I 'spect the long download time is intentional. Too many people actually have the bandwidth now to download one CD's worth, so they don't sell enough copies... so if they make it two CD's, less folks will want to spend the time downloading the free version...
We at The Original Plagiarist.org are pleased to provide The DeCSS Song for your listening pleasure. Part of the full "Naughty Bits - The DeCSS Uncensored Art Show," linkable from the plagiarist.org homepage. (It would have a direct link, but there is of course the requisite Net Art License Agreement to deal with first - can't be too careful where IP issues are concerned, you know....)
The retail company that I work for recently opened an e-store. Since we have brick-n-mortar operation in about 80% of the
states, someone must have saw laws like this coming, because we charge sales tax for everybody.
Huh? Is that even legal? Why is your company charging sales tax to people in the 20% of states where you don't have brick and mortar operations? Simplifying your accounting can't be the justification...
At some level, it doesn't really matter though. As "cracking" becomes an increasingly convenient catch-all for corporations with lots of lawyers to use against people who do things they simply don't like - criminal or not - we'll see more and more Officially Guilty Crackers. As of today, Randal still is one of these. So he has to put up with having his life wrecked the same as others who admit guilt. This is why this situation is particularly disturbing; we have to realize it will affect many innocent people as well as the guilty ones.
Specifically, defendant Pavlovich, by his own admission, founded and operated a web site located
at the URL: "livid.on.openprojects.net. "2 A key purpose of this web site was to aid in the development of an unlicensed, "open source"
system for DVD playback and copying. LiVid is dedicated to the idea that all computer source code should be "open," even if that means
stealing and disseminating protected intellectual property.
gee, i just went to the livid site, and it looked like it was about linux video or something, not about "stealing and disseminating protected intellectual property"... hmm...
John Pike, an analyst of the intelligence community for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., says the credibility risks are simply too great for governments or serious organizations to get caught attempting to spoof the public. And for the organizations that would be willing to risk it, says Pike, the news folks--knowing just what the technology can do--will become increasingly vigilant.
Hee hee hee... remember the "Cokie Roberts
is reporting from the Capitol Bldg. steps wearing
a raincoat because of the weather - oops, I mean, she's standing in a studio" controversy? Sounds a little like the fox guarding the henhouse...
yes, i know this... twas a little joke there...
the commodores having been used a bit more commonly for
word processing in that day and age than the atari's were...(despite trying to read 80 columns of text on that *@#$@#$ NTSC screen!) the atari docs reminded me of everything i ever word processed on mine...
Not really an analogy... noting how law applies in other cases is pretty much how the US judicial system works... Basically I am asking why the judge had so much difficulty thinking of a set of instructions as something that would fall under First Amendment protection... ???
It's legal to publicly post instructions for shooting a gun, correct? You might be shooting the gun legally - for target practice or hunting. Or you might want to know how guns are shot for research purposes. But you might be shooting a person, which is illegal. Still, the instructions are legal. (I believe it is also legal to post instructions on how to build a bomb.)
Source code is a set of instructions. In the case of DeCSS, it's instructions for how to decrypt a movie. Again, you might be doing that for legal or illegal reasons.
Why did the judge have such difficulty finally realizing there might be a reason to protect this form of speech? It's simply a set of instructions, like many others - and it's not even lethal.
This article discusses more about the research on how Napster helps recording industry sales, and could be even more helpful if the industry folks would use their heads a little...
I'm told that Softimage demoed an early RedHat port of XSI 1.5 at SIGGRAPH yesterday (Monday), but the port is still in the early stages.
Hopefully the development of OGL drivers will keep up with all the 3D software releases (Maya and now XSI)... this was always a problem under NT - a driver/card combo that might be great for Quake, Photoshop, etc., would often crash like mad under Softimage... it was always a real trick to find affordable cards whose drivers would work with these packages.
Yes, but controls need to be placed on government, etc., interference with *all* internet communications... these controls are sorely outdated, at least in the US. As Animats points out, there are specific legal restrictions on what the government can interfere with/eavesdrop on with regard to the telephone - but not the net. And how about mail? It's quite a big deal to interfere with US Mail - but remember when NSI turned off the etoy.com domain in the Root Servers, without a court order, at the request of Etoys? (Etoy had already followed the judge's order to shut off their web server, so the NSI action had only the effect of interfering with etoy's e-mail.)
Current laws in place in the US - and probably in most countries - serve to place privacy restrictions on older forms of communication, but are sadly in need of an overhaul to deal with internet communication.
not that alot of linux users will benefit from this port
But, look at it from the other perspective - it will benefit a lot of Maya users, because they will be able to run it on Linux. Maya users will become Linux users, not the other way around. With SGI/IRIX boxes no longer a practical option (and too expensive to begin with), it will be a welcome relief to be able to run Maya on an Intel-based platform without that meaning running Windows NT - especially in a multi-user/multi-system environment like I work in.
