These questions are what lawyers are paid to answer.
In most jurisdictions you can file a John Doe suit if you don't know the name of the party at the time of filing, and get the court to issue the warrant to the ISP so process can be served to the defendant. Consult your attorney. I suggest running the headers by someone who can read them to determine whether it's likely a party can be found in a jurisdiction you have access to. Consult your attorney.
Look, I know all this due process stuff is a drag, but that's how things are done in the US. Only the big boys with lots of money can side-step due process from time to time <snicker>. You'd have to go through the same process if someone ripped you off via mail order, or you slipped in a pool of unmopped Slurpy at the 7-11.
All your other questions are for your attorney. Like I said before, there is no magic wand you can get someone to wave on your behalf to make it all go away. Even in states that have anti-spam laws, their effect is really just to relieve the plaintiff of the need to show damages. In states without them, you'd probably have to show in court how the spam has harmed you. Consult your attorney.
Dude, the law you want already exists. It's the same law that says you have to get a warrant to obtain that info. How do you get a warrant? FILE A SUIT. There seems to be a certain pattern here... if you want to be taken seriously, you have to take serious action. Some of you seem to think that a magic wand should be waved on your behalf to make it all go away. That isn't how the world works. If you have a grievance, you file suit if you are serious about getting redress. All else is bluster and masturbation.
I think that violence is not an appropriate response to non-violent acts. I think I would have the same problem condemning a man to prison for spamming as I would condemning a man to prison for possessing marijuana. Whether the act should be considered criminal is almost beside the point. In both cases, the punishment surely does not fit the crime, if we admit that either act is a crime at all.
I speak as one who agrees that we are throwing too many people in prison already, and I agree with the folks who do not want any more prisons built. That seems to be most of the population, at least in California. If we do not want any more prisons built, and we profess democratic ideals, then we should not seek to imprison people needlessly, especially in overcrowded prisons, and especially not in prisons that are administered by repressive governments like China.
I think that locking up a few spammers might make future spammers think twice.
I think if we consistently held spammers financially liable for the headaches they cause, that would be sufficient deterrent and punishment. So far, we have hardly begun to try, only a few states have begun to get serious about it.
More of the spam from Chinese mail servers originates from other countries because the servers are open relays. They need to outlaw open relay servers, perhaps with some very harsh penalties....
...If the Chinese government were to crack down on not only misconfigurations of mail servers, but also the use of any pirated commercial software...
Calling for a repressive government to "crack down" on its citizens in the name of spam control and software piracy is absolutely disgusting. Have you completely taken leave of whatever shred of empathy you may have once posessed? Come on, man, think! Is imprisonment or execution really appropriate punishment for such "crimes" as spamming, running an open relay, or software piracy? Is that really what you think?
But to demand that an arbitrary ISP should be forced to pipe spam through to you is as silly as demanding that the New York Times run the column your cousin writes for the Louisiana Southern Tech campus paper. You can choose to see that column if you want to, but not everyone is required to specifically enable it.
Faulty anology - very faulty. What if he subscribes to the email newsletter for his cousin's column, but his ISP blocks his cousin's college's mail server?
Do you really claim it is unreasonable to expect "any arbitrary ISP" to deliver email to you that you had asked to be sent? Is that really your claim?
Will the Chinese government crack down on open relays? Will it become a criminal offense? What if the Chinese government comes to view the problem as one of national security?
The spam blocks, especially the DNS blacklists, are supposed to get the attention of the operator, so he will notice the problem and get it fixed. But it seems that it is the Chinese government that has taken notice. Is imprisonment a suitable punishment for neglecting to close an open relay? How about execution? If the Chinese government moves in this direction, how much culpability for the human rights abuses that would result do the operators of the DNS lists need to bear?
I am not attempting to hand out blame, I am just asking some interesting questions.
Why bother calling in the developers at Microsoft? The 9 states can just show the judge 98lite, which has already accomplished what the 9 states want: a modular Windows installation.
Not only can it be done, but someone has already done it and turned it into a product you can buy. If the 98lite people can do it - without any special access to Microsoft APIs - then surely Microsoft can do it. They just don't want to.
