DISQUS

This seems unfair. I'm skeptical of network neutrality because Washington is so bad at tech policy, and Big Copyright will find some way to lobby in its own interests.

However, there's a difference between telling an ISP that it doesn't own its pipes and telling an ISP that it can't block or throttle certain kinds of traffic. The problem is, it's a distinction the legislators won't get right.

This only tells half the story. Newspapers typically have something in the range of 20% profit margins. That's really high, but since there's no growth they don't perform well on Wall Street.

That changes the game somewhat, at least to the extent that it can still be played without apocalyptic rhetoric. I leave it to someone smarter than me to figure out how.

Regulations live Steve suggests could be good, but I'd think they'd work best if consumers (or a state attorney general) could just sue misbehaving ISPs when they commit violations, rather than have a government agency actively regulating.

As a snob who pays for both bottled water and music, I can assure you Richard, that illicit free music is not the same. Mass P2P downloading all but ensures you'll get some poor quality content and lot's of viruses.

He has a point. If you walk into a bookstore, you don't wear a mask. You expect people to look at you as you present yourself, see your name on your credit card, look at what you purchase, etc.

What you don't except them to do is write all that down and share it with other parties.

So in a sense, he's right, but I have a feeling that his ideas about what laws and customs should apply are far looser than mine.

Under normal conditions, I'd say that's pretty damning evidence, except that its a very odd coincidence that she writes for RIAA v. the people. Although it would shock me if she was really singled out as a target, I wouldn't put it past the RIAA, and its technologically very possible. I'd like to see a detailed report of their methodology: how they knew what they knew at what points.

In the much more likely chase, its a shame that the first person to real fight the RIAA head to head would choose to do so when they're not actually innocent.

Education sounds good in theory, but in actuality school systems are barely a step ahead of Ted Stevens when it comes to understanding technology.

I have a feeling that any well-intentioned web safety program will start to resemble something like their sex education: misguided, ineffective, and so detached from reality that it won't be taken seriously.

The point about the camera quality is interesting. I've been experimenting with an independent film that was shot on a DV camcorder. It looks great on a projector or a computer, decent on a CRT-TV, but the moment you put it on a big LCD TV the quality drop is terrible.

The bigger HD gets, the more of a barrier expensive cameras will become for small, low budget operations, and the more web-based distribution will make sense.

Cookies don't scare me, and never have, for this reason alone: only the site that created them can read them. If I can trust Google to store my email or send my IM's, I can trust it to remember what my session is, and I can delete those cookies at any time.

The question is, having all that data, what do they do with it? That's far more interesting than how long a cookie takes to expire.

There's too much ambiguity. Since nobody can build a magical copyrighted content detector, what specifically would allow an ISP to fulfill this requirement?

Let's suppose that 14-year-old Danny gives the address of his local Starbucks, his dog's birthday plus a few years, and a random four digit number.

SL has two options.

It can disregard, and as a result anyone can dupe the age verification system.

Or it can verify, which involves looking up people at their addresses, and somehow validating their birthdate and last four of SSN.

I'm not sure how they'd be allowed to access this information. But I think the ID theft problem is understated.

The second option will hurt their business. People don't like to give out personal information, especially anything SSN related. If they can't get away without it, they might not sign up at all.

This is why we don't need patents. As long as they didn't steal the code per se, it's fair game.

I couldn't care less what some radio talk show host says. Those that do care made themselves heard, and the situation is settled with no government intervention whatsoever.

A month ago a Neo-Nazi group protested here. That's bona fide hate speech, and the government had no choice but to allow it. Two dozen Nazis showed up, only to find a flood of over a thousand counter-protesters booing them.

Society already does regulate hate speech. The government doesn't need to.

The first thing is an attempt to keep kids out of malls. It has nothing to do with ID.

The rating system only prevents 16-year-olds from buying tickets to an R rated movie. I say 16 because anyone younger needs a ride to the theater anyway.

With that in mind, what 16-year-old isn't resourceful enough to get into an R-rated movie anyway?

Essentially then, if some theaters (doesn't even have to be a majority) started picking up NC-17 movies, there'd be no problem at all. It might even be a way for small theaters to compete with big chains.

