Re: No Link Between Dell and Handgun Control, Inc.
On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 01:57:20AM -0500, Matthew Gaylor wrote: > I'm just now starting to get feedback from the Dell cancelation of > the Weigand Combat Handguns, Inc. order and noticed that Dell > computers is listed as a beneficiary at the below link. There's no specific connection between Dell and Handgun Control, Inc. It's all aggregated as a referral program where Dell is one merchant participating in the referral pool, and Handgun Control, Inc is one organization which can be the source of such a directed referral. Go up one level, and look at the page http://www.progressivefunds.com/ . It lists several other referring organizations. This particular referral pool is being run by progressivefunds.com, so of course the *referring* organizations reflect those views. That says nothing about the participating *merchants*. Basically, the merchants are paying the organization a commission for business from that organization's members. I can hardly speak for Dell, but on general principles I'd assume they'd be happy to give the NRA the same deal if a conservative group wanted to offer referrals in a similar online mall. See http://www.linkshare.com/ -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php BESS vs Google: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/google.php
Re: Dell Computer Corporation Doesn't Deserve Your Business
>On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 03:50:20PM -0500, Matthew Gaylor wrote: > I'm carbon copying this message to Seth Finkelstein, who I consider > the pit bull of the anti-censorware opposition. And I have a > question for Seth- Dell's use of the paraphrase comment "illegal > purposes" reminds me of the various categories that filtering > software uses to describe a site. I wonder if Dell didn't run the > Weigand site into a filtering application to make the decision not > to sell one of their computers to him?] I called Dell to try to verify the story myself before commenting. An official response I received seems to indicate that they did indeed flag "Weigand Combat Handguns Inc." as suspicious from the word "Combat": "We recently received an order from a customer whose company name included the word "combat." We cancelled the order to give us enough time to follow up with the customer and be assured that the sale would be in compliance with U.S. export law." Obviously, I do not think Dell is willing to discuss the details of their system of searching for suspicious keywords. In general, this sort of simple matching against bad words is a very simple programming task. One of the concepts I try to convey to people is that there is no magic in censorware, no amazing artificial intelligence that has any sort of judgment (despite any manufacture's hype). It is a common feature of many programs to have the ability to enter a list of bad words, and if any of the bad words match, deny service. And this incident is an example of just how intelligent such keyword-matching can be. Myself, I would have thought that the word "Handguns" would have been a stronger flag than "Combat". But who knows what's in their blacklist? Those entries are almost always kept secret. Perhaps the matching went from left to right, and the word "Combat" kicked out the laptop order before the program even saw the word "Handguns". Dell could have bought any of a number of commercial programs, or written their own simple keyword-checker for integration with their order processing system. It really doesn't make a difference here. Computers aren't magic. Computers are dumb. It's the human element which is crucial here. A simple match of a word against a blacklist is then blindly treated as indicating some sort of illegality, and a procedure of better-safe-than-sorry then takes over. This incident is a small case-study in one context. But the idea, and the implications, are quite general. Remember this incident the next time anyone tries to claim that censorware is so much better now. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php BESS vs Google: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/google.php
Re: BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity)
On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 07:01:32PM -0700, Tim May wrote: > ... Declan took the obvious and legal > steps to limit his testimony to statements of the form: > > "Yes, I am a reporter for "Wired News."" > > "Yes, I wrote the story you are referring to." "Yes, I affirm under oath that the article is true" Once he says that, it's basically equivalent to testifying to the contents of the article in court. Making such an affirmation is not inevitable. People can disown articles. This not to recommend such disowning. However, the prosecution is well aware of the risks that it can happen. But if the US was a police state, Declan would not be griping about his plane ticket as his biggest concern in such a situation. He certainly would not be welcomed back to gather information on people he might help put in jail in a future trial. I can't convey how ludicrous it seems to me. Declan is the Fed's best friend. That's not an insult, that's a fact. He's provided important evidence that helped obtain two convictions. He shows every sign of repeating the performance. And nobody even seems to notice. Everybody goes by what he posts, the politically correct (for here) liberpunk anarcrypt cyberbilge. Not what he *does*. It's utterly unreal. But hey, he's a Libertarian(-type), and I'm not. So don't take me seriously. I have my own legal risks to worry about. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php P.S. Regarding Jim Choate's "speculations", as far as I know, you *do* have "lots of guns and money". Why aren't you also giving him a pass for restating what are presumably your own true statements? As far as being "a dangerous person", well, that depends who one thinks is your target.
