Yesterday the Internet was a way for well-meaning polite academics to communicate. There were no commercial uses of the Internet and nobody had to worry about malicious attacks, fraud, or much of anything else. Except flame wars. WHOIS information was optional and pretty meaningless except in a very few cases.
Today the Internet is composed to fraud, copyright infringement, theft and all manner of people doing malicious things. If you aren't trying to hurt someone a significant portion of your time is either defending or recovering from attacks. WHOIS information isn't very accurate today either. The people doing malicious things aren't using their right names and addresses when they register phishing domains.
Tomorrow can't look like yesterday. Sorry, that period is over. It can look like today with domain registration being used as a weapon against everyone else while irresponsible registrars happily take money for registering domains like "ebay1.com". Surely the intent is clear - why can't the registrars do something about this? And the registrars, without identity confirmation, just help these folks along.
Tomorrow can look like today or worse. Or it could be better. Choose.
OK, so you are confirming the idea that there can never, ever be any enforcement of copyright infringment? Are you sure you are comfortable with that? Because pretty much that means that no matter what I (or anyone else) does to you as long as the Internet is the vehicle there can never, ever be any consequences. Fraud, libel, threats, theft, invasion of privacy, no matter what - it is all a free ride because all you can ever track it to is an IP address which doesn't ever identify a person.
Sure, it might narrow it down to one of a few people. But you are saying without first convicting the IP address in court you can't even learn the identity of the person.
You are confusing hosting with an Internet connection. As far as I know, nobody has ever been served with a DMCA violation because of something they were doing with their own computer. Like sending email to someone.
DMCA doesn't apply, really. What would you "take down"?
Besides, as others point out, there is no law here. Nothing.
I believe you are wrong on the point that anyone can derive revenue from recorded music. We have spent the last 10 years or so proving that everything on the Internet is free. All micropayment and subscription plans for the general public have failed. Nobody is interested in paying for something from site A when they can have the same (or at least similar) content from site B. There are no barriers to entry on the Internet that prevent site B from starting up and offering something similar to site A. Today most of the revenue on the Internet is from advertising, not subscriptions or sales.
I don't see any way artists can reverse this trend. It is going to be shared and redistributed for free no matter what the artist wants. They can't control this. Sure, they might get some money from dedicated die-hard fans but once their music reaches a level where it is "popular", that is the end of the revenue stream because it will be taken over by redistribution for free.
It is over for recorded music sales. The stuff has no value anymore. Nobody I know would pay a dime for music when they can get other music, just as good, for free.
A tape off the radio or from a CD was (a) not permanent and (b) not all that great. Today we have perfect digital copies that are every bit as good as the original. There is no need to buy the CD when you have the copy, no need whatsoever.
Anyone using the "try before buy" argument is lying or stupid and wasting their money. Nobody is buying CDs if they are downloading they very same music. Who is buying CDs today? The people without broadband Internet connections because downloading is too slow over dial-up. Nobody I know has bought a CD in almost 10 years. Nobody I know is going to buy a CD ever again, except maybe at a concert as a sort of souvenir.
What people fail to understand is that the RIAA isn't just fighting to preserve an outmoded business model, they are fighting to preserve any value whatsoever for recorded music. They have pretty much lost the war because nobody under thirty with a broadband Internet connection is ever going to pay for recorded music again. Some people might buy from iTunes, but trust me nobody is filling their 30GB iPod with $5000 worth of music. Or even $1000. It is all out there for free and everyone that can is taking advantage of that.
Yeah, but... there are two possible ways to look at this. Either you are saying the RIAA has no right to enforce copyright or you are saying there is a different way to pursue an investigation that they have failed to do. I suspect you are saying the first, which is a pretty far out stance for someone claiming to be a lawyer.
I would offer that the RIAA has all the evidence that can be obtained without acquiring evidence from computers. If there is no evidence there - when their investigation has determined clearly that something was happening at that IP address - there are a couple of possibilities, one of which is that indeed it was a visitor or someone sharing the connection wirelessly. Alternatively, it could just be spoliation. Difficult to prove in this case which would probably mean the end of the matter.
