This is the ideal concept for how the pirate bay should be looked at. Somehow it's not though.
It's clear that Craigslist only provides a service for people to communicate, but for The Pirate Bay it's only clear to us (/.) that they are doing the same.
I think there is also an unspoken bias about the proximity of any "crime" to the facilitator, that I would summarize like this: Craigslist is all just talk until people get together and do something wrong, but The Pirate Bay is stealing right there on the site. What counts as direct involvement? The closest we seem to get is asking if there's a "substantial non-infringing use" for a service. But for TPB that answer doesn't yield the desired results.
Truth? Has almost nothing to do with it. Truth today is in the eye of the beholder and it is all relative. If you believe that the World Trade Center towers were demolished by Israeli agents working for George Bush, nothing is going to deter you, and you will only listen to "news" that confirms this. If you believe that Obama is "the One" and can do no wrong, nothing is going to deter that opinion. There are believers for everything, no matter how wrong-headed it might seem.
Truth? Wikipedia might actually have a good idea. Truth is whatever the majority believes at the moment, and the majority can always edit the story to make it fit the latest fad.
If Slap-Chop Manufacturing And Brain Surgeries Inc. gives you stuff in exchange for your endorsement of Slap-Chop, then you're affected. If they don't, you are not. Does it get any simpler than that?
So if the Slap-Chop competitors give me stuff, I'm in the clear? Got it. Or do you want to refine your rules? (and should I have my Lawyer present?)
The FTC is wrong to suggest that a "product review" is some easy to identify thing. If I write that I love the Slap-Chop am I reviewing it? When does it change from opinion to review? Will a lawyer need to review everything before it's posted, or should we trust that government won't try to misuse this?
Writing on the web covers *all* modes, from babel to academic works. Regulating it as commercial is just wrong.
So... in order to break the microsoft lockin you use an api that is only availible to google users only.
Sound a bit like "Free, More Free and Locked in... Again..." to me...
Damn Google!! When are they going to make an API that lets us go from Microsoft's SharePoint to IBM's WebSphere??? Don't they see how evil they're being?
The problem with so much data is false positives, and the abuse that results from them.... And in a case like this -- where many magnitudes more people are innocent than guilty -- it gets that much worse. You will end up prosecuting (and possibly punishing) hundreds or thousands of innocent people for every guilty party you find.
The War on Drugs has done this for decades. In the US, it's not a problem unless its personally affects you.
To add to this excellent post, it is also critical as a means of keeping law enforcement in line. If the police obtain evidence by means of unlawful search and seizure, the judge can and should ban that evidence from being presented in court. It isn't banned from being printed in the media though; free speech and all.
Information wants to be free! The problem is not what the jury learns, it's how they act with the information they have. I see this as closely tied to courts banning Jury Nullification: restrict the role of the jury and grant more power to the lawyers. Since when does being an advocate mean being the only advocate? Juries can be instructed on the rules of evidence and asked to abide them, even be punished for failing to do so, but simply trying to control them is antithetical to the system of justice. The most important thing is that juries decide.
So you trust the NY Times and are willing to pay for their trustworthiness. But shouldn't most of the payment go to the journalists? And a tiny amount to the website operator? I'm also willing to pay for good stories and for having the avalanche of available stories filtered to a list I like and have trust in, but that's not what Google or the Newspapers are offering.
If it were only that simple, I always thought I should support the sites I look at byt not disabling the ads with an ad blocker, but lately it's been pretty much impossible to look at most news sites I go to as all those flash ads causes my browser and computer to crawl.
FlashBlock, instead of AdBlock, works really well as a compromise to allow adds and still have access to Flash on a page. YMMV. For real change we need a way to give a vote or feedback on AD *companies* so they'll force the advertisers to behave; for example, zedo.com uses pop-up's so ban all their AD's.
I thought everyone on Slashdot hated the RIAA, the MPAA, and Microsoft. Why do you keep hyping CDs, movies, and Windows games?
Big corporations are what they are. They sell us cool stuff with one hand and tighten the screws on our freedoms with the other. We hate them every morning and love them every afternoon, and vice versa. This is part of living in the modern world: you take your yin with your yang and try to figure out how to do what's right the best you can. If you think it has to be all one way or the other, that's cool, share your opinions, but don't expect everyone else to think the same.
Today, bandwidth is cheap for documents. Bring on the Firefox extension and public.resource.org hosting! I think they should allow a bidding contract with "free" being the only option... I'm guessing Google and Scribd and many others could make enough off the ads to host everything without blinking an eye. Hell, Google's doing it for patents, why not federal court documents?
