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Slashback: DRM, MPAA, ADSL
It's not evil, but just in case... gmr2048 writes "Sony seems to have heard the commotion. They have offered a "Service Pack" to uninstall the DRM Rootkit. From the announcement: 'This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology component that has been recently discussed in a number of articles published regarding the XCP Technology used on SONY BMG content protected CDs. This component is not malicious and does not compromise security. However to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove this component from their computers.'"
Obviously they have never heard the adage about deep pockets. Dieppe writes "The MPAA is at it again. This time they're suing a grandfather who didn't cave into the $4,000 blackmail offer for movie downloads his grandson downloaded from iMesh. Four movies in total, and they already owned 3 out of 4 with the grandson deleting them soon after download. This time the MPAA wants "as much as $600,000" in damages. The article also claims that "illegal downloading" costs the industry $5.4 billion per year. Not sure where the MPAA comes up with these figures."
Longer life and no charge time. It doesn't come easy writes "A press release from A123Systems announces another new lithium-ion battery technology that promises to deliver unprecedented performance (according to them). The technology is suppose to deliver 10 times the cycle life and 5 times the power over conventional lithium technology, and only require 5 minutes to recharge to 90% capacity. This is certainly not the first breakthrough for lithium based batteries that has been promised. I wonder if there is a patent lawsuit in the making?"
Fast net connection, but only if you live nearby. conJunk writes "The BBC is running an article about the ADSL2+ that touted a 24MB/s net connection. It seems that this number in fact only holds up if you live across the street from the service provider."
Always read the fine print. JeremyWall writes "The recent Netflix class action settlement has a catch. While it is nice that the average subscriber will be upgraded for one month for free, if you read the fine print in section 4.2 of the long form [PDF Warning] of the settlement you find that you will be automatically charged for the higher subscription going forward. If you don't opt back out when you get their email, you are gonna get charged from then on. If you opt in for the settlement - check your email box regularly!"
Know when to hold and know when to fold. psykocrime writes "According to a recent press release SGI stock has been delisted by the New York Stock Exchange, as a result of falling below the NYSE's minimum share price." SGI, the former darling of the high-tech world, has been in trouble for a while, perhaps this is really the end.
From their ass! They pulled it right out.
24mbit/sec? Sounds like "across the street from the provider" has suddenly become prime nerd real estate, beats the hell out of lakefront housing any day!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Leave it up to the MPAA to go after a grandfather. Where is the accountability for this group? Who do we direct our hatred at?
Let's give the fuckers a name, and a face. No more of this MPAA, let people know who is behind it, which artists are in cahoots with this. Then we'll see how much we can really cost the industry.
The real question about the Sony "service pack" is whether it removes the entire software program, leaves anything behind, or simply replaces the old rootkit with one that's harder to detect and remove.
So to uninstall this mess, they want me to go to a web site, hosted by the company who wrote the spyware/rootkit, and run an activeX control. Hahahahaha.
This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me channel Nancy Regan, and "Just Say NO!".
This is sad that SGI cannot stay afloat. I put them akin to Next in that they both make(made) quality machines that not many people want to buy. Notice I did not say need to buy. SGI has been a perfect fit for many a project of mine, but for varied reasons no one wants to take them.
I guess this movie just isn't going to be accurate. One line I chuckled at during watching it was when it says, "Silicon Graphics Saves the World." Of course, this may be somewhat off...
Click here or here.
...resort to desparate and morally reprehensible measures to slow their decline, be they the MPAA or the RIAA. They're behaving like frightened, cornered animals. I'd expect both of these industry cartels to resort to some really scary shit in the next decade or so to try to cut their losses (like the east fork stuff, http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/18 11/), but they don't understand the difference between gliding along in a paracheut and flying. Ultimately, the industry megacorporations will tank (well, the music industry will, but movies are much harder to make than music), and our freedoms will be the real casualty.
The actual speeds usually ends up around 16-18Mbits, but we've had 24Mbit available here a long time. And, yeah, it's also ADSL2+
According to TechDirt the grandfather was sued for offering movies for download. Claiming that he isn't liable because his grandson was the one doing it, not him, is about as rediculous as saying that he's not liable if someone cracks their head open on faulty steps in his house because his grandson lives there not him. He owns the line, he's liable for any copyright infringement performed from that line. And no, it doesn't matter if it wasn't his son but some hackers who broke into his computer; if a burglar breaks into your house and puts his back out trying to lug away your safe, you're still liable. Much like copyright law in general, personal liability is insane and should be abolished.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Only works in IE.
How about a full exchange of that CD for a new one without the DRM and the rootkit?
I hope someone sues them just to get such an exchange program going.
Just went to the Sony site to download the DRM removal tool, using Mozilla on Linux.
.... Just say NO!
Sony site initially says, I have to use MS IE.
I set my Mozilla to lie and claim to be MS IE.
Now Sony demands that I enable Javascript, along with instructions for IE.
