Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 26 Nov 2012 @ 12:40pm
Sigh
Another totally wasted opportunity for a useful debate based in reality with about 3 pages of what looks suspiciously like average_joe arguing an obtuse and picky legal point and screaming "It's the LAWWWWWW!!!".
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 26 Nov 2012 @ 10:27am
Re: Re:
Politicians care most about votes.
Perhaps I'm cynical but it appears that politicians care most about cash because until they have piles and piles of it to run a campaign they are in no position to care about votes anyway.
Public opinion can and might work but it looks an uphill struggle from where I'm standing, especially when "public opinion" tends to be strongly influenced by the mainstream media that supplies a fair chunk of the afore-mentioned cash.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 26 Nov 2012 @ 8:38am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
True but by by making the legal side better they enable piracy.
No, no they don't.
"Piracy" in the technical sense of making an infringing copy of something is in no way enabled or hampered by making the legal option better. There is not one format or technical restriction that has ever or will ever prevent copies being made and obtained. As technology advances this can only become cheaper and easier when it already costs next to nothing for circumventing the most complex "protection" available and is accomplishable by anyone with minimal skills.
Unless laws literally mandate (and fund of course) the total and constant monitoring of everyone's life and enforce harsh punishments making the smallest infringing of copyright approximately equivalent of violent crime there will be little effect on copyright infringement and even then I doubt it would stop. Conversely, I'd imagine that if enforcement of copyright was dialed back to cover only the most gratuitous for-profit infringement, the amount of infringement would likely also change very little.
On the other hand, making legal offerings better, easier and cheaper would very quickly reduce the amount of infringement and also make more money. The problem is the corporations currently holding the strings know they're too old and slow to actually compete in a marketplace like that because they've long since forgotten how and so they'll do anythign they can to avoid it even if it means less money than they could have.
Oh, and:
When I buy a bluray disc, I'd want to be able to burn a backup and play it just as the original
Please don't refer to things like this as "piracy", you're just playing their game. The obvious aim is for anything other than each an every person who "consumes content" paying each and every time they do to be declared illegal. Every time you refer to something that any sane person would consider a perfectly reasonable use of something that you've paid for as "piracy" you're vailidating a step towards that worldview.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 23 Nov 2012 @ 6:08am
Re: It's not the TSA
Years before 9/11, I went through security checks in Europe that equal anything ever done by TSA. This has been routine there for years.
If you mean European security was generally way tighter and more effective than the US before September 11th 2001 then I'd agree with you. If you mean it was as intrusive and intimate and pointless as the current security theatre then no, not even close.
The tightest security I've been through anywhere at any time was Belfast airport in Northern Ireland there there was an armed checkpoint to enter the airport grounds, pre-screening of baggage to get into the airport including random but business-like effective and non-intimate pat-downs and then the usual (at the time) security checks done very carefully. They at least had a credible threat of an attack at the time and still that level of security did not feel invasive and gave the impression of buisness-like efficiency. It also took little longer to get through than any other airport back then.
Now, prompted and led by the US/TSA paranioa, we have massive invasions or privacy with the wide sharing of personal information, the inconvenience of having to provide it way before you travel, the frustration of trying to make all the various bits of information match up when the fields to enter them aren't long enough or if you are travelling together as a party that don't live together. We have overly intimate pat-downs that one would usually expect dinner or at least drinks beforehand that are given at the slightest provocation, often due to metal detectors turned up so sensitive that the tiny metal tassle on drawstring trousers will set them off. We have passports and travel documents being checked so frequently at airportts that every time you walk through a door it feels like you are at checkpoint charlie in a bad WWII film. We have vastly overpriced water being sold in airports because you can't take it with you. We have the hassle of carefully planning what toiletries you take on a weekend break to still be able to take your bag on as handluggage instead of having to wait at reclaim the other end. We have the inabilty to cut the bad food on the plane because they are no longer allowed to give you a metal knife.
And on and on and on.... and not one bit of it has improved security in any noticeable degree over that which existed before in Europe and together has managed to increase the time taken to get through an airport by 2-3 times, roughly double the time it takes to prepare to travel and increase the intrusiveness of the "security" by a factor of 3.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 20 Nov 2012 @ 7:10am
Re: Re:
Voters trump money.