I'd be interested in hearing from someone what alternative there might be to the investigation that the RIAA has conducted so far and how they could have better information at this point. They have an IP address and some file names, and possibly the actual files as well. Sure, it would be nice to tie that up with a picture of a person at the keyboard with the screen showing uploading activity going on, but how exactly are they going to get this? RIAA storm troopers breaking down the door brandishing cameras?
The difference between a backup and restribution is exactly what? Sure, there is a different to the person doing it but at one step removed from the actual process what precisely is the different?
Nothing.
This means that until copyright has some kind of respect it really needs to be abolished. Start with the law that says if it isn't nailed down it will be stolen. Private property is meaningless - unless defended with lethal force. If is possible to copy, it will be redistributed. Period. This would inject a sense of reality into common dealing with merchants, laborors and government agencies. You would understand why there is an armed guard at the exit of every store. You would understand why people insist they must live in gated communitied with guards, guard dogs and high fences.
Your IP address is not your name. Your ISP does not claim that all activity on an account is the responsibility of the account holder. Therefore, tracking illegal activity to your IP address isn't good enough.
They need to get a photograph of who is at the keyboard. And without that, sorry, no evidience of wrongdoing. Unless, of course, you are an idiot and (a) use the same name lots of legal and illegal places or (b) blab about what you are doing. Both of those will get you in trouble.
Let's say that you had a business of selling daisies. You are making a nice living working with flowers.
For some reason, the city tells you that you have to sell daisies to other florists directly at a discounted bulk-quantity price. Which turns out to be just less than you were charging people. Overnight, a florist comes in with a lot of slick advertising and buys up half your daisies and suddenly you find your income cut by a lot more than the city promised you originally. And, you really miss the customer interaction that you had before - now you are just a factory churning out flowers for someone else. Also, nobody comes to you so they aren't buying anything else either.
Guess what? This is pretty much where the ILECs are today. They've been told they have to sell their product at bulk-discounted rates to the competition. Competition with little or no infrastructure of their own. And the customers are still 100% dependent on the ILEC infrastructure - unless it is nationalized or something like that we're not getting rid of Verizon et al anytime soon. But we're cutting the revenue to Verizon to ensure they can't do anything except maintain a decaying, aging network.
This isn't going to last very long. Sooner or later Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and anyone else I missed are going to seriously question why they are just working for Vonage and the other zero-infrastructure VOIP providers. Gosh, do you think that might be the reason for the patent lawsuits? Also, this is why they aren't suing cable systems that are offering telephone service on their own infrastructure. If Verizon ceased operation next week Vonage would be stuffed. Alternatively, if you have phone service with Comcast or Cox then Verizon is irrelevent.
Incentive? Oh, you mean that by taxing electricity generation - and allowing them to pass those costs on to consumes - they will voluntarily do something to reduce those taxes.
Why would they do that? The costs just get passed on. The consumer get get their electricity from either company "A" or company "B" with pretty much equal costs. Or, they could get their power from company "C" which has no distribution agreements and is 100% wind power - so they have to buy (at a premium) power from company A or B.
Suing people or passing laws doesn't change how things work. Just who pays for them.
Near term, the answer is to turn off the coal plants. Period.
Sure, over the next 20 years or so other types of electric generation can be tried out. Nuclear doesn't appear to be an answer because of the hippy protests. Wind is basically unreliable over long periods - there are few places that have the wind blowing 24x7. Solar is interesting, but outside of Arizona and Nevada solar isn't very reliable either - and it is environmentally very expensive.
Doing something with the carbon emissions seems to be also unpopular and unlikely to get much support. It allows the generators to keep turning and keep putting out electricity. The answer right now is to turn them off. Darken the cities at night. People can go back to reading by candlelight. Or go to bed like they did on farms in the 1800s.
Turn off the power plants. It is the only solution that will have an immediate, state-by-state effect. No more coal-fired plants. No nuclear plants are going to be built in the near future, so that is out.
Wind power? Sure, we could ramp up the construction of wind turbines 100-fold, but that isn't a reliable power source. Geothermal? Sure, it could be done - but it isn't likely to happen anytime soon because of the geologic considerations except next door to an active volcano.
