Slashdot Mirror

And, after a little bit more research I note that the justice department came to the same conclusion I did after reading the text of the statute:

Here. They should give me a job.

I just came home from a lovely four year stay at a fed prison. Yes, you can eventually make $.25 an hour, but you have to work up to that.

See federal (BOP) pay scales here.

FPI (UNICOR) is the prison industries. Read: slave labor for government profit. At the facility I was at there was a data processing factory, fixing bad OCR scans by entering Postscript commands.

However, anyone with any computer skills was forbidden from working there, so my job was Captain's Crew...cleaning the sidealks for half hour every day. Nice use of my MCSE, no?

Your entire argument is retarded. First, you're using language (accessory) to a criminal offense, not a civil one -- which AFAIK, copyright infringement is.

Copyright infringement is a federal crime.

The for-profit motive was removed as an element of the offense in the "No Electronic Theft Act" of 1997.

Wilson faces a maximum sentence of six years in prison, a $500,000 fine, two years of supervised release following the prison term and an order of restitution. A sentencing date has not yet been set by the court. New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Unauthorized Recording of Newly Released Motion Pictures in Movie Theater [Feb 23]

Humphrey operated the subscription-based website USAWAREZ.COM from which he distributed copies of
hundreds of copyrighted movies, computer games and software products without authorization from
the copyright owners. Humphrey offered paid subscription services for access to the pirated
materials on his website and also solicited donations for his operation of the site OHIO MAN SENTENCED TO 29 MONTHS IN PRISON FOR SELLING PIRATED COPIES OF MOVIES [April 20]

Second, going by your argument, if you were responsible for downloads, every time you open a webpage, you would open yourself up to liability. Who owns that font? Who owns that clipart? Or those jpegs? Haven't you ever heard of websites using other website author's templates, either knowingly or unknowingly. Should you the browser be liable then?

This is why we can't have nice things.

Font Foundries Opening Up To the Web

When you re-use the unlicensed font, photograph or other element of a webpage for your own purposes you risk being sued.

Ignorance is no excuse.

That is why the pro does his shopping at Corbis or Getty Images when he needs a stock photo.

copyright would protect everything down to the lowly font, jpeg, and animated gif.

It does.

["Digital fonts" may be protected by copyrighted computer programs or design patents.]

Your entire argument is retarded. First, you're using language (accessory) to a criminal offense, not a civil one -- which AFAIK, copyright infringement is.

Copyright infringement is a federal crime.

The for-profit motive was removed as an element of the offense in the "No Electronic Theft Act" of 1997.

Wilson faces a maximum sentence of six years in prison, a $500,000 fine, two years of supervised release following the prison term and an order of restitution. A sentencing date has not yet been set by the court. New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Unauthorized Recording of Newly Released Motion Pictures in Movie Theater [Feb 23]

Humphrey operated the subscription-based website USAWAREZ.COM from which he distributed copies of
hundreds of copyrighted movies, computer games and software products without authorization from
the copyright owners. Humphrey offered paid subscription services for access to the pirated
materials on his website and also solicited donations for his operation of the site OHIO MAN SENTENCED TO 29 MONTHS IN PRISON FOR SELLING PIRATED COPIES OF MOVIES [April 20]

Second, going by your argument, if you were responsible for downloads, every time you open a webpage, you would open yourself up to liability. Who owns that font? Who owns that clipart? Or those jpegs? Haven't you ever heard of websites using other website author's templates, either knowingly or unknowingly. Should you the browser be liable then?

This is why we can't have nice things.

Font Foundries Opening Up To the Web

When you re-use the unlicensed font, photograph or other element of a webpage for your own purposes you risk being sued.

Ignorance is no excuse.

That is why the pro does his shopping at Corbis or Getty Images when he needs a stock photo.

copyright would protect everything down to the lowly font, jpeg, and animated gif.

It does.

["Digital fonts" may be protected by copyrighted computer programs or design patents.]

What, her stance on fabricating evidence to wrongfully imprison people wasn't "tech" enough for you? That's some nerd stuff right there.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/05/nation/la-na-court-framed5-2010jan05
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/28/the-infallible-prosecutor
http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2009/3mer/1ami/2008-1065.mer.ami.html

You don't know how to use google or bing do you?

Google - "prosecutor manufactures evidence kagan"

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/05/nation/la-na-court-framed5-2010jan05
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/28/the-infallible-prosecutor
http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2009/3mer/1ami/2008-1065.mer.ami.html

ANSI used to have a policy that they would not accept standards which contained patented components. That changed in the 1980s, I think. (The link to ANSI's patent policy is currently returning the message "Cannot connect to the configuration database. For tips on troubleshooting this error, search for article 823287 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base at http://support.microsoft.com./")

The legal way to address this is to require that standards bodies, from IEEE to ANSI to MPEG-LA, lose their exemption to antitrust law if they promulgate standards which contain patented components. Without that exemption, when companies get together to agree on a standard, it's conspiracy in restraint of trade.

