> but if you're asked "Dude, do you know how to get some pot around here?"
Unfortunately, in the technical world we're talking about, the question might actually be "Dude, do you have a file whose SHA256 hash is e0ef7229e64c61596d8be928397e19fcc542ac920c4132106fb1ec2295dd73d1"? And you could certainly be able to say "yes" without knowing squat about what is actually in that file (since it is encrypted, with some other means, say a darknet, or even just a forum totally independent from your file sharing site, being used to distribute the decryption keys and the correspondences betweens hashes and desired content).
Now, is it at all reasonable to think that IsoHunt and Pirate Bay could, under such a hypothetical condition, still serve a distinctly useful purpose for even 1% of the people who currently use it?
I don't know exactly, since I have no real data on the exact percentage of users which "stayed on", but www.mininova.com is still running after 1.5 years of only supplying legal torrents. So, the answer to your question would seem to be: yes.
All this is academic, since it is obvious to anyone who is technically knowledgeable that P2P is feasible without centralized servers, and this becomes more and more feasible as technology progresses. And even without that, the "sue-a-mole" strategy isn't working particularly well.
> i don't know if you're hiding a goatse behind that.
Depending on your outlook, it might be worse, it links to a page at "www.electroherbalism.com"....
FYI: Like many shortened URLs, the full goo.gl URLs can be peeked at: in this case, by adding ".info" at the end: http://goo.gl/vguj5.info or by adding/info/ on the top level: http://goo.gl/info/vguj5
> That's because their statement is based and wholly rooted in fact - unlike yours - which is pure delusion.
I'm glad that the US Constitution is delusional.
> First and foremost, copyright exists to FAIRLY reward creation by means of COMPENSATION. > Only after the creator has been FAIRLY COMPENSATED
Perhaps you didn't notice that the poster you reply to did not in any way contradict this? He merely said that the wealth of creative works being produced clearly indicates that creators are already being fairly compensated and that it makes no sense to compensate them further, and in fact, it might be overall more effective for society to compensate them less. This is similar to the fact that it is possible to gain more profit overall by charging less money for your product.
> Its literally a retarded notion.
Maybe you yourself should put the brain in gear a bit more before replying next time with flamebait?
Wasn't that called "ThePirateBay" or something? Somehow that didn't work as well (it did work to a small extent with regards to the founding of the Pirate Party). Probably has something to do with the relative economic power involved...
Maybe he believes in eternal copyright, and therefore thinks that governments proclaiming that works can "fall into the public domain" is, in itself, a form of "theft"?
There are more ideas about what copyright is and/or should be than there are people who actually think about the issue, it seems to me.
> their computer got nerfed and their bank account is empty and "OMGITSYOURFAULT!!1!oneone!1.... > the Windows model is pretty much dead outside the enterprise
Personally I don't use Windows for anything financial or for sensitive personal information, but I have a feeling that the problems with Windows which I understand you are assuming will cause consumers to stop using it will end up being "fixed" in a different way, where personal liability for the kind of losses you are talking about is limited by legislation (kind of like how credit card losses are).
Interesting, I hadn't thought of the relationship to that existing model.
The answer is: not really, because
in "app stores" the platform controllers are taking a cut, not being paid to do security reviews and nothing else
in (some) "app stores" the platform controllers are actively censoring applications which do things they don't like (in my suggestion, the consumer is controlling what gets reviewed based on his needs).
most(?) existing "app stores" prevent the user from running other applications, in my suggestion people are free to run "unsafe" applications if they choose to do so
most existing "app stores" are monopolies, in my suggestion people are free to choose between competing companies doing these kinds of reviews (or use more than one of them, or use a different model totally like buying an anti-virus product)
The Foreign Office launched a modernisation process in 2010, one component of which was the pursuit of a new IT strategy moving away from open source software and towards "standardised proprietary client solutions" as used in other ministries. Specifically, this means a return to Windows XP, to be upgraded at some point to Windows 7, Office 2010 and Outlook.
In other words, a new IT boss decided he had to make his impression. Since there are no quantitative details given, this post is just here to fan a flamewar. Oh, and users also complain when moving from one version of Microsoft Office to the next one, so that throwaway comment is also empty of any real information.
This only proves what people have been saying since day 1: fighting malware via blacklisting is a losing battle.
Eventually some company will come up with a business plan which is the opposite: if you are interested to run an application, you can pay them to do a security review on it. If the company worked on a "we do the review once $X dollars have been raised" basis, popular applications would be reviewed for small change per user, and niche applications would be expensive to have reviewed.
