No, but they completely ignored the intent of the court's ruling, then embarressed the EU by showing consumers didn't buy any of the unbundled Windows. So who really won the real victory?
This reminds me of when France was going to force Apple to open iTunes, and Apple said fine, we'll leave. Or when the EU took on Microsoft. Once companies get to be a certain size, its really difficult for countries to control them, especially when the controls will end up hurting their corporate citizens, as in this case. When Google stops linking to their newpapers, the newspapers will feel the pain, not Google. Especially since all of Google's competitors will have to play by the same rules, and can't provide unique content. If the governments were right in these cases, and could take the moral highground, then they might stand a chance of winning. However, by continuing to fight huge tech companies in these areas, where they can't win, they stand to lose the power to fight when it really matters. Also, in each case, there were other ways of dealing with the problem. Don't like MS bundling? Move the government to Linux, save money, and encourage your population to do the same. Don't like iTunes and the way Fairplay is locked down? Start a competitor, or encourage the labels to stop their love affair with DRM. Don't like Google lnking to news stories? Update your robot.txt to prevent cache's and Google indexing your site to begin with. Of course, they know they can't do that. They want to come up on Google searches, but not have Google index their content as well. Would you like to have that cake you just ate, anyone?
The problem of court costs is a much larger problem that I wasn't addressing. To assert any legal right in court, you need money, and that is a problem, because everyone should have the same rights to assert their legal rights. Court costs serve a purpose in restricting some lawsuits and forcing people to work towards solutions outside of court, but you are right, if an entity has enough money to make a court option trivial, and a smaller entity is completely prevented from pursuing a legal option, we have a large problem. That's why all attorneys are supposed to do pro bono, and firms are supposed to encourage it. A band aid solution at best. But again, that's a larger problem than the RIAA specific lawsuits.
If you agree that the RIAA is correct in its lawsuits (which is an if on the order of magnitude If you believe the earth is flat), then this makes sense. I think we can all assume that the RIAA believes that it is correct in its lawsuits, which means it should persue means to make the law suits more effective. This is just a another means to do so. Really, it helps consumers in that the RIAA is less likely to sue innocent people, and only sue those people who are actually violating the law. I don't condone the activities of the RIAA, nor it methods in general for reaching its goals, but at least this one is based on making its lawsuits more accurate, and its willing to pay to do so, rather than just going back to courts and attempting to get contempt charges against the ISPs, which it may be able to do. That said, there will be fewer instances of the RIAA suing grandmothers for filesharing that people can use to illustrate the futility of the overall RIAA campaign.
Actually, the original discussion had to do with responding to a cyber attack of such intensity that our infrastructure was threatened. I would say that would be an act of war. As far as Iraq goes, there was an act of Congress authorzing it.
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396
It surely seems that Jefferson had no problem with a complete re-write of the Constitution. He understood the founding fathers had no idea what was going to happen in the future, and so people should have no problem altering the Constitution to adapt. However, they shouldn't ignore the Constitution; they should amend or re-write it based on a republican ideal, as the first one was.
Responding to an act of war without an act of Congress is perfectly legal. And I think you don't understand Jefferson, who believed that the Constitution should be re-written every generation or so to keep up with the times.
I would rather see cyber counter attacks. Yes, a lot of the targets would be innocent bots, but the counter attack could be as simple as taking them off line. If you remove enough bots, the attackers either have to give up, or begin to use bots closer to their own computers, until eventually they would have to use their own computers. Taking that many computers off line through cyber attacks is not something to be undertaken lightly, but if the incoming attack is sufficient to have a significant negative impact on infrastructure, then its probably justified. And maybe, if we start having massive cyber battles that this seems to imply, maybe Joe Public will stop clicking install this now banner ads and allowing his computer to become a bot. But probably not.
A lot of people thought this would go the way of their last video offering. It now seems that they are dedicated to making it a failure. Too bad, the more competitors in the on-line video business, the better.
The government will never be as efficient as a business. This is especially true in procurement, where there are enormous safeguards to try and restrict corruption. Of course, these safeguards don't always work. But they have been added over time as people learned to cheat the system, and are there for a reason. What we lose in agility we gain, somewhat, in transperency and review. Its a trade-off, and it makes the article's contention a truism. Its also intentional.
