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Why Is It Rocket Science That Laws Should Apply Online Too?
- jister 16y agoI got confused with the title. Why is "IT" or "IN" Rocket....?
- joelburget 16y agoIt's not rocket, it's rocket science. I.E. a complex or difficult mental exercise or field or study, used frequently in an ironic sense to suggest that a task should be easy or simple because it is not rocket science. (definition from wikipedia)
- VB6_Foreverr 16y agoWhy do people use this tired old cliche. Surely it's not heisenberg debugging to come up with something other than rocket science (or brain surgery?)
- kiiski 16y agoBecause people don't know what "heisenberg debugging" (or whatever you use) is? After all, your primary objective is not to be original, but to be understood.
- zecho 16y agoRight, it's a figurative expression for a reason. There's a balance where the listener/reader must understand the literal sense of the phrase to understanding the rhetorical meaning. If the listener/reader doesn't understand "heisenberg debugging" in any relevant context, they can't easily find the second meaning in the figure of speech. I'd go so far as arguing that figures of speech need to approach cliche entirely because of this necessity. It's not rocket science.
- VB6_Foreverr 16y agoPoint taken. What people should say is "it's easy" or "it's not difficult".
- burgerbrain 16y agoContinue with that line of reasoning very far at all and you'll be left with something that lacks any flavor or passion. Something very close to Newspeak. What people should say is what they already say. English doesn't have a central authority, it's defined by common usage.
- tkahn6 16y ago> When I write a letter to somebody, nobody has the right to intercept the letter in transit, break its seal and examine its contents unless I am under formal, individual and prior suspicion of a specific crime. In that case, law enforcement (and only them) may do this. Of course, I am never under any obligation to help anybody open and interpret my letters. It is perfectly reasonable to demand that this applies online as well. I would be willing to bet that 90% of the readership of TorrentFreak have run wireshark at one time or another.
- ori_b 16y agoI would argue that unencrypted communication is the equivalent of sending a postcard. There's no envelope or anything protecting the contents, so it's hardly a crime if someone happens to see the contents while it's in transit. If you don't want someone to see what you wrote, encrypt it. And yes, this will take a massive amount of user reeducation.
- elliottcarlson 16y agoThere is a difference in passively trying to intercept unencrypted communication and accidentally seeing a postcard in transit. It is illegal to look in someone's mailbox and it's illegal to remove contents from someone's mailbox to possibly read mail even without opening it. The points of contact for a postcard are minimal and generally would only be by employees of the postal service. I would argue that snooping on unencrypted communication would still be a crime because the user made a passive decision to do so. (I'm not preaching what to do or not to do - I'm no angel and have done my share of deeds - but this is to point out what it really comes down to when you compare analog and digital actions...)
- nightpool 16y agoI would say using someone else's network is like giving them your mail to put in your mailbox 'cause you're lazy. Using an unsecured public wireless connection is like shouting to a friend across the park. The problem really is that people think of a line to the internet as just a line to the internet, no matter where it comes from or who it goes through, not considering that some of their communications are public
- Goladus 16y agoBecause exchange of information over the internet fits more existing models than mail delivery, that's why it's a hard question to answer. It's a bit like mail delivery, but also shares characteristics with radio and television broadcasting, manufacturing, and distribution.
- hxa7241 16y agoThere is some truth there, but let us be clear about something: The hard question to answer is how best to arrange cultural production. The easy question to answer is whether we should surrender fundamental expectations/rights to a few corporate interests.
- showsover 16y agoI might have missed it, but did he specify whose laws should apply? Say I send his postcard from Sweden to America, and it goes via China. Whose laws apply?
- rokhayakebe 16y agoWherever the letter is at the moment the laws of that country will apply.
- masterzora 16y agoI can't really argue that that doesn't make the most sense, but, at the same time, I also find it kind of scary. In essence, I obviously choose the start and end points of the transit, but I have no control over where my packets go in between.
- zwischenzug 16y agoThis guy's obviously never tried posting anything to Italy.
- pwg 16y agoTo quote Bruce Schneier: "trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." ( http://www.schneier.com/essay-126.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-126.html ) And that is what scares the current content industry. And that is why they want such draconian laws applied to the Internet, when such laws, as the author of the subject article accurately points out, would never fly in the non-internet realm.
- SomeCallMeTim 16y agoHmm...well, then maybe there's hope: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100825174102.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100825174102.ht... (article on "dry water")
- chc 16y agoI don't see how an article about water encased in silica is relevant. Is it just because it contains the words "dry water" or is there something else?
- SomeCallMeTim 16y agoPlaying of the quote in the comment I replied to: "trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
- praptak 16y ago> [...] such laws, as the author of the subject article accurately points out, would never fly in the non-internet realm. The logical conclusion is that the non-internet realm is actually enough to make copyright unenforcible.Suppose the internet has been shut down. I can still hand my neighbor a USB stick. I can still snail-mail my buddy an external drive. The intellectual "property" lobby knows that. That's why they wanted to push something as ridiculous as the SSSCA. For those too young to remember, here's the gist of it: "It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies" More here: http://xenon.stanford.edu/~ruchika/dmca/theFairyTaleGetsWorse.html http://xenon.stanford.edu/~ruchika/dmca/theFairyTaleGetsWors...
