I'm not real familiar with the way the British courts work, but I know that in the US a tactic sometimes used by judges that want a law overturned is to simply enforce the letter of the law. The idea is that the law itself is so flawed that by enforcing it strictly and literally it becomes evident that the law should be changed. Similar thing happened recently where some congressmen tried to reinstitute the draft, the reasoning being that if it's important enough for US soldiers to fight and die in Iraq, then it's important enough for every eligible US citizen to join up. Of course, and this was their point, if it's not that important, then we shouldn't be there. Maybe this judge is making the same point about DNA profiling: either everyone has to be on record, which would raise some serious privacy and legal issues, or no DNA records are kept at all because there isn't a fair way to do it.
The FCC (in addition to other functions) does a lot of censoring to protect society from rogue nipples and people who swear on the basis that everyone has access to television and therefore television shouldn't offend the sensibilities of anyone at all. Well, let's say you're deeply offended by boobies and monk seals. You join a ratings block of like minded folks who also are offended by boobies and monk seals. I, who happen to adore those things but am deeply offended by Jerry Lewis, join a block that reflects my tastes. The result is that networks, rather than being unable to air shows which portray boobies, monk seals, or Jerry Lewis for fear of offending anyone, can now show NOTHING BUT Jerry Lewis, boobies, and monk seals, since my rating group blocks shows featuring Mr. Lewis from my channel listings, and so forth. If this sort of technology could enable me to see nothing but documentaries, porn, old movies, porn, porn, horror movies and porn, all without making soccer moms and ministers upset, I'm all for it.
The bottom line is that people go on shooting sprees because they're batshit. But if you want to make a desensitization argument, I'd look at the news, frankly. Look at an hour of CNN or any other cable news outlet. You'll see much more in the way of realistic depictions of violence than from an hour of Battlefield 2, or what have you. Having grown up watching horror movies and playing Mortal Kombat I can tell you that neither of these things prepared me for seeing an actual dead body in real life, and I can safely say that I would have to be off my rocker to look forward to killing someone.
Interesting. I'm a little confused by the funding, though. What do they mean by "assets"? At first it looked like they were saying that the setup cost was publicly funded but that maintenance would be handled privately, but towards the end of the paragraph it almost seemed like the private companies would foot the whole thing. Any clarification on that? In principle it seems like a good idea. I note also that they were pretty upfront with the possibility of wireless transmissions being intercepted, which is good.
Absolutely not, in fact one of the arguments I use against a Libertarian friend of mine in favor of public regulation is that corporations are generally required by the terms of their incorporation to act in the best interests of the shareholders, not of the consumers, employees, or society at large. It was actually an Army of Darkness reference that has apparently been lost on a lot of people......damn, and I thought it was pretty funny...
They've been talking about something like this in Annapolis (capitol of MD, kinda halfway between DC and Baltimore) for awhile now, and as far as I can tell there is some network you can connect to based out of one, kind of out of the way part of town. Unfortunately, when you even CAN connect to it (difficult because of how far off it is and all the interference in between) you can't actually use the Internet. So "free" wifi is still limited to a couple cafes, living in an apartment building, or living near enough to one of the colleges.
"Self-interest might well be among of their motives, too, as companies like Google and Microsoft are routinely sued over copyright-related issues. Defending fair use might be good for consumers, but it might turn out to be good for business as well."....get an axe.
That's like saying that the upshot to AIDS is that you lose weight! Alzheimer's isn't like just being a little forgetful, where every day is some sort of new, fun adventure a la some Disney movie. Just taking the loss of memory aspect, try to imagine what it might be like to wake up in a room and not know where you are or how you got there. Or to be surrounded by total strangers who act like they're family. Or to forget who you are entirely. Knowing all the while that you used to remember these things and the next day you'll remember even less. That's like saying polio is a coping mechanism for a sprained ankle.
Now all that is left is to feed Travelocity through this translator so that the Elder Gods can find a good deal on a flight to Dulles. One way of course!! Mwuahahaha!!!
Meanwhile, I'm glad that the video feed is secured by passwords as strong as "admin" or my favorite "1234". Sometimes they throw a "5" on there for added security...(it's Comcastic!)
"Hey, your corporate media colossus is in my DIY video!"
"Your DIY video's in my corporate media colossus!"
