Really what he should be saying is, "Unless it is found to be illegal..." but we have entered a permissions culture mirror world where now some things are illegal unless declared otherwise, rather than legal unless explicitly banned.
This is the bad news! Areo, the networks etc are small potatoes compared to this seemingly pervasive presumption of illegality.
There's absolutely no reason to put a link-shortened HREF in a regular blog post where space is not at a premium. It turns the link into unrecognisable glop. Clicking one becomes an unnecessary mystery.
My comment is about .001% as useful Christina's comments, but I couldn't resist:
We apologize for any confusion and would like to thank the commenter for adding further details.
Mike, if you'd like to thank the commenter, please feel free. Mention her name too.
(sorry, it always bugs me when the plane lands in the USA and they say that they "would like to be the first to welcome you to..." and then never get around to doing so!)
Speaking as an MIT grad: although I'll wait until Hal's investigation is done, my theory is that this was driven by the IS department. When I was there, IS was basically like the IS/IT department of any big corporation: monolithic, conservative, and not particularly interested in the "mission." Academic departments (especially EECS of course, but also ME, aero-astro, architecture and I'm sure many more) took care of their own computing needs rather than deal with IS, which mainly dealt with the libraries, administration, business school and the like. And MIT is a pretty loose place, so if IS decided "Gadzooks, Hakorz!" and wanted to run with the ball probably the administration figured there was something to it and the academic departments probably didn't even notice.
There is some good news: 1> there's a new president, so there's no axe to grind / backside to cover at the top in terms of doing diagnosis. 2> Hal Abelson has incredible integrity and is also the main guy responsible for the existence of open access like Open Courseware so was an outstanding choice to look for problems.
My guess up front could be wrong -- perhaps there was mendacity involved. But I will believe whatever report Hal produces, and I will be quite astonished if it's anything other than IS running essentially open loop and nobody else paying attention.
By the way the noun was "the arpanet" not "arpanet". There were arpanet protocols like NCP (replaced later with IP, TCP and UDP) just as there are internet protocols, but they were/are used with the arpanet and the Internet.
FWIW, since most of us used case-insenstive systems, and frequently uppercase defaults, capitalization isn't really a big deal: ARPANET, arpanet, ARPAnet...unlike the Internet, which is the mongo big internet of them all.
So if there's no relationship that means IP laws have no effect (i.e. it's harmless). Which is certainly surprising to me! I would have thought them negatively correlated.
This appears to be basically the same as West's monopoly on legal books (i.e. court rulings, basically). Although the judges' rulings, as government documents, are public domain, West's publishing of them in paginated volumes is copyrighted. And cases are often referenced by West page numbers.
Nonetheless I continue to be astonished that he wants to make it harder to find bad guys! It's almost like he supports terrorism (which I don't believe he does)!
"AT&T gave me $50K to help the homeless though they wanted me to endorse the merger. I'm an honest guy so I won't lie or pretend that I have a position on telecom policy but if it causes more donations, please do support it."
I am delighted by his attitude (but don't support the merger).
This is how Ronald Reagan got his start: he would read the ticker tape reporting of faraway baseball games and then describe the game over the radio to listeners. The ticker tape just had raw data (hits, outs etc) so he would make up the background detail.
(Not to mention that many people follow cases like this as they follow sport)
But what if, instead of focusing on the paywall, the NYT had focused its efforts on adding more direct value to the site itself
Interestingly, the Times has the chance to experiment with this, as it also owns the Boston Globe, which has a respectable following of its own. It could leave the paywall up on the NYT site but experiment on the Globe's site, and see which does better.
We should refer to these companies as "Music Enforcement" or "Movie Enforcement" companies. Both highlights the ridiculousness of it as well as indicating clearly that they are shakedown crews of little value to anyone but themselves. But While calling them "Music Shakedown" could sound biased; Music Enforcement is simply normative!
What would happen if you printed a book with URLs of sites that streamed video? Would such a book be protected by the 1st amendment? It seems to me that there is plenty of case law that would claim it would be.
This would make an interesting test case -- if it succeeds, it becomes a clarifying precedent, as the DOJ would need to prove that a web site is somehow different from a book.
I am not David Slater nor do I represent (or even know) a David Slater. These images are being used without my permission, therefore can I ask you remove these images from your site immediately.
(hmm, do I need permission from Caters News to use their sentence?)
Cops come under a lot of legit criticism on this site, so I'm glad be able to praise the chief of police for downplaying, rather than hyping this rubbish. How great to have a rational response for a change.
Of course it's a shame that the other rational response is beefing up police patrols anyway, because of the cost of the negative press.
Actually changing your name is not a bad way to do it
It's sort of like the posix unlink() system call.
Unfortunately you can't do it selectively, and there will likely be agencies that will sell the service of connecting the old name to the new.
But I know when I changed my name at marriage my publication record essentially vanished.
Actually the part that should worry us is in the phrasing
The part that really worries me is this phrase:
Really what he should be saying is, "Unless it is found to be illegal..." but we have entered a permissions culture mirror world where now some things are illegal unless declared otherwise, rather than legal unless explicitly banned.This is the bad news! Areo, the networks etc are small potatoes compared to this seemingly pervasive presumption of illegality.
