The so-called software patent directive, rejected by a 648-14 vote with 18 abstentions, would have given companies EU-wide patent protection for computerized inventions ranging from programs for complex CAT scanners to ABS car-brake systems.
Holy crap! Does it mean companies will have to be satisfied with EU-wide patent protection only for computerized inventions ranging from complex CAT scanners to ABS car-brake systems instead? Now that seems like a real threat to European innovation; these companies will surely fall victims to foreign competitors selling computerized ABS car-brake systems involving no hardware components at all...
648 votes to 14. That's how utterly wrong this bill was.
648 MEPs all voted to reject the directive, but for how many different reasons? This number probably includes both supporters of software patents who feared an amended directive (for no good reason, I should add) and those who were angry at the Council for scrapping all the amendments already made by the Parliament back in 2003. I don't think it means 648 MEPs are decidedly opposed to software patents.
Now as European Citizens it is out duty to write to the 14 fuckwits who voted for the bill and ask them simply "Why?". Then make sure they loose at the next European Elections.
I don't know who those 14 were, but I'd like to know. However, I wouldn't rule out they may have included one or two brave individuals who wanted to give the 21 Rocard-Buzek-Duff amendments a chance (to reject software patents, rather than reject the directive). If your purpose with asking "why" is to identify potential allies, then fine, but why not ask all the other MEPs the same question?
If I understand correctly, the plan was to go through all the 178 (?) amendment proposals and vote on each one, after which a final vote would be held on whether the directive was now in an acceptable state or should be rejected anyway. The advice from FFII was to first vote for the 21 Rocard-Buzek-Duff amendments, but later vote to reject the directive if those amendments didn't achieve the necessary majority.
Now the proposal to reject the directive was made already before the amendments, meaning that we will never know how our elected representatives would have voted on the issues of substance, and I fear that may have been yet another reason for some MEPs to vote "no" early - they preferred not to show their cards if they didn't have to. In that light, kicking 14 MEPs in the back for asking to see the result of 178 amendment votes seems like a bad idea. They are too small a group to even be concerned about, and you will only encourage future MEPs to take the safe option and vote in unison like a flock of sheep, regardless of the issue.
OSS already is about building bridges - open standards, interoperability, mutual sharing of knowledge and information. If any sector of the industry is fragmented into numerous, disjoint parts, it's the proprietary, closed-source sector, where Microsoft is a key player.
Oh - maybe they are talking about legal or philosophical bridges? Then there are only two parts, and a single bridge to connect them would suffice. I guess we'll both sit down and wait for the other party to actually build that bridge and then cross it.
First you point out that the Y chromosome does not follow Mendelian genetics, then that neither does mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but you conclude that one should use male samples. Why?
Because cell samples from male participants contain Y chromosomes as well as mitochondrial DNA (the latter which they inherited from their mothers). The point being, male participants provide more of the genetic material used in these tests than females do. Actually, for each male participant, the testing of one woman (his biological mother) becomes redundant.
Still, I think there are other factors in favor of having both males and females participate:
The more people you get involved, the more representative a sample (of the entire population) you will get. Ten men and ten women will be more representative than just ten men. Limiting the project to men only will not automatically double the number of men available for participation.
While both tests themselves cost money to perform, the $100 paid for each test kit appearantly covers more than just the testing procedure, such as partial funding for the research done. A married couple may be more inclined to spend $200 on having both of them tested, than just one of them, even if the woman will learn nothing about her father's ancestry in this way.
This is not only about research, but also about public education and involvement. Excluding half of humanity from this effort ("you may read the results of your husband's or your brother's important contribution to science in five years") wouldn't exactly be good PR for either IBM or the National Geographic Society...
According to the Genographic project FAQ, male samples will be subject to the Y-DNA test only, which looks like a wasted opportunity to me. However, it could be that male participants will be suggested to upgrade their tests with Family Tree DNA if they want the mtDNA test too. I have sent mail to National Geographic asking them to clarify that particular answer.
Mathematically speaking, spammers waste thousands of human lives every year, except that the "killing" is distributed among millions of Internet users so that nobody actually dies from pressing delete. I'd say it's in the same ballpark as 9/11 from a strictly economical point of view, though I don't have any numbers good enough for comparison. However, CNN has yet to provide live coverage of the ongoing attack. It's difficult to find a good photo angle on the Internet.
Agreed, prohibiting people from using computers or accessing the Internet means their freedom of speech is infringed. Has anybody ever been banned from using a typewriter or a pencil for having committed a crime using either of those tools? Say, an author killing his wife by throwing his typewriter at her?
You might just as well have your mouth sewn shut for repeated cases of slander. Fitting, perhaps, but not reasonable or even legal.
I can agree with 9 years, but I'd leave out the "jail" part. If the victims really want to get even, he should be confined to a keyboard and required to press delete once for each unsolicited message he has sent. After a few days, he will probably beg to have the sentence commuted to jail time instead.
I don't want that kind of revenge myself, and I think American jail sentences are way too harsh in general (I'm not American). I'd be satisfied with a picture of the guy behind bars, to paste it next to my mailbox as a deterrent...
I very much agree with your analysis of spam blocking (analyzing mail contents) vs blacklisting (analyzing mail sources, what MAPS is about) and that the former merely creates more spam.
However, I stopped using MAPS myself already in 2001 when they changed their terms into a subscription service and prohibited public disclosure of their listings (since I work at a university, where "someone told us to" is simply not good enough an answer when somebody asks why we insist on rejecting legit mail from particular sources).
I can also understand the frustrations of someone being inconveniently blacklisted, and MAPS certainly isn't above making mistakes. However, if a network has indeed been listed by mistake, the proper entity to bring this up with is the MAPS subscriber, not MAPS themselves. Anybody using a blacklist to reject inbound mail should provide an "emergency" point of contact (say, a web form or an unblocked postmaster address) so that they can receive notification of potential problems. It will be up to them to evaluate the claims, make exceptions or forward the feedback to MAPS as appropriate. MAPS offers support to their subscribers only, not to the general public or even to listed ISPs.
I have maintained a DNS-based blacklist myself, not meant for public use but still available for public inspection, and I received numerous complaints from people finding their own IP addresses listed by me, even as they could provide no evidence as to my list being the reason for their bounced mail in the first place! Appearantly, some blacklist subscribers don't care to inform each sender why their particular message has been rejected, but they rather return a static error message saying "here is a database of 500 blacklists, go complain to the maintainers and demand to be removed" or something to that effect...
I wouldn't mind seeing my own mail rejected due to a blacklisting. Either that's because my ISP is doing something wrong, in which case I want to be notified, or it's because the person I'm trying to talk to is using a poor blacklist, in which case I can either notify that person or drop him from my address book. It may seem drastic at that very moment, but in the long run it should send a clear message to everybody that network abuse will not be tolerated.