In general, most of the more annoying patent problems are really antitrust problems. Anyone can get a very narrow patent on a very specific way of doing something. Such a patent is not useful unless the very specific way is a de-facto standard enforced by market dominance. That's an antitrust issue.

The reason MPEG-LA gets away with this is that the Justice Department signed off on it in 1997. That's consistent with the FTC-DOJ 1995 guidelines in this area. Anyone can buy an MPEG-LA license under stated terms. So they meet the guidelines. The guidelines don't address the issue of the interaction of de-facto standards and market power. They should. That's what needs to be revised.

For background, here's a speech by an FTC commissioner of the Clinton era on this issue. He makes the point that antitrust lawyers and patent lawyers don't talk to each other much and don't understand each other's fields. Also see this Justice Department Antitrust Division talk from 2007. If you want to talk intelligently about this issue, you need to read these materials.

I actually took the time to read the final fbi report This guy was mentally unstable well before the attacks, he was obsessed with some sorrority, with female co-workers, and was quite openly discussing his mental illness with co-workers. (why he was still in charge of antrax - astonishes me) The most interesting part is the new science that came out of the investigation (some kind of new dna sequencing method) either way, this guy was nuts before the fbi got involved (imho)

Wow! You are so wrong, that I'm tempted not to educate you!

IBM was under a consent decree until 2001. That's why there was no verdict in the antitrust case.

Try this link:
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/1996/0715.htm

It's a civil court where these cases are going.

True, this story is about civil court lawsuits being filed. However I would wager that the "settlement offers" do explicitly raise the threat of criminal charges and prison if you don't give them the money they demand.

Having people think something is crime that can be prosecuted in criminal court when it is demonstrably not so

False. The 1997 NET Act in the US did in fact make most copyright infringement into a felony. In particular the NET Act slipped this cute redefinition into law:

101. The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.

Any use of Bittorrent or any other P2P pretty much by definition "includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works". It is also quite easy for offline non-commercial infringement to fall under that definition.

The NET Act adds the following criminal law:

506. Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement.--Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either--
1. for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
2. by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.

Note that that is an "or" situation. Under the first clause, even a single minimal infringement is defined as a criminal act if it falls within that crazy redefinition for "financial gain".

The NET act also defines the criminal penalties:

Criminal infringement of a copyright
(a) Whoever violates section 506(a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b) and (c) of this section and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.
(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506(a)(1) of title 17--
1. shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;
2. shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (1); and
3. shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.

So the penalty is up to FIVE YEARS in prison if you have uploaded or downloaded 10 or more infringing files during a half year. The penalty is up to TEN YEARS for a second offense.

Oh, and if it's only a single act of infringement of a single file, then the law is much more generous with you, the crime is merely a felony with up to ONE YEAR in prison.

If you somehow manage not to fall under the "financial gain" definition, 506(a)(2) still makes infringement a felony if the infringement has a total "retail value" of $1,000 within a half year. In that case the prison terms are merely three years if it was ten or more copies with a total retail value of $2,500, six years on a second offense, or merely up to one year in prison for a non "financial-gain" infringement with total claimed retail value under $2,500.

Probably about a quarter of the entire U.S. population are technically unindicted criminal copyright felons subject

...so when given a choice, people sometimes choose different browsers? This is news? This sounds like the argument

Actually, the case was "United States v. Microsoft", which means that it was the government of the United States of America coming down on his Billness for actively and maliciously going out of his way to screw up the market.

Again, the browser ballot does not make any kind of remedy, not even a little, against the original complaint in the EU. MSIE is still bundled on Windows and even if you install Chromium or Firefox, MSIE is still there making botnets. Many regions have good environmental regulations and are able to prevent pollution. Windows can be treated the same way.

Also, the courts are granting one of the masterminds leniency in exchange for prosecuting their underlings? Isn't that the opposite of how it works? Reducing the sentence of a drug kingpin in exchange for testimony against 2 of his street dealers, really?

Justice Department policy is that the first one to come forward and turn in the others gets leniency. Those guys could have turned in Madoff, even after Madoff's arrest, until Madoff confessed. But the one "that is second in the door -- even if by only a matter of days or hours, as has been the case on a number of occasions -- will not be eligible for leniency." If your company is crooked, it's very important to know this.

Madoff himself, of course, is Prisoner #61727-054, at Butner Federal Correctional Institution (medium security).