For the folks that have bought into the idea that Global Climate Change is something that humans can control and reverse, serious action is needed right now. How about some really dedicated folks going out and start destroying infrastructure so electric generation is reduced. How about stopping, by whatever means necessary, air travel? It is clear that some people aren't going to be convinced one way or the other without proof, so let's get some proof - one way or the other. Either humans are fully in control or they aren't. End the use of coal-fired power plants in the US next week and we can begin seeing some results.
We can afford universal health care. Just not the kind you would like to have. It isn't going to be pay-everything no-limit health care when it comes, it will be very restricted and controlled. Managed, you might say. But with that extra special governmental sauce that makes it mismanaged from the start.
The big issue would be elderly folks. They won't vote for it if it is carried out like it is everywhere else. Old people die. Fact of life. Except in the US where old people die after spending zillions of dollars in health care. Nobody else does this, which is partly why "universal health care" looks like it would be affordable in the US.
What this means is young = healthy, old = dead. This might not be real popular with the folks over 50.
So sure, you can pay for 20-somethings with a broken leg from skiing but the old guy with cancer just goes to the hospice.
Right. But vision and hope aren't a solution. Killing all the folks that oppose the use of reason would however be a step in the right direction.
You cannot reason with someone who has discarded reason. If they are content to stare into their navel, you can ignore them. When the person who has discarded reason decides the world isn't big enough for you and they, you have one choice left: you or they.
We have spent perhaps the last 100 years trying desperately to avoid that conclusion. England tried it with Hitler for a long time. We're now trying it with a bunch of other zealots.
As a nation the US is deep in red ink because we export NOTHING and import everything manufactured with cheap overseas labor. This shows no sign of changing anytime, ever. If anything, we are going to lose more and more manufacturing capability.
This means that we will be owing China and the rest of the low-labor-cost world more than the net worth of the US.
In contrast with this, any pseudo-expenditures within the US itself are irrelevant. It is just taking money out of one pocket and putting in a different one.
I see the same sort of law-and-order assumptions here that I would like to believe in. Sadly, that phase in my life has ended.
Sure, you can find who is DDoS'ing you. You can then call the ISP/hosting company and complain. If they are in the US they will likely as not just tell you to get a court order. Outside the US they will laugh and suggest you bribe them. Either way, it is their customer's right to operate in whatever manner they choose. If they are presented with a valid court order from a court in their jurisdiction, they will quickly and efficiently comply. Otherwise, your complaint will go in the bit bucket.
Mostly the problem is that to a lot of ISPs their customer (and the revenue from that customer) is a whole lot more important than the negative effects their customer is having. Also, the customer may be Daddy and Sonny is the one causing all the trouble. Why would anyone want to offend bill-paying Daddy by cutting off service?
The problem here is that regardless of the problem - a botnet infested computer, a script kiddy trying to break in, or some other mischief - if you let it go, it gets worse. Every time a script kiddy gets to feel that rush of excitement at breaking to some computer somewhere without any consequences they get bolder. In the US it is not really possible to go after them until they run up at least $25,000 in damages. Because of this, you never hear about the high schooler getting in trouble because they defaced a web site. Instead you hear about someone after many years of mischief and mayhem who is being accused of causing $12,000,000 in damages computed in some creative manner to get the FBI's attention. There is never a thought of stopping this when the cost to everyone is minimal. Minimal doesn't get the FBI involved and local law enforcement is utterly clueless.
Nobody is really going to get taken down for this unless they do something incredibly stupid. Sure, you can find an IP address but you can't get the customer unless the ISP wants to cooperate. Can you get a court order for the ISP to identify the owner of the account? Probably not without at least $25,000 in damages that you can claim. Even then all you have found is an infected computer that the owner doesn't know anything about.
Unless it was to pick up a person of the opposite sex, why would I ever, ever want to go to someplace where it was noisy, crowded and the acoustics were awful? Especially when it is to hear - under the roar of the crowd - the same music I have already obtained?
No, I don't see it. Unless you transform the entire scene into just a gathering place for drugs and sex - a rave - music performances are pointless in today's world.
But the real issue is if they can defend this by saying these are (mostly?) illegal communications that they can be held liable for. Because they certainly do not have any sort of "common carrier" status. They can certainly be held liable for contributing to infringement without much of a stretch at all of current case rulings.
So anyone that really does sue them may just find out that Comcast is holding a little card that says the local US Attorney's office said "better block, just to be safe".