I still don't agree with your reasoning regarding the DNS vs the phonebook, but I don't see any point in continuing that argument.
I don't really understand your objections to the police having extra access to this info.
I don't object to the police having extra access to domain name contact information in particular; I object to the police having extra access to information in general as a default prerequisite for them to be able to do regular police work. Our perception of the world is built on the information we have about it, and if different groups of society have access to different information, they effectively live in different worlds. I accept the police being able to use special powers as an exception to the default rule of equal access, but I don't want to promote a society where nobody but the police is even capable of finding out whether a crime has been committed.
And since the registries are mostly hosted in the US, those laws will probably reach out and apply to you in Sweden.
Which is one reason why I don't mind having a public contact address, because to me, US law enforcement agents merely constitute another subset of "the general public". I'm not entrusting foreign law enforcement with any sensitive information of mine; I'm entrusting them with a published phonebook entry. If I had a secret address, I certainly wouldn't use it when ordering goods and services from abroad.
But I don't really get where posting your info outside a police station would really prove anything. I mean, in your case, you don't really care who knows it anyway, so what does it matter if only the police can know it?
Sorry, I was unclear. The street outside the police station is public property; anybody who happens to be there can read my sign, which I'll post in addition to having my entry listed in WHOIS. It's just my metaphorical way of telling the police "You don't need a subpoena to find my contact address; just look it up, stupid!" (that last word not spelled out but rather implied by the large sign itself firmly planted in the sidewalk). I recall some story about the FBI being unable to locate two "suspected terrorists" because they didn't bother to check the San Francisco phonebook (where the "suspects" were actually listed), so it may very well be that the police needs an extra investigatory hint now and then...
I consider where I live to be rather sensitive information, more than my shoesize or religious belief. The latter two can't hurt me, the first one can.
In a free society, being impopular is not dangerous. I don't claim to live in a free society, but it's an ideal to strive for. If your residential address is indeed sensitive information, then you are right to protect it, and even to ask society for help in protecting it. To relieve you of some of the pressure from groups seeking to obtain your address anyway, I'm placing my own address in full public view, hoping to satisfy the curiosity of the masses. If you think I'm doing you a disservice, please let me know.
I do ask however, that people don't use their freedom to be anonymous for entirely trivial reasons. I use a caller-ID display to see who is calling, but I don't refuse to answer merely because the caller's number is withheld, even though I know it's a telemarketer in 9 cases out of 10, because some of my friends withhold their numbers too. Rather than ask my friends to give up their privacy, I try to force the telemarketers to give up theirs. Having a product to sell is simply not a legitimate reason for anonymity. Avoiding telemarketing calls is just the second worst reason. If a public registry such as the phonebook or the WHOIS database allows my friends and the telemarketers to be anonymous regardless of reason, that registry will in my view be discre
First, it's not a good idea to use contact info from Domain X in the registration records FOR Domain X. If Domain X breaks, it's quite possible to end up in a spot where you can't fix it BECAUSE it is broken.
I obtained my domain only last year, when my previous ISP modified their e-mail system and broke my per-address spam filtering mechanism. As I had been using their domain, I couldn't simply transfer my setup to another ISP, but I had to give up my 50+ addresses as well (the oldest ones dating to 1998). I'm now trying hard not to become dependent on another domain I don't control myself.
If a problem with my domain renders my e-mail contact address unusable, my telephone number or snail mail address should be available as a last resort means of reaching me. I could of course obtain another domain as a backup, and let the two domains provide WHOIS contact addresses for each other, but right now I feel that would be overkill to me.
The Namecheap anonymizer is really nice, because I don't have to make a special address that discards a lot of junk mail. It shifts the burden of administration to them...
Shifting burdens of administration where they don't belong is something I try to avoid; that's rather something spammers are notorious for doing.
My six-year relationship with my previous ISP didn't prevent them from eventually screwing up the services I had become dependent on - services that I had essentially implemented myself in their Unix environment. The lesson I have learned is that I should have more control over the e-mail addresses I use, not less. Also, I like to buy fundamental services such as DNS, web and mail separately, possibly from different providers, rather than in a single package, simply to know what I'm paying for. Obtaining a spam filtering service from my registrar doesn't quite fit my view of what the role of my registrar should be.
Obtaining a domain name without publishing info is like getting a telephone but choosing not to go into the phonebook. It is the Internet equivalent of an unlisted number.
I agree that metaphor of mine wasn't exactly on the spot, but I think yours is worse. The DNS is the phone directory of the Internet, in that it translates names to numbers (IP addresses). An unlisted phone number is rather the equivalent of an unnamed IP address; you can run a working HTTP server on that without ever disclosing any domain name of yours (since you may not even have a domain in that case). You can even send e-mail to <postmaster@[12.34.56.78]> if you have an SMTP server running but no domain name. That IP address is "some form of contact information" albeit not a very convenient one.
Phone directories generally list residential addresses as well, although nothing in principle prevents you from being listed with your name and phone number only. Problem is, with a few billion telephone subscribers around the world, you can't expect your real name to be unique, and therefore you may need some additional items for identification, perhaps geographic or organizational ones.
In your particular case, you have decided that the benefits from publishing your info outweigh the loss of privacy. I have no beef with or complaint about that choice. You choose to list yourself in the phone book. I generally do not. There are good reasons for both approaches.
I'm indeed listed in the phone book, like a majority of telephone subscribers I believe. I grant you the freedom to do otherwise. However, as I don't buy your analogy between a proxy WHOIS contact for your domain and an unlisted phone number, I think your wish not to have your e-mail address listed at all doesn't rhyme with your desire to have a domain name listed in the DNS.
I really like what Namecheap is doing. For an extra five or six bucks a year, they'll hide your real address and give you an anonymized contact address... mail sent to this random address will be forwarded to your real email, invisibly to the sender.
If you are running your own mail server for your own domain, then why would you need to obtain an "anonymized" contact address from your registrar? Can't you simply define an alias whois-contact in your own domain and have it forward your mail anywhere you like? If the spammer has found your WHOIS entry, your domain name isn't exactly secret anyway, and I suppose postmaster should work as well to reach you whether you want it or not.
Obtaining an entry in the DNS without providing at least some contact information is a bit like obtaining an entry in the phone directory without providing a phone number.
So, if there is a problem with your domain, you are still contactable.
When I obtained my own domain (pdcs.org), my ISP registered it with NameCheap without me asking for it, and my contact information was cloaked by default. I don't think I'm paying extra for it; maybe NameCheap stopped charging. I have hinted to my ISP that I don't appreciate that cloaking feature, as it makes me look like a potential spammer to anybody investigating my domain for whatever reason, though it hasn't been a top priority issue to me. I understand that NameCheap doesn't want me to encourage people to actually use their proxy contact address to reach me.
