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So there I was, minding my own business, when Wes came in and told me I needed to come outside and look at something. Sitting on my front landing, was this HUMONGOUS turtle. You can see him here and also here.
Seems he's decided he's going to live in the heathers in the front of the house. Keep that in mind if you come to visit and you aren't wearing shoes. Don't stick your toes under the heathers.
The child went off to her 7th grade orientation today at her new middle school. She came home with seemingly hundreds of sheets of paper with ridiculous things we are supposed to sign, including how parents will be responsible for the child's conduct on busses, how the school system is not responsible if the kid sees porn on the Internet, and a HUGE pile of "opt out" forms to opt out of everything from family life education, to commercial use of kid's picture, to prohibiting the school from giving information to military recruiters.
Then, there's the litany of things I have to write checks for. New gym uniforms, yearbook, attempts to extort money by the PTA, and order forms for "school spirit wear." Strange, I didn't know that ghosts needed clothing, or that they had official school ghosts, but I guess things have changed since I went to school.
Calling All ReplayTV Commercial Skippers
As many readers know, EFF sued 28 Hollywood movie studios last year on behalf of five owners of ReplayTV 4000 units in response to studio claims that consumers who automatically skip commercials are breaking the law. The lawsuit asked the Court to rule that commercial skipping is fair use and NOT copyright infringement. After months of litigation, EFF has finally forced the studios to give up their threats and concede that our five clients can skip all the commercials they want with their ReplayTVs without fear of legal action.
So where do you come in? We've won the right to skip commercials for five consumers; now we want to make it 500, or if possible, 5,000 - the more the merrier. If you own a ReplayTV 4000 series unit or know anyone who does, contact us immediately. We are in the process of finalizing our negotiations with the movie studios and would like to get similar protection for everyone who has a ReplayTV and uses it for automatic commercial skipping. Contact us at:
nocommercials@eff.org
For more information on the case, please see our ReplayTV archive
P.S. If you use some other technology to skip commercials other than a ReplayTV 4000 series unit, drop us a line as well. While you may be outside the scope of the current case, we will be looking to bring similar cases in the future to guarantee the fair use rights of all consumers, no matter what technology you may use to enjoy them.
It's that most wonderful time of the year! The child goes to her orientation at her new middle school tomorrow. She will show off her new braces, her way cool new school clothes, and a pile of whatever she was told to bring. She's going to have to wake up VERY early, in order to start at 7:30, but she gets out at 2:30. She is definitely not a morning person, so it might be quite interesting watching her attempting to get her sorry butt out of bed. In this way, she is very much like her mother. Ah the fun of being a mommy.
Tuesday, when we attempted to commit Tae Kwon Do, the weather decided it was going to dump torrents of rain, complete with some nasty wind, knocking out power and dropping limbs and trees all over the place. Made it to the dojang, but with no power it was virtually impossible to do anything. We sent the kids home and left. The power at home came back around 9pm.
Last night, in the middle of sparring, another storm and another power hit. The kids wanted to keep sparring in the dark. There's a reason to have adults at Tae Kwon Do :-). "NO" works pretty well, as the parents scurried to take the kids out.
The following call to action from Larry Lessig's Blog is WELL worth your consideration. While many may think that this is not directly within the mission of the Domain Name Rights Coalition, strongarming of user, author, and intellectual property holders'... [Domain Name Rights Coalition]
When the controversey first started, it was rather quaint, and although silly, not anything that worried me terribly much, since I knew that even a highly conservative Supreme Court would not do the "wrong thing." But now with the circus that has become the Alabama State Court system, the abject stupidity, sheer arrogance, and "I'm more righteous than you are"... [Non Fluffy Wicca]
All functional parts of the new bathroom are COMPLETE! The only thing we are waiting for is for me to get off my butt and design a tile backsplash. At long last! This is SO wonderful. Happy happy.
From Larry Lessig
I don’t even know how to begin this story, so stupid and extreme it is.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was convinced by Jamie Love and others to hold a meeting about “open collaborative models to develop public goods.” One of those models is, of course, open source and free software. Lobbyists for Microsoft and others apparently (according to this extraordinary story by Jonathan Krim) started lobbying the US government to get the meeting cancelled. No surprise there. Open source and free software is a competitor to MSFT’s products. Lobbying is increasingly the way competition is waged in America.
But the astonishing part is the justification for the US opposing the meeting. According to the Post, Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said “that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights.” As she is quoted as saying, “To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO.”
If Lois Boland said this, then she should be asked to resign. The level of ignorance built into that statement is astonishing, and the idea that a government official of her level would be so ignorant is an embarrassment. First, and most obviously, open-source software is based in intellectual-property rights. It can’t exist (and free software can’t have its effect) without it. Second, the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should be to promote the right balance of intellectual-property rights, not simply to promote intellectual property rights. And finally, if an intellectual property right holder wants to “disclaim” or “waive” her rights, what business is it of WIPOs? Why should WIPO oppose a copyright or patent rights holder’s choice to do with his or her rights what he or she wants?
These points are basic. They should be fundamental. That someone who doesn’t understand them is at a high level of this government just shows how extreme IP policy in America has become.
[Lessig Blog]The thread about Ms. Boland’s (mis)characterization of open-source software (remember the days when statements were either true or false?) reminded me of an odd fight I found myself in the middle of at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in February.
I was asked to give one of three keynotes launching the second preparatory conference. At a press conference before the keynote, a reporter asked what I was going to talk about. I indicated vaguely I would discuss the importance of the public domain to innovation, etc. (same old boring stuff). But I was then astonished when the moderator of the event, Maria CATTAUI, Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce, scolded me that issues of “intellectual property” were not to be discussed because they were “exclusively” the concern of WIPO.
I promptly threw away the talk I had intended to give, and gave a completely different talk about how — Ms. Cattaui’s scolding notwithstanding — it was crucial that a summit on the world “information society” consider the role of the public domain in spreading knowledge and culture even if WIPO claimed exclusive jurisdiction of the matter. That assured I won’t be invited back to WSIS anytime soon (or at least by Ms. Cattaui).
