I just spent 5 minutes making sure that that link went where it claimed to go and no further (It points to a/. article entitled "FCC To Require Backdoor Network Access for Feds").
True for the US, not for the UK (grandparent was focusing on the UK) primarily as the right to silence (which is the the right that prevents self incrimination) is restricted by statutory and common law exceptions, not to mention that when it does apply it is often not taken up.
Under various laws there are requirements to disclose information (for example to HMRC) who can compel answers on pain of contempt of court (which is not too different from how this works in essence), you cannot be jailed or convicted for not testifying against yourself but you can be punished for failing to supply a particular piece of information as specified in law (I don't think that that info can be used against you in a subsequent criminal trial though).
However if you fail to provide such information, you are not automatically guilty, you still have the opportunity to present a case, a case in which the prosecution would have to prove that you *do* have the information they are asking for.
To address your first point, leaving a notebook of equations (or even a document in latin or some other obscure language) is a bad analogy, there will be at least one other person able to derive meaning from it, its up to them to deal with that issue, it is quite possible for an encrypted document to be unbreakable (unlike locks or safes etc..). If there is evidence to suggest that the encrypted file is evidence *and* there is evidence that you have the key, then I don't think there is a problem.
Your second point about forgetting keys is very pertinent, no one should be able to simply jail you arbitrarily because you really cannot comply with their request, it would be very difficult to determine whether someone has forgotten something or if they are hiding it, however a judge should as a last resort be able to make a decision one way or another (they do every day with regard to other similar matters after all).
Innocent until proven guilty means that you are assumed innocent of a crime until you have been through a process to determine your guilt, nothing more nothing less, failing to provide an encryption key when it has been determined that you have it would make you guilty of a crime (even if you didn't have the key, but that is simply the same as being found guilty of some other offence that you have not committed, courts are not clairvoyant nor do they have a monopoly on the truth.)
I disagree with the implementation of the UK Act, but I do agree with what it is trying to do, like I said before there need to be some fairly robust safeguards to protect people who have forgotten / never had a key but then that should be true of any law. I see no problem in jailing someone who is covering up a crime by hiding a key if it is determined that they have it, after all they have the option of revealing the key and being tied on the basis of whatever is contained within the encrypted file *or* being found guilty of failing to provide the key. The problem as you pointed out is proving that they have the key, I would assume that that would only be possible in a vanishingly small number of cases. As it is the law can be abused, but there are ways to prevent that abuse.
I was under the impression that they wouldn't find you guilty of what you had been originally been charged with if you failed to provide your encryption key (assuming that the encrypted data is required for a conviction) but rather would charge you for *not* supplying your key (which of course you *would* be guilty of).
Of course if a warrant is issued by a judge (so there is some other evidence to suggest that the encrypted data is evidence of a crime) and there is *certainty* that you have the key (or a decrypted copy, after all you need to provide one *or* the other) then I am not too worried by the idea of being forced to hand over keys / decrypts.
That position isn't because I believe that 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' etc... but rather because a legal search warrant already breaches your privacy to a fairly completely and will have been scrutinised by a judge, this simply extends it into the digital sphere. Where I get worried by it is that you could end up in jail for legitimately forgetting a key, or for receiving encrypted data.
There needs to be a balance between security and privacy and that balance should be tipped in favour of privacy, however using digital measures to hide data that would previously (prior to encryption targeted at the consumer for example) is not maintaining privacy it is extending it, there are already protections for privacy and they are fairly robust, encryption is still useful, just not if it appears to have been used in conjunction with the commission of a crime.
I think that at the moment the two things that worry me about the UK law IIRC are the fact that a warrant is *not* required and that you can be ordered to remain silent about having handed over the keys, that is very very bad IMHO.
Clearly the requirement to hand over encryption keys or decrypts rests with the safeguards in place to protect you from abuse by the government, I do feel however that in certain cases it may be appropriate.
Your post made me think of a certain Orang-outang Librarian.