- tzs 16y agoSo, basically, they want privacy laws online to work similar to privacy laws offline--so that they can ignore copyright laws online that they would not be able to so easily ignore offline?
- jrockway 16y agoWho has ever been a part of a mass lawsuit for making a copy of a DVD and giving it to a friend?
- tzs 16y agoProbably no one, since people copying DVDs offline generally only give them to a handful of friends, tops. Try making many thousands of physical copies of DVDs and handing them out to random strangers, and I'll bet you'd get sued--and almost no one would be outraged that you got sued. Do it on the internet, and suddenly people think you are a victim. The same thing happens with defamation, too. If I printed out a bunch of flyers accusing you of something horrible and not true, and posted them around your town, very few people would have a problem with you suing me, and with me losing. However, if instead I post the same things about you on an online forum, and you sue, then to a lot of people will think you are the bad guy trying to stop free speech. The general principle in the article, that law should really be the same online and offline, is a good one. After all, law is mostly about how people interact. The medium should not matter. All the internet really changes is that our actions can have a wider impact, and that some things are a lot easier to do on the internet.
- spullara 16y agoI think the big difference here is that in the physical world all that work that lead up to distributing 1000s of DVDs carries much more weight to the person making the copies. With Napster it was literally just start the program and point it at your music folder. People don't see it as "fair" that you can click twice and be doing the same crime as someone who methodically collected all the DVD copying hardware, bought disks, made the copies, found distributors and systematically created a business whose purpose and intent was completely clear. I think the same logic for people applies to people posting in forum. Computers have drastically increased the productivity of everything, including breaking the law, to the point where it was so easy there was no time to think about what they were doing.
- ignifero 16y agoAnalogies with the past are not a good guide. The internet is nothing like the previous broadcast/communication mediums. Imho, we don't need to look back into the old practices to create the laws of the digital realm. This is uncharted territory . People need to step back, look at the broader picture and figure out the new laws that will allow having a functioning economy in the online world. In the process, the current content industry will have to die, sorry
- dwc 16y agoThe partial truth of this leads to some major fallacies. There are some things that good techies understand, like abstraction, that lead to more general solutions. Laws on the books tend to be tied very closely with specific implementations. Here's an example that's been with us for a long time: junk fax laws v. spam emails. Junk faxes and spam are essentially the same problem, but with different coefficients in the equation. What spam is not is a whole new problem never before encountered, requiring novel and special legislation. By treating each technological innovation as completely unique, each "solution" takes a NIH approach. This also provides a yet another venue for special interest groups (MPAA, RIAA, et al) to advocate their agendas on every new issue even though the core ideas have already been explored. Yes, the internet has given us true revolutions and more will come. But not every issue is a unique special case, but rather many are new twists on old themes.
- joe_the_user 16y agoGood point and rundown of the situation but I'd say the expectation of a new approach to law appearing will only be fallacious if we let it be by accepting the way things are going. Laws on the books tend to be tied very closely with specific implementations. Yes, the law as it currently exist is based on being able to preserve "differences that don't make a difference". It's developed incrementally, inductively and by analogy. The phenomena of generic information, of information that isn't tied to a physical manifestation, is anathema to the whole English Common Law tradition, the basis of our system of laws. Is a string of bits a song? a device for circumventing security? Hate Speech? Protected Speech? The law as it exists needs to answer this and yet can't answer this because the law needs a context and the free flow of information implies there no set context. And so the legal system is going to be either be further and further removed from reality or institute an entirely totalitarian system to maintain its expectations. Because generic information really doesn't consist of a series of "new devices" and "new contexts" but rather is a single, abstract and indivisible process; either every unique string of bits is free or it has an owner - which is it?
- known 16y agoI believe offline laws should not be applicable to online till a credible face recognition software is developed. e.g. http://www.riya.com/ http://www.riya.com/
- Xodarap 16y agoI have to say, I'm not smart enough to understand this "rocket science." Laws exist because they accomplish the goals that we as a society want to accomplish. There's nothing intrinsically valuable about writing your name on a certain piece of the envelope - it just helps us accomplish our goals of privacy, etc. If changing technology means that we need new laws to accomplish our goals then there's nothing wrong with that.
- Tycho 16y agoIt's a bit like a drug-dealer saying 'why shouldn't I be able to ship drugs drugs through customs? - I know the drugs are illegal, but my crates are supposed to be private anyway.'
- warrenwilkinson 16y agoThe author claims a right he doesn't have (a right to private correspondence). Something I've never seen mentioned anywhere before. I know most war time letters are censored, and I've never seen rights activists even mention (let alone protest) that. Your ISP analyze packets, sometimes deeply. Google opens your mail to look for spam (does this violate the spammers right to private communication?). Norton opens your email attachments, and it might be mandated by your employer. A post office might scan or open suspicious packages to ensure they are safe for the receiver. These all involve 3rd parties analyzing and modifying messages.
