"The PROTECT IP Act provides needed tools to target criminals beyond the reach of current laws.
This must be important, since it appears in three of the top ten. But it could apply to any proposed law. Think of anything you want to make illegal, or more illegal than it already is: marijuana, witchcraft, corruption, abortion, flag-burning, dog-fighting... Go down the Bill of Rights (a real top ten) and try to find one you couldn't argue against with this logic.
I hope the Congressfolk realize that these really are the best arguments that anyone can come up with in favor of PROTECT-IP.
"My feeling is that piracy goes from it's probably 40% of the marketplace down to something like 20%..."
How will these numbers be measured? For that matter, how are they defined? If Alice sells 1000 copies of her album for $1 each, and Bob remixes one of the ten songs and 1000 people listen to it, twice each, what's the percentage?
This is the only quantitative prediction in your post. I salute you for actually making such a prediction, but I notice that it doesn't refer to the size of the market or the total amount of commerce, but the proportion of piracy. As a voter and internet user, I don't see why I should care about that, or consider it a "success". I'm not a professional "content creator", but I don't see why they should care either, since it says nothing about how much easier or harder it will make it for them to make money.
a swindle, inside a pork barrel, wrapped in dyslexia
"Such system will be based on two elements: a storage that would contain illegal materials (some sort of "thesaurus of illegal keywords") and the search system that will scan through the online space and compare the online text with the illegal content in the storage."
As described, this is pretty trivial. But the list of requirements (in the summary-- I can't read the original) is beyond ludicrous.
So either A) the list of requirements was made deliberately impossible, to prevent any serious competition with the already-chosen favorite, or B) this whole thing was dreamt up by tech-illiterate politicians who have been watching too much bad science fiction, and some contractor is playing along. Either way, somebody will get rich at the expense of the Russian taxpayer (not big news).
They'll have a powerful monitoring system someday, but I doubt that this will contribute much to it.
"Understanding the nature of what the vulnerability was (in hindsight) illustrates that it could have been discovered by very simple means. As unlikely as the an individual picking this app is."
If I'm parsing this correctly, you're saying that once the app was in the store, the vulnerability was as likely to be discovered by someone picking the app (from all the apps in the store), decompiling it, analyzing the results and discovering the exploit, as by studying iOS. That is absurd. I have lost count of the times I've heard of an independent researcher discovering a hole in a large, supposedly secure IT system; I have never heard of someone discovering a hole by deconstructing an app or other published software which shows no sign of malicious behavior.
(As for the rest of your argument, I really can't make any sense of it. You seem to be agreeing with me, then claiming victory.)
"...Someone else could have downloaded the app, found the vulnerability and maliciously exploited it."
Are you suggesting that a miscreant could have discovered a vulnerability by downloading an app with very simple behavior, decompiling it, then sifting through the code looking for Easter eggs? Anyone with the skill to do that could have found the vulnerability far more easily by studying the code-signing protocol, the way Miller did.
Apple's actions may be defensible legally, but only legally.
I beg to differ. It sounds like a man who has expert knowledge of the bill in question, keen awareness of which points he must avoid and which he can play to, an ample supply of talking points and debate tactics...
Has there been a test of the legal theory involved? If a law contains a contradiction like "(1) This Act shall not be construed to ban X, (2) X is hereby banned", what will the courts do? Will a judge go with the part that's longer? Clearer? Less restrictive of individual rights? Better for society? More similar to other laws? Do such restrictions work?
Can we be really, really sure that we can violate the ban and not be convicted under the law, or should we obey the ban just to be on the safe side?
And even if it's a sure thing that we won't be convicted, does that mean the authorities won't arrest us, seize our equipment, commandeer our web sites and/or ruin our businesses before even setting a court date? Is there a realistic way to sue the government for doing so?
"Holding two opposed ideas in the mind" is Fitzgerald's test of intelligence.
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" is Orwell's definition of doublethink.
Espousing two contradictory positions on different days of the week is just what people like Biden do; it doesn't really say anything about what beliefs, if any, they hold.
I've read over this several times and still can't understand what problem it is intended to solve, or what good thing it could do better than the current system.
If an internet run by such a body were more attractive than a wild one, that is if people would choose it over the one we all know, then it would have happened by now. It would have started small in the University of Calcutta, grown fast, and we'd all be using it today. How many such experiments have there been over the years?
