Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The BBC has had a couple of stories on that 2000-year old question. The first is about the British government, Snowden leaks: GCHQ ‘attacked Anonymous’ hackers, and the second about the US government; US agrees to pay $50m after ‘piracy’ of software.
The second informs us that:
The US government has agreed to pay $50m (£31m) after it was said to have pirated “thousands” of copies of military software.
Apptricity, based in Texas, has provided logistics programs to the army since 2004.
The company said it had discovered last year the software had been installed on many more machines than had been licensed.
The Department of Justice has not commented on the settlement.
The Dallas Morning News reported a DoJ spokeswoman had confirmed the agreement, but would not give more details.
The government acts like hackers and pirates software while it imprisons people for these activities. Apparently the War on Terror™ justifies everything.
According to Charlie Pierce it seems to allow people to redefine legal terms to suit their prejudices. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), a former FBI agent, redefines larceny to include copying, so he can accuse the media of selling stolen property.
The government still has all the documents that are being revealed by Edward Snowden. That is why they don’t know which documents he copied. If he had ‘stolen’ the documents, the government would be able to determine what was missing.
You can’t classify documents because they are embarrassing to the government, nor can you classify documents to conceal crimes. This makes the claims about the nature of the documents problematical, especially given the tendency of the leaders of the intelligence community to lie to Congress. either outright or by half-truths.
Chairman Rogers is one of those leaders who has not spoken the truth. Who oversees the overseers?
19 comments
One of my tasks back when I worked for a branch of UT was persuading students that it really was theft when they copied commercial software, licensed to the school, for their personal use. It was much easier to make pirated copies then than now, and many students claimed not to see how what they did could be illegal, when the original s/w media were still in the possession of the school. Eventually the school had to threaten expulsion; that didn’t completely stop piracy, but it did reduce the volume.
OTOH, I remember the venerable (and now ancient!) Jerry Pournelle wrote, decades ago, that s/w piracy would cease when copies of s/w could be legally purchased for the price of a new hardbound book. The viability of that maxim probably depends on the cost of development of the s/w, but I always thought he had a point.
I have to admit I’ve enjoyed changing almost completely to Linux, on which most s/w is legitimately free.
The price of software had nothing to do with development costs, it had to do with corporate decision levels. That’s why some many packages were priced at $495. At $500 and above there was another layer of approval involved. The software vendors wanted to sell to the corporate market, and priced software accordingly.
I used ‘free’ software almost exclusively, and I make donations that are the same as the cover price of a hard bound book. I don’t mind paying for software, hell I want to be paid for the software I write, but if you are going to charge me big bucks, the damn software had better work out of the box. I don’t want support, I want a working program.
Software is intrinsically different from hardware.
Hardware once developed must be replicated for each business/location in which it is used, and the cost of replication is far from negligible.
Software once developed is no doubt needed for each seat or application in which it is used, but the cost of replication is next to nothing (why else would there be piracy).
Ideally the prices of both h/w and s/w should reflect the actual cost of required development and replication/distribution, plus a reasonable profit.
Yes, of course, programmers, esp. good ones, should be well-paid, but there is no need for s/w companies (*cough* M$ *cough*) to charge per-instance prices that are prohibitive of large numbers of potential uses just for the sake of truly excessive profit.
Conservatives whine about taxes… hell, M$’s licensing prices are worse than any tax, and they burden every business there is in the world today.
A personal experience:
M$ rejected my proof of purchase for the previous version of their enterprise development platform to be credited to my purchase of the new version. Yes, they charged me full price for the new version.
I had a talk with one of their developer customer rep’s about how that sat with me. He all but called me a liar as if I were trying to cheat M$.
I paid full price… I needed the damned thing for a job I’d already landed… and privately vowed not to purchase a license for any future development tools from M$, instead finding other tools and platforms for my purposes.
I have kept that vow.
Did M$ win or lose that encounter? Did they save money or pay a price for stiffing one of their formerly loyal developers? They apparently felt smug about their decision, but I felt pretty good about mine as well. There ARE other tools out there on the market, whatever M$ may think.
There is no way in hell an upgrade to a new version of a software package should cost more than the processor it runs on. A fabulous new product that does something neat and nifty that makes everyone jealous, fine, but not a version upgrade.
They are trying to go back to the mainframe days when everything, hardware and software, was leased. M$ wants to join the financial sector and make customers pay fees for being customers, not for any actual service, but just for being customers.
