Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

Mr. Tenenbaum appears to concede a lot of grounds even when he could make RIAA work for it:

“This is me. I’m here to answer,” said Tenenbaum. “I used the computer. I uploaded and downloaded music. This is how it is. I did it,” he testified before a packed courtroom, whose spectators included an all-star cast of Harvard Law School copyright scholars: Lawrence Lessig, John Palfrey, and Jonathan Zittrain.

“Are you admitting liability for all 30 sound recordings” on which the record labels brought suit, asked the plaintiffs’ attorney Tim Reynolds.

“Yes,” said Tenenbaum.

Tenenbaum then admitted that he “lied” in his written discovery responses, the ones in which he denied responsibility.

“Why did you lie at that point?” asked Tenenbaum’s attorney, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson. “It was kind of something I rushed through,” responded Tenenbaum. “It’s what seemed the best response to give.” At the time he gave the admittedly false discovery responses, Tenenbaum testified that he was being advised by his mother Judith, a family law attorney who works for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

It probably can’t be said that Mr. Tenenbaum’s attorney is ignorant of the law, or even that he is negligent (given that he’s volunteered to take the case and has given unusual attention to it). And given that this is his attorney’s question, it is quite clear that the questions and the responses were planned.

So, what’s their plan here?

If I had to take a guess, I am guessing their strategy is the exact opposite of Jammie Thomas, who was seen by two different juries as lying in the face of plain evidences (which could only imply that she thought the jury was stupid) and got hit with huge, punitive damages. That is, they are trying to say Mr. Tenenbaum is an honest guy. He might have given false representation earlier (not under oath), but that was a moment of weakness, and on the whole, he is an honest, average American who is being asked to pay $4,000 (if he settled) or upwards to $1 million (if the jury goes for maximum damage, like in the Jammie Thomas case). Now, does he really deserve to get punished like that for doing what an average American does?

Of course, if the jury sticks to the law and finds willful infringement (which may as well be the case, because Mr. Tenenbaum probably knew the songs were copyrighted and couldn’t have been unaware that what he was downloading were not authorized copies), then the minimum damage they can award is around $24,000, which is still quite a bit.

But here’s the real reason constitution guarantees a right to trial by jury of our peers: the jury does not have to “follow the law”, if they find the law unjust. This is a check on our legislative bodies by ordinary informed citizens. They cannot pass arbitrary, clearly unfair laws and expect the citizenry to uphold them. The jury is the final arbiter of facts in any trial, and if a clearly unbiased jury finds someone innocent, the legal professionals are very unwilling to question that fact as found by the jury (appeals are usually on the basis of technicalities and how the jury might have been led toward a particular bias).

Of course, the legal counsels on either side cannot mention jury nullification during the trial (if they do, they will probably be held in contempt of the court and the judge will instruct the jury to ignore the call to ignore the law), but so many unusual things happened with this trial, so who knows how it will end up?

Update: Whatever the strategy was, it doesn’t seem to have worked out.

Unless they had planned on arguing for unconstitutionality of this type of awards (punitive statutory damages on noncommercial copyright infringements), it seems like this is it, end of the road.

Should we just be thankful that RIAA isn’t pursuing its litigation strategy anymore (after all, it’s really bad PR)?

Perhaps we should considerably reduce the power of copyright in academic journals (via Slashdot), but we should do it through reasoned discourse, not mindless fear-mongering:

We’ve discussed a few times over the years how copyright gets in the way of academic work. Journals (who get all of their writing and reviewing totally for free) insist on holding the copyright for those works in many cases. I’ve even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn’t even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they’re forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights.

Oh, please. Data is not copyrighted. I am fairly sure they are not even copyrightable in most cases, even though a particular presentation of the data might be, especially if it shows some evidence of creativity. One must be either fairly stupid or have a really horrible legal department to get an idea that data in a published journal article is copyrighted and cannot re-use or even cite the data (who wouldn’t want citation? citation increases the impact factor of the journal) without “re-doing the experiment”. (Say, how does one know whether the “new data” is from new experiment or the old one? Aren’t they supposed to be the same within experimental error?)