DDoS is perfectly legal... in Russia, or Romania or Khazakstan. Lots of places. It is completely legal to extort money from people to keep their business Internet connections safe and secure.
Haven't you been paying attention?
Now, if you are an idiot and start your own DDoS attack from inside the US to another US company's connection you are done for. As soon as they track you down and confirm that you are indeed the person using some given IP address. It will take a while (months, probably), but if you are that silly you will likely get caught.
All you have to do is show that they are blocking 100% completely legal traffic on the Internet. Not 90% legal or 99% legal or "has substantial non-infringing use" - none of these are going to stand up to the light of day with a jury.
The problem is that if you want to ding Comcast for blocking it you are going to need to show that in no way could they ever be held liable for not blocking it. With decisions about contributing to infringement coming down in the last year, I'd say an ISP would be incredibly stupid for not blocking traffic that they could clearly be held liable for. You better believe Comcast will use this as a defensive strategy. In today's climate their attorneys have likely advised that not blocking it could be construed as a assisting in infringement.
So while technically it helps management of the network it also eliminates one more thing that could create a liability for them. Win - win for Comcast, lose-lose for the customer.
The decision that nobody owns anything you cannot hold in your hand is the only way out of this. I don't think it is going to come because it would mean the virtual bankruptcy of the US. We don't make "stuff" anymore, we make "intellectual property".
Will this make people respect copyright? Heck no. You can't prosecute people on the Internet, you can't track them down and you just barely can sue them - only if they are stupid about it.
Your Swedish friends are right. The only way to sustainable resource use is to just use less. If that takes cutting back on steel production, so be it. Steel comes from iron ore, which today comes from mining iron ore which came from iron and steel recycled by the planet. We're using more iron and steel than the planet can recycle for our use. Therefore, we need to either get iron ore from somewhere else or reduce the amount we're using.
The problem domains between automotive safety and airliner hijacking aren't even close.
Unless you go around picking up random hitchhikers you are in control of who is in your car and what they are doing. Contrast this with an airliner where there are going to be 100+ people on it that you have zero control over or input into their accompaning you on your journey. Whatever the motivations of someone on an airliner might be, you aren't privy to them and aren't going to be consulted. You are therefore utterly dependent on the judgement of others.
Simply put, you are in control in your car and have no control in an airliner.
The total loss of life in a car crash is often zero. So doing stupid things while driving can injure others but more often than not it does not affect someone for the rest of their life. This is in contrast to the 9/11 incidents where the loss of life was total, plus those targets on the ground. You might say that everyone involved had it affect them for the rest of their lives.
The only way to make a car safe is to get rid of it. In the US we rebuilt the cities since 1950 around the idea of personal automobile transportation. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
I would say the status of DeCSS is perfectly clear. At least one company went down because they were distributing a CSS-bypassing product. It is illegal to distribute anything that decrypts CSS protected movies without a license from the DVD Forum. Period.
What you describe is utter stagnation - "Microsoft can not change the protocol without pissing off many companies..."
This is an absolute formula for zero growth. It is one of the things that causes a lot of Linux development to be done in fits and starts where something stagnates for a long period of time because "Oh, we can't manage change in THIS area." This is a formula for a repeat of where we are with SMTP today.
All change is not bad. There are ways of implementing changes in established protocols if the original protocol allows for it and it is done carefully.
Today, we are stuck with SMTP and no replacement is anywhere on the horizon. Why? Because the nobody wants to manage the change.
Microsoft is not the enemy. They can be a partner and must be if there is to be any real progress by anyone except Microsoft. Calling them the enemy, refusing to work with closed-source software and just trying to be obstinate will result in Microsoft being the only choice far, far into the future.
Sorry, but I disagree. Everything should be free. Free as in "I take everything I want and give nothing back." For a while we will have to live with paying for things like rent and groceries but right now we can have music and movies for free.
Of course, the current crop of content owners will find this an unattractive business to be in. They will be replaced by the American Idol, Australian Idol and xxxx Idol wannabies that discover there are plenty of ways to get their exciting content published on the Internet. So there will no scarcity or shortage of content.
This is clearly where things are headed and there is no reason that I can see why we should not push it along.
