jon has at no point attempted to trivialize or demonize those who were killed at Columbine.
I am not he, so I cannot guarantee his attitude, but my impression is that he feels that post Columbine schools are becoming oppressive. I happen to agree with this particular argument, but I don't see how it ties in with Columbine itself except that that was the catalyst for the current move towards oppression.
If somebody does something wrong, you punish them. You don't go out and start treating everybody even remotely like them like they did something wrong too.
It's worth noting that he is not "capitalizing on their deaths" with this book at all. The proceeds (after costs) are going to a yet to be selected charity.
It is ironic to me that a forum of people (seemingly the majority of/. participants) who supposedly promote open source and limits on patents would be so irate over this.
What's the difference between somebody posting a code snippet vs. a comment here? If it was a source snippet you'd assume somebody would use it if it was a response to a direct query. We've fought to get code recognized as free speech, yet now we're being stingy about letting free speech be quoted.
I can't speak for anybody else, but when I post here I do so with the assumption that I will not receive monetary compensation (or even personal recognition) for doing so. While I doubt that anything of mine is quoted in this book, I would consider it an honor, not a ripoff, if my comments were deemed worthy of publication.
I posted to these threads with the assumption I would get nothing in return, and I am thus far meeting my expectations.
There is no requirement to phase out libraries as digitalization takes place. The presumption that dead tree form will be replaced by the electronic is not, IMO, a real danger with books.
I see digitalization as more of a complementary resource, not one for replacement. This is especially important as many people do not have access to the library of congress (or any library, depending on nation and locale).
I would disagree that you do it based on social class. It seems that such an approach would be just as unjustified as jocks using it to report geeks.
For a more effective, and less partisan approach, simply report all the children of teachers, adminstrators, school board members, local politicians, and media representatives. If you're going to something unethical to make a point, at least make sure that the point is made to those who have the power to change the system.
I'd argue that even with a god there is no morality, but only if morality is universally accepted with a distinct definition.
As an atheist, it is clear to me that I have morals, it is simply that these morals are not those that are dictate by a religious institution (although there are commonalities). Even among theists, it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to find two theists with exactly the same morals. Further, theists that worship different dieties have even more divergent systems of morality.
To some extent it's a matter of scale. Robots require raw materials like metal, silicon, petroleum products etc. For a "robot plague" to occur, not only would robots have to have all the expertise to find, mine, and refine these resources, but they'd have to defend these resources against a human attack.
HIV and the bubonic plague (and the nanotech that Joy mentioned) all use materials that are readily available. Further, since the resources are ubiquitous, it is impossible to destroy the resources without destroying the host. Frankly, I don't see robots as being a real threat without a very intelligent force behind them. Even the fastest assembly plant in the world cannot crank out warbots fast enough to threaten the world. Nor can current robots innovate to counter new technologies we might create to fight them.
I agree that nanotech does not require intelligence to be a threat. For that all you need is a self-replicating nanobug that breaks molecular bonds of complex carbon molecules. My argument for the requirement of AI was limited to robotic threats.
It doesn't require it, but it's hardly likely to happen without an AI of some sort directing it. Right now we're a lot smarter than machines. Even a fairly fast robot probably wouldn't be able to replicate faster than we could destroy it. For it to be a menace it would have to be moderately intelligent as well.
I'm not an expert on it. The dictionary definition is roughly "being aware of yourself or your envirnment". As to what makes it happen, you'd have to ask Mr. Pollack.
(off topic) What's non-artifician intelligence? Whould that be NI for natural intelligence? Now we know what the knights who say "ni" were talking about.
This is only required if we wish to model AI after human intelligence. We also happen to know quite a bit (but by no means a complete picture) of how the human brain does work. Should we abandon all modelling of the human brain simply because we don't have the full picture? Sometimes modelling something is the best way to learn how it works.
Slashdot Mirror
I loved his casual assumption that "tracking" would keep up with piracy. He doesn't seem to realize that Napster made their job easy. Try tracking a file distribution through freenet even with anon FTPs from warez sites.
Oh well, he never needs to worry about being too informed.