Of course, I can only speak for the situation in physics, but I am fairly sure the situation is as bleak as presented in this page, at least not in natural sciences. APS (which does retain copyright) and Nature (which does not retain copyright) both allow the author to do pretty much whatever they want with the author-formatted preprints of the article. The allowances are less on the journal-produced, professional versions of the article, but that’s understandable (that particular copy represents the combined effort of the author and editor) and does not have that much impact on open access as long as one doesn’t mind the amateurish document formatting by many scientists (just look at arXiv.org).

On the whole, I do think copyright in U.S. does need to be reformed, and particularly so in academic journal publishing (textbooks have … different goals so it’s not so clear whether academic textbooks should be treated any differently from other books). But we will gain nothing by inciting unreasonable fear in the sheeple and eroding our own credibility. After all, don’t we believe that our cause is strong enough to prevail when we present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (as well as it can be determined from data and statistics, anyway) to the public?

Well, this is it. I no longer support RMS’s crusade.

According to Stallman, the Pirate Party’s proposal of a five-year limit on copyright would remove the freedom users have to gain access to source code by eventually allowing its inclusion in proprietary products. Stallman suggests requiring proprietary software to also release its code within five years to even the balance of power.”

Somehow, I had always believed that RMS and, by extension, FSF’s goal was to limit the destructive power of copyright in software business by using its own rules against itself. I had believed that, given the choice between strong, draconian copyright, with GPL taking all its power from the same law, and having no copyright at all for software (or something very short like 5 years), RMS and FSF would choose the latter.

I was wrong. I have said before (not here, ‘probably on Slashdot) that if I ever find out that RMS’s (and, by extension, FSF’s) position was pro-copyright (even if it’s for strengthening copyleft), then I would stop supporting him. This is it.

I do, in general, like free software and will continue to use it, but as a political force I am opposed to the free software movement, now that I know for sure that the movement is led by a statist liberal whose central agenda is forcing others to his will (i.e. forcing proprietary software authors to release the source code, even if they didn’t use any copyleft codes).

As one of the immediate consequences, my FSF associate membership will not be renewed at the end of this month.

P.S. I had been getting fairly annoyed with RMS’s bashing of libertarians (I count Gov. Palin as one, although she may not know that yet) and capitalists (insurance companies and banks) recently anyway. He had, before this, the merit of … being seen as having the right opinions and position on one issue I deeply care about (copyright), but apparently I was wrong about that.

Edit: After all, there is no reason to force arbitrary obligation upon proprietary software authors. Just as the way original patents worked, copyright can be a two-way street. If the authors want copyright protection, they can submit the source code along with copyright registration (as apparently they already have to do, at least for small programs), and this will be public record once the work passes into public domain. If they want to keep the source code secret, then they can do it the same way it’s done in every other industry: keep it a trade secret and don’t tell it to anyone, including the copyright office (and since it was never “published”, it won’t be under copyright protection).

The very first thing we should do with this copyright mess is probably requiring copyright registration (say, within 1 year of original publication, as is done with patents) for copyright protection. If it wasn’t worth registering, then it’s not worth protecting.

The O’Reilly Factor comments on Jack Welch’s comment:

It’s in the second part of the segment. It quotes: “There is no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices.”

He’s absolutely right. “Work-life balance” is as silly as “study-party balance”. You either study or you party. You either work and be productive or lazily “enjoy life”. There is no balance between being pregnant and not being pregnant. There is no balance between being dedicated to work and not being dedicated to work.

I frankly don’t see what’s so hard to understand, but then, I’m probably underestimating the liberal sophistry.

In another demonstration of, well, how exercise of copyright control really looks like censorship.

Will they reimburse customers who bought the ebook version, or will they simply say that they have never been charged. You know, the way we’ve been always at war with Eastasia and stimulus is stabilization.

Anyways. I guess I am not buying Kindle until they work out these legal issues. For now, I’ll just … enjoy the irony of Kindle ad on the Slashdot story.