It's the only domain I have, and once it was set up I defined contact addresses within that domain to use for WHOIS. I know they won't work if the domain goes down, but I'm dependent on it enough not to need anybody else telling me when it goes down; I'll surely investigate if I don't get a daily article listing from Slashdot...
If there's a legal problem with a domain, then of course the real info is going to be available to any form of law enforcement.
If there is a legal problem with my domain, I'd like to learn about it before law enforcement gets involved. I'm interested in legal issues, and I want to discuss them with my fellow citizens without requiring every comment or complaint be delivered by the police. I don't want a police state where government agents have access to all sorts of information the general public hasn't. One way to avoid that is to deny even the police access to my contact information. Another way is to voluntarily provide it to the world.
In some cases, I'd like to exclude government agents from inspecting information I'm offering everybody else, but I realize this is hardly possible, and I'm satisfied with equal access for all as the default rule. Granting law enforcement privileges beyond those already granted by the law itself isn't really my cup of tea. Give them an inch, and they'll claim you owe them every mile they can think of.
But it's hidden from the casual spammer/identity thief, and I am very, very happy about this.
Spammers don't care where I live; they just want an address where somebody lives. My street address isn't exactly secret; it can easily be determined from reading street signs and numbers in my neighbourhood, if not from a gazetteer. Yes, there actually arebroadband companies sending bulk snail mail addressed to "Every Tenant on 13 Sernander Rd" and getting it delivered to 56 separate mailslots in that single building, without knowing the real names of individual recipients. Am I going to spam their customers by e-mail in return? You bet, to inform them that I have blacklisted their entire broadband network and that they should ask their customer support
I haven't bothered to register to read the article, so maybe this is discussed already: I have been told that plants (or at least some of them) have a lot of DNA due to, among other things, spurious repetitions of partial sequences. I don't have any numbers for nucleic DNA, but I think I saw somewhere examples of plants having more than 100,000 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA, compared to some 16,500 for humans. I guess those repetitions might work as a backup, and help revert an earlier mutation.
I'm not a geneticist by profession though, so what I'm telling here may be an urban legend...
I believe the patent issue was a European Parliament issue, and the monopoly issue is a European Commission issue - they are different entities, therefore unlikely to directly share any personnel.
The Parliament and the Commission are different entities, true, but it's actually the Commission that is trying desperately to push through the directive on Computer-Implemented Inventions, while the Parliament has been calling for substantial amendments of it. In any case, the Commission runs a large organization of its own, and may well maintain several mutually unrelated agendas at once.
I think however that the software patent issue does not depend on lobbying by Microsoft alone, but also on efforts by other major players in Europe. Therefore even the very same Commission won't necessarily see any problem introducing software patents with one hand while spanking Microsoft with the other. When Microsoft starts using those patents against European interests, we may be hearing a different song from the Commission.
he has contributed more money personally than many countries do to the fight against poverty and disease
And he made that money by selling software to, among others, the very countries that didn't spend as much as him on fighting poverty and disease. Looks like they still contributed to those charitable causes then, albeit indirectly, and may deserve a small portion of that recognition?
I don't mind giving money to charitable causes, nor do I mind others doing business as they see fit, but I'd rather be confident that the money I pay for goods and services go to the production of said goods and services. If not all of it does, then at least those boxes should be labelled "1% of retail price goes to the Red Cross" or whatever, so I can tell when I've done my part.
Not all contributions are of a monetary nature, though. Contributions of new ideas, methods and technologies may be at least as worthy of recognition as a big check, but sometimes a big check may be the only way to make others notice your new idea, method or technology. This may very well be the case also for Bill Gates, and I'm pretty sure I had no part in any such contribution of his. Good for him.
Why would I want any other solution, if it still requires opt-out (besides the do-not-call list, which I don't want either)?
Because it's more important that there be free speech than that the world suit any one person's individual preferences, and hopefully you realize this.
Now you have definitely lost me (and I even have to quote myself for context). How is my desire to opt in to business correspondance I want, rather than opt out from correspondance I don't want, a threat to free speech? I'm not calling the cops to stop anybody from talking, I'm simply refusing to do business with them if they insist on treating me like a credit card with two eyeballs and no brain. Their speech is free from government interference; they just can't count on selling anything to me if they say things I don't like. I'm not the government; I have no obligations to them.
I don't have a problem with what are essentially filters. Of course, you should still ensure that they're not abused.
How could a filter be "abused"? It's mere information, a list of names and numbers. If I accidentally turn it upside down, the worst thing that can happen is that it will reject all legit mail and let in the spam, and I'm the one who suffers most from that. Even if it's published, it's still just information, now awarded protection as free speech, like any book. Where does the abuse come in?
Offering people magazine subscriptions is not an invitation to mail fraud.
I don't claim the subscription offer is. However, if the joint message sent to me by all spammers and their lawyers is "We have the government on our side, we will bury you in ads unless you give in to our demands, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop us short of resorting to violence", then I probably will resort to violence, even if it's illegal. So what if revenge is unacceptable in civilized society, when the society I'm subjected to isn't civilized? Pointing to laws written by spammers and claiming that theoretically, society by definition is "civilized", isn't very convincing when the theory doesn't work out that well in practice.
I may be using human language, but you are really talking to a cornered animal here, one trying desperately to find a way out of the spammer's mental junk mail trap. Don't count on that animal not to attack as an act of self defense; it would rather take a few scratches in combat than give up its dignity as an individual by being put in your cage.
I'm a little curious as to what other solutions you can think of which still require an opt out.
Why would I want any other solution, if it still requires opt-out (besides the do-not-call list, which I don't want either)? I'm asking for an opt-in approach, not an opt-out one. And it's not a legal issue to me, it's an issue of making the other guy understand what I want from him. If he says "I guess you don't want to receive this, but I have my constitutional right to..." then I'll beat him with a stick, and take my business elsewhere. If he wants to defend his position in court, he has to sue me first.
Of course, more drastic measures could justifiably get you into trouble. Disliking spam is no excuse for criminal or tortious behavior.
I didn't suggest violating the law. "Killing" a spammer doesn't necessarily equate shortening his biological life, just removing his ability to spam, say by public blacklisting. Usenet "kill files" were invented long ago, and they aren't lethal weapons.
Communication can certainly be one way. The guy on the corner holding up the sign about the end of the world is certainly speaking; you aren't required to pay attention for him to exercise his rights. Even when there's no one else there, he's still speaking.
He may be speaking, but if nobody is listening, there is no communication. One-way communication still requires somebody to listen passively. You can't communicate with a brick wall by speaking to it.
Yes, but mail fraud isn't.
