Culture? YouTube exemplifies the culture of the West perfectly. The majority of YouTube viewers find throught-provoking, interesting and insightful clips of people performing authentic ethnic dances and material culled from the wasteland of television that is really interesting.
Look for a new trend: reposting commercials. Especially old classing beer commercials. To a certain group this can be as culturally inspiring as anything else.
Remember the phrase Lowest Common Denominator. It will guide you through many avenues of life, especially the Internet.
The radio is at cost. Either the tax-supported BBC or ad-supported "public" media. Either way, you are paying.
In the US it is either contribution-supported NPR or ad-supported formats. AM radio is a joke because there is about 10 minutes of content for eacy 50 minutes of ads.
I don't know what UK law is, but ISPs are not "common carriers" under US law. There is a safe harbor provision under some child protection law, but it is not in any way how telephone companies are "common carriers".
There is not and never will be the kind of responsibility you are fantasizing about.
That would be like the "educational use only" and "law enforcement not allowed" notices on warez sites. Sure. The only problem is that it is meaningless. Let's say I get someone to sign a piece of paper saying I didn't murder them and then kill them. My defense is that piece of paper. Think that is going to help?
Sorry, but the anonymity of the Internet is the defense today. You can't prove a connection between a person and an IP address unless you leave incriminating traces elsewhere. And if folks on the defense can successfully deter ISPs from disclosing locations from IP addresses then it is impossible to sieze computers and check them for files.
I suspect in a lot of Western countries the wild, wild west of the Internet is going to come to an end. This will mean less spam, less fraud and less downloading of illicit materials. But there will continue to be spam, fraud and places to download stuff from outside of these Western countries. The question will be if Internet access can be cut off to countries that refuse to enforce their own laws and international agreements.
Today your credit card can be used for a purchase in the US and the goods delivered to a drop house where it is forwarded out of the country or sold on Ebay. The transaction originates outside the US most of the time. Today there is no defense whatsoever against this - the merchants just get ripped off unless they take extraordinary steps to prevent this. There is never any prosecution - all you have is an IP address, often through some kind of proxy. The credit card companies don't lose a dime on it - the merchants do. This is an effect of zero enforcement and anonyminity on the Internet.
Banks don't care because it costs them almost nothing to live with the current state of things. Credit card fraud costs the consumer, mostly because merchants get ripped off and have to eat the cost of sales to fraudulent card numbers.
Credit card companies have very strict rules for merchants that prevent them from validating who a customer is beyond the signature on the card. For instance, they are not allowed to ask for a photo ID. If the card says "check ID" instead of being signed they are not supposed to accept it as it is not signed. The signature indicates that you have accepted the terms of the credit agreement, not any sort of identity verification. Violation of the merchant agreement can result in the merchant account being terminated. These days, a retail store not being able to accept credit cards might as well just fold up shop.
Fraudulent loans and financing are a very small percentage. The FBI mandated that credit card fraud be lumped into "identity theft" a while back and that is where all the numbers are coming from. Unfortunately, there isn't any motivation to fix the problem because the wrong people - the merchants - are paying for the fraud.
Problem today is with "identity management" agencies. In Illinois the Governor mandated that the state DMV department (Secretary of State's office) would give driver's licenses to people producing a card from the local Mexican Matricula Consular office. What they do is give you (or anyone else) an ID that says you can then get a valid Illinois driver's license. Verification? None. It seems that birth records aren't well maintained in Mexico so it would be difficult for them to establish if someone was really even from Mexico under the immigration policies in effect in Illinos. Therefore, no ID is required to get this form of identification.
With this as a starting point, you can basically get anything you want in Illinois. If you would like a SSN on your driver's license you can have that as well. Again, no verification or validation is needed. It is required that you be able to write your name.
This same practice occurs in a number of other cities and states as well.
I believe they would feel obligated to provide a translator if someone showed up speaking nothing but Klingon.
Just remember, they aren't stealing your identity, just borrowing it.
As drug use is generally a self-destructive behavior, are you willing to subsidize these people? Obviously, they can't hold jobs. Would you hire a drug addict for anything, especially something that offers the opportunity to become addicted to something else?
The first problem is that people choosing to use drugs in significant quantities essentially choose to devote their lives to the practice. This is pretty much mandated by the term "addicted". The addict has no option, no choice in the matter - they are addicted.
