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Yes, yes, socialism sucks.
That will be why the US ISP's do so well without any taxpayer money at all.
Oh, wait, they don't.
Or here's a more recent story about the sort of crony capitalism you have to live with in the US.
Gosh but socialism is so awful.

Yes, yes, socialism sucks.
That will be why the US ISP's do so well without any taxpayer money at all.
Oh, wait, they don't.
Or here's a more recent story about the sort of crony capitalism you have to live with in the US.
Gosh but socialism is so awful.

The original terms of use that everyone agreed to way back when probably contained a a phrase about needing to accept the terms of use again whenever they are updated.

GP here. Such a clause is not valid, by definition (see my first post for an idea of the concept of "consideration"). (Saying "you need to agree to any future changes we make" is just the same as saying "we may change our terms at any time.") In some jurisdictions, you risk the entire contract by including that phrase. Court Rejects Online Terms Of Service That Reserve The Right To Change At Any Time

Second, most of these sorts of contracts contain specific wording to the effect of: the terms can change at any time. So, changing them is not a breach.

GP here. Such a clause is not valid, by definition (see my first post for an idea of the concept of "consideration"). In some jurisdictions, you risk the entire contract by including that phrase. Court Rejects Online Terms Of Service That Reserve The Right To Change At Any Time

Oddly enough, Techdirt seems to have read the same article. Or one just like it.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

They said much the same thing, better, made points I missed, and they published first. :)

That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]

That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]

That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]

That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]

That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.aol.com/article/ne... http://thehill.com/policy/cybe...

Each command calls into action a pre-assigned function. The overall name tree, of course, has creative elements but it is also a precise command structure — a utilitarian and functional set of symbols, each to carry out a pre-assigned function. This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted. Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability.

Wall Street Merger Mania Is Driving Us Toward One Single, Horrible ISP - Probably Named Comcast

Let me make myself clear: I am NOT, repeat, NOT, a supporter of such foolishness. But since you all haven't gotten around to making me Imperator yet [hint], there actually might be a USE for such an error code ... for the teapot purists, that is. Like these guys:
https://smarter.am/ikettle/
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The US government has been paying for nothing for years.

Verizon Knows You're A Sucker: Takes Taxpayer Subsidies For Broadband, Doesn't Deliver, Lobbies To Drop Requirements

Shocker: Billions In Broadband Subsidies Wasted As Government Turns Blind Eye To Fraud

Wired to fail

The US government has been paying for nothing for years.

Verizon Knows You're A Sucker: Takes Taxpayer Subsidies For Broadband, Doesn't Deliver, Lobbies To Drop Requirements

Shocker: Billions In Broadband Subsidies Wasted As Government Turns Blind Eye To Fraud

Wired to fail

What a shock, all the Drupal Code of Conduct authors are women. Remember when GitHub was about to adopt the TODO Group's Open Code of Conduct that enforces a whole lot of identity politics bullshit? Well, while the most blatantly hateful anti-white anti-male anti-normie items have been cleaned out of it, Drupal's using the current version of the same godforsaken thing. We've seen this formula play out time and time again with SJW infections. Drupal is an SJW infested project with SJWs running everything. Is it any surprise that development is tertiary to micro-aggressive oppression olympics squabbling and Tumblr feminist grade virtue signalling competitions?

No. No it's not. "Social justice" is antithetical to actual work. It is a cancer. Drupal needs some serious anti-feminazi chemo.

While we're remembering "retarded" hurtful word shit, let's also revisit the time GitHub blew away a project for using the word "retard." The GitHub code of conduct drama shitstorm is eye-opening reading while we're looking back at things.

I believe in the iDubbbz position on hurtful words and slurs: either all of it is okay or none of it is.

YouTube's proprietary music check algorithm already flags birdsong as being copyrighted:
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Let Brussels send hunters to American woods to rid the world of these pirating birds. And we'll let our hunters know they're coming.

You are confused. Qualcomm is mad that their monopoly at Apple is being broken up by Apple using Intel's cell modems. So to get back at Apple the are accusing Apple patent infringement in another part of the iPhone developed by Apple, not Intel.

Personally I am very tired of the damage patent monopolies are doing to the US cell phone market. There are 100+ makers of cell phones in China. Only six or seven manufacturers sell in the US. LTE modems for the Chinese LTE bands are $15, same modem of US bands are $60. Average US cellphone pays $35 in patent royalties. Major cell phone companies like Xiaomi won't even enter the US market. in 2012 one sixth of all US patents were on cell phones.

And the future is bleak. All of these patents serve to keep US cell prices very high compared to rest of the world. This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices. The patent mess and high prices as so bad that completely independent cell technology (LORA/SIGFOX) is being developed to bypass the existing cell network.

Too bad I had mod points yesterday instead of today, I'd upvote you.

