Well, to be fair, in the colloquial sense of the word Snowden is a traitor... to the NSA.
It's just that people disagree about whether that also means he's a traitor to the government, or to the American people, or indeed to America itself.
Under the Constitution, you can't charge someone with treason unless their acts satisfy the criteria quoted in this article - and Snowden's do not. However, the colloquial sense of "traitor" - which may well be defined in some textbooks - does not rely on, or even particularly relate to, the word "treason".
The colloquial sense of "traitor" is, for practical purposes, merely a more extreme and more loaded version of "betrayer". You see that all the time, as for example when one friend reveals something embarrassing about another to a third, and the second calls the first a traitor.
I suspect that much of the discourse about Snowden involving the word "traitor" is using, and relying on, that colloquial sense. Where that becomes dangerous is when people allow that to color their opinions on what is applicable in legal terms, and on whether Snowden meets the legal definition of a traitor.
Declaring a business model illegal seems just ludicrous to me. A product or service, yes, but an entire business model is quite another matter.
Do we have any other example, in the entirety of US history, of a case where a business model - rather than a product or service - has been declared illegal under US law?
I suppose arguably "protection" (i.e. "nice shop you've got here, be a shame if something were to happen to it") and "monopoly" could be described as business models, and those are theoretically illegal... but that idea still seems to be lacking something, somehow.
Typical HTML rendering engines automatically collapse multiple spaces (or even tabs, I think) into just one space for display purposes; that's been the case pretty much since the dawn of the Web.
There are ways to write a space in the raw HTML such that that doesn't happen, but I don't recall what any of them are off the top of my head.
The simplest way to avoid it is with the tag, which pretty much disables all HTML parsing and processing for whatever's inside the tag, but that's not on Techdirt's list of allowed HTML tags.
AFAICT, this is similar to the distinction in the US Code (I don't have the citation handy, but I have seen it myself) for "copies necessary for use" - e.g., running a program from disk involves copying it into RAM, but that doesn't count as a copy for purposes of requiring authorization under US copyright law.
I've been using HTTPS Everywhere (which I highly recommend, by the way), combined with a local ruleset for Techdirt, to force SSL here for a while now. I'd excluded the Insider Shop (rtb.techdirt.com) because it had produced a certificate mismatch error, but checking now, it appears that that has been fixed.
I've now turned that ruleset off, in the hopes that it will indeed be unnecessary for the future. If I encounter any issues, what would be the appropriate way to report them?
Translation: The rules put in place to reduce the use of excessive and deadly force against suspects is somehow increasing the number of people killed. Because reasons.
Oh, even more bluntly: 'We became cops so we could legally shoot at people, rules that restrict our ability to do so take all the fun out of it!'
I suspect the cited reasons would be "Because we can't use force as readily, criminals are able and willing to use force both against us and against law-abiding citizens, resulting in more of us and more of those law-abiding citizens being injured and/or killed.".
This may even be true, though at this point I'd at least want to see statistics supporting it (and probably some of the studies underlying those statistics, as well). The next question would be what the tipping point / balance point of the tradeoff is, where the cost from an increase in the successful use of force by criminals becomes enough to outweigh the benefit of the reduction in excessive use of force by police.
Re: Re: Re: As we say in the South, 'bless your heart'
It might be possible to fix the two-party lockin without first fixing the money problem, by instead first switching to a Condorcet-satisfying voting system - i.e., one based on ranked preferences (with appropriate methods for comparing and evaluating those expressed preferences), rather than on "vote for only one".
Unfortunately, the odds of that happening for any election higher than Mayor - without first fixing the overall locked-in political system, which is the goal of all this in the first place - are if anything potentially slimmer than those of getting the money problem fixed.
What's your source for the claim that only making the explicit and/or naked photos publicly available and searchable would be prohibited under this ruling?
All the stories I've found on this report that the ruling is that the photos must be deleted following the end of the relationship, if the other member of the relationship asks for it. Nothing about public availability is mentioned. Under that standard, yes, "[keep]ing [the] photos in your house" would indeed be prohibited.
None of those stories have included a link to, non-vague summary of, or direct quotes from the original ruling, either, so it's possible that all of them are based on an invalid premise (possibly rooted in one original mistaken or maliciously inaccurate news article). I see no reason to assume that that is the case, however, and the principle underlying Occam's razor would seem to argue against doing so.
(And of course, unless the ruling itself does specifically say something about public searchability, Google has nothing to do with this.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright implications are staggering
Why would he need to provide cases in German law where such things have happened?
He said:
this ruling is a huge outlier over anything any other civil law or common law jurisdiction has or ever rule in this way on
(Emphasis added.)
I.e., Germany itself is the outlier. For other things in German law, or even the entirety of the rest of German law, to support this would not undermine that point.