The second problem is where do they sleep? Either we, collectively as a society, put them out on the street, or we take them in. If we take them in, it is a Chinese obligation - we own them and have to take care of them, probably for life.
The third problem is growth. If a reasonable lifestyle choice was to sit around stoned all day, not having to work and having someone take care of your basic needs, who would choose it? Today we see a small fraction of the population making that choice without the side benefits other than just sitting around stoned. If we make it tolerable, neigh even attractive, who will choose it? I'd say we could be looking at significant growth in the US.
So, as a hard-working American, are you prepared to pay taxes at the level required to support those that make this choice? If not, then you want drug use to be as unattractive as possible, including criminal penalties for use. If you are, then I think you are in a minority but one that may be visited upon us soon. Both Hillary and Barak have made statements about "equalizing income" lately. I guess that means if you make too much the government takes the excess in taxes. If you make too little, you get grants. Then everyone is equal, one way or another. Equality for all, right?
My guess is that if drugs were legal with no stigma or penalities and use was effectively subsidized for those that couldn't hold a job while addicted we would see 30% of the population of the US vote with their feet to join the drug-addicted.
Biofuels? You must be kidding, right? If you ignore the fuel used by the farmer, ethanol is about 1:1 with how much energy it takes to make it vs. what you get out of it. Adding in the fuel used by the farmer, is is more like 1.2:1 from what I understand.
Sure, there migth be some other alternatives on the horizon. But for now we have a clear choice: eating or making ethanol. In the US the "making ethanol" decision has been made and hopefully will be reversed soon. Otherwise, the true downside of the equation is going to be felt.
There is oil for at least the next hundred years at current consumption rates. We can drill for it, or we can let others do it - China is already drilling off the coast of Florida. Are we prepared to deal with the side effects of that?
Until the environmentalist scene is managed better we aren't going to be building any new factories, refineries, distilleries, nuclear power plants, coal power plants, or any other major industrial plant anytime soon. You see it now with a new emphasis on "reduce, conserve" rather than growth. You are going to be forced into conserving soon, with limited electrical power and limitations on other energy sources. We have a choice, and clearly for the economy, jobs and international standing we have made the wrong one. Can we chance our minds? Probably not anytime real soon.
I don't understand how anyone trying to operate a business can operate over a cable modem. You can't upload anything. Sure, you can download at 12-20Mb but upload speeds are often 128K or even less. And then when the school children get home, your service drops to nothing.
If you had a T1 you would get 1.5MB both up and down with dedicated bandwith that nobody can interfere with, no matter what they are doing in your neighborhood.
Yes, it is more expensive than cable, but you get RELIABLE bandwidth and RELIABLE performance. What I have seen from cable is a burst at 12Mb and then a long, long time at 1Mb, if that. If you know it is going to take 30 minutes to upload a web site to a server then you can plan for it. If it might take 5 minutes or it might take 4 hours what sort of planning can you do?
How can anyone seriously use a cable modem for business purposes?
The problem is that you don't want what they have to sell. They knew that in 1995. You want what they do not have, will not have in the near future and probably will never have.
The real problem is that some users now can make use of 10+ megabit transfer rates continuously for long periods of time. The only connection that can do that is a dedicated fiber that extends from the head end to the home. And then the OC3 headend is vastly overcommitted as well. No, that isn't going to happen in the US anytime soon. Even FIOS isn't that fat a pipe.
1. The news organizations will announce the winner before the paper can be counted. No question about that, it happened in 2000 and will likely happen in 2008.
2. It is almost impossible to count any substantial number of items on paper twice and get EXACTLY the same count. This is why there have been thresholds for recounts like 0.05% or so. With the current state of things that may be the total margin between candidates.
Paper isn't the solution. Maybe fixing the news organizations is part of the answers.
If it is in digital form, and it is popular, it will be pirated. Period.
If there are eBooks that are not being passed around on P2P sharing networks, it is not because there is any increased respect for eBooks than music or movies. It is because nobody cares about the content.
If I were to publish an eBook on the mating habits of the German Cockroach, I would expect that it would not be heavily pirated. Equally, I would expect a photoeassy on the day in a life of a proctologist would similarly be immune from piracy. However, an eBook of any popularity would immediately be copied and passed around freely regardless of the wishes of the author.
Does eBook mean piracy? No, clearly not. However, anything that is popular is likely to be pirated regardless of any wishes of the author. The author (like Stephen King) can make the content available online free or not, as they choose. However, once it is in digital form the author loses the ability to control the outcome. This much should be obvious to everyone by now.
