A "really great article" that gets the history badly wrong, twisting it to fit QuestionCopyright's agenda. They try, against all historical fact, to present the Statute of Anne as a way of extending the Stationers' censorship scheme by using innuendo to tie it in to the Stationers' previous (failed) attempts to restore their censorship system that had previously been rejected, but in real fact no such tie to the law that did get passed exits.
The Statute of Anne was created to fix the chaos of the power vacuum that resulted from the dissolution of the Stationers' system. When the article states that "Authors by themselves might have no inherent desire to control copying, but publishers do," they're throwing history out the window. Back before the Internet, when publishing was synonymous with the printing press, which required not only a press (an expensive piece of high technology) but also a good deal of (also expensive) skilled labor to typeset and print the book, publishing one's work was well beyond the means of most authors. But once the Stationers' authority, which regulated the publishing system, was dissolved, publishers found themselves able to publish and sell whatever they wanted to--they were the ones who had the technology and the technical expertise to use it--without the authors having any say in it. Frequently something would get published without the author's permission and also without paying any royalties to the author, simply because they could.
The Statute of Anne was created explicitly to put an end to the publishers' practice of leveraging their power and expensive technology to abuse authors, by giving the authors a legal right of control over the publishers' use of their works. It was fundamentally a good thing.
The DMCA, by contrast, was created explicitly to enable publishers to leverage their power and expensive technology to abuse everyone through DRM and the DMCA takedown system. It is an abomination that flies in the face of not only proper copyright, but of our most sacred legal traditions, such as the presumption of inncence, and it needs to be done away with.
Are you trying to disagree with me? I've been saying for years that DRM has zero legitimacy and needs to be made illegal, because it's functionally no different from malware whose purpose is to hack your computer.
The said code is closed source software and our client is sole proprietor of the same.
"Closed source" does not mean "proprietary"; it means that the source is not made available.
Yes, there's a difference. As a programmer I use several proprietary third-party libraries in my work, which I have the source to as part of the licensing for the library. Every company I've worked at has had this as a requirement; you don't want to use a closed-source library where the source code is not available at all, because when bugs arise you want to be able to get inside the code and fix it. The thing is, though, we paid for this proprietary source code and received it under license from the developers, as part of a contractual relationship with explicit obligations on the part of both parties.
Because of the way JavaScript and web browsers work, when a script is put on a webpage, the source is sent to the end-user automatically. There is no contractual relationship, and I'm not a lawyer but I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to establish the act of placing a script on a public-facing web server as constituting implied consent for the public to copy the code, because that's the only way it can possibly work.
In other words, these guys don't have a leg to stand on. There is not and can never be (at least not without radically revamping the entire infrastructure of the World Wide Web) such a thing as closed-source JavaScript that one is not permitted to copy freely.
Mine too. What do allegations that this woman was having an affair with one of the witnesses have to do with this woman's ex-husband? It feels like there are a bunch of details missing from this account...
What ransom and blackmail? Ransom and blackmail require a threat. They require leverage. When he turned over all of his documents, what leverage does he have to threaten anyone with?
Or, looking at it from a different angle, if he was interested in ransom and blackmail, where are his terms? At what point did this "traitor" ever demand the Government do X or else he would do Y?
This appears to be an interesting variation on the high court/low court issue.
Recall that less than two weeks ago, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a guy who was blatantly threatening his ex-wife with violence because he made an utterly transparent claim that it was "just rap lyrics" and he was "expressing himself." This despite the fact that he had never performed rap music for an audience or attempted to sell his work as a songwriter, and--according to the ex-wife at least--didn't even listen to rap. That's about as blatant a lie as you can possibly come up with, but he still got off the hook.
But threaten someone important, like a federal judge, even when the threats are obviously not real this time, and boy does everyone take it seriously!
Re: Re: Makes Just As Little Sense As Banning Research Into Gun Safety Or Climate Change
Cracking encryption is one thing. Trying to find flaws in trusted systems is a perfectly legitimate piece of security research, and if any holes can be found they need to be found and published so we can improve our systems. But (as I understand it at least) that's not what this ban is about.