Sure. The only potentially questionable part is the "massively", and there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people playing it online at any given time; there generally aren't more than a couple of hundred per server, and most servers are far fewer than that, but that by itself doesn't seem enough to disqualify the term as far as I can tell.
I suspect that the argument will be that the contract / release the performers sign before appearing in the porn is sufficient for the grant of permission to be legally binding and irrevocable, whereas the implicit or verbal consent provided by the participants in the individual relationship is not.
The solution is for the mall operator to pay for shuttle buses to get people to it's mall
Which, under that analogy, would seem to be roughly what Netflix's paying to put their servers in Comcast facilities (to avoid having to pull the data across the broader backbone) would constitute.
As I understand matters, there are potentially four entities involved here: Netflix, its ISP, the end user, and the end user's ISP.
In the case being considered, the end user's ISP is Comcast. (Netflix's ISP may also be Comcast, in which case we have only three entities and things are somewhat simplified, but that isn't remotely guaranteed to apply.)
The end user pays the end user's ISP for access.
Netflix pays Netflix's ISP for access.
The reason data sent by Netflix through Netflix's ISP can reach the end user through the end user's ISP is that Netflix's ISP and the end user's ISP have a peering agreement with one another.
Under the terms of that peering agreement, every time Netflix's ISP sends data to the end user's ISP, Netflix's ISP pays the end user's ISP X dollars for every Y gigabytes of data sent.
The end user pays Comcast for access, meaning Comcast gets paid. Netflix pays their ISP for access, who pays Comcast for peering, meaning Comcast gets paid.
If Comcast thinks the money they get paid for incoming Netflix data isn't enough, they need to renegotiate their peering agreement with Netflix's ISP. If Netflix's ISP can't pay more at their current income levels, they can increase the amount they charge Netflix.
What they can't do is charge an extra fee directly to Netflix. Their costs for carrying the incoming Netflix data are supposed to be covered by what they get paid under the peering agreement. If theose costs aren't covered by that, then the problem is with the peering agreement, not with Netflix.
This sort of bare comment isn't really helpful. What exactly about the Techdirt comment system do you see as antiquated, or otherwise problematic?
I think it's one of the better ones I've seen in current use. About the only thing I could point to as unambiguously improvable about it is the fact that posting a new comment takes you to a different page, and you have to go "back" to continue reading from where you left off.
(There are of course quite a few of what I might call "ambiguously improvable" things, i.e., things which if changed in the way I have in mind might end up better, or worse, or even just different after all.)
I recognize, understand, and agree with the arguments in support of that position.
However, I think there are also legitimate arguments in support of the position that registration causes problems in some cases. (E.g., it serves as a barrier to entry, making it harder for the small guy to get started in the face of competition from larger and/or established players.)
Those arguments may or may not be strong enough to trump the arguments in opposition, but they are at least enough that they should not be dismissed out of hand. Also, making some concession to those arguments would likely make it far easier to get such a change adopted, and if properly crafted the negative impact of such a concession could be sufficiently minimal to allow it to be worthwhile.
That's why my own suggestion, which I posted in the comments a week or three back, did not require registration for the first (short) term of the copyright but did require it for renewal.
(I actually have other suggestions which could take the place of that one, including replacing copyright entirely with a "distribution right" which imposes some rather different limits, but I've yet to find one which satisfies me as sufficiently unambiguously an improvement over the current concept of copyright that I want to champion it as something to actually push for implementing.)
And under the distinguishing standard John Fenderson stated, it would then be classed not as a right (just as you said) but as a privilege.
I can see room to quibble about what term should be applied to it ("privilege" vs. something else), but you do seem to be agreeing that "right" is one term which should not be applied.
I think his point was that the only reason unauthorized copies in the 1500s did not inhibit development and progress is that such fast sharing was not possible, and so the creators were able to exploit their creations much better even in the absence of other effective ways to forbid or limit unauthorized use by others.
The argument would be that in order for progress and development to occur, some sort of barrier to free reuse by others is necessary, so that the creator of a new thing can profit from (and thus be compensated for the work that went into the creation of) that. Back in the 1500s, the slow pace of travel and communication served as that barrier; today, travel and communication are so fast that they do not provide such a barrier, and so some other barrier is needed.
I don't think I buy the premise of that argument, that such a barrier is necessary in the first place - but if you do, then the logic does seem to follow fairly well.
That's not necessarily reliable. Many projects do not have "deterministic builds", where compiling the same source for the same target with the same compiler and the same external libraries (et cetera) will produce a binary-identical file in all cases; in some cases, the compiler may go so far as to insert compile-time timestamps - or other time-dependent information - in the generated binary.
Producing a reliably deterministic build is still possible, but there's no guarantee that any given project has gone to the trouble to ensure it.