If your idea of entertainment is "Ow, My Balls", YouTube is probably all you have ever been looking for.
What YouTube offers is the distribution of entertainment they did not create. Clearly it is distributing Viacom content as well as that from lots of other sources as well. Viacom isn't going to be able to control this and is likely doomed in the long run.
Of course, "entertainment" is going to be of the "Ow, My Balls" caliber pretty soon. I do not see an upside to this. It is not freedom for the masses, it is public theft of private property. The result will be the elimination of the private property from being created.
For the most part, I agree with you. Unfortunately we are currently educating people that violating copyright is OK. Every student going through school today gets this from other students and gets nothing in the way of information opposing this view. I would claim that it makes no difference whether or not "getting a fair deal" has anything to do with it. If people are conditioned to believe that murder is good under the right circumstances, they will happily participate in murder. Just check out the Aztec society for an example of this.
I don't care what your belief is on copyright, right or wrong. We are creating a society in which all digital materials have a value of zero. This isn't a good idea.
Finally, on the subject of entering the public domain I have to seriously question the benefit of most things entering the public domain. Today we have companies which have at the core only a relatively few valuable properties like this. You can perhaps argue if this is a good thing overall for society in general but I believe the value is demonstrated each and every day that the company derives revenue from sale of these properties. In other words, if Mickey Mouse has any value at all it is because this value is being actively exploited by the Disney company. Without Disney, there would be no value for Mickey Mouse. I would also say that without Microsoft the Windows trademark has no value. I don't think there is any way around it.
You can try to destroy the value of these and other properties but all you are going to end up doing is removing the revenue stream and devaluing the property. In isolation, these properties have no value. This differs considerably from a relatively few works that exist. I contend that the Mona Lisa has value quite apart from any licensing or copyright. At the same time I contend that the drawing I made as a six year old child can be copyrighted but has no value apart from whatever might be derived from licensing it - hopefully zero.
If it is on the Internet, it is free. This has been the mantra for the last 15 years or so.
People have lived their entire lives under the delusion that if something can be put into digital form, it can therefore be shared by everyone at no cost.
The result is plenty of people grab whatever they can. I don't know anyone that would pay for music anymore. Movies, yes - they take too long to download today. Software? It sort of depends.
We are creating a society of people that believe it is their right to have everything digital for free. It is getting closer and closer to being true - the only way to get paid for something is to make sure it can never, ever be in digital form.
Software support? Pay for it? Are you kidding? If the product needs constant support - such that someone would pay for it - then the product has failed. Kill it and try again.
No way. I do not know anyone under 30 that "buys" music anymore. It is known to be free, therefore it is free. The value and the price is zero.
Movies are a little too hard for the average person. I know people that wouldn't buy a song, ever, who use Netflix. I expect this to change with increasing bandwidth and increased quality of pirated content. Today it is just too easy to spend four days downloading some camcorder copy of a movie and discover it is unwatchable. After four days.
Software is probably something that will always remain divided. There are people that won't download stuff and those that will. Businesses that use pirated stuff are just waiting for trouble. Individuals are unlikely to change their behavior without some very large legal club held over them - which is unlikely to ever happen.
I don't see a bright future for music or movies. I seriously doubt there will be much in the way of large expenditures made in either area in 10 years time. Mostly because the returns won't be there. I don't see anyone making a great deal of money from either music or movies once the bandwidth is commonly available to download them in less than a day.
The Internet as it stands today is a consequences-free zone. Nations can't "do" anything about such attacks because there are no effective ways to conclusively track them back to individuals or even organizations. Even if there was, how much is some official going to do in China when handed a report of some kind of attack against some other country's computers?
As continuously pointed out, an IP address does not identify an individual. Today, with today's laws, unless you leave clear tracks to other forms of identification just having an IP address does not connect a deed with an individual. You can threaten, harass, and, yes, DDoS, with impunity. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
This pretty much means that any real online presence lives or dies by how much they draw attention to themselves and how motivated the attackers are. Estonia sounds like they were particularly vulnerable with little in the way of offline backup for basic services. This is not true in the US today, but it could easily be that way tomorrow. Could a group of disgruntled folks cripple government services in the US? Maybe. Given the current climate with laws, enforcement and international cooperation, there is no way that anyone outside the US would ever be prosecuted unless they bragged about what they did.