Well, I picked up an iMac G5 from the electronics discard area by 151 Le Conte. I am hoping that it’s a perfectly good machine (I see no visible damage and unit powers on) thrown away by someone who upgraded his computer.

I opened it up following the directions here (apparently they’ve made these iMacs really easy to open). But unfortunately, it’s apparently missing it’s SATA drive, and more importantly, RAM, which means I can’t quite test to see if it does actually work.

I don’t think I have any spare DDR rams, especially ones meeting the criteria for use with iMac G5. So, I am going to have to ask around tomorrow for one, and if not, I may have to take a chance (that this machine is working) and order one online.

It would be very nice if this works (it’s a nice, self-contained unit no larger than an LCD) … but we shall see.

Edit: It seems to start up O.K. with a DDR ram we had hanging around in the lab. I wouldn’t trust it … until an OS could be installed on a hard drive and successfully booted from that drive, but so far so good.

Or next generation of re-wording what others have been doing for almost a decade?

By using a laser beam to impose the quantum state of a molecular transistor, the research team demonstrated control of a second laser beam, which reflects the way in which a conventional transistor works.

“The next step is to ‘connect’ two or more [single-molecule optical transistors],” Pototschnig told us with regard to future areas the team will be focusing on. “In other words, we have to connect two molecules in a way that the quantum mechanical superposition state of each molecule is exchanged in a coherent manner. Only that way the strength of the quantum computing principles can be fully taken advantage of. We are in the middle of coming up with actual ways to implement the connection idea.”

I fail to see how this is different from normal and usual techniques (such as CPT and EIT, which involves two lasers (or more) acting coherently on three (or more) atomic levels) people have been using in AMO physics for a very long time. And I think at least for two decades or so (i.e. since the advent of laser cooling), people have been doing this stuff with single atoms (and maybe single molecules) in a cavity.

I mean, it’s one thing for some people to call these devices “optical switch”, in order to bring attention to the fact that, well, these effects can be used as optical switch (networks and communications people wouldn’t be as enthralled with words like “electromagnetically induced transparency” or “coherent population trapping”). But to claim that something that is little more than an optical switch is actually a “optical transistor”? That seems, well, irresponsible.

It’s a shame that this article didn’t actually link to the journal article supposedly published in Nature. Then I could see for myself whether this is yet another typical bad science journalism (for every good article I see in science and tech, I see at least 2 or 3 spectacularly bad ones), or if the author himself is, well, so isolated from the scientific community that he doesn’t know that he is simply reproducing what others have been doing for a long time—except, I guess, that he’s using a slightly more complicated molecule, maybe.

Edit: This article links to the journal in the references (found via Slashdot comments). You’ll need some kind of library subscription to see full article, but even the abstract shows that the authors of this article did consider other work in AMO physics using cooled/trapped atoms in cavities, and their work, presumably, represents a marginal advancement in these techniques. So, this is yet another case of bad, sensationalist journalism, where the so-called “journalist” tries to justify his salary by trying to paint a small-step improvement as some kind of other-worldly breakthrough (… that he happens to be covering).

An old geezer writes:

I recommend that my students—and the rest of us!—stop looking for answers on the internet and instead go out and play in the real world. We can learn a lot more physics from Nature than from being stuck to the computer screen. Why not emulate Copernicus, Galileo, or Isaac Newton, who saw the world with their own eyes. Spend time walking in the woods, listening to the ocean, experiencing the beauty of the spring flowers, and being amazed by the vast expanse of the night sky; it’s bigger than your computer screen, you know. Nature—not the internet—is still the greatest teacher.

Well, guess what Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton all had in common?

They were all wrong.

Copernicus was wrong to say that the planets orbited the sun in circular orbits (‘sorry; it’s elliptical). Galileo is famously wrong with his insistence on Galilean relativity (we now know that it’s the special relativity that holds true in the absence of gravity). And Newton was not only wrong with corpuscular theory of light (well, in the light of existence of photons, you could argue that he wasn’t entirely wrong, but if you insist on bringing quantum mechanics into this, then Newton was utterly, irreconcilably wrong in his entire work, save perhaps for calculus, for which another man deserves more credit), but he couldn’t provide any credible explanation for the one thing that he’s known for: Newtonian gravity (another theory which is quite wrong on the details, by the way).