Ook
Re:Guarantee of Reliability is not Free
on
NYSE Moves to Linux
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you have the source code to the software you use then you have the ability to both change support agreements (albeit you still have to find a competent firm to do the work), if as you suggest, get a part open part closed system you are getting rid of most of the benefits of the open source part.
I agree to a certain extent 'that it would probably be no more or less difficult to switch Linux vendors/supporters than a Commercial Unix variant' in certain cases (any very large complex or heavily customised implementation) but for *most* companies that wouldn't be an issue, mail servers, network services etc.. the core of a companies IT infrastructure would be made up of common and well tested components, supportable by anyone, custom database or web applications would be more difficult to transition to a new support provider, but if they are *yours* and open then at least you *can*.
As for market share, I'm not sure. It is clear that Linux is replacing Unix in some areas, but it is also making inroads the areas where Microsoft is traditionally dominant.
Re:Not the same as a Desktop
on
NYSE Moves to Linux
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From a marketing perspective this is very good news, Microsoft ran an advert for a long time after the London Stock Exchange switched various systems to Windows (but not the trading system apparently... correct me if I'm wrong). Of course those adverts don't seem to be around so much anymore, possibly as they have had some problems.
Anyway if this is a success (and there is no reason it shouldn't be) and since Linux excels on the server (and frankly is perfectly suited to 90% of corporate desktops) this kind of public roll out is a great selling point and a driver for others large and small to do the same, after all little 10 man operations can suddenly point to their two Linux mail servers and proudly tell their clients that they are using the same technology as the NYSE! (Not the same software or the same hardware (and definitely without the SLA's and support) but the same technology....:) ) .
For those nut bothering to read the links - salient parts are:
As part of its strategy to win more trading business and new customers, the London Stock Exchange needed a scalable, reliable, high-performance stock exchange ticker plant to replace its earlier system. Roughly 40 per cent of the Exchange's revenues are generated by the sale of real-time information about stock prices. Using the Microsoft®.NET Framework in Windows Server® 2003 and the Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 database, the new Infolect® system has been built to achieve unprecedented levels of performance, availability, and business agility. - mainframemigration.org (December 01, 2006) (Emphasis mine)
Furious traders were left twiddling their thumbs for the last 40 minutes of trading yesterday after the London Stock Exchange's IT system collapsed..... One trader said: "I've not known this to happen since the start of electronic trading. If they're saying trading is still going on, that's just not true.".... - www.timesonline.co.uk (November 8, 2007)
You are probably right, however in 6 years when that contract expires at least NYSE should be able to find *alternative* suppliers to maintain the *same* software, with a proprietary solution you stick with the vendor or migrate.
I can't help with the evidence of extra terrestrial life, but you will be glad to know that I can provide limited proof of black seagulls.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at this point in time all we can conclusively say about the existence of other life in space is that we don't know (and might never know)one way or the other.
wonder what the reason is that, among the billions of stars we can see in the sky... That's probably a good start as to why we haven't seen it yet, well tht and the potentially billions of stars we can't see too...
Although the whole building a dyson sphere around a star in the first place may pose technological problems for any civilisation.
My Ipaq has a 2Gb CF card and a 1Gb SD card for local storage, when I am at home I have an additional.5Tb available over NFS, I would say that for a portable device that is more than enough. As for capabilities, it always bugged me with WM OS's that configuration options were massively limited and that the UI was generally counter-intuitive, not to mention that PDA applications seem to all get cut down to the point of uselessness. Familiar Linux is a good start if you are looking to make changes to an Ipaq, but once you start looking you realise that you really can make use of all that computing power in your pocket.
Totally, but then we (I assume I can include you in this) use the OS's we use because they are more adaptable and configurable, I couldn't care less what a default DE looks like, I have spent the last 6 years organising my working environment so that it works, the look and feel has evolved and is represents what works for me, not what some KDE Dev (bless them all) thinks is a good idea.
