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Censoring The Net With A Hotmail Account
Alex Bradbury writes "Members of the Bits of Freedom group conducted a test to see how much it would take for a service provider to take down a website hosting public domain material, and have published their results. They signed up with 10 providers and put online a work by Dutch author Multatuli, who died over 100 years ago. They stated that the work was in the public domain, and that it was written in 1871. They then set up a fake society to claim to be the copyright holders of the work. From a Hotmail address, they sent out complaints to all 10 of the providers. 7 out of 10 complied and removed the site, one within just 3 hours. Only one ISP actually pointed out that the copyright on the work expired many years ago. The conclusion of the investigation is definitely worth reading. The three providers who didn't take down the material are XS4ALL, UPC and Freeler. The company that came out the worst was iFast, who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner to the sender of the fake takedown notice without even being asked to do so."
That this should be illegal. Unfortunately, the way the legal system in the US is, it'd just make things worse and not fix the problem.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
I am amazed that an ISP wouldn't have some process in place to at least check the validity of a party making that request and check the validity of the copyright as well. It wouldn't take much to put such a process in place.
http://www.busyweather.com/
I can either invest in lawyers to investigate every claim, or drop a few customers with an "ask no questions" policy.
Which is easier for the smaller ISP to administer and live by?
I'm not saying it's right, we're just in an odd climate around digital rights at the moment.
Dear Slashdot,
My great great grandfather had a newspaper in Lizard Lick, NC back at the turn of the century. I was called "The Lizard Lick Slash/Dot".
Please remove your site from the internet as it's in violation of copyright.
As you may know, the Slash/Dot moved it's headquarters from Lizard Lick to Bugfart, Iowa back in the 40's, just after the war. It's publisher, Mavis Leetdudzki also was the town buggerer and notary public.
Thanks.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Put a simple process in place. When someone makes a copyright claim send them an email asking for written proof of who they are and evidence that they do have a legitimate copyright ownership. The party making the request should do all of the work, the burden is on them. They would then have to mail all of this, by certified mail, to the ISP. If the party making the request does all of this properly than a takedown decision can be made. A legitimate party with a legitimate claim should have no problem complying with such a request/process.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Maybe this group should forward their findings onto the relevant data protection agency in the Netherlands ... it would be interesting to see what happened.
(answer: nothing, these agencies exist to suck money and do nothing)
The company that came out the worst was iFast, who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner to the sender of the fake takedown notice without even being asked to do so."
I can't help but wonder, is this consistent with iFast's user privacy policy? I can't tell, I don't speak Dutch...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I can either invest in lawyers to investigate every claim, or drop a few customers with an "ask no questions" policy.
Which is easier for the smaller ISP to administer and live by?
By far the easiest method would be to autoreply with the address where DMCA takedown notices are accepted, mentioning that they must include a statement of accuracy made under penalty of perjury.
I think everybody missed the real test here,
the test is which company is the most helpfull to people sending notices to sites and its obvious that iFast is the most helpful,
Now all I have to do is tell ALL my friends to go with them, iFast will like all the extra business its the least I can do for such a helpful company...
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
This is very bad news. This means that ISPs are so afraid of litigation that they are willing to remove material at the first threat of copyright violations without cheking whether or not the material is copyrighted. Basically, they are willing to be bullied by any entity that claims copyright.
Oh, pssht. At least try a unique idea. That was ripped right from the annals (anus) of Guantanamo Bay.
