Press Release Source: Info-Tech Research Group Ban corporate Skype usage immediately, says Info-Tech Research Group Thursday November 10, 10:22 am ET LONDON, ON, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ - Technology industry analyst firm Info- Tech Research Group (www.infotech.com) is telling enterprises to ban Skype - the freely-available Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service - from their organizations. "Companies that are already banning peer-to-peer applications, such as instant messaging, should add Skype to its list of unsanctioned software programs," says Info-Tech analyst Ross Armstrong. "Approximately 17 million registered Skype users are using the service for business purposes," says Armstrong. "Unless an organization specifies instances where Skype use is acceptable, and outlines rules for client-side Skype settings, that's 17 million opportunities for a hacker to invade a corporate network." More at http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051110/to217.html?.v=15

From: "Riad S. Wahby" <rsw@jfet.org> To: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> CC: cypherpunks@jfet.org Subject: Re: "Copying"...what does that mean? Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:40:30 -0500

Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> wrote:

...

Does this mean that enforcing copyright laws basically means dis-allowing experiences similar to those triggered by the "actual" recording?

I don't think it has to be this broad to cover the mp3=copying issue. You can draw a continuous line from the original performance through one or more automated processes intended to reproduce said performance (recording, encoding, printing the CDs), and at all steps along the way the newly-created data is said to be a "copy" of the original. There is nothing particularly special about lossy methods of deriving new data from old, since it's the fact that it is so derived that makes it a copy.

Yes, I basically agree. But on the other hand, a bootleg in the old days meant braking laws regarding illicit recording of an event. (As I remember) you also broke a law regarding the copyright of the performance. Cassette copies of vinyl were a tiny bit tricky, and the "gap" allowed for copying for home use and maybe for a few friends.

It's a violation of copyright to translate a book into a different language and sell it as your own, even if the two languages are slightly at odds with regard to, e.g., their colloquialisms (i.e., the translation is "lossy" in some way). It's about the chain of derivation, not the subjective experience.

IANAL, and I don't know if these arguments are "right" in any particular legal context; take this as nothing more than musings on the definition of a copy.

Basically, this was what I was wondering. When we move from the analog domain to the digital, how does one identify the data? It's no longer a series of 1s and 0s, because I can change the 1s in 0s in a non-correctable way (which is what happens with lossy compression) and still go to jail for transmitting that bitstream. Without a doubt, the courts have not bothered to give precise definitions to what a "copy" truly is in the digital domain. Even samples count as full copies, apparently. This means, then, that even a small sample (ie, the bitstream 0101110111) is a "sample" from something somewhere (probably practically everything) and hence could land me in jail. Unlike some Cypherpunks, I'm more litely anti-statist: One can only claim legitimacy for a state if the laws are well defined enough so as to allow for nonarbitrary enforcement (and I only said "claim", so I don't need killin...yet). Of course, there are probably legal arguments made somewhere that refer to the perceived identity of a track or sample, so I guess what I'm really asking is if anyone knows what they are and if they make any sense (aside from giving big corporates the ability to whack any college student they want to make an example of). -TD

Shawn Quinn wrote...

This reminds me of something else: to a computer, playing is simply a form of copying, the output is simply a video card and/or sound card. Isn't this is, in fact, what makes computers so powerful, that they simply obey instructions without asking questions? Isn't this why every attempt to block "unauthorized" copying has failed in the end, because the reality is that if it can be played, it can be copied, because playing *is* copying from the point of view of the computer programs?

-- Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn@speakeasy.net>

That's part of my gist. I guess what I'm asking is, in the digital age does "copying" make a lot sense legally? OK, there are a few clear cases: If I take bitstream X and replicate every single bit precisely, that's "copying". If I take bitstream X and losslessly compress it and then transmit it (along with instructions for decompressing it, this latter potentially out-of-band), then I am "copying". After that I'm not convinced "copying" makes any sense. In other words, if "copying" is to mean anything besides what a bunch of Men with Guns say it is (because a big fat media company told them that), then it needs to be defined clearly. And if it can't be defined clearly then the MwG are merely MwG and the more strongly anti-state cypherpunks have a new insteresting argument: A law ain't a law (in the classic sense) if you can't define it. As I said before, if a "sample" is copying, how small a sample are we talking about? Look-->0101 I sampled Britney and that's what I got. I'm therefore copying and could go to jail. I probably won't go to jail, though, unless I eat into someone's profits or piss off individuals in the government. -TD