"First they arrested the Communists but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats - but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists - and I did nothing because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews and then the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me - and there was no one left to do anything about it."
- Rev. M. Niemoller
The MPAA, RIAA, etc. do not hold closed standards above profits. A boycott of all closed standards will indeed force them to open up. Let them put their money where their mouths are. =)
>but domain names are the real estate of the 'Net and real estate is a legitimate business
This is a prime example of metaphor becoming fact.
There seen to be a lot of internet-related cases brought forward, especially in the US, where the real nature of the technology is dismissed in favor of vague notions of virtual space, virtual property, virtual trade, etc... e.g.
Consider the following: Company X sues person Y because a domain name that they have paid for contains part of the company's trademark. Shouldn't the company be filing againt the domain registrar? After all, it's their server that is responding to the look-up requests and directing people to Y's servers, the action that X says is infringing. Can responding to a look up even constitute trademark infringement? After all, the DNS only transmits an IP address - it's the people sending lookup requests, and web servers serving pages with links to the site that are actually transmitting the trademark-containing-domain-name...
In any case, I don't really see how lame microscopic entries in someone else's database can be construed as someone's property. [some-dictionary-word].com doesn't really have the originality necessary for normal intellectual property protection. Some propose special domain name law to protect the alleged finite domain name resources. But such resources aren't limited at all. The worst that you can say is that a severe monopoly is going on.
There really isn't anything stopping a few community-minded individuals from starting an open-access DNS system, perhaps a system where each registrar gets a top level domain, or where companies/individuals/groups can be required to share domains where conflicts arise... Or someone could come up with a new naming system that allows for duplicates... Anyone interested in cooking up such a scheme? You would have one happy user right here. =)
Final Gripe: The expense of registering a domain with the de facto standard DNS regime (which claims to be government-regulated when it suits their purposes; how ironic) is insane. They could at least give the appearance of asking for fees based vaguely in some way to the service they are providing, instead of picking a flat rate dollar value at random... Perhaps they could do this by charging in relation to the number of requests responded to. I have no interest in subsidising the service of aol.com requests with my joeblow.org registration, after all.
Well, more than my $0.02... Food for thought, at least.
Hmm... In this case harm is pretty much defined as lost potential earnings over the length of the trial due directly to the DeCSS injunction. You can't really bring watching DVDs into it. Even if you could, you'd pretty much have to show a loss of potential income somehow over the length of the trial for the lesser of being a) forced to buy 'doze and watch the dvds on it, b) forced to buy a dvd player (and optionally a tv) and watch on it, or c) not able to watch them at all. This wouldn't really amount to much.
DeCSS (and therefore a description of the workings of the CSS scheme) is probably well-distributed enough by now that CSS can no longer be considered a trade secret. I'm assuming that, given this fact, it's a little odd that the injuction was granted.
As the case (not the injunction) is about actual violations of trade secret law, it's only important to the case whether or not CSS was a trade secret at the time the offence was committed, right?
Does anyone have any links to click-agreement validity case law in any jurisdiction? That could be helpful (or maybe not...)
It looks like the DMCA and the other applicable copyright law doesn't allow holders to restrict reverse engineering for interoperability, so a copyright notice saying "no reverse engineering" is irrelevant. However, if the user makes an agreement that they won't reverse engineer the software and then does, they're breaking the law, yes?
Someone said above that the judge considers freedom of speech trivial. IMHO, it's not freedom of speech in general he considers trivial, just the subset involving fair use of your DVDs over the length of the trial...
"The circumstantial evidence, available mostly due to the various defendants' inclination to boast about their disrespect for the law, is quite compelling on both the issue of Mr. Johansen's improper means and that Defendants' knowledge of impropriety." What the heck is this about? Not having a transcript, I have to guess that the judge is confusing quoted slashdot posters with the defendants or something.