This would be a wild guess, but I'm suspecting that the reason the restrictions are still in place is because of the very reasons you stated. They're right next door to us and they're using a governing model that some folks high up in the power structure feel is not a good one.
The fear is probably that Cuba will align with China or Iraq or somesuch place and once again become a staging area.
Join Freenet.
http://freenet.sourceforge.net
Set up a server and become your own little island of freedom.
They are not talking about banning file sharing. If anything, it would be a narrow ban restricting companies from aiding criminals who move around copyrighted material. Right now there is a gray area in the law where a service provider can claim they are only providing a service, and it's the users who are breaking the law (Napster, of course, is appalled that anyone would use their service to break the law, *wink* *wink*).
While I would agree that Napster is a thinly disguised mechanism for pirating music (although it has legitimate uses as well), your argument is not applicable to all incidents of service providers.
ISPs in general can (and most do) provide services for sharing files. Many people can and do exchange files that are not legally redistributable on these ISPs, using their services. Napster is an extreme example of this and facilitates the process considerably, but you seem to have forgotten we still have FTP like we did before Napster showed up.
Should we ban all services capable of sharing files? Obviously not, as this would cripple the internet.
Should we make ISPs liable for all content? Only if we want to have a net regulated by litigation. This type of environment is being previewed nicely by the UK's libel laws. Imagine if all you had to do to get a file/account revoked was to claim it infringed a copyright. Do you really want it that easy to take away somebody's little corner of the net?
Napster is not the problem. Making ISPs liable for content is not the solution. Until somebody actually goes to the trouble of identifying the problem (or perhaps realizing that "problem" is perhaps not the correct term) then all this will be resorting to (immoral) bullying tactics in an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.
To leave you with some things to think about:
- what are the governing factors that lead to theft?
- what is the most successful way of dealing with theft?
See also the freenet project at http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Freenet isn't quite as streamlined for music (because it's for all file types), but it's quite versatile.
PPI's solution is bad for couple of reasons:
- It puts a burden on all service providers. One that they will not be willing to shoulder. What will happen is identical to what is happening with "libel" cases in the UK. If somebody complains that some material is copyrighted, then the ISP will be forced to remove that material without review. To do otherwise would incur legal expenses beyond the resources of the average ISP.
- It does not allow for speech to be protected. As previously mentioned, I could claim that somebody's "rant" about a product was actually a stolen product review from some obscure (possibly non-existent) magazine and force their ISP to take it down.
Further, current law that allows for prosecution of copyright offenders is adequate. If you can prove that somebody has illegally distributed copies of protected material, then current law allows you to prosecute them. To allow prosecution of ISPs is only being bandied about because it allows corporations to bully ISPs with little effort. An ISP is not liable for distribution of data, as they can hardly be counted on to know what is being distributed on their networks. Even scarier, forcing ISPs to monitor data on their networks, would both require more manpower than many of them could afford and it would be a gross invasion of privacy.
The genie is out of the bottle. Data is no longer protectable unless it is secret. Current solutions, including yours and PPIs, are not feasible because they adress a paradigm that is no longer applicable to reality. To try to force reality to conform with the paradigm will only force us to abandon the internet. What do you think the chances of that happening are?
I agree with your comments in spirit, but I think that such a viewpoint would be flawed (not that this has stopped MS in the past). Many large IT departments don't have the flexibility to adopt a pure microsoft solution, nor is it likely that MS will be able to provide a reasonable solution for many business/operating needs.
To enforce this will actually drive markets away from them. Interoperability is a foundation of so much business that they could well disqualify themselves by failing to be interoperable.
In what way does this book hurt the victims of the Columbine shootings? Deification of the shooters is far from any comment I saw posted on the original series (although I did have my threshhold on 2). The "worst" I saw in that respect was sympathy for them, not vindication of their actions.
The point of the book is to point out an injustice. What better way than to use ACTUAL EXAMPLES of injustice (ie. those stories that were submitted). The correlation with Columbine is merely that the backlash from shootings there caused a bad situation to become worse in an intolerable way. *You* may wish that the stories were completely unrelated, but that does not make it so. Wrong is wrong, whether it's out of the blue, because of traditional teenager callousness, or because of a some pretty sick people taking out a bunch of their classmates.
