Modplan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the lots-to-talk-about dept
This week's "favorites of the week" post comes from Modplan. He's not the most prolific commenter, but I always enjoy his thoughtful responses.First, a thanks to Mike for asking me to write this week's post. When approached to do the favorite posts of the week, I was initially worried I wouldn't be able to find much of interest in a week I thought it wasn't as eventful of a week as it turned out to be when looking back for the selections, so I took a few swigs of my kool-aid and prepared for the inevitable drop in value that follows from doing anything for free and got writing. I only hope the following selections and my musings are at least of mild interest to even just a few of you.
I've been following the "Freedom Box" project for quite a while after first seeing some of Eben Moglen's speeches regarding freedom, the web and free software, which had also inspired other projects like Diaspora, so it's no surprise that the article "Sometimes 'Piracy' & Freedom Look Remarkably Similar" was something of particular interest. I think the article leads into a point I'd personally been thinking about for while, in that much of what makes the web so great at freedom of speech is also fundamentally the same as what makes it great for widespread piracy. To attack piracy is to often end up -- inadvertently or not -- attacking the same things that give us a greater freedom of speech and efficiency. With modern attempts at attacking the former in some ways inhibiting the latter, they result in rather ham-fisted ways of working around that technologically, legally and PR wise. I'd be interested to see, if these kinds of devices take off, what precisely will be demanded to be done to combat the higher chances of piracy that seem will inevitably come with the greater protection of privacy and free speech.
Next up is the story of how the Tolkien estate is trying to put a stop to a historical fiction book involving the deceased author. I think we can all understand at some point the feeling of needing to fight back against something said that's untrue about us or the need to not be associated with something we don't support or like, but it seems like publicity laws, as they are, will just continue to be abused. I'm not sure what merit cases involving deceased authors and Hulk Hogan impersonations have outside of getting in the way of what seems like perfectly valid forms of criticism and bad comedy, regardless of any fears of association.
Speaking of overly broad rights and protections, I'm reminded of the story on the EU and Korea trade agreement, which to me didn't appear to get a lot of attention the first time round. Though I think I only need to point out this particular part to show just how bad this agreement is:
The data exclusivity provision prevents generic drug manufacturers from relying on data used by the patentee for market authorisation. Clinical test data generated by the patent holder, for example, therefore cannot be used for market authorisation of a generic drug using the same substance, obliging the generic drug users to reiterate the tests.If only every society were required to reinvent the wheel, we'd all have teleporters by now.
Moving swiftly on, here's a case we can all learn from with Sweden fining a file sharer €200 ($311, working out at $7 a song). I'm sure this is something the USTR will balk at, but sometimes the US (and us at Techdirt) can get so involved in debating, arguing and extending its own laws, they forget there's a whole world out there we can communicate with and learn from, not merely try to coerce into our ways, with more reasonable file sharing damages certainly being one of those areas.
I'd also like to briefly highlight the stories of the US paying for software that didn't work, the revolving door between Government and industry , and where would we be without ICE admitting to taking down 84,000 domains for the sake of 10 -- not only did the Government give plenty more ammo this week to show themselves to be incompetent and untrustworthy, but they also gave us yet more reasons to dislike the patent system. They really worked had this week didn't they? Just think that if they hadn't done all this work, our national security would be in danger.
To put this post to bed, I'd like to end with more positive stories -- TED's success in opening up its content to the world, a porn company deciding to work with rather than against pirates and its customers, and that cheap video games are not necessarily bad for the industry. I think the story of TED in particular helps show that not only is cheap and free not necessarily as devaluing or industry-destroying as is regularly claimed, but can, in fact, lead to more success and a better situation for all. It's been a regular point at Techdirt that it's not always a zero-sum game when it comes to freeing content and making money, it's just a matter of thinking beyond being simply a gatekeeper.
That's it from me, back to lurking in the comments section from now on.
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Mike is the Walrus
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
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There's nothing like shutting down a domain for 0.01% of its content to illustrate why shutting down websites with nothing more than a judge's rubberstamp is a really bad idea. Shutting down domains containing protected or potentially protected speech should require a trial and establishment of guilt. The first amendment is important enough that nothing less than that should ever suffice.
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The United States sure is fucked in the head when it comes to the law.
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If the bodega is being used without the consent of the owner or his knowledge I would complain loudly so would you if people seized your company because one employee was selling weed to other there.
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Would calling them subdomains harm your argument too much?
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The difference is huge.