Thank you. Honestly, I feel a little bad for Zillow (having used them only a couple months ago in buying my house). They've got a brand new general counsel who only started there a month ago, and who, as his first public action, proverbially sets fire to their front lawn. Between the fact that Wagner is obviously in the right, legally, and that she's an absolutely perfect defendant - JHU grad student, humorous in exactly the politically right ways, with a great "local girl makes good" backstory - this is a case that everyone from the EFF to Popehat to NYCL to giant law firms with pro bono departments will be slavering over. "Goliath extractive real estate middle-man attacks sweet, funny grad student" is the sort of case you hope they keep appealing all the way to the Supreme Court at every loss.

There seem to be an awful lot of techies who don't understand that politicians can in fact control what happens outside their country.

Maybe not on the entirety of the internet, but certainly for a few big social media companies, which is all that matters to the millennial crowd anyway, since they have elected to move entirely to corporate centrally controlled internet services. It works especially well when the social media company - let's call it Facebook for example - agrees and wants to self-censor to avoid the bad PR associated with free speech. Even that is not strictly necessary though. Especially not if the whole EU is aligned. When the social media company has offices and infrastructure in a jurisdiction, it can be pressured by that jurisdiction to take actions even outside the jurisdiction itself.

Don't be too over-confident. Yes, you'll still have your darknet. But for most people "the internet" is nothing more than a handful of social media companies any more, and with that centralization comes the ability to exert pressure on just a few points.

Also, I wonder if the names Fuchsia & Magenta are references to the ill-fated Pink OS that started life as a ground-up Mac OS rewrite at Apple

Mac homage or not, T-Mobile has sued Aio Wireless and Engadget over the use of magenta.

Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now.

Yes, those billions of taxpayer dollars given to them during the Clinton administration, and the billions more in tax breaks and what amounts to effective monopolies, is a lot of money being spent by the end users. It's so much money, ISPs have to be reminded they can't spend taxpayer money on booze and trips to Disney World.

As we saw recently, the taxpayers keep being told they have to hand over their money to these private companies for. . . well, no one's really sure since neither service or accessibility has been increased in many places.

Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now.

Yes, those billions of taxpayer dollars given to them during the Clinton administration, and the billions more in tax breaks and what amounts to effective monopolies, is a lot of money being spent by the end users. It's so much money, ISPs have to be reminded they can't spend taxpayer money on booze and trips to Disney World.

As we saw recently, the taxpayers keep being told they have to hand over their money to these private companies for. . . well, no one's really sure since neither service or accessibility has been increased in many places.

My second favorite Bloom County .

"we have plenty of examples of it all over the place."

Really?

definition of artificial intelligence (FROM THE GODDAMN DICTIONARY)
1 : a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers
2: the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior

Please, provide an example of a computer system which is able to imitate intelligent human behavior. Maybe...one that actually passed a Turing Test?

Oh, before you answer, you might want to read https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

http://isturingtestpassed.gith...

Maybe you could provide some goddamned examples? Should be easy, if they're all over the place?

A problem is that some judges will go full Francis E Dec and say that an officer's word is worth more than video evidence. https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

I'm curious to know why the east district of texas has gotten this notorious for being a patent troll's best friend? Not the statistics, we've seen the statistics. I want to know why it keeps happening?

The patent attorney who answered you covered a lot, but there's one more thing. From July 2015 regarding a lawsuit filed by a patent troll against NewEgg:

The Federal Eastern District is wildly corrupt. From the Newegg filing:

Further evidencing the unreasonableness of the delay in Newegg’s case is the most recent Civil Justice Reform Act (“CJRA”) Report for Judge Gilstrap, which indicates that as of September 30, 2014, Judge Gilstrap had only a single civil case pending for more than three years, and that he had no motions pending for more than six months.

That's from Newegg's argumentation that a 20 month delay in issuing a ruling is ridiculous. What they tacked on in the footnotes is fascinating:

Curiously, although TQP’s case against Newegg (filed May 6, 2011) had been pending for more than three years, and although Newegg’s JMOL motion (filed February 17, 2014) had been pending more than six months at that time, neither the case nor the motion were listed in Judge Gilstrap’s September 2014 CJRA Report.

Gilstrap wants to punish Newegg for daring to go to trial at all over the patent lawsuit, and further for daring to be right when they proved they weren't infringing, and finally for making a mockery of the idiot east Texas jury that found infringement and awarded millions for it, completely in contradiction to the law, other case law, and the plain reading of the text of the patent. And he wants to get away with it by hiding it from the CJRA Report. And he's doing it.

In other words, a law was passed by Congress to evaluate the performance of judges, specifically to catch malpractice like this, and he got a fraudulent report created that hides his misbehavior.

Newegg has the discretion to call that "curious." The rest of us call it criminal. Impeach the bastard.