And this is exactly why law which holds service carriers such as ISP responsible for the actions of their owners is both invalid and dangerous. ISPs can't and shouldn't be expected to police their customers, and laws or copyright treaties such as the DMCA which place them into the position of having to do so must be changed...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If you take down my material that is legally posted and I am a paying customer with a contract, you damn well better expect a call from my legal staff or be prepared to offer up a significant refund.
currently going on in europe, I am really not suprised by the actions taken by the providers. We are currently in a rather scarey time for people that host, and people that serve. For the big companies, especially in europe right now, what with the crackdowns that have been reported numerous times. And just how much time and expense can be put into checking facts. I do think it's abhorable that this can happen, but I also have to feel understanding to the providers. I have been doing a lot of reading lately on these subjects, the one thing that repeatedly comes to mind is an article written by Tim O'rielly, here This is a well informed intelligent article on all sorts of distribution, and also covers lengths of copyright, and others...
sig!wind down the juuice, let the tubes roar with the glow of alternative powers, not they that be." me, today...
I can either invest in lawyers to investigate every claim, or drop a few customers with an "ask no questions" policy. Which is easier for the smaller ISP to administer and live by? I'm not saying it's right, we're just in an odd climate around digital rights at the moment.
Damn straight. I hope people understand enought to only place part of the blame on the ISPs here. The primary people to blame are those who are behind the insane copyright laws that have caused ISPs to legitimately fear massive fines, prolonged lawsuits, and even jail time for copyright violations.
The balance is tipped way too far on the side of copyright holders. Fair use has flown out the window, copyright is essentially limitless now, and appropriate penalties for these "crimes" have long since abandoned in favor of draconian measures designed to totally cripple anyone who steps out of line.
Yes it's unfortunate that more ISPs didn't do some basic investigation into the matter, but when you risk having your entire business shut down in the blink of an eye if you make a mistake in your research, what can you expect? For all they know a recent court ruling might have allowed a publisher to get the work back under copyright. With the way things are going these days, it's not that far fetched.
An interview with these people was on dutch radio last Tuesday.
For example, if the public library was responsible and liable for all material that was copied on it's self service photocopy machine, then most libraries would probably ban use of the copier or manage and log its use very closely and be willing to share this information with anyone that threatens to sue the library. This would be done to protect the legally liable library. The library would be attempting to shield itself from liability by cooperating with those that were alledgedly infringed and by pointing the finger at the person that actually made the copies. Of course libraries are not liable, the person that uses the copier is liable. This is why photocopy machines are normally self service. This prevents the library from being legally liable.
Unfortunately the same doesn't seem to be true for ISP's. ISP's can be legally liable if they don't provide information about an alleged copyright violator or if they don't remove the allegedly copyrighted material from their servers in a timely fashion. It is unfortunate that even though the ISP may not knowingly endorse infringement or actively participate in the infringement, they could still be held liable (or at least named as an infringing party in an expensive lawsuit).
Unfortunately ISP's have not been afforded legal protection similar to that granted to libraries with respect to photocopiers. It is the system that attempts to hold ISP's liable that is the problem. ISP's are merely reacting to this and trying to protect themselves.
you can download the report from my archive here:r SANE.pdf
http://theprecipice.org/gallery/misc/researchpape
Tie this in with the RIAA/MPAA's apparent automatic search and send bots (that are programmed moronically to boot, a 30kb file's supposedly a movie?) and you also get the potential to take down large chunks of the web illegally. Just wait till the lowlifes out there start doing DoS's using bogus takedown letters instead of packets. Things will probably get mighty ugly.
The current setup of copyright laws establishes that there's a steep penalty for not taking down a copyrighted work, but no penalty at all for wrongly taking down public domain work... No wonder the businesses involved reach for the trigger instead of stopping to think. Delaying when it's valid exposes them to risk, tripping over a false positive does not.
It would have been nice if one of ther providfers had asked for some accurate details concerning the involved work...
But no : they just agreed that if somebody contested its presence, it had to be unlegitimate...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I had some source code to a game I was working on, and had licensed the code to a friend (it was for a MUD, and I had years of work invested). After an altercation, he violated the agreement we had and decided to release his copy to the world to spite me. Fortunately the code was several years old from my current work, but UNfortunately what he released contained player files with plain text passwords, and some of the players had played on both of the games with the same password.