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Just as mooo.com has to register mooo.com with one of the various .com registrar, so does illegal.mooo.com have to register illegal.mooo.com with the operators of mooo.com. Whether mooo.com asks for any personally identifiable information or not is beside the point, for any way you slice it illegal.mooo.com is not the same entity as mooo.com.
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Think of it as like an office phone. You are at extension 101. It is a sub-phone of the main phone line, 555-1212. From a legal standpoint, there is only one phone line. What is done with the phone line after (including subletting it to another user) isn't an issue that would stop legal action in regards to the phone line.
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Following your logic, from a legal sense, there would be no "slicing" between mooo.com and all .com domains. Each step is merely a further nesting of the same basic principle, the only difference between them being who owns and who we trust to manage said domain. In the case of .com, it's ICANN, in the case of domains on mooo.com, it's afraid.org.
www.mooo.com will result in a request to ICANN's DNS service for where mooo is - after that mooo's DNS is asked where www is (www usually refers to HTTP on port 80). No different than if you were to ask for a blog at Blogspot or Wordpress - does that justify shutting down all of Wordpress's and Blogspot's subdomains for 10 child porn blogs? Does that make it impossible technically and legally to "slice" between all of Blogspot and Wordpress and the 10 child porn blogs hosted on them?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hMkSNiBPvE
Excuse the presenter being drugged up, he was in an accident.
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Besides if they contacted the registrar why couldn't they have contacted the owner of that domain to see if they could work something out?
So now Facebook can be seized right, because I know there were instances of CP there and in other platforms like Blogspot, Orkut, MySpace and so forth.
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Why would it imply that? Please explain the logic behind your reasoning.
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http:/ /www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/18/fed_domain_seizure_slammed/
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ DHS-Domain-Seizures-Get-Ridiculous-COICA-Returns-112793
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/16/us- government-accidentally-shuts-down-84000-websites-during-child-porn-raid/
From the query:
http://www.google.com/search?q=ice+seize+84.000
There are at least 365 k citations available is that large enough for ya.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-18/lawful-websites-seized-in-u-s-operation-again st-child-porn.html
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Trying to discuss this with you guys is sort of a waste of time, even when presented with facts you ignore them. The Kool aid is strong in these ones.
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You don't know how it works and how it relates to the real world and that is frustrating.
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Sounds like a plan here cause really, they are all really subs of those right? right?
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And the domains were registered - with the organization responsible for mooo.com, just like subdomains of co.uk are registered with the organization responsible for co.uk. There is no special distinction between a "subdomain" and a "domain"; a subdomain is nothing more than a domain within another domain.
But all of this is just a red herring. The real problem here is that all these sites were not taken down. Instead, they were hijacked - replaced with a boilerplate page - and that boilerplate page accused the site owner of child pornography. In current western society, few (if any) accusations can be more damaging than that. Since the accusation is so strong, even a single site being falsely accused of that would be one too many. It would have been much better to just take the domain down quietly.
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No, .co.uk is a TLD, not a domain.
Keep trying.
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"There are three aspects to choosing a domain name:
* The choice of Top Level Domain � such as .uk
* The choice of Second Level Domain - such as .co.uk, .plc.uk or .me.uk
* The name itself - such as bbc.co.uk"
http://www.nic.uk/registrants/register/choose/
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"Unusually, the '.co.uk' second-level domain within '.uk' is more widely used than for most other countries where the ccTLD has primacy. This is a result of specific rules set by Nominet, the UK's naming body, prohibiting direct use of the ccTLD"
IN other words, you cannot register a .uk directly, you have to register it under one of the listed choices. Those registrations are kept as a top level domain registration (making a .co.uk on par with a .com or .net address, example).
Put another way, you can do a whois on .co.uk domains, but you cannot do a whois on .moooo.com domains.
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Put another way, you can do a whois on .co.uk domains, but you cannot do a whois on .moooo.com domains.
You deliberately miss the point every time.
The fact is that both technically and legal-technically you can probably argue the case either way( and I guess you would if you thought it helped your cause ) but in the real world the websites of 84,000 websites belonging to 84,000 completely separate organisations only linked together by the fact that they bought their web- hosting from the same supplier, were taken down in one go.
It's like the police getting a description of a getaway car as a BMW and IMPOUND every BMW in the world in response.
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(and btw you're wrong)
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Wow your stupidity is just unbelievable.
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Let me fix that for you: 'No, .co.uk is a top level domain, not a domain.'
Notice anything wrong?
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They seized one brach that had a lot of other branches in it, which means they are not investigating anything the way it should be, which means the people involved don't understand exactly how the technology works, which means you also is ignorant about technology and its inner workings.
