Even if this were not just useless security theater and could actually improve our security, I would rather accept the risk of dying in terrorist attack than living in a society that needs to humiliate dying old woman to feel secure. Because this kind of society is what I call cowardly society.
Czech translator who makes subtitles for American movies wrote article (in Czech, sorry) about how difficult it has become to translate movies because of the restrictions enforced by studios.
For example he claims that when he is asked to do the translation, he gets the copy of the movie with action scenes cut out and other scenes fuzzy so he can only see speaking person's mouth. It can be difficult to understand the meaning of a sentence without knowing the context... so sometimes subtitles don't even make sense.
And I guess American studios will be really surprised when they find out that many Czechs have given up on going to cinemas and prefer pirated movies with subtitles made by fans, which can be much better than official subtitles.
Yes, I do live in my home country and no, it isn't the US. But...
1. I've been to the US, I've spent important part of my life there, I've met many friends there and I love that country. That's why I am sad.
2. The US still has the great power and can exercise its influence all over the world. There are many of us, who are not American citizens and have no influence over your politicians... but whatever you let them do will have impact on us. That's what makes me worried.
I grew up in east-european totalitarian communist regime... and I always looked up to the paradise of freedom and respect to human rights - United States of America.
It's kind of sad to see that my home country now seems to be better and much more free place to live than the USA - not because my country got so much better but because your country got so much worse. What is going on, guys? How come that now the land of freedom does not seem so much different than China when it comes to respect to human rights? When are you going to do something about it?
I tell you... I remember one revolution and it felt really good;-)
Dear Americans, it seems to me that with your patent system you have created huge system for transferring money from those who actually do stuff to government granted monopoly holders and their lawyers.
So far it seemed to affect only huge corporations... but now even small guys have to worry. This is huge burden on business, fear of getting sued is not the best environment for creating new and exciting things - are you not afraid that startups start to move out of your jurisdiction?
I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for startups and whatnot... but if this software patents craziness goes on, are pros of being in the Valley going to be enough to outweigh burden of being in the US?
I am not even sure people would actually have to move out of the Valley - in some cases maybe just registering their companies somewhere on Cyprus or in Estonia or some tax paradise island would be enough... which would not be good for your economy, right?
I hear that the first news about small developers getting C&D was brought to light in a tweet from Glasgow, Scotland-based developer James Thomson who got one of those... and I don't get it.
As far as I know Scotland is in European Union and not in the United States and we don't have software patents in EU... so why should we care about idiotic american patent system? Why should Thomas not treat that cease and desist letter as low quality toilet paper? The guy is Scotland based and US courts have no jurisdiction over Scotland - how can they threaten him... and all of us, non-US based app developers? What am I missing?
Anyway... I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for start-ups and whatnot, but I wonder when are pros of being in the Valley going to outweigh cons of being located in United States and start-ups start to move to less anti-innovation countries.
That's probably why he would lose hope for your legal system. Because if defending yourself is so expensive that it can destroy you even if you win so you rather give up even if you are innocent, it means that there is justice just for rich... which means there is no justice at all.
Is any commenter from Belgium here? I would like to know how other Belgian publishers/website owners react to this. If I had a business in Belgium I would be outraged by the decision that practically makes linking (without permission) illegal... creating SEO nightmare for every Belgian company - who is going to bother and ask for permission to give you some SEO love and link to your content?
Is it just me or did they twist "privacy" definition beyond recognition? My private info is not info that no one knows. It's info that I control and I get to decide to whom it should be known.
No matter what TOS say and whether people read it or not, the assumption that when I am willing to give some info to someone it is not private anymore is so false... OMG, do you also get this itchy feeling in your stomach when you face this kind of argument? It's not just wrong, it feels like when you are in presence of really sick twisted mind. It feels like saying that it's OK to rape your wife because she agrees to sleep with you so I can sleep with her too.
I really hope I just misunderstood their reasoning.
They ask citizens for their opinions. I know that you are not EU citizen but I don't know about anyone who would be able to make more insightful comment than you. Would you like to send them your opinion on the matter?
