Whether all this boils down to a privacy intrusion or not is an open question. However, I find the cookies themselves irrelevant in this matter. Cookies are merely a convenience and a nice concept to the information provider, but they don't add any significant functionality to the data exchange process.
Even if you disable everything that deals with cookies, you are still stuck with the ultimate cookie--the URL. Before cookies, some servers encoded the same kind of personalization data in long URLs. For all I know, this technique may still be in popular use. You type in a short URL found in a magazine, and the server immediately redirects you to a personalized URL, full of cryptic parameters, or simply containing a user ID. Disable URL redirection as well, and what do you have left?
The cookies simply provide a cleaner way to implement this, without burdening the URL with massive amounts of data. Besides avoiding URL buffer overflow, the cookies are supposed to be less visible to the user. However, they add no new functionality for tracking user habits. If you are worried about your privacy, you should be more concerned about what information sits in somebody else's database, than about what is stored on your own hard drive.
The essence of this news item, though, seems to be Doubleclick's omnipresence, doing away with the argument that all those different sites you visit won't be able to match their logs in order to find out anything important about you (they simply won't have to). I haven't studied Doubleclick's policy. Does it say anything about whether Doubleclick will comply with requests from law enforcement authorities to find out who seem to be frequent visitors to warez sites displaying Doubleclick banners? Is that something to be concerned about in the first place?
However, the controversy between the USA and Europe over genetically modified vegetables may put a dimmer on that christmas illumination. While the European Union demands labelling of genetically modified food, the USA considers responding to these restrictions by placing selected European goods under heavy import duties. Mutant christmas trees from Britain seem to be a prime candidate for this.
Scientific expertise disagree on what impact genetically modified cristmas trees may have on the environment. The producers have been eager to point out that since the tree isn't supposed to be eaten, the effect on humans is most likely nil. Others are not quite that optimistic, and fears have been raised that the gene may spread from domesticated trees to their wild counterparts, possibly making entire forests glow continuously and thus upsetting the natural balance between day and night.
Meanwhile, reports from Russia suggest that another British invention, the allegedly UFO-made crop circles, is being exploited on a grand scale. Siberian hackers are suspected to have sown large amounts of modified conifer seed in a complicated arrangement forming graphics and letters, appearantly hoping to render a functioning encryption program visible on regular satellite photos from the area, thus making it globally available without violating national export legislation.
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I may be off-base on this next point, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't there a concept known as a "compilation copyright" that can be used to protect a work such as a database. I think this is traditionally used to protect something like, oh, a printed collection of "The Best of alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork", where the contents aren't individually copyrighted by the "author", but the compilation as a whole is.
While I suppose U.S. copyright law recognizes compilations of other works much as Swedish copyright law does, I don't think you can apply this to random collections of data in general. Isn't there a requirement that in order to enjoy copyright protection, your work must have a creative element to it, i.e. you cannot simply instruct your computer or your chimpanzee to produce a sequence of random letters and have it accepted in court as a copyrighted work, right? It may be unique in its appearance, but there is no intellectual creativity embodied in it.
Likewise, merely compiling everything that has appeared in a particular newsgroup (including all the spam) takes no intellectual effort, but just a robot. If the typewritten monkey gibberish isn't protected by copyright, then neither is a random sample of today's Usenet postings.
It's however a different matter when you come up with The Best of alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork, because "The Best" implies a subjective selection of some kind, where a human has supposedly picked the (according to someone's opinion) most profound postings, or perhaps simply weeded out all the spam but kept the rest. This kind of compilation enjoys copyright protection in its own right (while the authors of the individual articles making up the compilation retain any existing rights they may have had).
If all databases were created in this manner, based on human selection and arrangement of the individual items, then I believe existing copyright law would be sufficient. However, most databases are simply mechanical compilations of anything fitting simple criteria that can be checked automatically, and thus they lack the creative element.
Therefore I don't think copyright in the traditional sense applies or should apply to databases, but that a separate kind of "almost-copyright" may optionally be established for databases, automatically made recordings, and the like. It need not involve the definition of an author, or any ridiculously long durations of any such rights.
If you arrange a camera next to a street crossing and set it up to automatically take a picture the next time a car passes in front of it, and you then leave the area, will the driver of that car be considered the photographer, and will he own the copyright to the picture thus taken? Will you? Will the owner of the camera? What if the camera was stolen from the owner and then used for this purpose..?
If copyright is the answer, what is the question?
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Who Owns The Database?
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While you are right that financial investments of various kinds may require legal protection in order not to be destroyed, it doesn't necessarily follow that the mechanism of copyright is the most appropriate solution.
Several people have made references to the original ideas behind copyright: To encourage talented minds to create works of art for the benefit of society as a whole. While the law implementing copyright will have to be a little more complicated than that, I see no reason to depart from that basic principle.
Does the english word "copyright" really describe what it's all about? Compare it with a few other languages:
French: Droit d'Auteur (right of the author)
German: Urheberrecht (right of the "originator", I think)
Swedish: Upphovsrätt (right of "origin")
In contrast to these, the term "copyright" refers to what that right entitles you to do, not what person owns or what fact establishes that right in the first place. I believe this difference in semantics may contribute somewhat to the reasoning about these issues in english-speaking versus other countries, though there are probably many other factors involved as well.
For instance, in Sweden the copyright resulting from work made for hire normally stays with the author, unless something else was agreed beforehand. In the USA, I believe it's the other way around.
I may have invested a lot of money and human labour into the compilation of a catalogue of a million stars in the sky, but I can't really say that my vast tables constitute an intellectual effort, even though their only purpose is to support intellectual activities such as scientific research (as opposed to, say, commercial tourist travel). To get my investment back, I would expect those who benefit from the catalogue to pay a reasonable fee for their use of it, unless of course my government is willing to fund it in return for it being released to the public domain.
While any controls on the use of said catalogue would probably boil down to limitations on copying, I'm not sure the traditional concept of copyright is appropriate here. There is no author and no intellectually creative effort, only lots of money spent on a tedious task, telescope usage fees, and photographic plates. It doesn't make sense to relate the commercial value of the catalogue to the year the last person involved in the project died (whether he was the supervisor or merely cleaned the photographic equipment). It's actually not much different from producing bulk steel, and steelworks certainly don't need copyright protection!
Therefore, when people suggest that you should have the ability to "copyright" databases not because of any intellectual creativity vested in them, but simply due to the financial burden of establishing them, I ask that you carefully consider whether this has anything in common with the idea that the descendants of a successful author should be able to collect royalties from his production 70+ years after his death, or whether you can devise other legal mechanisms to achieve the intended result.
I'm somewhat confused by the situation. While it's true that mere collections of information probably aren't what the legislators had in mind when copyright was established, they may still represent an essential investment to the compiler - not in storage costs, but in the effort needed to collect the data in the first place.
The Swedish Copyright Act has for quite some time contained a special kind of protection for collections of large numbers of information items (Article 49), similar to the protections given to audio or video recordings. It differs from normal copyright in a number of ways:
There is no requirement of artistic creativity, i.e. the collection need not be devised or expressed in any novel way.