Totally offtopic, but one the unemployment rate comparison is invalid as the way unemployment is measured differs between nation states. My understanding is that the US traditionally reports lower unemployment rates (which are worked out in a variety of ways) but similar employment rates (number of employed people per number of employable population). So the suggestion is that whilst there is lower unemployment in the US the proportion of people in employment is the same (which makes very little sense).
As for blaming any one group for economic or political failures (or claiming they have X negative trait whilst group B don't) is daft, when you get to the point where an electorate only has two choices in an election, and those two choices are so similar in policy terms (possibly with differences in public ideology or intended implementation) that any change is irrelevant you need to ask if there are other fundamental issues with the system. I am constantly amazed at how a country as diverse as the United States can have such an apparently limited and two sided political outlook.
Its scary when you realise that the PDA in your pocket (or rather my pocket) is so ridiculously more capable than any of the computers etc.. that I used up until about 1995, yet the default OS's let you do less in terms of productivity than what you could do half of that kit (I now run Gentoo on it so theproblem is resolved, but still!..).
I'm not sure that Gnome is more fully featured than KDE... If anything KDE seems to have (with 3.5.1 at any rate) far more capabilities than any other DE that I have used (I was looking at E17 and XFCE about 5 months back), it is nice that those bells and whistles are easily tucked away to give the end user a clean and uncomplicated experience, yet sufficiently accessible if you find you need them.
In this case the reduction in memory footprint really does seem to be down to better code / new and better technology than simply stripping out functionality and tweaking things so that they appear better. I used to hate doing windows installs because the install wizard would always point out that W95/W98/W2k/WXP was faster, more secure and more capable than its predecessors, something that was almost never true, as such I was concerned that the 'hype' about KDE4 being better, faster, lighter etc.. was just a ploy by KDE fans and marketeers, however for once it seems I can put mu scepticism away and look forward to the day KDE4 becomes available for Debian Stable....:)
I am fairly certain that if *artificial* barriers to entry are erected then the market isn't competitive, companies are limiting interested parties from entering the market artificially to prevent competition. The only barriers to entry in a competitive market should be natural or in some cases regulatory (product safety etc...). After all in a competitive market one would expect services to improve (to get that 'step ahead' you were talking about) and profit margins to remain low (lowest possible pricing to keep and attract customers).
Not to mention that any market where the incumbents have effectively have a regional monopoly (or duopoly) would be difficult to refer to as either competitive or free.
Hmm, From: The Iranian Consulate 50 Kensington Court Kensington London W8 5DB
To: PC World 47/53 Kensington High Street Kensington London W8 5ED
0.2 mi - Quite a bit less than a 5 minute walk.
Head east on Kensington Ct (259 ft) Turn left to stay on Kensington Ct (240 ft) Turn left at A315/Kensington Rd & Continue to follow A315 (0.1 mi)
Not really that far, There's even a McDonalds just a little further on after PC World if you need a snack before you head back. Of course on the downside you would end up paying over the odds for anything you buy....
I run Familiar linux on my PDA's* which gives me rather more flexibility.
*I am also playing with gentoo and debian on the hx4700, I'd love to get E17 working properly on it as it looks nice (not sure how usable it'll be) and I'm having issues with the touch screen ATM.
If they have modified the software in question to work with the hardware then those changes would be vital (or at least beneficial) to anyone wishing to improve or modify the capabilities of this kit. At the end of the day Verizon could have written their own software but decided they didn't want to re-invent the wheel (sensible, they probably saved some money) but now don't want others to be able to do the same (by not releasing their changes)
So the benefit that people would get form this lawsuit is the benefit Verizon currently enjoy.
Its a case of a legislature not realising the impact of a trade agreement, Canada could have ignored the panels decision (and faced whatever consequences that could have been made to stick..). A country's sovereignty rests with its government and head of state, if they take a trade agreement and make it law (which is how it usually happens) then that trade agreement becomes (in this case) bad law, something to be overturned, not a loss of sovereignty.
