Your nickname suggests you associate yourself with people who struggled for the right of voicing their opinion; but then you actually suggest some opinions should be discarded right away without looking on per source basis.
Funny that you noticed, I went and read the article on zombie rays:
http://rt.com/news/weapons-future-zombie-media-486/
and it turns out the article actually tries to debunk the "zombie rays" hoaxes and explain what's actually possible and what isn't when talking about experimental weapons.
So what? The real dissidents, ones who were actually heroes and not just fell in love with a nice word for their nick, were harassed because they were claimed to be CIA mouthpieces.
I thought we as a society figured out that this is an entirely wrong reason to shut someone off. First of all, you can be honestly mistaken.
I've been on the other side of the hivemind many times here and on reddit, and I can assure you, I encourage opinions that I may even disagree with or doubt. The last people I would sympathize with are the stubborn, dogmatic kind that refuse to listen to other perspectives.
RT is not an opinion or a perspective, they are a source that lacks credibility. It is not that their opinions are "wrong" to me, or that I disagree with them, it is that they fabricate, sensationalize and mislead people. As is the case with this article and many more.
Those are not characteristics of a debate in which all participants and opinions are given a fair shot -- you know, the ones dissidents fight for.
By the way, this is a private website, not a public space, and I have no problem with Hacker News outright banning whatever they want. Especially if it means I have to read less made-up crap. And if they end up banning legitimate sources, I can go elsewhere. Or if they're like reddit and refuse to police themselves -- letting the community's cynical attitude pervade the entire website's content, skewing the news and making it an unreliable representation of current events -- I can go somewhere else too.
You might have a hard-on for calling me a hypocrite, but really you're just making yourself look like an ass.
"this is a private website" part is fallable because this is how censorship/spin worked in Russia/Italy: all the big media is private but owned by the local czar. If you try to voice your opinion in those media you are politely told to go elsewhere, i.e. to screw yourself.
The best evidence of the usefulness of PG's post are replies like yours which (hilariously) cannot refute his points. Too many people are blindly devoted to the idea of copyright. He's not exactly preaching to the choir.
Please, refer me to an RIAA lawyer who can justify copyright in 2012.
Yes, the restrictions of the GPL would be moot if there were no copyright.
Treating source code as intellectual property is exactly what spawned GPL in the first place, as it is a "hack" that exploits the nature of software licensing.
That's not true. The GPL wouldn't be unnecessary, it would cease to work. The GPL relies just as much on copyright laws to work as does proprietary software. Something that is disallowed with the GPL is taking the source code, making a modification, compiling it, and then only distributing the binary. There is nothing that prevents this but copyright law.
A correct statement would be that the BSD or MIT licence would be unnecessary (except for their clauses that you have to include the copyright notice with your modified program).
It was a bit of a rambling point, but relates to the double-standard I see often applied. Terms like "piracy" and "stealing" aren't applicable because there's no physical good (although there's hardly any ambiguity over what's being discussed) and no one is being deprived of anything. But, hey, we need the GPL to ensure everyone shares everything and we need to go after those that violate the GPL. Although, quite arguably, the same logic could be applied: it's not stealing, I'm not taking anything you don't already have, and I don't need to share because I wasn't going to anyway, but maybe my friend will hear about it and contribute a patch to make your project better! [Please forgive the liberal use of pronouns.]
I'm only aware of laws that dictate the effort put into obtaining private information, not the knowledge or dissemination of it. I can't steal your phone and grab the picture, but if you give it to me under no certain terms, I can do what I want. Where is this mystical protection you speak of?
> You could always give performances and charge for those!
So, software as a service? It appears we've been heading that way for a while.
> Joking aside, I think that IP is and should remain a messy compromise. There are no easy answers. Were it to cease to exist completely, it would reduce the incentives for producers, and thus consumers would be worse off too because they would have less software, books, movies and music to enjoy.
I'm not sure we'd see less content, but less financially motivated content. Keep in mind, copyright is not the only way to subsidize content creation.
New music genres and artists are giving away their music online today -- and not just some of them. I'd say most new electronic music winds up on Soundcloud from the artists themselves. RIAA has a choke-hold on Pop music and that's it, but given the nature of Pop music, that's unsurprising.
It would be impractical to expect artists to give away their content with nothing in return... so create a business model that relies on payment before you produce the content rather than after you share it.
Copyright will die a slow and painful death, whether or not it is a compromise by today's standards. What are you going to do when I can put every HD movie ever created on my hard-disk? Enforcement isn't a gradient, it either largely works or largely doesn't.
'Financially motivated' means: it pays the bills, puts food on the table, and gives me a place to live. If someone can't do that as a producer of information goods, they'll have to do something else, and therefore produce less, leaving consumers worse off.
Where's the reasoning for this? Frequently starting over is a problem, but code refactoring can have immense benefits. Discovering a different framework or language may suit your work better, for instance.