Here's some legal speculation

Perhaps companies might be required to disclose, to their regulators, certain proprietary information with substantial commercial value to their competitors.

These employees had gone through a background check (NAC) when they were first hired. They have no access to classified information, nor do they have access to locations where classified projects may be developed. The requirement extends to the cafeteria workers and the groundskeepers. The plaintiffs are employees of Caltech and are not civil servants.

The investigations (and re-investigations every 5 years) would require the employees do "voluntarily" sign a waiver (http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf85.pdf) that would authorize any investigator to "obtain any information" from a long list of enumerated and "other" sources, and would authorize any custodians of such information to release it on request, "regardless of any previous agreement to the contrary".

The investigators then send questionnaires (http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/pdf/05-21051.pdf) to neighbors, former employers, and references asking, in an open-ended manner, for any derogatory information.

After the investigators are done, a NASA official "adjudicates" the applicant based on criteria that include "carnal knowledge", "attitude", "sodomy", and, sometimes, "adultery" and "cohabitation". The criteria had been posted on a NASA website, (http://nasapeople.nasa.gov/references/SuitabilitySecurityDeskGuide.pdf ), now replaced with an empty page. The plaintiffs have posted a copy at (http://hspd12jpl.org/files/SuitabilitySecurityDeskGuide.pdf , see page 65 of the pdf). In their latest court filing (http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2009/2pet/7pet/2009-0530.pet.rep.pdf) the Solicitor General denies that NASA uses this.

A lot more on this is at the plaintiff's website, http://hspd12jpl.org/.

...in case you think I'm a troll - this is official!
No wonder they come up with ideas like "let's make everyone give their banking data to US!"

http://www.justice.gov/oarm/jobs/attorneyvotingoarm2010.htm

The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division is seeking up
to 10 experienced attorneys for the position of Trial Attorney in the
Voting Section in Washington, D.C.
[...]
The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with
targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are
[...]
mental retardation, mental illness
[...]

The department continues to believe that a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits. The department stated that it is committed to continuing to work with the parties and other stakeholders to help develop solutions through which copyright holders could allow for digital use of their works by Google and others, whether through legislative or market-based activities.

Seemed to me they weren't happy with Google 'ownership' of orphaned works and the fact that it's "opt out" not "opt in" for authors. I guess you could see that as opposition but basically the amended contract failed to satisfy them. That's why they're having a hearing on Feb. 18, 2010.

A deal this big is bound to have lengthy negotiations and investigations as it's truly game changing for everyone involved and the world at large.

I'd say the only real fishy thing about it is that they are asking for emergency processing in accordance with 5 CFR 1320.13. The Federal Register listing doesn't say why though. I wonder which one of these was their problem:

(i) Public harm is reasonably likely to result if normal clearance procedures are followed;

(ii) An unanticipated event has occurred; or

(iii) The use of normal clearance procedures is reasonably likely to prevent or disrupt the collection of information or is reasonably likely to cause a statutory or court ordered deadline to be missed.

Did someone miss a deadline or did something unexpected happen?

Link if you are interested:
http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn=div5&view=text&node=5:3.0.2.3.9&idno=5#5:3.0.2.3.9.0.48.13

Other than that I don't think anything horrifically fishy is going on. The whole reason InfraGard is a bit opaque has to do with what authorized it in the first place, PDD 63.

Link: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd-63.htm

To save you the reading time, here's are 2 goals I lifted out:

* Seeks the voluntary participation of private industry to meet common goals for protecting our critical systems through public-private partnerships;

* Protects privacy rights and seeks to utilize market forces. It is meant to strengthen and protect the nation's economic power, not to stifle it.

Sometimes you have to do things behind closed doors to get all the players to the table. Security through obscurity? Maybe.

If you really want to learn more about PDD 63, I suggest you read this: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/white_pr.htm

Discuss.

The Judge granted Plaintiffs authority to personally watchdog Microsoft.

The watchdogs are granted, first among other things,

1. Access during normal office hours to inspect any and all source code, books, ledgers, accounts, correspondence, memoranda and other documents and records in the possession, custody, or control of Microsoft

"The whole document" is the evidence that got the Judge to do that.

Thousands of pages. Gigabytes of video.

Somehow, I think the Judge's response to that evidence is a bit ... harsher ... than your description would support.

Hmm. Whose assessment of the evidence should I rely on? Hmm. Hmmm.

I'm going with the newly-signed-up /. poster who read the whole case and weighed all the evidence in a case that took six months to present, overnight. I mean, speed-reading skills like that command respect.

when Microsoft gets shit for including a basic feature

Please, before repeating Microsoft's lies for them again, get the facts.