Perhaps in a very limited way. But when the only choices you have to vote for are there because of gargantuan sums of cash "donated" to their campaigns, the effects of your vote seem limited to which set of "special intrests" to choose.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 18 Nov 2012 @ 2:26am
Re:
You'd think wouldn't you? IIRC correctly the online version of Computer Weekly and other magazines that used the same engine did this and actually followed the click and drag of the mouse with the page turn. That was back way before the first iPhone so how doesn't that count as prior art.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 14 Nov 2012 @ 3:56pm
Re: Long live the King
In his case yes.. in general, arguably a somewhat benevolent dictator would probably be better that clowngress or any other "democratic" government in the world.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 14 Nov 2012 @ 3:52pm
Re: Re: Presidential overreach....
A thought occurs: governments are becoming less relevant to the population of the world.
And I wonder why that is?...
As I understand it the presidential race cost $1billion per candidate or there abouts. It's hardly suprising that:
1/ Anyone getting there is beholden to whoever can provide that kind of money to get them there and
2/ The interests of those that they are beholden to are not the same as the other 99.99% of the world that don't have that kind of money.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 13 Nov 2012 @ 2:08pm
Re: Re: I should get my mind out of the gutter
Perhaps someone more horticultural than I will correct, but IIRC poppies flourish particularly well on blood-soaked soil - possibly something to do with the iron? Either way I think the original symbolism of the poppy has more to do with them growing profusely on many of the main battlefields of WW1 in Europe, especially Flanders in Belgium that prompted one of the more famous of the "War Poems". Certainly the colour makes the symbolism more vivid though...
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 13 Nov 2012 @ 1:58pm
Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Who said they get the email from your Inbox?
Well since it was talking about subpoenas one assumes it's something they have to get rather than already have.
If they need a warrant to look at something they already have that raises a whole bunch of other questions doesn't it? Not to mention making it even harder to keep a straight face when saying they won't look at anything they're not allowed to...
And those are only a couple of the ones we KNOW about.
Indeed... I believe GCHQ do a good line in that too. I can never make head or tail out of the conflicting jurisdictions of the ludicrous amounts of federal agencies in the US, but I'd understood that the FBI technically was supposed to get a warrant to spy on americans and most of the rest supposedly "aren't allowed" (though getting the info from a friendly government that did it for you works I suppose)
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 13 Nov 2012 @ 12:22pm
Tenuous rules?
Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. To get more recent communications, a warrant from a judge is required. This is a higher standard that requires proof of probable cause that a crime is being committed.
Given that many if not most people keep all their email in 1 big inbox going back probably years, how exactly does one get access only to the "old email"?
Off the top of my headI can only see two ways:
1/ Get the email provider to pre-filter the inbox and olny hand over the allowed bit... Which seems unlikely since it then costs the provider more in man-hours to action and besides what the hell are they doing snooping through a private inbox?
2/ The ISP hand over the lot and the FBI promise faithfully to not look at anything they shouldn't without a warrant... (Boy, that was hard to type with a straight face)
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 12 Nov 2012 @ 2:28pm
Re: agree but...
Well the juvenile nature of the DHS "plan" and the constant hand-waving and tantrums make it pretty hard to take the whole thing seriously so I guess that evens it up.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 12 Nov 2012 @ 2:23pm
Re: Re: Re: Who's in charge of the DHS
Of course.... first fill the attacker full of hot lead, then eat the banana, thus disarming him. Straight out of the DHS playbook (am I now going to get a visit for revelaing a classified training manual?).
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 10 Nov 2012 @ 10:22am
Re: Re: No, that's not extreme...
Next time you jaywalk, how about the death penalty?
Little out of scale perhaps.... I was thinking something roughly equivalent like being banned from buying anything for 6 years as a punishment for shop lifting.
Much more reasonable, huh? I'm sure no-one would have an objection to that.. oh but wait, it's in the "real world" so that's different, the internet is of course imaginary so it doesn't matter what happens there.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 10 Nov 2012 @ 7:21am
Re: Re:
and you left me completely unaccountable for my actions and let me keep my job election after election after election?