The compiler enjoys only financial rights, but not any moral rights similar to those awarded to authors of literary or artistic works.
The duration of this protection is based on when the compilation was created, rather than on when the compiler died.
The duration of said protection is much shorter than that given to literary or artistic works, today 15 years after the compilation was created as compared to 70 years after the author of a book died.
In addition to enjoying this simple kind of protection, a collection that has literary or artistic merit may enjoy normal copyright protection as well (imagine a telephone directory decorated with flower ornaments between every five subscribers).
As with books, general provisions for fair use, private copying etc. apply, and as with books, nobody is prevented from extracting individual items of information from the collection, as long as you don't simply copy the entire collection.
These provisions predate the appearance of computerized databases, and were appearantly intended for printed catalogues, directories and the like. However, I think they apply equally well to digital collections, and I'm not aware of any legal major disputes over this matter in Sweden.
Then we started hearing complaints from several other countries that databases weren't protected by copyright, that such protection had to be established, and that it must be international. Funny they didn't seem to notice that Sweden already had that kind of protection, but went ahead outlining that protection from scratch. Then we were essentially required to adopt whatever they came up with, so now we have two kinds of protection covering approximately the same thing, but with very different rules.
Now I hear that the USA still has no database protection at all - and I was under the impression that the USA was the place where these desperate cries for database protection originated. Was I wrong? How many different kinds of database protection will be imposed on smaller countries before the USA gets its act together and implements even one of those, wreaking havoc with existing legal concepts everywhere?
Steaming arguments make poor code
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Three on Munich
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I agree that there seems to be no easy solution, just a lot of opportunities for evil things to happen... However, I feel that a lot more effort is wasted on merely talking about the problem rather than doing things that may make a difference (but the latter does include some talking as well, of course).
The enemy has two major weapons: Money and a big mouth. Can you counter that by either outspending or outvoicing them? Hardly, but then bring the battle to an arena where you get to pick the weaponry you know best, which I'd suppose is computer programming. You know the technology, you have a cheap distribution medium (the Internet), and probably a limited but seriously interested audience.
So, what kind of software should you create? Don't ask me; I'm just trying to bring up ideas. But if you can threaten Microsoft with something as mundane as an operating system, I'd say there are probably a number of killer apps still waiting to be discovered. And, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to sell the app to a million clueless users, but rather that it could have a similar impact by merely existing in a limited edition.
How about a useful rating system such as one adding topical keywords or audience scores to documents? An annotation system? Make it easy for others to rate your web pages, any web pages, according to their own preferences rather than some pseudo-objective standards of "suitability" for any age group. You could even allow for suitability ratings within the framework of such a system, as long as you don't make it too easy to extract that part and somehow make it mandatory. Add extra dimensions to the WWW by adding preference links to the existing hypertext links - if you like this, then chances are that you will like that as well!
The most common HTTP server on the market is open source. Which is the most popular open source browser? What interesting things could you possibly do in a browser, that aren't done today? Support for the abovementioned preference ratings seems an obvious example. What about enhanced user control over the appearance of documents, rather than more scripting languages, more applets, more anything that is supposed to be controlled by the document author anyway? Convenient, built-in ad filtering? Runtime image manipulation such as clipping and superimposition? A private domain name system? A kitchen sink?
With a little imagination and ingenuity, you can have a lot of fun, and perhaps change the environment of your enemy enough to force them to rethink their ideas from scratch. That should buy you some time. Remember, it wasn't the censors who brought us the Internet or the WWW in the first place, nor will they bring us the next major innovation either. Just let them spend their time adapting to an ever-changing environment.
Of course it won't work. I'm just kidding you. Don't even think of trying to do what I outline above; you'll just waste your time. Trust me, or I'll sue.
Maybe that's because everyone pretty much agree with each other on this issue, and don't see any point in finding more than 29 ways to say that the whole idea stinks?
If two people share exactly the same views, one of them is redundant.
But you have a point, in that people could do a lot more than simply talk about this. Maybe they already do, which is why you don't see them on Slashdot.
Isn't this exactly what some guy named William R. Della Croce Jr. did in the USA a few years ago? According to what I've read, Linus Torvalds and friends received pro-bono assistance from a law firm to have Della Croce's trademark claim invalidated, but in the end they simply had him turn over his claim to Torvalds.
Even though this is legally enforceable in the USA only, they should be able to use the same approach in other countries if needed. Also, owning the trademark in the USA already may constitute a good argument in many jurisdictions. However, that may depend on the actual circumstances in each particular case and country.
Besides the chilling effect, which I also consider the most plausible explanation, they may want to use their loss in court as a political argument, hoping to "improve" copyright legislation to deal with people telling where to find pirated stuff. I don't think they'll lose any sleep over the millions in damages this teenager wasn't ordered to pay.
With all the free publicity you get from suing teenagers, their presumed ingenuity but limited financial resources, and the desire of the legal system to prosecute juvenile delinquents with priority, teenagers with computers seem to make excellent legal guinea-pigs. Perhaps the babelfish wasn't too far off calling this guy a "tea rodent"...
What does the Berne Convention have to say about encouraging copyright violation? That is probably the relevant law in this case.
While I don't know the text of the Berne Convention by heart, I'd say it's only marginally relevant (legally speaking, it's not a law, by the way). The Berne Convention sets some minimum standards for copyright, but its primary purpose is to let foreign authors enjoy the same rights as the nationals of the country where copyright is claimed.
Before the Berne Convention was established in the late 19th century, a Swedish publisher could obtain a book by a British author, possibly translate it, and distribute as many copies he liked within Sweden, without the British author getting a say (or even receiving a penny in compensation)! Even today, copyright legislation is essentially national, with various conventions extending the rights given by national laws also to foreigners.
I don't think the Berne Convention says much about encouraging infringement or similar "side issues". The function of the Berne Convention (or perhaps some other convention) in this particular case was essentially to allow the recording industry to bring charges to the Swedish teenager on behalf of foreign musicians. The rest was up to the Swedish court to decide in accordance with the Swedish Copyright Act and other relevant statutes.
There is another potential twist related to the Berne Convention though: I don't know from what country the actual MP3 files were (and maybe still are) served. In this layman's opinion, charging somebody with assisting infringement by linking to those files will require their distribution to be illegal in the first place. What if they reside on a server in a country which isn't party to the relevant conventions, or where even domestic copyright law is insufficient? Can you be charged with helping someone abroad to commit an act that would be illegal if committed in your own country, but not where it's actually committed?
Note that making a single copy for your own personal use normally isn't illegal in Sweden, so I don't think you'll get anywhere by claiming the teenager was assisting those who downloaded the music to commit "petty theft of intellectual property" or something. The issue here is whether he in effect operated as the advertising agency of an actual pirate (something the court appearantly didn't address, due to sloppy homework on the part of the prosecutor).