From Wikipedia: "A controlled substance is generally a drug or chemical whose manufacture, possession, and use are regulated by a government. This may include illegal drugs and prescription medications". The original article uses 'controlled substance' the same way the Justice Dept. & the Drug Enforcement Administration (not that Wikipedia citation) do. See http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/csa.html Heroin is a Sch I substance in the USA, no prescriptions can be written. Morphine is a Sch. II controlled substance & needs a prescription. Penicillin is a non-controlled substance and needs a prescription.

It'd be pretty easy for somebody with some letterhead and a paralegal's knowledge of the terminology to just do a snailmail spam campaign against a broad swath of demographically suitable addresses.

This is mail fraud.

It can put you away in a federal pen for twenty years.

Title 18 - Part 1 - Chapter 63-- Mail Fraud and Other Fraud Offenses - 1341 Frauds and swindles

Prosecution Policy Relating to Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud

Not in the US. You actually have to be found guilty of a crime to go to prison.

You mean like when the US DOJ actually got them convicted as a coercive monopoly? Or maybe you were referring to when the EU smacked down Microsoft for bad practices?

Somebody down below posted a link to this document. Here's a relevant clip:

101. The development of an alternative platform to challenge Windows was not the primary objective of Intel's NSP efforts. In fact, Intel was interested in providing APIs and DDIs only to the extent the effort was necessary to ensure the development of applications and devices that would spark demand for Intel's most advanced microprocessors. Understanding Intel's limited ambitions, Microsoft hastened to assure Intel that if it would stop promoting NSP's interfaces, Microsoft would accelerate its own work to incorporate the functions of the NSP software into Windows, thereby stimulating the development of applications and devices that relied on the new capabilities of Intel's microprocessors. At the same time, Microsoft pressured the major OEMs to not install NSP software on their PCs until the software ceased to expose APIs. NSP software could not find its way onto PCs without the cooperation of the OEMs, so Intel realized that it had no choice but to surrender the pace of software innovation to Microsoft. By the end of July 1995, Intel had agreed to stop promoting its NSP software. Microsoft subsequently incorporated some of NSP's components into its operating-system products. Even as late as the end of 1998, though, Microsoft still had not implemented key capabilities that Intel had been poised to offer consumers in 1995.

102. Microsoft was not content to merely quash Intel's NSP software. At a second meeting at Intel's headquarters on August 2, 1995, Gates told Grove that he had a fundamental problem with Intel using revenues from its microprocessor business to fund the development and distribution of free platform-level software. In fact, Gates said, Intel could not count on Microsoft to support Intel's next generation of microprocessors as long as Intel was developing platform-level software that competed with Windows. Intel's senior executives knew full well that Intel would have difficultly selling PC microprocessors if Microsoft stopped cooperating in making them compatible with Windows and if Microsoft stated to OEMs that it did not support Intel's chips. Faced with Gates' threat, Intel agreed to stop developing platform-level interfaces that might draw support away from interfaces exposed by Windows.

103. OEMs represent the primary customers for Intel's microprocessors. Since OEMs are dependent on Microsoft for Windows, Microsoft enjoys continuing leverage over Intel. To illustrate, Gates was able to report to other senior Microsoft executives in October 1995 that "Intel feels we have all the OEMs on hold with our NSP chill." He added: This is good news because it means OEMs are listening to us. Andy [Grove] believes Intel is living up to its part of the NSP bargain and that we should let OEMs know that some of the new software work Intel is doing is OK. If Intel is not sticking totally to its part of the deal let me know.

In short, you're complaining that Microsoft does what it can to prevent compatibility and discourage open interfaces and drivers - as if that's a slam against Linux. Here's the thing: everybody who knows about this should be willing to go to the extra trouble to be free of the abusive relationship this represents.

That may well be true

It is easy to believe, isn't it?

Everyone sees it. Some people even admire it.

It does, however, make them unpopular among people who harbor a strong dislike for felons.

Dude, learn to read. You'll notice that I didn't make a single argument against the claim that health reform is unconstitutional. That wasn't my point. My point was that your argument (there's no explicit reference to health insurance in the constitution) is lame, and isn't even used by strong opponents of reform.

I did read, and I can write. Lame? The USA Constitution is lame? Or is it believing in the Constitution is lame? Or believing in the limited role the federal government was supposed to have? Opponents don't use that argument? Congressman Ron Paul didn't say "Not to mention the fact that it is completely unconstitutional"? How about CONSTITUTIONALITY OF HEALTH CARE REFORM? Googling health care reform constitution returns almost 3 million results. The first result, other than the map link, is the link you provide in this post of yours.

Falcon

When you are a little fish . . . run to your lawyer, then together make yourselves the very best friends that the FBI ever had.