Then don't invite people to commit mail fraud by leaving them no other option to make their point. It's not like the government can spend arbitrary amounts of law enforcement resources to track down people trading addresses they found in the phone directory, as if they were pirating music. When a sufficiently large portion of the population is determined to get even, it's better to call a truce and make an honest attempt to rewrite the rules more to their liking, than continue beating them into obedience.
Or I could respond like the spammers: Please define mail fraud, and we'll spend the rest of this decade arguing the formal distinction between (and contractual implications of) "mail", "e-mail", "fax", and "fist".
Something similar might be possible for spam. While it might not be as effective, remember that it's not as though any other proposed legislation seems like it would be more effective. Enforcement is always going to be difficult, regardless of how much or little is subject to it.
A do-not-mail list works best when the marketer actually wants to respect my wish to be left alone. If I can't trust the marketer to do that, but I have to call for the government to "enforce" my wish against someone desperately trying various legal tricks to be able to mail me anyway, I clearly can't trust that person with even having my address in the first place. A law then requiring me to still submit my address to that scumbag in order to invoke my "rights" is worse than useless, and I will not participate in that legal farce anymore, but rely entirely on physical means of protection instead, such as refusing him access to my mail server, or even more drastic measures (of course first checking that the marketer isn't found on my do-not-kill list).
By failing to consider the needs of a majority of Internet users, any law offering a public do-not-mail list as the only legal protection against unsolicited e-mail will render itself irrelevant. As I and others have made extremely clear in full public view that any spammers will blacklisted to the full extent of the Internet, the problem is not me hiding my "no solicitors" sign in my basement, it's the law hiding my freedom in some closet in the spammer's basement.
Bingo. Which is why, in a society that values communication highly, the assumption is that they're willing. If they're unwilling, only they can justifiably say so.
And only those who are willing can justifiably say so. If neither party speaks up, the default assumption can be anything agreed upon in that community, whether communication is valued highly or not. Sending unwanted advertising is not communication any more than mailing an unwritten brick is; it takes at least two voluntary parties to communicate. Why is it that when a majority of the members of a community have to put up signs enumerating all the things they don't want delivered to them, the silent minority can still expect to receive anything they want, anonymously, just by not objecting to it, thanks to the "value of communcation"?
But I realize I'm fighting a losing battle. Better apply the same reasoning myself, and return every magazine subscription offer mailed to me filled in with a random name and address found in the telephone directory. After all, in a society that values communication highly, the assumption is that they want those subscriptions. If they're unwilling, only they can justifiably say so, claim they didn't order anything, and refuse to pay the bills. Isn't communication wonderful?
This may be a little off-topic, but does anyone know how a company can use embedded GIF tracking in HTML mail to potential customers, yet have a privacy policy saying among other things:
It is our intent to inform you before we collect personally identifiable information, and tell you what we intend to do with it. You will have the option of not providing the information, in which case you may still be able to access other portions of this website, although you may not be able to access certain programs or services. In certain portions of this website, we also may enable you to "opt out" of certain uses of your information, or elect not to receive future communications or services.
It appears to me that the only way I can avoid sending my IP address and a tracking code with a request for an almost invisible GIF image each time I read unsolicited mail from CA is to disable inline images in my mail reader (or not use an HTML-capable mail reader at all). Fortunately I have done that already, but I'm still curious enough to look at the HTML code. How do I "opt out" from receiving these messages when I'm not even a CA customer, and I don't want to disclose my e-mail address to them?
But the onus is on you, the individual recipient. If you don't tell people you don't want something, don't fault them for sending it. And just because you don't want something, don't stand in the way of the people who do.
I'm not sure, we may even be in agreement on this issue, but it's not quite clear from what you write. I have already "told" anybody who cares that I don't want their advertising, simply by stating in public that I dislike their practice. If this doesn't count, but I have to contact each potential sender individually with a request that they place my address on a do-not-mail list, it's obviously beyond my capacity to prevent most junk mail from reaching me in the first place. I hope you aren't suggesting that spam victims should resort to spamming in order to get their message out?
However, I'm not standing in the way of people who want advertising. They can simply subscribe to one or more opt-in lists, and receive as much advertising as they like. What I object to is advertising being sent to unwilling recipients who have neither opted in nor opted out, but of course neither their ISP, the sender nor some court of law can determine in advance whether they are unwilling. Would they have to give up their anonymity and declare publicly that they don't want advertising, so that those who want advertising will be able to continue receiving it without giving up their anonymity to individual senders? If your privacy stands in the way of somebody else's privacy, which one will win?
And you can. Turn off your port 25. That'll work.
Or use a public blacklist, like MAPS RBL (not that I have much faith in that particular list these days, but long ago it was the only one around). For instance, I could use a list of network providers known to sell connectivity to spammers without disclosing their identities. It may result in also some legit mail bouncing back to the sender, but that's the point; I want my friends and anybody else trying to contact me to know that their current ISP is hosting spammers, hoping they will eventually switch to another provider. I'm sure they would do the same for me in case my ISP were to turn bad.
Otherwise, I suggest telling spammers to not spam you anymore, and to follow up on that with appropriate legal action if they continue.
Waste of time. If they intentionally send me advertising unasked for, they have already violated long-standing rules of conduct on the Internet and lost any credibility with me, regardless of what the law says. If they show, by their own action, that they have no respect for my privacy and my property, why should I spend even five seconds trying to talk them out of it? It's much easier to put them to a public blacklist, allowing everybody else to benefit from my experience immediately if they want to. If they continue spamming after that, all they will get is bounces. Legal action would only be necessary if they break into my mail server and remove the blacklist, but that would invoke an entirely different statute.
But force goes too far.
We are in complete agreement here; I have no particular desire for violence. This can and should be resolved by entirely legal means.
the same applies to an email address - if you protect it, refrain from giving it out to every form on the web and keep it for your personal communications only, it will last much longer.
An e-mail address is meant for communication, just like a phone number (or even a car, though that's a very different kind of communication). A phone number is printed in a directory so that people can find it and call you. The same can be done with an e-mail address. A phone number isn't expected to "wear out" just because it's published and telemarketers get to see it, nor does a public directory listing constitute deliberate lack of "maintainance" of that number.
Sure, if you hardly ever use your e-mail address except within a close circle of trusted friends, it will last a lot longer, just like a car will last longer if you never take it outdoors but rather keep it in your garage as a kind of museum piece (or perhaps take it for a pleasant drive in the countryside once a year). Most cars are sold to be used however, just like e-mail addresses, and the owner is supposedly the authority on what it should be used for.
Accepting the notion that you have to keep your contact information secret in order not to have to change it every two years is precisely what the spammers want you to do. Their mantra goes like "If you publish your e-mail address on the Internet, you have effectively opted in to receiving any kind of commercial advertising, including ours. If you don't want our ads, simply remove your name from public view!"