One of the big four has to be first. Maybe if one takes that big first step, the rest will realize the folly of DRM and follow.
Re:Are we really making it better for us, or worse
on
Finding New Code
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We shouldn't ignore a good idea just because it makes it easier for someone to do something illegal. There are laws to protect the code. I think the benefits will outweigh any loss from commercial companies stealing the code. I hope this does work out as well as it looks like it could.
I agree on all counts, and I am not defending oil companies' actions. But all sides are playing by questionable means, some more so than others, but everyone is in the mud with the pigs.
Last year, the Sierra club provided more than 90 million dollars to climate scientists. What does this mean? Who knows. Both sides of the discussion are paying scientists to create global warming studies. Whether the money is tied to the result implicitly o explicitly doesn't really matter. It is sad that we are at a point where we can't have a legitimate scientific inquiry into this area because of the shady tactics of both sides. Its also sad that some politicians have decided to make political hay with unrealistic plans and promises. In 1997, the Senate vote against Kyoto was unopposed- no many of those same senators are saying its the president's fault for not implementing climate control. With an issue this charged and controversial, I have doubts we can reach an effective solution, at least in the political arena. Our best hope? Use the market. Toyota is rapidly passing GM in no small part because of the strength of its hybrids. Now, GM and Ford are reacting by offering more environmentally aware options. Look at BP and GE's ad campaigns- they both stress environmental concerns. Whether their actions carry through, we don't know yet. But at least some of the companies are recognizing the importance of the enivornment to the consumer. If we, as consumers, continue to push this issue through our purchases, some real change can be made before the politicians can decide on legislation.
The only legitimate point is users using the "This is spam" button to unsubscribe to newletters they legitimately subscribed to. This isn't fair to an honest company. However, there are risks to advertising through newsletters, and this is one. As long as companies are informed of the risk, and can take steps to mitigate it, then its all fair, I suppose.
There is still a lot of debate on whether EULA's and click through agreements are completely binding. I won't get into all of the arguments on both sides, but I believe that companies are afraid to really go after anyone for breaking the asnine portions of these agreements because a court might rule that these documents are not binding contracts. They are handy for threatening people in certain situations, with cease and desist letters, and for making corporate users wary about potential law suits, thus restricting their usage and options. Of course, a court could hold that they are completely binding, and then the software companies would be free to attack an breach. So each side seems to be in an uneasy truce.
Marshall's point is that the political process should be used to punish the President. He is, at least nominally, prosecuting a war as a commander in chief. In a later case, Marshall said the other branches of government had freedom to use powers not stipulated in the Constitution to achieve the broad framework in the Constitution. That's why congress can create a national bank or bould an interstate highway system, despite a lack of those in the Constitution. So, as long as the President can fit his actions under the War on Terror, he is safe from the courts. That is one of the reasons there is an impeachment process; so the Congress can remove him from power, and then the courts can do what they need to.
Because the damages would be paid by other citizens. The government only gets its funding from tax money. To pay the damages, they would either have to raise taxes or cut programs. Believe me, they wouldn't cut pork, either.
In Marbury v. Madison, Marshall said that the Executive in the execution of his powers is beyond the reach of the Supreme Court, if they are the powers granted by the Constitution and not by statute. Its debatable if he is or not. It could be argued that the is executing his powers as Commander in Chief. I am sure there is other case law relating to this, but no court will try the President prior to impeachment.
Actually, the remedy for breaking the law is not always jail. Also, there is soverign immunity. While the President is sitting, the only way to try him is by impeachment.
The difference is in the remedy. If you murder someone, the remedy is jail, so there is a point to charging you. In this case, they wanted an injunction to stop the activity. If the activity is stopped, why go to trial? I actually think what is happening, though, is that the practice was stopped so that there is never a court order against it. Then, they can start it up again later. If it does go to trial, and goes against them, then they would not be able to legally start it up again.
They are losing money because of the practice. They could easily stop it, but they do not. It seems that they are doing it for a non-monetory reason. We can debate whether its a good policy or not, but at least it doesn't seem to be motivated by pure greed. Maybe they do believe some info is better than none, and they think they are doing good. Enough good to be worth losing money in other markets over it.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but they completely ignored the intent of the court's ruling, then embarressed the EU by showing consumers didn't buy any of the unbundled Windows. So who really won the real victory?