Yes, run. It is official Justice Department policy that only the first conspirator to report a criminal conspiracy gets off:. "(the) Division frequently encounters situations where a company approaches the government within days, and in some cases less than one business day, after one of its co-conspirators has secured its position as first in line for amnesty. Of course, only the first company to qualify receives amnesty. "

Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 709 F.Supp. 925 (N.D.Cal.1989) (Apple I); Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 717 F.Supp. 1428 (N.D.Cal.1989) (Apple II); Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 759 F.Supp. 1444 (N.D.Cal.1991) (Apple III); Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 779 F.Supp. 133 (N.D.Cal.1991) (Apple IV); Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 799 F.Supp. 1006 (N.D.Cal.1992) (Apple V); Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 821 F.Supp. 616 (N.D.Cal.1993) (Apple VI).

And in 2003:

8. In 1995, Microsoft introduced a software package called Windows 95, which announced itself as the first operating system for Intel-compatible PCs that exhibited the same sort of integrated features as the Mac OS running PCs manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple"). Windows 95 enjoyed unprecedented popularity with consumers, and in June 1998, Microsoft released its successor, Windows 98.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, vs. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant. COURT'S FINDINGS OF FACT

And in 2005:

"They can't even copy fast,"

It is truly bizarre that average people allow the shills to make noise promoting such incompetence. Look at their search engine payment bug and you are reminded yet again what kind of people they must scrape the bottom of the barrel to get. Not just known-nothings, but fresh-out-of-school ones at that. Sadly that scam has gone on for a generation. What happens if they get into schools or colleges and start posing as staff or faculty??

Sure, Obama was sworn in on January 20. AG Holder was confirmed on February 2.

Rather than political finger pointing, I find it more interesting that U.S. Attorney Morrison has been with the DOJ for 17 years. Sadly, this is probably more indicative of how the DOJ does business than who was in the White House the day the subpoena issued.

iPod Touch is the only handheld video game system that 1. allows part-time developers to make and publish apps and 2. is sold in U.S. and European stores.

This description does not rise to any legal standard for judging a monopoly that I'm aware of. You're attempting to describe a market in such a way that no other products match the description. Contrast this with what you see, for example, in T. Penfield Jackson's Findings of Fact document in the DoJ v MS case. (Note how it is defined in terms of market power, pricing, and what the alleged monopoly holder could do with that power to the prices)...

"33. Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market."

I think the question still stands: Precisely what monopoly does Apple hold?

The TL;DR is that Holder is trying to persuade Walker that there are ongoing surveillance programs that are (may be) legal which would be compromised, so please don't make the Administration explain why it violated the 4th Amendment Rights of everyone that made a phone call or sent an email, your honor.

Cornell isn't the government. Please make sure you're using a current definition of the law.

The DoJ has the text of the statute, a discussion of the case law surrounding the statute, and discussion of the definitions used by the courts of key terms. Take a look at this.

See, for example, the reference to America Online, Inc. v. LCGM, Inc. on page 9 for what courts might consider unauthorized access. Also, the provisions in the law about leading to physical injury do not mean the fraud or computer abuse must be the direct cause or even that that harm was intentional.

Indirect causes and reckless damages are included, so indirectly causing physical harm or death to someone through fraudulent use of the computer and exceeding authorized access fits the DOJ's position quite well.

Since the DoJ is where federal prosecutors work, their understanding of the law, both statutory and case law, is what the federal prosecutor is likely to use. Even if the theories held by the DoJ are wrong, that doesn't mean this one prosecutor is a maverick acting outside the mainstream of the system. If the understanding presented by the DoJ isn't accepted by the courts, it's the DoJ as a whole that's wrong.

Before everyone expends all that energy being outraged, the relevant statute is here.:

While some of its aspects are kind of on the border of due process, it is not a generic "no warrant needed" law.

But most importantly it isn't clear how much longer their current business model is viable.

What does someone speculate as Microsoft's business model?

Yesterday, I saw posted here on /. this quote from BG to the DOJ There's no level of performance or specific application of corporate information systems that we don't intend to go after... [and] there won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go.

That seems to be their business model, which defies most all of the characteristics of a goal. Its not achievable, believable, or concrete.

I simply refuse to use their products. I don't like them, nor do I have a need for them, but I hear about them all the time. A coworker yesterday switched from Outlook to Thunderbird yesterday because Outlook wasn't able to get his mail reliably for a few days. Switched to Thuderbird, and now he can read his mail. Someone that works in the cafeteria where I work knows I work with computers and was complaining about the new interface to Excell. I mean, I'm sure he does not do much besides put crap in there for inventory or something for the kitchen, and he was like "Why do they just change crap around. Its not like its better, its just different".