I don't agree with that notion, and I'm certainly not giving in to threats made by spammers; they don't get to decide what the Internet is for. It may result in me receiving more junk mail than others, but if I'm ever to confront a spammer in public debate, I will be able to show by example that mere publication of one's e-mail address does not in itself constitute a request for commercial solicitations, just like a woman wearing a certain kind of clothing in public does not constitute consent to random strangers having sex with her. Nor does the way she looks constitute "lack of maintenance" of her right not to be raped.
Why was the RSA public key encryption patent such a terrible thing, whereas a patent for a hardware encrytion device is a good thing?
Because a software implementation of the RSA public key encryption algorithm amounts to mere information that can be published in a printed book, perhaps with a CD-ROM included. A hardware encryption device cannot; it has to be sold to end-users unit by unit.
This may not sound like such a big deal, but consider the implications for the publishing business. When someone gets a patent on that hardware device, sale of any infringing products will have to cease (or royalties be paid). When the algorithm described and implemented in your book is patented by somebody other than you, are you going to withdraw it from publication? Will people still be able to borrow copies sold to libraries, or are those to be withdrawn from the shelves too?
Note you did nothing illegal, akin to copyright infringement, by publishing unpatended code in the first place. Therefore those copies already in circulation aren't pirate copies. You just have to stop "using" the invention for commercial purposes (such as selling copies of the code) once someone is granted a patent and tells you to stop. This can never happen with copyright, which is always granted to the author without the need to apply for it, and without the comparably broad scope that patents enjoy.
What good is freedom of speech, if somebody else can buy an exclusive right from the government to say something vaguely similar to what I said, and thereby stop me from saying it? If you think political statements can't be made in a programming language, think again.
How come when I do it, it's called "muddying debate"?
Because you are painting your point of view all over your website, thereby allowing anybody to analyze it and potentially have you eat your own words at some time in the future, when you have changed your mind?
It wouldn't be bad to send (or give out, at the demonstration) a letter or something, shortly but strongly summarising the objections raised to the current proposal, and the reason (and request) to remove it from any future agenda, or make it a B-topic.
I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "B-topic". In any case, if the Council of Ministers is going to discuss this thing, it definitely shouln't be on the agenda of a fish and agriculture meeting at all. Since they appearantly believe they are finished discussing this, forcing them to discuss it again among themselves is hardly going to achieve anything. They should have to consider the parliament's proposed amendments of 2003 or an entirely new directive proposal, which they appearantly can't do now without a restart of the process.
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Holy crap! Does it mean companies will have to be satisfied with EU-wide patent protection only for computerized inventions ranging from complex CAT scanners to ABS car-brake systems instead? Now that seems like a real threat to European innovation; these companies will surely fall victims to foreign competitors selling computerized ABS car-brake systems involving no hardware components at all...
648 MEPs all voted to reject the directive, but for how many different reasons? This number probably includes both supporters of software patents who feared an amended directive (for no good reason, I should add) and those who were angry at the Council for scrapping all the amendments already made by the Parliament back in 2003. I don't think it means 648 MEPs are decidedly opposed to software patents.
I don't know who those 14 were, but I'd like to know. However, I wouldn't rule out they may have included one or two brave individuals who wanted to give the 21 Rocard-Buzek-Duff amendments a chance (to reject software patents, rather than reject the directive). If your purpose with asking "why" is to identify potential allies, then fine, but why not ask all the other MEPs the same question?
If I understand correctly, the plan was to go through all the 178 (?) amendment proposals and vote on each one, after which a final vote would be held on whether the directive was now in an acceptable state or should be rejected anyway. The advice from FFII was to first vote for the 21 Rocard-Buzek-Duff amendments, but later vote to reject the directive if those amendments didn't achieve the necessary majority.
Now the proposal to reject the directive was made already before the amendments, meaning that we will never know how our elected representatives would have voted on the issues of substance, and I fear that may have been yet another reason for some MEPs to vote "no" early - they preferred not to show their cards if they didn't have to. In that light, kicking 14 MEPs in the back for asking to see the result of 178 amendment votes seems like a bad idea. They are too small a group to even be concerned about, and you will only encourage future MEPs to take the safe option and vote in unison like a flock of sheep, regardless of the issue.
OSS already is about building bridges - open standards, interoperability, mutual sharing of knowledge and information. If any sector of the industry is fragmented into numerous, disjoint parts, it's the proprietary, closed-source sector, where Microsoft is a key player.
Oh - maybe they are talking about legal or philosophical bridges? Then there are only two parts, and a single bridge to connect them would suffice. I guess we'll both sit down and wait for the other party to actually build that bridge and then cross it.
Because cell samples from male participants contain Y chromosomes as well as mitochondrial DNA (the latter which they inherited from their mothers). The point being, male participants provide more of the genetic material used in these tests than females do. Actually, for each male participant, the testing of one woman (his biological mother) becomes redundant.
Still, I think there are other factors in favor of having both males and females participate:
According to the Genographic project FAQ, male samples will be subject to the Y-DNA test only, which looks like a wasted opportunity to me. However, it could be that male participants will be suggested to upgrade their tests with Family Tree DNA if they want the mtDNA test too. I have sent mail to National Geographic asking them to clarify that particular answer.
Mathematically speaking, spammers waste thousands of human lives every year, except that the "killing" is distributed among millions of Internet users so that nobody actually dies from pressing delete. I'd say it's in the same ballpark as 9/11 from a strictly economical point of view, though I don't have any numbers good enough for comparison. However, CNN has yet to provide live coverage of the ongoing attack. It's difficult to find a good photo angle on the Internet.
Agreed, prohibiting people from using computers or accessing the Internet means their freedom of speech is infringed. Has anybody ever been banned from using a typewriter or a pencil for having committed a crime using either of those tools? Say, an author killing his wife by throwing his typewriter at her?
You might just as well have your mouth sewn shut for repeated cases of slander. Fitting, perhaps, but not reasonable or even legal.
I can agree with 9 years, but I'd leave out the "jail" part. If the victims really want to get even, he should be confined to a keyboard and required to press delete once for each unsolicited message he has sent. After a few days, he will probably beg to have the sentence commuted to jail time instead.
I don't want that kind of revenge myself, and I think American jail sentences are way too harsh in general (I'm not American). I'd be satisfied with a picture of the guy behind bars, to paste it next to my mailbox as a deterrent...
What is your IP address? Without it, nobody else can verify your conclusions.
I very much agree with your analysis of spam blocking (analyzing mail contents) vs blacklisting (analyzing mail sources, what MAPS is about) and that the former merely creates more spam.
However, I stopped using MAPS myself already in 2001 when they changed their terms into a subscription service and prohibited public disclosure of their listings (since I work at a university, where "someone told us to" is simply not good enough an answer when somebody asks why we insist on rejecting legit mail from particular sources).