Don't read into these stories something that isn't there. This isn't about Columbine, it's about kids getting smacked down for being different.
``Napster is about facilitating piracy, and trying to build a business on the backs of artists and copyright owners,'' Rosen of the RIAA said.
If only we could make that illegal, then we might actually have reasonably priced music where the artist actually made money from sales of recordings.
That said, this isn't really a full judgement. Napster was requesting a summary judgement. IANAL but I believe that means that we still have several months of court battles ahead to see what's up with Napster.
I would say that transient copies being illegal would be a tricky business. Take any copyrighted material and send it to somebody (even a legitimate user) and anybody with a packet sniffer between you and the destination can grab a copy of it (assuming you're not encrypting).
It's in the same ballpark as making ISPs liable for content. If an ISP is not responsible as a publisher (like with recent UK ISPs in regard to libel) then you cannot hold them responsible for transient content.
Going against napster on these grounds would make life very difficult, as effectively all traffic would have to be monitored for content. Not a good outcome.
Actually, distributing the music is illegal, those that download it, however, are not liable. I could download a zillion unprotected files and never be liable for anything, no matter what they contained. Whoever made them available to me could get in trouble, but not I (unless I then made them available to others).
Metallica is actually doing more than shooting themselves in the foot here. They are trying to get people banned for something that is legal. They should only try to get people banned if they are distributing their music.
Incidentally, since many of these users are undoubtedly minors, wouldn't they be collecting data on minors without parental consent, something that is now illegal?
I disagree. Amoral != evil, depending on how you choose to define evil (a difficult task in itself). Rocks are amoral, yet when a village is burried under a rock slide it is not evil. They simply behave according to the laws that govern their existence. Corporations are very similar. While they are directed by conscious entities, there are certain (market) laws that dictate how a corporation may behave and remain solvent. While I'm not particularly fond of the corporate entity, I happen to invest in a few of them that I believe do good work without harming people.
Corporations are about the bottom line, which in effect means maximizing shareholder return. Why does it mean maximizing shareholder return? Because for some strange reason, people tend to invest in companies that they believe will make them rich, regardless of what actions those companies take. I would say that calling corporations evil is a misdirection. The real evil lies with the investors that fund corporations that act in ways that are undesirable to society.
I work on (in part) financial analysis software that analyzes the behaviors of investment managers. We do track things like which managers will invest in environmentally clean companies over the inevitably cheaper unclean competitors. When compared to managers that don't give a damn about the environment, it's unsurprising to see how much lower their net assets are. More bang for the buck almost always pulls in the investors.
So to sum up: People are evil, corporations are only a visible manifestation of this that allows us to pretend that the responsiblity lies with a social/business construct instead of ourselves.
While I won't attempt to defend Dre for his brutality, your argument is a classic example of the "two wrongs" fallacy. To commit a crime, even if it is against a criminal, is still a crime. Crimes are defined by behavior, not who they're a crime against.
If Dre weren't still suing Napster I'd actually applaud this particular decision. It's not napster that is making illegal copies, it's the users that use napster. Unfortunately in this case I suspect he's just doing this to try to get more cash in addition to his suit against napster.
Unfortunatly, there are a number of other problems.
Napster doesn't just transfer music. It theoretically can be used to transfer any files. Digital sigs in the mp3s would be a new format, besides, what if you're dealing with mp3s from a garage band trying to give free samples?
More importantly, it would cut into the profit margins of the big record companies, thus it would never meet their approval.
The real solution is for record companies to stop charging $20 a pop for a CD. If a CD only cost $5, I'd be buying them in bushels, and they'd be making more money than they do now ($0).
As far as napster capitulating, why should they when they have done nothing wrong?
Hmm, let's see what else we can think of:
- Football, definitely violent.
- Rugby, makes football players look like pansies (they wear padding after all)
- Hockey, it's not a real hockey game until somebody bleeds
- Driving in rushhour (damn near makes me psychotic every day)
- Mothers/Mother in laws. 'nuff said.
