One of the great ways this is useful in that it provides pointers to research papers. It keeps people from reinventing the wheel regarding the sequence, by giving a lot of information on what has already been done.
I am a Senior Software Engineer who co-founded and devoted much volunteer analysis effort to an organization called Censorware Project (http://censorware.org). I do not write to you as a representative of this organization, though, and in fact my comment pertains to why that is the case....
But I don't do this work anymore. A large reason is that the legal risks simply became more than I could tolerate. Around the time the DMCA was first being debated, I was advised by one lawyer with Censorware Project that we were facing odds of being ``sued on trumped up charges by a censorware company''.
The Religious Right does a lot of outreach and local work. It's great when someone puts in such tremendous real-world, face-to-face effort in opposing them.
Yes. I'll repost something I wrote to a similar question:
The DMCA prosecution is not brought under this provision of the DMCA (1201(a)(1)). It's under the NEXT provision of the DMCA (1201(a)(2)), which is in effect now.
Correction: The DMCA prosecution is not brought under this section of the DMCA. It's under the NEXT section of the DMCA (1201(a)(2)), which is in effect now.
Plaintiffs' sole claim is for violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. They contend that plaintiffs' posting of DeCSS violates Section 1201(a)(2) of the statute, which prohibits unauthorized offering of products that circumvent technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works.
The primary responsibility of the Register and the Librarian in this respect is to assess whether the implementation of technological protection measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works is
diminishing the ability of individuals to use copyrighted works in ways that are otherwise lawful. Commerce Comm. Report, at 37. As examples of technological protection measures in effect today, the Commerce Committee offered the use of ``password codes'' to control authorized access to computer programs, for example, or encryption or scrambling of cable programming, videocassettes, and CDROMs.
The Copyright Office is first seeking written and reply comments from interested parties in order to elicit information and views on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by the prohibition against circumvention of access control technologies. Persons interested in submitting comments should consult the November 24, 1999
notice of inquiry published in the Federal Register. Further background on this rulemaking may also be found in the notice of inquiry.
This is important to read!. For example:
5. Specific Questions
The Office seeks comment on the following specific questions. Persons submitting comments need not address all questions, but are encouraged to respond to those as to which they have particular knowledge or information. Persons submitting comments are encouraged to submit concrete evidence, examples and data supporting their responses to these questions. Such submissions will carry greater weight than unsupported allegations and predictions.
Read the requirements for filing a comment. You cannot just send them text e-mail:
The Office prefers that comments be submitted in electronic form. For updated information on requirements for electronic and hard-copy filing, please see the
Federal Register Notice Extending Deadlines for Initial and Reply Comments. Several persons have attempted to submit comments in the text of e-mail messages. The Office cannot accept such comments; the comments must be sent as attachments to e-mail messages or on diskettes as described in the Federal Register notice. In addition to the acceptable formats described in the Federal Register notice, the Office will accept comments in RTF and ASCII text formats
It's a question of emphasis. Your memory is very kind.
Just in passing, on the topic of money, I should note for the thread that Censorware Project (I was a cofounder, have since left) has never gotten a cent from anyone.
Nice Libertarian, *ahem*, analysis there, Jim. Wow, would I have loved to be hearing things like that years ago, when I first set out to oppose censorware. Anyway, I actually think the situation is a bit more complex. I don't have the time or inclination to write a long essay (I quit free-speech activism). But the community library lobbying is more a function of the Religious Right. That's who funds David Burt and similar. The censorware companies are dealing with bigger fish, Congress and large corporations (see GetNetWise Supporters)
When it doesn't work, the judge basically says "That's different", which has the formal name of "distinguished". The best programming analogy I can come up with here was if *HUGE* areas of the language had unspecified and undefined behavior. Sort of like the old C problem where people would write code with pointers and integers being used interchangeably. Except that was considered a bug, not an unavoidable implementation issue.
By the way, if the judge is one of the "clueless, technologically illiterate ludites", why will he or she be impressed by a brief filled with sparkling technical expertise?
Anyway, my point is I'm wondering if there is even a way that many Slashdot-like minds can EFFECTIVELY "apply their reasoning faculties to the project". I'm skeptical that legal parts of a case modularize for effective multiple contributions. Sure, a piece related to expert testimony, I can see that. But nobody tries to substitute an ideological tract for a kernel driver ("I tell you, who is to be master, man or machine? This *scuzzy* bus, this *slave* client, should accept its priority and not disrupt interrupts").
Once you have patent rights to trade, you can get other people to make their patents accessible for Open Source software.
I dunno. What if they can play the game better than you? What about hostile takeovers and/or defections? I'm unsure that it's such a good idea to swim with the sharks, sounds like a good way to get eaten.