Let me make it clear - I think it is a good thing to build on things done by others. I am just not sure in this specific case that there would be enough to build on without patents.
>>>But if patents are the incentive, then there would be no incentive to contribute...
I say patents are incentive but I never said patents are the only incentive.
Let me illustrate this on a model: lets imagine that most of the world respects patents - all countries except Italy. World's companies have no other option then to finance their own research because they cannot use anything invented by others (well... others except for one country - Italy). Italy does not respect patents - they can use anything invented by the rest of the world.
But Italy still has other incentives to do research (I've written about other incentives - brand, getting ahead of competitors etc). But unlike the others, Italy does not profit only from their own research - they can profit from their own research AND also the research done by the whole rest of the world. And we know that when you can use innovative things done by others freely it can help you to innovate further. Therefore Italy can be seen as winner - despite the fact that they may be some kind of sponge sucking out of the others and building on their shoulders and despite the fact that most of their success comes from research done by others that may be motivated by patents and would not exist without patents.
I am not saying it necessarily was like that in reality. I am just saying it could be. Therefore it is not necessarily true that pharma patents are harmful.
I hope it's understandable - I am sorry about my English.
I think that Mike Masnick and also David Sugar made it very clear why living in a surveillance society without any ways how to communicate securely would be a bad thing. So the only question remains - how do we protect ourselves from totalitarian governments (and if that bill is passed I would have to add US government to my list of totalitarian governments) snooping on everything we do online?
What exactly can US government do to enforce such law?
1. They can threaten or punish a person or a company producing any technology that allows secure communication (let's call it 'secure technology' for now).
2. They can block servers hosting secure technology to suppress its distribution.
3. They can block bank accounts of the person or company providing secure technology or block users from sending money to those accounts to make sure nobody will not be able to profit out of it.
4. They can make it illegal to use secure technology and punish users.
5. They can force hardware producers to make sure that it would be technically impossible to use secure technology.
What did I forget?
It seems to me that in order to communicate securely, we have to make sure that there is NOT a single point of failure in any of these five things. How?
1. secure technology should not depend on any single person or company - it should be some open source technology with distributed development model - everybody is fungible, developers live in different countries to minimize the risk, if any developer is removed - the technology survives.
2. secure technology is distributed from 'distributed source' (bittorrent or something like that). No single server to block.
3. secure technology is developed for free by idealist freedom-fighters or is financed by some kind of (distributed?) payment channel that is difficult to block/trace.
4. secure technology is not easy to spot and distinguish from other traffic. No specific port or protocol - just some kind of tunneling or VPN like when you are communicating with your bank or company, or maybe transparent end-to-end encryption - because it would be necessary to make illegal the whole internet to suppress this.
Secure technology is also easy to use because it needs to be widely adopted - any law is not practically enforceable when it's broken by everybody - that's the best 'security' from the bad law.
5. well... if any government is able to control hardware production globally - then we are all screwed.
Please consider this some kind of RFC - I am looking forward to your comments so we would be ready in case US democracy fails ;-)
Flattr seems really interesting, but I see two major problems with this.
1. How long it takes before someone makes same dirty JavaScript that "clicks" on that button instead of me?
2. If I don't flattr anything a month, then my monthly amount is given to charity. This is a deal-breaker for me. It breaks the whole "you pay only if you like something" concept.
It's not that I am not charitable - but I want to be able to determine what I support with my money. Flattr takes that away from me. And there are some charities I would really NOT want to support. Why is it not like "If I don't flattr anything a month, then nothing gets paid this month"?
Why pick up a liberal community such is a southern bible belt rural community? The internet is available even in some sharia law / hard-core muslim countries which makes all internet illegal and about 99% of the internet punishable by the death penalty - why not use those standards?
I am sorry... just to make it clear - Europe is not one country. I live in the Czech Republic (which is in Europe) and we don't have any "book price fixing laws in Europe".
