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In mid-December 1987, Miniscribe's management, with Wiles' approval and Schleibaum's assistance, engaged in an extensive cover-up which included recording the shipment of bricks as in-transit inventory. To implement the plan, Miniscribe employees first rented an empty warehouse in Boulder, Colorado, and procured ten, forty-eight foot exclusive-use trailers. They then purchased 26,000 bricks from the Colorado Brick Company.

On Saturday, December 18, 1987, Schleibaum, Taranta, Huff, Lorea and others gathered at the warehouse. Wiles did not attend. From early morning to late afternoon, those present loaded the bricks onto pallets, shrink wrapped the pallets, and boxed them. The weight of each brick pallet approximated the weight of a pallet of disk drives. The brick pallets then were loaded onto the trailers and taken to a farm in Larimer County, Colorado.

Miniscribe's books, however, showed the bricks as in-transit inventory worth approximately $4,000,000. Employees at two of Miniscribe's buyers, CompuAdd and CalAbco, had agreed to refuse fictitious inventory shipments from Miniscribe totaling $4,000,000. Miniscribe then reversed the purported sales and added the fictitious inventory shipments into the company's inventory records.

Find the full text here: http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/1996/w961430w.txt

Now, though, Seagate is not Miniscribe.

Are you asking for citation? Here you go:
http://www.justice.gov/jmd/afp/02fundreport/02_2.html http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91490480 -- NPR story detailing the huge amounts of money getting sent back to law enforcement.

Willms isn't the only one to survive and thrive after the government imposed a huge Internet ad-related fine. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt even managed to get named to the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees in November, after his company agreed to forfeit $500 million for allowing online Canadian pharmacies to place advertisements through its AdWords program targeting consumers in the U.S., resulting in the unlawful importation of controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs. In December, the Mercury News reported on Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's ongoing efforts to stop Google from making it too easy to buy drugs online without a prescription (screenshot). In his 2011 Senate testimony (PDF), Schmidt said "we absolutely regret what happened. It [drug advertising] was a mistake," and replied "Absolutely" when asked if Google had "taken steps to make sure that that sort of thing never happens again."

The US is using its national intelligence agencies to obtain intelligence on terrorists trying to kill people.

Yes, and obtaining intelligence on political movements like Occupy Wall Street.

The intelligence agencies themselves don't have police powers.

Oh? What's that you say? TFA is about warrantless surveillance undertaken by the FBI, which is the federal agency with explicit domestic police powers.

The suspect in this case is accused of assisting a terrorist group.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, providing "material support" to a terrorist group can be as simple as expressing support for it. And having a terrorism suspect browse your web site is enough to spark a secret investigation of your organization which scares away many of the donors who keep it in operation.

East Germany's secret police had both an intelligence function and police powers.

The FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, at least, are agencies with police powers and intelligence operations. Heck, even the NYPD is in on the deal.

Their primary purpose was to keep the East German Communist party in power.

Given that NSA snooping hasn't indisputably foiled even a single terrorist plot, and the FBI instigated virtually all of the "terrorist" plots they've busted, I have to wonder what is the primary purpose of these agencies. Surely not to intimidate political dissidents!

You could be arrested and imprisoned for such things as making jokes about the nation's leadership, wanting to form a new political party,

Here in the U.S., they've at least figured out that making jokes about the leadership is essentially harmless and does nothing to erode their power. If people started to rise up to challenge them, we might see that change; the architecture of oppression is in place. As for forming a new political party, it does no harm to talk of it, because it's essentially impossible due to the laws in most areas which protect the two incumbent parties.

being a member of an unapproved church,

Like a mosque?

trying to leave the country without permission (could get you shot on the spot)

It won't get you shot, but you apparently can't leave without permission. The U.S. apparently has more finesse than East Germany did.

and many other possible infractions.

There are plenty of other infractions that'll get you in trouble, like walking while black,

The site smells of entrapment to me.

There is more to making good a defense of entrapment than being caught in the trap.

In criminal law:

A valid entrapment defense has two related elements: (1) government inducement of the crime, and (2) the defendant's lack of predisposition to engage in the criminal conduct. Of the two elements, predisposition is by far the more important.