It is therefore extraordinary now that people purporting to speak for WIPO would say that WIPO too is not to consider issues about the public domain. Neither at WIPO, nor at WSIS, nor apparently anywhere. Except among us commies I guess. (Fellow travelers, for our next secret communist meeting, be sure to read the latest great work by some of the most prominent IP commies out there. Linked here.)
[Lessig Blog]And why not? Psycho Sensei was available, so why not take it? It's mine it's mine it's mine. Most of the moving over has been done. My only issues are with a few of the category icons. Not quite certain why OS 10.1 server isn't properly handling permission changes on files, but I suppose the best I can do is WAIT FOR 10.3 SERVER!!!
Hurry up, Apple. PLEASE.
In refugee camp, a P2P outpost
File-trading network in West Bank not worried about lawsuits
Deep in the tense Jenin refugee camp in the Palestinian West Bank, a new file-swapping service is daring record labels and movie studios to turn their piracy-hunting into an international incident. Dubbed Earthstation 5, the new file-swapping network is openly flouting international copyright norms at a time when many older peer-to-peer companies are trying to establish themselves as legitimate technology companies. One of the brashest of a new generation of file-trading networks, it is serving as a new test case for the ability of high-tech security measures and international borders to preserve privacy on the Net.
AS THE DEADLINE looms this month for what will likely be thousands of copyright lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against individual computer users, anxious file swappers are turning to this and other new services in hopes of avoiding legal consequences. In EarthStation 5’s case, it is returning industry legal threats with bravado.
"We’re in Palestine, in a refugee camp," said Ras Kabir, the service’s co-founder. "There aren’t too many process servers that are going to be coming into the Jenin refugee camp. We’ll welcome them if they do." ... (MSNBC)
Many of you wrote in last week to comment on SCO's attorney's argument regarding the alleged unenforceability of the GPL license. Now, Eben Moglen, General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, gives his views, courtesy of CNET News.com. Preview: SCO's argument was 'arrant, unprofessional nonsense.' Thanks to Dennis Kennedy for the link. [The Trademark Blog]
In yet another example of the rampant "it's not MY fault'itis" that seems to be sweeping America, the lastest and possibly most moronic attempt to blame someone else comes from - the close friends in fascism to the RIAA, a motion picture executive.
It can't POSSIBLY be that people aren't going out to the movies so much because the movies SUCK. It can't possibly be because it's oftentimes more convenient to wait for the DVD (which makes the MPAA a ton of money anyway) rather than put up with misbehaving brats and adult brats who won't shut up during movies. And it can't POSSIBLY be because our lives are more busy. Instead, let's blame free speech.
n this story Rick Sands, COO of Mirimax claims that text messaging devices are to blame. Yes, those horrible people expressing *gasp* OPINIONS might actually be cutting into his bottom line. Those naughty people who send messages to their friends not to waste 2 hours and up to 20 bucks to watch a crappy film, NOT the crappy film itself, are to blame.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if someday a corporate executive stands up and says, "We lost market share because we have a lousy product. We're sorry. We'll try to do better next time." Stop the presses!
Note to self: Add to list of things to advise clients of before bringing trademark lawsuit. Someone might publish song parody targeting the trademark that client brought the suit to protect in the first place. [The Trademark Blog]
Believe it or not, even with my radical views on trademarks, INTA has asked me to speak at their upcoming Trademarks in Cyberspace Forum Sept 22 and 23 in the DC Suburbs. Please feel free to come and say howdy.
Once again, the federal government is using a disaster as the spearhead for a power grab. This time, the target is the ability to "condemn" private property over the objections of land owners and municipalities, to site power stations, lines, and all of the accompanying gunk that goes with it. I'm watching Spencer Abraham, the Shrub's Energy Secretary, and he bemoaned the fact that the states and municipalities were fighting them on zoning grounds, etc.
We have already seen the hundreds of examples of power grabs using a disaster as the impetus. My personal favorite is the establishment of an ADIZ, "defense zone" around Washington, DC to protect important federal potintates from the horrors of general aviation. This new airspace restructuring went through without so much as a rulemaking.
Once the Congressional sheep are convinced that we must prevent possible terrorist attacks on the electrical grid (including the terrorist attacks by the cheapness of presidents of power companies, I suppose), then you will see federal power placing power lines through your backyard, schoolyard, or parkland.
I can only shudder to think of what might be next.
For those who may not know much about general aviation, when this branch of flying began, small aircraft manufacturers touted their wares as the next logical phase of American travel. Everyone had cars in their driveways, now everyone could own an aircraft and use it to fly where they wished. And for those who decided to take to the skies, after a hefty amount of training (average of 60+ air hours plus written exams, flight tests, etc.) you could either purchase an aircraft, join a flying club, or rent an aircraft at your local airport, and as long as you stayed out of certain restricted areas, and complied with the airspace rules, you could basically go where you wanted without asking permission first. In many ways, it became the same as driving your car to grandma's house.
Of course, after 9/11 this all changed. In a misguided attempt to make people "feel better," the Bush Administration grounded general aviation totally. This included business jets, trips to grandma's, pleasure trips, and everything that was not scheduled airline service. When the restrictions eased, they first eased for scheduled airlines, despite the fact that general aviation was in no way involved in any of the attacks.
After a series of confusing, draconian, and inconsistent rules, etc., things gradually got back to almost normal. That is, until we went to Code Orange a number of months back. Then, "Defense Zones" were established above several urban areas. When we went back to Code Yellow we all hoped that these "Defense Zones" would go away. They did...everywhere except the Washington, DC area.
So, what does this "Defense Zone" do? Pilots are required to file flight plans for any types of fight whatsoever, then wait for a "discrete squawk code" to place in their transponders prior to taking off. After take off, you must follow your flight plan, or face being shot down by fighter jets. To get into any airport within the ADIZ, you must circle outside and attempt to break into overcrowded frequencies and get permission from overworked air traffic controllers. One aircraft already has run out of gas and crashed while waiting for permission.
What does this do for security? Absolutely nothing except inconvenience and
possibly endanger general aviation pilots. Proof of this occurs on a rather frequent basis. For example, last night I heard the roar of afterburners over my house as two F-16s were scrambled to find a hapless pilot who made a mistake and breached the zone. Despite this, the pilot in question figured out his mistake and exited the area before being intercepted. In other words, the ADIZ was breached, and the pilot escaped, flying an aircraft whose speed is akin to a pedestrian on the autobahn in relation to the aircraft chasing him.