Within 20 minutes of his posting it, I politely asked the ISP to take it down (was about midnight), and they had it taken down by morning. Someone obviously got hold of it and hacked a few of our players' accounts, but the source+assets itself never resurfaced.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
An almost identical study was published by Christian Ahlert of the Oxford Internet Institute, and featured on /. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/10/17 50232&mode=thread&tid=153&tid=99
See his website for more details http://www.ahlert.org
It's good to see that the authors of this article at least provide a reference to his work, but I think this slashdot thread should have mentioned the study that started it all!
...is that the guys who run several web hosting places are overworked, besieged by takedown notices, or dumb (or most likely, a combination of all three). Hell, I could've told you that, and I didn't try to do a study.
The hosting sweet spot is selling power/pipe/ping, not managed services. Managed services always cost more than expected when paired with a reasonable SLA. As such, most hosters just take in whoever seems capable of paying, content be damned. When they get a takedown notice, they shut the port or server instance (whichever is easier i.e. whichever they know how to do quickly) and deal with the consequences later.
RW
The DMCA requires an ISP to take action if a report is adequately filed. A counterclaim can be filed to prevent an ISP from removing content. Blame the law, not some companies who have to follow it.
If you take down my material that is legally posted and I am a paying customer with a contract, you damn well better expect a call from my legal staff or be prepared to offer up a significant refund.
Your what??? Your legal staff???. Oh, that's a riot. You have a frickin legal staff and you're hosting with one of these low-end budget companies, huh? And instead of just moving to a high-end hosting provider where you won't get dropped with no warning, you're going to have an entire legal staff sue one of these rinky dink companies. Sure, that makes economic sense.
Listen, the problem here is that it's the little guy who are getting walked all over because they have no way to defend themselves against billion-dollar copyright holders with big guns and unfair laws to back them. Things like this are designed to keep the little people down, not other big people (i.e. people who really do have a staff of lawyers, c.f. your fantasy staff that shares an office with your unicorn).
Certainly, ISPs here have been known to overreact to complaints before (and the DMCA gives them specific guidelines that they *must* follow, no matte how unfounded the complaint is) but last I checked, this wasn't specific to Texas. But perhaps these Europeans know something about Texas that I do not ...
To do something like this at random intervals to see just what ISPs will do when faced with someone claiming to have a patent, copyright, or other legal contract on a piece of art, publication, etc. All ISPs should check into the claim (like one did) to see if it's valid or not.
If ISPs are so eager to remove potentially offending material, someone could use this as a DOS attack on a commercial website by claiming to own "copyrighted" material on a company's website to the ISP. Those with knee jerk reactions would take the copany's site down without even warning them first.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
But when I was new to PayPal, I and some friends of mine receive spoof emails. I thought to make it known that such a thing was going around (again, I was a newb.) I removed the offending part from the email (the form submit), added a giant notice indicating it was an example or a phish scam, and put on my site. I forwarded the site to my friends.
The next day, my site was taken offline. PayPal didn't even look at the content: they chose to contact my ISP, which didn't even put up a fight, and to put a hold on my account, without any sort of consent on my part.
A blog like any other.
I'm not surprised at all at XS4ALL's behavior. This is the same ISP that went to court to defend one of their customer's rights to host the Fishman Affidavit (a collection of high-level Scientologist documents).
I'm glad that there are companies out there who are willing to stand up for their users when they are right, going so far as to take the heat in court. XS4ALL won the case, too, and the Fishman Affidavit is still hosted there for all to see.
-
For example, if the public library was responsible and liable for all material that was copied on it's self service photocopy machine, then most libraries would probably ban use of the copier or manage and log its use very closely and be willing to share this information with anyone that threatens to sue the library. This would be done to protect the legally liable library. The library would be attempting to shield itself from liability by cooperating with those that were alledgedly infringed and by pointing the finger at the person that actually made the copies. Of course libraries are not liable, the person that uses the copier is liable. This is why photocopy machines are normally self service. This prevents the library from being legally liable.