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What ICE did was seize various different domains in practice, it doesn't matter that only one was registered.
Under that folder in the server there were 84.000 different websites.
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Sorry, doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you could install windows 95 and learn something too. I don't know what, but they would each be amusingly similar.
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The latest stable release from HTTP-Apache is 2.2.17 the latest version XAMPP is using is 2.2.17.
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Even more if the other side is trolling, which appears to me to be the case here. Focusing on a minor nitpicky point to the exclusion of more important issues (like the fact that the sites were wrongly and publicly accused of doing something very bad) is a classic trolling strategy. Giving them extreme reactions (like that kind of analogy) is exactly what they want.
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Wow, lots of things wrong here.
1. Sure, we can. We probably won't, though. Did you mean to ask if we would?
2. So far as I know, there is no eponymous group of people who use Nazi analogies, so it's no use asking if 'us guys' can stop.
3. If there is a group, I'm obviously not in it, because I'm not a guy.
4. Godwin didn't create a rule. He made an observation. There's a difference.
5. Godwin did ask that people only use Nazi references appropriately and in context so that those references don't lose impact through overuse. However, I made a good point, using the Holocaust reference in an appropriate and contextual manner, so I don't see the problem there.
6. However, Godwin's Law does not apply to discussion of totalitarian regimes or actions, like the one we're discussing, so even if my analogy was not appropriate or contextual, it wouldn't matter. In short, Godwin's Law doesn't apply to this thread.
7. I didn't focus on a minor point. The entire point is that ICE took down 80,000 sites because it had a problem with a handful of them, and did so illegally. This was a totalitarian move. Pointing that out, even with satire, isn't trolling. End of story.
8. If we change what we say or do because of trolls, then the trolls have won, and I simply can't be a part of that.
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I was not saying you focused on a minor point, I was saying the one you were replying to focused on a minor point. Sorry if I was not clear enough.
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This situation is virtually* identical to CDT v. Pappert. In that case, the district court found that the Pennsylvania law was both prior restraint, and a violation of the Commerce Clause.
In other words, it's already been decided in court that actions like this are unconstitutional.
*"Virtually!" Right? 'Cause the internet is "virtual?" Get it?
(crickets)
...Tough crowd.
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Pithy
I liked that.
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Agreed
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+1
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Re the former, the data is a scarcity as between the original drug developer and generic "wannabes". Is access to this data, which is maintained in confidence for obvious reasons, deemed a public right? It is, after all, a trade secret by any standard definition. If its trade secret status can be truncated with the stroke of a pen, would this not suggest that for all practical purposes trade secrets are no longer available under law?
The auto emissions comments are all wrapped up nicely in an argument "it's all about clean air". Is it possible, mind you...possible, that the emissions standards in Korea were enacted (for example), not as a health measure, but as a means to protect domestic industry from foreign competition?
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You misunderstand the objection. They're not asking for access to the data. The generic drug companies don't want to repeat the testing process - lab tests, animal testing, clinical trials, etc. - for a drug that has already gone through that entire process, and already been approved by the government.
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There is a difference between an "identical" generic and a "bioequivalent" generic, which may in some cases lead to significant adverse reactions by patients taking a bioequivalent.
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Apparently, the trade agreement makes no distinction between the two.
Anyway, generic drug makers have to do tests to prove that the "bioequivalent" drugs work the same way as the name brands. They've always had to do this, at least here in the U.S.
Maybe in Korea is different... but then why focus on all generic drugs, even identical ones? Why have the generic drug manufacturers redo all the tests from square one, and not just prove that the drugs are equivalent?
It sounds like they're trying to protect not the well-being of the Korean populace, but the well-being of Pfizer's wallet.
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1. Because often it was obtained (at least partly) by publicly funded research.
2. Because the drugs have benefited from patent protection - and part of the "deal" is that the information is published.
3. Because keeping it secret risks people's lives.
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I'm not sure this makes sense at all when you're already enforcing patents to deliberately exclude people from making a drug. What exactly is the point of going further and making generic producers repeat tests of "safety and efficacy" we already know the outcome of? It's unnecessary.
Also, it doesn't appear to make any distinction between data kept private and data that's public - only that you cannot use such data without authorisation for at least 5 years (10 years for plant protection products).
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/october/tradoc_145180.pdf Page 14
There was also another odd part of the agreement that guaranteed if you were to judge someone worthy of life protection with copyright, you were at minimum to guarantee 70 year protection after their death (Page 3).
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