Actually, the two best things that come from MS are things that most people never see. Their development tools and their research division. Outside of that, they just throw crap out there because they have little competition, or have been able to eliminate the competition.

The sad thing is that it really seems as though despite their ability to do things that people want, they are successful at making money.

And to think that all of this started from this crappy thing called DOS that was practically stolen, but the person let them have it because they didn't think much of it. Strange "success" story, and likely to never be repeated.

How evil a company that wants to have the market. How many large companies do you know that only want a part of the market they compete in? You go for 100% and settle for whatever the free market gives you. Has MS been anti-competitive sure. But this quote (which probably came from a public announcement or a board meeting etc) is all that the representative of a company can be expected to say.

You don't hear a president say "America is a pretty good country, probably in the top 10". You hear them say "the greatest country in the world", and those that disagree with them are "an axis of evil" etc. A car salesmen doesn't sell many used Jalopies by saying it is alright, but by saying "I got just the thing for you" to every customer that comes in the lot.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00030631_ex4.htm

...and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey isn't the first to draw a connection. INTERPOL (The International Criminal Police Organization) has identified potential links between IP crime and the financing of terrorist activities:

Many terrorist groups engage in a variety of organized crimes to fund their activities. As terrorist groups tend to act in similar ways to transnational organized crime groups, it is important to carefully monitor how their activities evolve. There is general agreement that IP crime is a high-profit, low-risk crime, which inevitably motivates criminals to engage in this type of activity. It is clear paramilitary terrorist organizations have traded in counterfeit and pirated goods to maintain their organizations and fund their activities. In light of this, INTERPOL remains concerned about the possibility that some other terrorist groups would seize the opportunity to finance their activities through IP crime.
It is an issue that needs to be carefully monitored, and evidence of terrorist groups actually engaging in IP crime must be collected in a systematic fashion, if and when it surfaces.

A 2004 report by the Union des Fabricants also highlighted the links between counterfeiting and terrorism. One excerpt reads:

According to R.E. Kendal, former General Secretary of Interpol, the connections with organised crime are increasingly obvious. He has written that counterfeiting is a fully-fledged criminal activity that is not on the periphery of other criminal activities but, instead, at their very heart. Similarly, Christophe Zimmerman, a French expert advising the European Commission, has quoted an unusual example: fake boxes of Vaseline, a product used to make certain explosives, were intercepted at the Danish border, having originated from Dubai; the head of the network was a known member of Al Qaeda. According to Chris Merchant from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the IFPI "has proof of links between terrorism and counterfeiting and industrial piracy". In Northern Ireland, nine arrested terrorists had financed their activities through industrial piracy. In Latin America, links have been established between Middle Eastern terrorist groups and industrial piracy networks. More recently, Islamic terrorist groups in Southeast Asia and the Philippines have used industrial piracy to finance their operations with Al Qaeda. There is nothing new about this phenomenon. As far back as 1992, Muslim fundamentalist groups were suspected of being connected with trafficking in contraband goods and counterfeiting designer products, watches and perfume. In 1993, the police arrested the owner of an import-export company in Paris, whose offices were being used as a base by an Islamic association. A stock of fake designer shirts was also found there. In November 2003, a counterfeiting network between France and Italy was dismantled and thirteen members of the Hijdra Oua Etakfir phalange were arrested. They are suspected of having supplied arms and false papers to Algerian terrorists via a network financed by counterfeiting clothes.

The assertion that "[c]riminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities" doesn't seem to be lie given the findings of others. It hardly seems necessary to make extensive references in a public speech given at the Tech Museum of Innovation when identifying supporting finding is easy to do. The speeches given by government officials are boring enough already without turning them into oral treatises to avoid being accused of telling lies.

A lot of people have faith in Sergey Brin's corporate motto. The creation of class B stock at Google, which gives Sergey and Larry ten votes for every share, ensures that they will be able to keep Google from being corrupted, so long as they themselves remain uncorrupt.

Microsoft has no such public image. They were found to use their monopolist position to kill Navigator and hurt Java. Their CEO is belligerent and takes shots at the FOSS community. More recently they've tried to buy the ISO vote for OOXML. They don't trust their own customers, as evidenced by periodic, rude and disruptive Genuine Advantage challenges.

We're about to enjoy a big, fat, open class C block in the US spectrum, courtesy of Google. They purchased Android, and then opened its SDK to the world. In contrast, Microsoft has promoted hardware restrictions, media restrictions, and discourages use of unemcumbered codecs such as Ogg Vorbis.

Which company would you rather do business with, all things being equal? That is Microsoft's problem. They can spend all the $billions they like on buying market share... but they can't buy a reputation. When the FTC clears the Yahoo deal... Microsoft will still be Microsoft.