The problem is there are far more malleable people than you that will look at these things and think "You know, these guys really have a point." There are so far relatively few people from the West that have joined the jihadist cause, but the more advertising time these folks get, the more will be swayed.
I don't think censorship is the answer, but I do believe that we need more facts and fewer emotional appeals. Emotional appeals will find interested and willing parties to be swayed. It is like the difference between having a sex ed class where the teacher passes out textbooks vs. the teacher passing out condoms. Both will enhance the knowledge of the class but we can clearly recognize the difference between information and encouragement.
The sorts of videos that are in question are not informational or neutral. They are designed to sway people to a different belief system. And believe it, they are finding converts.
We have a choice. We in the West can tolerate Islamic expansionism and one day be prepared to be offered the choice of convert, pay the dhimmi tax or die. Or we can say that Islam is not our way and not tolerate such advertisements.
Do you consider Islam a valid choice? If your child or brother announced they were converting to Islam would you regard this a tragedy or just a life choice, like deciding to run in a marathon or take up golf?
I firmly believe that it is clear to all Muslims that they have a duty to expand the reach and power of Islam. Some pursue this with greater vigor than others, but the duty remains. Members of the Islamic community must get the West to accept Islam, embrace Islam and finally adopt it as their own. Should this happen it will change the face of the world in ways that most people in the West will not like, will not accept and will not tolerate. Should Islam gain enough power in the meantime, the fate of people not accepting Islam will be death. Death by hanging, death by stoning, death by beheading, death.
Can we prevent Islam from gaining that much power in the West? As things stand right now, it is not clear that we have the will.
Today, just about all "computer forensic examiners" in the US spend 50-80% of their time on child porn cases. This is well over 10,000 people working for local, state and federal law enforcement. Child porn cases are the #1 workload item for Army CID.
Yes, this means there is enough work for 10,000 people to spend all day, every day doing nothing but digging out child porn from seized computers.
I do not know the number of convictions in the last year, but I'm sure there have been thousands of them. Just US Attorneys did 1700 cases in 2007, which is federal level alone.
It is not a trivial problem and is absolutely not "infrequent" in any regard.
Yes, FOSS is subject to the "last person that broke it" problem. Unfortunately, the real problem is there are a limited number of people that really understand the code but lots of people that have access to it. Access that, as this proves, can be used to corrupt an otherwise working system.
The problem with reviewing the last modifier for a package is there is no way to know if that last change interacts with some other package. If this change was actually required for OpenSSL to work with some other (modified) Debian package it would not be possible to know this in advance. At least with the current structure of things. I would say this is where the real problem lies - you can always back out modified packages back to the "original" version as long it doesn't break anything else.
Yes, but... given a suitable profit motive, what would be wrong with creating a new life form, human-like but with sub-normal brain development as a slave class? Imagine having personal servants that not only didn't mind but saw no other possible life other than service to their masters.
This is indeed within our grasp. Should it be possible, and I am certain it is, can you imagine a situation where a large multi-national corporation wouldn't do it? For the profits?
I guess you need to ask yourself if you would like to be living in that world.
I don't believe there is necessarily a religious connection to saying "this is wrong." Why is it wrong? For starters, do you actually believe no such creations will be allowed to come to term? If you were offered, secretly, to have a "superior, genetically enhanced" child would you not take the offer? Don't you want your offspring to be the very best they could possibly be?
Genetic modification holds the promise and the threat of changing the face of humanity. Literally in some ways. But the real problem isn't just making green people but people that are not human and do not share humanity with the rest of the people on the planet. This is a fundamental point; we can have a society because of a shared heritage. Messing around with things that at this point we have little knowledge of is an open invitation to creating a branch of the human species which shares no common heritage.
What would we, meaning the current humans on the planet, do with someone that was both human and not human? Not human because they, for example, believed and acted like they were a superior form of life and that all others were placed within their view for their own amusement? OK, one such being would be a curiosity. 100 would be a threat and 1000 would be a war. What part of the Star Trek episode "Botany Bay" did you not understand?
I'm not sure I would say this is an "ethical" problem, but it certainly is a problem that we do not have to address. We can choose not to go down this road. We, as the humans on the planet, must not go down this road as it stands a really good chance of leading to disaster, potentially on a global scale.
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Culture? YouTube exemplifies the culture of the West perfectly. The majority of YouTube viewers find throught-provoking, interesting and insightful clips of people performing authentic ethnic dances and material culled from the wasteland of television that is really interesting.