Just like you can fix a TABLE to be a bad width (like width=1600), does that mean HTML sucks?
Yes it does, now that you ask. All the device-specific tags and attributes (font, width, etc) in HTML, enhance its suckiness by reducing its portability. None of them were added because they were a good idea, those tags were all added to the standard as an attempt to document what the vendors were already doing after they had decided to fuck the standards process. The tags Netscape and Microsoft added to HTML were designed to distinguish their browsers, not to enhance HTML and make it more useful for everyone.
What is so wrong with building bandwidth demanding, visually stimulating and more importantly, entertaining, web experiences?
Plenty, if all I wanted to do was find out your phone number. Why do I need to download 40 Mb of plugins and data to get your god-damned phone number so I can talk to your god-damned voicemail system?
It is at this point that I begin seeking alternatives to your product.
My Phillips DSR6000 cost me $499.00 new almost two years ago. I bought it from Good Guys the first day it was available. I see it priced at $319.00 for first time subscribers from Satellites Unlimited. $700 is way beyond the pale. The Sony unit ought to be able to actually read your mind for that price (since the DSR6000 can seem to do so for half that much!:)
Ultimate TV is not TiVo at all. It's not Linux, it's Windows for one thing. I do not know if it is hackable or upgradeable, but the TiVo units - including the DSR6000 - certainly are. I am enjoying 225 hours of recording time after I did the upgrade this past weekend. That's enough to hold the entire run of Babylon 5, plus Crusade, plus all the B5 movies, and still have more than 3 times the space left over as compared to the unit before the upgrade. But if I were to do it again, I would not use 7200rpm drives, they are too noisy (but they were on sale - $189 for 120Gb WD disks! Wow!).
Stop buying DVDs and CDs. Go to a live concert if you like music, or the movie theater if you like films. Wait for it to come on HBO, or hear it on the radio. What have you lost if you don't buy DVDs or CDs, versus what you would lose if you continue to buy them? Is a crystal clear picture and Dolby digital sound worth it?
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 2
There you go again with this absolutist principle stuff that will be ignored as the DRM folks come down like a ton of bricks.
I did not pick any fight with the media companies. If they were not so relentless in their push to pry into my every waking moment, I would not be so dogmatic about keeping them out.
But yeah, I can see how all that absolutist stuff in the US Constitution (phrases like "shall not be infringed" without any "except when..." as you may recall) just promotes intransigence, and is quite a bother.
The problem is when it leaves the privacy of your own home and enters 100 million other homes illegally.
I didn't do any such thing.
The challenge is creating a compromise DRM solution that allows you free use of your purchased media...
I already have that. Systems that fail to provide it are broken.
...yet disallows you from handing it out to everyone and their uncle...
I didn't do any such thing. And since I'm actually an uncle, I can vouch for 13 other young people. So why must me and my nieces and nephews pay? I already pay a royalty on media, even for media that will contain no material but my own. Why is it not enough that I pay a compulsory royalty every time I use blank media? Why is it not enough that the force of law can be used to punish infringers for 75 years or more beyond the grave? Don't you think that the customer - me and you - have made enough compromises already to accomodate the interests of copyright holders?
And you accuse me of being an absolutist... can I ask where it will stop, if after all that has been given, we're now being told we have to give up even more? Just answer that one.
(which you definately should have to ask permission to do).
This has always been the case since copyright existed. Why is it not good enough now, in light of all the other compromises the public makes in favor of copyright holders?
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
No amount of ranting on Slashdot is going to change the writing on the wall.
That much seems certain.
Besides, why shouldn't effective DRM exist?
The main reason is because it is impossible.
But ignoring that for the moment, DRM should not exist because I should not have to ask anyone for "permission" to do whatever I want with the property I have bought in the privacy of my own living room. Especially not Disney. That's the bottom line.
Monsanto, may I eat?
Coca Cola, may I drink?
American Standard, may I piss and shit?
Disney, may I forget, a little, my miserable existence for 90 minutes?
If congress passes some stupid law like this, then the voters will strike back.
Don't be so sure. In Orange County, CA, a judge found in possession of child porn on his office and home computers is about to be re-elected, despite a well-publicized campaign to vote him out with write-ins (he is the only candidate on the ballot). It looks like the effort will fail, and the judge will take his seat on the bench again.