Try reading an entire novel on your PDA I have and do, both on an IPAQ h2200 at 240x320 (an OK Experience) and more recently on an IPAQ hx4700 with a 4" screen at 480x640. The hx4700 is ideal for book reading, you just don't get a page at a time.
UN membership doesn't constitute a total loss of sovereignty for any country, primarily because the enforcement powers available; levying sanctions or making war against the violator of a resolution are available to any nation at any time anyway, with or without justification, more importantly you don't have to be a member of the UN to be sanctioned / invaded.
NATO is more interesting, but as I understand it individual countries supply forces to NATO on an ongoing or as required basis, as opposed to NATO commanders simply choosing and using NATO members troops at will.
In any case I would suggest that sovereignty can only be lost if a country enters an agreement it cannot later unilaterally remove itself from, I would suggest that the individual states of the USA have lost much of their sovereignty but not all (they can still leave?) and EU member states are reducing their own sovereignty but are no where near having lost it. A loss of sovereignty can really only come about by losing a war and being put in a position where you no longer hold any powers of ther region that was your country.
My point was that the music industry need you to buy your music again and again and again to maintain their profits, digital copies prevent this, therefore surely you shouldn't be allowed to make backups, and if WD is worried about the legal implications then you certainly shouldn't use one of their drives and put them at risk!!.
Didn't the word 'scum' give it away? I didn't think it was a word in general use outside of satire.
To be totally clear, I think backing up stuff you have bought is sensible and should be legal (it isn't in some areas), I think format shifting media you have bought should be legal (it isn't in some areas), I also think that copyright terms should be reduced. The entertainment industry needs to shape up and stop treating customers like criminals. However, I do think that *real* copyright violations should be punished (in a civil court) with appropriate penalties depending on the kind of violation.
I'm not in America, but even with the excessively litigious culture that is (apparently) prevalent in the US I cannot see how or why a drive manufacturer would react in this manner. If it is a legal issue then address the whole issue. All data files regardless of type may be subject to copyright, make sharing it an 'opt-in' option rather than the default means that the end user must decide to share data say on a directory basis (a good idea anyway). That should remove any argument that the user was unaware that the data would be available to others.
Now I realise that this would take common sense on the part of the manufacturer, as well as a sensible default configuration, but surely that is preferable to the negativity this is going to cause, especially given that a moderate number of people will see this caveat and misunderstand it to mean that the device cannot be used for entertainment. Its going to bite WD in lost sales, they *should* know that, so why do it if you can mitigate the legal risk anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
I just spent 5 minutes making sure that that link went where it claimed to go and no further (It points to a /. article entitled "FCC To Require Backdoor Network Access for Feds").
True for the US, not for the UK (grandparent was focusing on the UK) primarily as the right to silence (which is the the right that prevents self incrimination) is restricted by statutory and common law exceptions, not to mention that when it does apply it is often not taken up.
Under various laws there are requirements to disclose information (for example to HMRC) who can compel answers on pain of contempt of court (which is not too different from how this works in essence), you cannot be jailed or convicted for not testifying against yourself but you can be punished for failing to supply a particular piece of information as specified in law (I don't think that that info can be used against you in a subsequent criminal trial though).
However if you fail to provide such information, you are not automatically guilty, you still have the opportunity to present a case, a case in which the prosecution would have to prove that you *do* have the information they are asking for.
Anyway, Like I said its broken and needs fixing.
To address your first point, leaving a notebook of equations (or even a document in latin or some other obscure language) is a bad analogy, there will be at least one other person able to derive meaning from it, its up to them to deal with that issue, it is quite possible for an encrypted document to be unbreakable (unlike locks or safes etc..). If there is evidence to suggest that the encrypted file is evidence *and* there is evidence that you have the key, then I don't think there is a problem.