#flame-retardant armor on
IMHO, except for the bit above, this decision seems to make a fair amount of sense. The lack of a prohibition on linking is good. It's pretty clear that, if the DeCSS posters were in the wrong (not that they are, but supposing they were), the plaintiffs would stand to lose a fair bit, while the defendants can probably afford to wait a while longer to play DVDs on their linux boxen.
#flame-retardant arm... on second though, maybe I'll keep it on. =)
My $0.02 -rak
--- Shameless plug omitted for the good of the masses.
I agree that many "details" are unknown. But many of these details are at higher orders of abstraction than the molecular level (which, I assume, any useful computer simulation would need to simulate at).
Is there anyone with a CS degree who didn't learn about complexity and O notation running time order proofs? Here at Waterloo, it's introduced in first year.
Re:Information *IS* Darwinian
on
The Regulon
·
· Score: 1
the mere ability to reproduce a lot is a piss poor test of value.
This is only true if the nodes of the system are idiots (which many clearly are, in this case).
This poster obviously doesn't understand the concept of memes, demonstrating the same lack of understanding in this area that he accuses others of having with respect to the human mind. He/She seems to think that memetic theory gives thinkers only a passive role in meme distribution, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Suggestion: If you do five minutes of research before cutting a theory down, it will be much less obvious that you've never read anything on the subject.
However, where memetics provides a useful abstraction about idea dispersion in communities, I can't see what Katz' theory is useful for. Maybe it's time to cut down on the crack, Katz?
NSI's may be the de-facto standard DNS network, but that doesn't make it a monopoly. That would require legal limitations on operating nameservers; I am not aware of any nation that currently has such restrictions.
Nothing is currently stopping anyone from organizing a completely namespace (DNS-based or otherwise). Losing compatibility with the NSI namespace is an obstacle, but not a serious one. Perhaps a cross-namespace gatewaying/interchange standard for the DNS protocol is in order? (e.g. "*.foobar.gw." corresponds to "." in the foobar namespace; something along these lines, anyway.) I, for one, wouldn't have a problem with falling back to IP's & hostlists or incompatible competing root namespaces until a better solution is implemented.
Slashdot Mirror
"First they arrested the Communists but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats - but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists - and I did nothing because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews and then the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me - and there was no one left to do anything about it."
- Rev. M. Niemoller
The MPAA, RIAA, etc. do not hold closed standards above profits. A boycott of all closed standards will indeed force them to open up. Let them put their money where their mouths are. =)
- rak.
Domains as property? Hmm...
>but domain names are the real estate of the 'Net and real estate is a legitimate business
This is a prime example of metaphor becoming fact.
There seen to be a lot of internet-related cases brought forward, especially in the US, where the real nature of the technology is dismissed in favor of vague notions of virtual space, virtual property, virtual trade, etc... e.g.
Consider the following:
Company X sues person Y because a domain name that they have paid for contains part of the company's trademark. Shouldn't the company be filing againt the domain registrar? After all, it's their server that is responding to the look-up requests and directing people to Y's servers, the action that X says is infringing. Can responding to a look up even constitute trademark infringement? After all, the DNS only transmits an IP address - it's the people sending lookup requests, and web servers serving pages with links to the site that are actually transmitting the trademark-containing-domain-name...
In any case, I don't really see how lame microscopic entries in someone else's database can be construed as someone's property. [some-dictionary-word].com doesn't really have the originality necessary for normal intellectual property protection. Some propose special domain name law to protect the alleged finite domain name resources. But such resources aren't limited at all. The worst that you can say is that a severe monopoly is going on.
There really isn't anything stopping a few community-minded individuals from starting an open-access DNS system, perhaps a system where each registrar gets a top level domain, or where companies/individuals/groups can be required to share domains where conflicts arise... Or someone could come up with a new naming system that allows for duplicates... Anyone interested in cooking up such a scheme? You would have one happy user right here. =)
Final Gripe: The expense of registering a domain with the de facto standard DNS regime (which claims to be government-regulated when it suits their purposes; how ironic) is insane. They could at least give the appearance of asking for fees based vaguely in some way to the service they are providing, instead of picking a flat rate dollar value at random... Perhaps they could do this by charging in relation to the number of requests responded to. I have no interest in subsidising the service of aol.com requests with my joeblow.org registration, after all.