This reminds me of when France was going to force Apple to open iTunes, and Apple said fine, we'll leave. Or when the EU took on Microsoft. Once companies get to be a certain size, its really difficult for countries to control them, especially when the controls will end up hurting their corporate citizens, as in this case. When Google stops linking to their newpapers, the newspapers will feel the pain, not Google. Especially since all of Google's competitors will have to play by the same rules, and can't provide unique content. If the governments were right in these cases, and could take the moral highground, then they might stand a chance of winning. However, by continuing to fight huge tech companies in these areas, where they can't win, they stand to lose the power to fight when it really matters. Also, in each case, there were other ways of dealing with the problem. Don't like MS bundling? Move the government to Linux, save money, and encourage your population to do the same. Don't like iTunes and the way Fairplay is locked down? Start a competitor, or encourage the labels to stop their love affair with DRM. Don't like Google lnking to news stories? Update your robot.txt to prevent cache's and Google indexing your site to begin with. Of course, they know they can't do that. They want to come up on Google searches, but not have Google index their content as well. Would you like to have that cake you just ate, anyone?
The problem of court costs is a much larger problem that I wasn't addressing. To assert any legal right in court, you need money, and that is a problem, because everyone should have the same rights to assert their legal rights. Court costs serve a purpose in restricting some lawsuits and forcing people to work towards solutions outside of court, but you are right, if an entity has enough money to make a court option trivial, and a smaller entity is completely prevented from pursuing a legal option, we have a large problem. That's why all attorneys are supposed to do pro bono, and firms are supposed to encourage it. A band aid solution at best. But again, that's a larger problem than the RIAA specific lawsuits.
If you agree that the RIAA is correct in its lawsuits (which is an if on the order of magnitude If you believe the earth is flat), then this makes sense. I think we can all assume that the RIAA believes that it is correct in its lawsuits, which means it should persue means to make the law suits more effective. This is just a another means to do so. Really, it helps consumers in that the RIAA is less likely to sue innocent people, and only sue those people who are actually violating the law. I don't condone the activities of the RIAA, nor it methods in general for reaching its goals, but at least this one is based on making its lawsuits more accurate, and its willing to pay to do so, rather than just going back to courts and attempting to get contempt charges against the ISPs, which it may be able to do. That said, there will be fewer instances of the RIAA suing grandmothers for filesharing that people can use to illustrate the futility of the overall RIAA campaign.
Actually, the original discussion had to do with responding to a cyber attack of such intensity that our infrastructure was threatened. I would say that would be an act of war. As far as Iraq goes, there was an act of Congress authorzing it.
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40 "Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396 It surely seems that Jefferson had no problem with a complete re-write of the Constitution. He understood the founding fathers had no idea what was going to happen in the future, and so people should have no problem altering the Constitution to adapt. However, they shouldn't ignore the Constitution; they should amend or re-write it based on a republican ideal, as the first one was.
Probably just send in the FBI.
Responding to an act of war without an act of Congress is perfectly legal. And I think you don't understand Jefferson, who believed that the Constitution should be re-written every generation or so to keep up with the times.
I would rather see cyber counter attacks. Yes, a lot of the targets would be innocent bots, but the counter attack could be as simple as taking them off line. If you remove enough bots, the attackers either have to give up, or begin to use bots closer to their own computers, until eventually they would have to use their own computers. Taking that many computers off line through cyber attacks is not something to be undertaken lightly, but if the incoming attack is sufficient to have a significant negative impact on infrastructure, then its probably justified. And maybe, if we start having massive cyber battles that this seems to imply, maybe Joe Public will stop clicking install this now banner ads and allowing his computer to become a bot. But probably not.
A lot of people thought this would go the way of their last video offering. It now seems that they are dedicated to making it a failure. Too bad, the more competitors in the on-line video business, the better.
If you are so easily influenced by this type of video, maybe there are some other issues besides trust that you need to look at.
Glad to see him getting the recognition he deserves.
The government will never be as efficient as a business. This is especially true in procurement, where there are enormous safeguards to try and restrict corruption. Of course, these safeguards don't always work. But they have been added over time as people learned to cheat the system, and are there for a reason. What we lose in agility we gain, somewhat, in transperency and review. Its a trade-off, and it makes the article's contention a truism. Its also intentional.