Unfortunately, that's also a losing battle because of the noncomputablity of the stopping problem, but it's less so --- developers who want their application to be reviewed quickly would supply source code to the reviewing company and the developers would have an interest to have the code be as "clean"-looking as possible, raising the bar for slipping in "underhanded" side effects (and hopefully making malware with complex behavior difficult to pass muster).
> Isn't that kind of how the law is supposed to work?
Yes, but in the case of copyright infringement by P2P distribution, it seems it is economically infeasible to prosecute infringers --- even if RIAA would actually get paid the several million dollar damages awards they've gotten up to now versus Tennenbaum and Thomas, they wouldn't break even (IIRC, given the financial info they've published, in one of the last recent years they lost something like $16M even including all of the people who folded immediately and paid several kilo-dollars each). And in many (most?) countries, exemplary damages for copyright infringement are explicitly forbidden (even in the US it is not clear that they are constitutional) so it'd be even harder to get back the legal expense or even get a decision with (in their eyes) good deterrent value.
You missed the part in the discussion which points out that the probable reason why the labels didn't bring the suit previously was because they prefer that legislation make it much cheaper for them to enforce their copyrights. I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of this lawsuit is designed to maximize its nuisance value versus its legal expenses --- if the industry is convinced that the new bill will pass in the near future, maybe they are hoping they can cause a lot of legal expense for Isohunt in the near term, and then suddenly be able to "refile" because the the change in the legislative landscape after the passage of the bill.
A comment on the blog quoted an industry source:
I quote Danielle Parr, executive director of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, who says exceptions to the protection of digital locks wonâ(TM)t work. "When you create a big hole in the law that people can drive through, the onus is suddenly placed right on the copyright creator to prove the infringement."
I had thought that the Canadian Supreme Court has already ruled that fair use is a right of the consumer, so how can this law be viable? Or does legislation always override previous judicial decisions in Canada?
<sigh/>When will the industry figure out that Whack-a-Mole isn't going to work?
If they believe the conduct of these lawyers will be publicized enough to reflect on their own reputation or the reputation of the legal system itself, there is a chance they'll sanction / disbar them anyway.
Surprise! The code was closed until the Humble Bundle and no one has started screaming about GPL violations since it's been opened up. So no, the whole basis of your reasoning is unsound, even if you sell software for a living.
Note to self: other people might have different successful business models which I don't know about.
> As far as I know, books, music and videos don't have a GPL equivalent that could poison the > finished result so that it must be given away to be legal.
You really need to get out of the basement more. Firstly, GPLed code can be sold if you can find someone willing to buy it. It doesn't necessarily have to be given away for free (even if you are possibly correct in a practical sense). Secondly, see the Creative CommonsAttribution-ShareAlike license for books, music, videos, etc.
Oh, and lastly --- you actually didn't reply to any of my post, you merely unconnectedly knee-jerked anti-GPL sentiment. Now that you understand how wrong your assumptions were, you have a second chance to actually reply to my point.
The unchallenged declaration of one of Bright's attorneys states that in the interest of representing his client he visited 101 tube-based adult entertainment sites between May 14 and May 16, 2009 and was able to access adult videos free of charge on every one of them.
He's going to have to pay for the defendant's attorney surfing for porn non-stop for two days.... LOL
You don't have to cry over the developer's business model. They made plenty of money from the first Humble Bundle, partly because they promised to release the source.
What I find strange about your comment is that the analogy of your position to video, books, and other creative works protected by copyright law (since these works are released without obfuscation, unlike compiled code) is that the creators should expect counterfeiters to hijack their works, and not expect that they can have a viable business model.
Do you actually believe that? Reality doesn't seem to agree with you with respect to the viability of the business model, even if it is true that there is illegal copying and counterfeiting in those arenas also. There's even illegal copying and counterfeiting of non-open-sourced programs and this infringement doesn't necessarily prevent some companies from having a viable business model.
> This is surely a wonderful, novel demonstration of human ingenuity and cleverness. =/
Everyone is missing the real point --- in actuality, he only did it to be able to collect the insurance money on his (over-insured) shed without raising the suspicions of the investigators.
That's just like saying something's fool-proof. There's always a better fool.
You are certainly qualitatively correct, however, in security, what is important is whether the security is quantitatively worthwhile. If breaking Sony's next DRM scheme would actually require $10M worth of equipment or computer time (something I rather doubt will be true), it would be infeasible for the hobbyist attackers to break it.
> The [PCI] audit will cover network communications, hardware, software, change processes and accountability and access controls.
How do any of those things concern the one issue I'm asking about, which is whether / how hosting email in the Google cloud is inherently violating the PCI standard?