Bad example, and most copiers are self service because libraries can't afford to hire staff to do a job most people are capable of doing themselves. In this case the equivalent would be if someone reported to a library employee that some guy was copying an entire book on the copy machine and had been at it for hours. At this point the library would be responsible to check out the situation and stop the person if the allegation is true. However, if they get to the copier and the guy's actually copying notes from a friend instead of a copyrighted book the library should not unplug the copier and demand the guy leave. At that point it's clear the original report was bogus and the guy at the copier is not breaking any laws. Incidentally the library would be liable for the copyright violations if the failed to even investigate a reported abuse, just making the copiers self-service doesn't exempt them from that responsibility.-
Unfortunately the same doesn't seem to be true for ISP's. ISP's can be legally liable if they don't provide information about an alleged copyright violator or if they don't remove the allegedly copyrighted material from their servers in a timely fashion. It is unfortunate that even though the ISP may not knowingly endorse infringement or actively participate in the infringement, they could still be held liable (or at least named as an infringing party in an expensive lawsuit).
Actually the law requires them to pass along the takedown notice to their customer who's allegedly infringing, then to take the site down if the customer doesn't respond defending themselves. The ISP is most certainly not required to forward along personal details to the complaintant without a warrant, the RIAA has kindly established this for us by abusing the DMCA, that's why all their suits are now filed as John Doe suits. Secondly the ISP does have some responsibility to check the validity of the claim. Receiving an E-mail from a hotmail account should be a warning sign that something's not right in this case. When the site in question plainly lists the original copyright date (and why it's in the public domain now) the ISP opens itself up to a breach of contract lawsuit from their customer. Just because the DMCA says ISPs have to respond in a timely manner does not release them from other legal obligations!-
Unfortunately ISP's have not been afforded legal protection similar to that granted to libraries with respect to photocopiers. It is the system that attempts to hold ISP's liable that is the problem. ISP's are merely reacting to this and trying to protect themselves.
Actually it does, ISPs must respond to complaints filed properly (ISPs are allowed to list a DMCA contact address that MUST be used to file all complaints, the law allows them to ignore any complaints not sent to that address), must pass the info to the subscriber and must take down the site if the subscriber doesn't respond. If they do that they're fine, but in this case they seemed to do only the last part, after failing to do even the most basic of fact checks. ISPs aren't merely "trying to protect themselves", they're failing to uphold their subscriber agreements. Acting in this manner will not absolve them of their other legal obligations and can, especially in this case, open them up to lawsuits from the subscriber. That's not protecting yourself, that's just stupid.Look here.
Exactly. I run www.mncriminals.com, which publishes the MN criminal conviction data. We get the data directly from the state. We frequently get letters from people demanding that we "expunge" their record because "the state cleared their name". We pretty much just ask that they fax a copy of the state's paperwork removing the conviction from their record. We've only ever heard further from one person. Even then, she hadn't really had it expunged. Rather, she'd had the remainder of her sentence, including parole, etc. commuted. A lot of people make demands and I'm perfectly willing to follow through, but you're going to at least provide a piece of paper proving it needs to happen. The BSA can come into my offices only if there's a warrant in their hand, etc.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Dear Slashdot,
You are currently hosting material which is under Copyright as well as infringing upon our Trademarks. In order for you to remain free from liability, we must insist that you must remove this material immediately.
Our company currently owns all the rights to Linux, Unix, as well as the name "slashdot", and our well-known brand name "Cmdr Taco". Therefore, we insist you remove your entire site immediately.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Your in Hades,
Daryl McBride (BrideOfSatan@hotmail.com)
Copyright @ 2004 by Hell Inc., All Rights Reserved.
The company that came out the worst was iFast, who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner to the sender of the fake takedown notice without even being asked to do so.
/. if the results had been the opposite.