I'd love to meet the crack legal team that decided to pursue this. Seriously, you've got to be a pretty secure person to sue someone for posting changes you made to his content and not be worried about winding up in the lowest level of hell or reincarnating as a dung beetle or something. I don't know what the fine print is for YouTube, and I'm sure that they have a case, but that's pretty far from the spirit of the thing, I'd say.
Now that game was great, really atmospheric but had enough twitchy sections to keep you engaged. I find that video games tend to be "boo-scary", which works well in the short term, but they tend (with some exceptions) to be light on truly ominous atmosphere and literal horror. Most main-stream American horror is the same way. Gore aside, because that's kind of its own phenomenon, a thing is scary because it's both threatening and unexpected. For example, a monster jumping out of a closet behind you is scary. Horror is more subtle, but longer lasting. For example, hiding in a dark room from a monster scratching at the door and falling asleep, only to wake up the next day and notice that the scratch marks are on the inside. Good horror movies do a little of both, and because you're watching a movie to be entertained (whereas you play a game to entertain yourself) you're more open to allowing the story and the mood to be established at a slower pace than if you were playing a game. A game's got to grab you quickly and keep you involved, which is effective in it's own right if it makes you feel as if the events in the game are or could be happening to you, but a movie can take its time and establish backstory, characters, plot, mood, all without having to do double duty as an entertaining game.
For example, try to make a game out of The Omen that produces the same impact as the movie.
I work for local government and I finish most of my work for the day in about two hours. So I've got six hours to kill. Rarely do I find myself with an entire day of work. So am I supposed to just leave two hours in and come back tomorrow when there's stuff to do? Not only would that screw me over money-wise but I'll often get hit with tasks late in the day that have to be done immediately. "Slacking" off on the internet, like I'm doing right now, is the only way I can keep myself occupied enough to not walk out on the job from sheer boredom. If you want me to sit somewhere for eight hours without enough to do, expect a great deal of forum posting, my friend.
"Is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?"
There are a lot of factors here, not the least of which is your level of dedication to the principles of open source weighed against the possibility of jail time, but I suppose the main question is this: Are you an American scientist, or a scientist living in the US? Given that almost any technology can be used destructively or to benefit the enemies of a particular country you have to decide how likely the technology you develop is to be to used to harm an American soldier or citizen, and then decide if that risk is worth it in the interests of international scientific cooperation. And neither of those are easy questions, so good luck.
No, seriously. I had an econ class with a marine who was learning Arabic and was minoring in Middle Eastern Studies. He wrote the Saudi Arabian embassy and they sent him a copy of the Quran in both Arabic and English. Might be worth checking out so as to get it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
So the problem is that innocent babes will be subjected to scenes of wild depravity and bloodletting, possibly drug use, etc. The game's rated M for Mature. Where's the issue here? Besides, last I checked Fox News has no rating, nor does the NFL or Friday Night Fights.
I wonder what politicians will do for cheap votes once the video game industry starts paying them off as much as the media does?
"Good lord, you would have loved it back in apartheid South Africa, or cold war East Germany or the Soviet Union"
But what makes those examples of infringement of liberty is not that information was collected but what was done with that information. Unless you are a very wiley person indeed all sorts of your personal information is floating around out there, but it's the use to which that information is put that makes something oppressive or not, not the mere fact of it's collection. After all, the point of attending a demonstration is to show your support for that particular movement. Otherwise there's no point in going, is there? I'm not saying any of the aforementioned examples are exactly my idea of a wonderful civic society but I find that I'm less concerned about government observation and collection of publicly accessible data than I am with what is done with said data.
Extraterritoriality is the principle that a particular nation's citizens (or subgroup of that nation's citizenry, eg. military) can only be held liable for actions which are crimes in their nation of citizenship. This can be limited to certain locations, such as embassies, or not. This suit is basically implying that because Yahoo!'s Chinese subsidiary violated American ethics (not even US law, by the way, as turning a source's identity over to government investigators isn't illegal here)it must be held liable, despite the fact that Chinese law required it. In fact, one of the major sore points in Chinese history is the presence of European enclaves during the late 19th and (very) early 20th century where one-sided treaties of extraterritoriality resulted in the loss of Chinese sovereignty. This is one of the reasons behind the stated Chinese policy of noninterference within the borders of other sovereign nations as well as why the Chinese tend to be a little touchy about stuff like this.