Slashdot Mirror
Yesterday the Internet was a way for well-meaning polite academics to communicate. There were no commercial uses of the Internet and nobody had to worry about malicious attacks, fraud, or much of anything else. Except flame wars. WHOIS information was optional and pretty meaningless except in a very few cases.
Today the Internet is composed to fraud, copyright infringement, theft and all manner of people doing malicious things. If you aren't trying to hurt someone a significant portion of your time is either defending or recovering from attacks. WHOIS information isn't very accurate today either. The people doing malicious things aren't using their right names and addresses when they register phishing domains.
Tomorrow can't look like yesterday. Sorry, that period is over. It can look like today with domain registration being used as a weapon against everyone else while irresponsible registrars happily take money for registering domains like "ebay1.com". Surely the intent is clear - why can't the registrars do something about this? And the registrars, without identity confirmation, just help these folks along.
Tomorrow can look like today or worse. Or it could be better. Choose.
How exactly do you convict an IP address?
OK, so you are confirming the idea that there can never, ever be any enforcement of copyright infringment? Are you sure you are comfortable with that? Because pretty much that means that no matter what I (or anyone else) does to you as long as the Internet is the vehicle there can never, ever be any consequences. Fraud, libel, threats, theft, invasion of privacy, no matter what - it is all a free ride because all you can ever track it to is an IP address which doesn't ever identify a person.
Sure, it might narrow it down to one of a few people. But you are saying without first convicting the IP address in court you can't even learn the identity of the person.
Is that really what you mean?
You are confusing hosting with an Internet connection. As far as I know, nobody has ever been served with a DMCA violation because of something they were doing with their own computer. Like sending email to someone.
DMCA doesn't apply, really. What would you "take down"?
Besides, as others point out, there is no law here. Nothing.
I believe you are wrong on the point that anyone can derive revenue from recorded music. We have spent the last 10 years or so proving that everything on the Internet is free. All micropayment and subscription plans for the general public have failed. Nobody is interested in paying for something from site A when they can have the same (or at least similar) content from site B. There are no barriers to entry on the Internet that prevent site B from starting up and offering something similar to site A. Today most of the revenue on the Internet is from advertising, not subscriptions or sales.
I don't see any way artists can reverse this trend. It is going to be shared and redistributed for free no matter what the artist wants. They can't control this. Sure, they might get some money from dedicated die-hard fans but once their music reaches a level where it is "popular", that is the end of the revenue stream because it will be taken over by redistribution for free.
It is over for recorded music sales. The stuff has no value anymore. Nobody I know would pay a dime for music when they can get other music, just as good, for free.
A tape off the radio or from a CD was (a) not permanent and (b) not all that great. Today we have perfect digital copies that are every bit as good as the original. There is no need to buy the CD when you have the copy, no need whatsoever.
Anyone using the "try before buy" argument is lying or stupid and wasting their money. Nobody is buying CDs if they are downloading they very same music. Who is buying CDs today? The people without broadband Internet connections because downloading is too slow over dial-up. Nobody I know has bought a CD in almost 10 years. Nobody I know is going to buy a CD ever again, except maybe at a concert as a sort of souvenir.
What people fail to understand is that the RIAA isn't just fighting to preserve an outmoded business model, they are fighting to preserve any value whatsoever for recorded music. They have pretty much lost the war because nobody under thirty with a broadband Internet connection is ever going to pay for recorded music again. Some people might buy from iTunes, but trust me nobody is filling their 30GB iPod with $5000 worth of music. Or even $1000. It is all out there for free and everyone that can is taking advantage of that.
Yeah, but... there are two possible ways to look at this. Either you are saying the RIAA has no right to enforce copyright or you are saying there is a different way to pursue an investigation that they have failed to do. I suspect you are saying the first, which is a pretty far out stance for someone claiming to be a lawyer.
I would offer that the RIAA has all the evidence that can be obtained without acquiring evidence from computers. If there is no evidence there - when their investigation has determined clearly that something was happening at that IP address - there are a couple of possibilities, one of which is that indeed it was a visitor or someone sharing the connection wirelessly. Alternatively, it could just be spoliation. Difficult to prove in this case which would probably mean the end of the matter.