Now if charges of child porn fail to whip up the citenzry enough to vote an official out of office, what makes you think they'll be moved to vote out an official over SSSCA?
Even my mom wants to make copies of video's in case something does go bad.
When was the last time your mom participated in a public protest or civil disobedience? Better yet, when was the last time your mom voted?
It stars the unwatchable Luke Perry. Of course, I managed to love the first season of Babylon 5 despite the unwatchable Michael O'Hare... so I will give this one a go. Hey, I just upgraded my DirecTiVo to 225 hours, I got room for the entire B5 series and all the B5 movies (will SciFi run it once more so I can do this?) and still have plenty of room left over for Jeremiah, so why not?
I notice we've managed to/. Google groups... is that a first? By the way, how much do you think I could get on eBay for a TiVo filled with every B5 episode? (j/k:)
It grandfathers in all the agreements already in place with the Bells for co-lo-ing and access to infrastructure, and requires the Bells to continue to offer these things on slightly different, but not ridiculous terms.
So we can keep Qwest, SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and whatever 2nd tier providers have survived so far, but new competition is a no-go from here on out.
It requires that everyone in the USA have access to broadband within 5 years, subject to serious penalties,
There is no guarantee that when the time comes, those penalties won't be waved, like they often are.
...requires the FCC to monitor and enforce the laws
Oh, right. As if they do that now. How many TV station conglomerates have exceeded the quota with no enforcement action? How many DSL providers were driven out of business by the incumbents while the FCC stood by and allowed them to practically flaunt openly the open access rules?
(contrary to a very deceiving ad run locally in DC by voicesforchoices),
Moot.
...and makes special provisions for under served communities.
Uh-huh. Look, you can believe whatever you want, but telecom bills are not high on the list of credible predictors of future performance. Look at the Telecom Act of '96, fat lotta good that did. Ask Covad if the '96 bill did what was promised, then ask yourself why this bill should be regarded any differently.
To be useful, the converter would have to be able to emit analog signals for the higher resolutions. Without this feature, you have exactly the current situation. But high res analog is explicitly forbidden. The device you propose would be illegal.
I thought that would be the International Conspiracy to Acquire Network Names, since they don't really assign them so much as they acquiesce to allow someone else to use them.
If they don't want Starcraft or Diablo played on non Battle.net servers (unless, of course, you're running over UDP or TCP), who are we to complain?
We're the people who bought the product. It's our copy of the game. We own it.
If you buy a new car, and after the sale the dealer tells you that you may not drive it on public roads, but can only do donuts in his parking lot, what would you tell that dealer?
If you buy a toaster, and Sunbeam sends you a letter telling you that due to a exclusive licensing arrangements only Wonder bread may be toasted in it, what will you tell Sunbeam?
This is a major problem with the DMCA. No one would tolerate these kinds of restrictions on any other product. If an automotive analog to the DMCA were passed, the outcry would be deafening.
What about the hobbyists who are not pirating your software but just want to use these servers as an alternative to Battle.net?
Unfortunately, software pirates have spoiled this situation for hobbyists. We are constantly working to improve Battle.net, and we sincerely hope that one day, no one will see any reason to seek alternatives to Battle.net for playing Blizzard games.
Prior to this action by Blizzard, I had no reason to use bnetd servers. Now I have one.
Terrible crime there, but what is your point? Anyone can sign up anonymously to any ISP. Anyone can put Hotmail.com in the headers whether they have a Hotmail account or not. I was simply trying to inform you that the conditions that prompted your block probably no longer obtain, and that you should investigate and reconsider.
But I see now that you are not interested in reducing spam, you only want to punish Hotmail. So I won't waste any more of your time.
Spam from Yahoo and Hotmail is most likely forged these days. Both outfits have done an admirable job cleaning up their own users. Fat lot of good it did them. If you and too many others continue to "punish" them, they may decide that their efforts were for naught, layoff their abuse desk staff and go back to the old ways. Is that what you want?
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't your question kind of frivolous? Does everybody have to work on the most pressing social problems (and who gets to say what is most pressing)?