I can also understand the frustrations of someone being inconveniently blacklisted, and MAPS certainly isn't above making mistakes. However, if a network has indeed been listed by mistake, the proper entity to bring this up with is the MAPS subscriber, not MAPS themselves. Anybody using a blacklist to reject inbound mail should provide an "emergency" point of contact (say, a web form or an unblocked postmaster address) so that they can receive notification of potential problems. It will be up to them to evaluate the claims, make exceptions or forward the feedback to MAPS as appropriate. MAPS offers support to their subscribers only, not to the general public or even to listed ISPs.
I have maintained a DNS-based blacklist myself, not meant for public use but still available for public inspection, and I received numerous complaints from people finding their own IP addresses listed by me, even as they could provide no evidence as to my list being the reason for their bounced mail in the first place! Appearantly, some blacklist subscribers don't care to inform each sender why their particular message has been rejected, but they rather return a static error message saying "here is a database of 500 blacklists, go complain to the maintainers and demand to be removed" or something to that effect...
I wouldn't mind seeing my own mail rejected due to a blacklisting. Either that's because my ISP is doing something wrong, in which case I want to be notified, or it's because the person I'm trying to talk to is using a poor blacklist, in which case I can either notify that person or drop him from my address book. It may seem drastic at that very moment, but in the long run it should send a clear message to everybody that network abuse will not be tolerated.
I still don't agree with your reasoning regarding the DNS vs the phonebook, but I don't see any point in continuing that argument.
I don't object to the police having extra access to domain name contact information in particular; I object to the police having extra access to information in general as a default prerequisite for them to be able to do regular police work. Our perception of the world is built on the information we have about it, and if different groups of society have access to different information, they effectively live in different worlds. I accept the police being able to use special powers as an exception to the default rule of equal access, but I don't want to promote a society where nobody but the police is even capable of finding out whether a crime has been committed.
Which is one reason why I don't mind having a public contact address, because to me, US law enforcement agents merely constitute another subset of "the general public". I'm not entrusting foreign law enforcement with any sensitive information of mine; I'm entrusting them with a published phonebook entry. If I had a secret address, I certainly wouldn't use it when ordering goods and services from abroad.
Sorry, I was unclear. The street outside the police station is public property; anybody who happens to be there can read my sign, which I'll post in addition to having my entry listed in WHOIS. It's just my metaphorical way of telling the police "You don't need a subpoena to find my contact address; just look it up, stupid!" (that last word not spelled out but rather implied by the large sign itself firmly planted in the sidewalk). I recall some story about the FBI being unable to locate two "suspected terrorists" because they didn't bother to check the San Francisco phonebook (where the "suspects" were actually listed), so it may very well be that the police needs an extra investigatory hint now and then...
In a free society, being impopular is not dangerous. I don't claim to live in a free society, but it's an ideal to strive for. If your residential address is indeed sensitive information, then you are right to protect it, and even to ask society for help in protecting it. To relieve you of some of the pressure from groups seeking to obtain your address anyway, I'm placing my own address in full public view, hoping to satisfy the curiosity of the masses. If you think I'm doing you a disservice, please let me know.
I do ask however, that people don't use their freedom to be anonymous for entirely trivial reasons. I use a caller-ID display to see who is calling, but I don't refuse to answer merely because the caller's number is withheld, even though I know it's a telemarketer in 9 cases out of 10, because some of my friends withhold their numbers too. Rather than ask my friends to give up their privacy, I try to force the telemarketers to give up theirs. Having a product to sell is simply not a legitimate reason for anonymity. Avoiding telemarketing calls is just the second worst reason. If a public registry such as the phonebook or the WHOIS database allows my friends and the telemarketers to be anonymous regardless of reason, that registry will in my view be discre
I obtained my domain only last year, when my previous ISP modified their e-mail system and broke my per-address spam filtering mechanism. As I had been using their domain, I couldn't simply transfer my setup to another ISP, but I had to give up my 50+ addresses as well (the oldest ones dating to 1998). I'm now trying hard not to become dependent on another domain I don't control myself.
If a problem with my domain renders my e-mail contact address unusable, my telephone number or snail mail address should be available as a last resort means of reaching me. I could of course obtain another domain as a backup, and let the two domains provide WHOIS contact addresses for each other, but right now I feel that would be overkill to me.
Shifting burdens of administration where they don't belong is something I try to avoid; that's rather something spammers are notorious for doing.
My six-year relationship with my previous ISP didn't prevent them from eventually screwing up the services I had become dependent on - services that I had essentially implemented myself in their Unix environment. The lesson I have learned is that I should have more control over the e-mail addresses I use, not less. Also, I like to buy fundamental services such as DNS, web and mail separately, possibly from different providers, rather than in a single package, simply to know what I'm paying for. Obtaining a spam filtering service from my registrar doesn't quite fit my view of what the role of my registrar should be.
I agree that metaphor of mine wasn't exactly on the spot, but I think yours is worse. The DNS is the phone directory of the Internet, in that it translates names to numbers (IP addresses). An unlisted phone number is rather the equivalent of an unnamed IP address; you can run a working HTTP server on that without ever disclosing any domain name of yours (since you may not even have a domain in that case). You can even send e-mail to <postmaster@[12.34.56.78]> if you have an SMTP server running but no domain name. That IP address is "some form of contact information" albeit not a very convenient one.
Phone directories generally list residential addresses as well, although nothing in principle prevents you from being listed with your name and phone number only. Problem is, with a few billion telephone subscribers around the world, you can't expect your real name to be unique, and therefore you may need some additional items for identification, perhaps geographic or organizational ones.
I'm indeed listed in the phone book, like a majority of telephone subscribers I believe. I grant you the freedom to do otherwise. However, as I don't buy your analogy between a proxy WHOIS contact for your domain and an unlisted phone number, I think your wish not to have your e-mail address listed at all doesn't rhyme with your desire to have a domain name listed in the DNS.
If you are running your own mail server for your own domain, then why would you need to obtain an "anonymized" contact address from your registrar? Can't you simply define an alias whois-contact in your own domain and have it forward your mail anywhere you like? If the spammer has found your WHOIS entry, your domain name isn't exactly secret anyway, and I suppose postmaster should work as well to reach you whether you want it or not.
Obtaining an entry in the DNS without providing at least some contact information is a bit like obtaining an entry in the phone directory without providing a phone number.
When I obtained my own domain (pdcs.org), my ISP registered it with NameCheap without me asking for it, and my contact information was cloaked by default. I don't think I'm paying extra for it; maybe NameCheap stopped charging. I have hinted to my ISP that I don't appreciate that cloaking feature, as it makes me look like a potential spammer to anybody investigating my domain for whatever reason, though it hasn't been a top priority issue to me. I understand that NameCheap doesn't want me to encourage people to actually use their proxy contact address to reach me.