I was not surprised by the fact that most the ISPs took the sites down.. This article would hardly have made it onto
But this reaction is much worse then I could have imagined. I think the moral of this story is to be very cautious when picking an ISP.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
2 of the 4 founders of XS4ALL were editors at HackTic ; a paperprinted Slashdot at the time;) http://www.hacktic.nl/
They were succesfull from the first day that they started selling internet access to the consumer ; and kinda set first foot in that area, dragging alot of new ISP's into the market over the years.
Currently they are one of the more expensive ISP's around ; but the whole company radiates the Google-vision : 'do no evil'.
Their customer service was one of the best i -ever- had ; I only found out later that most of their helpdesk are actually screened for -really- knowing about computers ; instead of reading from an autocue all day long.
I live ~15 minutes from Lizard Lick, NC :-P
Jay | http://oldos.org
Actually I think its a good example, libraries and Kinkos went to self service photocopiers because it does afford them significant protection under the US copyright law. Check this university library site for more details. Quoted from that site:
Section 108(f)(2) gives protection to libraries, archives, and their employees from liability that may arise from the "unsupervised use" of photocopy machines and other equipment at the library, provided that the "equipment displays a notice that the making of a copy may be subject to the copyright law. . . ."
The function of the law is actually remarkably simple. If the library places the notice on the machine, the library avoids potential legal liability for infringements that a user may commit by the use of that equipment.
Consider this possibility:
A bunch of motivated slashdotters all go to their local libraries (or anywhere else they can gain anonymous internet access) and create hotmail or yahoo email accounts. Then, they send copyright violation notifications to various ISP's across America, so that a huge number of legitamite sites get taken down.
The resultant customer rage would get media attention, and the ISP's would mention the DMCA as they speak in their own defense. This would bring the harmful effects of the DMCA into the public eye.
Of course, I am not advocating any such thing. Just reflecting on the possibilities.
--AC (emphasis on the C in my case)
activewebhosting.com decided to pull my site just because there were MP3's on it. MP3's that I had permission to store.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Granted, I'm still dependent on someone else for connectivity itself, but I found a pretty good DSL provider with terms I can live with, so as long as I keep my systems are zombie free and I don't do anything stupid enough to get an actual court order sent to my DSL provider, I'm pretty safe from this kind of crap (at least more than I was before). And I got broadband service to my house in the process.
I realise it's not an option for a lot of people, but if you want something done right...
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
1) DirtFire
2) ICame (sexually)
3) FireFromMe
4) DirtArrived
Pick your favourite. I prefer the number 2.
Why? Did Ireland quit the E.U.?
UPC (aka chello) ignore all complaints, valid or not, including spam complaints.
see for yourself
Chello.nl
Chello.at
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
And Bits of freedom is an organization sponsored by X54A11.
Everybody is happy here.
Ah, but that would be the right thing to do. And god help us if companies did the right thing.
the people responsible for these kind of things out of office, this is the future you can expect.
What?
I don't think that being free really has much to do with it, although there could perhaps be a correlation. Probably what matters is the terms of service that you agree to. Even if you pay for the service, virtually all terms of service will contain a clause that states the provider can yank your access or hosting or whatever they provide on a whim at their own discretion.
Clearly it might not hold up in court, and it's perhaps even less likely to hold up if you're paying for a service and they don't have reasonable grounds for not providing it... regardless of what's in the terms of service. But they could still potentially get away with claiming that they don't have time or resources to follow up complaints and have to protect their liability, and it still means going through the court system. The latter is a huge disincentive when it's normally much easier to just find a different provider.
A potential legal battle is never profitable for an ISP. Why even take the risk?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
When someone makes a copyright claim send them an email asking for written proof of who they are and evidence that they do have a legitimate copyright ownership. The party making the request should do all of the work, the burden is on them. They would then have to mail all of this, by certified mail, to the ISP. If the party making the request does all of this properly than a takedown decision can be made.
Wow, you've just described the DMCA.