- dexen 16y agoAs far as wikipedia can be trusted, there are explicit rigits to privacy & secrecy of correspondence [1] in western countries. The examples you give fail flat out -- mechanical sorting & filtering of email, without any direct human intervention -- has no way of breaking privacy. No person learns anything private, and nobody will ever get pestered by the spam filters of google or other such. Also, there's no crates of illegal drugs there being moved around. There is opaque electronic correspondence. Paper correspondence is by default secret, unless interceped by law enforcement officials under court order. No provisions out there for private parties for wildcard checks if their rights are infriged somehow by paper mail -- and you can be sure every now and then somebody slanders someone in paper mail. Rumors and whatnot. The point of the article is, why are there blatant double standards when it comes to electronic correspondence? EDIT: also note the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States In short, ``[[SCOTUS interpreted the Fourth Amendment]] to count [[also]] immaterial intrusion with technology as a search''. ---- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
- andos 16y ago
- Rhapso 16y agoThis analogy seems a bit poor, The laws preserving the integrity of postal service in most countries stem from the fact the government manages the post. If the government managed the internet to the same degree perhaps the analogy would hold. The question this begs is: Do you want the government to run the internet versus provider companies?
- Paulomus 16y ago"These are civil liberties that our forefathers fought, bled, and died to give us." The poster is Swedish. Sweden's last war was fought in 1814 to occupy Norway. Before that it fought in the coalition against Napoleon so that it could demand Norway in the peace settlement. Previous to that Sweden fought in the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 to maintain and extend its Baltic empire and in the 30 Years War to defend Protestantism in Germany and to seize the basis for said empire. I suggest that the existence of civil liberties and democracy in Sweden has more to do with peaceful activism and good government that with bloodshed and violent struggle.
- Typhon 16y agoI suggest that the existence of civil liberties in many countries has to do with the example set by the American war of independence, and the French revolution (which was itself inspired by the other one).
- ignifero 16y agohaha. bashing the swedes for their neutrality. classic
- cabalamat 16y ago> The poster is Swedish. Sweden is also an intrinsic part of Western Civilisation. People in other western countries have fought many wars, and many civil rights battles -- both violent and non-violent -- over the last two centuries, to get where we are today. > the existence of civil liberties and democracy in Sweden has more to do with peaceful activism and good government that with bloodshed and violent struggle Both have their place; it's a question of whatever tactics win in a given situation. To use a modern example, the Egyptian people were able to overthrow their dictator with a good deal less bloodshed than the Libyan people are.
- chegra 16y ago//Independently discovering all music and movie under //a Tera-byte of data for(int i=0; i < 2^(1099511627776x8); i++){ Node *binary = convert_to_binary(i); write_raw(binary); send_email_to_friends("I own number: %d".i); } Implicitly, they are claiming they own a number.
- erydo 16y agoSam Hughes had an interesting perspective on this: http://qntm.org/number http://qntm.org/number Basically, meaningful numbers are so sparse that to claim there's nothing special about them is ridiculous.
- chegra 16y agoA being in the 7th dimension wouldn't think nothing of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySBaYMESb8o&NR=1&feature=fvwp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySBaYMESb8o&NR=1&feat... Are you discriminating against me cause I'm a 3 dimensional being?[Being facetious, I actually was trying to come up with a good argument to defend against a argument like the one given before posting.]
- tedunangst 16y agoYou know that it takes a lot less than "2^(1099511627776x8)" bytes of storage to record that number? And while the entire sequence takes about that much space, it's only one such sequence, hardly "all music and movies".
- jbermudes 16y agoIANAL, but it seems that mens rea (intending to commit a crime) would play a big role in this area. While you are correct in saying that Abbey Road might under some form of digital encoding turn out to be the number "34", this wouldn't make distributing files with the number 34 illegal unless you can demonstrate that the people sharing the number knew what it was for and how it was encoded. Otherwise, it would seem that you could infringe copyrights all day and as long as the traffic was encrypted then you could argue that you're not sending MP3 files, just numbers that after some massaging with keys turns out to be data useful for feeding to an MP3 Player. (Heck, you could probably slippery slope the analogy to simply taking the twos compliment of the digital representation) So unless I'm mistaken, they are not claiming to own a number, but rather, are claiming to own "imaginary" property in that anything digital that resembles and is being _used_ to replicate the artist's performance is infringement and thus illegal. But I agree that the whole thing is still crazy and full of logical loop-holes. EDIT: For a similar concept that's brewing, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
- endtime 16y agoBandwidth is so cheap that data/IP are effectively non-scarce. We've never before written laws governing the exchange of non-scarce goods. So the old laws often seem not to fit.
- cabalamat 16y agoWhat's the betting that when replicators like reprap get good/useful, traditional manufacturing industries will try to get them banned?