I turn on Javascript
Finally I get to the download option and what do I see!? It's not a download at all, it's an "ActiveX" component that they want you to "INSTALL".
SONY
5 minutes to recharge a battery sounds like a recipe for a housefire to me.
The original email that I got from Netflix is taken nearly word-for-word from the settlement, but leaves out this tasty tidbit: ...the upgraded service shall renew automatically (following an email reminder) at the end of the upgraded month at Netflix's regular subscription rate for the upgraded program, unless and until the Class Member cancels the service or modifies his or her subscription.
I probably clicked to indicate that I read the full version at some point, but it's a seven page document and I suspect most people rely on the summaries of long legal documents, we not being lawyers.
I'm gonna count on them to send me a nice, clear email at the end of the month. We'll see. Usually they've been pretty good, but I know some Netflix subscribers have been unhappy.
*sigh* This is exactly the sort of game that always seems to come out of class-action lawsuits, which is why I ignore most of the ones that come my way. This one seemed chintzy, but not evil. "What could it hurt?" I figured when I saw it.
Now I know. Thanks, Jeremy Wall.
I'm just a bit curious... Does the patch keep the rootkit permanently disabled and removed? It seems to me that if we put a deviant Sony CD back into our computer that the rootkit would just be reinstalled. Then do we have to run the patch again? This is rediculous. I've do not intend on purchasing any music that has the SONY lable on it. This to me is just plain stupid. What gives Sony the right to install deviant software on "MY" pc and then make it stealth so that I don't know it's there. As far as I'm concerned I think that's the lowest a company can go. That's stooping to the level of those bastard red headed step children Spammers/Spyware installer/Virus/worm pushing assholes.
I'm to the point now watching this rediculous attempt from Sony to attach it's controls on something that I purchase the rights to use/listen/backup and trying to enforce through deviant means. What is this rootkit supposed to do!? They just wanted to install it for the Hell Of It? Nope, it's supposed to reinforce their stupid DRM bullshit and keep me from listening to the music that I paid for. I'm to the end of my rope. I think that there needs to be a group or mutiple groups put together that should purposefully break what Sony is trying to do. I've been years out of the programming/Computer industry and thus lack the skills to do it, but I think that we should form Anti-DRM, anti-Sony groups to demolish the protection that they put on their stupid CD's. I will not from this day forward purchase anymore music from Sony until they drop their Bullshit practices. I call for a Boycot of Sony's Music. I'm not sure what one man can start, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand around any longer and watch Sony impose itself on me! They want me to buy their shit, then they want to enforce by deviance their policy, and after all that they hijack my PC for WHo knows what! Ahhh! Time for a Revolution. I love my PS2, but am refusing to play it again until SONY stops all this Bullshit! No more video games purchased either. Damn you Sony! Leave me the Hell alone! Stay off of my Computer and my CD's! Damn you!
With that said, I feel somewhat better, but am still disturbed deep inside that they would have to stoop to that level to try and enforce their protection. Maybe they don't realize that as the sound comes out of the speakers it can be recorded with a MIC and pirated that way, or through LINE OUT. Damn them. Rant Over.Generation Trance: What generation are you?
When it comes to upload capacity, ADSL2+ is no better than plain ADSL. Therefore I don't see much of an improvement there. I think the 8/1 ratio in plain ADSL is dumb enough already.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Obviously they want the largest figure possible to get the politicians in a spin ("OMG! We're not getting the tax on $5.4b!"), so factoring in relative prices of the media in different markets is probably fudged, and a cant towards the more profitable of the three options is quite likely. The mere possibility of the fourth option, that someone will have downloaded the file just because it didn't cost them anything and wouldn't otherwise have seen it the film before it hit the TV screen, if at all, almost certainly isn't going to be a factor of course.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Say WHAT? ... I ... This.... WOW.
I cannot belive that they can say this. They released a rootkit, bloody damn general purpose rootkit, and it doesn't comprimise security? IT HIDES AN ENTIRE SUBSET OF FILE NAMES! With this rootkit installed, ANY file or folder starting with $sys$ is immmedately hidden from the Windows API. People are already using it to hide hacks for WoW. What happens if someone distributes a trojan, tells them to run Sony's rootkit to make sure they don't get caught by Warden, and the thing disappears and the user never knows the better.
Sony screwed up beyond reproach with this, and that comment just makes me scream.
This component...does not compromise security.
The Sony CDs install a rootkit that virus-writers can take advantage of. How does making the job of virus-writers easier "not compromise security"?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Isn't it reassuring that the Sony DRM removal kit is an ActiveX object, only available with IE?
Allow popups from xcp-aurora.com? Always/Yes/Never
Purchase products from from Sony BMG? Never/No/Nada
Ohmigod, a grandfather? How dare they? Grandfathers should obviously be immune to all lawsuits. Grandfathers are always nice, and we all know that nobody should be able to sue nice people. I say Grandfathers should be allowed to download all the movies, music, and porn they can get their liver-spotted hands on.
Find free books.