As one previous poster mentioned, if the Napster and Scour technologies are being targeted for lawsuits, then it would seem that FTP and HTTP would be even more culpable as technologies that enable illegal file-sharing. The difference is, Napster/Scour/Gnutella offer greater de-centralization of the content. That is: the average computer owner can easily control and distribute content with these technologies - the parental middleman (ISP operator controlling most web servers) is removed from the picture. Also, with Napster/Gnutella/Scour, the distributors generally have dynamic IP's - that makes things for more difficult for MPAA/RIAA when they want to track people down (though in the case of Napster/Metallica, the centralized login system proved that decentralizing content isn't always the issue.)
Anyway, this decentralization of distribution is a scary thing for the big-ticket content providers - it not only makes piracy more feasible, it also makes competition more feasible. Independent media creators now have a greater opportunity to distribute outside the mainstream channels, and this is problematic for MPAA/RIAA etc... These groups consistently try to control distribution in ways that assume/ensure that they are "the only game in town." Remember MPAA's proposed surcharge on blank video tapes a few years back, to reimburse them for revenues lost to piracy? Was any of that surcharge to be distributed to independent videomakers?
The point to bear in mind when discussing the squelching of technologies/services that appear to foster piracy, is that these same services/technologies also foster distribution of alternative/independent content. To "shoot the messenger" as its been referred to here, is to censor independent distribution, not just distribution of pirated mainstream content.
It would be nice to see more discussion of 3D performance under Linux in terms of 3D modeling/animation, rather than just games. The article mentioned the debate over whether gamers should bother to use Linux when Windows might serve them better; i.e. whether Linux is best left for servers. But, Linux is becoming a critical concern in the 3D animation field. Animators and animation houses have been moving away from SGI for the past few years, due to the expense of the SGI hardware as compared to Intel-based systems. But, that has so far meant, using Windows NT. All of the major packages (Maya, Softimage, 3D Studio, etc.) now have NT as their primary platform. (Though Maya, Soft, and others are still released for IRIX as well... SGI's aren't obsolete yet!)
However, people are becoming frustrated with NT, and longing for the stability/flexibility they had with their IRIX based systems. Major animation houses are now moving to Linux, at least for rendering. Maya has its renderer ported to Linux already, and houses that write their own software are porting to Linux also. (I've spoken to people from two major houses who said, "we're giving up on NT.") But, on the actual interactive end, where 3D performance counts, the major packages have not yet been ported, (though the houses may be porting their in-house packages.) So... much of the discussion of Linux for 3D animation users is, "Will, or when will, enough packages port to Linux so that we can use it instead of NT?" Also, "Will we have the level of OpenGL performance we need for these applications?" It's good to see the gaming article, because, attention to 3D that helps the gamers winds up helping the animators too, but I would like to see more articles addressing these aspects of 3D Linux performance.
Once I do get things working, I almost always find that it was worth the effort to "learn" my way through the process. But sometimes I'd rather be out playing pool and drinking beer with friends. I enjoy tinkering and fiddling with things, but sometimes I just want the thing to WORK, without having to worry about which "bleeding-edge" library I've got to download and compile..
Agreed. Not only do I sometimes want to drink beer more than fiddle with the software, at times I'd actually like to *use* the software...:-)... As much as fiddling is an Enjoyable Thing, I need as much time as I can get *using* the app in my project. I like to be able to fiddle when I want to, but Forced Fiddling reduces productivity.
This article has an excellent discussion of the need for attention to the end user's needs in OS development. It focuses on interface issues, but has a good analysis of the problems of perspective.
In order for an ISP to be protected by the DMCA the way that you mean, they have to have a DMCA agent registered with the US Copyright Office. That agent receives the contact from the complainant, which must have specific info explaining what was infringed and what was infringing.
I just checked The Directory of Online Service Provide Agents and Oxford University isn't listed. Probably didn't bother registering an agent because they're not in the US... or can non-US ISP's even register?
Slashdot Mirror
You can easily make an entire lawsuit out of this breed of dork....
I 'spect the long download time is intentional. Too many people actually have the bandwidth now to download one CD's worth, so they don't sell enough copies... so if they make it two CD's, less folks will want to spend the time downloading the free version...
-plagiarist
Huh? Is that even legal? Why is your company charging sales tax to people in the 20% of states where you don't have brick and mortar operations? Simplifying your accounting can't be the justification...