I'd be interested in hearing from someone what alternative there might be to the investigation that the RIAA has conducted so far and how they could have better information at this point. They have an IP address and some file names, and possibly the actual files as well. Sure, it would be nice to tie that up with a picture of a person at the keyboard with the screen showing uploading activity going on, but how exactly are they going to get this? RIAA storm troopers breaking down the door brandishing cameras?
The difference between a backup and restribution is exactly what? Sure, there is a different to the person doing it but at one step removed from the actual process what precisely is the different?
Nothing.
This means that until copyright has some kind of respect it really needs to be abolished. Start with the law that says if it isn't nailed down it will be stolen. Private property is meaningless - unless defended with lethal force. If is possible to copy, it will be redistributed. Period. This would inject a sense of reality into common dealing with merchants, laborors and government agencies. You would understand why there is an armed guard at the exit of every store. You would understand why people insist they must live in gated communitied with guards, guard dogs and high fences.
Internet = No Consequences.
Your IP address is not your name. Your ISP does not claim that all activity on an account is the responsibility of the account holder. Therefore, tracking illegal activity to your IP address isn't good enough.
They need to get a photograph of who is at the keyboard. And without that, sorry, no evidience of wrongdoing. Unless, of course, you are an idiot and (a) use the same name lots of legal and illegal places or (b) blab about what you are doing. Both of those will get you in trouble.
Let's say that you had a business of selling daisies. You are making a nice living working with flowers.
For some reason, the city tells you that you have to sell daisies to other florists directly at a discounted bulk-quantity price. Which turns out to be just less than you were charging people. Overnight, a florist comes in with a lot of slick advertising and buys up half your daisies and suddenly you find your income cut by a lot more than the city promised you originally. And, you really miss the customer interaction that you had before - now you are just a factory churning out flowers for someone else. Also, nobody comes to you so they aren't buying anything else either.
Guess what? This is pretty much where the ILECs are today. They've been told they have to sell their product at bulk-discounted rates to the competition. Competition with little or no infrastructure of their own. And the customers are still 100% dependent on the ILEC infrastructure - unless it is nationalized or something like that we're not getting rid of Verizon et al anytime soon. But we're cutting the revenue to Verizon to ensure they can't do anything except maintain a decaying, aging network.
This isn't going to last very long. Sooner or later Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and anyone else I missed are going to seriously question why they are just working for Vonage and the other zero-infrastructure VOIP providers. Gosh, do you think that might be the reason for the patent lawsuits? Also, this is why they aren't suing cable systems that are offering telephone service on their own infrastructure. If Verizon ceased operation next week Vonage would be stuffed. Alternatively, if you have phone service with Comcast or Cox then Verizon is irrelevent.
Incentive? Oh, you mean that by taxing electricity generation - and allowing them to pass those costs on to consumes - they will voluntarily do something to reduce those taxes.
Why would they do that? The costs just get passed on. The consumer get get their electricity from either company "A" or company "B" with pretty much equal costs. Or, they could get their power from company "C" which has no distribution agreements and is 100% wind power - so they have to buy (at a premium) power from company A or B.
Suing people or passing laws doesn't change how things work. Just who pays for them.
Near term, the answer is to turn off the coal plants. Period.
Sure, over the next 20 years or so other types of electric generation can be tried out. Nuclear doesn't appear to be an answer because of the hippy protests. Wind is basically unreliable over long periods - there are few places that have the wind blowing 24x7. Solar is interesting, but outside of Arizona and Nevada solar isn't very reliable either - and it is environmentally very expensive.
Doing something with the carbon emissions seems to be also unpopular and unlikely to get much support. It allows the generators to keep turning and keep putting out electricity. The answer right now is to turn them off. Darken the cities at night. People can go back to reading by candlelight. Or go to bed like they did on farms in the 1800s.
Turn off the power plants. It is the only solution that will have an immediate, state-by-state effect. No more coal-fired plants. No nuclear plants are going to be built in the near future, so that is out.
Wind power? Sure, we could ramp up the construction of wind turbines 100-fold, but that isn't a reliable power source. Geothermal? Sure, it could be done - but it isn't likely to happen anytime soon because of the geologic considerations except next door to an active volcano.