I think that was the point: that asking about 9/11 was an irrelevancy, just done because "9/11 is important, he's famous, therefore we should ask him what he thinks about 9/11".
I can agree with the derision towards that attitude in general, though I'm not sure it applies in this case.
While this is true, the mass damage to credibility in this case is not particularly the NSA's fault; it's the fault of whoever wrote "national security letters", and their associated automatic effectively-unappealable gag orders, into the law. (And partly / indirectly the fault of whoever voted to approve them, and hasn't worked to get them removed from the law since.)
On the post: Marc Andreessen Thinks Snowden, Administration Are To Blame For Backlash Against US Tech Industry
Re:
It's just that people disagree about whether that also means he's a traitor to the government, or to the American people, or indeed to America itself.
Under the Constitution, you can't charge someone with treason unless their acts satisfy the criteria quoted in this article - and Snowden's do not. However, the colloquial sense of "traitor" - which may well be defined in some textbooks - does not rely on, or even particularly relate to, the word "treason".
The colloquial sense of "traitor" is, for practical purposes, merely a more extreme and more loaded version of "betrayer". You see that all the time, as for example when one friend reveals something embarrassing about another to a third, and the second calls the first a traitor.
I suspect that much of the discourse about Snowden involving the word "traitor" is using, and relying on, that colloquial sense. Where that becomes dangerous is when people allow that to color their opinions on what is applicable in legal terms, and on whether Snowden meets the legal definition of a traitor.
On the post: Corrupt State Index: Virginia DMV Orders Uber And Lyft To Stop Operating Immediately
Do we have any other example, in the entirety of US history, of a case where a business model - rather than a product or service - has been declared illegal under US law?
I suppose arguably "protection" (i.e. "nice shop you've got here, be a shame if something were to happen to it") and "monopoly" could be described as business models, and those are theoretically illegal... but that idea still seems to be lacking something, somehow.
On the post: Verizon Sends Netflix A Cease & Desist, Saying It Can't Blame Verizon For Clogged Networks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Dear Verizon
There are ways to write a space in the raw HTML such that that doesn't happen, but I don't recall what any of them are off the top of my head.
The simplest way to avoid it is with the tag, which pretty much disables all HTML parsing and processing for whatever's inside the tag, but that's not on Techdirt's list of allowed HTML tags.
On the post: EU Court Of Justice: Just Viewing Stuff Online Isn't Infringing On Copyright
Re: Re: The Trouble With This Decision Is...
On the post: Techdirt Is Now 100% SSL
I've now turned that ruleset off, in the hopes that it will indeed be unnecessary for the future. If I encounter any issues, what would be the appropriate way to report them?
On the post: US Marshals Step In To Keep Florida Police Department's Stingray Documents Out Of The Hands Of The ACLU
Re: Re:
This may even be true, though at this point I'd at least want to see statistics supporting it (and probably some of the studies underlying those statistics, as well). The next question would be what the tipping point / balance point of the tradeoff is, where the cost from an increase in the successful use of force by criminals becomes enough to outweigh the benefit of the reduction in excessive use of force by police.
On the post: US Marshals Step In To Keep Florida Police Department's Stingray Documents Out Of The Hands Of The ACLU
Re: Re: Re: As we say in the South, 'bless your heart'
Unfortunately, the odds of that happening for any election higher than Mayor - without first fixing the overall locked-in political system, which is the goal of all this in the first place - are if anything potentially slimmer than those of getting the money problem fixed.
On the post: German Court Rules Ex-Lovers Must Disappear Consensual Previously Taken Nude Pictures Of The Other
Re: I think this is wrong on several levels
All the stories I've found on this report that the ruling is that the photos must be deleted following the end of the relationship, if the other member of the relationship asks for it. Nothing about public availability is mentioned. Under that standard, yes, "[keep]ing [the] photos in your house" would indeed be prohibited.
None of those stories have included a link to, non-vague summary of, or direct quotes from the original ruling, either, so it's possible that all of them are based on an invalid premise (possibly rooted in one original mistaken or maliciously inaccurate news article). I see no reason to assume that that is the case, however, and the principle underlying Occam's razor would seem to argue against doing so.
(And of course, unless the ruling itself does specifically say something about public searchability, Google has nothing to do with this.)
On the post: German Court Rules Ex-Lovers Must Disappear Consensual Previously Taken Nude Pictures Of The Other
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright implications are staggering
He said:
(Emphasis added.)
I.e., Germany itself is the outlier. For other things in German law, or even the entirety of the rest of German law, to support this would not undermine that point.
On the post: Everyone Go Crazy: Prepare To Blame The Internet For Murder-Inducing Ghost Stories
Re: Re: Re: Re: Maybe...