Granted, Yahoo! has ethical responsibilities as well, and they probably should have seen this coming, but perhaps the allure of the money they could make in China outweighed the danger of having to face decisions like this. Legally, however, this is a non-starter, since they haven't even broken a US law.
Not really. You can present the most compelling argument on earth but if you don't know procedure, you're sunk. That's what you need the lawyer for. Even for supposedly "slam-dunk" cases there is a tremendous amount of procedural wrangling that goes on before and during trial. That having been said, as long as you know the law and can demonstrate that you didn't break it, you'll be ok. It really isn't as bad as it may seem when it comes to non-violent crime. Also, a lot depends on if it's a jury trial, as those tend to be much more formal and procedure can make or break your case.
Maybe, but I tend to think that people who don't know enough to not make songs available also won't necessarily be installing KaZaa, for instance, to distribute their own copyrighted or copyright-free material. There is the whole "grandmother getting sued by Sony because her grandson installed Napster seven summers ago" thing, which I could definitely see but your average dummy is gonna be installing KaZaa to download copyrighted music. Ask 12 people if they've even heard of KaZaa and if anyone says yes they're gonna say that it's used to "download songs off the internet, like Napster."
While I agree that the RIAA should take a long walk off a short pier, there's a problem with the analogy. Let's say you install P2P software and it "helpfully" searches your hd for media files to share. You launch the software. You've now provided access to these files using software specifically designed for the purpose of file sharing. Arguing the absence of intent is like saying to someone, "I'm not gonna punch you. I'm just gonna hold out my fist and walk towards your head, and if your head hits my outstretched arm, that's your fault." Even if you intentionally leave your back door open, unless you hang out a sign reading, "Attention! Behind this wide open door there is a 72" plasma television on a dolly," you're not actively encouraging theft. Negligence at the most. Which leads to the scary part for me.
The Scary Part: Going with the modified back door analogy you could only be criminally liable for the theft of the telly if IT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU, since you can't steal from yourself. So what this is saying is that having copyrighted music or media of whatever variety on your computer now carries with it some sort of custodial responsibility. Whee! I wonder how long it's gonna be before there's a Steam for music...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not real familiar with the way the British courts work, but I know that in the US a tactic sometimes used by judges that want a law overturned is to simply enforce the letter of the law. The idea is that the law itself is so flawed that by enforcing it strictly and literally it becomes evident that the law should be changed. Similar thing happened recently where some congressmen tried to reinstitute the draft, the reasoning being that if it's important enough for US soldiers to fight and die in Iraq, then it's important enough for every eligible US citizen to join up. Of course, and this was their point, if it's not that important, then we shouldn't be there. Maybe this judge is making the same point about DNA profiling: either everyone has to be on record, which would raise some serious privacy and legal issues, or no DNA records are kept at all because there isn't a fair way to do it.
The FCC (in addition to other functions) does a lot of censoring to protect society from rogue nipples and people who swear on the basis that everyone has access to television and therefore television shouldn't offend the sensibilities of anyone at all. Well, let's say you're deeply offended by boobies and monk seals. You join a ratings block of like minded folks who also are offended by boobies and monk seals. I, who happen to adore those things but am deeply offended by Jerry Lewis, join a block that reflects my tastes. The result is that networks, rather than being unable to air shows which portray boobies, monk seals, or Jerry Lewis for fear of offending anyone, can now show NOTHING BUT Jerry Lewis, boobies, and monk seals, since my rating group blocks shows featuring Mr. Lewis from my channel listings, and so forth. If this sort of technology could enable me to see nothing but documentaries, porn, old movies, porn, porn, horror movies and porn, all without making soccer moms and ministers upset, I'm all for it.
The bottom line is that people go on shooting sprees because they're batshit. But if you want to make a desensitization argument, I'd look at the news, frankly. Look at an hour of CNN or any other cable news outlet. You'll see much more in the way of realistic depictions of violence than from an hour of Battlefield 2, or what have you. Having grown up watching horror movies and playing Mortal Kombat I can tell you that neither of these things prepared me for seeing an actual dead body in real life, and I can safely say that I would have to be off my rocker to look forward to killing someone.
'Course, it is former penal colony...
Interesting. I'm a little confused by the funding, though. What do they mean by "assets"? At first it looked like they were saying that the setup cost was publicly funded but that maintenance would be handled privately, but towards the end of the paragraph it almost seemed like the private companies would foot the whole thing. Any clarification on that? In principle it seems like a good idea. I note also that they were pretty upfront with the possibility of wireless transmissions being intercepted, which is good.
