Then let owners control whether it's enabled or not (by a hardware switch if necessary). As it currently stands, I can't imagine a benign reason that would drive intel and AMD to lock users out of their machines.
Mozilla can solve this problem the right way by doing what debian does when it wants to collect statistics: Ask users if they want to donate their information to Mozilla on first run or during the installer.
Recording users' behavior by default with informing the user clearly and giving him the option to opt-out is abhorrent, regardless of the benignity of the reason behind it.
Disclosure: I use firefox, but periodically strip all relevant hidden add-ons and disable all information sending possible.
Why isn't he thrown in jail, or why isn't the fence bulldozed down? Where I currently live (a somewhat well-off area), bulldozers (and self-entitled assholes) are a common occurrence.
I doubt failing to contact a server would circumvent DRM. Blocking their servers would only make their DRM scheme fail and prevent access to said copyright material.
Using the DMCA to protect company's defective and flawed DRM scheme does not constitute circumvention. As such, I do not believe that DMCA's anti-circumvention laws are relevant.
This has nothing to do with believing that we have right to other people's work without payment. The fundamental issue is that these publishers are allowing public access to their work than expecting to have some control over how it is consumed. Hanging your painting in a public park and then demand that people not wear sunglasses when looking at it, or demanding that onlookers look at it sideways would be absurd. Don't hang your paintings in public parks. Hang it in a private gallery, and make no-sunglasses a term for admission.
Publishers would be better served if they restricted their articles, by demanding payment upfront before serving the article, rather than unreasonably and unrealistically demanding that people consume their content in a certain way. Don't blame your users for your failed business model.
As a side note, Copyright is not the place where this issue should be tackled as no copyright is being infringed (Content is not being redistributed).
>This third party tool is making unauthorized edits to the New York Times' copyrighted material.
It's not a third party tool. It's a tool used by the first party (user) to modify information that was sent to him without effecting the publisher. I don't see how the publisher has any authority over what the user chooses to do with the information he obtained.
> I find it difficult to justify "We changed around your copyrighted work to remove stuff we decided we don't like." If you don't like ads, pay up or go elsewhere.
That's an interesting take on IP rights. By generalizing your argument, would you argue against newspaper snippets because a reader would only collect the article without adjacent ads? (with scissors made by a third-party, no less.)
> You do not have a right to anybody else's IP.
Fair use, Noncopyrightable items, old expired IP, and the public domain are all examples of rights I have to others IP. Rights have been - and I hope will continue to be - balanced between the concerns of IP "owners" and the rest of society to best serve everyone's interests. Tipping the scale in one side's favor like what you advocate here will disrupt that balance.
Agreed with seeking a legal solution instead of just relying on a techincal one, but if the problem is the string of characters, just hash those instead without hashing the whole host:
What does ad-blocking have to do with copyright circumvention or copyright enforcement? The only think on that list is the domain name.
I'm certain that including a name in a list does not fall under copyright (ample precedent that backs it up). In the unlikey (and unfathomable) case that it is protected under copyright, I bet it would fall under fair use.
Trademark law isn't relevant to an entry in a machine database.
>DEF CON provides conference WiFi with preauthorized certificates (WPA2), so [if you remove all other known open networks] then [you can have secure and sane WiFi at the conference].
Emphasis mine. Merely "removing" networks from your device does not preclude you from being attacked. Broadcom and all the locked-down devices that aren't iphones or high-end android devices who use them demonstrate this quite nicely.
I disagree. To most normal users, I expect they perceive libreoffice and openpffice.org to be distinct separate projects. Only techies who have been following openoffice.org would know that one is a fork of the other (and even that distinction is starting to become irreverent as both both projects further diverge in terms of feature sets).
I also think that while LibreOffice is relatively new, it name has already begun to spread among normal users. I think it be very unwise to throw that good reputation away and start over. I also happen to be quite found of their current name, LibreOffice. I think it's classy and easy to remember.
>they're very valuable if and only if you cannot use the protection [..]
I don't think that's entirely fair. They're also valuable to those who want to transfer money without ridiculous fees, excessive bureaucratic friction, and many mandatory middlemen.
What other system would allow you to instantly be able to accept payments without giving an exorbitant portion of your revenue?
I remember coming across a serious bug in a site that belonged to a top multi-billion company. My brother also found what essentially an unrestricted privacy leak (and possibly editing access) in a top university (leaked data is sensitive personal information, not academic). Neither of us reported (or exploited) what we found.
Protection from this kind of blame-shifting and misdirected retaliation should be guaranteed by law. Until it is, bugs in critical and important infrastructure will go on unreported, and remain available for malicious actors to exploit.