On the post: German Court Rules Ex-Lovers Must Disappear Consensual Previously Taken Nude Pictures Of The Other
Re: Porn industry next
On the post: FCC Comment Page Buckles To Its Knees After John Oliver Asks Everyone To Comment
Re: Re: Re: Re: Misinformed jokes
Which, under that analogy, would seem to be roughly what Netflix's paying to put their servers in Comcast facilities (to avoid having to pull the data across the broader backbone) would constitute.
As I understand matters, there are potentially four entities involved here: Netflix, its ISP, the end user, and the end user's ISP.
In the case being considered, the end user's ISP is Comcast. (Netflix's ISP may also be Comcast, in which case we have only three entities and things are somewhat simplified, but that isn't remotely guaranteed to apply.)
The end user pays the end user's ISP for access.
Netflix pays Netflix's ISP for access.
The reason data sent by Netflix through Netflix's ISP can reach the end user through the end user's ISP is that Netflix's ISP and the end user's ISP have a peering agreement with one another.
Under the terms of that peering agreement, every time Netflix's ISP sends data to the end user's ISP, Netflix's ISP pays the end user's ISP X dollars for every Y gigabytes of data sent.
The end user pays Comcast for access, meaning Comcast gets paid. Netflix pays their ISP for access, who pays Comcast for peering, meaning Comcast gets paid.
If Comcast thinks the money they get paid for incoming Netflix data isn't enough, they need to renegotiate their peering agreement with Netflix's ISP. If Netflix's ISP can't pay more at their current income levels, they can increase the amount they charge Netflix.
What they can't do is charge an extra fee directly to Netflix. Their costs for carrying the incoming Netflix data are supposed to be covered by what they get paid under the peering agreement. If theose costs aren't covered by that, then the problem is with the peering agreement, not with Netflix.
On the post: EA Labels President: DRM Is A Failed Strategy, But SimCity Didn't Have Any DRM
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Security Experts Looking To Possibly Fork And Rescue TrueCrypt
Re: Dear Techdirt...
I think it's one of the better ones I've seen in current use. About the only thing I could point to as unambiguously improvable about it is the fact that posting a new comment takes you to a different page, and you have to go "back" to continue reading from where you left off.
(There are of course quite a few of what I might call "ambiguously improvable" things, i.e., things which if changed in the way I have in mind might end up better, or worse, or even just different after all.)
On the post: The Web Is In The Public Domain... But The Document That Put It There Is Locked Up By Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Automatic Copyrights
However, I think there are also legitimate arguments in support of the position that registration causes problems in some cases. (E.g., it serves as a barrier to entry, making it harder for the small guy to get started in the face of competition from larger and/or established players.)
Those arguments may or may not be strong enough to trump the arguments in opposition, but they are at least enough that they should not be dismissed out of hand. Also, making some concession to those arguments would likely make it far easier to get such a change adopted, and if properly crafted the negative impact of such a concession could be sufficiently minimal to allow it to be worthwhile.
That's why my own suggestion, which I posted in the comments a week or three back, did not require registration for the first (short) term of the copyright but did require it for renewal.
(I actually have other suggestions which could take the place of that one, including replacing copyright entirely with a "distribution right" which imposes some rather different limits, but I've yet to find one which satisfies me as sufficiently unambiguously an improvement over the current concept of copyright that I want to champion it as something to actually push for implementing.)
On the post: Public.Resource.Org Sued (Again) For Publication Of A Document Incorporated Into Federal Regulations [Update]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I can see room to quibble about what term should be applied to it ("privilege" vs. something else), but you do seem to be agreeing that "right" is one term which should not be applied.
On the post: WIPO's Development Agenda At The Crossroads: Does IP Or Development Take Priority?
Re: Re: Re: Re: development to what, exactly?
The argument would be that in order for progress and development to occur, some sort of barrier to free reuse by others is necessary, so that the creator of a new thing can profit from (and thus be compensated for the work that went into the creation of) that. Back in the 1500s, the slow pace of travel and communication served as that barrier; today, travel and communication are so fast that they do not provide such a barrier, and so some other barrier is needed.
I don't think I buy the premise of that argument, that such a barrier is necessary in the first place - but if you do, then the logic does seem to follow fairly well.
On the post: TrueCrypt Page Says It's Not Secure, All Development Stopped
Re:
Producing a reliably deterministic build is still possible, but there's no guarantee that any given project has gone to the trouble to ensure it.
On the post: NBC Confirms That Snowden Did Try To Raise Concerns Internally Before Going To Journalists
Re: Re:
I can agree with the derision towards that attitude in general, though I'm not sure it applies in this case.
On the post: UPS Insists That It Is Not Helping The NSA 'Interdict' Packages To Install Backdoors
Re:
Next >>