Yes, what you propose is to me the natural way of dealing with the problem, and it should probably slow down the move towards the abyss enough to justify calling it an effective halt. However, don't assume that your opponents will behave as predicted at every turn. Just stay informed about their moves, and change your response accordingly.
I don't buy the argument that erring on the safe side of the line (i.e. rating a picture of a naked CPU board as hard-core pornography) would automatically be declared illegal, as you can come up with a number of plausible defenses for this. Since the effect would theoretically be to prevent minors from seeing your CPU board, the harm done to them is essentially nil. As a safety measure, put the extreme rating in your HTML editor document template, and add a note in the documentation that the user is supposed to adjust the rating according to their content after they have finished it, meaning that most users won't even care what the rating says unless they have filters enabled in their own browsers!
The only thing harmed will be the rating system itself. It will be fun watching the censors argue that your prudent act of self-censorship amounts to legal obstruction, and that kids may be harmed by not seeing your harmless CPU boards!
But if they insist that your content must match your rating, by all means, go ahead and add such content, just for the sake of the censors. If they complain about that too, ask them for specific guidance about how to rate each and everyone of your pages. Ultimately, they will have to do the rating themselves and place it with the recipient, an option they have had all the time. It's their job anyway; you shouldn't be forced to do it for them.
However, first we need to wait for the initial rating system becoming law (and you may as well fight it in other ways). No need to disclose your intented tactics to the opposite side in advance. Let them bear the full financial burden of introducing a useless law, to teach them a lesson.
[I normally avoid responding to anonymous cowards, but I think this deserves to be read by others, simply for a perspective.]
Anonymous cowards making incredible allegations about the "crimes" of people who dare to tell the truth in public carry absolutely no weight at all.
While you want to intimidate, track down and jail whistleblowers who have the integrity to sign their own statements and assume responsibility for them, I want you to enjoy your freedom to speak anonymously if you so desire to protect yourself from unlawful harassment because of what you have to say. As long as your statement itself doesn't involve a serious crime (and no, I don't consider simply informing the world about how crimes are committed one of those), anybody involved in the mere handling of your statements on your behalf should be required by law not to reveal your identity even before a court of law!
Such is the law in Sweden with respect to printed media, based on the principle that the publisher is solely responsible for what is being printed. Since Slashdot is an unmoderated medium, that principle can hardly be applied here, but that doesn't make the freedom it would yield any less desirable. I don't care that you don't have the slightest idea of what freedom of expression means, but I want you to enjoy that freedom as much as anybody else, because if you can't, then that freedom isn't worth a dime to anybody else either.
And, if you are still not convinced, please report my name and e-mail address to your nearest police officer, the FBI, Interpol, or any Microsoft lawyers you know. I'm a system manager at a Swedish university, and it's my job to protect the privacy of our users as well as the integrity of our systems against attacks from anywhere.
Privately, I'm sick and fed up with silly government attempts at controlling the spread of information, such as bans on cryptographic software, laws regulating the mere mentioning of named individuals in electronic communication, "copyright infringement" claims raised against proxy HTTP servers, software patents, police snooping on private mail and so on.
I freely admit to a strong desire to circumvent any technical or legal obstacles placed in my way for no legitimate reason at all, and pointing out security flaws in computer software or service configurations - even to the point where continued operation of said software or service is jeopardized - is to me a good deed for the well-being of man kind.
I have decompiled and studied binary code without regard to any copyright on it, simply to satisfy my curiosity. I have modified the Netscape Navigator binary (international version) and configuration to enable US-strength encryption as well as change the "license agreement" nonsense into something in line with Swedish law for the benefit of our students (we don't accept "shrinkwrap" licenses over here), without asking Netscape. I routinely press the "Accept" button whenever I install software at work or at home, knowing that it means approximately "null and void" to me. I may read the "license agreements" after installation, just for the fun of it. I have transmitted encryption software across national boundaries. I have exploited security holes in computer systems owned by others, without their authorization, to obtain useful results such as improved network connectivity.
I scoff at the obscene claims made by German authorities to "own" Adolf Hitler's literary works, and I'll gladly make and distribute copies of Mein Kampf or any other garbage he wrote whenever I feel like it. I conspire with my friends to change the ways things happen around the world, whether in politics or in business, not merely by voting in elections or participating in marketing polls. I believe I do all this in full compliance with the law and with judeo-christian ethics, but if I don't, I'm prepared to defend my actions in court.
I challenge you to report all the above to the appropriate authorities, simply as an experiment to show how futile that is, and how pathetic your remarks are. I promise you that I will not have you prosecuted for making any false accusations against me (though I cannot answer for any actions by others). Ain't I kind? Believe me, it's hardly worth the cost of a phone call.
No, I'm not giving you my residential address. I may be frank, but I'm not stupid. If you are serious, you could either ask my ISP Algonet (it's my primary private ISP, not a mailbox hideaway), or you could ask Datainspektionen, the Swedish government agency charged with maintaining the register of those who maintain databases with personal information, for the owner of registration license number 9999110043 (it's mine). Make sure to include ample copies of any evidence you have against me either committing a crime or violating anybody's privacy by storing their names electronically (I'll mention Bill Clinton, Börje Ramsbro, Håkan Nordquist and Tomislav Micic to give you a fair advantage). Good luck!
You know, if I perform and distribute copies of my own music (or software, or literature, or whatever), then I'm entitled to set the terms for distribution of my works. I could charge $10 per CD made, or I could allow people to download my stuff via the Internet for their personal use but not for resale. If someone were to take advantage of my generosity, repackaging and selling copies of my stuff for a profit, I would be able to sue them for copyright infringement, right?
Usually, the problem is that I don't have the resources to identify every single little small-business pirate to sue, so I'll concentrate on the big fish to make an example out of them. Now, if someone is orchestrating this kind of piracy all over an entire country, effectively forcing each resident to pay them a fee for copying my music/software/literature, don't you think that would be a big enough fish for me?
Granted, they may abuse the creative talents of their own country as they see fit, but when they start copying foreign works for a profit, I'd suggest taking them to court, or excluding Canada from your otherwise liberal distribution license.
You need to check only a small percent (i.e. probably less than 0.1%) of these values anyway, since anyone trying to fake his keyblocks will want to do crank out much more false keyblocks like those pranks before.
This begins to sound like a reasonable approach, but consider carefully the implications of your statistical approximations here. Even if the bad guys are detected due to one of your random samples showing fake results, how are you going to determine what other submitted blocks should be invalidated?
Relying on the fact that the bad guys have used only a single ID works only as long as the risk of getting caught this way is minimal. As soon as you start labelling all reports by the same submitter as faked, they will start obtaining multiple ID's to the point where your attempts at detecting them will be meaningless, much like you can't eliminate spam by listing the e-mail addresses of all the spammers.
There will simply be more rogue keyspace searchers than keyspace blocks per searcher (or more spammers than spams per spammer), and your 0.1% sample will detect only about 0.1% of the rogue keyspace blocks submitted. This will still leave the integrity of 99.9% of the submitted blocks in doubt.