The hilarious thing is that they had such a lease model with their “Technet” program, which allowed you to install Microsoft operating systems on a limited number of computers for a per-year license fee, and then cancelled it because apparently they decided they’d get more money by selling operating systems outright for $495/pop rather than by leasing it for $250/year. How they came to that conclusion eludes me, but so it goes. That’s why Microsoft is circling the toilet. Maybe the new CEO can turn things around, but I doubt it — he’s too much infused with that whole culture.
They just haven’t been run as business, because they were making too much money to actually look at their revenue models and figure out how to normalize them.
Leasing has definite advantages for businesses, and many will lease equipment rather than buy it outright because it reduces their overall costs by making the lease payments tax deductible without the hassle associated with depreciation if you buy equipment.
Well, you all know how I feel about the crooks. *shrug* 🙂
And yeah bt, I couldn’t believe that the MicroMorons pulled Technet! It was IMHO the only good thing M$ had going for them. I know that there were many (including myself) who were thoroughly pissed at them for that stupid decision. It not only allowed s/w to be leased, but was a great technical resource for support people. There was a time when they would send out a large binder full of CD’s with all their latest s/w, manuals, training and other tech resources to top-level Technet subscribers (the last time was when XP came out, 2001). Gates got so greedy, he actually started loosing money. Always said he was a moron.
Anyway, to the topic… Check this out Bryan. 🙂
New Photos of the NSA and Other Top Intelligence Agencies Revealed for First Time
Who is watching the watchers? apparently, everyone now! LOL 😉
PS. Check out the comments.
In other news… Well, the board I joined seems to like my work, I was officially made a Moderator last night. Shortest trial period they’ve had I was told by an Admin. Usually a month apparently. *sigh* I always said I was my own worst enemy. But then, most people usually are! 😀
It’s a big place, almost a half mill members, and more than half are not native English speakers. Fun indeed. *sigh*
And more from the front!
Seems the USA is in a race with the UK to win the Stasi Award (and who will win I wonder?)
UK will pool medical records, then give cops, spies, insurers a warrantless ‘backdoor’
Though it seems someone may be waking up… Will it do any good? Probably not. *shrug*
USTR Finally Realizing Its All Encompassing Secrecy May Be A Problem, Calls Frantic Meeting For All ‘Cleared’ Lobbyists
And then there is that (which we all knew):
US Copyright Lobbyists Equate Fair Dealing To Piracy And Copyright Infringement
It’s a decent and educational read, and parallels the comments above. (Not that we needed any proof). 🙂
PS. Bryan, I added my name/sig to “The Day We Fight Back” via the banner below (as a non-American of course) for whatever it’s worth.
Given how much money they have made, it is really amazing to know how much more they could have made with more understanding of business, and some decent support. Linux would never have reached the level of market share it currently has if M$ had been a semi-decent company to do business with.
They can now only counter-punch, reacting to new ideas from other people, and then they screw it up. Dumping the Technet program was another example of their dislocation from reality. They had a group of very competent people paying to debug and improve their software, and they threw it away.
Oh, just what you needed m8, another unpaid ‘job’ 😉
Under the legal theory of the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Mike Rogers, whoever took the pictures has stolen the buildings. [These people get to formulate our laws … exits shaking his head…]
Oh yeah… Story of my life m8! I’d be more wealthy than The Dweeb if I got paid for everything I’ve done! 😉 😀
Well, technically, TechNet still exists. But it’s a very shallow shadow of what it once was. *shrug*
Yeah. Now that we have a Liberal Party (well, *Coalition* if you want to get technical) for Fed & State Gov, we have similar clown making stupid laws that don’t hold up the first time they end up in a Courtroom! Most of these fools seem never to have heard of Common Law, or understand that we are not totally autonomous, we are still part of the Commonwealth, and the Magna Carta still applies!
I was browsing through Techdirt for a laugh before bed, thought I’d share these two with you all! 😀
RPS Takes On Critics Of The Idea That Games Should Eventually Enter The Public Domain
An excerpt:
BTW, I buy games from GOG (Good Old Games) because they have made many of my old fave games work under Win 7/8 (including several that I actually owned in DOS & Win95/98 that don’t work even though I paid good money, some were $80 for eg. 15 or so years ago. I paid between $1.99 and $4.99 to GOG for a working version.)
Snowden Says He Is Willing To Answer Questions From European Parliament, Which Also Wants Him To Go There In Person
Never gonna happen! 😉 LOL
Oh look! It seems our *Lawmakers* never visit Parliament House, or can’t read! LMAO
Magna Carta (Great Charter), 1297 Parliament House, Canberra
Ohhh… just too funny!! LMAO
Still, the Magna Carta’s influence on the US Constitution can be seen, for example:
It’s actually called the “Living Law”here and in the United Kingdom, and other Comonwealth Nations.