For the folks that have bought into the idea that Global Climate Change is something that humans can control and reverse, serious action is needed right now. How about some really dedicated folks going out and start destroying infrastructure so electric generation is reduced. How about stopping, by whatever means necessary, air travel? It is clear that some people aren't going to be convinced one way or the other without proof, so let's get some proof - one way or the other. Either humans are fully in control or they aren't. End the use of coal-fired power plants in the US next week and we can begin seeing some results.
We can afford universal health care. Just not the kind you would like to have. It isn't going to be pay-everything no-limit health care when it comes, it will be very restricted and controlled. Managed, you might say. But with that extra special governmental sauce that makes it mismanaged from the start.
The big issue would be elderly folks. They won't vote for it if it is carried out like it is everywhere else. Old people die. Fact of life. Except in the US where old people die after spending zillions of dollars in health care. Nobody else does this, which is partly why "universal health care" looks like it would be affordable in the US.
What this means is young = healthy, old = dead. This might not be real popular with the folks over 50.
So sure, you can pay for 20-somethings with a broken leg from skiing but the old guy with cancer just goes to the hospice.
Right. But vision and hope aren't a solution. Killing all the folks that oppose the use of reason would however be a step in the right direction.
You cannot reason with someone who has discarded reason. If they are content to stare into their navel, you can ignore them. When the person who has discarded reason decides the world isn't big enough for you and they, you have one choice left: you or they.
We have spent perhaps the last 100 years trying desperately to avoid that conclusion. England tried it with Hitler for a long time. We're now trying it with a bunch of other zealots.
As a nation the US is deep in red ink because we export NOTHING and import everything manufactured with cheap overseas labor. This shows no sign of changing anytime, ever. If anything, we are going to lose more and more manufacturing capability.
This means that we will be owing China and the rest of the low-labor-cost world more than the net worth of the US.
In contrast with this, any pseudo-expenditures within the US itself are irrelevant. It is just taking money out of one pocket and putting in a different one.
I see the same sort of law-and-order assumptions here that I would like to believe in. Sadly, that phase in my life has ended.
Sure, you can find who is DDoS'ing you. You can then call the ISP/hosting company and complain. If they are in the US they will likely as not just tell you to get a court order. Outside the US they will laugh and suggest you bribe them. Either way, it is their customer's right to operate in whatever manner they choose. If they are presented with a valid court order from a court in their jurisdiction, they will quickly and efficiently comply. Otherwise, your complaint will go in the bit bucket.
Mostly the problem is that to a lot of ISPs their customer (and the revenue from that customer) is a whole lot more important than the negative effects their customer is having. Also, the customer may be Daddy and Sonny is the one causing all the trouble. Why would anyone want to offend bill-paying Daddy by cutting off service?
The problem here is that regardless of the problem - a botnet infested computer, a script kiddy trying to break in, or some other mischief - if you let it go, it gets worse. Every time a script kiddy gets to feel that rush of excitement at breaking to some computer somewhere without any consequences they get bolder. In the US it is not really possible to go after them until they run up at least $25,000 in damages. Because of this, you never hear about the high schooler getting in trouble because they defaced a web site. Instead you hear about someone after many years of mischief and mayhem who is being accused of causing $12,000,000 in damages computed in some creative manner to get the FBI's attention. There is never a thought of stopping this when the cost to everyone is minimal. Minimal doesn't get the FBI involved and local law enforcement is utterly clueless.
Nobody is really going to get taken down for this unless they do something incredibly stupid. Sure, you can find an IP address but you can't get the customer unless the ISP wants to cooperate. Can you get a court order for the ISP to identify the owner of the account? Probably not without at least $25,000 in damages that you can claim. Even then all you have found is an infected computer that the owner doesn't know anything about.
Unless it was to pick up a person of the opposite sex, why would I ever, ever want to go to someplace where it was noisy, crowded and the acoustics were awful? Especially when it is to hear - under the roar of the crowd - the same music I have already obtained?
No, I don't see it. Unless you transform the entire scene into just a gathering place for drugs and sex - a rave - music performances are pointless in today's world.
Yes, they are interfering with communications.
But the real issue is if they can defend this by saying these are (mostly?) illegal communications that they can be held liable for. Because they certainly do not have any sort of "common carrier" status. They can certainly be held liable for contributing to infringement without much of a stretch at all of current case rulings.
So anyone that really does sue them may just find out that Comcast is holding a little card that says the local US Attorney's office said "better block, just to be safe".