However, if you are somehow able to check a randomly chosen piece of data in each keyblock submitted, then you stand a pretty good chance of detecting blocks where more than half the data has been faked. Is that good enough for the application at hand?
You won't save any money by having someone search your premises for that missing $100 bill, and then hire someone for $100 to follow him around and make sure he doesn't sneak the money away and pretend not having found it.
I think the real answer to this, however, is that they impliment some checking on the server end to verify the results so people can hack their client all they want.
If the challenge has a simple answer, and the task of verifying the answer is trivial compared to actually finding it, then they can verify the results as you suggest. However, in the case of exhaustive keyspace searches, the answer isn't simply "I have found the key" (which can be verified) but rather "I have searched that part of the keyspace you gave me and I have either found the key, or I can tell you for sure that the key isn't there".
There is no way you can "verify" that latter answer without actually redoing the entire work yourself, in which case there would be no point in asking others to lend you their CPU time in the first place. Even though you know the key yourself, you can only detect the liar if he claims having searched the part of the keyspace it is in and still not found it. All the other sections of the keyspace would remain in doubt, and the challenge would be useless as a measure of how hard it is to search the entire keyspace.
Now, could someone come up with a way to verify by looking at the data submitted that the computer is still safely in the hands of the owner, then we would get another benefit from the d.net project (as well as getting this thread barely back on topic).
As others have pointed out, having a physically decentralized network infrastructure (several root name servers on different continents) may help if a bomb or missile takes out critical equipment, but as long as a single corporate entity is in charge of the master database, the rest of the net will have to trust that corporate entity not to be taken out by a legal or political grenade (or to go berserk all by itself).
Does NSI's current contract stipulate who will be authorized to take over the root master database and start distributing root zone caches in case NSI would fail to handle its most critical tasks, either due to its own fault or because of another body (say, a terrorist group or a government) beginning to interfere with NSI operations? Are there procedures in place for this?
I'm not an AlterNIC fan, largely because of their attempt to impersonate the InterNIC a few years ago, but also because I don't think they provide a solution to the actual problems that exist with the DNS today. Creating a new set of TLDs besides the existing ones, without telling where each kind of company belongs, will probably result in more domain squatting, not less. If companies cannot stand seeing their beloved trademarks being used in.ORG and.NET, imagine what life will be like when they have ten additional TLDs to worry about.
The article being the focus of this thread briefly mentioned the IANA taking over domain registration after NSI's contract has expired. While I haven't educated myself about IANA's plans, it does have a promising ring to it.
I'd be interested in working out alternative name service arrangements, perhaps with actual implementations, to see what may work in the future. That includes registration procedures and legal arrangements, as well as TLD allocation and use. Would anybody else?
According to Eric Allman recently, all the root name servers require open source implementations, i.e. BIND. He wasn't sure though whether they required on-site source also for their operating systems. How many of them run Linux..?
Damn all this makes me want to buy a small(er) island, proclaim it as a my own nation and make everything legal that's fun and everything fun that's legal. Anyone join me?
While I'd like to question your prerequisites (buying an island and proclaiming it independent), there is a lot to be done about alternative law.
In a hypothetical world (say, a computer game), you can establish any laws you like and try them out theoretically. Want to legalize murder? Try it out in cyberspace where nobody is actually hurt. Does law enforcement regularly intervene in theatre plays to catch people playing thiefs and hooligans? Hardly.
In the same fashion, you can establish fictious laws about information processing, transfer some information from the real world into cyberspace, process it according to the laws in the game, and transfer the result back out into the real world. Now, who could claim a crime has been committed?
All you need is software and a little imagination. No islands.
The street and e-mail addresses can be found in the WHOIS database, not in the zone files. The WHOIS database (whois.internic.net) is still open to access, though perhaps not by means of downloading in its entirety (I don't know if it has ever been downloadable).
The only contact info found in the zone file is the e-mail address in the SOA of the zone itself, and while name server maintainers probably get their share of junk e-mail, there is no point in downloading the entire.COM zone (with some 3.5 million subdomains) in order to find out that <hostmaster@INTERNIC.NET> is the maintainer of that zone.
Thus, I can't say I'm buying into the anti-UCE argument in this case. What exactly have they done to that end?
As long as they merely prevent bulk access to the entire thing, but I can still access individual records as needed, I don't mind too much.
The Software Publishers Association spammed a number of e-mail addresses found in the WHOIS once (I could tell, because my WHOIS address is not used for anything else) merely to "inform" me that my FTP server could be used for distribution of pirated software! They haven't apologized yet, and I haven't reported a single case of piracy to them since.
You are proposing a whole new trademark registry, besides those already existing in most countries. While this may be a good idea in itself, it does very little to solve the problem at hand, that of making lawyers and legislators understand that the DNS goes beyond mere commercial marketing. Giving them an entire TLD to play with could even be seen as admission on your (our) part that trademarks do have a place in the namespace.
In my opinion, if trademarks belong in the DNS at all, it's within the domains of those government agencies registering them in the first place. Thus, the U.S. PTO could set up TM.USPTO.GOV as a placeholder for all trademarks registered there, and it would be up to them to devise a naming scheme that would allow every registered trademark to map to a valid and unique subdomain name. I wish them good luck with pictorial trademarks.
As for non-registered trademarks, establishing a registry in the form of a domain name (whether TLD or any other domain) kind of contradicts the idea of allowing non-registered trademarks in the first place.
We don't have to wait for the WIPO or any court to rule that the DNS should accomodate their view on trademarks before we set up a new system. In fact, we are well-advised to make preparations in advance, setting up an organization, devising new rules, and decide how to make an emergency transition in case a legal warhead happens to hit the present InterNIC. I suppose you don't need government authorization to join others in building a bomb shelter or stockpiling canned food?
Don't repeat AlterNIC's mistake however, that of polluting the existing namespace in order to seize control of InterNIC's web address (according to what I've heard, the guy behind AlterNIC ended up in jail for that, thanks to the InterNIC having high-ranking friends not wanting to see the integrity of.MIL being corrupted in that or any other way).
If anybody wants to test an alternate domain hierarchy, keep it well away from the current one. That goes for intellectual property lawyers too.
Well, <URL:http://www.imp.org/> works for me at least (the domain name was set up in December). If you can't reach it, could you be more specific as to what the problem is? Mail me directly; there's no need to bother Slashdot readers with local network trouble (and I have enough trouble reaching Slashdot to tell you this, since I don't know your e-mail address).
However, you could also check the initial project website at <URL:http://www.algonet.se/%7Ejhubert/Mov ieProject/> (that space is in the anchor text only, not in the actual URL) which still links to all the relevant material.
I'd rather not try to describe the project here, since I would be duplicating their own web info. Studio-quality? Yes, if you count television/video (as opposed to cinema) quality. GPL? No, but public enough for me. One has to register as a member in order to take part in the project, but much of it is visible to non-members as well. The distribution details haven't been worked out in detail, but as I understand it, the result will be made available for free (see the membership agreement for legal details).