On the post: TSA Says Groping A Dying 95-Year-Old Woman, Forcing Her To Remove Diaper, Is Ok Because It Followed Standard Procedure
cowardly society
On the post: Sony's Insane Fear Of 'Piracy' Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters
Just google "FFFILM: Konec titulků v Čechách?"
BTW, the title means "The end of subtitles in Czechia?"
On the post: Sony's Insane Fear Of 'Piracy' Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters
translators
For example he claims that when he is asked to do the translation, he gets the copy of the movie with action scenes cut out and other scenes fuzzy so he can only see speaking person's mouth. It can be difficult to understand the meaning of a sentence without knowing the context... so sometimes subtitles don't even make sense.
And I guess American studios will be really surprised when they find out that many Czechs have given up on going to cinemas and prefer pirated movies with subtitles made by fans, which can be much better than official subtitles.
On the post: What 4th Amendment? Indiana Sheriff Says Random, Warrantless House To House Searches Are Okay
Re: Re: OMG!
1. I've been to the US, I've spent important part of my life there, I've met many friends there and I love that country. That's why I am sad.
2. The US still has the great power and can exercise its influence all over the world. There are many of us, who are not American citizens and have no influence over your politicians... but whatever you let them do will have impact on us. That's what makes me worried.
On the post: What 4th Amendment? Indiana Sheriff Says Random, Warrantless House To House Searches Are Okay
OMG!
It's kind of sad to see that my home country now seems to be better and much more free place to live than the USA - not because my country got so much better but because your country got so much worse. What is going on, guys? How come that now the land of freedom does not seem so much different than China when it comes to respect to human rights? When are you going to do something about it?
I tell you... I remember one revolution and it felt really good;-)
On the post: Patent Troll Lodsys: All We Want Is 0.575% Of The Entire Mobile In-App Payment Ecosystem, Is That So Wrong?
Shift?
So far it seemed to affect only huge corporations... but now even small guys have to worry. This is huge burden on business, fear of getting sued is not the best environment for creating new and exciting things - are you not afraid that startups start to move out of your jurisdiction?
I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for startups and whatnot... but if this software patents craziness goes on, are pros of being in the Valley going to be enough to outweigh burden of being in the US?
I am not even sure people would actually have to move out of the Valley - in some cases maybe just registering their companies somewhere on Cyprus or in Estonia or some tax paradise island would be enough... which would not be good for your economy, right?
On the post: Patent Troll Going After iPhone/iPad Developers Who Use In-App Payments
jurisdiction?
As far as I know Scotland is in European Union and not in the United States and we don't have software patents in EU... so why should we care about idiotic american patent system? Why should Thomas not treat that cease and desist letter as low quality toilet paper? The guy is Scotland based and US courts have no jurisdiction over Scotland - how can they threaten him... and all of us, non-US based app developers? What am I missing?
Anyway... I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for start-ups and whatnot, but I wonder when are pros of being in the Valley going to outweigh cons of being located in United States and start-ups start to move to less anti-innovation countries.
On the post: Patent Troll Going After iPhone/iPad Developers Who Use In-App Payments
Re: Re:
On the post: Belgian Appeals Court Says Google Must Pay Up For Linking To Newspaper Websites
On the post: Feds Say It Doesn't Matter If No One Reads A Privacy Policy; It Still Means Gov't Can Have Your Info
Heh?
No matter what TOS say and whether people read it or not, the assumption that when I am willing to give some info to someone it is not private anymore is so false... OMG, do you also get this itchy feeling in your stomach when you face this kind of argument? It's not just wrong, it feels like when you are in presence of really sick twisted mind. It feels like saying that it's OK to rape your wife because she agrees to sleep with you so I can sleep with her too.
I really hope I just misunderstood their reasoning.
On the post: Samsung Accused Of Installing Secret Keyloggers On New Laptops 'To Monitor Performance' [Updated]
On the post: European Commission Planning New, More Draconian 'Anti-Piracy' Laws
RFC
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2011/intellectual_property_rights_en.ht m
On the post: Who Needs COICA When Homeland Security Gets To Seize Domain Names?
fake?
On the post: Putting Tooltips On Links? Company Demanding $80,000 For Patent Infringement
Why not sue USPTO?