Inducement is the threshold issue in the entrapment defense. Mere solicitation to commit a crime is not inducement. Nor does the government's use of artifice, stratagem, pretense, or deceit establish inducement. Rather, inducement requires a showing of at least persuasion or mild coercion.

Even if inducement has been shown, a finding of predisposition is fatal to an entrapment defense. The predisposition inquiry focuses upon whether the defendant "was an unwary innocent or, instead, an unwary criminal who readily availed himself of the opportunity to perpetrate the crime."

Entrapment --- Elements

Or in other words, "Gee, Sarten-X, I don't actually have facts, but I want to believe!"

That's okay. I happen to have some time to kill. A quick search for "federal drug trafficking code", turns up a nice list of limits by schedule, which nicely points out the lower bound is 500 grams. That's quite a lot for simply detecting the composition of a sample.

I recommend doing your own research next time.

At least the DEA website is up, letting us know they are still operating. Gotta get those pot smokers.

http://www.justice.gov/dea/index.shtml

Meanwhile the USDA is down, but don't worry, there's no problem with our food supply.

http://www.usda.gov/

Makes sense to me. Going after the druggies is far more essential than the food we eat.

Incomprehensible.

Probably talking about this: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/1994/211749.htm

GE and DeBeers got together to fix the price of industrial diamonds back in the early 1990s.

"Uh... why would the FBI care about being caught?"

Because they illegally interrupted service of hundreds if not thousands of other customers of the hosting service.

See 18 USC 242, "Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law"

When there is danger of infringing on the rights (which includes contracts) of innocent parties, law enforcement is, at the very least, required to use "narrowly tailored" means to effect their business.

They used pretty much the opposite of "narrowly tailored" means. They just took over the whole hosting company and surveilled ALL the users.

Definitely a no-no. Definitely illegal.

No reasonable person is in favor of child pornography. But law enforcement is not allowed to break the law in order to enforce the law.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/guidelines/211578.htm

There's even a contact address at the bottom of the page you can use to report the signs of collusion you've witnessed: antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov.

Anyway, that's how it works in the grownup world.

The TSA had two choices. Treat them all alike and respect their Constitutional rights, or treat them all alike and ignore their Constitutional rights. The TSA chose the latter, and everyone involved with it deserves prosecution for deprivation of rights under color of law.

You are wrong about 17 being underage. 16 is the age of consent in Britain,

Okay that's a fair point, except that Nicole Sherzinger is American, therefore I'm judging her actions from an American perspective. It's actually the law here that if an American is overseas, they are still bound by American law. It's specifically illegal to have sex with people who are under 18 REGARDLESS of the local age of consent -- it's considered child sex tourism: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/ceos/subjectareas/child-sex-tourism.html

I *still* think if one of the male judges said that about a 17 or 18 year old girl, in Britain, there would be an outcry. If not, bravo for their society, but as an American that idea is so incredibly unlikely that I can't believe it until I see it.

Phones are connected to networks. Government agencies by definition have the ability to issue warrants to get the network provider to turn over all data that passes through their network. Every government on the planet does this and has since the invention of the telephone. It's called a wiretap and the logic was extended for text and other data.

The network provider owns the network. Through the use of warrants the government owns the network provider. When you own the network you own all of the data going over it. With devices that perform MITM on the fly your encryption is useless unless you exchanged the key offline ahead of time. These devices have been sold for government and corporate use for many years.

The idea that anyone has ever had privacy on their mobile is a myth that has never had any basis in reality. You want a secure phone that your favorite government bad guy can't get into? Go to the store, buy your favorite phone and leave it in the package.

and only when they had sufficient probable cause to get a subpoena.

If by sufficient you mean none at all.

"Probable cause is not a prerequisite to the issuance of a subpoena."

I pulled from the USA Department of Justice website:
http://www.justice.gov/dea/druginfo/ds.shtml

It's a strange system set more for political reasons than science or fact. Helps keep our racial minorities in jail...

And Samsung still wouldn't care, evidenced by past behavior (otherwise known as the best predictor of future behavior):

Samsung could face 15B Euro fine
Samsung, LG fined for LCD price fixing
Tax evasion, bribery, and price fixing: how Samsung became the giant that ate Korea
Samsung agrees to plead guilty to DRAM price fixing, pay $300M fine
6 Samsung executives headed to jail for price fixing
Samsung, LG fined for mobile price fixing scheme

Everyone is holding these guys up to be some kind of saints in their battle against the evil Apple Empire, when they are thrice-convicted price fixers that screw their customers over at every opportunity, legal or otherwise; and try to screw the competition by suing over standards-essential patents that they don't license for FRAND terms (allegedly).

