ACLU loses digital copyright battle (News.com)

Posted Apr 10, 2003 3:15 UTC (Thu) by naughty-artkitekt (guest, #10552) [Link]

OK, Here's some techno-screed/thrill-screed... I'm peeved and distrusting of such
companies and particularly of judges who seem to render decisions that craftily or
conveniently serve such companies....
=====
Here is how to run N2H2 out of business if they don't OPEN UP: Lobby the law
to make it mandatory that site content providers put as the FIRST thing in their
metag a globally-accepted code that relates to "Sexual" or "Non-Sexual" ,
"Insurrection" or "Non-Insurrection" or something plain. This tag must be in every
single file they serve up, even if they have 1 BILLION pages. Really, who needs
to keep and serve up 1 BILLION pages?

Then, a corresponding binary code will apply to verify the site matches it's
self-declared content category code. More than one category can apply, but
maybe the code needs to be affixed to the URL so that no sneaky Tricky #$cks
can slip past the Meta Tag requirement.

ALL sites publishing material would have to go through another server- or
stand-alone fiilter process that would be an EASY to USE utility. Parents or
guardians or libararies could view, edit, and lock down the settings they desire. Or
they could open up certain portions of the utility to enable entrusted supervisors
to add or remove strangely-named but neutral, harmless or non-offensive names.
Or, they could have their local copy download the latest feed from a DNS-like
server.

To have any company circulating an ENCRYPTED list means there is potential
for CENSORSHIP, BLACKMAIL, OBSTRUCTION or the like against sites which
offend certain people who have gateway, router, ISP or shop control over what a
workstation can or cannot access. It also has the potential to STEER people,
based on whatever coding has been assigned to a person, home, credit card
number, ISP, neighborhood, city or even state, to bogus, false, misleading or
other types of divisive, confusing, or soft-pedalled story that deserves HARSHER
SCRUTINY. Imagine at voting time the last-minute voters in a targeted
demographic get served up self-expiring never-to-be-cashed files that discourage
them from voting for an industry (hint, mega-corp) -unpopular candidate. Imagine
countries or corporations that dump toxins on India or the Philippines being able
to filter out from the Internet, at the TOP DOMAIN LEVEL content that is from
Green Peace or Amnestry International or similar groups.

So, when kids surf, they would have to authenticate their age somehow. That
might be tough, unless we reach the time when we ALL have to surf using a
unique indentifier. That will REALLY be self- or unnecessarily incriminating.
However, if kids or parents get fed a porn page, or steamy lascivious or
bomb-construction or the like pages, they should be able to "HIT A BUTTON" to
forward the offending page to a clearing house that has LIVE human Johnny and
Jenny onn-the-spot inspect, flag, and report true positives. It's a LOT of work, but
maybe it'll get jailed the Internet abusers. This thing could work to the dismantling
of spammers, too, to an extent. (This is ONE area where N2H2 MIGHT have a
merit badge in their chest: "You honor, we have a spam and porn reporting tool
that could inadvertently be breeched and divulge the identity of the complainant.."
or some such anti-competitive drivel. If it IS a built-in capability, then the JUDGE
should have OPENLY acknowleged it as their legal defence to keep it closed.
But, somehow I doubt that is the case...)

OPEN SOURCE Developers: Please, if it's not being done now, find a way to
harvest all the names of sites that will voluntarily insert the META TAG/in-page
code. Then, those will be added to tools that can freely or for-pay be distributed.
Fortunately, many registered types of businesses, say IBM and Sears, won't likely
be associated with lascivious material, so they could be granted "instant access"
rights or permissions, but if the site being sought is anti-IBM, then in that case
ALL companies would have to be Meta Tagged.

Next, those whose sites are being excluded could be advised by the tool that they
were exclude BECAUSE they were not Meta tagged FOR inclusion.

Those who ask for inclusion could THEN be validated as to the content of their
site. IF they are deceptively pushing porn, but are claiming to be general, non-sex,
or they claim to be educational-sex when it's really adult entertainment, then they
should IMMEDIATELY be taken offf the Internet/ISP routes until they rectify the
lies.

If they (ANYone) refuse to join the OPEN SOURCE program, then ask them
why, or what they have to gain by being secret. Unless N2H2 is some whacked
secret front for a pre-Homeland Security agency that absolutely MUST conceal
certain addresses, then there is NO need to encrypt the addresses or URLs. If
they ARE such an agency, then they need contain their butts to Carnivore,
Echelon (or has that boondoggle mutated into Carnilon/Carnal-On or Echevore?),
and all the other spook/spy gear that is NOT on the commercial market. (Don't
forget, a number (small, less than 25,000??) of corporations and organziations
are really just fronts for foreign or domestic intelligence gathering agencies. Yeh,
as a teenager in the 80's I read LOTTTTTTA books you don't read in high
school...All with ISBN and Copyright info, so no, I never grabbed any secret
material that wasn't sanitized for public consumption. Maybe that's where my "big
imaginations" come from....)

Please, all, help me clean up my thoughts or arrangements. Let's get this thing
moving to de-proprietarize the listing of encrypted sites. Next thing we'll know,
N2H2 will be installed at the ISP level blocking me and you from or redirecting me
and you to sites that have a few words here and a few words there changed,
jusssst enough to sway or dissuade us about something. How goes the war?
Good or Bad? Wellllllll, that depends on your ZIP code or your previous
employer...