If it would be more of a social good than what we have now, and yet individuals would choose to use what we have now over it, then it's one of those Prisoner's Dilemma deals, where we're being assured that if we all give up something nice -- and eradicate it -- then we'll all be better off. There are a couple of examples of this that I like (such as environmentalism and the rule of law), but many more that I don't like (e.g. communism, theocracy, political correctness), and three common threads I see among the bad ones are 1) they are unrealistic, 2) their chief goal is a "good" that I don't want (which often takes the form of banning an "evil" that I either don't care about, or quite enjoy), and 3) when a limited experiment fails miserably, their proponents say "it will work if we just make it bigger".
I'd like to see video of the seizure, just on the off chance that when the marshals kick in the office door and march through they'll find themselves in the parking lot, while all the the Righthaven letterhead documents dissolve into smoke, Mangano's arms come off when they try to handcuff him and he collapses into a small heap of second-hand clothing and twigs, the other Righthaven staff are revealed to be merely painted on the wall--
No, on second thought I don't think I'd like to see the video; it can't possibly live up to my expectations.
"Righthaven.. doesn't want to actually go through a trial it can't afford, but... [is] still hoping against all hope that it can win an appeal and get these cases reinstated."
...and then go to trial, using the proceeds from the lottery tickets it is presently buying.
They ought to set aside at least enough money for some false moustaches and vocational training, since they're probably done with law.
Before I want a vaccine against a deadly disease, I have to be convinced that the deadly disease 1) exists, 2) is deadly, 3) can be stopped by the offered vaccine, and 4) is sufficiently likely to attack me that the price of the vaccine is reasonable.
"The city of Bossier, Louisiana... got things rolling by building an $11 million bomb-resistant "cyber fortress," complete with a moat."
I... I tried. I tried to come up with a joke about this, and I just... I mean, I thought about catapults and mispronouncing "search engines", I thought about construction costs in World of Warcraft, I thought about Always Preparing To Fight The Last Millenium's War, but I just...
Seriously? Bomb-resistant cyber fortress with a moat? How can you satirize that?
"The biggest change was the ending of the movie. In Nosferatu, Count Orlok is burned up by the sunlight."
This is a tribute to how movies infiltrate our thoughts. If I remember correctly, Orlok doesn't burn in the sunlight at all, he just dies an verminous, undignified death. Now (thanks to Hammer's films, I guess) the idea of a vampire burning in sunlight has soaked so deeply into our mental carpet that Orlok's death scene is surprising.
On the post: MPAA Boss Chris Dodd Then & Now Concerning Google Censorship In China
you gotta pay to see
I for one think that Mr. Dodd's principles do not, in fact, change. It just took some patient observation to find out what they actually are.
On the post: MPAA Tries Its Hand At Comedy With A Top 10 List In Favor Of Censoring The Internet
This must be important, since it appears in three of the top ten. But it could apply to any proposed law. Think of anything you want to make illegal, or more illegal than it already is: marijuana, witchcraft, corruption, abortion, flag-burning, dog-fighting... Go down the Bill of Rights (a real top ten) and try to find one you couldn't argue against with this logic.
I hope the Congressfolk realize that these really are the best arguments that anyone can come up with in favor of PROTECT-IP.
On the post: A Question For SOPA Supporters: How Will You Gauge SOPA's Success?
Re:
How will these numbers be measured? For that matter, how are they defined? If Alice sells 1000 copies of her album for $1 each, and Bob remixes one of the ten songs and 1000 people listen to it, twice each, what's the percentage?
This is the only quantitative prediction in your post. I salute you for actually making such a prediction, but I notice that it doesn't refer to the size of the market or the total amount of commerce, but the proportion of piracy. As a voter and internet user, I don't see why I should care about that, or consider it a "success". I'm not a professional "content creator", but I don't see why they should care either, since it says nothing about how much easier or harder it will make it for them to make money.
On the post: Gamex Pulls The Welcome Mat Out From Under The Pirate Party
we have standards
I'm curious to know what party (on Earth) could get in.
On the post: Russian Internet Content Monitoring System To Go Live In December
a swindle, inside a pork barrel, wrapped in dyslexia
As described, this is pretty trivial. But the list of requirements (in the summary-- I can't read the original) is beyond ludicrous.
So either A) the list of requirements was made deliberately impossible, to prevent any serious competition with the already-chosen favorite, or B) this whole thing was dreamt up by tech-illiterate politicians who have been watching too much bad science fiction, and some contractor is playing along. Either way, somebody will get rich at the expense of the Russian taxpayer (not big news).
They'll have a powerful monitoring system someday, but I doubt that this will contribute much to it.