I would be hard pressed to argue that these men were wrong simply because they didn’t have access to computers. Or Internet, although a simple Google search today will show that these men are wrong. But then, I can ask in turn: who put the man on the moon? Was it Kennedy? Was it the engineers down in Houston? Was it the astronauts? I dare say it was the computing machines (and maybe the men who made them … for creating something greater than themselves) that deserve more credit. Computers themselves can get to the moon now on their own (look at all the unmanned probes we are sending to Mars). Can we say the same for any man, except for fictional beings like the Superman?

Computers are the future. To deny the computer is to deny the future of sentience.

On Slashdot:

“Retired University of Tennessee Professor Dr. John Reece Roth has been sentenced to four years in prison after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In 2004, the company Roth helped found, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, won a US Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals. Despite warnings from his university’s Export Control Officer, in 2006, Roth took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China and also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project. ‘The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,’ says David Kris of the US Department of Justice. ‘We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today’s sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.’ During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract. ‘This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university,’ said Roth. ‘And it has probably not helped this country, either.’”

If the facts as represented are accurate, it seems clear enough: the professor is guilty, if not of actual treason against this country, then of extremely poor judgment. Even naturalized U.S. citizens (to my great dismay) have betrayed this country before either for the sake of money or for the sake of their “motherland” (as if after they took the naturalization oath, they belonged to any country other than United States of America). Foreign graduate students are not U.S. citizens. They are not even permanent residents. Their stay in the U.S. is contingent not only on the visas we issue them, but on the validity of their passport. They can not only be persuaded by their home government but even pressed into service against their will, given how much control over their life the foreign government has. As brilliant as these people are, they cannot work on sensitive projects, and they cannot be allowed access to sensitive data, even inadvertently.

No one said that we cannot hire foreign graduate students—that would be great tragedy indeed, as they are some of the brightest people in American graduate schools (at least judging by test scores and classroom grades). We just cannot hire them for sensitive projects (at least before they decide to stay in this country and become naturalized). This professor was an idiot for not properly shielding his graduate students from sensitive information that would be too tempting for them—or even if not, the access itself, whether they actually used it or not, could be brought against them to arouse sufficient suspicion.

… as a graduate student who lives on tax dollars, either at federal or state level:

On HotAir.com:

Felix Salmon at Reuters also discovers that not all creditors are created equal in California’s eyes. Some people will still get cash rather than a wish sandwich in the mail. See if you can discern a theme:

People who get California IOUs	People California pays in cash
Grants to aged, blind or disabled persons	University of California
People needing temporary assistance for basic family needs	Public Employees’ Retirement System
People in drug prevention, treatment, and recovery services	Legislators, legislative employees, and appointees
Persons with developmental disablities	Judges
People in mental health treatment	Department of Corrections
Small Business Vendors	Health Care Services payments to Institutional Providers

Well, the only reason University of California is in the list of state institutions still paying out cash is, well, UC is now only partly a state institution. Already the flagship campus UC Berkeley relies more heavily on private donations than ever (I think somewhere around 15% of the operating budget now). When the issue of state budge came up some months ago (because, well, HotAir.com’s right—this “crisis” could’ve been avoided if the unprincipled legislators could make the necessary cuts and “sacrifices” months ago), the statement from university official was, well, UC has enough discretionary funding that does not depend on the state funding in the short term that lack of payments from the state on a month-to-month basis will not affect UC employees.

It’s not that California state government is somehow giving special treatment to UC employees—it’s that UC system itself has enough funding independent of this mess of a government that it can shield its employees from the stupid government.

And this is probably the strongest argument one can provide in support of further “privatization” of UC system. There is a reason the nation’s best universities are private schools. In order for the best schools in the UC system (i.e. UC Berkeley and UC LA) to compete with them, we need to compete for and win private funding, because well, frankly state funding is too unreliable and too immoral.