Monkeypiling on top of old work is really advice out of the 90's.
These articles with a bunch of three word sentences and zero justification are becoming annoying.
Sometimes, it's just not a good idea. If you have a piece of software that has been battle tested and many of the bugs have been worked out over the course of several years, you will have an entire new set of bugs with a complete re-write (which could take lots of time to figure out).
I've also seen this as a solution to many problems because it was much easier for the developer to start over than to figure out the existing code and try to work with it.
But, there are some instances when a rewrite is the answer.
Calling it the "Spy on Everyone Always Act" is sensationalized no matter what your opinion is on the bill. Most ISPs wouldn't even have to change their current behaviors to comply with it. (To be fair, that's not saying much anyway...)
The more bills we shoot down because of misinformation, the less likely we can defeat bills with more serious problems.
Because the actual language of the bill is somewhat vague, activists at Demand Progress have correctly noted that this legislation might force Internet companies to retain even more data just to be on the safe side. The proposed bill is an amendment to 18 USC § 2703, the law currently defining the circumstances under which companies that store electronic data on customers must disclose it to the government. H.R. 1981 is attempting to amend and expand this law in a way that “enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.”
So what is subsection (c)(2)? It requires a provider to turn over to the government without a warrant:
Name
Address
Records of session times and durations
Length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized
Credit card or bank account number
> It requires a provider to turn over to the government without a warrant:
It does not require that a provider turn that over to the government without a warrant. It mandates that only the government can have access to it.
Providers still have the liberty of not complying with government requests for assistance, in which case a warrant would be necessary to obtain the information.
We can argue over whether providers will cooperate or not in practice, but it does not require providers to do anything but keep the information.
It appears that you're missing something. Read the act's reference to subsection (c)(2) carefully. You see, there is no subsection (c)(2) in the proposed bill. It's a part of the law this would have amended, 18 USC § 2703.
And 18 USC § 2703(c)(2) requires no more than an administrative subpoena (though there are other ways to get it as well). And an administrative subpoena is not a warrant at all. But don't take my word for any of this, read it for yourself:
"(2) A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose to a governmental entity the [long list of customer info skipped] of a subscriber to or customer of such service when the governmental entity uses an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or trial subpoena or any means available under paragraph (1)."
It's easy to miss and it's been getting lost in all the noise, I fear. You don't appeal subpoenas, you try to quash them and prevent the information from being disclosed to begin with. I mean, you can't very well have them un-share your identity or personal information after the fact any more than you can un-ring a bell.
Here's one nice little article about how they work in practice:
You will note that they commend Twitter for giving the user notice of the subpoena, even though Twitter is not required to. That's an important point, too: companies may go above and beyond what they're required to. So, assuming you use services that do that, you might get notice even when the company wasn't legally required to provide it.
Finally, here's the Justice Department's own report to Congress on the use of administrative subpoenas:
Fair enough. But don't ISPs and other commercial entities tend to share that stuff "voluntarily" already?
> you could go and read the bill if you want
I like the part about "the term ‘Internet’ has the same meaning given that term in section 230(f) of the Communications Act of 1934."
It says "the term ‘commercial provider’ means a provider of electronic communication service that offers Internet access capability for a fee to the public or to such classes of users as to be effectively available to the public, regardless of the facilities used"
Why wouldn't that apply to a coffee shop that offered free Wifi?
Wouldn't they then be required to collect and retain information which "enables the identification of the corresponding customer"?
Are coffee shops and libraries going to have to check photo IDs like Iran and China?
To be fair, I'm not sure that "Spy on Everyone Always" is any more sensationalist than the original title, "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers", is it?
I think this is more of an open letter to content publishers; content creators haven't had any trouble solving the problems that you explained.
Content has been moving copyleft (or at the very least, to more liberal licensing) every day because of the competitive advantages in emerging markets, but where copyright still holds a strong presence, the debate will not center around the consumer's point of view (unfortunately).
It is better to frame this debate around "content creators" and whether they are truly benefiting from the artificial scarcity which supports Hollywood's business model. And thus it is important to mention that this is not the content creators doing, but the backwards thinking of very powerful copyright holders, who pass very little of their economic benefits to artists compared to other mediums.
The economic benefit they provide to content creators is the financing to be able to create the content in the first place and also hooking them up with marketing etc.
It's just part of capitalism, if you have money you can use it to make more money from others who don't.
How would this be different to say a venture capitalist or indeed any other sort of investor?
If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it in the first place?
> If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it in the first place?
For the same reasons a lot of people sign up for terrible deals. E.g.:
* They believe they have no choice,
* The dealmaker says: no, it's really a great deal,
* They are naive,
* They are desperate,
* They believe they'll be the 1 in 100 who does better,
* The dealmaker promises more than is delivered,
* Information asymmetry,
* Etc, etc, etc.