On the post: Find A Vulnerability In Apple Software; Lose Your License As An Apple Developer
Re: Re: Re: False Blame
If I'm parsing this correctly, you're saying that once the app was in the store, the vulnerability was as likely to be discovered by someone picking the app (from all the apps in the store), decompiling it, analyzing the results and discovering the exploit, as by studying iOS. That is absurd. I have lost count of the times I've heard of an independent researcher discovering a hole in a large, supposedly secure IT system; I have never heard of someone discovering a hole by deconstructing an app or other published software which shows no sign of malicious behavior.
(As for the rest of your argument, I really can't make any sense of it. You seem to be agreeing with me, then claiming victory.)
On the post: Find A Vulnerability In Apple Software; Lose Your License As An Apple Developer
Re: False Blame
Are you suggesting that a miscreant could have discovered a vulnerability by downloading an app with very simple behavior, decompiling it, then sifting through the code looking for Easter eggs? Anyone with the skill to do that could have found the vulnerability far more easily by studying the code-signing protocol, the way Miller did.
Apple's actions may be defensible legally, but only legally.
On the post: RIAA Explains Its Interpretation Of SOPA; Which Doesn't Seem To Be Found In The Bill Itself
Re:
On the post: RIAA Explains Its Interpretation Of SOPA; Which Doesn't Seem To Be Found In The Bill Itself
Re:
...and not an honest bone in his body.
On the post: The Secret Behind SOPA Defense: Insist That It Doesn't Say What It Actually Says
there's law and then there's law
Can we be really, really sure that we can violate the ban and not be convicted under the law, or should we obey the ban just to be on the safe side?
And even if it's a sure thing that we won't be convicted, does that mean the authorities won't arrest us, seize our equipment, commandeer our web sites and/or ruin our businesses before even setting a court date? Is there a realistic way to sue the government for doing so?
On the post: Joe Biden On The Internet: 'If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It... Unless Hollywood Asks You To'
Re: He's first rate!
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" is Orwell's definition of doublethink.
Espousing two contradictory positions on different days of the week is just what people like Biden do; it doesn't really say anything about what beliefs, if any, they hold.
On the post: Joe Biden On The Internet: 'If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It... Unless Hollywood Asks You To'
hmm...
What was her mother sick with, again?
On the post: India Wants UN Body To Run The Internet: Would That Be Such A Bad Thing?
how to tell good plans from bad
If an internet run by such a body were more attractive than a wild one, that is if people would choose it over the one we all know, then it would have happened by now. It would have started small in the University of Calcutta, grown fast, and we'd all be using it today. How many such experiments have there been over the years?
If it would be more of a social good than what we have now, and yet individuals would choose to use what we have now over it, then it's one of those Prisoner's Dilemma deals, where we're being assured that if we all give up something nice -- and eradicate it -- then we'll all be better off. There are a couple of examples of this that I like (such as environmentalism and the rule of law), but many more that I don't like (e.g. communism, theocracy, political correctness), and three common threads I see among the bad ones are 1) they are unrealistic, 2) their chief goal is a "good" that I don't want (which often takes the form of banning an "evil" that I either don't care about, or quite enjoy), and 3) when a limited experiment fails miserably, their proponents say "it will work if we just make it bigger".
On the post: US Marshal Service Told To Go After Righthaven's Assets
the sound of haunting laughter
No, on second thought I don't think I'd like to see the video; it can't possibly live up to my expectations.
On the post: How Copyright Infringement Turned Vampires Into Big Business
Re: Re: Where'd you get that idea?
On the post: Righthaven Asks Court To Speed Up Ruling Against It So It Doesn't Have To Pay For A Trial
...and then go to trial, using the proceeds from the lottery tickets it is presently buying.
They ought to set aside at least enough money for some false moustaches and vocational training, since they're probably done with law.
On the post: The Non-Existent 'Cyber War' Is Nothing More Than A Push For More Government Control
Re:
Cyberwar does not pass any of these hurdles.
On the post: The Non-Existent 'Cyber War' Is Nothing More Than A Push For More Government Control
Beyond Satire
I... I tried. I tried to come up with a joke about this, and I just... I mean, I thought about catapults and mispronouncing "search engines", I thought about construction costs in World of Warcraft, I thought about Always Preparing To Fight The Last Millenium's War, but I just...
Seriously? Bomb-resistant cyber fortress with a moat? How can you satirize that?
On the post: How Copyright Infringement Turned Vampires Into Big Business
Re:
On the post: How Copyright Infringement Turned Vampires Into Big Business
Where'd you get that idea?
This is a tribute to how movies infiltrate our thoughts. If I remember correctly, Orlok doesn't burn in the sunlight at all, he just dies an verminous, undignified death. Now (thanks to Hammer's films, I guess) the idea of a vampire burning in sunlight has soaked so deeply into our mental carpet that Orlok's death scene is surprising.
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