That EFF charity thing seems kinda frivolous to me too, in light of war, hunger, suffering... much more important stuff than YRO.
These questions are what lawyers are paid to answer.
In most jurisdictions you can file a John Doe suit if you don't know the name of the party at the time of filing, and get the court to issue the warrant to the ISP so process can be served to the defendant. Consult your attorney. I suggest running the headers by someone who can read them to determine whether it's likely a party can be found in a jurisdiction you have access to. Consult your attorney.
Look, I know all this due process stuff is a drag, but that's how things are done in the US. Only the big boys with lots of money can side-step due process from time to time <snicker>. You'd have to go through the same process if someone ripped you off via mail order, or you slipped in a pool of unmopped Slurpy at the 7-11.
All your other questions are for your attorney. Like I said before, there is no magic wand you can get someone to wave on your behalf to make it all go away. Even in states that have anti-spam laws, their effect is really just to relieve the plaintiff of the need to show damages. In states without them, you'd probably have to show in court how the spam has harmed you. Consult your attorney.
Dude, the law you want already exists. It's the same law that says you have to get a warrant to obtain that info. How do you get a warrant? FILE A SUIT. There seems to be a certain pattern here... if you want to be taken seriously, you have to take serious action. Some of you seem to think that a magic wand should be waved on your behalf to make it all go away. That isn't how the world works. If you have a grievance, you file suit if you are serious about getting redress. All else is bluster and masturbation.
I think that violence is not an appropriate response to non-violent acts. I think I would have the same problem condemning a man to prison for spamming as I would condemning a man to prison for possessing marijuana. Whether the act should be considered criminal is almost beside the point. In both cases, the punishment surely does not fit the crime, if we admit that either act is a crime at all.
I speak as one who agrees that we are throwing too many people in prison already, and I agree with the folks who do not want any more prisons built. That seems to be most of the population, at least in California. If we do not want any more prisons built, and we profess democratic ideals, then we should not seek to imprison people needlessly, especially in overcrowded prisons, and especially not in prisons that are administered by repressive governments like China.
I think that locking up a few spammers might make future spammers think twice.
I think if we consistently held spammers financially liable for the headaches they cause, that would be sufficient deterrent and punishment. So far, we have hardly begun to try, only a few states have begun to get serious about it.
More of the spam from Chinese mail servers originates from other countries because the servers are open relays. They need to outlaw open relay servers, perhaps with some very harsh penalties....
...
...If the Chinese government were to crack down on not only misconfigurations of mail servers, but also the use of any pirated commercial software
Calling for a repressive government to "crack down" on its citizens in the name of spam control and software piracy is absolutely disgusting. Have you completely taken leave of whatever shred of empathy you may have once posessed? Come on, man, think! Is imprisonment or execution really appropriate punishment for such "crimes" as spamming, running an open relay, or software piracy? Is that really what you think?
But to demand that an arbitrary ISP should be forced to pipe spam through to you is as silly as demanding that the New York Times run the column your cousin writes for the Louisiana Southern Tech campus paper. You can choose to see that column if you want to, but not everyone is required to specifically enable it.
Faulty anology - very faulty. What if he subscribes to the email newsletter for his cousin's column, but his ISP blocks his cousin's college's mail server?
Do you really claim it is unreasonable to expect "any arbitrary ISP" to deliver email to you that you had asked to be sent? Is that really your claim?
Will the Chinese government crack down on open relays? Will it become a criminal offense? What if the Chinese government comes to view the problem as one of national security?
The spam blocks, especially the DNS blacklists, are supposed to get the attention of the operator, so he will notice the problem and get it fixed. But it seems that it is the Chinese government that has taken notice. Is imprisonment a suitable punishment for neglecting to close an open relay? How about execution? If the Chinese government moves in this direction, how much culpability for the human rights abuses that would result do the operators of the DNS lists need to bear?
I am not attempting to hand out blame, I am just asking some interesting questions.
Why bother calling in the developers at Microsoft? The 9 states can just show the judge 98lite, which has already accomplished what the 9 states want: a modular Windows installation.
Not only can it be done, but someone has already done it and turned it into a product you can buy. If the 98lite people can do it - without any special access to Microsoft APIs - then surely Microsoft can do it. They just don't want to.