Asked today about EFF's criticisms of the patent, an IBM spokesperson said that "IBM has decided to dedicate the patent to the public."

So, while I absolutely think this is a stupid patent, a) I'd rather this outcome than a true patent troll get it, and b) the problem (as I see it...) is really with the patent system, NOT with IBM.

I have not built up an infrastructure depending on computers I don't own, don't control

I'm interested in how you eliminated dependencies on your home ISP's DHCP server

I have static IPs.

First, most home ISPs charge extra per month for that. Second, Comcast requires subscribers with a static IP to either forfeit the static IP or rent and use Comcast's modem, which reintroduces "depending on computers I don't own, don't control", and moving to an area whose cable company is not Comcast can prove cost prohibitive, particularly if your work is unrelated to your website.

I don't serve HTTPS. I'm not collecting information about you, or serving illegal or secret information.

Making even a completely public, completely static website available over cleartext HTTP and not HTTPS has three consequences. First, the most popular western web search engine will demote your site. Second, you run the risk of a rogue ISP injecting pop-up advertisements and other malware into your pages, as Comcast has done (source 1; source 2). Third, you cannot make resources on your site available for transclusion into sites that do use HTTPS due to the mixed content policy.

And without advertisement exchanges or subscription payment servers, how do you afford to keep your server powered on and connected to the Internet?

I work.

Is your work related to your website? If not, what benefit do you gain from having a website, and do you ever have to take time off your day job to keep it updated?

When many people concentrate their dependencies on something such as Amazon's cloud, when the cloud dies or is successfully attacked, everyone goes down.

The same is true of DNS or a major home ISP. Or is your argument "only those dependencies that are provably absolutely necessary, and not a single one more"?

Alice.

Chew on this:

    https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

After their interference in the last election where the FBI was on the same side of a US election as the GRU, is this any real surprise? The perception it creates is an image of a law enforcement agency that's gone off the rails. Snooping without a warrant and the nearly unchecked expansion of surveillance powers makes me wonder where this country is headed and whether the FBI needs a reboot.

Isn't all of SV SJW? I just heard that story from peter thiel who almost was kicked from the facebook board (even though he was an early investor) just because he endorsed an anti SJW presidential candidate and went to RNC [1] [2] [3]. He was the first openly gay man to speak at the RNC! Apparently thats not SJW enough for SV. Or github which nukes entire repositories just for using certain words [2]. So Mozilla isn't the only SJW company in SV, its part of their style.

[1] : http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...
[2] : https://www.theguardian.com/te...
[3] : http://time.com/4417679/republ...
[3] : https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

In regards to her perception as a warmonger, the behavior towards Russia in the tail in of the election certainly helps convince me that she is one. Trying to start shit with an ICBM and submarine possessing nuclear power does not strike me as the actions of a rational actor, but the temper tantrum of a spoiled little shit who'd rather ruin things for everyone than not get her way. And on an international stage, the amount of people for whom shit can get ruined, and the degree to which it can get ruined, is too horrifying to allow her a chance to do so. She threatened military responses to hacking https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

A liar for pleading guilty while innocent? You're really asking that.

What would your choice be?

- 2 years of probation, and a $6,000 lawyer bill that you can hope to pay off, or...

- 2 years in jail after losing a one year court fight, with an attorney fee of ~$150,000 that you have no hope of paying off in under 30 years.

Please, tell me whether you'd lie and plead guilty, or mortgage your future and go to jail anyway?

The Wheeler FCC has fixated on building government-run gigabit networks to serve small numbers of users in heavily Democratic cities. We need a more humble, realistic, pragmatic and inclusive approach.

The best, cheapest Internet access in America is consistently community owned. And it doesn't even have to be a large community. The small town of Sandy, OR has the best, cheapest Internet in the country. Forty dollars for 300Mbps symmetric or $60 for gigabit. No bandwidth cap. And they work with content providers like Netflix so their citizens get the fastest, highest quality content they can. Far better than any of the cable companies, which refuse to work with Netflix without significant payment. It's amazing how well your incentives align when your shareholders are also your customers.

No, the reason we don't have to worry about it is because they do not represent an existential threat to this country. If all the terrorists in the world decided to gang up on America, and they each managed to kill 10 people (pretty good for a military operation to say the least), we would have at most 1.8 million dead civilians. Back in reality, it's difficult to kill more than a few hundred people at a time without some pretty serious military hardware.

Wall Street is probably more of a secondary concern. Probably the simplest reason why we have a war on terror is that it is profitable for the military industrial complex. The US accounts for 40% of the world's arms spending, and we're the largest arms exporter as well. Terrorism may disturb the markets, but if there were no one to fight then that river of money might stop flowing. With 54% of our federal budget being spent on defense, it can only be said that we as a nation are in the business of War. Our leaders have to do what's good for business. It's really easy to dip into that river, too. But that brings me to another point -- if military spending is a proxy for power, no one else is particularly close to our level, and these terrorists are terrorists precisely because their ability to project conventional force is zero. A "War on Terror" is an oxymoron, and an excuse for endless military spending.