As for high-quality script, I don't think you will be disappointed reading what has been done so far. I wasn't.
While I may have my doubts about your claim, I think you would be interested in joining the Internet Movie Project established less than a year ago. Ok, that web page may look pretty beta, and don't expect a fast race, but there are some serious minds out there willing to spend part of their spare time scripting, modelling, directing, and rendering an entire movie using PoV-Ray. Look around and see if you want to contribute.
In Sweden, you cannot use the name or photo of anybody (say, the Queen, or Björn Borg) for commercial advertising without their permission. Faking an image of the Queen drinking Coca-Cola would count as alleged endorsement of a product, and may (if reported to the police) result in damages to the person depicted as well as fines.
It's at least as illegal as making false statements about the product itself (such as selling plain water but labelling it "vodka"). It has nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual property.
I'm not sure though how the Swedish law on the subject relates to dead people. For some reason, celebrities don't seem to pop up in random commercials in Sweden as soon as they are dead, and I think that would count as false marketing anyway. Maybe this is a real problem in Britain?
Computer "notations" are not rich enough to describe human thought. Please translate the following english statement into any computer notation you please:
"Last night the whiskey was thin and the glass was thick." - Langston Hughes.
Graphical art, music, and architecture probably suffer from just the same deficiency. Have you tried translating the factual contents of that statement into either an oil painting or a fugue? What about its poetic qualities? Are you saying oil on canvas isn't rich enough to describe human thought?
On the other hand, English isn't too good at explaining Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, or the geometry of the Mandelbrot fractal. Each kind of expression is optimized to deal with its preferred subset of human thought. Computer languages don't stand out from any of the others, except in a political context.
On the Internet, the average image says about as much as 2.72 words.
For instance, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act which just went into effect was written for the express purpose of bringing US Copyright law into conformity with those of other countries.
Formally at least, yes. However, did the DMCA advocates perhaps refer to the December 1996 WIPO conference in Geneva, where the members of the Berne Convention agreed to extend protection to digital works? If so, they are playing a trick on you.
I wasn't at the conference (of course), but it was reported on UPD-DISCUSS that the U.S. delegation was the one really pushing for extending those rights, and that independent lobbyists from the USA as well as other countries had to rally support from such far shots as Libya in order to oppose the worst extensions...
Then the U.S. delegates ran back to Washington, asking Congress to upgrade U.S. legislation to come at par with "international standards". Nice touch, isn't it?
And, you are absolutely right about extending the term of copyright protection for already existing works. The authors agreed to write those books under the terms in effect back then, and were duly paid for it. Neither they, their heirs, or their publisher have any ethical standing coming back to ask for more. They shouldn't have any legal standing either.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether all this boils down to a privacy intrusion or not is an open question. However, I find the cookies themselves irrelevant in this matter. Cookies are merely a convenience and a nice concept to the information provider, but they don't add any significant functionality to the data exchange process.
Even if you disable everything that deals with cookies, you are still stuck with the ultimate cookie--the URL. Before cookies, some servers encoded the same kind of personalization data in long URLs. For all I know, this technique may still be in popular use. You type in a short URL found in a magazine, and the server immediately redirects you to a personalized URL, full of cryptic parameters, or simply containing a user ID. Disable URL redirection as well, and what do you have left?
The cookies simply provide a cleaner way to implement this, without burdening the URL with massive amounts of data. Besides avoiding URL buffer overflow, the cookies are supposed to be less visible to the user. However, they add no new functionality for tracking user habits. If you are worried about your privacy, you should be more concerned about what information sits in somebody else's database, than about what is stored on your own hard drive.
The essence of this news item, though, seems to be Doubleclick's omnipresence, doing away with the argument that all those different sites you visit won't be able to match their logs in order to find out anything important about you (they simply won't have to). I haven't studied Doubleclick's policy. Does it say anything about whether Doubleclick will comply with requests from law enforcement authorities to find out who seem to be frequent visitors to warez sites displaying Doubleclick banners? Is that something to be concerned about in the first place?
Scientific expertise disagree on what impact genetically modified cristmas trees may have on the environment. The producers have been eager to point out that since the tree isn't supposed to be eaten, the effect on humans is most likely nil. Others are not quite that optimistic, and fears have been raised that the gene may spread from domesticated trees to their wild counterparts, possibly making entire forests glow continuously and thus upsetting the natural balance between day and night.
Meanwhile, reports from Russia suggest that another British invention, the allegedly UFO-made crop circles, is being exploited on a grand scale. Siberian hackers are suspected to have sown large amounts of modified conifer seed in a complicated arrangement forming graphics and letters, appearantly hoping to render a functioning encryption program visible on regular satellite photos from the area, thus making it globally available without violating national export legislation.
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While I suppose U.S. copyright law recognizes compilations of other works much as Swedish copyright law does, I don't think you can apply this to random collections of data in general. Isn't there a requirement that in order to enjoy copyright protection, your work must have a creative element to it, i.e. you cannot simply instruct your computer or your chimpanzee to produce a sequence of random letters and have it accepted in court as a copyrighted work, right? It may be unique in its appearance, but there is no intellectual creativity embodied in it.
Likewise, merely compiling everything that has appeared in a particular newsgroup (including all the spam) takes no intellectual effort, but just a robot. If the typewritten monkey gibberish isn't protected by copyright, then neither is a random sample of today's Usenet postings.
It's however a different matter when you come up with The Best of alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork, because "The Best" implies a subjective selection of some kind, where a human has supposedly picked the (according to someone's opinion) most profound postings, or perhaps simply weeded out all the spam but kept the rest. This kind of compilation enjoys copyright protection in its own right (while the authors of the individual articles making up the compilation retain any existing rights they may have had).
If all databases were created in this manner, based on human selection and arrangement of the individual items, then I believe existing copyright law would be sufficient. However, most databases are simply mechanical compilations of anything fitting simple criteria that can be checked automatically, and thus they lack the creative element.
Therefore I don't think copyright in the traditional sense applies or should apply to databases, but that a separate kind of "almost-copyright" may optionally be established for databases, automatically made recordings, and the like. It need not involve the definition of an author, or any ridiculously long durations of any such rights.
If you arrange a camera next to a street crossing and set it up to automatically take a picture the next time a car passes in front of it, and you then leave the area, will the driver of that car be considered the photographer, and will he own the copyright to the picture thus taken? Will you? Will the owner of the camera? What if the camera was stolen from the owner and then used for this purpose..?
While you are right that financial investments of various kinds may require legal protection in order not to be destroyed, it doesn't necessarily follow that the mechanism of copyright is the most appropriate solution.
Several people have made references to the original ideas behind copyright: To encourage talented minds to create works of art for the benefit of society as a whole. While the law implementing copyright will have to be a little more complicated than that, I see no reason to depart from that basic principle.
Does the english word "copyright" really describe what it's all about? Compare it with a few other languages:
In contrast to these, the term "copyright" refers to what that right entitles you to do, not what person owns or what fact establishes that right in the first place. I believe this difference in semantics may contribute somewhat to the reasoning about these issues in english-speaking versus other countries, though there are probably many other factors involved as well.