It's banning undermining encryption: putting backdoors into encryption products and letting people think they're safe. That's the opposite of legitimate security research, and it holds the same moral status as the Takata airbag scandal.
Re: Makes Just As Little Sense As Banning Research Into Gun Safety Or Climate Change
I disagree. There are some questions that should not be asked, and "how can we efficiently sabotage vital technology that keeps the general public safe and make sure they don't find out?" is absolutely one of them!
The oversight committee has its eye on FOIA reform and the government could use a swift kick right in the exemptions. But whether or not a so-called "terrorist's" assertions about near-bribes and SOP stonewalling will push it in that direction remains to be seen.
I hope so. Mr. Leopold is fighting the good fight, and there are times that various parts of the government need to be reminded that they work for We The People.
Fourth, most economists expect China's economic growth will continue to be much faster than that of the United States.
Seriously? Have they not been paying attention to what's been going on in China over the last couple years?
Remember when the US housing bubble burst in 2007, and about a year later, it almost crashed the entire economy? Well, China's got a much bigger housing bubble than the USA ever had, and it's currently in the process of bursting. Right now is a very bad time to be tying your future to hopes of continued Chinese prosperity!
The term "fill the tree" was used in yesterday's article (linked above) and in the source article for yesterday's article as well, but it's not explained anywhere. For the benefit of those of us not familiar with the idiom, what exactly does "filling the tree" entail?
Yes, exactly this. This is what I've been saying the whole time: it's insane to even ask the question "should this merger be allowed?" rather than the question that they should be asking: Should Comcast be broken up as an illegal monopoly?
No matter what some are claiming, there are some important reforms in the USA Freedom Act. It doesn't go far enough, and the bill is far from perfect, but as a starting point it has some value.
Am I misremembering something here? I seem to recall that various groups following these issues, such as the EFF, pulled support for it because it not only "doesn't go far enough" but actively makes some things worse, even without McConnell's help.
On the post: Guy Reveals Airtel Secretly Inserting JavaScript, Gets Threatened With Jail For Criminal Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Re: Abolish Copyright
The Statute of Anne was created to fix the chaos of the power vacuum that resulted from the dissolution of the Stationers' system. When the article states that "Authors by themselves might have no inherent desire to control copying, but publishers do," they're throwing history out the window. Back before the Internet, when publishing was synonymous with the printing press, which required not only a press (an expensive piece of high technology) but also a good deal of (also expensive) skilled labor to typeset and print the book, publishing one's work was well beyond the means of most authors. But once the Stationers' authority, which regulated the publishing system, was dissolved, publishers found themselves able to publish and sell whatever they wanted to--they were the ones who had the technology and the technical expertise to use it--without the authors having any say in it. Frequently something would get published without the author's permission and also without paying any royalties to the author, simply because they could.
The Statute of Anne was created explicitly to put an end to the publishers' practice of leveraging their power and expensive technology to abuse authors, by giving the authors a legal right of control over the publishers' use of their works. It was fundamentally a good thing.
The DMCA, by contrast, was created explicitly to enable publishers to leverage their power and expensive technology to abuse everyone through DRM and the DMCA takedown system. It is an abomination that flies in the face of not only proper copyright, but of our most sacred legal traditions, such as the presumption of inncence, and it needs to be done away with.
On the post: Guy Reveals Airtel Secretly Inserting JavaScript, Gets Threatened With Jail For Criminal Copyright Infringement
Re: Re:
On the post: Guy Reveals Airtel Secretly Inserting JavaScript, Gets Threatened With Jail For Criminal Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Re: MITM attacks
On the post: Guy Reveals Airtel Secretly Inserting JavaScript, Gets Threatened With Jail For Criminal Copyright Infringement
"Closed source" does not mean "proprietary"; it means that the source is not made available.
Yes, there's a difference. As a programmer I use several proprietary third-party libraries in my work, which I have the source to as part of the licensing for the library. Every company I've worked at has had this as a requirement; you don't want to use a closed-source library where the source code is not available at all, because when bugs arise you want to be able to get inside the code and fix it. The thing is, though, we paid for this proprietary source code and received it under license from the developers, as part of a contractual relationship with explicit obligations on the part of both parties.