Since bandwidth is cheap, why not just post a torrent of the archive? If they're required to collect fee's to cover the costs, they'll only need a few hundred dollars (?) and meet both the letter and spirit of the law. Then all the aggregaters like Google or Scribd or anyone else could do it without prior negotiation and contracts, etc...
Funny story by Richard Feynman about selecting textbooks in California. Makes you hope for the future.
In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products.
'The proponents of GPL like to tell people that the world only needs one open source license, and I think that's actually, frankly, just a flat-out dumb position,'
Yeah, well I think that's actually, frankly, just a flat-out fabrication. Could we have a source for this assertion please?
If we assume it is true, then why aren't GPL advocates replacing all BSD software with GPL versions? Where's the big push to redo X and apache as GPL, and only GPL?
The issue is not having encryption software widely distributed. You need to have (1) common software, (2) used by many people, (3) on a regular basis, and (4) for the purpose of hiding data. If you have anything less, than whatever GUI/script/tool you use is the difference that singles you out.
I'm fairly certain you couldn't do it the other way around.
"AT&T? Hi, I'm just calling you to tell you, that I've faxed over the new terms of our contract, stipulating that I get to spank your CEO in public every Saturday afternoon. You can either sign it or release me from my contract. Yours truly $name."
Somehow I think that'd just be ignored by AT&T and the courts alike.
You're right, but why? I think: We are biased, but we call it common sense. People think that a corporation doing something is serious and all business. An individual that does something similar is just trying to make a point. We don't think the laws should be applied equally: Corporations should be disciplined by the government or law enforcement, not by consumers. After all, law enforcement is who keeps the peace, and remember that McDonald's coffee case?... People should not imitate businesses because they aren't doing the beneficial work that businesses do. I think people really believe that corporations are good, as well as big and powerful and outside of our understanding, and that individuals are not justified in questioning or challenging them. Interestingly, I think this changes when people are on a jury and forced to pay attention to the facts of a single case.
This was clearly the wrong action in this case, but it's worth remembering why they built this capability in the first place: so people can get refunds if they one-click the wrong book. That's something that they can't do without a remote-deletion capability.
That's not true. When/if they decide to refund is up to them. Lot's of companies will send a replacement part without demanding the old part back. There is no necessity for this "feature". Publishers want control, and DRM gives it to them.
And please don't change the argument to how it's a "business" necessity because they wouldn't be able to sell the books, or please the publishers, etc...
Sure, in the same sense that all proprietary licenses are also viral. The difference is that the GPL "virus" doesn't generally kill its hosts.
Wrong! The difference is that GPL source code is irresponsibly scattered all over the web. Programmers don't lock it up like good corporate citizens. We teach our employees to cut any corner in the pursuit of profit, and that's how it should be! You can't just leave valuable Intellectual Property out in the open, that's not how its done.
... the disclosure could open the RIAA companies to accusations of conspiracy to defraud on a grand scale.
Do people - outside slashdot - actually doubt that the major music companies collude to control the market and routinely do fraudulent things? The jury awarded ~$2 million, so it looks like most people think the music industry is OK. That award can't be chalked up to apathy; it was vengeful. It's strange how systemic fraud like this is allowed.
That's an ontologically interesting point, but it's usually stated as a proof rather then a potentiality. It's good you included "sic" or I may have thought you were joking.
The barrier to entry is high because users are expecting 3D, theater quality graphics and sound at every turn.... So, an indie publisher will have to deal with that by having gameplay so good it overshadows dated graphics.
It won't just be those issues. As major corporations continue turning the games industry into a Movies/Music style business venture, they'll use all the same tactics those industries use against indie developers: Ratings agencies to enforce decency, and which are owned by the big players. Cross promotions and restrictive deals. Emphasis on costly aspects (3D models/textures, big movie explosions, bands' stadium performances) and minimizing what's open for everyone to produce in the medium (good game play, character development and dialog, musical skill). Legal changes from bought politicians. Massive advertising to create "big hits". Corruption of reviewers and education/training to be biased towards their products.
The games industry is in for one ugly ride. They won't kill indies, but "video game" won't mean the same thing anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the ideal concept for how the pirate bay should be looked at. Somehow it's not though.
It's clear that Craigslist only provides a service for people to communicate, but for The Pirate Bay it's only clear to us (/.) that they are doing the same.