Your second point about forgetting keys is very pertinent, no one should be able to simply jail you arbitrarily because you really cannot comply with their request, it would be very difficult to determine whether someone has forgotten something or if they are hiding it, however a judge should as a last resort be able to make a decision one way or another (they do every day with regard to other similar matters after all).
Innocent until proven guilty means that you are assumed innocent of a crime until you have been through a process to determine your guilt, nothing more nothing less, failing to provide an encryption key when it has been determined that you have it would make you guilty of a crime (even if you didn't have the key, but that is simply the same as being found guilty of some other offence that you have not committed, courts are not clairvoyant nor do they have a monopoly on the truth.)
I disagree with the implementation of the UK Act, but I do agree with what it is trying to do, like I said before there need to be some fairly robust safeguards to protect people who have forgotten / never had a key but then that should be true of any law. I see no problem in jailing someone who is covering up a crime by hiding a key if it is determined that they have it, after all they have the option of revealing the key and being tied on the basis of whatever is contained within the encrypted file *or* being found guilty of failing to provide the key. The problem as you pointed out is proving that they have the key, I would assume that that would only be possible in a vanishingly small number of cases. As it is the law can be abused, but there are ways to prevent that abuse.
Hmm, I'm going to be unpopular.
I was under the impression that they wouldn't find you guilty of what you had been originally been charged with if you failed to provide your encryption key (assuming that the encrypted data is required for a conviction) but rather would charge you for *not* supplying your key (which of course you *would* be guilty of).
Of course if a warrant is issued by a judge (so there is some other evidence to suggest that the encrypted data is evidence of a crime) and there is *certainty* that you have the key (or a decrypted copy, after all you need to provide one *or* the other) then I am not too worried by the idea of being forced to hand over keys / decrypts.
That position isn't because I believe that 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' etc... but rather because a legal search warrant already breaches your privacy to a fairly completely and will have been scrutinised by a judge, this simply extends it into the digital sphere. Where I get worried by it is that you could end up in jail for legitimately forgetting a key, or for receiving encrypted data.
There needs to be a balance between security and privacy and that balance should be tipped in favour of privacy, however using digital measures to hide data that would previously (prior to encryption targeted at the consumer for example) is not maintaining privacy it is extending it, there are already protections for privacy and they are fairly robust, encryption is still useful, just not if it appears to have been used in conjunction with the commission of a crime.
I think that at the moment the two things that worry me about the UK law IIRC are the fact that a warrant is *not* required and that you can be ordered to remain silent about having handed over the keys, that is very very bad IMHO.
Clearly the requirement to hand over encryption keys or decrypts rests with the safeguards in place to protect you from abuse by the government, I do feel however that in certain cases it may be appropriate.
Your post made me think of a certain Orang-outang Librarian.
Ook
If you have the source code to the software you use then you have the ability to both change support agreements (albeit you still have to find a competent firm to do the work), if as you suggest, get a part open part closed system you are getting rid of most of the benefits of the open source part.
I agree to a certain extent 'that it would probably be no more or less difficult to switch Linux vendors/supporters than a Commercial Unix variant' in certain cases (any very large complex or heavily customised implementation) but for *most* companies that wouldn't be an issue, mail servers, network services etc.. the core of a companies IT infrastructure would be made up of common and well tested components, supportable by anyone, custom database or web applications would be more difficult to transition to a new support provider, but if they are *yours* and open then at least you *can*.
As for market share, I'm not sure. It is clear that Linux is replacing Unix in some areas, but it is also making inroads the areas where Microsoft is traditionally dominant.
Anyway if this is a success (and there is no reason it shouldn't be) and since Linux excels on the server (and frankly is perfectly suited to 90% of corporate desktops) this kind of public roll out is a great selling point and a driver for others large and small to do the same, after all little 10 man operations can suddenly point to their two Linux mail servers and proudly tell their clients that they are using the same technology as the NYSE! (Not the same software or the same hardware (and definitely without the SLA's and support) but the same technology....:) ) .