Because of the way JavaScript and web browsers work, when a script is put on a webpage, the source is sent to the end-user automatically. There is no contractual relationship, and I'm not a lawyer but I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to establish the act of placing a script on a public-facing web server as constituting implied consent for the public to copy the code, because that's the only way it can possibly work.
In other words, these guys don't have a leg to stand on. There is not and can never be (at least not without radically revamping the entire infrastructure of the World Wide Web) such a thing as closed-source JavaScript that one is not permitted to copy freely.
On the post: Missouri Prosecutor Issues Subpoena To Reporters Demanding Emails They Had With Her Ex-Husband
Re:
On the post: Justice Department Issues Subpoenas To Reason To Identify Angry Anonymous Commenters
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Or, looking at it from a different angle, if he was interested in ransom and blackmail, where are his terms? At what point did this "traitor" ever demand the Government do X or else he would do Y?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
On the post: Justice Department Issues Subpoenas To Reason To Identify Angry Anonymous Commenters
Recall that less than two weeks ago, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a guy who was blatantly threatening his ex-wife with violence because he made an utterly transparent claim that it was "just rap lyrics" and he was "expressing himself." This despite the fact that he had never performed rap music for an audience or attempted to sell his work as a songwriter, and--according to the ex-wife at least--didn't even listen to rap. That's about as blatant a lie as you can possibly come up with, but he still got off the hook.
But threaten someone important, like a federal judge, even when the threats are obviously not real this time, and boy does everyone take it seriously!
On the post: DailyDirt: That Lucy In The Sky... Is A Diamond
Re:
On the post: TISA Agreement Might Outlaw Governments From Mandating Open Source Software In Many Situations
Re: Re: Re: Re: TISA
On the post: Putin's Internet Propaganda War Is Much Bigger And Weirder Than You Think, Now Extending Into The States
Re: Re: OMG! "propaganda war against the entire internet"!
On the post: House Overwehelmingly Passes Amendments Blocking Funding For Undermining Encryption
Re: Re: Makes Just As Little Sense As Banning Research Into Gun Safety Or Climate Change
It's banning undermining encryption: putting backdoors into encryption products and letting people think they're safe. That's the opposite of legitimate security research, and it holds the same moral status as the Takata airbag scandal.
On the post: House Overwehelmingly Passes Amendments Blocking Funding For Undermining Encryption
Re: Makes Just As Little Sense As Banning Research Into Gun Safety Or Climate Change
On the post: Why Do Our Senators Keep Calling Ed Snowden 'Eric Snowden'?
On the post: Pentagon Offered 'FOIA Terrorist' Jason Leopold A Stack Of Documents To Just Shut Up And Go Away Forever
I hope so. Mr. Leopold is fighting the good fight, and there are times that various parts of the government need to be reminded that they work for We The People.
On the post: WikiLeaks Wants To Crowdsource $100K Reward For Leak Of TPP Text, As Doubts Grow About Agreement's Value
Seriously? Have they not been paying attention to what's been going on in China over the last couple years?
Remember when the US housing bubble burst in 2007, and about a year later, it almost crashed the entire economy? Well, China's got a much bigger housing bubble than the USA ever had, and it's currently in the process of bursting. Right now is a very bad time to be tying your future to hopes of continued Chinese prosperity!
On the post: USA Freedom Act Passes As All Of Mitch McConnell's Bad Amendments Fail
Re: Re:
On the post: USA Freedom Act Passes As All Of Mitch McConnell's Bad Amendments Fail
Filling the tree?
On the post: Comcast Was So Incredibly Full Of Crap During Its Merger Sales Pitch, The Government Is Considering Additional Punishment
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On the post: Comcast Was So Incredibly Full Of Crap During Its Merger Sales Pitch, The Government Is Considering Additional Punishment
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On the post: Mitch McConnell Pushing Bad Amendments To Block Any Useful Amendments On Surveillance Reform
Am I misremembering something here? I seem to recall that various groups following these issues, such as the EFF, pulled support for it because it not only "doesn't go far enough" but actively makes some things worse, even without McConnell's help.
Is that still the case?
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