The Postini component of Google Apps (referred to as Google Message Security) allows for very granular control of email content (in and out). There are additional email archiving and retention components available
Judging from a cursory perusal of the PCI DSS quick reference guide, as long as the business has in place a policy which forbids sending payment card numbers over email in the clear, it should still be able to use a cloud-based email solution. Do you have personal knowledge which contradicts this?
Slashdot Mirror
The second derivative of world population size is negative. That is, the rate of population increase is decreasing with time. This leads many to believe it is possible that the world population might stabilize at around the nine to ten billion level.
> but if you're asked "Dude, do you know how to get some pot around here?"
Unfortunately, in the technical world we're talking about, the question might actually be "Dude, do you have a file whose SHA256 hash is e0ef7229e64c61596d8be928397e19fcc542ac920c4132106fb1ec2295dd73d1"? And you could certainly be able to say "yes" without knowing squat about what is actually in that file (since it is encrypted, with some other means, say a darknet, or even just a forum totally independent from your file sharing site, being used to distribute the decryption keys and the correspondences betweens hashes and desired content).
I don't know exactly, since I have no real data on the exact percentage of users which "stayed on", but www.mininova.com is still running after 1.5 years of only supplying legal torrents. So, the answer to your question would seem to be: yes.
All this is academic, since it is obvious to anyone who is technically knowledgeable that P2P is feasible without centralized servers, and this becomes more and more feasible as technology progresses. And even without that, the "sue-a-mole" strategy isn't working particularly well.
> You're thinking of David Nimmer. Ray Nimmer has lots of credentials too, but he's a different guy.
William F. Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, is no slouch either.
> i don't know if you're hiding a goatse behind that.
Depending on your outlook, it might be worse, it links to a page at "www.electroherbalism.com" ....
FYI: Like many shortened URLs, the full goo.gl URLs can be peeked at: /info/ on the top level: http://goo.gl/info/vguj5
in this case, by adding ".info" at the end: http://goo.gl/vguj5.info or by adding
This info was easily found using Google itself...
> That's because their statement is based and wholly rooted in fact - unlike yours - which is pure delusion.
I'm glad that the US Constitution is delusional.
> First and foremost, copyright exists to FAIRLY reward creation by means of COMPENSATION.
> Only after the creator has been FAIRLY COMPENSATED
Perhaps you didn't notice that the poster you reply to did not in any way contradict this? He merely said that the wealth of creative works being produced clearly indicates that creators are already being fairly compensated and that it makes no sense to compensate them further, and in fact, it might be overall more effective for society to compensate them less. This is similar to the fact that it is possible to gain more profit overall by charging less money for your product.
> Its literally a retarded notion.
Maybe you yourself should put the brain in gear a bit more before replying next time with flamebait?
> some gun nut gets rid of a few of the retards
Let's learn from the HBGary affair and just expose enough corruption to just discredit the parties involved.
Wasn't that called "ThePirateBay" or something? Somehow that didn't work as well (it did work to a small extent with regards to the founding of the Pirate Party). Probably has something to do with the relative economic power involved...
Maybe he believes in eternal copyright, and therefore thinks that governments proclaiming that works can "fall into the public domain" is, in itself, a form of "theft"?
There are more ideas about what copyright is and/or should be than there are people who actually think about the issue, it seems to me.
> of course windows is interoperable with itself. pfft.
If only you were actually right! Ooops, nix that, that would mean that a lot of Slashdotters would lose their jobs...
> their computer got nerfed and their bank account is empty and "OMGITSYOURFAULT!!1!oneone!1 ....
> the Windows model is pretty much dead outside the enterprise
Personally I don't use Windows for anything financial or for sensitive personal information, but I have a feeling that the problems with Windows which I understand you are assuming will cause consumers to stop using it will end up being "fixed" in a different way, where personal liability for the kind of losses you are talking about is limited by legislation (kind of like how credit card losses are).
> uh, something like an "app store", perhaps?
Interesting, I hadn't thought of the relationship to that existing model.
The answer is: not really, because
From TFA:
In other words, a new IT boss decided he had to make his impression. Since there are no quantitative details given, this post is just here to fan a flamewar. Oh, and users also complain when moving from one version of Microsoft Office to the next one, so that throwaway comment is also empty of any real information.
This only proves what people have been saying since day 1: fighting malware via blacklisting is a losing battle.
Eventually some company will come up with a business plan which is the opposite: if you are interested to run an application, you can pay them to do a security review on it. If the company worked on a "we do the review once $X dollars have been raised" basis, popular applications would be reviewed for small change per user, and niche applications would be expensive to have reviewed.