For those nut bothering to read the links - salient parts are: As part of its strategy to win more trading business and new customers, the London Stock Exchange needed a scalable, reliable, high-performance stock exchange ticker plant to replace its earlier system. Roughly 40 per cent of the Exchange's revenues are generated by the sale of real-time information about stock prices. Using the Microsoft®
You are probably right, however in 6 years when that contract expires at least NYSE should be able to find *alternative* suppliers to maintain the *same* software, with a proprietary solution you stick with the vendor or migrate.
(Sorry left out the link)
I can't help with the evidence of extra terrestrial life, but you will be glad to know that I can provide limited proof of black seagulls.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at this point in time all we can conclusively say about the existence of other life in space is that we don't know (and might never know)one way or the other.
Although the whole building a dyson sphere around a star in the first place may pose technological problems for any civilisation.
My Ipaq has a 2Gb CF card and a 1Gb SD card for local storage, when I am at home I have an additional .5Tb available over NFS, I would say that for a portable device that is more than enough. As for capabilities, it always bugged me with WM OS's that configuration options were massively limited and that the UI was generally counter-intuitive, not to mention that PDA applications seem to all get cut down to the point of uselessness. Familiar Linux is a good start if you are looking to make changes to an Ipaq, but once you start looking you realise that you really can make use of all that computing power in your pocket.
Totally, but then we (I assume I can include you in this) use the OS's we use because they are more adaptable and configurable, I couldn't care less what a default DE looks like, I have spent the last 6 years organising my working environment so that it works, the look and feel has evolved and is represents what works for me, not what some KDE Dev (bless them all) thinks is a good idea.
Totally offtopic, but one the unemployment rate comparison is invalid as the way unemployment is measured differs between nation states. My understanding is that the US traditionally reports lower unemployment rates (which are worked out in a variety of ways) but similar employment rates (number of employed people per number of employable population). So the suggestion is that whilst there is lower unemployment in the US the proportion of people in employment is the same (which makes very little sense).
As for blaming any one group for economic or political failures (or claiming they have X negative trait whilst group B don't) is daft, when you get to the point where an electorate only has two choices in an election, and those two choices are so similar in policy terms (possibly with differences in public ideology or intended implementation) that any change is irrelevant you need to ask if there are other fundamental issues with the system. I am constantly amazed at how a country as diverse as the United States can have such an apparently limited and two sided political outlook.
Its scary when you realise that the PDA in your pocket (or rather my pocket) is so ridiculously more capable than any of the computers etc.. that I used up until about 1995, yet the default OS's let you do less in terms of productivity than what you could do half of that kit (I now run Gentoo on it so theproblem is resolved, but still!..).
I'm not sure that Gnome is more fully featured than KDE... If anything KDE seems to have (with 3.5.1 at any rate) far more capabilities than any other DE that I have used (I was looking at E17 and XFCE about 5 months back), it is nice that those bells and whistles are easily tucked away to give the end user a clean and uncomplicated experience, yet sufficiently accessible if you find you need them.
:)
In this case the reduction in memory footprint really does seem to be down to better code / new and better technology than simply stripping out functionality and tweaking things so that they appear better. I used to hate doing windows installs because the install wizard would always point out that W95/W98/W2k/WXP was faster, more secure and more capable than its predecessors, something that was almost never true, as such I was concerned that the 'hype' about KDE4 being better, faster, lighter etc.. was just a ploy by KDE fans and marketeers, however for once it seems I can put mu scepticism away and look forward to the day KDE4 becomes available for Debian Stable....
I am fairly certain that if *artificial* barriers to entry are erected then the market isn't competitive, companies are limiting interested parties from entering the market artificially to prevent competition. The only barriers to entry in a competitive market should be natural or in some cases regulatory (product safety etc...). After all in a competitive market one would expect services to improve (to get that 'step ahead' you were talking about) and profit margins to remain low (lowest possible pricing to keep and attract customers).
Not to mention that any market where the incumbents have effectively have a regional monopoly (or duopoly) would be difficult to refer to as either competitive or free.
