I've been swamped with unsolicited advertising for beehives for 48 hours now because of a moment's curiosity. Beehives. I can certainly solve the problem - but not all the sites I browse are happy with TOR, and I don't want to spend hours going over my cookie list to delete the trash. The problem is that passive advertising is generally acceptable but "targeted" advertising is about as precise as being vomited on by the local drunk outside a bar on Friday night. It should be blindingly obvious that this is simply ad-spamming and shows total indifference to readers who might otherwise be disposed to buy their products. It's also worth noting that if tracking is essential for company viability, then when do we start to hear lobbying that insists tracking cookies are protected by law? After all, how can you allow cookie removal but refuse cookie-proofing?
The MEPs should be congratulated for a burst of sanity. I predict that the demise of involuntary or extortion-based tracking cookies will make precisely no difference at all to internet economics.
Platforms are increasingly locations for international disputes about ownership of ideas and legitimacy of expression. If they have a location and a legally-identifiable owner, they are vulnerable. So protocols, and I wonder if something like Ethereum is a workable direction for distributed, unlocated, unattributable applications? It puts security back into the realm of consensuality instead of owned authority.
Wendy, the court decision was based on the evidence including press repetition, as mike observes. You can read it for yourself. I don't need to retry the case to justify my statement.
Keen as I am to support freedom of expression, speech is never totally free - the test being actual harm. The line relating to "hurt feelings" is quoted out of context. The judge was rejecting anything about hurt feelings and going on to focus on the real test in law which is harm to reputation. The key to understanding this is the full context of what happened in the UK in terms of Hopkins' claims being all over the tabloids, which amplified the damage to Monroe's reputation. It's like the "glass jaw" cases where if you punch someone during a fight and it turns out he has a fragile jaw, you can't escape damages by saying you didn't know and you just tapped him a bit. The test isn't what you thought you did, it's about the consequences of what you actually did.
Re: Two-hundred and thirty-three counter-examples and counting...
I used to listen to Radio Free 365 until it was driven off "air" by a change in royalty payment rules from proportional to flat rate. No warning, and they became instantly non-viable. Which was a shame for the artists they featured at no cost to listeners, because I used to hear a song I liked and buy the album, or several albums, by the artist. I bought pretty much every Suzanne Vega album after hearing Calypso from Solitude Standing. There were a lot like that, and mucho dineros for record companies. In the years since then I have purchased one album. Not a policy decision, just nothing crossing the radar. I could say the same thing about library books - I buy books based on what I borrow, at a rate of about 4 to 1. The booksellers should pay the public library for all that effective advertising.
Payola wasn't good, but the opposite is even worse for both artists and potential fans. The problem with letting lawyers run your business is that everything looks like litigation - including adoring fans.
If it works as advertised, really good news at last for Immigration, Human Rights and Asylum legal practices where the opposition is always government.
Borges was fascinated by the ontological issues of literary creation, especially replication - can a copy be more real than the "original"? Can generations of copies result in something which improves on the "original" - as with the Hronir in Tlon, Uqbar, a story which starts with a copyright infringement: "the encyclopedia is fallaciously called The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917) and is a literal but delinquent reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1902." Anyone familiar with Borges' works (which apparently does not include his wife) would find the "Fattened Aleph" an interesting extension of his literary approach and legacy. It certainly poses no threat to her revenue stream.
Global growth figures may also be hiding variability in country-by-country performance. UK Netflix is a far cry from most, apparently because it's competing with Sky for exclusives. The result is a UK presence which isn't worth the cost of membership. Possibly the same is true in other national versions.
Depressing but it shows the evolution of an interesting company from startup with the first PC sound boards and a handful of people, to a wide range of neat audio gizmos, to stagnation, irrelevance and patent trolling. Patent trolling is a bit like the end game for a star - a black hole for those too big to shrivel into a dismal burnt-out red dwarf. The real end for Creative was probably its sell-off of 3DLabs which took it out of the SOC and tablet market.