- Stupid studies performed so that congress can make spurious laws so that we all end up playing video games based on Barney the Dinosaur. Makes me feel downright treasonous.
I think you're entirely missing the point. Jon has at no point attempted to trivialize or demonize those who were killed at Columbine.
I am not he, so I cannot guarantee his attitude, but my impression is that he feels that post Columbine schools are becoming oppressive. I happen to agree with this particular argument, but I don't see how it ties in with Columbine itself except that that was the catalyst for the current move towards oppression.
If somebody does something wrong, you punish them. You don't go out and start treating everybody even remotely like them like they did something wrong too.
It's worth noting that he is not "capitalizing on their deaths" with this book at all. The proceeds (after costs) are going to a yet to be selected charity.
It is ironic to me that a forum of people (seemingly the majority of /. participants) who supposedly promote open source and limits on patents would be so irate over this.
What's the difference between somebody posting a code snippet vs. a comment here? If it was a source snippet you'd assume somebody would use it if it was a response to a direct query. We've fought to get code recognized as free speech, yet now we're being stingy about letting free speech be quoted.
I can't speak for anybody else, but when I post here I do so with the assumption that I will not receive monetary compensation (or even personal recognition) for doing so. While I doubt that anything of mine is quoted in this book, I would consider it an honor, not a ripoff, if my comments were deemed worthy of publication.
I posted to these threads with the assumption I would get nothing in return, and I am thus far meeting my expectations.
There is no requirement to phase out libraries as digitalization takes place. The presumption that dead tree form will be replaced by the electronic is not, IMO, a real danger with books.
I see digitalization as more of a complementary resource, not one for replacement. This is especially important as many people do not have access to the library of congress (or any library, depending on nation and locale).
I would disagree that you do it based on social class. It seems that such an approach would be just as unjustified as jocks using it to report geeks.
For a more effective, and less partisan approach, simply report all the children of teachers, adminstrators, school board members, local politicians, and media representatives. If you're going to something unethical to make a point, at least make sure that the point is made to those who have the power to change the system.
First, w/o god there is no real morality
I'd argue that even with a god there is no morality, but only if morality is universally accepted with a distinct definition.
As an atheist, it is clear to me that I have morals, it is simply that these morals are not those that are dictate by a religious institution (although there are commonalities). Even among theists, it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to find two theists with exactly the same morals. Further, theists that worship different dieties have even more divergent systems of morality.
To some extent it's a matter of scale. Robots require raw materials like metal, silicon, petroleum products etc. For a "robot plague" to occur, not only would robots have to have all the expertise to find, mine, and refine these resources, but they'd have to defend these resources against a human attack.
HIV and the bubonic plague (and the nanotech that Joy mentioned) all use materials that are readily available. Further, since the resources are ubiquitous, it is impossible to destroy the resources without destroying the host. Frankly, I don't see robots as being a real threat without a very intelligent force behind them. Even the fastest assembly plant in the world cannot crank out warbots fast enough to threaten the world. Nor can current robots innovate to counter new technologies we might create to fight them.
I agree that nanotech does not require intelligence to be a threat. For that all you need is a self-replicating nanobug that breaks molecular bonds of complex carbon molecules. My argument for the requirement of AI was limited to robotic threats.
It doesn't require it, but it's hardly likely to happen without an AI of some sort directing it. Right now we're a lot smarter than machines. Even a fairly fast robot probably wouldn't be able to replicate faster than we could destroy it. For it to be a menace it would have to be moderately intelligent as well.
I'm not an expert on it. The dictionary definition is roughly "being aware of yourself or your envirnment". As to what makes it happen, you'd have to ask Mr. Pollack.
(off topic)
What's non-artifician intelligence? Whould that be NI for natural intelligence? Now we know what the knights who say "ni" were talking about.
The article was mentioned in this slashdot post, and here is the actual article
This is only required if we wish to model AI after human intelligence. We also happen to know quite a bit (but by no means a complete picture) of how the human brain does work. Should we abandon all modelling of the human brain simply because we don't have the full picture? Sometimes modelling something is the best way to learn how it works.