Hmm,
From:
The Iranian Consulate
50 Kensington Court
Kensington
London
W8 5DB
To:
PC World
47/53 Kensington High Street
Kensington
London
W8 5ED
0.2 mi - Quite a bit less than a 5 minute walk.
Head east on Kensington Ct (259 ft)
Turn left to stay on Kensington Ct (240 ft)
Turn left at A315/Kensington Rd &
Continue to follow A315 (0.1 mi)
Not really that far, There's even a McDonalds just a little further on after PC World if you need a snack before you head back.
Of course on the downside you would end up paying over the odds for anything you buy....
I run Familiar linux on my PDA's* which gives me rather more flexibility.
*I am also playing with gentoo and debian on the hx4700, I'd love to get E17 working properly on it as it looks nice (not sure how usable it'll be) and I'm having issues with the touch screen ATM.
If they have modified the software in question to work with the hardware then those changes would be vital (or at least beneficial) to anyone wishing to improve or modify the capabilities of this kit. At the end of the day Verizon could have written their own software but decided they didn't want to re-invent the wheel (sensible, they probably saved some money) but now don't want others to be able to do the same (by not releasing their changes)
So the benefit that people would get form this lawsuit is the benefit Verizon currently enjoy.
Its a case of a legislature not realising the impact of a trade agreement, Canada could have ignored the panels decision (and faced whatever consequences that could have been made to stick..). A country's sovereignty rests with its government and head of state, if they take a trade agreement and make it law (which is how it usually happens) then that trade agreement becomes (in this case) bad law, something to be overturned, not a loss of sovereignty.
UN membership doesn't constitute a total loss of sovereignty for any country, primarily because the enforcement powers available; levying sanctions or making war against the violator of a resolution are available to any nation at any time anyway, with or without justification, more importantly you don't have to be a member of the UN to be sanctioned / invaded.
NATO is more interesting, but as I understand it individual countries supply forces to NATO on an ongoing or as required basis, as opposed to NATO commanders simply choosing and using NATO members troops at will.
In any case I would suggest that sovereignty can only be lost if a country enters an agreement it cannot later unilaterally remove itself from, I would suggest that the individual states of the USA have lost much of their sovereignty but not all (they can still leave?) and EU member states are reducing their own sovereignty but are no where near having lost it. A loss of sovereignty can really only come about by losing a war and being put in a position where you no longer hold any powers of ther region that was your country.
OK unclear parent post,
My point was that the music industry need you to buy your music again and again and again to maintain their profits, digital copies prevent this, therefore surely you shouldn't be allowed to make backups, and if WD is worried about the legal implications then you certainly shouldn't use one of their drives and put them at risk!!.
Didn't the word 'scum' give it away? I didn't think it was a word in general use outside of satire.
To be totally clear, I think backing up stuff you have bought is sensible and should be legal (it isn't in some areas), I think format shifting media you have bought should be legal (it isn't in some areas), I also think that copyright terms should be reduced. The entertainment industry needs to shape up and stop treating customers like criminals. However, I do think that *real* copyright violations should be punished (in a civil court) with appropriate penalties depending on the kind of violation.
I'm not in America, but even with the excessively litigious culture that is (apparently) prevalent in the US I cannot see how or why a drive manufacturer would react in this manner. If it is a legal issue then address the whole issue. All data files regardless of type may be subject to copyright, make sharing it an 'opt-in' option rather than the default means that the end user must decide to share data say on a directory basis (a good idea anyway). That should remove any argument that the user was unaware that the data would be available to others.
Now I realise that this would take common sense on the part of the manufacturer, as well as a sensible default configuration, but surely that is preferable to the negativity this is going to cause, especially given that a moderate number of people will see this caveat and misunderstand it to mean that the device cannot be used for entertainment. Its going to bite WD in lost sales, they *should* know that, so why do it if you can mitigate the legal risk anyway?