I've been thinking about OpenLaw for a while, ever since I saw the original annoucement. I can't shake the feeling that it's a gimmick. Yes, it sounds good, cool, the wave of the future - but what IS it?
Is it that the lawyers in a case are going to post the briefs-in-progress and invite public comment? This is NOT the same as open source. The "open" part is the same, but law is not source code.
Source code is, to a first approximation, either correct or not. If someone wants to work on a routine in a program, it can usually be modularized, parcelled out, and tested to some degree of reliabily. Critically, it's typically OBVIOUS if it's completely wrong.
A judge isn't a compiler. No-one really knows if a legal argument is going to work or not. It's like the world's worst debugging session, there's almost no way to retest the results.
It sounds like a good idea, but there's a lot that's very unclear in practice.
You're on to something, but I think there's a lot more to it than having "truly brilliant" free-speech advocates. The Religious Right has been well-organized, and their major organizations were extremely supportive of censorware activists.
By contrast, on the censorware-opposition side, it's a struggle sometimes to even give work away. I quit doing it in part because the legal risks were getting very high (per the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and the net return on effort personally was, amazingly, negative.
If Japanese civil-liberties groups have solved this, I'd love to know how. But I'd caution that their solution might not be translatable to the US.
According to Surfwatch's very own PR, their censorware has over 100,000 sites on their blacklist.
That's ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND. One with five zeros after it. No-one could examine this list in a reasonable time. It's not humanly possible. At one per minute, that's around 500 per workday. A whole work-year (200 days) to go through it once.
It's simple mathematics. Even open lists, while a good idea, don't solve the problem of this massive, extensive, blacklisting.
I don't know if a Linux-jobs-only setting is the way to go. But I definitely think that some job boards would attract attention if they had a way to indicate that development would be done on Linux machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Plenty of excellent resources and arguments.
One of the great ways this is useful in that it provides pointers to research papers. It keeps people from reinventing the wheel regarding the sequence, by giving a lot of information on what has already been done.
THE X-STOP FILES: The Truth Isn't Out There
- The Boston Lunatic
The DMCA prosecution is not brought under this provision of the DMCA (1201(a)(1)). It's under the NEXT provision of the DMCA (1201(a)(2)), which is in effect now.
http://cryptome.org/dvd-mpaa-3-mo.htm
That's from the notice of inquiry
Because the court case you avoid might just be your own.
Just in passing, on the topic of money, I should note for the thread that Censorware Project (I was a cofounder, have since left) has never gotten a cent from anyone.
Following the library money:
Pro-filter group takes big money lead
Pro-filter factions win money battle
"Thanks to $35,000 gift from AFA, groups pushing for Internet filters have advantage"
Actually, your post is far more poignant than you know.
- The Boston Lunatic
By the way, if the judge is one of the "clueless, technologically illiterate ludites", why will he or she be impressed by a brief filled with sparkling technical expertise?
Anyway, my point is I'm wondering if there is even a way that many Slashdot-like minds can EFFECTIVELY "apply their reasoning faculties to the project". I'm skeptical that legal parts of a case modularize for effective multiple contributions. Sure, a piece related to expert testimony, I can see that. But nobody tries to substitute an ideological tract for a kernel driver ("I tell you, who is to be master, man or machine? This *scuzzy* bus, this *slave* client, should accept its priority and not disrupt interrupts").
So this is a kind of call-for-testimony? I can understand that. Much clearer.
Is it that the lawyers in a case are going to post the briefs-in-progress and invite public comment? This is NOT the same as open source. The "open" part is the same, but law is not source code.
Source code is, to a first approximation, either correct or not. If someone wants to work on a routine in a program, it can usually be modularized, parcelled out, and tested to some degree of reliabily. Critically, it's typically OBVIOUS if it's completely wrong.
A judge isn't a compiler. No-one really knows if a legal argument is going to work or not. It's like the world's worst debugging session, there's almost no way to retest the results.
It sounds like a good idea, but there's a lot that's very unclear in practice.
By contrast, on the censorware-opposition side, it's a struggle sometimes to even give work away. I quit doing it in part because the legal risks were getting very high (per the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and the net return on effort personally was, amazingly, negative.
If Japanese civil-liberties groups have solved this, I'd love to know how. But I'd caution that their solution might not be translatable to the US.
That's ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND. One with five zeros after it. No-one could examine this list in a reasonable time. It's not humanly possible. At one per minute, that's around 500 per workday. A whole work-year (200 days) to go through it once.
It's simple mathematics.
Even open lists, while a good idea, don't solve the problem of this massive, extensive, blacklisting.
Particularly the UCITA list of articles at http://www.badsoftware.com/uccindex.htm
I don't know if a Linux-jobs-only setting is the way to go. But I definitely think that some job boards would attract attention if they had a way to indicate that development would be done on Linux machines.