For instance, in Sweden the copyright resulting from work made for hire normally stays with the author, unless something else was agreed beforehand. In the USA, I believe it's the other way around.
I may have invested a lot of money and human labour into the compilation of a catalogue of a million stars in the sky, but I can't really say that my vast tables constitute an intellectual effort, even though their only purpose is to support intellectual activities such as scientific research (as opposed to, say, commercial tourist travel). To get my investment back, I would expect those who benefit from the catalogue to pay a reasonable fee for their use of it, unless of course my government is willing to fund it in return for it being released to the public domain.
While any controls on the use of said catalogue would probably boil down to limitations on copying, I'm not sure the traditional concept of copyright is appropriate here. There is no author and no intellectually creative effort, only lots of money spent on a tedious task, telescope usage fees, and photographic plates. It doesn't make sense to relate the commercial value of the catalogue to the year the last person involved in the project died (whether he was the supervisor or merely cleaned the photographic equipment). It's actually not much different from producing bulk steel, and steelworks certainly don't need copyright protection!
Therefore, when people suggest that you should have the ability to "copyright" databases not because of any intellectual creativity vested in them, but simply due to the financial burden of establishing them, I ask that you carefully consider whether this has anything in common with the idea that the descendants of a successful author should be able to collect royalties from his production 70+ years after his death, or whether you can devise other legal mechanisms to achieve the intended result.
I'm somewhat confused by the situation. While it's true that mere collections of information probably aren't what the legislators had in mind when copyright was established, they may still represent an essential investment to the compiler - not in storage costs, but in the effort needed to collect the data in the first place.
The Swedish Copyright Act has for quite some time contained a special kind of protection for collections of large numbers of information items (Article 49), similar to the protections given to audio or video recordings. It differs from normal copyright in a number of ways:
As with books, general provisions for fair use, private copying etc. apply, and as with books, nobody is prevented from extracting individual items of information from the collection, as long as you don't simply copy the entire collection.
These provisions predate the appearance of computerized databases, and were appearantly intended for printed catalogues, directories and the like. However, I think they apply equally well to digital collections, and I'm not aware of any legal major disputes over this matter in Sweden.
Then we started hearing complaints from several other countries that databases weren't protected by copyright, that such protection had to be established, and that it must be international. Funny they didn't seem to notice that Sweden already had that kind of protection, but went ahead outlining that protection from scratch. Then we were essentially required to adopt whatever they came up with, so now we have two kinds of protection covering approximately the same thing, but with very different rules.
Now I hear that the USA still has no database protection at all - and I was under the impression that the USA was the place where these desperate cries for database protection originated. Was I wrong? How many different kinds of database protection will be imposed on smaller countries before the USA gets its act together and implements even one of those, wreaking havoc with existing legal concepts everywhere?
I agree that there seems to be no easy solution, just a lot of opportunities for evil things to happen... However, I feel that a lot more effort is wasted on merely talking about the problem rather than doing things that may make a difference (but the latter does include some talking as well, of course).
The enemy has two major weapons: Money and a big mouth. Can you counter that by either outspending or outvoicing them? Hardly, but then bring the battle to an arena where you get to pick the weaponry you know best, which I'd suppose is computer programming. You know the technology, you have a cheap distribution medium (the Internet), and probably a limited but seriously interested audience.
So, what kind of software should you create? Don't ask me; I'm just trying to bring up ideas. But if you can threaten Microsoft with something as mundane as an operating system, I'd say there are probably a number of killer apps still waiting to be discovered. And, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to sell the app to a million clueless users, but rather that it could have a similar impact by merely existing in a limited edition.
How about a useful rating system such as one adding topical keywords or audience scores to documents? An annotation system? Make it easy for others to rate your web pages, any web pages, according to their own preferences rather than some pseudo-objective standards of "suitability" for any age group. You could even allow for suitability ratings within the framework of such a system, as long as you don't make it too easy to extract that part and somehow make it mandatory. Add extra dimensions to the WWW by adding preference links to the existing hypertext links - if you like this, then chances are that you will like that as well!
The most common HTTP server on the market is open source. Which is the most popular open source browser? What interesting things could you possibly do in a browser, that aren't done today? Support for the abovementioned preference ratings seems an obvious example. What about enhanced user control over the appearance of documents, rather than more scripting languages, more applets, more anything that is supposed to be controlled by the document author anyway? Convenient, built-in ad filtering? Runtime image manipulation such as clipping and superimposition? A private domain name system? A kitchen sink?
With a little imagination and ingenuity, you can have a lot of fun, and perhaps change the environment of your enemy enough to force them to rethink their ideas from scratch. That should buy you some time. Remember, it wasn't the censors who brought us the Internet or the WWW in the first place, nor will they bring us the next major innovation either. Just let them spend their time adapting to an ever-changing environment.
Of course it won't work. I'm just kidding you. Don't even think of trying to do what I outline above; you'll just waste your time. Trust me, or I'll sue.
Maybe that's because everyone pretty much agree with each other on this issue, and don't see any point in finding more than 29 ways to say that the whole idea stinks?
If two people share exactly the same views, one of them is redundant.
But you have a point, in that people could do a lot more than simply talk about this. Maybe they already do, which is why you don't see them on Slashdot.
Even though this is legally enforceable in the USA only, they should be able to use the same approach in other countries if needed. Also, owning the trademark in the USA already may constitute a good argument in many jurisdictions. However, that may depend on the actual circumstances in each particular case and country.
Besides the chilling effect, which I also consider the most plausible explanation, they may want to use their loss in court as a political argument, hoping to "improve" copyright legislation to deal with people telling where to find pirated stuff. I don't think they'll lose any sleep over the millions in damages this teenager wasn't ordered to pay.
With all the free publicity you get from suing teenagers, their presumed ingenuity but limited financial resources, and the desire of the legal system to prosecute juvenile delinquents with priority, teenagers with computers seem to make excellent legal guinea-pigs. Perhaps the babelfish wasn't too far off calling this guy a "tea rodent"...
While I don't know the text of the Berne Convention by heart, I'd say it's only marginally relevant (legally speaking, it's not a law, by the way). The Berne Convention sets some minimum standards for copyright, but its primary purpose is to let foreign authors enjoy the same rights as the nationals of the country where copyright is claimed.
Before the Berne Convention was established in the late 19th century, a Swedish publisher could obtain a book by a British author, possibly translate it, and distribute as many copies he liked within Sweden, without the British author getting a say (or even receiving a penny in compensation)! Even today, copyright legislation is essentially national, with various conventions extending the rights given by national laws also to foreigners.
I don't think the Berne Convention says much about encouraging infringement or similar "side issues". The function of the Berne Convention (or perhaps some other convention) in this particular case was essentially to allow the recording industry to bring charges to the Swedish teenager on behalf of foreign musicians. The rest was up to the Swedish court to decide in accordance with the Swedish Copyright Act and other relevant statutes.