Samsung is not a friendly company, but I'll likely be modded down for saying so. Whatever, I've got the karma to burn.

The concept you are looking for is called "extraterritorial jurisdiction."

You may recall that hackers from around the world attacking the US are potentially subject to prosecution in the US for their crime? Same basic idea, just a different crime.

Extraterritorial Issues

Extraterritorial jurisdiction simply relates to the authority of a government to criminalize activity that occurs outside its territorial borders, or to investigate or prosecute such activity. The exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction by one state with respect to criminal activity necessarily encroaches, in some measure, upon the sovereignty of the nation where the offense occurred. Under customary international law, there are five generally recognized principles upon which a country can permissibly assert extraterritorial jurisdiction. See United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 91-92 (2d Cir. 2003). The jurisdictional bases include the following.

- The objective territorial principle—where the offense occurs in one country but has effects in another, for example, killing someone by shooting across an international border.
- The nationality principle—the offender is a citizen of the prosecuting state.
- The protective principle—the offense offends the vital interests of the prosecuting state, such as counterfeiting that nation's currency.
- The passive personality principle—the victim is a citizen of the prosecuting state.
- The universality principle—the offense, such as piracy, is universally condemned by the international community, sometimes in a multinational convention or treaty to which the United States is a signatory.

If Assange engaged in an active conspiracy with Manning to obtain classified documents, it might be grounds for a conspiracy charge. There are nuances around this issue. It might be possible, it might not. Only a lawyer that practices in this area is likely to really know.

Many are enthusiastic about extraterritorial or universal jurisdiction when the possibility of prosecuting Dick Cheney is raised, but that enthusiasm tends to wane when the prospect of the US prosecuting Assange comes up.

Not Goldman and nowhere near enough but some little ray of sunshine: http://www.justice.gov/ag/Hayes-Tom-and-Darin-Roger-Complaint.pdf

Really?

Where did they admit it? Or are you just making up 'facts'?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57568377-93/macmillan-reaches-e-book-pricing-settlement-with-doj/
They settled because they couldn't live with the worst outcome.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/57204_b57204
"In April, those three publishers decided to settle (without admitting any wrongdoing) instead of fighting the DOJ suit in court."

Even the DOJ doesn't say they admitted to collusion:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/February/13-at-171.html

Thanks for the answer.

I probably was not accurate enough in my question. Question was rather "how this happened and still happens..."

Now, a little search provides a really good link I found: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm

I thought there was a real reason historically but it just seems that car dealers effectively lobbied their state governments to introduce these "Franchise Laws" after they were established. And it was in order to "... protect their investment in real estate and showrooms, etc..." - So, as you said, the traditional protectionist malaise as everywhere (reminds me of the stupid solar industry in Europe which actually managed to convince the EU Commission to introduce tariffs on Chinese solar panels... up to 67% ... now the Chinese are striking back with tariffs on European products *sigh* - will this never end?)

Read the findings of fact. It's a lot more complex than you imagine.

There was very little alternative on the desktop when Microsoft was convicted. However Apple has a very strong competitor in both Android and Samsung. That's the difference.

Try reading the findings of fact and focus specifically on applications barrier to entry. Moving from iOS to Android is not nearly as difficult as moving from Windows to Linux or OS9 was in 2000.

Microsoft also deliberately, not once but three times, disrupted the development of middleware that would have made the migration easier. Now whether you think that any of the middleware (Netscape, Java and Intel's cross-platform device driver framework) was crap or not is irrelevant. Microsoft did this to prevent competitive threats from arising and to maintain their illegally gained market share.

Apple have tried to disrupt Android but have failed, and they have also not prevented software that allows cross-platform development. It's all in the findings of fact which you clearly haven't read.

Here's the DOJ site for the case and the DOJ court filing.

The court doc has a dramatic graphic which shows you exactly what happened to ebook prices while this was going on. All the colored lines are publishers who conspired with Apple to switch to agency pricing the first week of April 2010, except for Penguin (beige) who switched the end of May. The two grey lines are publishers who stuck with wholesale pricing (Random House and other non-majors).