One of the big four has to be first. Maybe if one takes that big first step, the rest will realize the folly of DRM and follow.
We shouldn't ignore a good idea just because it makes it easier for someone to do something illegal. There are laws to protect the code. I think the benefits will outweigh any loss from commercial companies stealing the code. I hope this does work out as well as it looks like it could.
I agree on all counts, and I am not defending oil companies' actions. But all sides are playing by questionable means, some more so than others, but everyone is in the mud with the pigs.
Last year, the Sierra club provided more than 90 million dollars to climate scientists. What does this mean? Who knows. Both sides of the discussion are paying scientists to create global warming studies. Whether the money is tied to the result implicitly o explicitly doesn't really matter. It is sad that we are at a point where we can't have a legitimate scientific inquiry into this area because of the shady tactics of both sides. Its also sad that some politicians have decided to make political hay with unrealistic plans and promises. In 1997, the Senate vote against Kyoto was unopposed- no many of those same senators are saying its the president's fault for not implementing climate control. With an issue this charged and controversial, I have doubts we can reach an effective solution, at least in the political arena. Our best hope? Use the market. Toyota is rapidly passing GM in no small part because of the strength of its hybrids. Now, GM and Ford are reacting by offering more environmentally aware options. Look at BP and GE's ad campaigns- they both stress environmental concerns. Whether their actions carry through, we don't know yet. But at least some of the companies are recognizing the importance of the enivornment to the consumer. If we, as consumers, continue to push this issue through our purchases, some real change can be made before the politicians can decide on legislation.
The only legitimate point is users using the "This is spam" button to unsubscribe to newletters they legitimately subscribed to. This isn't fair to an honest company. However, there are risks to advertising through newsletters, and this is one. As long as companies are informed of the risk, and can take steps to mitigate it, then its all fair, I suppose.
There is still a lot of debate on whether EULA's and click through agreements are completely binding. I won't get into all of the arguments on both sides, but I believe that companies are afraid to really go after anyone for breaking the asnine portions of these agreements because a court might rule that these documents are not binding contracts. They are handy for threatening people in certain situations, with cease and desist letters, and for making corporate users wary about potential law suits, thus restricting their usage and options. Of course, a court could hold that they are completely binding, and then the software companies would be free to attack an breach. So each side seems to be in an uneasy truce.
Marshall's point is that the political process should be used to punish the President. He is, at least nominally, prosecuting a war as a commander in chief. In a later case, Marshall said the other branches of government had freedom to use powers not stipulated in the Constitution to achieve the broad framework in the Constitution. That's why congress can create a national bank or bould an interstate highway system, despite a lack of those in the Constitution. So, as long as the President can fit his actions under the War on Terror, he is safe from the courts. That is one of the reasons there is an impeachment process; so the Congress can remove him from power, and then the courts can do what they need to.
Because the damages would be paid by other citizens. The government only gets its funding from tax money. To pay the damages, they would either have to raise taxes or cut programs. Believe me, they wouldn't cut pork, either.
In Marbury v. Madison, Marshall said that the Executive in the execution of his powers is beyond the reach of the Supreme Court, if they are the powers granted by the Constitution and not by statute. Its debatable if he is or not. It could be argued that the is executing his powers as Commander in Chief. I am sure there is other case law relating to this, but no court will try the President prior to impeachment.
Actually, the remedy for breaking the law is not always jail. Also, there is soverign immunity. While the President is sitting, the only way to try him is by impeachment.
The difference is in the remedy. If you murder someone, the remedy is jail, so there is a point to charging you. In this case, they wanted an injunction to stop the activity. If the activity is stopped, why go to trial? I actually think what is happening, though, is that the practice was stopped so that there is never a court order against it. Then, they can start it up again later. If it does go to trial, and goes against them, then they would not be able to legally start it up again.
They are losing money because of the practice. They could easily stop it, but they do not. It seems that they are doing it for a non-monetory reason. We can debate whether its a good policy or not, but at least it doesn't seem to be motivated by pure greed. Maybe they do believe some info is better than none, and they think they are doing good. Enough good to be worth losing money in other markets over it.