There is another potential twist related to the Berne Convention though: I don't know from what country the actual MP3 files were (and maybe still are) served. In this layman's opinion, charging somebody with assisting infringement by linking to those files will require their distribution to be illegal in the first place. What if they reside on a server in a country which isn't party to the relevant conventions, or where even domestic copyright law is insufficient? Can you be charged with helping someone abroad to commit an act that would be illegal if committed in your own country, but not where it's actually committed?
Note that making a single copy for your own personal use normally isn't illegal in Sweden, so I don't think you'll get anywhere by claiming the teenager was assisting those who downloaded the music to commit "petty theft of intellectual property" or something. The issue here is whether he in effect operated as the advertising agency of an actual pirate (something the court appearantly didn't address, due to sloppy homework on the part of the prosecutor).
Yes, what you propose is to me the natural way of dealing with the problem, and it should probably slow down the move towards the abyss enough to justify calling it an effective halt. However, don't assume that your opponents will behave as predicted at every turn. Just stay informed about their moves, and change your response accordingly.
I don't buy the argument that erring on the safe side of the line (i.e. rating a picture of a naked CPU board as hard-core pornography) would automatically be declared illegal, as you can come up with a number of plausible defenses for this. Since the effect would theoretically be to prevent minors from seeing your CPU board, the harm done to them is essentially nil. As a safety measure, put the extreme rating in your HTML editor document template, and add a note in the documentation that the user is supposed to adjust the rating according to their content after they have finished it, meaning that most users won't even care what the rating says unless they have filters enabled in their own browsers!
The only thing harmed will be the rating system itself. It will be fun watching the censors argue that your prudent act of self-censorship amounts to legal obstruction, and that kids may be harmed by not seeing your harmless CPU boards!
But if they insist that your content must match your rating, by all means, go ahead and add such content, just for the sake of the censors. If they complain about that too, ask them for specific guidance about how to rate each and everyone of your pages. Ultimately, they will have to do the rating themselves and place it with the recipient, an option they have had all the time. It's their job anyway; you shouldn't be forced to do it for them.
However, first we need to wait for the initial rating system becoming law (and you may as well fight it in other ways). No need to disclose your intented tactics to the opposite side in advance. Let them bear the full financial burden of introducing a useless law, to teach them a lesson.
Outlawing sheer creativity is doomed to fail.
Anonymous cowards making incredible allegations about the "crimes" of people who dare to tell the truth in public carry absolutely no weight at all.
While you want to intimidate, track down and jail whistleblowers who have the integrity to sign their own statements and assume responsibility for them, I want you to enjoy your freedom to speak anonymously if you so desire to protect yourself from unlawful harassment because of what you have to say. As long as your statement itself doesn't involve a serious crime (and no, I don't consider simply informing the world about how crimes are committed one of those), anybody involved in the mere handling of your statements on your behalf should be required by law not to reveal your identity even before a court of law!
Such is the law in Sweden with respect to printed media, based on the principle that the publisher is solely responsible for what is being printed. Since Slashdot is an unmoderated medium, that principle can hardly be applied here, but that doesn't make the freedom it would yield any less desirable. I don't care that you don't have the slightest idea of what freedom of expression means, but I want you to enjoy that freedom as much as anybody else, because if you can't, then that freedom isn't worth a dime to anybody else either.
And, if you are still not convinced, please report my name and e-mail address to your nearest police officer, the FBI, Interpol, or any Microsoft lawyers you know. I'm a system manager at a Swedish university, and it's my job to protect the privacy of our users as well as the integrity of our systems against attacks from anywhere.
Privately, I'm sick and fed up with silly government attempts at controlling the spread of information, such as bans on cryptographic software, laws regulating the mere mentioning of named individuals in electronic communication, "copyright infringement" claims raised against proxy HTTP servers, software patents, police snooping on private mail and so on.
I freely admit to a strong desire to circumvent any technical or legal obstacles placed in my way for no legitimate reason at all, and pointing out security flaws in computer software or service configurations - even to the point where continued operation of said software or service is jeopardized - is to me a good deed for the well-being of man kind.
I have decompiled and studied binary code without regard to any copyright on it, simply to satisfy my curiosity. I have modified the Netscape Navigator binary (international version) and configuration to enable US-strength encryption as well as change the "license agreement" nonsense into something in line with Swedish law for the benefit of our students (we don't accept "shrinkwrap" licenses over here), without asking Netscape. I routinely press the "Accept" button whenever I install software at work or at home, knowing that it means approximately "null and void" to me. I may read the "license agreements" after installation, just for the fun of it. I have transmitted encryption software across national boundaries. I have exploited security holes in computer systems owned by others, without their authorization, to obtain useful results such as improved network connectivity.
I scoff at the obscene claims made by German authorities to "own" Adolf Hitler's literary works, and I'll gladly make and distribute copies of Mein Kampf or any other garbage he wrote whenever I feel like it. I conspire with my friends to change the ways things happen around the world, whether in politics or in business, not merely by voting in elections or participating in marketing polls. I believe I do all this in full compliance with the law and with judeo-christian ethics, but if I don't, I'm prepared to defend my actions in court.
I challenge you to report all the above to the appropriate authorities, simply as an experiment to show how futile that is, and how pathetic your remarks are. I promise you that I will not have you prosecuted for making any false accusations against me (though I cannot answer for any actions by others). Ain't I kind? Believe me, it's hardly worth the cost of a phone call.
No, I'm not giving you my residential address. I may be frank, but I'm not stupid. If you are serious, you could either ask my ISP Algonet (it's my primary private ISP, not a mailbox hideaway), or you could ask Datainspektionen, the Swedish government agency charged with maintaining the register of those who maintain databases with personal information, for the owner of registration license number 9999110043 (it's mine). Make sure to include ample copies of any evidence you have against me either committing a crime or violating anybody's privacy by storing their names electronically (I'll mention Bill Clinton, Börje Ramsbro, Håkan Nordquist and Tomislav Micic to give you a fair advantage). Good luck!
Jerk.
Usually, the problem is that I don't have the resources to identify every single little small-business pirate to sue, so I'll concentrate on the big fish to make an example out of them. Now, if someone is orchestrating this kind of piracy all over an entire country, effectively forcing each resident to pay them a fee for copying my music/software/literature, don't you think that would be a big enough fish for me?
Granted, they may abuse the creative talents of their own country as they see fit, but when they start copying foreign works for a profit, I'd suggest taking them to court, or excluding Canada from your otherwise liberal distribution license.
Relying on the fact that the bad guys have used only a single ID works only as long as the risk of getting caught this way is minimal. As soon as you start labelling all reports by the same submitter as faked, they will start obtaining multiple ID's to the point where your attempts at detecting them will be meaningless, much like you can't eliminate spam by listing the e-mail addresses of all the spammers.
There will simply be more rogue keyspace searchers than keyspace blocks per searcher (or more spammers than spams per spammer), and your 0.1% sample will detect only about 0.1% of the rogue keyspace blocks submitted. This will still leave the integrity of 99.9% of the submitted blocks in doubt.