It's different than VC investment, and especially different than regular investment, in that publishers control much more of the playing field. Also, to get VC money you generally have to have a reasonable understanding of business. That's definitely not true of writers and musicians, which would make them much easier to take advantage of.
> The economic benefit they provide to content creators is the financing to be able to create the content in the first place
Music, video games, application/software development are all areas where this is completely false -- very minimal financing is required for any of this and we already see a growing, open media landscape as a result of it. You seem to forget the capitalistic tendency for market potential to dictate the cost of services as well.
That is to say, Hollywood movie budgets are extremely over-inflated because of the monopolistic business models that guarantee them capital they do not require to finance the creation of content in the first place. Actors, directors and writers do not require millions of dollars to write or produce this content anymore. A market for its production -- or at the very least a social imperative -- would exist regardless of this artificial establishment.
Walk through this with me:
* it costs nothing to distribute the content anymore (in stark contrast with even a decade ago)
* it costs very little to create most content, and where it does costs a lot, it's mostly because of copyright's existence
* it costs nothing to market the content anymore. Social media is in a dominating role.
Copyright depended on all of these factors being completely opposite. It depended on some cost for creation, or more broadly, some quantifiable scarcity. It depended on a publisher -- an intermediary -- to connect the consumer with the creator. It eventually depended on advertising and extremely competitive marketing as well.
The realities of 21st century communication and technology simply are not compatible. Financing the production of works by selling the right to copy it is absurd in this economic climate. It made sense when publishing was a capital-intensive and narrow industry, but it now forms the basis by which many people communicate today.
Instead, works should be financed by the public interest in its creation. Nobody has to pay more than they want for their "copy" of the "intellectual property", the artist is subsidized as much as they transparently request, and perhaps an arbiter is compensated under contract.
Regardless, it is unenforceable and ultimately counter-productive to support copyright, just about anything could be better.
I think it can still cost a great deal to produce content , let's take video games as an example. GTA 4 cost approx $100 million to develop, even the much more modest "angry birds" cost around $100,000.
Even equipment for recording and editing music to a high standard doesn't come cheap and the amount I have seen professional video/photography people pay for cameras alone is staggering.
This is not the kind of money most people have lying around, it has to come from somewhere.
Distribution is cheaper for sure, but you still have to factor in costs for bandwidth so it's not quite free although you may get some mileage from using a P2P system for some of the distribution. You also (in the case of software at least) need some sort of support infrastructure in place for when people have problems with your product. This means contracting out to a call centre or at least hiring someone to answer the emails.
I would hazard that many content companies spend quite a lot of money and time marketing their products which includes finding ways to pimp them on social media. If anything you have to do more to stand out now that there is so much noise, this means either spending more money or hiring smarter people to do your marketing (who probably want to get paid).
There are projects like kickstarter which offer an alternative way to finance works, of course it's early days yet so we will have to see how that works out.
The problem with "pay what you want" is that this is probably going to be as close to zero as you feel comfortable going. Even if you wanted to objectively try and pay a fair price , this will be affected by what you see other people paying.
A case in point would be the ardour music production software which is one of the few free software projects to have a full time programmer working on it who was not an employee of some corporate entity. However when you look at the donations he has received I'm surprised he is able to feed himself, bear in mind that this is pro level software which is actively used by enthusiasts and some pros. I think it would be difficult to agree that he is paid
anything close to the value of what he produces.
Simply not true, the true cost is the people's time. A 20-person dev team for 6 months can easily cost north of $1M paid market rates[1], even if they are all using their own equipment and working at home. Double that if you include office space.
That is the elephant in the corner of the room: people working on open source have to have day jobs that pay well enough.
Yes, almost all significant software is produced by full time programmers. This includes open source which is why some companies will pay programmers full time to hack on projects.
There may be a few people who have the energy to work a 40-60 hour week in a serious job and then come home and put the same level of love into an open source project but these people are a minority.
If I thought I could just quit my job tomorrow and spend my time hacking on some game or open source project without having to find someone to fund me up front (who would subsequently want some plan on how I would return their investment) I would do it in a flash.
Fliers do not diminish the point. RMS worked very hard to earn that $1M, and foundations are in the business of finding fliers worth giving bags of money to. Such "here's a million bucks, go do something interesting" people are rare.
Obvious point is 99.9999% of content creators cannot afford to create for free, and cannot attract gratuitous "free money" sufficient to cover basic food/shelter needs (dependents included). Observing that 0.0001% can serves to irritate, not facilitate, the discussion.
Yes that is exactly my point - there must be a means for content/IP creators to be paid. The OPs point that content creation is cheap or free is absolutely not true, and is unrelated to the cost of distribution.
It sounds like Linode's user system is different from their server management system. They probably have some administration tools for resetting VPS passwords, but don't have access to sensitive user details.