To be fair to the public (and admittedly I have no idea why I should be), it's not really the public that leaves politicians unnacountable it's the political system.
I saw a stat that the US presidential election race cost 1 billion per candidate of there abouts. I would guess that's the top for the world of elections, but either way it takes serious money to get anywhere near political "power". In a situation like that:
A/ It's hardly any suprise that politicians will listen to money over people because otherwise they wouldn't be there.
B/ It means that the public end up getting a very limited choice of "leaders out of the ones that can get the money. This amounts to a choice between a sock puppet, the worst kind of used car salesman and if very lucky an empty shirt with good hair a smile.
With choices like that nothing the public could possibly do short of demanding wholesale change of the political system (something impossible to achieve through the political system) ould make much of a difference. Their "choice" amounts to nothing. Modern democracy is an illusion, nothing more.
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Sigh
On the post: It's Time To Update Our Privacy Laws: Tell Your Elected Officials To Reform ECPA Now
Re: Re:
Public opinion can and might work but it looks an uphill struggle from where I'm standing, especially when "public opinion" tends to be strongly influenced by the mainstream media that supplies a fair chunk of the afore-mentioned cash.
On the post: Early-Morning Raid Sent To Confiscate 9-Year-Old's Winnie The Pooh Laptop For Downloading Music
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Piracy" in the technical sense of making an infringing copy of something is in no way enabled or hampered by making the legal option better. There is not one format or technical restriction that has ever or will ever prevent copies being made and obtained. As technology advances this can only become cheaper and easier when it already costs next to nothing for circumventing the most complex "protection" available and is accomplishable by anyone with minimal skills.
Unless laws literally mandate (and fund of course) the total and constant monitoring of everyone's life and enforce harsh punishments making the smallest infringing of copyright approximately equivalent of violent crime there will be little effect on copyright infringement and even then I doubt it would stop. Conversely, I'd imagine that if enforcement of copyright was dialed back to cover only the most gratuitous for-profit infringement, the amount of infringement would likely also change very little.
On the other hand, making legal offerings better, easier and cheaper would very quickly reduce the amount of infringement and also make more money. The problem is the corporations currently holding the strings know they're too old and slow to actually compete in a marketplace like that because they've long since forgotten how and so they'll do anythign they can to avoid it even if it means less money than they could have.
Oh, and:Please don't refer to things like this as "piracy", you're just playing their game. The obvious aim is for anything other than each an every person who "consumes content" paying each and every time they do to be declared illegal. Every time you refer to something that any sane person would consider a perfectly reasonable use of something that you've paid for as "piracy" you're vailidating a step towards that worldview.
On the post: TSA/Airport Security: Killing Us On Christmas
Re: It's not the TSA
The tightest security I've been through anywhere at any time was Belfast airport in Northern Ireland there there was an armed checkpoint to enter the airport grounds, pre-screening of baggage to get into the airport including random but business-like effective and non-intimate pat-downs and then the usual (at the time) security checks done very carefully. They at least had a credible threat of an attack at the time and still that level of security did not feel invasive and gave the impression of buisness-like efficiency. It also took little longer to get through than any other airport back then.
Now, prompted and led by the US/TSA paranioa, we have massive invasions or privacy with the wide sharing of personal information, the inconvenience of having to provide it way before you travel, the frustration of trying to make all the various bits of information match up when the fields to enter them aren't long enough or if you are travelling together as a party that don't live together. We have overly intimate pat-downs that one would usually expect dinner or at least drinks beforehand that are given at the slightest provocation, often due to metal detectors turned up so sensitive that the tiny metal tassle on drawstring trousers will set them off. We have passports and travel documents being checked so frequently at airportts that every time you walk through a door it feels like you are at checkpoint charlie in a bad WWII film. We have vastly overpriced water being sold in airports because you can't take it with you. We have the hassle of carefully planning what toiletries you take on a weekend break to still be able to take your bag on as handluggage instead of having to wait at reclaim the other end. We have the inabilty to cut the bad food on the plane because they are no longer allowed to give you a metal knife.