It's the only domain I have, and once it was set up I defined contact addresses within that domain to use for WHOIS. I know they won't work if the domain goes down, but I'm dependent on it enough not to need anybody else telling me when it goes down; I'll surely investigate if I don't get a daily article listing from Slashdot...
If there is a legal problem with my domain, I'd like to learn about it before law enforcement gets involved. I'm interested in legal issues, and I want to discuss them with my fellow citizens without requiring every comment or complaint be delivered by the police. I don't want a police state where government agents have access to all sorts of information the general public hasn't. One way to avoid that is to deny even the police access to my contact information. Another way is to voluntarily provide it to the world.
In some cases, I'd like to exclude government agents from inspecting information I'm offering everybody else, but I realize this is hardly possible, and I'm satisfied with equal access for all as the default rule. Granting law enforcement privileges beyond those already granted by the law itself isn't really my cup of tea. Give them an inch, and they'll claim you owe them every mile they can think of.
Spammers don't care where I live; they just want an address where somebody lives. My street address isn't exactly secret; it can easily be determined from reading street signs and numbers in my neighbourhood, if not from a gazetteer. Yes, there actually are broadband companies sending bulk snail mail addressed to "Every Tenant on 13 Sernander Rd" and getting it delivered to 56 separate mailslots in that single building, without knowing the real names of individual recipients. Am I going to spam their customers by e-mail in return? You bet, to inform them that I have blacklisted their entire broadband network and that they should ask their customer support
I haven't bothered to register to read the article, so maybe this is discussed already: I have been told that plants (or at least some of them) have a lot of DNA due to, among other things, spurious repetitions of partial sequences. I don't have any numbers for nucleic DNA, but I think I saw somewhere examples of plants having more than 100,000 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA, compared to some 16,500 for humans. I guess those repetitions might work as a backup, and help revert an earlier mutation.
I'm not a geneticist by profession though, so what I'm telling here may be an urban legend...
Not to forget Latin America.
The Parliament and the Commission are different entities, true, but it's actually the Commission that is trying desperately to push through the directive on Computer-Implemented Inventions, while the Parliament has been calling for substantial amendments of it. In any case, the Commission runs a large organization of its own, and may well maintain several mutually unrelated agendas at once.
I think however that the software patent issue does not depend on lobbying by Microsoft alone, but also on efforts by other major players in Europe. Therefore even the very same Commission won't necessarily see any problem introducing software patents with one hand while spanking Microsoft with the other. When Microsoft starts using those patents against European interests, we may be hearing a different song from the Commission.
"It ain't over 'til the fat commissioner sings."
And he made that money by selling software to, among others, the very countries that didn't spend as much as him on fighting poverty and disease. Looks like they still contributed to those charitable causes then, albeit indirectly, and may deserve a small portion of that recognition?
I don't mind giving money to charitable causes, nor do I mind others doing business as they see fit, but I'd rather be confident that the money I pay for goods and services go to the production of said goods and services. If not all of it does, then at least those boxes should be labelled "1% of retail price goes to the Red Cross" or whatever, so I can tell when I've done my part.
Not all contributions are of a monetary nature, though. Contributions of new ideas, methods and technologies may be at least as worthy of recognition as a big check, but sometimes a big check may be the only way to make others notice your new idea, method or technology. This may very well be the case also for Bill Gates, and I'm pretty sure I had no part in any such contribution of his. Good for him.
Now you have definitely lost me (and I even have to quote myself for context). How is my desire to opt in to business correspondance I want, rather than opt out from correspondance I don't want, a threat to free speech? I'm not calling the cops to stop anybody from talking, I'm simply refusing to do business with them if they insist on treating me like a credit card with two eyeballs and no brain. Their speech is free from government interference; they just can't count on selling anything to me if they say things I don't like. I'm not the government; I have no obligations to them.
How could a filter be "abused"? It's mere information, a list of names and numbers. If I accidentally turn it upside down, the worst thing that can happen is that it will reject all legit mail and let in the spam, and I'm the one who suffers most from that. Even if it's published, it's still just information, now awarded protection as free speech, like any book. Where does the abuse come in?
I don't claim the subscription offer is. However, if the joint message sent to me by all spammers and their lawyers is "We have the government on our side, we will bury you in ads unless you give in to our demands, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop us short of resorting to violence", then I probably will resort to violence, even if it's illegal. So what if revenge is unacceptable in civilized society, when the society I'm subjected to isn't civilized? Pointing to laws written by spammers and claiming that theoretically, society by definition is "civilized", isn't very convincing when the theory doesn't work out that well in practice.
I may be using human language, but you are really talking to a cornered animal here, one trying desperately to find a way out of the spammer's mental junk mail trap. Don't count on that animal not to attack as an act of self defense; it would rather take a few scratches in combat than give up its dignity as an individual by being put in your cage.
Why would I want any other solution, if it still requires opt-out (besides the do-not-call list, which I don't want either)? I'm asking for an opt-in approach, not an opt-out one. And it's not a legal issue to me, it's an issue of making the other guy understand what I want from him. If he says "I guess you don't want to receive this, but I have my constitutional right to..." then I'll beat him with a stick, and take my business elsewhere. If he wants to defend his position in court, he has to sue me first.
I didn't suggest violating the law. "Killing" a spammer doesn't necessarily equate shortening his biological life, just removing his ability to spam, say by public blacklisting. Usenet "kill files" were invented long ago, and they aren't lethal weapons.
He may be speaking, but if nobody is listening, there is no communication. One-way communication still requires somebody to listen passively. You can't communicate with a brick wall by speaking to it.
Then don't invite people to commit mail fraud by leaving them no other option to make their point. It's not like the government can spend arbitrary amounts of law enforcement resources to track down people trading addresses they found in the phone directory, as if they were pirating music. When a sufficiently large portion of the population is determined to get even, it's better to call a truce and make an honest attempt to rewrite the rules more to their liking, than continue beating them into obedience.
Or I could respond like the spammers: Please define mail fraud, and we'll spend the rest of this decade arguing the formal distinction between (and contractual implications of) "mail", "e-mail", "fax", and "fist".
A do-not-mail list works best when the marketer actually wants to respect my wish to be left alone. If I can't trust the marketer to do that, but I have to call for the government to "enforce" my wish against someone desperately trying various legal tricks to be able to mail me anyway, I clearly can't trust that person with even having my address in the first place. A law then requiring me to still submit my address to that scumbag in order to invoke my "rights" is worse than useless, and I will not participate in that legal farce anymore, but rely entirely on physical means of protection instead, such as refusing him access to my mail server, or even more drastic measures (of course first checking that the marketer isn't found on my do-not-kill list).