Far fetched? No. If you listen to NPR or ABC or CNN, you might in a 1-day span
hear similar or confilcting major news feed reports. Despite large markets (Let us
not forget a little broadcasting thingy called "Ad Insertion", which allows news
agencies to localize advertisers or submissions. Well, it also is used for relaying
local news to finite markets, so, say ABC's KGO in San Francisco doesn't
incessantly bombard listeners in France about Hightway 880 cloggin up at
Richmond near Marine World...) In the SAME time, 2 other networks or even
Yahoo and Google will steer you to information that is DIAMETRICALLY
OPPOSED about some reported activity that SOMEbody wants to downplay.
Then days later, the things get updated. But, with short-minded, don't really care
people, 3 days ago won't matter. What's exciting today IS. It won't be long before
every ISP is being told to "filter yourself through us, or else".

Imagine your kids at school trying to gain access to a legitimate, post-grad
school's medical or dementia or structural materials physics database from their
11th or 12th grade course and simply a few hip-area or demolition terms in the
standard dictionaries trigger No, No, Ha Ha (N2H2) to remove the found page
from the searches. I sometimes think this is what search engines are doing
against brand new websites that don't get picked up by major news relays, acting
as after-the-toll-booth (ISP) spray rigs ("DAhhh, Didn't pay for PLACEMENT/
SITE RANKING?, Well, we'll have to remove you from the crawl bot findings so
the pressure buils up on you till you scream for exposure. Since when does an
site engine get to remove URLs that have been legally, legitimately registered and
active?). Hence, nobody knows you exist, (unless they know your URL) EVEN
THOUGH one return of a one-hit find should still turn up. Searching for a URL
should return SOMEthing, especially if the site has been provided with meta tags,
been submitted to search engines, and has been seen around the world over
2,000 times by home or lower level pages.

Now, if No, No, Ha Ha is simply encrypting "Doom" or "Magic Carpet" (didn't ms
do that to bloat ms blurb a few years back, to "legitimize" their bloat, calling it
"advanced code and features" or something?), then the software could or should
be regarded as junk and not a dime paid for it. Does anyone know how big is the
encrypted matter? Is it fluff, spacers/fillers? Junk in there to mire the cracking
attempts? And, again it BEGS the QUESTION? What the HECK are they
encrypting? A matchlist of "send HIM to here; filter THIS from her; block THESE
orgs from THAT"? Is it by CC number? ZIP code? Political registration/affiliation?
Crime record?

Just WHAT the heck does that judge know that WE cannot, such that it justifies
the shrill (or pragmatic) the simple:

""There is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that...outweighs N2H2's
right to protect its copyrighted property from an invasive and destructive
trespass," U.S. District Judge Richard Sterns wrote. ""

Thats' BULL!! C'mon JUDGE! Why were MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of lines of
code and BILLIONS of dollars spent cracking the Human Genome? Mostly for
pharmaceuticals' benefit, right? SO, I guess your ruling is for corporate benefit!
Unless WE, the supposedly-self-directing, liable-to-the-law citizens can know what
is in there, that racial or neighborhood profiling is not going on, then that is a
SPECIOUS reply. ONLY in cases of national security or protection for subitters of
illegal URLs should such a list be encrypted. ONLY! Not to protect "our
weak-assed corporate position in the markeplace".

One more thing, to get conspiratorial. What's the company's relation, if any, to
microsoft (Or, again, the spy agencies)? Maybe some of the code in there is
related to sifting PAKs, SIDs and other things from disks. Maybe there's some
illegal, (LEGALLY ILLEGAL) html, or tags of some sort, that manipulate the disk
and drop cookies, keystroke counters, bots, crawlers, file collection and
compression, call-back-home, disable the router LEDs while sending back home
code? What the heck is IN THERE? (I ask this question because I think it is
possible. Why? Well, in 1994 I was temping as a lowly data entry guy at Lotus
Development and I struck upon an idea in conversation with a technician there. I
said to him, "I a year or so, people will be able to get into your modem and into
your computer and move, delete, change, or corrupt files." His reply, "Awww, no
no way. You DON'T KNOW what your're talking about! You're not an Engineer .
That's IMPOSSIBLE!" Well, when did such things get regular news? Around
1994? Once broswers started taking off?

End of this drivel, screed, rant, shrill......

David Syes
naughty artkitekt

Posted Apr 10, 2003 16:47 UTC (Thu) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link]

It would be *far* simpler to petition the government to set up an administrative agency to take care of "blight" in intellectual "property". Property rights (and abuses) are already well established in the law... and when IP owners feel the risk of having their IP "condemned" and sold to a rival company who will promise to do something "beneficial" with it, then perhaps they won't be in such a hurry to convert their trade secrets to "property".

Posted Apr 11, 2003 16:18 UTC (Fri) by Ebarrow (guest, #10593) [Link]

This is, I submit, a failure of the intellectual property system. In patent law, there is an express bargain between the community and the inventor: a limited monopoly is granted in return for publication of the invention.

The use of copyright law to protect software, without source code disclosure, circumvents the publication requirement of patent law. I have long been of the opinion that copyright in published software should be conditional on full disclosure of the source code; as well as facilitating the study of computer science, it would I believe have prevented many of the monopolistic abuses which have characterised the computer software market.

Edward Barrow, Copyright Consultant
http://www.copyweb.co.uk/