I do not like UK Netflix, which carries a feeble inventory because Sky beat them to most of the current content exclusives. Until recently I subscribed to US Netflix which required some overhead costs for VPN - but worth it for the content inventory. However the VPN crackdown is seriously irritating. If Netflix thinks this means I'm going back to UK Netflix, they are sorely mistaken. Amazon among others isn't great but it's better.
The entire geolocation 'piracy' issue is venal rubbish. In the era of analog TV and radio, broadcasters did not moan about the fact that waves failed to recognize national borders. When vinyl was king the MPAA did not man border patrols to prevent illicit smuggling of LPs. Amazingly, the entertainment industry seemed to work just as well or better than now, when seeing a current release when it's actually released is considered worse than people trafficking in most of the world.
If Netflix is unable or unwilling to stand up for its customers I feel sorry for it. The usual commercial wisdom is that one visibly unhappy customer equates to about 100 quietly unhappy customers. There are alternatives to Netflix, and market share can erode as quickly as it builds.
Aside from the obvious folly of assuming total global US hegemony over encryption products of all sorts (just saying it is like reading Hunter Thompson out loud) there is the interesting point implied by Uriel-238 that only encryption which appears to be encryption can be unencrypted on demand. Automated book cyphers could be problematic for the feds and a consideration of Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication might cast up other useful paradigms.
Yes, awful thing that dark net. Yet the same people probably think that unlisted phone numbers are pretty good thing. Better warn them about the dark telephone net.
So if the US has a back door key to my data, and the Chinese, then naturally the EU, and Russia - sooner or later the CASE statement to handle all the back door keys is going to be longer than the product code.
The current trend in musical copyright rests on the delusion that copyrightable music arose from nowhere, is absolutely unique, has no predecessors, draws on no musical or cultural traditions or works, and came into being without any debt to a shared musical heritage.
In fact, copyright in music is an attempt to enclose and control part of a heritage which belongs to the public, just like the Enclosure Acts stole common land in Britain. The longer copyright persists, the more it steals from the public. Downloading and reselling for commercial profit is not an answer, it is a parasite on the original immorality.
Rationally, copyright must be viewed as an indulgence granted by the state to borrow from the cultural heritage for a limited time, not a corporate right to steal from it forever.
At last - a breath of fresh air and sanity after years of FUD, redaction, logic failure and misinformation from the spooks. If someone can get NSA and FBI to turn off the whine spiggot maybe we can begin to trust US hardware again.
The digital media industry lost the plot when it tried to restrict distribution based on geography and release dates - and strong-armed the hardware manufacturers into enforcing it. Back up a few years: what would you have said if your turntable refused to play a new vinyl album because you snuck it into Montreal from Burlington? What would you have said if it was illegal to rip your fragile new album to reel-to-reel? Amazingly, music did not die just because common sense prevailed. Arguments about how easy it is to make digital copies really do not apply to one-off personal use. So why make something illegal when it is totally inoffensive? Because law is a very blunt weapon, especially when wielded by idiots.
So logically you'd be fine with a law that said it was OK to crush your car if you were found with a defective brake light, as long as there weren't too many prosecutions?
There is, in fact, an objective and clearly defined distinction and difference. Studies by Rand and a detailed analysis by Duke University and UNC at Chapel Hill instead conclude that:
"There is no profile of the type of person who becomes a terrorist; indeed, the process by which a person embraces violence is fluid, making it nearly impossible to predict who will move from espousing “radical” views to committing violent acts; and although the view that Islam requires attacks on Western targets (frequently described as jihadism) may provide an organizing principle or worldview that supports terrorism, Islam itself does not drive terrorism. In fact, the most recent research suggests that a well-developed Muslim identity actually counteracts jihadism."
TTIP - and no, the fact that a vote was withdrawn does not mean that either (a) the MEPs will vote it out globally or (b) that the ECM won't twist arms to get what it very clearly wantsd. EU decision-making is esoteric at best.
On the post: China's Solution To The VPN Quandary: Only Authorized, And Presumably Backdoored, Crypto Links Allowed
On the post: European Parliament Agrees Text For Key ePrivacy Regulation; Online Advertising Industry Hates It
Re: Re: Unintended consequences
The MEPs should be congratulated for a burst of sanity. I predict that the demise of involuntary or extortion-based tracking cookies will make precisely no difference at all to internet economics.