Here's the DOJ site for the case and the DOJ court filing.

The court doc has a dramatic graphic which shows you exactly what happened to ebook prices while this was going on. All the colored lines are publishers who conspired with Apple to switch to agency pricing the first week of April 2010, except for Penguin (beige) who switched the end of May. The two grey lines are publishers who stuck with wholesale pricing (Random House and other non-majors).

It's just that even more than a cursory examination of these "scandals" reveals them to either be normal function of government misconstrued as a crime or a legitimate problem bent completely out of factual frame of reference in order to blame the president.

Have you ever heard of the phrase "The buck stops here"? The idea is that the President is the top guy, and is responsible for everything.

For example, in the aftermath of Hurricaine Katrina, just about the entire news media held George W. Bush personally responsible for the failures of FEMA, because Bush was the President.

There are two possibilities here. Either Mr. Obama knew and approved of the IRS actions, or he didn't. The former means he is a crooked politician, and the latter means he does not have full control of the machinery of government. If you are a fan of Mr. Obama, you better hope it's the latter. (And if you blamed W for Katrina, I hope you also blame Mr. Obama for the IRS scandal; fair is fair.)

So, when I say the government is far too big and needs to be trimmed way the hell down, will you tell me I am "paranoid" for worrying that government will get out of control?

As to the entire rest of your post, I can't imagine the level of self-awareness you must lack to write all that in the context of discussing paranoia and not recognize it as such. There is almost nothing there but conspiracy theories unbacked by evidence.

IRS evidence (citations from IG report, ProPublica, USA Today... and a Jon Stewart Daily Show clip)
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348410/tea-party-irs-scandal-facebook-faq

IRS asked a group to publish the contents of their prayers (freedom of speech? separation of church and state?)
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/irs-conservative-group-2009-members-pray-193833144.html

Discussion of possible union connection.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking

Wikipedia discussion of Wide Receiver and FaF.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal#Operation_Wide_Receiver

Inspector General's report on Fast and Furious.
http://www.justice.gov/oig/testimony/t1220.pdf

So now, your turn. What is your explanation for the difference between Wide Receiver and FaF? (If you are going to say "they were the same" then go read that IG report and try again.) Please tell me some theory as to why guns were allowed to walk with absolutely no attempts to track them and without warning the Mexican authorities that this was going to happen.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/nye/pr/2013/2013may09.html

Over the course of approximately 10 hours, casher cells in 24 countries executed approximately 36,000 transactions worldwide and withdrew about $40 million from ATMs. From 3 p.m. on February 19 through 1:26 a.m. on February 20, the defendants and their co-conspirators withdrew approximately $2.4 million in nearly 3,000 ATM withdrawals in the New York City area.

2904 withdrawals, not ATMs. About 10 hours, not EXACTLY 10 hours.
Also, it's 8 persons with 12 accounts per person. All they needed to cover was about 30 ATMs.
Which comes out to about 20 minutes per ATM, meaning that each TEAM (i.e. at least one to withdraw the money, one to drive the car and keep lookout) had about 8 minutes to get from one ATM to the next.

Good critical thinking on your part though. Just too much noise in the signal.

Neil Macbride, former Business Software Alliance general counsel and vice president was appointed US Attorney shortly after President Obama's first inauguration - probably at the behest of his former boss Vice President Joe Biden. Since then he has been a tireless bulldog as the US Government's enforcement arm of the MPAA and RIAA - notably in the case of Kim Dotcom's Megaupload in New Zealand, which is now bordering on an international incident.

Darned right it doesn't pass the sniff test.

The thing is that monopoly is not one precise thing it is shades of gray

Um no. There is a legal and precise definition of monopoly. There are multiple laws--there is an even division of law that deals specifically with monopolies. For someone decrying how others don't know history, you seem not to know anti-trust law.

if it were one succinct definition you wouldn't be moving those goalposts to rationalize how all the other monopolies I've cited fit different requirements.

First of all criteria I've come from the multiple legal cases including US vs Microsoft:

34. Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows.

Second, you haven't cited one source that supports your definition that highest market share is the only criteria for defining a monopoly. It seems you are moving the goalposts which you accuse me of. Hypocritical much?