At some level, it doesn't really matter though. As "cracking" becomes an increasingly convenient catch-all for corporations with lots of lawyers to use against people who do things they simply don't like - criminal or not - we'll see more and more Officially Guilty Crackers. As of today, Randal still is one of these. So he has to put up with having his life wrecked the same as others who admit guilt. This is why this situation is particularly disturbing; we have to realize it will affect many innocent people as well as the guilty ones.
DeCSS sure is beautiful lyrics, ain't it???
Specifically, defendant Pavlovich, by his own admission, founded and operated a web site located at the URL: "livid.on.openprojects.net. "2 A key purpose of this web site was to aid in the development of an unlicensed, "open source" system for DVD playback and copying. LiVid is dedicated to the idea that all computer source code should be "open," even if that means stealing and disseminating protected intellectual property.
gee, i just went to the livid site, and it looked like it was about linux video or something, not about "stealing and disseminating protected intellectual property"... hmm...
Hee hee hee... remember the "Cokie Roberts is reporting from the Capitol Bldg. steps wearing a raincoat because of the weather - oops, I mean, she's standing in a studio" controversy? Sounds a little like the fox guarding the henhouse...
VIC 20 anyone? :-)
(..or was it the Pet?)
Order yours today!
----------------
... maybe write it in perl?:
system("killall intruders") or die;
Not really an analogy... noting how law applies in other cases is pretty much how the US judicial system works... Basically I am asking why the judge had so much difficulty thinking of a set of instructions as something that would fall under First Amendment protection... ???
Source code is a set of instructions. In the case of DeCSS, it's instructions for how to decrypt a movie. Again, you might be doing that for legal or illegal reasons.
Why did the judge have such difficulty finally realizing there might be a reason to protect this form of speech? It's simply a set of instructions, like many others - and it's not even lethal.
This article discusses more about the research on how Napster helps recording industry sales, and could be even more helpful if the industry folks would use their heads a little...
Hopefully the development of OGL drivers will keep up with all the 3D software releases (Maya and now XSI)... this was always a problem under NT - a driver/card combo that might be great for Quake, Photoshop, etc., would often crash like mad under Softimage... it was always a real trick to find affordable cards whose drivers would work with these packages.
Current laws in place in the US - and probably in most countries - serve to place privacy restrictions on older forms of communication, but are sadly in need of an overhaul to deal with internet communication.
But, look at it from the other perspective - it will benefit a lot of Maya users, because they will be able to run it on Linux. Maya users will become Linux users, not the other way around. With SGI/IRIX boxes no longer a practical option (and too expensive to begin with), it will be a welcome relief to be able to run Maya on an Intel-based platform without that meaning running Windows NT - especially in a multi-user/multi-system environment like I work in.
Anyway, this decentralization of distribution is a scary thing for the big-ticket content providers - it not only makes piracy more feasible, it also makes competition more feasible. Independent media creators now have a greater opportunity to distribute outside the mainstream channels, and this is problematic for MPAA/RIAA etc... These groups consistently try to control distribution in ways that assume/ensure that they are "the only game in town." Remember MPAA's proposed surcharge on blank video tapes a few years back, to reimburse them for revenues lost to piracy? Was any of that surcharge to be distributed to independent videomakers?
The point to bear in mind when discussing the squelching of technologies/services that appear to foster piracy, is that these same services/technologies also foster distribution of alternative/independent content. To "shoot the messenger" as its been referred to here, is to censor independent distribution, not just distribution of pirated mainstream content.
However, people are becoming frustrated with NT, and longing for the stability/flexibility they had with their IRIX based systems. Major animation houses are now moving to Linux, at least for rendering. Maya has its renderer ported to Linux already, and houses that write their own software are porting to Linux also. (I've spoken to people from two major houses who said, "we're giving up on NT.") But, on the actual interactive end, where 3D performance counts, the major packages have not yet been ported, (though the houses may be porting their in-house packages.) So... much of the discussion of Linux for 3D animation users is, "Will, or when will, enough packages port to Linux so that we can use it instead of NT?" Also, "Will we have the level of OpenGL performance we need for these applications?" It's good to see the gaming article, because, attention to 3D that helps the gamers winds up helping the animators too, but I would like to see more articles addressing these aspects of 3D Linux performance.
Agreed. Not only do I sometimes want to drink beer more than fiddle with the software, at times I'd actually like to *use* the software... :-) ... As much as fiddling is an Enjoyable Thing, I need as much time as I can get *using* the app in my project. I like to be able to fiddle when I want to, but Forced Fiddling reduces productivity.
This article has an excellent discussion of the need for attention to the end user's needs in OS development. It focuses on interface issues, but has a good analysis of the problems of perspective.
I just checked The Directory of Online Service Provide Agents and Oxford University isn't listed. Probably didn't bother registering an agent because they're not in the US... or can non-US ISP's even register?