Tiscali, Wanadoo, Planet Internet, Demon... not tiny companies.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
Actually the law requires them to pass along the takedown notice to their customer who's allegedly infringing, then to take the site down if the customer doesn't respond defending themselves. The ISP is most certainly not required to forward along personal details to the complaintant without a warrant, the RIAA has kindly established this for us by abusing the DMCA, that's why all their suits are now filed as John Doe suits.
These ISPs were European. The whole point was that there wasn't a DMCA in the first place. If there had been, the ISPs would have ignored the non-DMCA compliant emails, and almost surely wouldn't have given the account details without a subpoena or counterclaim being filed.
Under the DMCA, the entities in question forfeit their DMCA safe harbor provision (the part that protects them from being sued) if they don't comply with any valid DMCA notice.
:/
Now, of course, these notices were invalid, but the free providers also have a ToS term that generally allows them to remove your site for any reason at all. In other words, it's easier to take your site down than to have to do any fact checking at all.
And I'm not sure how many people at these places have any idea how to find the copyright status of a work, anyhow... That may have been easier here, but for other works, it can be a real problem to determine who, if anyone, holds the copyright
Say you're the ISP in this situation. It makes more sense to take it down than it does to leave it up. What do you gain for just leaving it up after receiving a dispute? Nothing, really. What do you have to lose if you continue host something that is truly under copyright? A lot more. The potential for more work is there by leaving it up than there is for merely taking it down.
Now, I'm not saying this is right. But there has to be a better incentive than "the good of all humanity" to protect fair use.
Since the stupid **AA bots took the "abuse@*" contact address and sent the takedown notices there, instead of the proper takedown, they could very well ignore them...
The EU data protection directive is the basis of much of the privacy law in Ireland.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
There was an anti-spam attempt made by a group from Europe. They created a service called anti-spam, which constantly loaded gifs/jpgs from the spam-sites, making traffic go high. these were published on normal http sites in europe.
Suddenly mails were sent to owners about that the http spread warez and similar. My guess is that the spam-sites created fake mails about this, and after 3 hours the site was closed.
I guess we need a better way of dealing with this.
While it is true that the constitution was partly written by slave owners, and it isn't perfect, it isn't all crap. Can you be specific with the amendments that you would propose?
This is a great idea for spam, just make millions of emails requesting random websites to be shutdown.
At first you'll see 10000s of websites disapear, then soon they will stop removing them due to MASSIVE complaints, then legit requests will be ignored unless in writing from a lawyer.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
but I love the "Texan-style private ISP justice"! Biased against Texas... or maybe just Bush. ;-) /no flame intended.
BoingBoing also used that phrase, and it didn't make sense then either since it's about Dutch ISPs. There's no mention of Texas in the .pdf document.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'm not sure this is a fair test. Under the DMCA, the ISP must take down the material within (I think) 72 hours to maintain immunity. The site owner can respond in 10 days to deny the charges and the ISP can put it back up with immunity. Now I'm not saying that the DMCA is the correct way to do things, and I really don't condone the idea of handing out personal information without a court order, but this "test" doesn't tell us anything except that ISPs don't want to get into legal trouble. Surprise, surprise.
Where mydomainhere represents my domain.
Despite the fact that this is obviously nonsense, that my website was just a stupid little tripod-hosted discussion board that no one would pay a dime to spamvertise, and that the content of the spam had absolutely nothing to do with my website, I was accused of spamming and XS4ALL threatened to terminate Capibara's account unless Capibara deleted all my domain redirectors.
Furthermore, when I contacted XS4ALL to try to straighten this out, providing a good case that my domain had nothing to do with the spam, I was greeted with a face-full of attitude from a most-arrogant dude from the "Net Abuse" team who stated basically "we don't believe you, but even if you are telling the truth, it's too bad that you got into trouble because of a spammer; you have no say in the matter; don't contact us again."
I admit that this is personal, but after that experience I have nothing good at all to say about XS4ALL.