DDoS is perfectly legal ... in Russia, or Romania or Khazakstan. Lots of places. It is completely legal to extort money from people to keep their business Internet connections safe and secure.
Haven't you been paying attention?
Now, if you are an idiot and start your own DDoS attack from inside the US to another US company's connection you are done for. As soon as they track you down and confirm that you are indeed the person using some given IP address. It will take a while (months, probably), but if you are that silly you will likely get caught.
All you have to do is show that they are blocking 100% completely legal traffic on the Internet. Not 90% legal or 99% legal or "has substantial non-infringing use" - none of these are going to stand up to the light of day with a jury.
The problem is that if you want to ding Comcast for blocking it you are going to need to show that in no way could they ever be held liable for not blocking it. With decisions about contributing to infringement coming down in the last year, I'd say an ISP would be incredibly stupid for not blocking traffic that they could clearly be held liable for. You better believe Comcast will use this as a defensive strategy. In today's climate their attorneys have likely advised that not blocking it could be construed as a assisting in infringement.
So while technically it helps management of the network it also eliminates one more thing that could create a liability for them. Win - win for Comcast, lose-lose for the customer.
The decision that nobody owns anything you cannot hold in your hand is the only way out of this. I don't think it is going to come because it would mean the virtual bankruptcy of the US. We don't make "stuff" anymore, we make "intellectual property".
Will this make people respect copyright? Heck no. You can't prosecute people on the Internet, you can't track them down and you just barely can sue them - only if they are stupid about it.
Your Swedish friends are right. The only way to sustainable resource use is to just use less. If that takes cutting back on steel production, so be it. Steel comes from iron ore, which today comes from mining iron ore which came from iron and steel recycled by the planet. We're using more iron and steel than the planet can recycle for our use. Therefore, we need to either get iron ore from somewhere else or reduce the amount we're using.
No other way - those are the alternatives.
The problem domains between automotive safety and airliner hijacking aren't even close.
Unless you go around picking up random hitchhikers you are in control of who is in your car and what they are doing. Contrast this with an airliner where there are going to be 100+ people on it that you have zero control over or input into their accompaning you on your journey. Whatever the motivations of someone on an airliner might be, you aren't privy to them and aren't going to be consulted. You are therefore utterly dependent on the judgement of others.
Simply put, you are in control in your car and have no control in an airliner.
The total loss of life in a car crash is often zero. So doing stupid things while driving can injure others but more often than not it does not affect someone for the rest of their life. This is in contrast to the 9/11 incidents where the loss of life was total, plus those targets on the ground. You might say that everyone involved had it affect them for the rest of their lives.
The only way to make a car safe is to get rid of it. In the US we rebuilt the cities since 1950 around the idea of personal automobile transportation. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
I would say the status of DeCSS is perfectly clear. At least one company went down because they were distributing a CSS-bypassing product. It is illegal to distribute anything that decrypts CSS protected movies without a license from the DVD Forum. Period.
Just venting here...
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What you describe is utter stagnation - "Microsoft can not change the protocol without pissing off many companies
This is an absolute formula for zero growth. It is one of the things that causes a lot of Linux development to be done in fits and starts where something stagnates for a long period of time because "Oh, we can't manage change in THIS area." This is a formula for a repeat of where we are with SMTP today.
All change is not bad. There are ways of implementing changes in established protocols if the original protocol allows for it and it is done carefully.
Today, we are stuck with SMTP and no replacement is anywhere on the horizon. Why? Because the nobody wants to manage the change.
Microsoft is not the enemy. They can be a partner and must be if there is to be any real progress by anyone except Microsoft. Calling them the enemy, refusing to work with closed-source software and just trying to be obstinate will result in Microsoft being the only choice far, far into the future.
Sorry, but I disagree. Everything should be free. Free as in "I take everything I want and give nothing back." For a while we will have to live with paying for things like rent and groceries but right now we can have music and movies for free.
Of course, the current crop of content owners will find this an unattractive business to be in. They will be replaced by the American Idol, Australian Idol and xxxx Idol wannabies that discover there are plenty of ways to get their exciting content published on the Internet. So there will no scarcity or shortage of content.
This is clearly where things are headed and there is no reason that I can see why we should not push it along.