Absolutely not, in fact one of the arguments I use against a Libertarian friend of mine in favor of public regulation is that corporations are generally required by the terms of their incorporation to act in the best interests of the shareholders, not of the consumers, employees, or society at large. It was actually an Army of Darkness reference that has apparently been lost on a lot of people... ...damn, and I thought it was pretty funny...
They've been talking about something like this in Annapolis (capitol of MD, kinda halfway between DC and Baltimore) for awhile now, and as far as I can tell there is some network you can connect to based out of one, kind of out of the way part of town. Unfortunately, when you even CAN connect to it (difficult because of how far off it is and all the interference in between) you can't actually use the Internet. So "free" wifi is still limited to a couple cafes, living in an apartment building, or living near enough to one of the colleges.
"Self-interest might well be among of their motives, too, as companies like Google and Microsoft are routinely sued over copyright-related issues. Defending fair use might be good for consumers, but it might turn out to be good for business as well." ....get an axe.
You are tenured, right?
Dude, seriously!?
That's like saying that the upshot to AIDS is that you lose weight! Alzheimer's isn't like just being a little forgetful, where every day is some sort of new, fun adventure a la some Disney movie. Just taking the loss of memory aspect, try to imagine what it might be like to wake up in a room and not know where you are or how you got there. Or to be surrounded by total strangers who act like they're family. Or to forget who you are entirely. Knowing all the while that you used to remember these things and the next day you'll remember even less. That's like saying polio is a coping mechanism for a sprained ankle.
*tosses cookie to troll
Now all that is left is to feed Travelocity through this translator so that the Elder Gods can find a good deal on a flight to Dulles. One way of course!! Mwuahahaha!!!
Meanwhile, I'm glad that the video feed is secured by passwords as strong as "admin" or my favorite "1234". Sometimes they throw a "5" on there for added security...(it's Comcastic!)
"Hey, your corporate media colossus is in my DIY video!" "Your DIY video's in my corporate media colossus!" I'd love to meet the crack legal team that decided to pursue this. Seriously, you've got to be a pretty secure person to sue someone for posting changes you made to his content and not be worried about winding up in the lowest level of hell or reincarnating as a dung beetle or something. I don't know what the fine print is for YouTube, and I'm sure that they have a case, but that's pretty far from the spirit of the thing, I'd say.
Now that game was great, really atmospheric but had enough twitchy sections to keep you engaged. I find that video games tend to be "boo-scary", which works well in the short term, but they tend (with some exceptions) to be light on truly ominous atmosphere and literal horror. Most main-stream American horror is the same way. Gore aside, because that's kind of its own phenomenon, a thing is scary because it's both threatening and unexpected. For example, a monster jumping out of a closet behind you is scary. Horror is more subtle, but longer lasting. For example, hiding in a dark room from a monster scratching at the door and falling asleep, only to wake up the next day and notice that the scratch marks are on the inside. Good horror movies do a little of both, and because you're watching a movie to be entertained (whereas you play a game to entertain yourself) you're more open to allowing the story and the mood to be established at a slower pace than if you were playing a game. A game's got to grab you quickly and keep you involved, which is effective in it's own right if it makes you feel as if the events in the game are or could be happening to you, but a movie can take its time and establish backstory, characters, plot, mood, all without having to do double duty as an entertaining game.
For example, try to make a game out of The Omen that produces the same impact as the movie.
I work for local government and I finish most of my work for the day in about two hours. So I've got six hours to kill. Rarely do I find myself with an entire day of work. So am I supposed to just leave two hours in and come back tomorrow when there's stuff to do? Not only would that screw me over money-wise but I'll often get hit with tasks late in the day that have to be done immediately. "Slacking" off on the internet, like I'm doing right now, is the only way I can keep myself occupied enough to not walk out on the job from sheer boredom. If you want me to sit somewhere for eight hours without enough to do, expect a great deal of forum posting, my friend.
Because that's obviously working so well in Iraq.
"Is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?" There are a lot of factors here, not the least of which is your level of dedication to the principles of open source weighed against the possibility of jail time, but I suppose the main question is this: Are you an American scientist, or a scientist living in the US? Given that almost any technology can be used destructively or to benefit the enemies of a particular country you have to decide how likely the technology you develop is to be to used to harm an American soldier or citizen, and then decide if that risk is worth it in the interests of international scientific cooperation. And neither of those are easy questions, so good luck.