Why are all these so-called Conservatives (neo-con’s really) such as our Lib’s and your Repug’s so damned stupid and willfully ignorant??
never mind… It was rhetorical.
Kryten, we know that the laws only apply to little people, not those that are important. People have to accept that the politicians are screwing them over to ‘protect them’ from the ‘bad people’ who will screw them over.
Oh, yeah, Snowden is really going to believe guarantees made by any nation in Europe – not gonna happen.
I have a hard time understanding the point of ‘intellectual property law’ when the property is no longer available for legal purchase. What creativity is involved in buying up patents? The system doesn’t promote creativity, and often suppresses it with baseless court cases. Twenty years is not an unreasonable period of time. If you can’t make the price of your creativity in two decades, you aren’t very creative.
What do you know! It CAN get worse! Here’s the latest bit of Copyright insanity! And it’s NOT USA (a-mazing! But I’m sure when they see this, they will think it’s a great idea and do something similar.) 😉
Dangerous Ruling In Germany Makes Domain Registrar Liable For Copyright Infringement On Website It Registered
Need to read it all!
That has to be one of THE most moronic, insane and completely f*cked up ideas I’ve heard for awhile! How the hell even the Germans managed to figure that one out, I’ll never know!
You know, the older I get, the more I’m rooting for the giant asteroid! If I looked up and saw one coming. I’d smile and finally feel all is right in the World!
You can’t do that under US law. In cases like this judges usually opt for their own expert to evaluate technical claims. As anyone who knows much about the ‘Net would tell a judge that the concept is bogus, the judge wouldn’t issue the order.
It is laws and decisions like this that prompted the creation of the Internet Defense League – to stop this kind of crap from becoming law. The big telecoms would oppose this sort of thinking, as it would mean shutting off revenue streams. The greed of competing industries would slam into each other, and the biggest political contributors to key lawmakers would win.
OT: Heat waves, bushfires, and floods – so, a normal summer Downunder, right?
Here in the United States, the big telecoms got a “safe harbor” written into the 1998 Copyright Act indemnifying them against any and all claims of intellectual property infringement as long as they follow the procedures laid out in the Act. So yes, this could not happen in the United States. Furthermore, Germany is a signatory to the 1996 WIPO treaties that created the indemnity clause of the 1998 act too, so they are violating their treaty obligations if they sanction a service provider who had properly followed the procedures laid out in the WIPO treaties (which are identical to those in the 1998 act).
So it seems the Germans respect their WIPO treaty obligations about as much as they respected the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Harumph!
LOL Yeah Bryan, I should have known that! 😉 😀
Apparently so badtux! Sure seems like someone that (or more) haven’t forgotten the *old way’s*!
OT: Heat waves, bushfires, and floods – so, a normal summer Downunder, right?
No. Not normal at all. The floods are mainly around Adelaide, who needed the downpour because of the fires all over. Well, Adelaide is known as the “City of Churches”! Maybe there’s something to it. 😉 Where most other Major cities here have a pub on every corner, Adelaide has a Church. *shrug* They are weird.
Hey, Brian. Came across this one for you m8. 😉
Highway Trooper Suing Miami Police Dept. For Repeatedly Accessing Her Personal Data After She Pulled Over One Of Its Officers For Speeding
If the report is accurate, sounds like she did the right thing. Good on her! Hope she win’s (but you’d know better than me her chances).
And this:
FISC Judge Reggie Walton Hesitantly Amends Latest Section 215 Order To Conform With Presidential Directive
“What a tangled web we weave…”
Oh, yes, Badtux, I’d forgotten about that exemption added to the ‘let the media mogols annoy everyone’ bill. Can’t have corporations being held responsible for anything in the US.
The registrar would probably win on appeal, but it is cheaper to just screw over the customer and make the judge happy.
You know, Kryten, those church spires could be concealing antennae for communicating with Vogon construction crews who are then doing some preliminary site preparation …
Oh, yeah, the Miami PD has been real PITAs about one of their own getting busted for his reckless driving. The MPD officer was on his way to a second job when the Trooper pulled him over. He was driving a marked MPD vehicle, but way outside of his jurisdiction. A lot of departments in Florida allow officers to take their patrol vehicles home, instead of leaving them at their precinct at the end of their shift. This has devolved into tribal warfare because the Miami PD didn’t deal with it when it happened.
I hate to break to the judge, but he has an oversight function. That’s the purpose of applying for warrants, to have a judge rule that they are necessary. If Judge Walton doesn’t believe what he is being told, he is supposed to deny the warrant. That is the purpose of the court he is on, and the reason he has a clearance.