1. Many parents don't know what MySpace is, or have no idea their kids use it. Those who care enough to look into it don't need monitoring software.

2. This is a very unobtrusive amount of data. It will have no effect on the pedophile problem.

3. MySpace is still not at fault for the pedophile problem any more than car manufacturers are responsible for reckless teen drivers. They can do anything they want to make the service as safe as possible, but there's always room for stupidity.

I'm not sure why nobody brings up the obvious side of this issue. When you play a game in vegas, you know that even though the odds are against you they are legitimately so. Dice have a one in six chance of landing wherever, the cards are in their physical places. Online, the site can execute whatever code it wants. The odds can be stacked against the consumer far beyond what ordinary casinos would allow.

If we're looking to protect US consumers, we shouldn't be banning internet gambling. We should be advertising how these operations work and AUDIT THEIR CODE to certify that there are no digitally weighted dice and publish the publish the results.

Noel, you forgot something. When they sell it to you, it is no longer their property. And this is what Microsoft and Apple try very hard to forget. Copyright does exist, but outside of replicating someone else's work precisely as is, they don't have a right to tell me what I can or cannot do with the product which I now own. Afterall, I paid for it.

If the tinkerer then chooses to make a business out of his invention, yes, he has to build his own iPod or XBox. Actually, that's even more difficult, because it can't be an exact replica.

Interesting point about the personal cameras. It brings up another problem: does anyone own reality? It's a given that the owners can decide who they let into what areas, i.e., letting a local broadcaster up to the sidelines to shoot. But what happens at that stadium is not a creative work someone created, it's a Real Event.

Is it possible to grant or possess an exclusive right to reality, which would forbid you from taking pictures on a personal camera and putting them on a blog. Even it the images themselves are trademarks, they are physical structures that exist in a real place when the camera recorded them.

If it's possible to own that, all visual journalism goes to hell because it would require exclusive permission to record any given place or thing.

Enough with the Microsoft antitrust cases. If they're not using subversive tactics to wipe out competition, it doesn't matter. And throwing a built in media player into Windows isn't what I call subversive. But then again, neither is adding IE. Windows gives out Moviemaker and Sound Recorder for free too, but that doesn't make a difference to the people who build the real, functional thing.

This may be the dumbest idea on the market. First of all, cell phones can already be tracked, if you have a warrant. It does no good if they're turned off, of course, but neither will GPS.

Any kid who's really up to no good (and a few who are just resentful of surveillance) would just have to take out the battery and suddenly he turns invisible.

And of course the more widespread and well-known that technology becomes, the more likely it is for kidnappers to search their victims for phones.

Everyone loses.

The pricing throws me. A DVD is a tangible thing that costs more to make and distribute, and comes in a box. What makes Hollywood think they can charge more?

Digital music is cheaper than CD's, ebooks are cheaper than paperbacks. This pricing scheme runs backwards to common sense.

James, most of the time I would agree that the government does not have the right to a business what to sell and how. But it doesn't apply with music. Customers don't buy music for the record labels, they buy it for the artist. If Panasonic TV's started imposing bizzare controls we'd switch to JVC. That doesn't work here. If you refuse to buy from Sony-BMG because of their little rootkit incident you're choosing to stop buying certain artists altogether.

Moreover copyright issues are the government's business. Governments have always set the copyright standards to protect the creator's and public's interest.

I have not read the actual law, so I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that its an attack on DRM, not Apple. Apple just gets all the attention because its such a heavyweight.

I don't buy it. DRM is easy to break anyway. Piracy is rampant anyway. The French are not endorsing theft, they're condemning DRM. iTunes customers are people who CHOSE to buy music legally rather than use P2P.

If the customers have already made that choice, why would removing the technological barrier change their minds?

This isn't so bad. It means that Apple has to release the code for FairPlay so others can use it, it doesn't mean they have to convert it for you. Creative won't bother making it directly compatible because that's a pain. Instead we'll get legal file converting software that removes the DRM to make it compatible with whatever you like. Will Creative provide such a program themselves? Well, it would be to their advantage...