Further, these flight plans can be filed by anyone. The name of the pilot in command is not even checked against the pilot database to make sure that the pilot has a license, or is qualified to file let's say an instrument plan. "Mickey Mouse" could be cleared to proceed direct to Dulles (but not to National because general aviation is no longer allowed there).
So why do I even care? Well, there are a number of reasons, the first of which being that i'm a pilot and flight instructor who highly enjoyed getting into my airplane at Gaithersburg, MD, flying north to a practice area, and "boring holes in the sky." Not anymore. Now they want to know who I am, what time I'm leaving, where exactly I'm going, etc., and then I get to sit and wait on the runway for an undertermined amount of time while filing this flight plan, and then another undetermined amount of time before I am allowed to get my code and leave. Then I have someone watching me at least until I leave the ADIZ area. While I don't mind being watched as one of a group of maybe 200 anonymous airplanes in the area at the time, seen only as incidental blips, I DO mind that they know everything possible about me and are tracking me as if I were a criminal. But then, as a GA pilot, I AM a suspected terrorist.
What also bothers me about this is where it could lead. Who is next? There's been talk about it being the boaters. Maybe it will be the truck drivers. After all, they reason that a GA pilot COULD be carrying explosives and COULD fly into the White House. Without debating whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing, doesn't it follow that a truck COULD be carrying enough explosive to drive close enough to the White House to blow it up? The argument would go that it is necessary to have truck drivers file "drive plans" and use GPS or other types of transponders linked directly to governmental agencies who track them to make sure they don't go too close to the White House or other places, like Disneyworld. This would definitely make a lot more sense than targetting general aviation aircraft. After all, while no GA has been involved in any terrorist activity in the US, a truck bomb blew up in Oklahoma City.
And why limit it to truck drivers? Those RV drivers most certainly could pack a load of explosives, as could large SUVs. Perhaps they should be required to let the government know before they take to the road. The Dell Interns would be required to file a drive plan and would be shot at if they deviated. Of course, this would inconvenience law abiding citizens, but you can't be too secure, can you?
At long last, I have succeeded in cleaning the mess called my master bedroom closet. This is, of course, a monumental achievement that deserves a mention in a weblog for the entire Internet to see. In lieu of congratulations, please send cash in small denominations or chocolate in large quanties. That is all.
I was reading Gilmore’s reply to Lessig’s earlier post and the conversation it stirred, and it moved me to share some of my own experiences with our fellow bloggers.
I have to admit to a feeling of resentment at the extent of the security searches every time I travel by air. The armed guards, the x-ray machines, the metal detectors, the pat downs, the search of luggage and personal effects, the removal of shoes, and for some, I suppose, the explanation of prosthetics, pacemakers, and appurtenances, constitutes a massive invasion of privacy. We have just come to accept this as a natural state of things because, like Gilmore, we’re all suspected terrorists. I find myself having to explain to people why I, as a Presidential candidate, am repeatedly shuttled off to that special line of selectees identified by the SSSS stamped on my ticket. The transportation security agents inform me that a computer has made this decision. I want to know who programs the computer. Is it John Ashcroft?
Even though I don’t feel as though I’m getting special treatment or that I’m entitled to special treatment, it makes me wonder how much of a threat I must be since I really do intend to replace the entire government. So when people occasionally recognize me getting the magic metal detector wanding and dutifully submitting to searches of my person, extending my arms and my legs spread-eagle, I explain with a smile, “I’m running against George Bush.”
What I’ve been able to determine from an informed intelligence source (oxymoron) is that I tend to get selected because I buy one-way tickets. This poses a dilemma. Should I change my campaign and do round trips say in a continuous loop from Seattle, Washington to Washington, DC in order to avoid greater suspicion or do I plan a practical itinerary from Seattle to San Francisco to Austin to Oklahoma City to Des Moines to Cleveland to Manchester and gain near public enemy status? The real reason that people who travel point to point instead of round trip are more likely to be subjected to a search is because, I’m told, that the hijackers bought one-way tickets. This is an interesting type of profiling that goes on. One which seldom invites an iota of self-reflection about America’s role in the world or about the basis for the murderous grievances which misguided individuals may have against us. It would be useful to have a national dialogue about our democracy and the manner in which it has been undermined since 9/11. The alternative is to proceed, robot like, and submit to metal detectors, x-ray machines, magic wands, pat downs, and the shuttling of point to point travelers to a point by point inspection.
It seems to me that the Bush Administration, with its moral obtuseness, its inconscience on matters of civil liberties, and its craven attempts to demolish the Bill of Rights has prepared for the American people a one-way ticket of sorts. When it comes to the quality of our democracy we are traveling on a road to nowhere.
Airline security is, as we have learned, a deadly serious business. The traveling public deserves assurances that they and their loved ones will be safe in the air. But when does security in a democracy morph into something profoundly anti-democratic. This is a discussion we need to have. And the answer, as Gilmore knows, cannot be simply “search me?”!
Trademark rights being used to stop spammers! This is really cool! A trademarked and copyrighted haiku is put in the headers. But spammers have stolen the haiku to try to trick people into thinking the email is genuine. But guess what? The intellectual property rights generally used to bash users over the head are now being used to save users from spam! Yay! Read More from the Register.
Silly me. After going through multiple iterations of trying to figure out how to use NetNewsWire and EspressoBlog with Movable Type, I came across the sage advice that one must use a much more updated version of Perl than I had. So, after attempting to install a new version of Perl by myself, and failing miserably, I found that the only way to fix this doom was to find someone who knew something technical. The frog offered his help. It took frog many hours, but he indeed installed the new Perl. Then my blog no longer worked. It was futzed. While all this panic was ensuing, I decided that perhaps I should try to put my blog on the OS X machine, where it would be much easier for me to administer it. After fixing a broken CGI mess (thanks to the O'Reilly information on the web...), I got most of it working, except for one little issue. It seems that the static files weren't loading properly. After going through billions of iterations attempting to fix this, I finally gave up and am going to try to sleep amidst massive snores on the other side of the bed.