That's a complex situation. The Marshals Service is administratively under DOJ, but by law, takes its orders from judges. Federal judges are currently lobbying Congress for more control over the Marshals.

The spokesperson of the Justice department has conceded that abuses have occurred. He categorized them as being ``small in number'' and asserted that ``it appears'' that no harm was done to either individual persons or corporations.

So your analogy isn't very apt; it's more like a police bureau not only not tracking the issuing of bureau firearms to officers but saying that it didn't keep track and in a large number of situations they have been fired in situations that did not warrant that extent of force but that situations where intent was malicious were small in number and that it doesn't look like any innocent bystanders were hit.

Read the government's own report on the matter. The incidents categorized as ``improper'' fit the analogy you brought up. These are incidents where the appropriate paper work simply wasn't done or was done incorrectly. But there are also incidents categorized as ``illegal.'' These are incidents where the FBI retrieved email, phone records, or financial information in an illegal fashion. The report lists four incidents of this type. This says to me that any FBI agent presently has the ability to get almost any information he or she desires. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if the report had detailed disciplinary actions taken against the agents responsible for these abuses.

But of more concern to me are the nineteen incidents where the recipient of the letter responded with information outside the scope of the letter that was (in most cases) illegal for the recipients to furnish without a court order. It isn't just the FBI at fault here, it's also the telecoms, ISPs and credit bureaus who are abusing their positions of power.

Is this about discovering a vulerability, or trying to discover a vulnerability?

This seems to be the essence of the law. The federal law uses the word intentionally for a reason. Link to the text of 18 U.S.C. 1030.

For those who read the legal text remember "damage" could cover a lot of things including log files or time stamps.

Other than sales taxes - which everyone pays when buying non-black market goods - what other taxes do they pay?

Income tax? No. Social Security? No. Property tax? No.

Oh wait, they might pay those if they're using someone else's Social Security Number... Mmm... identity theft.

*Legal* immigrants are what have made the US the leader in almost every field. *Illegal* immigration has made the US a leader in prison populations... at least according to the DoJ studies:

As a result of IAFIS technology, CBP Border Patrol agents have arrested: 138 homicide suspects; 67 kidnapping suspects; 226 sexual assault suspects; 431 robbery suspects; 2,342 suspects for assaults of other types; and 4,801 suspected traffickers of dangerous narcotics

Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/ide nt-iafis.htm and http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/0003/resenp9.ht m

21.01 STATUTORY LANGUAGE: 18 U.S.C. 2 2. Principals (a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal. (b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

For the lazy or confused, read here http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_roo m/usab5201.pdf

No, no no. See, it's ok if we do it, because we're the good guys. That's what evil looks like in the mirror, but so what? Before you answer, don't forget: "Americans should watch what they say", and those who claim the administration is gutting the liberty America is famous for "only aid the terrorists" :

"All persons being detained have the right to contact their lawyers and their families". Never mind that that liberty was a phantom six months later. Ashcroft couldn't be bothered with phantom niceties like keeping his word or honoring habeas corpus.

But that was then. Now? They're still at it. Now they're sending Generals to the Supreme Court to argue:

GENERAL CLEMENT: And if you think, in order for there be to a -- to be a valid suspension, Congress has to do it consciously, then I think you could see why the arguments are mutually exclusive. My view would be that if Congress, sort of, stumbles upon a suspension of the writ, but the preconditions are satisfied, that would still be constitutionally valid.

Those preconditions, by the way, are invasion or insurrection. Lincoln tried it with the Civil War in progress and it's widely considered a permanent stain on not just his reputation but his character. Nobody else, ever before, never since. Not in 1941 when the Japanese Navy invaded Pearl Harbor. Not in 1814 when the invading army reached Washington D.C. and burned every government building to the ground. No. Now the country's in real danger. We must suspend accountability now, and apply only his military authority to whomever he pleases. Bush has been scouring the country for almost five years to find evidence of those Islamo- fascists' secret invasion, and hasn't come up with enough evidence to charge even one person, so we must suspend habeas to stop it from succeeding.

He promises the only people he'll imprison without enough evidence to convince a criminal court will be Scary Bad non-citizens. We must trust the President. If that invasion nobody can find but he tells the Supreme Court is underway anyway really doesn't exist, that would be ... sad.

I can't find specific games from a source I trust. However, here is a general rundown of the issue as part of a speech given to the American Law Institute and American Bar Association by Carl Shapiro from the US Department of Justice in 1996:

"As a condition for an independently-developed game to be allowed to play on Nintendo machines, Nintendo required that the game not appear on the rival systems sold by Atari and Sega for a two-year period.