Look for a new trend: reposting commercials. Especially old classing beer commercials. To a certain group this can be as culturally inspiring as anything else.
Remember the phrase Lowest Common Denominator. It will guide you through many avenues of life, especially the Internet.
Sorry, but the current definition of spam is "It is if I say it is."
If someone calls an email spam, then it is spam. Period. And that definition is accepted by most of the block lists.
I'd say the current sentiments are that mentioning anything to do with a commercial enterprise is spam.
The radio is at cost. Either the tax-supported BBC or ad-supported "public" media. Either way, you are paying.
In the US it is either contribution-supported NPR or ad-supported formats. AM radio is a joke because there is about 10 minutes of content for eacy 50 minutes of ads.
I don't know what UK law is, but ISPs are not "common carriers" under US law. There is a safe harbor provision under some child protection law, but it is not in any way how telephone companies are "common carriers".
There is not and never will be the kind of responsibility you are fantasizing about.
That would be like the "educational use only" and "law enforcement not allowed" notices on warez sites. Sure. The only problem is that it is meaningless. Let's say I get someone to sign a piece of paper saying I didn't murder them and then kill them. My defense is that piece of paper. Think that is going to help?
Sorry, but the anonymity of the Internet is the defense today. You can't prove a connection between a person and an IP address unless you leave incriminating traces elsewhere. And if folks on the defense can successfully deter ISPs from disclosing locations from IP addresses then it is impossible to sieze computers and check them for files.
I suspect in a lot of Western countries the wild, wild west of the Internet is going to come to an end. This will mean less spam, less fraud and less downloading of illicit materials. But there will continue to be spam, fraud and places to download stuff from outside of these Western countries. The question will be if Internet access can be cut off to countries that refuse to enforce their own laws and international agreements.
Today your credit card can be used for a purchase in the US and the goods delivered to a drop house where it is forwarded out of the country or sold on Ebay. The transaction originates outside the US most of the time. Today there is no defense whatsoever against this - the merchants just get ripped off unless they take extraordinary steps to prevent this. There is never any prosecution - all you have is an IP address, often through some kind of proxy. The credit card companies don't lose a dime on it - the merchants do. This is an effect of zero enforcement and anonyminity on the Internet.
Banks don't care because it costs them almost nothing to live with the current state of things. Credit card fraud costs the consumer, mostly because merchants get ripped off and have to eat the cost of sales to fraudulent card numbers.
Credit card companies have very strict rules for merchants that prevent them from validating who a customer is beyond the signature on the card. For instance, they are not allowed to ask for a photo ID. If the card says "check ID" instead of being signed they are not supposed to accept it as it is not signed. The signature indicates that you have accepted the terms of the credit agreement, not any sort of identity verification. Violation of the merchant agreement can result in the merchant account being terminated. These days, a retail store not being able to accept credit cards might as well just fold up shop.
Fraudulent loans and financing are a very small percentage. The FBI mandated that credit card fraud be lumped into "identity theft" a while back and that is where all the numbers are coming from. Unfortunately, there isn't any motivation to fix the problem because the wrong people - the merchants - are paying for the fraud.
Problem today is with "identity management" agencies. In Illinois the Governor mandated that the state DMV department (Secretary of State's office) would give driver's licenses to people producing a card from the local Mexican Matricula Consular office. What they do is give you (or anyone else) an ID that says you can then get a valid Illinois driver's license. Verification? None. It seems that birth records aren't well maintained in Mexico so it would be difficult for them to establish if someone was really even from Mexico under the immigration policies in effect in Illinos. Therefore, no ID is required to get this form of identification.
With this as a starting point, you can basically get anything you want in Illinois. If you would like a SSN on your driver's license you can have that as well. Again, no verification or validation is needed. It is required that you be able to write your name.
This same practice occurs in a number of other cities and states as well.
I believe they would feel obligated to provide a translator if someone showed up speaking nothing but Klingon.
Just remember, they aren't stealing your identity, just borrowing it.
As drug use is generally a self-destructive behavior, are you willing to subsidize these people? Obviously, they can't hold jobs. Would you hire a drug addict for anything, especially something that offers the opportunity to become addicted to something else?
The first problem is that people choosing to use drugs in significant quantities essentially choose to devote their lives to the practice. This is pretty much mandated by the term "addicted". The addict has no option, no choice in the matter - they are addicted.
