11.20.05
Posted in General at 10:06 pm by Clay
Quoting from the Wall Street Journal, Friday, November 18th, 2005, B8:
…felt there wasn’t sufficient judicial oversight of National Security Letters, a form of subpoena used to demand phone records and other business records without the approval of a judge. While the proposed law does allow recipients to appeal the letters, it makes it relatively easy for the goevernment to defeat a challenge by claiming that demand for records is a matter of national security.
Moreover, businesses that receive NSLs face new criminal penalties if they tell their customers about them. Under the proposed law, customers may in fact never get notice that their records were requested and obtained by federal agents. Businesses that receive these orders aren’t advised that they have a right to consult an attorney and challenge the demand.
So, Big Brother has the right to get whatever records it wants from you without having any amount of oversight, and if you tell someone about it, you can get prosecuted.
This is not security. This is asking, begging even, for the government to abuse its power.
A government that reveals nothing is a corrupt government; the ability to get away with whatever you want without it being legal to catch you… That’s a whole lot of power. I am not ready to assume that everyone in government has the citizen’s best interests in mind.
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Posted in Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law at 11:58 am by Clay
As part of my continuing outrage with Sony BMG (and, to a lesser extent, the parts of the music industry that use some form of DRM.), I was reading the Freedom to Tinker blog, which I believe was created by Ed Felten.
On Freedom to Tinker I saw a couple of interesting posts. One talked about the various hoops Sony BMG makes you jump through, and exactly how XCP qualifies as spyware. To quote:
·The software comes with a EULA which, at the very least, misleads users about what the software does.
·The software interferes with the efforts of ordinary users and programs, including virus checkers and other security software, to identify it.
·Without telling the user or obtaining consent, the software sends information to the vendor about the user’s activities.
·No uninstaller is provided with the software, or even on the vendor’s website, despite indications to the contrary in the EULA.
·The vendor has an uninstaller but refuses to make it available except to individual users who jump through a long series of hoops.
·The vendor makes misleading statements to the press about the software.
The Second article talks about how Sony is evidently still shipping Mediamax copy protection, and how it also qualifies as spyware. The other interesting point in the article was this question:
Does MediaMax also create security problems as serious as the Sony rootkit’s? Finding out for sure may be difficult, since the license agreement specifically prohibits disassembling the software.
Thank you, congress critters, for making it illegal to hack spyware to see exactly how it’s screwing things up. Also, thank you, congress critters and President Clinton, for passing the DMCA, which had to be violated in order for us to find out the sheer extent of bad behavior that XCP does.
Again, I say, support independent artists.
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11.19.05
Posted in Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law, Wall Street Journal Opinion at 7:51 pm by Clay
Taken from the Wall Street Journal(Thursday, November 17th, 2005, D5):
Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said the Sony BMG episode was an anomaly and shouldn’t become a reason to condemn all digital-rights-management efforts. “For new models to get traction in the digital world, there has to be DRM,” Mr. Bainwol said. “DRM is a fact of life.”
So, it’s a fact of life that the consumer will have to pay money to purchase something that’s significantly less useful than the pirated item?
The only way I’ll put up with that is if the DRM is so transparent that I don’t ever(meaning that I think I’ll still be able to use the item 20 years down the road) notice its restrictions, or I have an easy way to hack it.
Since the former isn’t likely to happen, and the latter is too much work, I’m happy that I no longer buy anything the RIAA has a hand in. If you prefer to be able to use the things you buy in the way you want to use them, I’d suggest you do the same. Support independant artists.
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11.14.05
Posted in General at 8:36 pm by Clay
Did any of you notice Bush’s veteran’s day speech, where he talked about how he wanted to increase the amount of veterans of foreign wars?
Well, okay, I’ll admit that it’s just the logical conclusion I reached after hearing what he talked about for veterans day.
Seriously, though, I was amazed at exactly how tasteless our president was. It was veterans’ day, one of the days when we honor our soldiers, and Bush spent it talking about how we should all be supporting the Iraq war.
Or, reading between the lines, how you’re not patriotic if you don’t support his execution of the Iraq war; you don’t actually support the troops unless you support the war in Iraq.
That sort of sentiment really bugs me; now people who have misgivings about supporting the Iraq war are that much less likely to support veterans, as Bush is attempting to conflate support of his Iraq war and supporting our troops, past and present.
Now, just for disclosure, my position on the Iraq war has been to not have a position until about ten years after the war began. I’ve attempted to keep that position as long as possible, in order to see if Bush is really correct that we’re creating a “beacon of freedom” or somesuch. I figure my position on the Iraq war isn’t terribly important, because it’s another one of those issues where pretty much every politically-involved person has a strong opinion. Since I don’t have to actually make any decisions about the war, I won’t make any decision about my position.
That being said, the president should be a better person than to politicize Veterans’ Day. May he lose support on the war, just because of the lack of honor he showed with his remarks.
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11.13.05
Posted in Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law, Wall Street Journal Opinion at 6:03 pm by Clay
I discovered this clip through the Darknet blog. It’s a person from the Wall Street Journal talking about how Google Print is a good thing.
J.D. Lasica of Darknet recommends it, but with this warning:
Some CNBC bimbette analyst named Becky keeps shouting out, “This is stealing!”
Which is the reason why I’m posting this. I believe people should use words such as ‘illegal’ or ‘unauthorized’ when talking about this sort of thing. Google, at worst, is making necessary copies so that they can keep a useful database. I occasionally do things like save a webpage, such as when I get my name or picture in the paper. Is that unauthorized? I’d say so, yes, but I’m not going to a) get authorization or b) stop doing it; it just doesn’t make any sense, and it’s certainly not stealing — no one is losing anything from my usage, and no one is losing anything from Google Print. Unless, of course, the innovation actually makes money for Google, in which case the publishers lost out on possible income that they could/would have had if they had actually been innovative. Being that I believe in some form of capitalism, I believe that’s a good thing — giving money to the innovators, rather than those who hold such things back.
Also, I think what Google is doing is exactly as much fair use as its search engine, and that if it’s illegal, our judges and legislators truly do want to sacrifice innovation for the sake of old-company’s profits.
So, please, save ‘stealing’ for the people who buy fewer CDs because they get their music through piracy.
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11.11.05
Posted in General at 1:21 am by Clay
Being a moderate, I’d like to have moderate, pragmatic people representing me, or at least representing someone, somewhere.
Gerrymandering runs directly counter to this ideal. In California, they evidently have districts that cross mountain ranges. Why do they do this? Because it allows them(meaning the legislators who are drawing their own districts) to create a district that is heavily liberal or heavily conservative in its leaning. This guarantees that almost all elected members of California will have almost no difficulty at all in securing reelection. This also all but guarantees that politics will be polarized, with the nut job conservatives battling it out with the nut job liberals, with no pragmatists or moderates in the bunch(as they’re unelectable in heavily tilted districts).
So, California has decided that they much prefer having weird districts that make little sense. Which I don’t understand in the slightest, unless that solid majority of voters who voted against the proposition are all on the edges of the spectrum.
Either that or people just hate Arnold, and anything he touches.
Regardless, I hope that some day people will understand that it’s impossible to have a representative government when district lines are drawn to ensure reelection.
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