The only difference is you are picking and choosing your requirements to fit what you can't dispute. Hell, you even got standard oil wrong to begin with, then you went and read the article I linked to and now you have another set of goal posts to apply there.

Where have you cited your definition is as you say it is? The article you linked supports my argument.

That's the problem with being such a literalist, you can't make the real world fit your literal viewpoint so you have to make exceptions. But once you start picking and choosing your exceptions your whole literalist based argument falls apart.

By your definition of monopoly everything is a monopoly. The most popular restaurant in town is a monopoly even though the one across the street from it is crowded. The definition had no meaning in your world. You the call it literal when you begin losing your argument as one simple logic test destroya your entire argument. In fact you cannot dispute it, can you? I've cited case law. Please cite your case law.

Yes, they do, in most cases - you should probably familiarize yourself with the actual laws governing the situation:

http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=286
http://www.justice.gov/pardon/collateral_consequences.pdf

If found guilty in Massachusetts, he would have lost his right to vote for "the term of his incarceration."

If he had accepted the plea bargain, he would have lost the right to vote for the 6 months of his incarceration. How many elections would he have missed, again?

The only reason Swartz was charged with crimes amounting to years in prison was to discourage him from exercising his rights. That's unjust any way you want to portray it.

No, the reason Swartz was charged with crimes amounting to years in prison is because the evidence indicated that he committed crimes whose maximum penalty was 35 years in prison.

The reason people keep shouting "35 years" is because they're engaging in a political game, trying to conflate "maximum sentence" with "likely penalty Mr. Swartz would have received."

Actually, Ortiz explicitly threatened him with 35 years here:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html

Nice try, though.

Huawei stealing secrets? No Way!

Note that our copyright laws have literally been getting drafted by industry layers, and they have been slipping lawyerly "gotchyas" into the text. Specifically, in the No Electronic Theft Act (N.E.T. Act) theyredefined "financial gain:

17 U.S.C. Â 101 - Definitions
The term âoefinancial gainâ includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.

And from the U.S. Department of Justice:
It is a common misconception that if infringers fail to charge subscribers a monetary fee for infringing copies, they cannot be held to have engaged in criminal copyright infringement. It is the position of the Department that the term "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" does not require the payment in money for the infringing works, but includes payment by trading anything of value for them. Thus, when "bartering" (i.e., the practice of exchanging infringing works for other infringing works) results in the unauthorized dissemination of substantial amounts of infringing product without recompense to the copyright holders, prosecution appears to be fully consistent with the purposes of the criminal copyright statute.

In other words, they they slipped a redefinition into the law to take essentially any use of P2P and magically shove it under the criminal copyright code which was originally intended only to target serious commercial piracy operations.

Virtually everyone who has ever used any P2P is guilty of a felony, subject to one, three, or up to five years in prison. Double that - up to ten years in prison - for a second offense of downloading some music from P2P. Because, someone who download music twicewould attempt to actually enforce that law. If they attempted to round up tens of millions of random Americans - mostly people's kids - for felony copyright infringement charged with several years in prison, there would literally be a hundred million people storming the streets with torches and pitchforks. If they actually attempted to enforce this law the general public would overthrow the entire U.S. government in under 48 hours. And somehow I suspect the new government wouldn't be quite so friendly to any of the other batshit-insane demands coming from the copyright lobby.

-

Indulge me in a little hyperbole: for a friend of mine, hacking AT&T was a death sentence.

Lance Moore was involved with LulzSec, foolishly no doubt. As an AT&T technician of some sort, he acquired and subsequently distributed some internal corporate documents. The Justice department is liable to be a more accurate source of the specific complaints. He was caught. The FBI seized its opportunity to bring the hammer down. I've seen various figures given for the amount of jail time he was facing; somewhere between five and thirty. He was found dead by his own hand on February 24 of last year. His crime has by now likely been forgotten by all that were involved with it.

Sixteen other people were arrested the same day that he was arrested. I don't know their stories. The reader may judge whether justice was served.

We have convicted rapists and murderers that seem to get off with lighter sentences than people that do anything that involves a computer these days, even if the results don't hurt anyone and only embarrass a company or some govt. personnel.

Show me the numbers and then we can talk.

Real stats for the rapist and murderer. Real stats for the geek whose computer-related crimes earned him hard time.