Why not? I am not American - do you Americans have some kind of law that you cannot sue any office funded by taxpayers money or something like that?
It seems to me that if they patent stuff that is not supposed to be patented for obviousness and cause damage by doing that... just sue the bastards!
On the post: Drug Rep Accidentally Admits There's No Justification For Massive Markup Over Generics
Re: Re: Re: Pharma without patents
On the post: Drug Rep Accidentally Admits There's No Justification For Massive Markup Over Generics
Re: Re: Pharma without patents
I say patents are incentive but I never said patents are the only incentive.
Let me illustrate this on a model: lets imagine that most of the world respects patents - all countries except Italy. World's companies have no other option then to finance their own research because they cannot use anything invented by others (well... others except for one country - Italy). Italy does not respect patents - they can use anything invented by the rest of the world.
But Italy still has other incentives to do research (I've written about other incentives - brand, getting ahead of competitors etc). But unlike the others, Italy does not profit only from their own research - they can profit from their own research AND also the research done by the whole rest of the world. And we know that when you can use innovative things done by others freely it can help you to innovate further. Therefore Italy can be seen as winner - despite the fact that they may be some kind of sponge sucking out of the others and building on their shoulders and despite the fact that most of their success comes from research done by others that may be motivated by patents and would not exist without patents.
I am not saying it necessarily was like that in reality. I am just saying it could be. Therefore it is not necessarily true that pharma patents are harmful.
I hope it's understandable - I am sorry about my English.
On the post: Feds Pushing For New Legally Required Wiretap Backdoor To All Internet Communications
What exactly can US government do to enforce such law?
1. They can threaten or punish a person or a company producing any technology that allows secure communication (let's call it 'secure technology' for now).
2. They can block servers hosting secure technology to suppress its distribution.
3. They can block bank accounts of the person or company providing secure technology or block users from sending money to those accounts to make sure nobody will not be able to profit out of it.
4. They can make it illegal to use secure technology and punish users.
5. They can force hardware producers to make sure that it would be technically impossible to use secure technology.
What did I forget?
It seems to me that in order to communicate securely, we have to make sure that there is NOT a single point of failure in any of these five things. How?
1. secure technology should not depend on any single person or company - it should be some open source technology with distributed development model - everybody is fungible, developers live in different countries to minimize the risk, if any developer is removed - the technology survives.
2. secure technology is distributed from 'distributed source' (bittorrent or something like that). No single server to block.
3. secure technology is developed for free by idealist freedom-fighters or is financed by some kind of (distributed?) payment channel that is difficult to block/trace.
4. secure technology is not easy to spot and distinguish from other traffic. No specific port or protocol - just some kind of tunneling or VPN like when you are communicating with your bank or company, or maybe transparent end-to-end encryption - because it would be necessary to make illegal the whole internet to suppress this.
Secure technology is also easy to use because it needs to be widely adopted - any law is not practically enforceable when it's broken by everybody - that's the best 'security' from the bad law.
5. well... if any government is able to control hardware production globally - then we are all screwed.
Please consider this some kind of RFC - I am looking forward to your comments so we would be ready in case US democracy fails ;-)
On the post: Getting Past The Hurdles Of Micropayments
Problems
1. How long it takes before someone makes same dirty JavaScript that "clicks" on that button instead of me?
2. If I don't flattr anything a month, then my monthly amount is given to charity. This is a deal-breaker for me. It breaks the whole "you pay only if you like something" concept.
It's not that I am not charitable - but I want to be able to determine what I support with my money. Flattr takes that away from me. And there are some charities I would really NOT want to support. Why is it not like "If I don't flattr anything a month, then nothing gets paid this month"?
On the post: Appeals Court Says Internet Content Should Be Held To Standards Of Strictest Jurisdiction
everything is ilegal
On the post: Amazon Sued In Germany For Offering Good Prices On Books
I am sorry... just to make it clear - Europe is not one country. I live in the Czech Republic (which is in Europe) and we don't have any "book price fixing laws in Europe".
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