The second problem is where do they sleep? Either we, collectively as a society, put them out on the street, or we take them in. If we take them in, it is a Chinese obligation - we own them and have to take care of them, probably for life.
The third problem is growth. If a reasonable lifestyle choice was to sit around stoned all day, not having to work and having someone take care of your basic needs, who would choose it? Today we see a small fraction of the population making that choice without the side benefits other than just sitting around stoned. If we make it tolerable, neigh even attractive, who will choose it? I'd say we could be looking at significant growth in the US.
So, as a hard-working American, are you prepared to pay taxes at the level required to support those that make this choice? If not, then you want drug use to be as unattractive as possible, including criminal penalties for use. If you are, then I think you are in a minority but one that may be visited upon us soon. Both Hillary and Barak have made statements about "equalizing income" lately. I guess that means if you make too much the government takes the excess in taxes. If you make too little, you get grants. Then everyone is equal, one way or another. Equality for all, right?
My guess is that if drugs were legal with no stigma or penalities and use was effectively subsidized for those that couldn't hold a job while addicted we would see 30% of the population of the US vote with their feet to join the drug-addicted.
Biofuels? You must be kidding, right? If you ignore the fuel used by the farmer, ethanol is about 1:1 with how much energy it takes to make it vs. what you get out of it. Adding in the fuel used by the farmer, is is more like 1.2:1 from what I understand.
Sure, there migth be some other alternatives on the horizon. But for now we have a clear choice: eating or making ethanol. In the US the "making ethanol" decision has been made and hopefully will be reversed soon. Otherwise, the true downside of the equation is going to be felt.
There is oil for at least the next hundred years at current consumption rates. We can drill for it, or we can let others do it - China is already drilling off the coast of Florida. Are we prepared to deal with the side effects of that?
Until the environmentalist scene is managed better we aren't going to be building any new factories, refineries, distilleries, nuclear power plants, coal power plants, or any other major industrial plant anytime soon. You see it now with a new emphasis on "reduce, conserve" rather than growth. You are going to be forced into conserving soon, with limited electrical power and limitations on other energy sources. We have a choice, and clearly for the economy, jobs and international standing we have made the wrong one. Can we chance our minds? Probably not anytime real soon.
I don't understand how anyone trying to operate a business can operate over a cable modem. You can't upload anything. Sure, you can download at 12-20Mb but upload speeds are often 128K or even less. And then when the school children get home, your service drops to nothing.
If you had a T1 you would get 1.5MB both up and down with dedicated bandwith that nobody can interfere with, no matter what they are doing in your neighborhood.
Yes, it is more expensive than cable, but you get RELIABLE bandwidth and RELIABLE performance. What I have seen from cable is a burst at 12Mb and then a long, long time at 1Mb, if that. If you know it is going to take 30 minutes to upload a web site to a server then you can plan for it. If it might take 5 minutes or it might take 4 hours what sort of planning can you do?
How can anyone seriously use a cable modem for business purposes?
The problem is that you don't want what they have to sell. They knew that in 1995. You want what they do not have, will not have in the near future and probably will never have.
The real problem is that some users now can make use of 10+ megabit transfer rates continuously for long periods of time. The only connection that can do that is a dedicated fiber that extends from the head end to the home. And then the OC3 headend is vastly overcommitted as well. No, that isn't going to happen in the US anytime soon. Even FIOS isn't that fat a pipe.
Some problems with paper ballots:
1. The news organizations will announce the winner before the paper can be counted. No question about that, it happened in 2000 and will likely happen in 2008.
2. It is almost impossible to count any substantial number of items on paper twice and get EXACTLY the same count. This is why there have been thresholds for recounts like 0.05% or so. With the current state of things that may be the total margin between candidates.
Paper isn't the solution. Maybe fixing the news organizations is part of the answers.
If it is in digital form, and it is popular, it will be pirated. Period.
If there are eBooks that are not being passed around on P2P sharing networks, it is not because there is any increased respect for eBooks than music or movies. It is because nobody cares about the content.
If I were to publish an eBook on the mating habits of the German Cockroach, I would expect that it would not be heavily pirated. Equally, I would expect a photoeassy on the day in a life of a proctologist would similarly be immune from piracy. However, an eBook of any popularity would immediately be copied and passed around freely regardless of the wishes of the author.