In the American federal system, crimes of violence are almost always prosecuted under state law.

Execution List 2012 Each state on this list, for example, has executed between 1200 and 1300 death row inmates since 1976.

Federal Executions 1927-2003: 23.

The DOJ's Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section archives its press releases of charges and convictions dating back to 2000. It's a useful corrective to the notion that the geek's crimes are victimless. That he hasn't hurt anyone.

CCIPS Press releases

Processing all the requests and appeals across the federal government cost $412,647,829.53 in FY 2010: http://www.justice.gov/oip/foiapost/fy-2011-annual-report-summary.pdf We hope to reduce these costs by eliminating the need for duplicitous requests, since everything requested through MuckRock is eventually made public. The federal government also has a system for recouping fees from requesters.

little googling

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/13/technology/intel.eu.fortune/index.htm

http://www.justice.gov/atr/icpac/chapter5.htm
"According to economists who have studied the issue, non-European firms that make telecommunications equipment do not have an equal voice in setting European telecommunications standards. The European firms use their influence inside ETSI to choose standards that have been developed by European firms and disadvantage technologies developed by non-European firms."

Just 'cause they target their own, doesn't mean they don't preferentially target foreigners.
US fines local companies too.

Like WTO disputes. Each country has a knack for finding practices by foreign companies to be anticompetive, while ignoring their own.

Most Linux dists with Firefox and I suppose Android may have a standard browser to.

Microsoft were abusing their position to ensure other browsers couldn't be bundled as part of the OEM software builds distributed with new PCs. PC makers were literally not permitted to add any other browsers. See this US Dept. of Justice link, section V.C.2 for a summary. This was Microsoft's strategy for winning the browser wars against Netscape Navigator, and was the reason Netscape died out.

Then they integrated their Internet Explorer browser into the operating system so deeply that you can't actually uninstall it. Internet Explorer is present on EVERY copy of Windows released, whether the user wants to actually use it or not.

This is different from Linux distros distributing Firefox as part of their bundle for a number of reasons - chief of which is that Firefox isn't made by the Linux Foundation, it's a Mozilla product. Secondly, it's been a while since I installed Ubuntu, but I'm pretty certain when I did, the installer asked me which browser(s) I wanted (amongst other software) - it's not like Firefox was just given to me, I could have picked Chrome if I'd wanted to use it.

The reason Microsoft are being targeted here is that this is an anti-trust fine. Microsoft are recognized as the leader in the consumer and enterprise desktop/laptop PC OS markets - there are more Windows installs than there are Linux or Mac installs. By bundling their own browser and not giving users the option during installation NOT to install IE (let alone giving them the option to install something else), they could be viewed as using their dominance in the desktop OS market as a tool to gain dominance in the web browser market. Remember that a lot of consumers will also just go with whatever is installed, either through ignorance (they don't know how good other browsers are, and IE just works, right?) or through not feeling confident / tech savvy enough to install a different browser. You have to go download files and run installers and make choices - that sort of thing scares people, which is why the App Store model is so popular - you just click "install" and it goes and does it all for you. Putting the choice of browser in the installation wizard for the OS or in the "first-time user login" wizard when you first start up your brand new PC should even the playing field, giving users an easy way of picking what browser they want to use. Granted, most will continue using IE because that's what they've been used to in the past, or because of the Microsoft branding on it - but that's their choice.

Having the Chrome browser bundled with Android is pretty much the same as Microsoft including IE with Windows and Apple including Safari with MacOS and iOS - yes there are other browsers available, but they don't give you the choice what you want. There is no reason why the European Commissioner for Competition can't go and levy the same sorts of fines against Google and Apple for the same reasons (maybe they haven't received complaints about this practice by these companies?). It's just been Microsoft's turn this time, and the fine they're being hit with is because of their failure to comply with an earlier ruling - they were told previously to give users a choice, and this demand has basically been ignored.

OH THE HUMANITY! THE HORRORS! I HAVE TO CHANGE BROWSER MYSELF?!

You don't have to change it at all if you don't want to. The point is, it's about having the choice. You may have the technical know-how to do this, but a lot of people won't, so Microsoft win the browser wars by default.

The US Attorney is following through on the laws as passed by duly-elected leaders. It's convienient to blame the prosecutor, but they didn't write the laws.