By failing to consider the needs of a majority of Internet users, any law offering a public do-not-mail list as the only legal protection against unsolicited e-mail will render itself irrelevant. As I and others have made extremely clear in full public view that any spammers will blacklisted to the full extent of the Internet, the problem is not me hiding my "no solicitors" sign in my basement, it's the law hiding my freedom in some closet in the spammer's basement.
And only those who are willing can justifiably say so. If neither party speaks up, the default assumption can be anything agreed upon in that community, whether communication is valued highly or not. Sending unwanted advertising is not communication any more than mailing an unwritten brick is; it takes at least two voluntary parties to communicate. Why is it that when a majority of the members of a community have to put up signs enumerating all the things they don't want delivered to them, the silent minority can still expect to receive anything they want, anonymously, just by not objecting to it, thanks to the "value of communcation"?
But I realize I'm fighting a losing battle. Better apply the same reasoning myself, and return every magazine subscription offer mailed to me filled in with a random name and address found in the telephone directory. After all, in a society that values communication highly, the assumption is that they want those subscriptions. If they're unwilling, only they can justifiably say so, claim they didn't order anything, and refuse to pay the bills. Isn't communication wonderful?
This may be a little off-topic, but does anyone know how a company can use embedded GIF tracking in HTML mail to potential customers, yet have a privacy policy saying among other things:
It appears to me that the only way I can avoid sending my IP address and a tracking code with a request for an almost invisible GIF image each time I read unsolicited mail from CA is to disable inline images in my mail reader (or not use an HTML-capable mail reader at all). Fortunately I have done that already, but I'm still curious enough to look at the HTML code. How do I "opt out" from receiving these messages when I'm not even a CA customer, and I don't want to disclose my e-mail address to them?I'm not sure, we may even be in agreement on this issue, but it's not quite clear from what you write. I have already "told" anybody who cares that I don't want their advertising, simply by stating in public that I dislike their practice. If this doesn't count, but I have to contact each potential sender individually with a request that they place my address on a do-not-mail list, it's obviously beyond my capacity to prevent most junk mail from reaching me in the first place. I hope you aren't suggesting that spam victims should resort to spamming in order to get their message out?
However, I'm not standing in the way of people who want advertising. They can simply subscribe to one or more opt-in lists, and receive as much advertising as they like. What I object to is advertising being sent to unwilling recipients who have neither opted in nor opted out, but of course neither their ISP, the sender nor some court of law can determine in advance whether they are unwilling. Would they have to give up their anonymity and declare publicly that they don't want advertising, so that those who want advertising will be able to continue receiving it without giving up their anonymity to individual senders? If your privacy stands in the way of somebody else's privacy, which one will win?
Or use a public blacklist, like MAPS RBL (not that I have much faith in that particular list these days, but long ago it was the only one around). For instance, I could use a list of network providers known to sell connectivity to spammers without disclosing their identities. It may result in also some legit mail bouncing back to the sender, but that's the point; I want my friends and anybody else trying to contact me to know that their current ISP is hosting spammers, hoping they will eventually switch to another provider. I'm sure they would do the same for me in case my ISP were to turn bad.
Waste of time. If they intentionally send me advertising unasked for, they have already violated long-standing rules of conduct on the Internet and lost any credibility with me, regardless of what the law says. If they show, by their own action, that they have no respect for my privacy and my property, why should I spend even five seconds trying to talk them out of it? It's much easier to put them to a public blacklist, allowing everybody else to benefit from my experience immediately if they want to. If they continue spamming after that, all they will get is bounces. Legal action would only be necessary if they break into my mail server and remove the blacklist, but that would invoke an entirely different statute.
We are in complete agreement here; I have no particular desire for violence. This can and should be resolved by entirely legal means.
An e-mail address is meant for communication, just like a phone number (or even a car, though that's a very different kind of communication). A phone number is printed in a directory so that people can find it and call you. The same can be done with an e-mail address. A phone number isn't expected to "wear out" just because it's published and telemarketers get to see it, nor does a public directory listing constitute deliberate lack of "maintainance" of that number.
Sure, if you hardly ever use your e-mail address except within a close circle of trusted friends, it will last a lot longer, just like a car will last longer if you never take it outdoors but rather keep it in your garage as a kind of museum piece (or perhaps take it for a pleasant drive in the countryside once a year). Most cars are sold to be used however, just like e-mail addresses, and the owner is supposedly the authority on what it should be used for.
Accepting the notion that you have to keep your contact information secret in order not to have to change it every two years is precisely what the spammers want you to do. Their mantra goes like "If you publish your e-mail address on the Internet, you have effectively opted in to receiving any kind of commercial advertising, including ours. If you don't want our ads, simply remove your name from public view!"
I don't agree with that notion, and I'm certainly not giving in to threats made by spammers; they don't get to decide what the Internet is for. It may result in me receiving more junk mail than others, but if I'm ever to confront a spammer in public debate, I will be able to show by example that mere publication of one's e-mail address does not in itself constitute a request for commercial solicitations, just like a woman wearing a certain kind of clothing in public does not constitute consent to random strangers having sex with her. Nor does the way she looks constitute "lack of maintenance" of her right not to be raped.
Because a software implementation of the RSA public key encryption algorithm amounts to mere information that can be published in a printed book, perhaps with a CD-ROM included. A hardware encryption device cannot; it has to be sold to end-users unit by unit.
This may not sound like such a big deal, but consider the implications for the publishing business. When someone gets a patent on that hardware device, sale of any infringing products will have to cease (or royalties be paid). When the algorithm described and implemented in your book is patented by somebody other than you, are you going to withdraw it from publication? Will people still be able to borrow copies sold to libraries, or are those to be withdrawn from the shelves too?
Note you did nothing illegal, akin to copyright infringement, by publishing unpatended code in the first place. Therefore those copies already in circulation aren't pirate copies. You just have to stop "using" the invention for commercial purposes (such as selling copies of the code) once someone is granted a patent and tells you to stop. This can never happen with copyright, which is always granted to the author without the need to apply for it, and without the comparably broad scope that patents enjoy.
What good is freedom of speech, if somebody else can buy an exclusive right from the government to say something vaguely similar to what I said, and thereby stop me from saying it? If you think political statements can't be made in a programming language, think again.
If CompTIA even has an opinion on software patents, then how come I can't find it on their website?
In contrast, searching for "linux" yields multiple hits, due to their CompTIA Linux+ Certification programme.
Because you are painting your point of view all over your website, thereby allowing anybody to analyze it and potentially have you eat your own words at some time in the future, when you have changed your mind?
I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "B-topic". In any case, if the Council of Ministers is going to discuss this thing, it definitely shouln't be on the agenda of a fish and agriculture meeting at all. Since they appearantly believe they are finished discussing this, forcing them to discuss it again among themselves is hardly going to achieve anything. They should have to consider the parliament's proposed amendments of 2003 or an entirely new directive proposal, which they appearantly can't do now without a restart of the process.