Does eBook mean piracy? No, clearly not. However, anything that is popular is likely to be pirated regardless of any wishes of the author. The author (like Stephen King) can make the content available online free or not, as they choose. However, once it is in digital form the author loses the ability to control the outcome. This much should be obvious to everyone by now.
If your idea of entertainment is "Ow, My Balls", YouTube is probably all you have ever been looking for.
What YouTube offers is the distribution of entertainment they did not create. Clearly it is distributing Viacom content as well as that from lots of other sources as well. Viacom isn't going to be able to control this and is likely doomed in the long run.
Of course, "entertainment" is going to be of the "Ow, My Balls" caliber pretty soon. I do not see an upside to this. It is not freedom for the masses, it is public theft of private property. The result will be the elimination of the private property from being created.
For the most part, I agree with you. Unfortunately we are currently educating people that violating copyright is OK. Every student going through school today gets this from other students and gets nothing in the way of information opposing this view. I would claim that it makes no difference whether or not "getting a fair deal" has anything to do with it. If people are conditioned to believe that murder is good under the right circumstances, they will happily participate in murder. Just check out the Aztec society for an example of this.
I don't care what your belief is on copyright, right or wrong. We are creating a society in which all digital materials have a value of zero. This isn't a good idea.
Finally, on the subject of entering the public domain I have to seriously question the benefit of most things entering the public domain. Today we have companies which have at the core only a relatively few valuable properties like this. You can perhaps argue if this is a good thing overall for society in general but I believe the value is demonstrated each and every day that the company derives revenue from sale of these properties. In other words, if Mickey Mouse has any value at all it is because this value is being actively exploited by the Disney company. Without Disney, there would be no value for Mickey Mouse. I would also say that without Microsoft the Windows trademark has no value. I don't think there is any way around it.
You can try to destroy the value of these and other properties but all you are going to end up doing is removing the revenue stream and devaluing the property. In isolation, these properties have no value. This differs considerably from a relatively few works that exist. I contend that the Mona Lisa has value quite apart from any licensing or copyright. At the same time I contend that the drawing I made as a six year old child can be copyrighted but has no value apart from whatever might be derived from licensing it - hopefully zero.
If it is on the Internet, it is free. This has been the mantra for the last 15 years or so.
People have lived their entire lives under the delusion that if something can be put into digital form, it can therefore be shared by everyone at no cost.
The result is plenty of people grab whatever they can. I don't know anyone that would pay for music anymore. Movies, yes - they take too long to download today. Software? It sort of depends.
We are creating a society of people that believe it is their right to have everything digital for free. It is getting closer and closer to being true - the only way to get paid for something is to make sure it can never, ever be in digital form.
Software support? Pay for it? Are you kidding? If the product needs constant support - such that someone would pay for it - then the product has failed. Kill it and try again.
No way. I do not know anyone under 30 that "buys" music anymore. It is known to be free, therefore it is free. The value and the price is zero.
Movies are a little too hard for the average person. I know people that wouldn't buy a song, ever, who use Netflix. I expect this to change with increasing bandwidth and increased quality of pirated content. Today it is just too easy to spend four days downloading some camcorder copy of a movie and discover it is unwatchable. After four days.
Software is probably something that will always remain divided. There are people that won't download stuff and those that will. Businesses that use pirated stuff are just waiting for trouble. Individuals are unlikely to change their behavior without some very large legal club held over them - which is unlikely to ever happen.
I don't see a bright future for music or movies. I seriously doubt there will be much in the way of large expenditures made in either area in 10 years time. Mostly because the returns won't be there. I don't see anyone making a great deal of money from either music or movies once the bandwidth is commonly available to download them in less than a day.
The Internet as it stands today is a consequences-free zone. Nations can't "do" anything about such attacks because there are no effective ways to conclusively track them back to individuals or even organizations. Even if there was, how much is some official going to do in China when handed a report of some kind of attack against some other country's computers?
As continuously pointed out, an IP address does not identify an individual. Today, with today's laws, unless you leave clear tracks to other forms of identification just having an IP address does not connect a deed with an individual. You can threaten, harass, and, yes, DDoS, with impunity. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
This pretty much means that any real online presence lives or dies by how much they draw attention to themselves and how motivated the attackers are. Estonia sounds like they were particularly vulnerable with little in the way of offline backup for basic services. This is not true in the US today, but it could easily be that way tomorrow. Could a group of disgruntled folks cripple government services in the US? Maybe. Given the current climate with laws, enforcement and international cooperation, there is no way that anyone outside the US would ever be prosecuted unless they bragged about what they did.