Please don't use link shorteners
There's absolutely no reason to put a link-shortened HREF in a regular blog post where space is not at a premium. It turns the link into unrecognisable glop. Clicking one becomes an unnecessary mystery.
In the realm of commenters fixing bugs in the article....
My comment is about .001% as useful Christina's comments, but I couldn't resist:
Mike, if you'd like to thank the commenter, please feel free. Mention her name too.
(sorry, it always bugs me when the plane lands in the USA and they say that they "would like to be the first to welcome you to..." and then never get around to doing so!)
Probably Institutional structure and blindness
Speaking as an MIT grad: although I'll wait until Hal's investigation is done, my theory is that this was driven by the IS department. When I was there, IS was basically like the IS/IT department of any big corporation: monolithic, conservative, and not particularly interested in the "mission." Academic departments (especially EECS of course, but also ME, aero-astro, architecture and I'm sure many more) took care of their own computing needs rather than deal with IS, which mainly dealt with the libraries, administration, business school and the like. And MIT is a pretty loose place, so if IS decided "Gadzooks, Hakorz!" and wanted to run with the ball probably the administration figured there was something to it and the academic departments probably didn't even notice.
There is some good news: 1> there's a new president, so there's no axe to grind / backside to cover at the top in terms of doing diagnosis. 2> Hal Abelson has incredible integrity and is also the main guy responsible for the existence of open access like Open Courseware so was an outstanding choice to look for problems.
My guess up front could be wrong -- perhaps there was mendacity involved. But I will believe whatever report Hal produces, and I will be quite astonished if it's anything other than IS running essentially open loop and nobody else paying attention.
Re: Just a guess but...
Well that's the implication, but on what grounds?. That is not a usual requirement unless "national security" is claimed...which isn't the case here.
Re: Just a guess but...
Well that's the implication, but on what grounds?. That is not a usual requirement unless "national security" is claimed...which isn't the case here.
Why would a judge prevent him for asking for help?
Lessig wote,
Why would a judge object to someone asking for help with their defense?Games
I thought it was basically a world wide marketing event with a small sporting exhibition attached.
Calling it "the games" is putting the cart before the horse.
"The" Arpanet
By the way the noun was "the arpanet" not "arpanet". There were arpanet protocols like NCP (replaced later with IP, TCP and UDP) just as there are internet protocols, but they were/are used with the arpanet and the Internet.
FWIW, since most of us used case-insenstive systems, and frequently uppercase defaults, capitalization isn't really a big deal: ARPANET, arpanet, ARPAnet...unlike the Internet, which is the mongo big internet of them all.
So it's not a problem, then?
So if there's no relationship that means IP laws have no effect (i.e. it's harmless). Which is certainly surprising to me! I would have thought them negatively correlated.
The bad guys will probably win
This appears to be basically the same as West's monopoly on legal books (i.e. court rulings, basically). Although the judges' rulings, as government documents, are public domain, West's publishing of them in paginated volumes is copyrighted. And cases are often referenced by West page numbers.
West sued someone who tried to use parallel structure, and won. Here's a good write up: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/the.law_pr.html
Actually, kinda cool
I think of Liberman as a retrograde anti-technologist, but he is advocating the Semantic Web, a technotopial idea!
Not that he would be persuaded by the obvious reasons it unfortunately can't work
Nonetheless I continue to be astonished that he wants to make it harder to find bad guys! It's almost like he supports terrorism (which I don't believe he does)!
That's brilliant
Mike asked,
It seems pretty clear to me:I am delighted by his attitude (but don't support the merger).Like old sports reporting
This is how Ronald Reagan got his start: he would read the ticker tape reporting of faraway baseball games and then describe the game over the radio to listeners. The ticker tape just had raw data (hits, outs etc) so he would make up the background detail.
(Not to mention that many people follow cases like this as they follow sport)
The NYT has the perfect opportunity to experiment
Name should include "Enforcement"
We should refer to these companies as "Music Enforcement" or "Movie Enforcement" companies. Both highlights the ridiculousness of it as well as indicating clearly that they are shakedown crews of little value to anyone but themselves. But While calling them "Music Shakedown" could sound biased; Music Enforcement is simply normative!
Possible first amendment challenge
What would happen if you printed a book with URLs of sites that streamed video? Would such a book be protected by the 1st amendment? It seems to me that there is plenty of case law that would claim it would be.
This would make an interesting test case -- if it succeeds, it becomes a clarifying precedent, as the DOJ would need to prove that a web site is somehow different from a book.
Cease and Desist Immediately!
I am not David Slater nor do I represent (or even know) a David Slater. These images are being used without my permission, therefore can I ask you remove these images from your site immediately.
(hmm, do I need permission from Caters News to use their sentence?)
Good job chief of police
Cops come under a lot of legit criticism on this site, so I'm glad be able to praise the chief of police for downplaying, rather than hyping this rubbish. How great to have a rational response for a change.
Of course it's a shame that the other rational response is beefing up police patrols anyway, because of the cost of the negative press.