philisha.net

I’m doing some research for my paper on protecting digital rights, and one of the main offenders happens to be the ever-inopportune DMCA. Section 117 of the law legislates when copies of software may be made: one (1) copy may be made for archival purposes when the software is obtained.

This has been the case for some time; it just clarified the CSCA from 1980. It seems pretty reasonable—one backup copy should be enough. Unfortunately this fails to take into account the fact that backups have to be done regularly if they are to be useful. So it turns out that backing up your hard drive which contains proprietary software is illegal—you only have the right to back up your program once: when you first obtain the software.

As if that weren’t enough, the DMCA also clarifies that copies of software and other digital material that are stored in RAM are also subject to the original copyright holder’s right of reproduction. That means it would be illegal for you to load up two copies of your proprietary program at the same time! This happens all the time in the case of servers. With Apache, the web server that runs about 70% of the web, each time someone connects to the web server, it spawns another copy of the program. Under the DMCA, if Apache weren’t open source, you would have to buy it over and over again for each concurrent viewer of the web site.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’m going to have a hard time coming up with digital rights abominations in the DMCA. Should be a relatively easy paper, unfortunately.

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The reason I’ve been slack in posting lately:

http://www.johnmarkreynolds.com

Now with added blog value!

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I’m going to Torrey Berkeley at the beginning of the summer, which is just going to rule so much…. The campus there is just beautiful and sadly, it shames Biola. We’ll be reading a book a day, focusing on the lives of great saints of the past.
Yes, it’s going to rule.

I was looking at the Berkeley Computer Science page and thought it was pretty funny that their instructions to build your own web page assumed a knowledge of Unix filesystems, but no knowledge of HTML. Then again, this is the birthplace of BSD, so perhaps it ought to be some kind of CompSci Mecca.

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Thanks to Micah Snell—

Achilles Pitt:

• “The first rule of Greek Fight Club is I refuse to fight in Greek Fight
  Club.”

  Hector Bana:

• “Don’t make him angry…I really won’t like him if you make him angry.”
• “I don’t care if Achilles is from the Styx. I’ve got his number.”
• “Finally equal billing with an Achaean! Nobody ever pays attention to
  the temperate man.”
• “The older brother always has to bail the younger one out.”

  Paris Bloom:

• “Achaeans? Who cares about freakin’ Achaeans? I slew a freakin’
  oliphaunt in my last flick. I’m self-confident enough to just be the
  whiny pretty boy.”
• “Wow, Helen is almost as beautiful as me.”
• “In a few thousand years some scampy chick is going to give people named
  Paris a bad reputation.”

  Menelaus Gleeson:

• “My favorite movie scene is the one where Orlando Bloom falls out of the
  Blackhawk and dies in the first 3 minutes of the film.”
• “Sparta always gets the bum rap. No one likes us as much as Athens. Oh
  well, could be worse, nobody’s ever heard of Mycenae.”

  Agamemnon Cox:

• “The older brother always has to bail the younger one out.”
• If I didn’t get first pick of the spoils this trip would suck for me as
  much as it does for all the other Achaeans.”

  Helen Kruger:

• “If I only had a brain…”
• “There are so many studs around here I think I’ll flirt with whichever
  one is closest.”
• “I got to kiss Orlando!”
• “Good thing I’m beautiful, otherwise I wouldn’t have a single thing
  going for me.”

  Priam O’Toole:

• “I’ve got so many descendants I should seriously consider becoming
  Mormon.”
• “How the heck did I get roped into such an imbecilic gig? I feel like
  Alec Guiness in Star Wars IV.”

  Odysseus Bean:

• “The horse is a gift! We can turn it to our own purposes.”
• “Armand Assante eat your heart out.”
• “What a load of oafs I’m allied with. I could really use some lotus
  right about now.”
• “Do well at the box office do well at the box office do well at the box
  office do well at the box office”

  Aeneas Fitzgerald:

• “Good thing I’m not of Priam’s bloodline. Somebody’s gotta bring
  redemption out of this whole fiasco.”
• “All the really cool people in this saga will get their own sequel.”
• “All the really really cool people in this saga will sire their own
  empire.”
• “Do well at the box office do well at the box office do well at the box
  office do well at the box office”

  The Muse:

• “Hey wait a minute! Why weren’t we consulted on this?”

  Diomedes:

• “You’d think the most prominent Achaean warrior in the first half of the
  story could at least get cast in the movie.”

  Keira Knightley:

• “I’m not Helen?”

  Homer:

• “It’s a good thing I’m blind and I don’t have to see the movie”

  So, will it be good?

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Lots of people hit my site by finding it on Google. Here are some of the searches through which people have come:

• real ultimate power wikipedia ninja
• andre arko
• grant turck
• knights of iluvatar
• engaged last night
• la vita nuova dante aligheri
• lem malabuyo
• helpful xanga sites [lol!]
• jobs for highschoolers
• biola blog
• biola university linux
• john mark reynolds blog
• bahamut lagoon pictures
• glorfindel bio and photos [!!!]
• shrunken heads pictures
• pictures of guthwine
• engagement pictures at the beach
• brian breed blog

Unfortunately, I think most people coming to the site through these searches didn’t find what they were looking for. Hopefully they still enjoyed themselves and perused the content though.

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