This is probably the most exposure that Multatuli has had in 100 years. I believe that in parts of Europe they refer to Fair Trade coffee as Max Havelaar coffee though.
I don't think that there is much that's more serious at the moment.
Living in Texas, I'm not sure what constitutes `Texan-style private ISP justice'. Perhaps Sjoera Nas could explain?
It's about Bush. He's a Cowboy(tm) and he liiiiiieeeeessss.
You have to say that with a sinister voice, to reflect the worldwide skull and bones conspiracy he's either leading or is a puppet of.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't think we'll see action on this area until people start sending annonymous copyright takedown notices to the ISP's of members of congress, as well as the heads of major corporations, showing them the folly of giving others full control over your life and business without due process. Of course such a thing would be illegal and dangerous, and a person would have to be crazy to do such a thing. After all, laws are a social contract, which we must obey in order for society to function. In a society ravaged by terrorism like ours, sending mixed messages is the last thing we can afford.
The ______ Agenda
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Tiscali?!?!?!
/contractor with the ,Lagos, and had a closing balance of
Allow me to post the contents of the last few emails I've recieved from Tiscali...
FROM:ALH YAKASIA BANK MANAGER
(UNION BANK OF NIGERIA PLC)
MARINA LAGOS
Private email:yakasia_mohammed@hotmail.com
Dear ME,
REQUEST FOR YOUR UNRESERVED BUSINESS ASISTANCE/NEXT OF KIN TO
LATE ENGR.WILLIAM NIXON
Firstly, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction, this is by
virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret.
Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one
apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the
end of the day. We have decided to contact you due to the urgency of
this transaction, as we have been reliably informed of it's swiftness and
confidentiality.
Let me start by first introducing myself properly to you. I am Alh
Yakasia, a Manager at the Union Bank Nigeria PLC, Lagos. I came to know of
you in my private search for a reliable and reputable person to handle
a very confidential transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge
sum of money to a foreign account requiring maximum confidence. A
foreigner, Late Engineer William Nixon, an oil Merchant
federal Government of Nigeria,
until his death three years ago in a ghastly air crash, banked with us
here at the Union Bank PLC
USD$7.2M (Seven Million, Two Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) which the
bank now unquestionably expects to be claimed by any of his available
foreign next of kin or alternatively be donated to a discredited trust
fund for arms and ammunition at a military war collage here in Nigeria....
Yea I've seen enough...real bang up operation you guys are running over there, keep patting yourself on the back for the quality IT work you do for spammers and scammers.
Of course a simple solution for this is to require a telephone call from the notice issuer before a takedown, they could then be given a dedicated line to call, probably to a call center somewhere in India and the call could begin with those time honoured words "Your call is important to us please press, one if from the RIAA ..... " I don't see why they can't suffer like the rest of us .... and it seems enough to satisfy the various consumer laws in non-corporate land
You stupid stupid fucks! ALWAYS let people know when you are linking to a PDF file! You politically correct OpenSource fuckers would certainly make it known if you were linking to a Microsoft Office document.
Hint: Multaltuli was the writersname of Eduard Douwes Dekker. Multatuli means "he who suffered"
-- for undocumented cisco commands, take a peek @ dotu
...is just that they make anonymous email accounts illegal.
In response to such information TERRORISM, next thing we know it becomes a federal offense to open anybody an email account without first demanding a notarized photocopy of their drivers license. DMCA stands.
After all, that's as appropriate as most of the responses to 9-11 have been.
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These ISPs were European. The whole point was that there wasn't a DMCA in the first place. If there had been, the ISPs would have ignored the non-DMCA compliant emails, and almost surely wouldn't have given the account details without a subpoena or counterclaim being filed.
Ouch, that makes the whole thing even worse. I can't think of any defense in that case (not that I agreed with what they did even if they were in the US). I'm just glad they're not my ISP.Why do governments want to saddle business with all this regulation???