So Backpage won three times but changed their policies to kill the ads anyway.

I think each shows a kind of pure evil in its own way. Yes, as a matter of degrees some sociopath with a law degree who uses his intellect and education to fuck over entire industries isn't committing an act quite as evil as a psychopathic pedophile that rapes and murders a child.

Or, maybe in some cases patent trolls and murderers same degree of evil.

How about trying to keep breast cancer tests as expensive as possible for personal profit?

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

how will this stop copyfraud?

Jay Leno hears a musical bit and includes it in the Tonight Show broadcast (without obtaining the rights to do so).

NBC uploads the Tonight Show to YouTube's ContentID system to declare their right to the 'NBC' broadcast. Except of course it contains the musical bit from someone else. Yet NBC is now claiming ownership of something they most certainly don't

Automated process at YouTube takes down anything matching ContentID except the 'original' content.

Except NBC isn't the owner or the original content. They are just the 900 lb gorilla who gets to throw their weight around.

NOTHING about content online conveys whether it is legal. Clearly it can be legal in MULTIPLE places (though not in this case). If NBC had licensed this, how would ContentID or FB's concept differ between 2 valid instances?

The original artist is under no obligation to register anything with anyone. copyright is granted simply by creating it. yet this system would actively undermine their legal rights.

You mean Jon Stewart the comedian? Because I don't know of any Jon Stewart the journalist...
The funny part is that the Daily show often contained more news than the actual news
And at least the Daily Show is sometimes funny. Right wing fake news is always angry. I wonder why that is?

For anyone still wondering why the snooper charter is a very very bad idea... and this is only a single problem out of a huge list.
Here's what to expect:

https://www.wired.com/2013/09/...
http://animalnewyork.com/2014/...
http://www.kiro7.com/news/inve...
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...
http://wncn.com/2016/02/10/nc-...
https://psmag.com/when-your-st...

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Most of these are coming directly from security agencies and the police itself, but what do people think will happen once ISPs and multiple governmental agencies are able to log content from Internet users? Be prepared folks. It's not about only about you doing bad and questionable things. It's specially about all the people with access to your private lives willing to ruin it or turn it into a profitable business.

The best I got was the listing of sponsors for one of the bills:
Senator Wyden (along with Sens. Coons, Lee, Franken, and Daines)

Source

It starts Thursday in the US: (From Techdirt)

the DOJ wants permission to break into "compromised" computers and poke around inside them without the permission or knowledge of the owners of these computers. It also wants to treat anything that anonymizes internet users or hides their locations to be presumed acts of a guilty mind.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The hypocrisy of it is that the Smith-Mundt act was repealed while Obama has been in office yet he is "worried" about "fake news".

"On February 1, 2008, Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of World of Warcraft, won a lawsuit against In Game Dollar, trading under the name Peons4Hire. The court ordered an injunction that immediately halted all business operations within said game.[37]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Yes, exactly like Gold farming. Both are violations of the TOS, and one could argue that stealing something of value (even if constrained by their applicable uses) by using external tools is a pretty safe ground for fraud. I may have rot13 security on my content, but someone breaking it without permission is still most likely committing a crime under DMCA. The crime could've been amazingly elaborate, or stupidly simple. The outcome of said crime is the same. Fraud with a computer is wire fraud. So, if in fact the defendant was issued something of value through deception, I could see this having some merit. Gold farmers are just as culpable of this, especially if its facilitated through the use of outside tools.

There are many sources. Here is a good one.

Remember Propaganda was recently LEGALIZED under Obama...

Propaganda has never been illegal.

Domestic use of the various US intelligence and law enforcement services was never illegal as in it being classed as a regular criminal act like theft, but there was a law on the books preventing domestic use of US government propaganda tools contained within the Smith-Mundt Act.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

"The Broadcast Board of Governors, which produces programming like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, has been prevented from aiming its programming at Americans since the 1970's when the Smith-Mundt Act (which authorized the State Dept. to communicate with foreign audiences via many methods, radio being one of them) was amended to prohibit domestic dissemination of the BBG's broadcasts. This was done to distance the State Department's efforts from the internal propaganda machine operated by the Soviet Union.

Now, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (part of the National Defense Authorization Act) has repealed the domestic prohibition, allowing the government's broadcasting to be directed at/created for Americans for the first time in over 40 years."

The point he made was generally correct, except it was both parties in both Houses of the US Congress plus Obama. Once again, when it counts, both US political parties are in total agreement: "Screw the people!"

But the important thing is don't let the wrong lizard get in!

Right?

Strat

for extortion. This is the same Canipre that has no problems pirating other peoples works https://www.techdirt.com/artic...