Here's a nice little write-up regarding WY seizure laws - most other states have similar laws in effect, as does the federal government.

Sorry, I remembered wrong, it wasn't 50 years, just 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million.

Do you feel better now? Is 35 years in prison plus a $1 million fine the correct punishment for using a script to download documents?

Is disbarment the correct punishment for applying the law that Congress wrote and failing to use discretion to ignore offenses? Do you understand what "discretion" even means, if you insist that it be mandatory and punishment be applied if it's not used? Do you understand what "hypocrisy" means?

Sorry, I remembered wrong, it wasn't 50 years, just 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million.

Do you feel better now? Is 35 years in prison plus a $1 million fine the correct punishment for using a script to download documents?

From the second Kerr link:

Why are you hearing that Swartz faced 35 or 50 years if it was not true? First, government press releases like to trumpet the maximum theoretical numbers. Authors of the press releases will just count up the crimes and the add up the theoretical maximum punishments while largely or completely ignoring the reality of the likely much lower sentence. The practice is generally justified by its possible general deterrent value: perhaps word of the high punishment faced in theory will get to others who might commit the crime and will scare them away. And unfortunately, uninformed reporters who are new to the crime beat sometimes pick up that number and report it as truth. A lot of people repeat it, as they figure it must be right if it was in the news. And some people who know better but want you to have a particular view of the case repeat it, too. But don’t be fooled. Actual sentences are usually way way off of the cumulative maximum punishments.

So if it serves as a deterrent we should be fooled, but if it applies to ourselves we shouldn't be? Personally I would be scared shitless if I saw the DOJ itself make statements like that about me. Just be truthful. The US already is highly punitive [pdf, see page 11-12] compared to other western countries (27 times as high as where I live). If that by itself doesn't work as a deterrent then exaggerations probably won't do much either, apart from increasing the likelihood of people killing themselves.

If bullying is part of the system, then yes, the system should be targeted. But not just by outsiders, the prosecuters themselves should have opposed the system instead of participating in the bullying. And as they did participate they should be targeted as part of the system.

You're wrong, a prosecutor's job is to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

Really? So was St. Jude's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?

“Medical device and pharmaceutical companies can use post-market studies legitimately to obtain information about how their products work in the field, but they cannot use those studies, and the honoraria associated with them, to induce physicians to select their products. Cardiologists and electrophysiologists should make their decisions on which pacemaker or defibrillator to implant in a patient based on their independent medical judgment, not based on how much the manufacturer is paying them to implant the device,” said Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Was anyone found guilty of anything? "St. Jude officials said they weren’t admitting liability"

How about GlaxoSmithKline?

“We will not tolerate corporate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society -- or those who cut corners that result in potentially dangerous consequences to consumers,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, said at yesterday’s news conference.

But hey, at least someone was found guilty this time. His name was SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc. I don't think he had to serve any time in prison, though.

Or Forest Laboratories?

“Forest Pharmaceuticals deliberately chose to pursue corporate profits over its obligations to the F.D.A. and the American public,” Carmen Ortiz, the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement Wednesday.

Someone was found guilty this time, too. His name was Forest Laboratories. No time served in prison, although there was one felony count - lying to FDA officials.

You know, if I squint really hard, I think I can see the impression left by the book that Ortiz threw at Mr. Forest Laboratories and Mr. SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc.

In a just world Carmen M. Oritz would herself be thrown in jail for intentional mental cruelty, but you watch: she won't get in a scrap of trouble for this. She's another Obama Appointee. Sad to say Obama has appointed some real pschyopath lawyers. I know one of them better than I'd like and these are arrogant and twisted people. http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/meetattorney.html I hope Anonymous can do what the lawyers ethics associations won't.

Just throwing something out there that may help.

Statute of limitations for Copyright Infringement (or as content owners like to call it... "The practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea."):

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm01860.htm

And state-licensed dispensaries. For example:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/cae/news/docs/2012/12-2012/12-17-12Chavez.html

They're also going after the people that lease the space to dispensaries, under asset forfeiture laws. Fortunately, those owners have enough money to defend themselves against unconstitutional search and seizure.

Sorry, but that is exactly what happened: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#vf

MS pressured OEMs to make sure that Netscape was not included on any new machine.