So the good news is - the frog has prevailed in fixing everything and my blog is happy. The bad news is... it looks like I'm going to have to fight with MT to get it working on the OS X box. So why am I bothering, given that I have it working fine on the other machine? Uh..... well..... uh..... Because it's there? :-)
Yeah, ok...I'm a nut case. What can I say?
FROM KARL AUERBACH - Privacy is a complex topic. The decision whether information is to be private or not is the result of a balance of equities. As in any such balancing act the weights assigned to the various equities frequently dictates the outcome. And loss of privacy is a ratcheting event - once privacy is breached, it remains breached. During the 1970s and 1980s privacy issues were distilled into collections of principles. These principles represent broad consensus of opinion among many actors, private and commercial, governmental and institutional. Many of these principles underlie imperative laws in many nations around the world and ought not be thoughtlessly disregarded. When a person discloses personal information a kind of rough social bargain is struck - the person makes a choice, perhaps unknowingly, to disclose or not to disclose based on that person's evaluation of the benefits to be obtained versus the costs and burdens to be... [CaveBear Blog]
Run, do not walk to this URL to get your very own Shrub Doll . One of the most pathetic things I ever did see. Can we stoop any lower?
From Wendy Seltzer's Blog -
Discussion on the first panel of ICANN's WHOIS Public Workshop has been heavily skewed toward "law enforcement and intellectual property interests." Speakers from the U.S. Department of Justice, OECD, and WIPO have emphasized their "need" for WHOIS data including names and contact information of domain name registrants in order to pursue alleged infringers, fraudsters, and criminals doing business online. Due Process to the accused is too inconvenient, it seems.
Discussion on the first panel of ICANN's WHOIS Public Workshop has been heavily skewed toward "law enforcement and intellectual property interests." Speakers from the U.S. Department of Justice, OECD, and WIPO have emphasized their "need" for WHOIS data including names and contact information of domain name registrants in order to pursue alleged infringers, fraudsters, and criminals doing business online. Due Process to the accused is too inconvenient, it seems.
According to John LoGalbo, U.S. DOJ, law enforcement needs public access to accurate WHOIS data. It's not enough to give access to law enforcement officials, for once public access is restricted, then law enforcement must use legal process to get at it -- the delay of legal process is unacceptable. What is it about online activity that justifies such prior restraint (forced identification of speakers online that we wouldn't accept in other media)? The speed of "harm" from online speech.
OECD has privacy guidelines, but its representative here, Michael Donohue, thinks that consumers use WHOIS data to investigate websites before doing business with them, and that this purpose warrants a data disclosure requirement. This analysis ignores that good business will want to spread their reputation by whatever means available, and don't need the WHOIS database, while bad businesses will fake "reputation" wherever they can, including in WHOIS. WHOIS shouldn't be the Better Business Bureau.
Please, folks. The Internet doesn't eliminate due process concerns. We've developed extensive procedural protections precisely because we value individual freedoms of privacy and presumptions of innocence. The burden of official justification is not an accident, but a basic component of liberty from unjustified investigation.
There are some welcome voices on the other side:
Sarah Deutsch, Verizon: "Convenience" doesn't cut it. Law enforcement still needs to use fair process when it demands access to data.
Jeff Neuman, Neustar registry, notes that various national privacy laws conflict with ICANN WHOIS disclosure mandates: "Do we break the law to provide this WHOIS information so that you may catch others who break the law?"
Diana Alonso Blas, European Commission: Build privacy protections into the system. Think about limiting collection and access, auditing use of the data collected.
Paul Stahura, eNom: Availability of privacy (including proxy services) increases accuracy. The bad guys will always put in false info, but the good guys are more likely to give real data if they know it will not be disclosed haphazard.
Tom Keller, Schlund: Privacy is a right, not something for which registrants should have to pay extra.
Karl Auerbach is here in Montreal, adding notes on WHOIS and privacy to his CaveBear Blog. I particularly appreciate his proposal to establish a truly anonymous domain name registration service, capturing only technically relevant data:
I hope to run an experiment soon in which people can register names anonymously and without the retention of any contact information whatsoever - control of a name would be in the form of a digital certificate, a kind of bearer bond.
Thomas Roessler, also here and blogging many of the sessions, shares concern over privacy in WHOIS records, and busts a few strawmen.
From Wendy Seltzer's Weblog
Alex Macgillivray, Glenn Brown and I did a presentation with Charlie Nesson on Content: Technology at the Stanford ILAW. We discussed what the Internet changes about the creation, distribution, and use of "content," focusing on peer-to-peer architectures and sampling.
Alex Macgillivray, Glenn Brown and I did a presentation with Charlie Nesson on Content: Technology at the Stanford ILAW. We discussed what the Internet changes about the creation, distribution, and use of "content," focusing on peer-to-peer architectures and sampling.
Glenn showed some of the music and video sampling that Creative Commons licenses can facilitate; Alex suggested that Google can be seen as web-wide sampling. I showed examples of "cultural sampling" -- creative use and abuse of trademarks and copyrights -- and the legal threats they often receive, as collected by Chilling Effects. In many cases, though, lawyers' threats don't produce the desired capitulation, but a swarm of web protest instead. In those cases, I asked, who gets the 'Net? The corporations and politicians using cease-and-desists, or those using the 'Net to respond? Chilling Effects aims to empower the responders.
Slides from Who gets the 'Net? presentation viewable online.
[Wendy: The Blog]Live notes from the Internet Law conference at Stanford.
from Aaron Swartz WeblogLive notes from the Internet Law conference at Stanford.
Lessig, the host, does an overview: Conquering the globe. Propagandizing for Creative Commons all week. Donna is our resident blogger. Aaron and Lisa will probably be blogging. Computer cafe, you can spam from them if you want to make some money while you’re here.
Technology underlies it all. Best to do less but deeply than rush through lots of slides. Purposely vague about some technical details. Larry’s idea (he’s had more than one, but this is the best): Code is a form of regulation. IETF, hourglass architecture (on IP). Hum voting. Other organizations: W3C (Tim Berners-Lee). Microsoft invented favicons; purists won’t like it. Gnutella.
Models of networks: centralized (TV), hierarchical (telephone), distibuted (decentralized). Innovation is the primary consideration. Everyone has an IP address. Jon Postel handed them out, called himself IANA.
Q: Who paid Jon?
A: He had a university job. He also applied to NSF. Just like artists apply to NEA for money to make art that offends Republicans, he applied to the NSF so he could make a network which offends Republicans.
How do packets route? Like letters w/o central coordination. They used the Amish barnraising theory. Then it bounces around a cloud in the middle of the Internet. Best efforts. Running out of IP addresses (Barbara Roseman: no we’re not!).
SETI. Spam, tracerouting the mail server, don’t know who everyone is. MAPS: inelegant solution, had an impact good and bad.
Basically thought impossible. “You cannot build a corporate network out of TCP/IP” - IBM, 1992. People thought bees couldn’t fly too.
Missing: QoS, accounting, traffic management, encryption, authentication.
With telephones, at least we know caller pays. But who of the Tier 1 Backbone provider pays? It’s symmetrical, so they carry each others data for free. Use protocols like BGP. Prediction: Accountants will put BGP to the test and break the servers until they generate money.
Q: How much does the Internet cost?
A: Tier 1’s probably cost a lot less than you expect.
Terry Fisher: Can you say more about what happens in the cloud? You started saying there was a big decentralized Amish system, then you said that there’s a backbone.
A: There are only a handful of Tier 1’s. If they were shot down, we’d be in trouble.
Encryption. One-time pads. Public-key encryption. Insulting the entropy of Rothko paintings.
General purpose computing devices. This is why we have viruses.
Originally folks thought cyberspace was “unregulable”. Promoted by John Gilmore (“routes around it”) and John Perry Barlow (“throws the law into disarray” - A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace). Both from the EFF, but the EFF’s job is to protect us from government! More rhetoric than reality.
Law regulates by threatening. If you drive more than 85 mph, police will punish you. (Ex ante rule, ex post punishment by the state.)
Norms regulate: I don’t wear a dress at Stanford, only at home. If I did, people would look at me funny; maybe not take my class. If you smoke, you’ll be treated like a weirdo. (Ex ante rule, ex post punishment by the community.)
Market regulation: If your work for 4 hours you’ll have enough money to buy lunch here in California. If I sing, you’ll pay me quickly to stop singing. Defines a set of options. Market functions based on law (setting up contract rules, etc.; won’t let you sell sex, even in California) and norms (says what you can sell — can’t buy an excuse out of lunch). Regulation in a sense that we evaluate options and make choices accordingly. Gas costs so much, limits how much you can drive.
Some things in in the market because of norms and laws. Yet market regulates in a different way.
Architecture constrains: If you’re bored and want to look out the window, you have to turn around and look out a tiny window at something not very interesting. Using architecture to protect my market power. Cars can’t drive over 160 mph. Simultaneous constraint. Lessig did not want WiFi in his classroom; removes competition for attention by acting of the architecture.
On any given situation, four regulating influences: market, laws, norms and architecture. But law can help modify them all! (Luckily for lawyers.) Take smoking: the government requires you to be >18 to buy them (law), they buy ads that say smoking kills (norms), they increase taxes (market), they considered regulating nicotine content (architecture).
Regulators pick the way to influence behaviour. This isn’t new: Napoleon III wiped out tiny roads to make highways harder to shut down by revolutionaries (architecture). Robert Moses segregated people by race by putting low bridges across roads to beaches, preventing busses (carrying mostly African-Americans) from going to beaches (architecture). ADA regulates architecture to ensure people in wheelchairs can get around.
Q: You noted how law could regulate the other three, but can’t the other three do the same? Is there an order of precedence?
A: Lawyers are on top because we’re at a law school and need to make the lawyers feel good. In a architecture school, they’d feel architecture should be on top. But law is the one place where changing humans is the explicit goal. Law has that role of supremacy in a democratic society, it has legitimacy. You’d feel funny if architects or marketers said they wanted to change the world to their benefit.
Q: Libertarians say they oppose coercion. But the only coercion they see is legal coercion.
A: Yeah, I tried this once with “What Declan Doesn’t Get” (bad title; now hundreds of articles titled “What Larry Doesn’t Get”). Look at Mills; he was concerned about norms and intolerance. He saw that the social norms in England were a threat to the freedom of speech in the English society.
Cyberspace is an architecture. Take TCP/IP. It’s a capable system for sending bits around. But look at what follows from this, look at architecture’s consequences: can’t know who send the data, what the data is, where the data is coming from or going. If the government doesn’t know who, what, and where, then it can’t punish you. The architecture entails the libertarian world (relative anonymity therefore can’t regulate, can’t market-ulate).
Marketers don’t like this feature, makes it hard to sell things. Conflict: anarchists, marketers, government.
Example: no porn to kids (38 states says by law). Supreme Court says this is OK as long as adults aren’t affected. Architecture of real space it’s hard to hide that you’re a kid. (Age is relatively self-authenticating in real space.) Market says don’t give kids porn because they don’t have money. Norms say don’t do it because it’s wrong. But age isn’t self-authenticating in cyberspace so none of this can happen.
The mistake of the net anarchists: is-ism. Just because the Internet is like this now, doesn’t mean it will always be this way. You can change the architecture of the Net. And both the government and the market have a strong interest in doing this!
This has been done. Market: cookies. Facilitates identification, which helps commerce online. General consequence: traceability of users. Most people have no clue about the ways their behavior is tracked.
Government: sniffers. Sniffs packets to see what’s inside. On Friday, set up a Morpheus server to share lectures. On Saturday night got a frantic phone call: the network police had broken into his office and unplugged his machine.
Government: maps. Connect IP addresses to physical locations. Makes it easier for governments to discriminate for the purpose of accessing content. Americans get some info, foreigners get another.
Add together these changes: we can now know who, what, and where! Relative anonymity becomes relatively identified. Change the code and you change the normative consequences. You change the Internet from a libertarian space to a place that is increasingly regulable.
Good or bad, it can happen. And we need to worry about this!
Q: DoubleClick says they protect their users privacy.
A: Is the cookie a violation of a law? Not in the US. But there are unintended consequences. Market: DoubleClick adopted a privacy policy to protect themselves from allegations. Law: the FTC enforces the policy. I like cookies. The point I wanted to make about cookies is how a tiny change in the architecture can have major, sometimes unintended, consequences.
Q. How do you explain the contradiction you posed about Gilmore and Barlow’s statements and actions? A: They’re not naive, what they said was a political statement, the EFF is a way of ensuring that it remained true.
The libertarians don’t want the law to intervene to stop spam or porn. They want to protect free speech. Originally we had strong norms against advertising. Enter AOL. Norms no longer worked because of all the new people. Enter vigilantes: they used technology (blackhole lists, etc.) to enforce their policies. But who decides on the policy?
Fight between HP and MIT: HP adopted ORBS, ORBS didn’t like MIT’s spam policy, so HP blocked MIT’s email at the suggestion of ORBS. MIT techies were upset and decided to block HP. Fortunately the war was avoided because ORBS got kicked off the network.
Vigilantes are trying to good in a world without law. But their technology doesn’t always achieve their goals. The cyber-libertarians didn’t want the government to enforce censorship on their network but they ended up with private companies doing, which turned out to be even worse. At least you can sue governments under the First Amendment!
Point: architecture can do more harm than law. If law takes care of the problem of spam, then we would have less need for regulation through architecture and vigilantes.
Lessons:
Q: The law no longer has such clear primacy, there’s less respect for public law. Are you going to address that?
A: I am a pessimist. This is my yellow-shirt day, when I get to be optimistic. At the end of the week, I’ll be even more pessimistic than you! There are lots of ways the law can address those problems. Whether or not the law has done that we’ll see during the course of this week.
Q: When I started our computer lab came under fire at ORBS. I wanted to work with them, but they felt that since I wasn’t bowing down to them and they threatened to blackhole the whole university. So I caved in. It bothered me that the vigilantes let their egos take over. I recently had the same problem with SPEWS. I’m concerned the vigilante groups are doing more harm than good.
A: Vixie’s group is relatively good. But SPEWS, I think, is the place that says there’s no appeal. That’s what troubles me. At least the government has to justify what it does. It’s accountable.
Q. If we’re talking about legitimacy, I notice we’re talking a lot about US law. Coming for a different jurisdiction, I’m concerned by the influence of the US norms and laws on other jurisdictions.
A. When I starting my reflection, being from a constitutional law background, I realized that the Internet was the best and most efficient way for the US to export the First Amendment values. The Internet is removing the barriers that real world had placed between jurisdictions.
Q: No jurisdiction has power over the Atlantic, cyberspace is like that.
A: This is a standard lawyer tactic, take something we know about (law of the sea) and apply it to something we don’t (cyberspace). But cyberspace is different, it also takes place in France. When you “go to cyberspace” you never leave real space.
Lessig: How do you “solve” the pornography problem? Problem: There exists pornography. (Some people think that the problem is that kids have access to pornography, but we can’t solve that — kids will get it.)
Zittrain: That’s a solution, not the problem. And isn’t there a little problem with that called the US Constitution (not the USS Constitution)? Michigan v. Butler, can’t burn the house to roast the pig.
Lessig: The fundamental First Amendment value is adult access to porn, huh. Well, what’s your alternative?
Z: Just ban it for kids. Like the top rack, kids can’t reach it. You’ve got to card people in cyberspace. You could collect credit cards.
L: So I have to give pornographers my credit card?!
Z: It’s a god-given right to let people steal your credit card in America and only be responsible for $50! Even kids know that.
[Zittrain writes “Larry wants porn.” on the board.]
Z: If we can put a man on the moon, we can give you an age ID that can be sent over the Internet.
L: So the burden is now getting and maintaining some ID thing. That seems bizarre. Isn’t the First Amendment about access to porn?
Z: You’re carded at the store.
L: Maybe you are! I’m not.
Z: It’s no big deal; it’s Microsoft^Wopen-source wallet; you don’t even notice.
L: Well, there’s another burden: the porn provider needs to validate the ID. And that’s what the Supreme Court cared more about.
L: Instead, why don’t we mark kids that they’re a kid? We need to make sure they use a kid-enabled browser. That’s a parents job, but they’re the ones who care. So now it’s a parent’s burden. All websites have to do is include a tag that says “harmful to minors”, the browser would do the blocking. [This is Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal with PICS. - ASw.]
Z: My Internet Explorer supports this, I just click the content advisor. But then I go to CNN and it doesn’t have a rating. Don’t all the sites have to rate themselves?
L: No, we’ll have a law require that sites with harmful-to-minor material say so.
Z: Won’t everyone say their stuff is harmful-to-minors so they don’t go to jail?
L: That’s true in real space too.
Z: Wouldn’t it be better to have a free market with third-party organizations rating all the sites?
L: So the Christian Coalition will rate the Internet for me. And my Internet will depend on labeling systems of other people. Isn’t that more burdensome on free speech?
Z: But the government’s not involved!
L: True, but this restricts access to more speech.
Z: So do venetian blind manufacturers! Are you saying a world that enables parents to shield their kids is a world with less free speech?
L: But having a system pick out what’s blocked is different than a parent picking.
Z: So we hire a nanny to sit by the blinds.
L: But won’t the systems block sites that criticize them?
Z: As well they should! Circumvention tools take away power from the parents. Bypassing software hurts the parents. People, like the ACLU, who protect these sites just want to let kids see porn.
L: How do we know this system works?
Terry Fisher Update: Posner has affirmed Aimster.
Yahoo! France case, US courts won’t enforce French decisions against the First Amendment.
L: So we don’t try to enforce our laws in other countries.
Z: Not so fast — American exceptionalism! Take iCraveTV, they used TV in Canada and broadcast it across the Internet. It’s legal in Canada, but not in the US.
L: So if the US was being consistent, we wouldn’t force Canadians to live up to our law.
Z: Nah, we just go after the iCraveTV people who live in Pittsburgh. If we didn’t do that, then everyone would move to Sealand.
L: So we wouldn’t try to enforce in Canada.
Z: Foolish consistency! We’d probably ask Canada to enforce our judgement if we had to.
L: What if iCraveTV tried to filter out US citizens?
Z: iCraveTV tried this; they asked Are you Canadian? Yes or no. Version 2 asked for your area code and only accepted if it was Canadian. But if it was more accurate like Quova. Even 99% accuracy wasn’t good enough.
L: So in this world, the Internet French people sees could be quite different.
Z: Yes, and Google.de is different from Google.com. (We have a mole at Google. We call him Moogle.) Great firewall of China.
L: So we have technologies to identify where, what, and to block it. So local governments have an easier, and easier time to regulate.
Z: Yes, the indicators point to a zoned world, and every country has an interest in that. US may turn up their noses at banning Nazi stuff, but perhaps not so much if we can ban child porn.
Q: How can we stop violence against women on the Net but not stop freedom of speech?
A: Yes, it’s the same toolkit for every problem. Need to figure out who people are, what the data is, and block it. That’s the connection between porn and jurisdiction.
Q: How did you see what sites were blocked in China?
A: We used ATT Worldnet to dial up Beijing and tried to visit sites. After a while our dialup was stymied, so we looked for open proxies in China.
Q: Do you really feel having enforceable jurisdictions is bad?
A: I’m not sure I want to impose my values on others, but I do want to argue for my values. I think access is better than restriction. Is it legitimate to enforce our view on others.
[Nesson is making us bloggers come down on the floor.]
Nesson: We’ve seen the net’s anarchistic libertarian heritage, but we’ve also seen it’s now in its twilight and will be gone in 2-3 years.
So what’s real, what’s not? Identify what makes the net democratic. Panel: Free speech, equality, connectivity, low cost, participation. Nesson: How much is architecture?
Lisa: A lot. Nesson: How much is law?
Panel: Common carrier platform.
Audience: When everyone uses IE6, how is it democratic?
Frank: There’s a barrier-to-entry to use the tools. Lisa: We need consumer education. People think AOL is the Internet.
Panel: Most of the planet doesn’t have the Net.
Nesson: Zittrain, you talked about Tier 1. What about Tier 2? What about Africa?
[…]
Models of communication: broadcast (intelligent sender), telephone (intelligent core), Internet (intelligent ends). Communication is made up of discrete components.
Democracy: Jonas of IDT: wants to control the pipe, content, opinion. Political routers, slowing packets from competitors and speeding them from partners. “The ability to shape the window through which we view the world […] is core to the question of democracy.”
Autonomy.
Innovation.
Efficiency: time-lag in redesigning network when people change their preferences.
Policy communications stack: Content, Logical, Physical. Take a fax. Physical: paper, lead in my pencil, a fax machine, copper/fiber wires, another fax machine, more paper, more ink. Logical: software, standards. Content: scribbles.
Physical: Overwhelming Cable, some DSL, a little sat., … . For homes and small businesses, it’s all cable and DSL (run by RBOCs). It’s the bigger institutions doing the other stuff (T1s, Fiber, etc.). Other ILEC and non-ILEC are teeny. Conclusion: ’76 Act Competition is a failure; incumbents take all.
Historically, we thought monopolies were more efficient. Cost-per-subscriber would be greater because most of the cost is in wiring the neighborhood. So you regulate the monopoly, you don’t introduce competition.
In the 1990s, we has two monopoly incumbents each capable of providing broadband. Wanted to introduce competition because regulators were bad at controlling monopolies.
Incumbent monopolist and need for competition. 1996 act: require telephone monopoly to cooperate with competitors. we’ll have two incumbents and each will have competition over their wires. intra-modal competition.
Hope: Open-Wireless networks! If you’re willing to spend $50 on service and $50 on hardware, then with an open wireless network you’ll spend $100 on hardware and get smarter devices at the edges.
Gain: making communication better without increasing popular. Directional antenna gain (putting hands around mouth or ears), processing gain (intelligent receivers reconstructing), cooperation gain (asking others to relay).
Multi-user information theory.
Logical: TCP/IP, DNS, Linux, Apache, Perl are all open. (Trusted system: closing off the open components.
Content: Freenet, free content, etc.
If the proprietary folks throw out all the open stuff in just one layer, then they control it all. We still have a chance for a Commons, though.
Alexander Macgillivray shows how peer-to-peer software works.
Charlie Nesson demonstrates video mashups and Kazaa.
Glenn Brown shows some excellent video mashups (some are available from Illegal Art).
Alexander Macgillivray shows more common forms of sampling: hyperlinks, OPML, BoingBoing, Google, Google News, Google glossary, Froogle.
Business patents are public goods. Creators may not make them unless government intervenes and grants a monopoly.
I invent a mouse trap. Marginal cost is low and stable. Competition will drive cost down to marginal cost of production. I know this and will never invent a mouse trap. So I get a patent. And then I could force every customer to pay as much as they can. But I don’t have the info to do that so I pick a flat price that maximizes my monopoly profits. One group (those who valued it more than the cost picked) saves. But there’s also losers (deadweight loss) — folks who would by the mousetrap at marginal cost but not at monopoly cost. Extreme result: millions of people in Africa with AIDS die.
Disadvantages: Administrative costs, impediments to cumulative innovation, deadweight loss. Conclusion: patents are always costly and should only be used when needed.
Rent-dissipation: Society is best served if only one team works on something. But monopoly profits encourage lots of teams to fight to be first. Also encourages people to waste time working around patented inventions and not to build on previous patented inventions.
Proposal: Grant broad patent rights to those who come up with big inventions. They’ll get rid of the waste by regulating future inventors to prevent conflicts.
Problem: Patentees won’t do anything and you’ll have an even greater rush to make big inventions.
Rent-dissipation is unavoidable.
Business method patents are bad. No evidence that they’re needed to stimulate innovation. People innovate to get first-mover advantage; not to make monopoly profits. Patents have little if any benefits and very serious costs: transaction costs (increased by recent reforms — need two examiners not one), large deadweight losses (consumers priced out of the market), impediments to cumulative innovation, rent-dissipation.
We should get rid of business-method patents.
Audience: Another justification for patents is that they provide a way of forcing improved techniques into the open. That’s not necessary for business-method patents.
Audience: Business-method patents don’t require a large outlay of capital to develop, so the monopoly profits aren’t necessary.
[Aaron Swartz]The lovely Wessiepooh is working wonderfully and the new light, paint touch up, completion of the caulking in the bathtub, etc. is going SO well that I am VERY pleased. Good ole Wessiepooh.
Magnificent fun. I am very very pleased. Lucy can use her side of the bathroom starting TOMORROW! Only have the sinks, a bit of floor, and a bit more paint to do.
This is a must see.
http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~shane/stasj/div_bilder/48.html
Poor Spot is getting older and older. And I have to admit that I'm getting tired of cleaning up barf and piss. Every morning, get up, clean up piss and barf, say hi to the cat, try not to step in anything else. *sigh*
I suppose I should be happy he's lived this long, since 18 is a long time for cats. But dealing with this can get annoying.
Sad, but I can't go to my 25th high school reunion. The weather won't allow it. It's going to be far too crappy to fly, and driving would not be that much better. No airlines have seats available for anything less than 900.00 or so now. Might as well just bit the bullet and not worry about it. Oh well. I'll keep in touch some other way.
Still trying to figure out whether or not I want to fly up to NH tomorrow for my reunion. Doesn't look like that many people are going to it, and if they are, none of the ones I was interested in finding. I'm still not feeling totally comfy flying unless it's clear VFR, and I have the added issue of the child pushing me to go and take her with me. Of course she wants to see her grandparents and auntie and uncle, so I have to figure out whether it's the right thing to do, or whether to drive, or what.
I am about to kick the ass of Lucy, our Columbian housekeeper, for telling Morgan ghost stories again, and making the kid afraid to sleep in her own bed, and afraid to turn out the lights. VERY frustrating, to say the least. Gave Morgan an amber necklace last night and explained it would protect her from "negative energy." Also explained to her that Lucy was superstitious and shouldn't be believed over her mother regarding whether there are or are not ghosts in the house.
And, of course, there ARE no ghosts in this house. I'd know it. Grrr.
After a meeting with the money behind audiopoint.net, it looks like I'm going to be working with the CEO to keep the legal side of things working properly.
This could be a fantastic thing. We truly need money at this point. Wes hasn't been working for a year, can't seem to find a job. We've been working on the new bathroom, but that's just about it. Meantime, the CEO (good ole Brian) may also be able to find a job for Wes. The new legal work means that I will be able to do things on my time, flexibly, and help the company at the same time. I'm really excited about that. I think it will be a goddess-send :-)
1.2 in a Seminole with a rather strange person who said that I wasn't a good enough pilot to fly IFR by myself without more practice. Heh heh. Is he right? I think I'll go up with another instructor and see if that's really the case.
Amy in our clan is going through a seriously awful marriage break up that is so eerily like mine with Kurt that it am basically freaked to the core. The things he is saying to her are almost exactly the same things that were said to me. And the reason for the break up is the same as what Kurt SAID was the issue with our marriage. Except Amy was monogamous and I was not. Kurt claimed to be monogamous, but cheated. Go figure.
Anyway, I thought that was just a coincidence, and tried to offer her words of wisdom about how things would eventually work out, and maybe sometime they could be friends, when Kurt announces to me that he wants to keep Morgan during the week with me having her on weekends, turning our custody agreement on its head.
So how can I deal with this? Morgan is 11 1/2, soon to go through puberty. She's about to start periods, is about to go to Junior High, when everything changes. This is the time she's going to need her mother. Unfortunately, she wants to be with her father. She says it's because she can play better video games at his house. I think there's more to it.
So how am I supposed to feel that my own daughter would rather be with her father and the woman that he cheated on me with? (well, one of the women anyway...). How am I supposed to feel that my daughter AND my ex husband both prefer her over me? What IS this?
I guess I have to fight for her. If I don't do it now, we'll never have an opportunity to have a real mother/daughter relationship. She won't talk to me and tell me what is going on in her mind. And the fact is, I have no idea where to start or how to handle it. The only thing I DO know is that I will have NO chance at all if she isn't with me during the week.
I wish I knew what to do. And I wish that my ex would understand that I MUST have her back.
Well, my plan was to go to my 25th high school reunion this weekend by flying myself up. But unfortunately, it looks as if the weather may not cooperate. So, I checked the airlines. United wants 995.00 to fly to MHT for the weekend. US Air wants 885.00. Southwest is sold out. So, if I don't get current for instrument conditions really fast, I get screwed. Film at 11.
Meantime, crazy Bushi decided to DEMAND to be let into the shower with me. He cried and scratched the door til I let him in. Then he pranced right into the running shower and stood under the water, waiting for me to shampoo him. Nutcase dog!
One thing worse than a telemarketer is a telemarketer who claims they are exempt from the FTC requirements for "do not call" lists because they're a utility. How DARE they keep calling me when I tell them to leave me alone? I HATE the telephone in general, and DEFINITELY HATE telemarketers in particular and it pisses me off and raises my blood pressure and they totally and completely SUCK! I HATE THEM!!!!!!
There. I feel a bit better now.
It's hard to believe that it's already August. The summer certainly is flying past. Anyway, i spent most of the day doing not much of anything. Woke up with a really awful headache. I have no idea why. Drank water, took some drugs, started feeling better, so I thought I'd do a bit of work. So I entered some more chapters in the Art Magic book project.
For those who don't know, the Art Magic book project is my third circle project. I'm taking a book from 1898 about "Art Magic and Spiritism" that seems to have a lot of parallels with Modern Wicca. The plan is to type the book into html and make it available on the Web. There is a working group helping me with typos and commentary so that I can perhaps compile a report on the book and how it contributes to modern Wicca. Assuming it contributes anything, of course. Today I finished up to Section VII. Oh the fun.
Went to the O'Briens for a really great pool party with C Crew. Had a really fun time. Website is at http://homepage.mac.com/mikkibarry/PhotoAlbum16.html
Well, I was hoping to get current again in airplanes (having basically been grounded for months because of annoyance with Washington DC's ADIZ that necessitates flight plans for flights that we generally used to take for granted, etc. etc.). Alas, that was not to be. The weather decided that I was not worthy, and didn't cooperate for the flight.
So I spent the day at Leesburg doing Tae Kwon Do and a bit of gymnastics, telephone answering, parent meeting stuff, and otherwise being difficult. in other words, it was a pleasant day regardless.