We have enough lawyers. Laws should be stopped to prevent these frivolous legal actions against freedom of speech.
It's beyond me how a republican congress can pass laws that encourage MORE regulation and MORE legal action. The billions they received from the RIAA and MPAA have destroyed their principles.
I happen to work at the abuse department of one of the ISP's who deleted the content(No name mentioned, but it is the biggest in Europe, I believe). What I like the world to know, is that the test done isn't done realy carefull. After we received the complaint we checked the site and concluded that the mentioned text was shown. We then sent a notice of warning to the "customer", in which we asked the person to respond to this message by mail or phone if the complaint was not accurate. After giving the customer a few days to respond, we heard noting. We know from experience that everybody who is wrongly acused/warned will respond within a few days. After not hearing from the customer, whe decided to pull the website. If it was a big issue we would have asked our legal department to take a look at the case, but we concluded this wasn't so. We didn't check the original of the text, since we are not working there to be experts of literature, just to keep our network clean. I also mailed the guy who did the test and asked him why he didn't respond to our warning notice, but he hasn't returned a message to me.
--- In a world without fences, who needs Gates.
He said:
a) he removed relevant personal details
b) he didn't put it up as a joke, it was a warning to show paypal users what the scam looked like, so that other people wouldn't lose their savings
c) There was nothing on the site he put up that would put an actual paypal account at risk
d) The site wasn't an example of how to send a paypal scam, it was an example of an existing scam with, again, intent to warn
e) How is this disrespectful of somebody who lost their money, intent was to prevent future users from falling for the same scam
f) Anyone who actually puts their savings in paypal is an idiot.
Your probably a troll, and I probably fed you. At the very least I hope you suffer from poor english/reading skills, because I find it hard to otherwise believe somebody can be so dense especially after an explanation was already given.
If you start reading this read it all or you might get the wrong idea...
Indeed, it might be a good study to tests ISP's on this to see who is best for self-hosting. My ISP (Telus in Canada) pulled my plug after receiving several complaints about spam. I had been mucking with proxy settings and accidentally left it open for part of a day before noticing (partly thanks to the slashdot open-proxy detection which warned we and prevented me from posting here).
About 4-5 days after the proxy was shut, I was connecting to my home server from work to transfer files when I was suddenly shut out. When I got home - no connection and a message on my answering machine from the Telus abuse department.
It took about a 5-10 minute calL (being on hold and all that) with me explaining the proxy was fixed - and Telus got me back up again. The kept me on monitor for awhile (and I was checking to see that no strange backdoors were spewing spamcrap somehow, I also added some firewall rules to log any emails going to strange SMTP servers), but other than that everything was great. Sometimes it's not just a matter of whether an ISP pulls your plug when something goes wrong (and I was in the wrong here), but one also considers how easy it is to get things fixed up when any problems/misunderstandings are corrected. Again, I was in the wrong here, admitted it, showed them the problem was fixed, and they got my service restored pas de probleme. How many poor plebs have to jump through a million hoops to fix the mistake?
A lawyer is an officer of the court. But this idea isn't usually invoked to give a lawyer the authority of a court. Rather it is invoked to restrain lawyers from becoming mercenary warriors who fight so zealously for the client that they harm the public interest.
Here's a link.
Meh. As an ISP, autoreply to such requests directing the requester to a web page on your site which asks for the details, including the relevant law under which the content is illegal.
Include a drop-down for which country the law relates to. Any generated requests which don't have the ISP's country selected can be autofiled under 'irrelevant', and an email sent back seven days later saying:
"Thank you for your interest, however $ISPname is not a $chosen_country company and is therefore not bound by the laws of $chosen_country. For a full list of laws which apply to $ISPname, please go to $link_to_ISP's_country's_law_site. If you find a law there which is being broken by content hosted on an $ISPname web page, please let us know by completing the form at $formURL."
Annoying? Definitely. Cuts down on the crap? Absolutely.