Re: BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity)
On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 08:17:02PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: > At one point Seth was capable of sane arguments and discussions > without insults. This was, of course, many years ago, and now he's > just nutty and should not be taken particularly seriously. I'm sorry Declan, I just can't take the cypherpunks list seriously anymore. After you testified for Federal government prosecutors, helping to put members in jail - not once, but twice - and anyone still respected you, I just lost all ability to regard that zeitgeist as other than a joke. There was indeed a time I could deal with Liberbabble. That was before a certain journalist, who I helped a lot, did many things to raise my legal risks, and justified some of it in the name of Libertarianism (other parts were just his "character"). I said this to you at CFP 2001, and I'll say it again: This is not a game we're playing. People are going to jail. I'd be overjoyed if you didn't take me seriously. It's the backstabbing I worry about. I don't ever want to find you playing Federal Witness #1 against me too. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php
BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity)
[cypherpunky cryptobabble libertopians should take note!] Available at: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity) Abstract: This report examines a secret category in N2H2's censorware, a product often sold under the name "BESS, The Internet Retriever". This category turns out to be for sites which must be uniformly prohibited, because they constitute a LOOPHOLE in the necessary control of censorware. The category contains sites which provide services of anonymity, privacy, language translation, humorous text transformations, even web page feature testing, and more. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php
Re: [free-sklyarov] Re: Rallies on Monday
Seth David Schoen wrote: > Unfortunately, courts already seem to have a hard enough time > believing that electronic publication of free/open source software is > protected by the first amendment. While this is true, there's a very deep issue in the definition of "protected". The problem is better rendered that the courts have taken the view that the protection of (intellectual) *property rights* trumps the free-speech concerns here. There's a very revealing paragraph in the DeCSS decision concerning this: "Thus, even if one accepted defendants' argument that the anti-trafficking prohibition of the DMCA is content based because it regulates only code that "expresses" the programmer's "ideas" for circumventing access control measures, the question would remain whether such code--code designed to circumvent measures controlling access to private or legally protected data--nevertheless could be regulated on the basis of that content. For the reasons set forth in the text, the Court concludes that it may. Alternatively, even if such a categorical or definitional approach were eschewed, the Court would uphold the application of the DMCA now before it on the ground that this record establishes an imminent threat of danger flowing from ^^ dissemination of DeCSS that far outweighs the need for unfettered ^ communication of that program. See Landmark Communications, ^^^^^ Inc. v. Virginia, 435 U.S. 829, 842-43 (1978)." -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html
Re: [free-sklyarov] Re: Rallies on Monday
Declan McCullagh wrote: > This state of affairs creates a mild problem (to go back to the recent > topic of discussion on cypherpunks) for those who strongly believe in > the First Amendment when applied to nonprofit or not-for-profit speech > but less so when it comes to speech that's part of a commercial > transaction. Heck, Declan, as far as I recall, you don't believe that the First Amendment applies to people who merely REPEAT (for profit) too many words you originally wrote as speech that's part of a certain commercial transaction (i.e. "copyrighted articles", which you are paid for). In fact, I can't look this up now, but I believe you've posted to the cypherpunks list on this very topic in the past. You want the government to punish people who simply say too many words that you originally said. Isn't that very inconsistent philosophically for you? By the way, as you know, this distinction is enshrined in copyright law: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; > Let's hope Dmitry, a budding capitalist, doesn't fall > into that same commercial-speech-can-be-regulated catchall. But Declan, as a Libertarian proselytizer. how can you justify making your living from a government-granted monopoly which infringes on free speech? Note the above is not necessarily my view. But if you are going to try to use this tragedy to recruit people for silly Libertarian ideology, I think consistency demands you apply the same argument to your articles too. Have you changed your views on this topic since I last saw them discussed? -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sethf.com http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html
