mrdingle

Man we really despise innovation attempts for some reason today on HN. Canonical is trying to push computing into the future and progress user interface by doing really hard stuff. They're sailing uncharted waters and giving us all a lot of good research, and all for free. This is honestly awesome. Not because it's going to be a UI revolution but because we get to see a well funded company, that cares about user rights, genuinely trying to innovate and make our lives better.

Plus the HUD sounds great. Anyone here use Quicksilver or mac spotlight or gnome do? I use them non stop, I can launch/search/command my computer using a simple interface without leaving my keyboard. Now I have this built into each application. And soon developers will start to build applications with this in mind and it'll get even slicker.

Theres no reason to poo on Canonical. They are trying super hard in the face of an ungrateful tech community. It's not about developing the system you personally would enjoy. It's about innovation and the future.

Think different mother fuckers.

Though this is a bit foil-hat for most people it can be a real privacy concern. Can your mac be used to secretly spy on you? Absolutely. Has apple done this before to their customers? 100% (and so have others) see carrier IQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarrierIQ

If something like this bothers you theres no reason you should be using any closed source software at all.

It's that easy. If you're concerned about your privacy and system integrity don't use any software from a source you don't personally trust and that can't be reviewed by a third party.

Fired? Who really cares? But investigated for congressional bribery? Definitely.

I think, unfortunately, it wouldn't be considered a search as the data recording would probably be considered voluntary.

To me, this supreme court decision stands as precedent against the ISP's forced tracking. If recording your vehicle moves constitutes a search, then recording your online moves surely constitutes a search.

The only difference is that the supreme court ruling mentions officers having to enter a constitutionally protected area(your car) to install the searching device. With ISP data recording they would have to make no such intrusion, as it would be built in. It would be as though every car came with GPS monitoring and all the feds had to to was ask for it from your car's manufacturer.

Nobody with "interesting" data (and half a brain) will be physically bringing it across a border.

What's super ironic about this legislation is that it makes local law enforcement's job of actually catching criminals harder. No one's going to get caught at the border with anything but parakeets shoved down their pants. And now criminals are forced to use full-disk encryption and secure delete for everything if they want to travel which will likely lead to more security at home and more obstacles for local law enforcement.

These are standard interrogation tactics that people need to be prepared for. If you really feel threatened, speak to a qualified layer before you make any decisions, say anything, or agree to anything you don't want to.

Standing up for your rights and privacy isn't always going to be easy. But sitting in detention for a little while is really a small price to pay for your liberty. Plus, you'll waste a lot of public money in the process.

Say, "I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable answering that question."

And when they ask why say, "Because I believe that it is my right not to."

But nothing more. Just be short, to the point, and courteous. You're not guilty of anything for saying that, and they will understand that you understand your rights.

They may make your life a tiny bit harder because of it, but if your courteous and patient you can maintain your dignity and your privacy.

We also need to seriously start electing people that represent us. Honestly, we need to pick people who understand technological issues and we need to cycle them regularly.

Most importantly, we all need to participate in government.

Put copyright aside for a sec and lets try to actually frame it in the case of child porn or drug trafficking. How can any legislator conclude that disrupting the public like this is acceptable after having a reasonable discussion about how easy it would be for criminals to circumvent?

The hugely ironic part of all of this is that laws like this don't make moving data harder for criminals. It just forces them to use better data-securing practices in their day to day lives which make it harder for local law enforcement to get their job done.

The only impact I can see this legislation having is making law abiding citizens upset with their democracy.

You don't own "Intellectual Property". You own a temporary monopoly on its reproduction in certain circumstances. But the creative work itself you don't own. Sure, if you paint a painting, you own the physical canvas, paint, and wood frame. Those are your property. But the depicted image? You don't own that. You own its copyright. Which is that temporary monopoly I described before.

Important takeaways:

    - Use full-disk encryption.
    - Secure it with a very long hard to guess password.
    - Turn your computer off at least 10 minutes before going through customs.
    - You don't legally have to tell anyone the password with out a court order.
    - You don't have to give them any information to aid in their search.
    - Secure delete everything before you travel.

    - DO NOT LIE.
    - You can simply not answer a question. But never lie.
    - Say, "I'm sorry, but I cannot answer that question."

    - Plan!!!
    - Decide what you will do *before* you get to customs.
    - Don't stress out, just relax and don't answer questions you don't want to.