I think there is also an unspoken bias about the proximity of any "crime" to the facilitator, that I would summarize like this: Craigslist is all just talk until people get together and do something wrong, but The Pirate Bay is stealing right there on the site. What counts as direct involvement? The closest we seem to get is asking if there's a "substantial non-infringing use" for a service. But for TPB that answer doesn't yield the desired results.
In a democracy there are two ways to participate in politics. One is to exercise your right to vote in secret. The other is to publicly organize.
There is a third way: give your opinion when asked. The public opinion poll is a major factor in almost all politics today.
If the BSA was genuinely concerned about software piracy, they'd be actively promoting free and open alternatives.
If X then Y. Not Y, therefore Not X.
There was a time when I could have named that..
Truth? Has almost nothing to do with it. Truth today is in the eye of the beholder and it is all relative. If you believe that the World Trade Center towers were demolished by Israeli agents working for George Bush, nothing is going to deter you, and you will only listen to "news" that confirms this. If you believe that Obama is "the One" and can do no wrong, nothing is going to deter that opinion. There are believers for everything, no matter how wrong-headed it might seem.
Truth? Wikipedia might actually have a good idea. Truth is whatever the majority believes at the moment, and the majority can always edit the story to make it fit the latest fad.
If that was true, we wouldn't need Wikileaks.
If Slap-Chop Manufacturing And Brain Surgeries Inc. gives you stuff in exchange for your endorsement of Slap-Chop, then you're affected. If they don't, you are not. Does it get any simpler than that?
So if the Slap-Chop competitors give me stuff, I'm in the clear? Got it. Or do you want to refine your rules? (and should I have my Lawyer present?)
The FTC is wrong to suggest that a "product review" is some easy to identify thing. If I write that I love the Slap-Chop am I reviewing it? When does it change from opinion to review? Will a lawyer need to review everything before it's posted, or should we trust that government won't try to misuse this?
Writing on the web covers *all* modes, from babel to academic works. Regulating it as commercial is just wrong.
So... in order to break the microsoft lockin you use an api that is only availible to google users only. Sound a bit like "Free, More Free and Locked in... Again..." to me...
Damn Google!! When are they going to make an API that lets us go from Microsoft's SharePoint to IBM's WebSphere??? Don't they see how evil they're being?
The problem with so much data is false positives, and the abuse that results from them. ... And in a case like this -- where many magnitudes more people are innocent than guilty -- it gets that much worse. You will end up prosecuting (and possibly punishing) hundreds or thousands of innocent people for every guilty party you find.
The War on Drugs has done this for decades. In the US, it's not a problem unless its personally affects you.
To add to this excellent post, it is also critical as a means of keeping law enforcement in line. If the police obtain evidence by means of unlawful search and seizure, the judge can and should ban that evidence from being presented in court. It isn't banned from being printed in the media though; free speech and all.
Information wants to be free! The problem is not what the jury learns, it's how they act with the information they have. I see this as closely tied to courts banning Jury Nullification: restrict the role of the jury and grant more power to the lawyers. Since when does being an advocate mean being the only advocate? Juries can be instructed on the rules of evidence and asked to abide them, even be punished for failing to do so, but simply trying to control them is antithetical to the system of justice. The most important thing is that juries decide.
So you trust the NY Times and are willing to pay for their trustworthiness. But shouldn't most of the payment go to the journalists? And a tiny amount to the website operator? I'm also willing to pay for good stories and for having the avalanche of available stories filtered to a list I like and have trust in, but that's not what Google or the Newspapers are offering.
If it were only that simple, I always thought I should support the sites I look at byt not disabling the ads with an ad blocker, but lately it's been pretty much impossible to look at most news sites I go to as all those flash ads causes my browser and computer to crawl.
FlashBlock, instead of AdBlock, works really well as a compromise to allow adds and still have access to Flash on a page. YMMV. For real change we need a way to give a vote or feedback on AD *companies* so they'll force the advertisers to behave; for example, zedo.com uses pop-up's so ban all their AD's.
Tabs should be diagonal.... It can be mathematically proven, too, that diagonal tabs are the most aesthetic and comfortable layout.
Just get the Cantor Diagonal Tab add-on. It lets you have more tabs then you can count.
Once they get this off the ground, how much will the next one cost? And the one after that? That's the important issue.
Who will build the next one? That's the important issue. This could be a dominant industry and it'll be Japan's companies that are at the forefront.
I thought everyone on Slashdot hated the RIAA, the MPAA, and Microsoft. Why do you keep hyping CDs, movies, and Windows games?