And on and on and on.... and not one bit of it has improved security in any noticeable degree over that which existed before in Europe and together has managed to increase the time taken to get through an airport by 2-3 times, roughly double the time it takes to prepare to travel and increase the intrusiveness of the "security" by a factor of 3.
On the post: TSA/Airport Security: Killing Us On Christmas
Re: Re: Your buttons were pushed to paralyze you with fear, Timmy.
On the post: TSA/Airport Security: Killing Us On Christmas
Re:
On the post: Don't Let Retraction Distract From The Simple Fact: GOP Copyright Policy Brief Was Brilliant
Re: Re:
On the post: Apple Gets Design Patent On... Page Turning
Re:
On the post: President Obama Signs 'Secret Directive' On Cybersecurity
Re: Long live the King
On the post: President Obama Signs 'Secret Directive' On Cybersecurity
Re: Re: Presidential overreach....
As I understand it the presidential race cost $1billion per candidate or there abouts. It's hardly suprising that:
1/ Anyone getting there is beholden to whoever can provide that kind of money to get them there and
2/ The interests of those that they are beholden to are not the same as the other 99.99% of the world that don't have that kind of money.
On the post: UK Looking To Cement Its New Anti-Free Speech Reputation By Arresting Man For Posting Photo Of A Burning Poppy
Re: Re: I should get my mind out of the gutter
On the post: How Much Did The FBI Snoop On Email Messages To Uncover The Petreaus Situation?
Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
If they need a warrant to look at something they already have that raises a whole bunch of other questions doesn't it? Not to mention making it even harder to keep a straight face when saying they won't look at anything they're not allowed to...
Indeed... I believe GCHQ do a good line in that too. I can never make head or tail out of the conflicting jurisdictions of the ludicrous amounts of federal agencies in the US, but I'd understood that the FBI technically was supposed to get a warrant to spy on americans and most of the rest supposedly "aren't allowed" (though getting the info from a friendly government that did it for you works I suppose)
On the post: How Much Did The FBI Snoop On Email Messages To Uncover The Petreaus Situation?
Tenuous rules?
Off the top of my headI can only see two ways:
1/ Get the email provider to pre-filter the inbox and olny hand over the allowed bit... Which seems unlikely since it then costs the provider more in man-hours to action and besides what the hell are they doing snooping through a private inbox?
2/ The ISP hand over the lot and the FBI promise faithfully to not look at anything they shouldn't without a warrant... (Boy, that was hard to type with a straight face)
On the post: If You Eat Something, Say Something: DHS Sounds The Alarm On The 'Terrorist Implications' Of Food Trucks
Re: agree but...
On the post: If You Eat Something, Say Something: DHS Sounds The Alarm On The 'Terrorist Implications' Of Food Trucks
Re:
On the post: If You Eat Something, Say Something: DHS Sounds The Alarm On The 'Terrorist Implications' Of Food Trucks
Re: Re: Re: Who's in charge of the DHS
On the post: IBM Patent Lawyer Says The Patent System Works Fine Because... Hey Look Over There!
Re:
On the post: Teen Hacker Banned From The Internet For Six Years
Re: Re: No, that's not extreme...
Much more reasonable, huh? I'm sure no-one would have an objection to that.. oh but wait, it's in the "real world" so that's different, the internet is of course imaginary so it doesn't matter what happens there.
On the post: Teen Hacker Banned From The Internet For Six Years
Re:
On the post: UN Wants Multi-Stakeholder Discussions On 'Rethinking Copyright' -- Ignores That The Only Stakeholder That Matters Is The Public
Re: Re:
I saw a stat that the US presidential election race cost 1 billion per candidate of there abouts. I would guess that's the top for the world of elections, but either way it takes serious money to get anywhere near political "power". In a situation like that:
A/ It's hardly any suprise that politicians will listen to money over people because otherwise they wouldn't be there.
B/ It means that the public end up getting a very limited choice of "leaders out of the ones that can get the money. This amounts to a choice between a sock puppet, the worst kind of used car salesman and if very lucky an empty shirt with good hair a smile.
With choices like that nothing the public could possibly do short of demanding wholesale change of the political system (something impossible to achieve through the political system) ould make much of a difference. Their "choice" amounts to nothing. Modern democracy is an illusion, nothing more.
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