On the post: Google Removed Catalonian Referendum App Following Spanish Court Order
Protocols and Apps
On the post: Bad Libel Law Strikes Again: Silly UK Twitter Spat Results In Six Figure Payout
Re: Re:
On the post: Bad Libel Law Strikes Again: Silly UK Twitter Spat Results In Six Figure Payout
On the post: Ed Sheeran: Piracy Is What Made Me
Re: Two-hundred and thirty-three counter-examples and counting...
Payola wasn't good, but the opposite is even worse for both artists and potential fans. The problem with letting lawyers run your business is that everything looks like litigation - including adoring fans.
On the post: Snowden's Favorite Email Service Returns, With 'Trustful,' 'Cautious,' And 'Paranoid' Modes
On the post: Is A 'Fattened' Version Of A Famous Jorge Luis Borges Story Artistic Re-Creation, Or Copyright Infringement?
Fattened Aleph
called The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917) and is a literal but delinquent reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1902." Anyone familiar with Borges' works (which apparently does not include his wife) would find the "Fattened Aleph" an interesting extension of his literary approach and legacy. It certainly poses no threat to her revenue stream.
On the post: Netflix Tries To Blame Press Coverage Of Its Price Hikes For Lower Than Expected Subscriber Additions
On the post: Google Goes On The Offensive Against Troll Armed With Old Mp3 Player Patent
On the post: Netflix CEO Says Annoyed VPN Users Are 'Inconsequential'
If you don't like what you get, don't subscribe
The entire geolocation 'piracy' issue is venal rubbish. In the era of analog TV and radio, broadcasters did not moan about the fact that waves failed to recognize national borders. When vinyl was king the MPAA did not man border patrols to prevent illicit smuggling of LPs. Amazingly, the entertainment industry seemed to work just as well or better than now, when seeing a current release when it's actually released is considered worse than people trafficking in most of the world.
If Netflix is unable or unwilling to stand up for its customers I feel sorry for it. The usual commercial wisdom is that one visibly unhappy customer equates to about 100 quietly unhappy customers. There are alternatives to Netflix, and market share can erode as quickly as it builds.
On the post: Why Doesn't The Anti-Encryption Bill List Any Penalties?
Re One Strategem
On the post: 71% Want The Dark Net Shut Down, Showing Most Have No Idea What The Dark Net Is
Dark net
On the post: China Makes Big Push To Get American Tech Companies To Agree To Its Rules
On the post: Can You Really Be A Copyright Expert If You Think Copyright Should Last Forever?
In fact, copyright in music is an attempt to enclose and control part of a heritage which belongs to the public, just like the Enclosure Acts stole common land in Britain. The longer copyright persists, the more it steals from the public. Downloading and reselling for commercial profit is not an answer, it is a parasite on the original immorality.
Rationally, copyright must be viewed as an indulgence granted by the state to borrow from the cultural heritage for a limited time, not a corporate right to steal from it forever.
On the post: FTC Commissioner Says The Public Needs Strong Encryption, Not Backdoors
On the post: If The UK Wants People To 'Respect' Copyright, Outlawing Ripping CDs Is Probably Not Helping
On the post: If The UK Wants People To 'Respect' Copyright, Outlawing Ripping CDs Is Probably Not Helping
Re:
On the post: Charlie Hebdo Bows To Assassins' Veto, Hecklers' Veto; Will No Longer Mock Mohammed
Re: Re: Censorship
"There is no profile of the type of person who becomes a terrorist; indeed, the process by which a person embraces violence is fluid, making it nearly impossible to predict who will move from espousing “radical” views to committing violent acts; and although the view that Islam requires attacks on Western targets (frequently described as jihadism) may provide an organizing principle or worldview that supports terrorism, Islam itself does not drive terrorism. In fact, the most recent research suggests that a well-developed Muslim identity actually counteracts jihadism."
On the post: Fast Track Moves Forward And Now The Fight Is On TPP Directly
Re: Re: TPP
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