Here's the best citation you can get: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

There were TONS of things they did to violate antitrust laws with regards to IE, including coercing ISPs to make their websites IE-only by including ActiveX components on the front page and using FrontPage extensions which would create non-standards-compliant HTML and only render correctly on IE.

I suppose it could be viewed either way. The end result is the same. OEM's were prohibited from removing IE and putting any other alternative browsers under threat of losing their Windows distribution licenses for Windows 95. They didn't threaten OEM's with removal until Windows 98, when they then claimed it was integrated and couldn't be removed.

[Complaint: U.S. v. Microsoft Corp.] (source: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f1700/1763.htm)

18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.

20. Microsoft designed Windows 98 so that removal of Internet Explorer by OEMs or end users is operationally more difficult than it was in Windows 95. Although it is nevertheless technically feasible and practicable to remove Microsoft's Internet browser software from Windows 98 and to substitute other Internet browser software, OEMs are prevented from doing so by Microsoft's contractual tie-in.

I don't think that would be a good idea. McAfee can be charged with murder in both Belize and the United States (federal charges).

If an American citizen murders another American citizen outside of the United States, but within the jurisdiction of another country, that murder may be prosecuted as a federal offense. 18 U.S.C. Â 1119 (2010)

He is a person of interest in the high profile murder of a US citizen. The US government can ignore him while he is in Guatemala or Belize, but once he is in the US, you can expect the FBI to get involved. All that the FBI would need would be the cooperation of Belizean authorities. Considering McAfee antics and what he has been calling them, I think we can assume that they would be thrilled if the US government handled this case instead of them.

It's really hard to have an intelligent exchange just about anywhere, and you're becoming a poster child as to why.

Ever hear of "embrace, extend, extinguish"? Microsoft built in browser incompatibilities with an object tag for ActiveX to make sure Netscape and Opera performed poorly (Opera sued for that), MSN.com even served a different CSS to Opera visitors to make it look broken, for a while, you saw a blank screen on msn.com unless your user-agent string said MSIE, they extended and broke CSS favoring their own -ms- property extensions, they broke Java in browsers with J/Direct, they created Java development tools that stripped away all the cross platform intentions of Java (Sun sued for that), they planned to extinguish the HTML standard with their own free browser to "cut off Netscape's air supply" (Paul Maritz revealed this in a meeting with Intel), they extended and broke Kerberos to lock out other platforms from Windows 2000, they embraced and extended the AOL IM protocol to make AOL's own IM software stop working, they made a mess out of ISO-9660 with their Joliet extension (so you only see the 8.3 names in other platforms), they told Intel to withdraw VDI and threatened PC makers if they implemented it (look up Steven McGeady's testimony), Bill Gates told Andy Grove to shut down the Intel Architecture Labs driving CPU level Internet technologies without Microsoft's permission, Intel had to kill NSP, kill Java support, stop support for Netscape - all part of their illegal restrictive licensing agreements with OEMs to favor Microsoft and harm everything else, they signed up OEMs for a rebate on installing Windows on PCs in exchange for a fee they had to pay for any PC they sold without Windows, effectively making a PC without bundling Windows more expensive for the OEM to make (anti-competitive and illegal), Microsoft threatened Apple unless they abandoned the ability of QuickTime to play multimedia content on computers (they refused and Microsoft sabotaged QuickTime's functionality on Windows with misleading error messages and technical changes or bugs so that QuickTime software sometimes didn't work properly on Windows), they stuffed an ISO standards body to make OOXML (a compendium of Microsoft proprietary undefined digital glop) a "standard" which only they controlled (instead of the truly available ODF standard), Microsoft had fully developed FUD as a marketing strategy (announcing nonexistent products to head off something a competitor actually made or claiming competitive software will crash Windows), If you’ve bought a new PC lately, it probably came equipped with something called “Secure Boot” (UEFI), a feature which prevents you from running anything but Windows on the PC...

These people aren't very nice, relying on a mix of brilliant marketing, threats against OEMs (Microsoft thought they owned any PC right down to the metal), failings of competitors, vaporware and fraudulent illusions. Sure, Netscape had problems and so did Microsoft. They earned their success with their best office productivity software, but their biggest success came from bending everyone over and fucking them, including the customers. Good competition could have been here a lot sooner.