Well, more than my $0.02... Food for thought, at least.
-rak
Hmm... In this case harm is pretty much defined as lost potential earnings over the length of the trial due directly to the DeCSS injunction. You can't really bring watching DVDs into it. Even if you could, you'd pretty much have to show a loss of potential income somehow over the length of the trial for the lesser of being a) forced to buy 'doze and watch the dvds on it, b) forced to buy a dvd player (and optionally a tv) and watch on it, or c) not able to watch them at all. This wouldn't really amount to much.
My $0.02
-rak
DeCSS (and therefore a description of the workings of the CSS scheme) is probably well-distributed enough by now that CSS can no longer be considered a trade secret. I'm assuming that, given this fact, it's a little odd that the injuction was granted.
As the case (not the injunction) is about actual violations of trade secret law, it's only important to the case whether or not CSS was a trade secret at the time the offence was committed, right?
Does anyone have any links to click-agreement validity case law in any jurisdiction? That could be helpful (or maybe not...)
It looks like the DMCA and the other applicable copyright law doesn't allow holders to restrict reverse engineering for interoperability, so a copyright notice saying "no reverse engineering" is irrelevant. However, if the user makes an agreement that they won't reverse engineer the software and then does, they're breaking the law, yes?
Someone said above that the judge considers freedom of speech trivial. IMHO, it's not freedom of speech in general he considers trivial, just the subset involving fair use of your DVDs over the length of the trial...
"The circumstantial evidence, available mostly due to the various defendants' inclination to boast about their disrespect for the law, is quite compelling on both the issue of Mr. Johansen's improper means and that Defendants' knowledge of impropriety." What the heck is this about? Not having a transcript, I have to guess that the judge is confusing quoted slashdot posters with the defendants or something.
#flame-retardant armor on
IMHO, except for the bit above, this decision seems to make a fair amount of sense. The lack of a prohibition on linking is good. It's pretty clear that, if the DeCSS posters were in the wrong (not that they are, but supposing they were), the plaintiffs would stand to lose a fair bit, while the defendants can probably afford to wait a while longer to play DVDs on their linux boxen.
#flame-retardant arm... on second though, maybe I'll keep it on. =)
My $0.02
-rak
---
Shameless plug omitted for the good of the masses.
I agree that many "details" are unknown. But many of these details are at higher orders of abstraction than the molecular level (which, I assume, any useful computer simulation would need to simulate at).
Is there anyone with a CS degree who didn't learn about complexity and O notation running time order proofs? Here at Waterloo, it's introduced in first year.
the mere ability to reproduce a lot is a piss poor test of value.
This is only true if the nodes of the system are idiots (which many clearly are, in this case).
This poster obviously doesn't understand the concept of memes, demonstrating the same lack of understanding in this area that he accuses others of having with respect to the human mind. He/She seems to think that memetic theory gives thinkers only a passive role in meme distribution, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Suggestion: If you do five minutes of research before cutting a theory down, it will be much less obvious that you've never read anything on the subject.
However, where memetics provides a useful abstraction about idea dispersion in communities, I can't see what Katz' theory is useful for. Maybe it's time to cut down on the crack, Katz?
NSI's may be the de-facto standard DNS network, but that doesn't make it a monopoly. That would require legal limitations on operating nameservers; I am not aware of any nation that currently has such restrictions.
Nothing is currently stopping anyone from organizing a completely namespace (DNS-based or otherwise). Losing compatibility with the NSI namespace is an obstacle, but not a serious one. Perhaps a cross-namespace gatewaying/interchange standard for the DNS protocol is in order? (e.g. "*.foobar.gw." corresponds to "." in the foobar namespace; something along these lines, anyway.) I, for one, wouldn't have a problem with falling back to IP's & hostlists or incompatible competing root namespaces until a better solution is implemented.
aT