However, if you are somehow able to check a randomly chosen piece of data in each keyblock submitted, then you stand a pretty good chance of detecting blocks where more than half the data has been faked. Is that good enough for the application at hand?
You won't save any money by having someone search your premises for that missing $100 bill, and then hire someone for $100 to follow him around and make sure he doesn't sneak the money away and pretend not having found it.
There is no way you can "verify" that latter answer without actually redoing the entire work yourself, in which case there would be no point in asking others to lend you their CPU time in the first place. Even though you know the key yourself, you can only detect the liar if he claims having searched the part of the keyspace it is in and still not found it. All the other sections of the keyspace would remain in doubt, and the challenge would be useless as a measure of how hard it is to search the entire keyspace.
Now, could someone come up with a way to verify by looking at the data submitted that the computer is still safely in the hands of the owner, then we would get another benefit from the d.net project (as well as getting this thread barely back on topic).
Does NSI's current contract stipulate who will be authorized to take over the root master database and start distributing root zone caches in case NSI would fail to handle its most critical tasks, either due to its own fault or because of another body (say, a terrorist group or a government) beginning to interfere with NSI operations? Are there procedures in place for this?
I'm not an AlterNIC fan, largely because of their attempt to impersonate the InterNIC a few years ago, but also because I don't think they provide a solution to the actual problems that exist with the DNS today. Creating a new set of TLDs besides the existing ones, without telling where each kind of company belongs, will probably result in more domain squatting, not less. If companies cannot stand seeing their beloved trademarks being used in .ORG and .NET, imagine what life will be like when they have ten additional TLDs to worry about.
The article being the focus of this thread briefly mentioned the IANA taking over domain registration after NSI's contract has expired. While I haven't educated myself about IANA's plans, it does have a promising ring to it.
I'd be interested in working out alternative name service arrangements, perhaps with actual implementations, to see what may work in the future. That includes registration procedures and legal arrangements, as well as TLD allocation and use. Would anybody else?
According to Eric Allman recently, all the root name servers require open source implementations, i.e. BIND. He wasn't sure though whether they required on-site source also for their operating systems. How many of them run Linux..?
While I'd like to question your prerequisites (buying an island and proclaiming it independent), there is a lot to be done about alternative law.
In a hypothetical world (say, a computer game), you can establish any laws you like and try them out theoretically. Want to legalize murder? Try it out in cyberspace where nobody is actually hurt. Does law enforcement regularly intervene in theatre plays to catch people playing thiefs and hooligans? Hardly.
In the same fashion, you can establish fictious laws about information processing, transfer some information from the real world into cyberspace, process it according to the laws in the game, and transfer the result back out into the real world. Now, who could claim a crime has been committed?
All you need is software and a little imagination. No islands.
The only contact info found in the zone file is the e-mail address in the SOA of the zone itself, and while name server maintainers probably get their share of junk e-mail, there is no point in downloading the entire .COM zone (with some 3.5 million subdomains) in order to find out that <hostmaster@INTERNIC.NET> is the maintainer of that zone.
Thus, I can't say I'm buying into the anti-UCE argument in this case. What exactly have they done to that end?
As long as they merely prevent bulk access to the entire thing, but I can still access individual records as needed, I don't mind too much.
The Software Publishers Association spammed a number of e-mail addresses found in the WHOIS once (I could tell, because my WHOIS address is not used for anything else) merely to "inform" me that my FTP server could be used for distribution of pirated software! They haven't apologized yet, and I haven't reported a single case of piracy to them since.
In my opinion, if trademarks belong in the DNS at all, it's within the domains of those government agencies registering them in the first place. Thus, the U.S. PTO could set up TM.USPTO.GOV as a placeholder for all trademarks registered there, and it would be up to them to devise a naming scheme that would allow every registered trademark to map to a valid and unique subdomain name. I wish them good luck with pictorial trademarks.
As for non-registered trademarks, establishing a registry in the form of a domain name (whether TLD or any other domain) kind of contradicts the idea of allowing non-registered trademarks in the first place.
We don't have to wait for the WIPO or any court to rule that the DNS should accomodate their view on trademarks before we set up a new system. In fact, we are well-advised to make preparations in advance, setting up an organization, devising new rules, and decide how to make an emergency transition in case a legal warhead happens to hit the present InterNIC. I suppose you don't need government authorization to join others in building a bomb shelter or stockpiling canned food?
Don't repeat AlterNIC's mistake however, that of polluting the existing namespace in order to seize control of InterNIC's web address (according to what I've heard, the guy behind AlterNIC ended up in jail for that, thanks to the InterNIC having high-ranking friends not wanting to see the integrity of .MIL being corrupted in that or any other way).
If anybody wants to test an alternate domain hierarchy, keep it well away from the current one. That goes for intellectual property lawyers too.
However, you could also check the initial project website at <URL:http://www.algonet.se/%7Ejhubert/Mov ieProject/> (that space is in the anchor text only, not in the actual URL) which still links to all the relevant material.
I'd rather not try to describe the project here, since I would be duplicating their own web info. Studio-quality? Yes, if you count television/video (as opposed to cinema) quality. GPL? No, but public enough for me. One has to register as a member in order to take part in the project, but much of it is visible to non-members as well. The distribution details haven't been worked out in detail, but as I understand it, the result will be made available for free (see the membership agreement for legal details).
As for high-quality script, I don't think you will be disappointed reading what has been done so far. I wasn't.
While I may have my doubts about your claim, I think you would be interested in joining the Internet Movie Project established less than a year ago. Ok, that web page may look pretty beta, and don't expect a fast race, but there are some serious minds out there willing to spend part of their spare time scripting, modelling, directing, and rendering an entire movie using PoV-Ray. Look around and see if you want to contribute.
It's at least as illegal as making false statements about the product itself (such as selling plain water but labelling it "vodka"). It has nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual property.
I'm not sure though how the Swedish law on the subject relates to dead people. For some reason, celebrities don't seem to pop up in random commercials in Sweden as soon as they are dead, and I think that would count as false marketing anyway. Maybe this is a real problem in Britain?
On the other hand, English isn't too good at explaining Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, or the geometry of the Mandelbrot fractal. Each kind of expression is optimized to deal with its preferred subset of human thought. Computer languages don't stand out from any of the others, except in a political context.
On the Internet, the average image says about as much as 2.72 words.
I wasn't at the conference (of course), but it was reported on UPD-DISCUSS that the U.S. delegation was the one really pushing for extending those rights, and that independent lobbyists from the USA as well as other countries had to rally support from such far shots as Libya in order to oppose the worst extensions...
Then the U.S. delegates ran back to Washington, asking Congress to upgrade U.S. legislation to come at par with "international standards". Nice touch, isn't it?
And, you are absolutely right about extending the term of copyright protection for already existing works. The authors agreed to write those books under the terms in effect back then, and were duly paid for it. Neither they, their heirs, or their publisher have any ethical standing coming back to ask for more. They shouldn't have any legal standing either.