Just like you can fix a TABLE to be a bad width (like width=1600), does that mean HTML sucks?
Yes it does, now that you ask. All the device-specific tags and attributes (font, width, etc) in HTML, enhance its suckiness by reducing its portability. None of them were added because they were a good idea, those tags were all added to the standard as an attempt to document what the vendors were already doing after they had decided to fuck the standards process. The tags Netscape and Microsoft added to HTML were designed to distinguish their browsers, not to enhance HTML and make it more useful for everyone.
What is so wrong with building bandwidth demanding, visually stimulating and more importantly, entertaining, web experiences?
Plenty, if all I wanted to do was find out your phone number. Why do I need to download 40 Mb of plugins and data to get your god-damned phone number so I can talk to your god-damned voicemail system?
It is at this point that I begin seeking alternatives to your product.
My Phillips DSR6000 cost me $499.00 new almost two years ago. I bought it from Good Guys the first day it was available. I see it priced at $319.00 for first time subscribers from Satellites Unlimited. $700 is way beyond the pale. The Sony unit ought to be able to actually read your mind for that price (since the DSR6000 can seem to do so for half that much! :)
Ultimate TV is not TiVo at all. It's not Linux, it's Windows for one thing. I do not know if it is hackable or upgradeable, but the TiVo units - including the DSR6000 - certainly are. I am enjoying 225 hours of recording time after I did the upgrade this past weekend. That's enough to hold the entire run of Babylon 5, plus Crusade, plus all the B5 movies, and still have more than 3 times the space left over as compared to the unit before the upgrade. But if I were to do it again, I would not use 7200rpm drives, they are too noisy (but they were on sale - $189 for 120Gb WD disks! Wow!).
Stop buying DVDs and CDs. Go to a live concert if you like music, or the movie theater if you like films. Wait for it to come on HBO, or hear it on the radio. What have you lost if you don't buy DVDs or CDs, versus what you would lose if you continue to buy them? Is a crystal clear picture and Dolby digital sound worth it?
There you go again with this absolutist principle stuff that will be ignored as the DRM folks come down like a ton of bricks.
...yet disallows you from handing it out to everyone and their uncle...
I did not pick any fight with the media companies. If they were not so relentless in their push to pry into my every waking moment, I would not be so dogmatic about keeping them out.
But yeah, I can see how all that absolutist stuff in the US Constitution (phrases like "shall not be infringed" without any "except when..." as you may recall) just promotes intransigence, and is quite a bother.
The problem is when it leaves the privacy of your own home and enters 100 million other homes illegally.
I didn't do any such thing.
The challenge is creating a compromise DRM solution that allows you free use of your purchased media...
I already have that. Systems that fail to provide it are broken.
I didn't do any such thing. And since I'm actually an uncle, I can vouch for 13 other young people. So why must me and my nieces and nephews pay? I already pay a royalty on media, even for media that will contain no material but my own. Why is it not enough that I pay a compulsory royalty every time I use blank media? Why is it not enough that the force of law can be used to punish infringers for 75 years or more beyond the grave? Don't you think that the customer - me and you - have made enough compromises already to accomodate the interests of copyright holders?
And you accuse me of being an absolutist... can I ask where it will stop, if after all that has been given, we're now being told we have to give up even more? Just answer that one.
(which you definately should have to ask permission to do).
This has always been the case since copyright existed. Why is it not good enough now, in light of all the other compromises the public makes in favor of copyright holders?
No amount of ranting on Slashdot is going to change the writing on the wall.
That much seems certain.
Besides, why shouldn't effective DRM exist?
The main reason is because it is impossible.
But ignoring that for the moment, DRM should not exist because I should not have to ask anyone for "permission" to do whatever I want with the property I have bought in the privacy of my own living room. Especially not Disney. That's the bottom line.
Monsanto, may I eat?
Coca Cola, may I drink?
American Standard, may I piss and shit?
Disney, may I forget, a little, my miserable existence for 90 minutes?
I don't want to live in that world.
If congress passes some stupid law like this, then the voters will strike back.