Without delving into the details of that case (and Nintendo certainly offered a number of justifications for this practice), or laying out the steps in the economic analysis of exclusive dealing, let me simply point out how the network elements in the video game industry affect the antitrust analysis of Nintendo's exclusive dealing provision with game developers: Once Nintendo had a large installed base, it became very costly for developers of hit games to forsake the installed base of Nintendo users in order to make their games available on competing systems. As a result, Nintendo's exclusivity requirement reduced the attractiveness of the Atari and Sega systems, and made it all the more likely that the market would tip entirely towards Nintendo. At some point, consumer expectations regarding the decline of Atari and Sega (in that generation of systems) became self-fulfilling. In other words, exclusive dealing here affects not only the supply of inputs (hit games), but also consumer expectations, to the benefit of the market leader."

So it appears that all third party games released in the time period involved would have been affected.

The DOJ source link WARNING. It's a PDF. Check out page 20 (labelled as 19).

And to be fair, from what I have read it seems that Nintendo changed its monopolistic practices to avoid DoJ prosecution so technically they were not "convicted monopolists" though they did engage in monopolistic practices.

Microsoft was convicted for illegal busines practices, including illegal OEM coersion. A quote from the findings of fact:

"...by pressuring Intel to drop the development of platform-level NSP software, and otherwise to cut back on its software development efforts, Microsoft deprived consumers of software innovation that they very well may have found valuable, had the innovation been allowed to reach the marketplace. None of these actions had pro-competitive justifications."

"Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."

including a BROWSER

"Informative"?!?? "Flamebait". "Troll".

How do you find The US's own Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ruling not fair, or not objective? Anti-trust laws exist, and microsoft's legal team knows about them. They are the ones that should have steared microsoft in another direction as they were gaining a monopoly position. If you don't want to believe it was microsoft's intention to break the law, then point at their lawyers for not protecting them from doing so. But microsoft's actions in repeatedly crossing the border of legality, dictates otherwise.

Anti-trust laws exist in Europe also and any EU bias can not interfere with justice. I would like to see evidence to the contrary, if you have any, that this is the case. Such evidence would help microsoft's case alot also. It is not a question of unfair laws, as it is a question of over-sized corporations having the money and thus the power to ruin the market in their favor. The EU has the obligation to protect its market, as did the US a couple of years ago. I would be interested if you pointed out how exactly Judge Jackson was wrong in his rulings after you actually read them. I don't think you believe that He was also biased against microsoft, in any way, do you?

Until then, I can only reject your post as unfair and and misinformed.

The only court that squarely has addressed the relative powers of Congress and the President in this field suggested that the balance tips decidedly in the President s favor. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review recently noted that all courts to have addressed the issue of the President's inherent authority have held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717, 742 (Foreign Intel. Surv. Ct. of Rev. 2002). On the basis of that unbroken line of precedent, the court [took] for granted that the President does have that authority, and concluded that, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President s constitutional power. Id.14 Although the court did not provide extensive analysis, it is the only judicial statement on point, and it comes from the specialized appellate court created expressly to deal with foreign intelligence issues under FISA.

But the NSA activities are not simply exercises of the President s general foreign affairs powers. Rather, they are primarily an exercise of the President s authority as Commander in Chief during an armed conflict that Congress expressly has authorized the President to pursue. The NSA activities, moreover, have been undertaken specifically to prevent a renewed attack at the hands of an enemy that has already inflicted the single deadliest foreign attack in the Nation s history. The core of the Commander in Chief power is the authority to direct the Armed Forces in conducting a military campaign. Thus, the Supreme Court has made clear that the President alone is constitutionally invested with the entire charge of hostile operations. Hamilton v. Dillin, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 73, 87 (1874); The Federalist No. 74, at 500 (Alexander Hamilton). As commander-in-chief, [the President] is authorized to direct the movements of the naval and military forces placed by law at his command, and to employ them in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy.

And again...

The courts uniformly have approved this longstanding Executive Branch practice. Indeed, every federal appellate court to rule on the question has concluded that, even in peacetime, the President has inherent constitutional authority, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, to conduct searches for foreign intelligence purposes without securing a judicial warrant. See In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717, 742 (Foreign Intel. Surv. Ct. of Rev. 2002) ( [A]ll the other courts to have decided the issue [have] held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information . . . . We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President s constitutional power. ) (emphasis added); accord, e.g., United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 629 F.2d 908 (4th Cir. 1980); United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593 (3d Cir. 1974) (en banc); United States v. Brown, 484 F.2d 418 (5th Cir. 1973).

and more... (notice this is pre-war)...

As noted in Part I, on May 21, 1940, President Roosevelt authorized warrantless electronic surveillance of persons suspected of subversive activities, including spying, against the United States. In addition, on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt