Posts by James Harton
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
In a world where an object being in your browser cache is seen as proof of intention to infringe copyright I don't see why the content being an FLV would make any difference.
-
@peter mclennan: The music industry makes money from music. The recording industry makes money from recordings. These are very different agendas.
-
Good point. Here at UoA we give away free internet access to students all day every day. We do our best to keep a lid on massive copyright infringement, but does this mean Telstra can turn around and cut us off for three allegations? That surely doesn't meet my definition of "reasonable process", but it has been pointed out that my definition of reasonable is different to others'.
I've been monitoring the security mailbox lately and we get a reasonable number of automated cease and desist emails from various would-be copyright owners. Most of them look bogus upon even a cursory investigation. -
Because Section 92A was so contentious that it has been delayed to give people more time to think about it. I suspect we'll still see this horrible piece of legislation on the books unmodified, it wouldn't be the first piece of horrible legislation.
Honestly, I think it's a bit of a red herring. Look at DMCA takedowns on youtube. Even with automated processes the MPAA can't keep up with the global whack-a-mole of the western worlds angsty tweens. People who have a legitimate reason to be posting something tend to post it on vimeo or blip.tv or any number of other services if the behemoth of youtube beurocracy selects them for the cull.
And none of it, short of burly men showing up on your doorstep (Hi John!) will stop the hardcore copyright infringers from going about their daily business. Without "trusted computing" then there's no way to control the worlds largest and highest bandwidth peer-to-peer file-sharing system: Sneakernet. -
It would seem impossible for there to not be unintended consequences. Orcon was kind enough to disable my internet access recently, my wife didn't even notice because her MacBook had decided to use my neighbour's wifi and neither of us even noticed it until suddenly _I_ had no internet access.
Pretty much the first thing I did upon unpacking my iPod touch from the box was change the settings for it to automatically try to join any wifi networks it finds and I went through and taught it the default passwords for a whole bunch of different brands of wifi access points. During my walk down the hill to the ferry in the morning there four or five different points at which I can happily loiter and check my email or browse the web (including a prominent journalists house who should know better). Some of these networks are unsecured, all of them have the box default configurations.
In a world where broadband internet access is given away in ignorance it's completely unreasonable to assume that because someone infringed copyright (or downloaded kiddy porn, for that matter) from a certain broadband connection that means that someone in that household is responsible for the infringement. -
It's strange. I'm the same. I can remember numbers, lots of numbers; my first phone number, the phone number of my old BBS, lots of IP addresses, house numbers, universal constants, but I struggle with pretty much everything else. I can't even tell you when I met my wife, or the street names of my childhood homes (I can remember the house numbers though). I can't remember if my daughter's bean-bag ball angel antics were when she was two or three or which house that was in.
-
I doubt Tolkien would've starved, but that's just not fair. His Estate wouldn't have got any money from the vastly popular films, even though he provided the important creative basis.
Why should his estate have gotten any money? Your garbage men's families don't continue to get his wage from the council after he kicks the bucket.
-
Well, there doesn't seem to be any discussion starting here, so let's start with a few key points (at least from my point of view):
Copyright is a technological anachronism, and attempts to create scarcity where none exists.
The internet, which is by no means perfect, is really good at a few things; creating communities amongst geographically disparate persons of common interest, moving content from one place to another and forcing down the cost of communications to an accessable level.When you combine these factors; ubiquity, community, connectivity and accessability new and interesting things start to happen. For example:
If community equals "people interested in watching the latest pixar film" then those people will use the other factors to a) find out about local session times on their local cinemas website (providing it's not a usability nightmare), and b) share highlights, mashups, commentary and most importantly copies with each other.
If community equals "people upset by the DRM imposed on their copy of Spore" then those people will use ubiquity, connectivity and accessability to wage a concerted campaign to hurt Spore's sales on Amazon by giving bad user reviews - something which costs EA a heap of money, but essentially costs each community member nothing more than a few seconds time (possibly the best circumvention device invented yet).
I guess my point is that like speed limits we're talking about individual people deciding that infringing the law is less important than their immediate need, whether that's doing 60 to get the kids to soccer practice on time or write wall-e/autopilot slash fic. People seem to think that these are "little laws" where they can see little or no potential harm resulting from their actions.
-
Thanks for the kind words. You're right, of course, that I have no idea what I'm getting into. My partner has a 3 year old daughter (so, I guess now I do too) and I've been gobsmacked by how much effort has to go into managing a biggish small person, let alone two tiny ones!
A greater adventure was never undertaken, Odysseus himself would ROFL at the thought!
-
I kind of expect that having a child will radically change my life. But knowing that in my head and understanding that in anything other than an abstract sense, well, they are too very different things. I hope I can reflect on the first few months (or longer!) with the humour and goodwill of Mr Haywood. Especially as I am really bad at dealing with stinky, gooey substances.
Actually, something I've been feeling recently is a lack of patience with people commiserating with me over how I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. A little patronising, wot?
In regards to stinky, gooey substances I discovered the first time I had to clean my then-puppy's diarrhoea out of the carpet that when it's someone you really care about it doesn't really matter any more. And for all you people saying "it's not the same", my dog is orders of magnitude bigger than any baby I've ever seen.
WRT the photo of the two Rodney's I can't help but see it with the caption "ZOMG!!~! INVISIBLE POLITICAL CONSPIRACY!~!!".