No, seriously. I had an econ class with a marine who was learning Arabic and was minoring in Middle Eastern Studies. He wrote the Saudi Arabian embassy and they sent him a copy of the Quran in both Arabic and English. Might be worth checking out so as to get it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
So the problem is that innocent babes will be subjected to scenes of wild depravity and bloodletting, possibly drug use, etc. The game's rated M for Mature. Where's the issue here? Besides, last I checked Fox News has no rating, nor does the NFL or Friday Night Fights.
I wonder what politicians will do for cheap votes once the video game industry starts paying them off as much as the media does?
"Good lord, you would have loved it back in apartheid South Africa, or cold war East Germany or the Soviet Union"
But what makes those examples of infringement of liberty is not that information was collected but what was done with that information. Unless you are a very wiley person indeed all sorts of your personal information is floating around out there, but it's the use to which that information is put that makes something oppressive or not, not the mere fact of it's collection. After all, the point of attending a demonstration is to show your support for that particular movement. Otherwise there's no point in going, is there? I'm not saying any of the aforementioned examples are exactly my idea of a wonderful civic society but I find that I'm less concerned about government observation and collection of publicly accessible data than I am with what is done with said data.
Extraterritoriality is the principle that a particular nation's citizens (or subgroup of that nation's citizenry, eg. military) can only be held liable for actions which are crimes in their nation of citizenship. This can be limited to certain locations, such as embassies, or not. This suit is basically implying that because Yahoo!'s Chinese subsidiary violated American ethics (not even US law, by the way, as turning a source's identity over to government investigators isn't illegal here)it must be held liable, despite the fact that Chinese law required it. In fact, one of the major sore points in Chinese history is the presence of European enclaves during the late 19th and (very) early 20th century where one-sided treaties of extraterritoriality resulted in the loss of Chinese sovereignty. This is one of the reasons behind the stated Chinese policy of noninterference within the borders of other sovereign nations as well as why the Chinese tend to be a little touchy about stuff like this.
Granted, Yahoo! has ethical responsibilities as well, and they probably should have seen this coming, but perhaps the allure of the money they could make in China outweighed the danger of having to face decisions like this. Legally, however, this is a non-starter, since they haven't even broken a US law.
Isn't this a bit like White Star Lines using the Titanic name to sell navigational systems?
Not really. You can present the most compelling argument on earth but if you don't know procedure, you're sunk. That's what you need the lawyer for. Even for supposedly "slam-dunk" cases there is a tremendous amount of procedural wrangling that goes on before and during trial. That having been said, as long as you know the law and can demonstrate that you didn't break it, you'll be ok. It really isn't as bad as it may seem when it comes to non-violent crime. Also, a lot depends on if it's a jury trial, as those tend to be much more formal and procedure can make or break your case.
Maybe, but I tend to think that people who don't know enough to not make songs available also won't necessarily be installing KaZaa, for instance, to distribute their own copyrighted or copyright-free material. There is the whole "grandmother getting sued by Sony because her grandson installed Napster seven summers ago" thing, which I could definitely see but your average dummy is gonna be installing KaZaa to download copyrighted music. Ask 12 people if they've even heard of KaZaa and if anyone says yes they're gonna say that it's used to "download songs off the internet, like Napster."
While I agree that the RIAA should take a long walk off a short pier, there's a problem with the analogy. Let's say you install P2P software and it "helpfully" searches your hd for media files to share. You launch the software. You've now provided access to these files using software specifically designed for the purpose of file sharing. Arguing the absence of intent is like saying to someone, "I'm not gonna punch you. I'm just gonna hold out my fist and walk towards your head, and if your head hits my outstretched arm, that's your fault." Even if you intentionally leave your back door open, unless you hang out a sign reading, "Attention! Behind this wide open door there is a 72" plasma television on a dolly," you're not actively encouraging theft. Negligence at the most. Which leads to the scary part for me.
The Scary Part: Going with the modified back door analogy you could only be criminally liable for the theft of the telly if IT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU, since you can't steal from yourself. So what this is saying is that having copyrighted music or media of whatever variety on your computer now carries with it some sort of custodial responsibility. Whee! I wonder how long it's gonna be before there's a Steam for music...