Unfortunately, that's also a losing battle because of the noncomputablity of the stopping problem, but it's less so --- developers who want their application to be reviewed quickly would supply source code to the reviewing company and the developers would have an interest to have the code be as "clean"-looking as possible, raising the bar for slipping in "underhanded" side effects (and hopefully making malware with complex behavior difficult to pass muster).
> Isn't that kind of how the law is supposed to work?
Yes, but in the case of copyright infringement by P2P distribution, it seems it is economically infeasible to prosecute infringers --- even if RIAA would actually get paid the several million dollar damages awards they've gotten up to now versus Tennenbaum and Thomas, they wouldn't break even (IIRC, given the financial info they've published, in one of the last recent years they lost something like $16M even including all of the people who folded immediately and paid several kilo-dollars each). And in many (most?) countries, exemplary damages for copyright infringement are explicitly forbidden (even in the US it is not clear that they are constitutional) so it'd be even harder to get back the legal expense or even get a decision with (in their eyes) good deterrent value.
You missed the part in the discussion which points out that the probable reason why the labels didn't bring the suit previously was because they prefer that legislation make it much cheaper for them to enforce their copyrights. I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of this lawsuit is designed to maximize its nuisance value versus its legal expenses --- if the industry is convinced that the new bill will pass in the near future, maybe they are hoping they can cause a lot of legal expense for Isohunt in the near term, and then suddenly be able to "refile" because the the change in the legislative landscape after the passage of the bill.
A comment on the blog quoted an industry source:
I had thought that the Canadian Supreme Court has already ruled that fair use is a right of the consumer, so how can this law be viable? Or does legislation always override previous judicial decisions in Canada?
<sigh/>When will the industry figure out that Whack-a-Mole isn't going to work?
Will Nokia send a takedown notice to that parody of their documentation website? Or just grin and bear it?
Parody by regexp.... I love it!
> and they look after their own.
If they believe the conduct of these lawyers will be publicized enough to reflect on their own reputation or the reputation of the legal system itself, there is a chance they'll sanction / disbar them anyway.
Surprise! The code was closed until the Humble Bundle and no one has started screaming about GPL violations since it's been opened up. So no, the whole basis of your reasoning is unsound, even if you sell software for a living.
Note to self: other people might have different successful business models which I don't know about.
> As far as I know, books, music and videos don't have a GPL equivalent that could poison the
> finished result so that it must be given away to be legal.
You really need to get out of the basement more. Firstly, GPLed code can be sold if you can find someone willing to buy it. It doesn't necessarily have to be given away for free (even if you are possibly correct in a practical sense). Secondly, see the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license for books, music, videos, etc.
Oh, and lastly --- you actually didn't reply to any of my post, you merely unconnectedly knee-jerked anti-GPL sentiment. Now that you understand how wrong your assumptions were, you have a second chance to actually reply to my point.
From the opinion:
He's going to have to pay for the defendant's attorney surfing for porn non-stop for two days.... LOL
You don't have to cry over the developer's business model. They made plenty of money from the first Humble Bundle, partly because they promised to release the source.
What I find strange about your comment is that the analogy of your position to video, books, and other creative works protected by copyright law (since these works are released without obfuscation, unlike compiled code) is that the creators should expect counterfeiters to hijack their works, and not expect that they can have a viable business model.
Do you actually believe that? Reality doesn't seem to agree with you with respect to the viability of the business model, even if it is true that there is illegal copying and counterfeiting in those arenas also. There's even illegal copying and counterfeiting of non-open-sourced programs and this infringement doesn't necessarily prevent some companies from having a viable business model.
> This is surely a wonderful, novel demonstration of human ingenuity and cleverness. =/
Everyone is missing the real point --- in actuality, he only did it to be able to collect the insurance money on his (over-insured) shed without raising the suspicions of the investigators.
You are certainly qualitatively correct, however, in security, what is important is whether the security is quantitatively worthwhile. If breaking Sony's next DRM scheme would actually require $10M worth of equipment or computer time (something I rather doubt will be true), it would be infeasible for the hobbyist attackers to break it.
> The [PCI] audit will cover network communications, hardware, software, change processes and accountability and access controls.
How do any of those things concern the one issue I'm asking about, which is whether / how hosting email in the Google cloud is inherently violating the PCI standard?
BTW, Google claims that Apps is SAS70 certified Level II. At that same link they state:
Judging from a cursory perusal of the PCI DSS quick reference guide, as long as the business has in place a policy which forbids sending payment card numbers over email in the clear, it should still be able to use a cloud-based email solution. Do you have personal knowledge which contradicts this?