Lets take this seriously for a second. Say we're actually trying to catch cyber criminals and child pornographers and we're discussing enacting this law. Someone speaks up and says, "For all the discomfort and trouble we're putting innocent people through, the real criminals will just store their data online and travel with cleaned computers." How do you continue enacting this legislation? I'm trying to be as serious as possible.

How does any legislator look at the people they represent and come to the conclusion that this is a good idea?

Piracy isn't like anything, it's copyright infringement. There is no need for an analogy. What takes place is completely obvious.

Using any analogy actually decreases the understanding even for the layman.

Sure, use piracy. We all understand what that means. But I'm not trying to define it out of existence, I'm trying to use the english language effectively. It's plainly not theft. And furthermore theres no such thing as intellectual property. Unfortunately you will never own any of your copyrightable creations. Your will just own a temporary monopoly on their reproduction in certain circumstances.

It's as simple as that. Thinking that you own any creative works is misunderstanding the law and society. Thinking that copying something is theft of it(or indirectly theft of anything else) is a misunderstanding of the same.

It's not theft. It's copyright infringement. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theft

The phrase "intellectual property" is a misnomer. It's like saying "corporate personhood".

Campaign finance reform and biased media coverage are different beasts entirely. Murdoch owns Fox whether corporations are people or not, and he loves your disparaged argument. Besides, I'd rather be lied to in the face by the news that have my senators bought and sold behind closed doors.

Also, all of the plan you propose is already happening. It's called the creative process. I bet a large portion, if not the majority, of your entertainment is now facilitated by self published content given away for free on the internet. Youtube videos, remixes, wikipedia, flickr, twitter, facebook updates. All of this stuff is 'High Quality' culture that is available to you for free.

Copyright is great. It's necessary. It facilitates things like Creative Commons and the GPL. Abusive copyright holding organizations on the other hand are not so great. They exist only to exert control over their holdings and have recently risen to unprecedented levels of power because of the money we directly give them.

To call a boycott against these organizations futile is to miss the point of the boycott. It's not about putting them out of business. It's about awareness and slowly changing the overall public perception of an issue so fundamental and important as copyright reform and voting with your dollars.

So try not to get so discouraged and remember you give them the power. Seriously. Vote with you dollars (and with a ballot).

"Why should I shoot myself in the foot to keep someone else from shooting me in the foot?"

Because sometimes democracy is harder than just doing what you want to do.

"This idea that the root cause of all bad legislation is political donations: it's wrong, and not supported by the data."

Of course bad legislation has no root cause, but money surely contributes. $94MM in contributions last year focused on one issue.

"No one raised more political money in the history of this nation than Barack Obama during his presidential campaign"

I think you're confusing raising campaign money with taking political donations and going out to thousand dollar meals with lobbyists.

"The tech industry, particularly on the Internet entrepreneurial side, has long prided itself on staying out of Washington."

No we haven't, but we've certainly been busy working and trying to ignore it. Plus, they never really came after us directly before.

"IP law is not a winnable war. It is an ongoing negotiation that must be managed forever."

Thats a terribly lazy reason to not protest something. We give them power through direct consumer spending. One great way to reduce that power is to educate each other about where our dollars go.

The best part about stopping to support companies that support the MPAA and RIAA is that they are going to say they are loosing revenue through piracy and not direct consumer withdrawal.

There is nothing immoral about copying data. It is a bummer that you worked so hard and didn't make the money that you thought you were going to but no one owes you that money and It's selfish to think distribution is going to work the way you want it to.

From henceforth and until the sun explodes, there will be massive amounts of piracy.

Thats it. Seriously. Factor it into your business plan. Think about it before you write your next song. If you still don't have a creative urge, then good, do something else. If that software isn't economically viable then good, do something else. But I guarantee you people will continue to make wheel barrows full of money regardless. And there will be music, and movies, and poetry and software. And there will be more of it than ever before.

This is actually a huge blessing in disguise. You no longer need to pay someone to distribute your creations, you no longer need marketing to reach your fans, you no longer need middle men. And best of all, you no longer have to worry about piracy. Because it is now fact.

So stop pretending like copyright law isn't fucked up. Stop pretending like you can have the same business model you did 5 years ago. Stop pretending like music, or movies, or software are going to cease to exist and make some fucking money.

Welcome to 2012.