Big corporations are what they are. They sell us cool stuff with one hand and tighten the screws on our freedoms with the other. We hate them every morning and love them every afternoon, and vice versa. This is part of living in the modern world: you take your yin with your yang and try to figure out how to do what's right the best you can. If you think it has to be all one way or the other, that's cool, share your opinions, but don't expect everyone else to think the same.
Today, bandwidth is cheap for documents. Bring on the Firefox extension and public.resource.org hosting! I think they should allow a bidding contract with "free" being the only option ... I'm guessing Google and Scribd and many others could make enough off the ads to host everything without blinking an eye. Hell, Google's doing it for patents, why not federal court documents?
Since bandwidth is cheap, why not just post a torrent of the archive? If they're required to collect fee's to cover the costs, they'll only need a few hundred dollars (?) and meet both the letter and spirit of the law. Then all the aggregaters like Google or Scribd or anyone else could do it without prior negotiation and contracts, etc...
In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products.
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
Yeah, well I think that's actually, frankly, just a flat-out fabrication. Could we have a source for this assertion please?
If we assume it is true, then why aren't GPL advocates replacing all BSD software with GPL versions? Where's the big push to redo X and apache as GPL, and only GPL?
The issue is not having encryption software widely distributed. You need to have (1) common software, (2) used by many people, (3) on a regular basis, and (4) for the purpose of hiding data. If you have anything less, than whatever GUI/script/tool you use is the difference that singles you out.
I'm fairly certain you couldn't do it the other way around.
"AT&T? Hi, I'm just calling you to tell you, that I've faxed over the new terms of our contract, stipulating that I get to spank your CEO in public every Saturday afternoon. You can either sign it or release me from my contract. Yours truly $name."
Somehow I think that'd just be ignored by AT&T and the courts alike.
You're right, but why? I think: We are biased, but we call it common sense. People think that a corporation doing something is serious and all business. An individual that does something similar is just trying to make a point. We don't think the laws should be applied equally: Corporations should be disciplined by the government or law enforcement, not by consumers. After all, law enforcement is who keeps the peace, and remember that McDonald's coffee case?... People should not imitate businesses because they aren't doing the beneficial work that businesses do. I think people really believe that corporations are good, as well as big and powerful and outside of our understanding, and that individuals are not justified in questioning or challenging them. Interestingly, I think this changes when people are on a jury and forced to pay attention to the facts of a single case.
Cool Hand Luke goes to Black Hat...
This was clearly the wrong action in this case, but it's worth remembering why they built this capability in the first place: so people can get refunds if they one-click the wrong book. That's something that they can't do without a remote-deletion capability.
That's not true. When/if they decide to refund is up to them. Lot's of companies will send a replacement part without demanding the old part back. There is no necessity for this "feature". Publishers want control, and DRM gives it to them.
And please don't change the argument to how it's a "business" necessity because they wouldn't be able to sell the books, or please the publishers, etc...
Sure, in the same sense that all proprietary licenses are also viral. The difference is that the GPL "virus" doesn't generally kill its hosts.
Wrong! The difference is that GPL source code is irresponsibly scattered all over the web. Programmers don't lock it up like good corporate citizens. We teach our employees to cut any corner in the pursuit of profit, and that's how it should be! You can't just leave valuable Intellectual Property out in the open, that's not how its done.
... the disclosure could open the RIAA companies to accusations of conspiracy to defraud on a grand scale.
Do people - outside slashdot - actually doubt that the major music companies collude to control the market and routinely do fraudulent things? The jury awarded ~$2 million, so it looks like most people think the music industry is OK. That award can't be chalked up to apathy; it was vengeful. It's strange how systemic fraud like this is allowed.
That's an ontologically interesting point, but it's usually stated as a proof rather then a potentiality. It's good you included "sic" or I may have thought you were joking.
The barrier to entry is high because users are expecting 3D, theater quality graphics and sound at every turn. ... So, an indie publisher will have to deal with that by having gameplay so good it overshadows dated graphics.
It won't just be those issues. As major corporations continue turning the games industry into a Movies/Music style business venture, they'll use all the same tactics those industries use against indie developers: Ratings agencies to enforce decency, and which are owned by the big players. Cross promotions and restrictive deals. Emphasis on costly aspects (3D models/textures, big movie explosions, bands' stadium performances) and minimizing what's open for everyone to produce in the medium (good game play, character development and dialog, musical skill). Legal changes from bought politicians. Massive advertising to create "big hits". Corruption of reviewers and education/training to be biased towards their products.
The games industry is in for one ugly ride. They won't kill indies, but "video game" won't mean the same thing anymore.