Don't be so sure. In Orange County, CA, a judge found in possession of child porn on his office and home computers is about to be re-elected, despite a well-publicized campaign to vote him out with write-ins (he is the only candidate on the ballot). It looks like the effort will fail, and the judge will take his seat on the bench again.
Now if charges of child porn fail to whip up the citenzry enough to vote an official out of office, what makes you think they'll be moved to vote out an official over SSSCA?
Even my mom wants to make copies of video's in case something does go bad.
When was the last time your mom participated in a public protest or civil disobedience? Better yet, when was the last time your mom voted?
It stars the unwatchable Luke Perry. Of course, I managed to love the first season of Babylon 5 despite the unwatchable Michael O'Hare... so I will give this one a go. Hey, I just upgraded my DirecTiVo to 225 hours, I got room for the entire B5 series and all the B5 movies (will SciFi run it once more so I can do this?) and still have plenty of room left over for Jeremiah, so why not?
/. Google groups... is that a first? By the way, how much do you think I could get on eBay for a TiVo filled with every B5 episode? (j/k :)
I notice we've managed to
It grandfathers in all the agreements already in place with the Bells for co-lo-ing and access to infrastructure, and requires the Bells to continue to offer these things on slightly different, but not ridiculous terms.
...requires the FCC to monitor and enforce the laws
...and makes special provisions for under served communities.
So we can keep Qwest, SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and whatever 2nd tier providers have survived so far, but new competition is a no-go from here on out.
It requires that everyone in the USA have access to broadband within 5 years, subject to serious penalties,
There is no guarantee that when the time comes, those penalties won't be waved, like they often are.
Oh, right. As if they do that now. How many TV station conglomerates have exceeded the quota with no enforcement action? How many DSL providers were driven out of business by the incumbents while the FCC stood by and allowed them to practically flaunt openly the open access rules?
(contrary to a very deceiving ad run locally in DC by voicesforchoices),
Moot.
Uh-huh. Look, you can believe whatever you want, but telecom bills are not high on the list of credible predictors of future performance. Look at the Telecom Act of '96, fat lotta good that did. Ask Covad if the '96 bill did what was promised, then ask yourself why this bill should be regarded any differently.
To be useful, the converter would have to be able to emit analog signals for the higher resolutions. Without this feature, you have exactly the current situation. But high res analog is explicitly forbidden. The device you propose would be illegal.
I thought that would be the International Conspiracy to Acquire Network Names, since they don't really assign them so much as they acquiesce to allow someone else to use them.
If they don't want Starcraft or Diablo played on non Battle.net servers (unless, of course, you're running over UDP or TCP), who are we to complain?
We're the people who bought the product. It's our copy of the game. We own it.
If you buy a new car, and after the sale the dealer tells you that you may not drive it on public roads, but can only do donuts in his parking lot, what would you tell that dealer?
If you buy a toaster, and Sunbeam sends you a letter telling you that due to a exclusive licensing arrangements only Wonder bread may be toasted in it, what will you tell Sunbeam?
This is a major problem with the DMCA. No one would tolerate these kinds of restrictions on any other product. If an automotive analog to the DMCA were passed, the outcry would be deafening.
Prior to this action by Blizzard, I had no reason to use bnetd servers. Now I have one.
They don't want a public beta for reason that I will not get into here.
Then I don't want to believe a word you say, for reasons I will not get into here.
I'm a Canadian resident & Xbox owner who's planning to move back to Australia sometime (and I'd kinda like to keep my Xbox)...
Interpol will be along shortly to collect your person. Please try to be presentable.
Terrible crime there, but what is your point? Anyone can sign up anonymously to any ISP. Anyone can put Hotmail.com in the headers whether they have a Hotmail account or not. I was simply trying to inform you that the conditions that prompted your block probably no longer obtain, and that you should investigate and reconsider.
But I see now that you are not interested in reducing spam, you only want to punish Hotmail. So I won't waste any more of your time.
Spam from Yahoo and Hotmail is most likely forged these days. Both outfits have done an admirable job cleaning up their own users. Fat lot of good it did them. If you and too many others continue to "punish" them, they may decide that their efforts were for naught, layoff their abuse desk staff and go back to the old ways. Is that what you want?