The problem is there are far more malleable people than you that will look at these things and think "You know, these guys really have a point." There are so far relatively few people from the West that have joined the jihadist cause, but the more advertising time these folks get, the more will be swayed.
I don't think censorship is the answer, but I do believe that we need more facts and fewer emotional appeals. Emotional appeals will find interested and willing parties to be swayed. It is like the difference between having a sex ed class where the teacher passes out textbooks vs. the teacher passing out condoms. Both will enhance the knowledge of the class but we can clearly recognize the difference between information and encouragement.
The sorts of videos that are in question are not informational or neutral. They are designed to sway people to a different belief system. And believe it, they are finding converts.
We have a choice. We in the West can tolerate Islamic expansionism and one day be prepared to be offered the choice of convert, pay the dhimmi tax or die. Or we can say that Islam is not our way and not tolerate such advertisements.
Do you consider Islam a valid choice? If your child or brother announced they were converting to Islam would you regard this a tragedy or just a life choice, like deciding to run in a marathon or take up golf?
I firmly believe that it is clear to all Muslims that they have a duty to expand the reach and power of Islam. Some pursue this with greater vigor than others, but the duty remains. Members of the Islamic community must get the West to accept Islam, embrace Islam and finally adopt it as their own. Should this happen it will change the face of the world in ways that most people in the West will not like, will not accept and will not tolerate. Should Islam gain enough power in the meantime, the fate of people not accepting Islam will be death. Death by hanging, death by stoning, death by beheading, death.
Can we prevent Islam from gaining that much power in the West? As things stand right now, it is not clear that we have the will.
Infrequent? What rock have you been living under?
Today, just about all "computer forensic examiners" in the US spend 50-80% of their time on child porn cases. This is well over 10,000 people working for local, state and federal law enforcement. Child porn cases are the #1 workload item for Army CID.
Yes, this means there is enough work for 10,000 people to spend all day, every day doing nothing but digging out child porn from seized computers.
I do not know the number of convictions in the last year, but I'm sure there have been thousands of them. Just US Attorneys did 1700 cases in 2007, which is federal level alone.
It is not a trivial problem and is absolutely not "infrequent" in any regard.
Yes, FOSS is subject to the "last person that broke it" problem. Unfortunately, the real problem is there are a limited number of people that really understand the code but lots of people that have access to it. Access that, as this proves, can be used to corrupt an otherwise working system.
The problem with reviewing the last modifier for a package is there is no way to know if that last change interacts with some other package. If this change was actually required for OpenSSL to work with some other (modified) Debian package it would not be possible to know this in advance. At least with the current structure of things. I would say this is where the real problem lies - you can always back out modified packages back to the "original" version as long it doesn't break anything else.
Yes, but... given a suitable profit motive, what would be wrong with creating a new life form, human-like but with sub-normal brain development as a slave class? Imagine having personal servants that not only didn't mind but saw no other possible life other than service to their masters.
This is indeed within our grasp. Should it be possible, and I am certain it is, can you imagine a situation where a large multi-national corporation wouldn't do it? For the profits?
I guess you need to ask yourself if you would like to be living in that world.
I don't believe there is necessarily a religious connection to saying "this is wrong." Why is it wrong? For starters, do you actually believe no such creations will be allowed to come to term? If you were offered, secretly, to have a "superior, genetically enhanced" child would you not take the offer? Don't you want your offspring to be the very best they could possibly be?
Genetic modification holds the promise and the threat of changing the face of humanity. Literally in some ways. But the real problem isn't just making green people but people that are not human and do not share humanity with the rest of the people on the planet. This is a fundamental point; we can have a society because of a shared heritage. Messing around with things that at this point we have little knowledge of is an open invitation to creating a branch of the human species which shares no common heritage.
What would we, meaning the current humans on the planet, do with someone that was both human and not human? Not human because they, for example, believed and acted like they were a superior form of life and that all others were placed within their view for their own amusement? OK, one such being would be a curiosity. 100 would be a threat and 1000 would be a war. What part of the Star Trek episode "Botany Bay" did you not understand?
I'm not sure I would say this is an "ethical" problem, but it certainly is a problem that we do not have to address. We can choose not to go down this road. We, as the humans on the planet, must not go down this road as it stands a really good chance of leading to disaster, potentially on a global scale.