As has been noted by many others before on the MPAA and RIAA, they don't necessarily want just money (although of course, they want that too), they want CONTROL. By controlling distribution channels, they guarantee profitability in perpetuity. So, the real way to hurt them is to use their attempts at control as fuel for the very revolution they are trying to quash.
Spend more money on "independent" filmmakers and musicians. Listen to more live music. Tell people why they should do the same (they've given us tons of ammo). Spread the music and films via P2P when the creators allow it. If you are a musician or filmmaker, see if you can do it without the studio and use the net to find your audience.
Thinking about profits and money is short term thinking, which many Slashdotters accuse the MPAA and RIAA of. I don't think they are actually that stupid.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
To kick and take candy from respectivly. Of course, given the track record so far, I'd believe it the other way around just as well.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
A very bad sign in SGI's response to delisting on the NYSE. Unless a company is in deep trouble, they would normally do a reverse split to bring the stock price back over $1. In this case, chances are that SGI will be filing bankruptcy in the near future and cancelling all existing equity. Then create new shares in a debt for equity swap. No need to bother with a reverse split, since they would be delisted when they went bankrupt anyway.
Pretty sad, SGI pioneered some wonderful technology in its time. Too bad they never figured out business rule #1, ideas don't mean squat unless they make money.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The article gives a name. Ms. Kori Bernards, vice president of corporate communications for MPAA.
Let's take a time out for a brief lesson on how the world works. People have some money. People give a little of this money to lawyers. Lawyers give some of the money that they get to politicians. Politicians pass laws requiring you to give more of your money to the people who gave a little of their money to the lawyers. A positive feedback loop. It continues to grow until (1) people kill the politicians, or (2) people kill the lawyers. This is how the world works.
The MPAA (or any group with money to pay for politicians) will continue to extort your money from you until you either (1) kill the lawyers yourself, or (2) pay someone to do it for you.
When the entertainment lawyers collectively realize that they personally will suffer as a direct result of their applying their professional expertise to the topic of randomly selecting someone who watches a movie or listens to a music recording and demanding thousands of dollars, then this shit will stop. Until then, it will continue.
Be real, this is America in the 21st century. The corporations own the three branches of government, the military, the media, the police, and damn near everything else. NONE of these avenues is open any more for a systematic redress of grievances.
What else is left?
I can not and will not in good faith condone murder in either a public or private forum. What I can say is that, from a historical perspective, violence is the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to either institute social change ( for better or worse ) or to seek redress from injustice.
There are alternatives to violence. Reread the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi for powerful accounts of effective alternatives. Nonviolent tactics did work against far more dangerous and evil enemies than the entertainment industry. Perhaps the newer communications tools such as the web can be used to organize effective boycotts and other tools of social change.
Nevertheless, you asked for a name and you now have it.
I just signed on to the class settlement today -- I'm a lapsed subscriber. I also noticed that fine print, and made a mental note to re-cancel after my free month. I suspect this is a tremendously good settlement for Netflix -- I wonder if the cost is going to be filed under "litigation" or "marketing".
I have a bunch of SGI machines that I use where I work:
2x 8 processor Onyx2s
1x 8 processor Origin 300
1x 8 processor Origin 2200
1x 32 processor Origin 350
1x 4 processor Prism
3x 1 processor Octane2s
and I hate them all with a passion. I've been fighting with software installation on the older Origin 2200 (8 400MHz processors, 6GB of RAM). SGI's crap compiler can't bootstrap gcc 4.0.2, their versions of common Unix tools like grep, etc., suck (forcing you to upgrade to the GNU versions, if their stupid compiler can build them), and IRIX has been at release 6.5 since 1998 or something. Sure, they want you to move to their new Linux-based Prism machines, and I've got one of those, too. Yippee, Itanics! What a super swell processor! I have an 8 processor Origin 300 where the total power consumption of all 8 processors is less than the consumption of 1 of the Itanics! See also, the poor code produced by gcc for this processor.
So, anyway. Upgrading SGIs sucks, their hardware is immensely fragile, its very persnickety about its environment (god forbid the temperature in the room not be in the 60s), licensing all their tools is hellish, their debugger is ancient and decrepit, my tech is a retard who tried to cable together the Origin 300 incorrectly and I had to fix it for him, and get this -- 8GB of RAM for an Origin 300 cost $25,000. That's right: $25k. You know what it is: it's PC3200 with some goddamn proprietary bullshit thrown in so you have to order your parts from SGI.
I'm glad you're dying. You've made every misstep possible: lets sell Windows NT machines! You sell Fuels in regular ATX cases with rockin' 800MHz processors that start at something like $10k. Your video offerings, once your strong suit, suck -- all you offer is older ATI cards in crap configurations -- $40k for two cards since I needed a new node (didn't buy it, duh).
The only reason to buy an SGI in the last five years or so is because of the good realtime performance of IRIX: I can sustain 16us interrupt times pretty much forever. But that's it. I'm not paying $130k for another slow-ass computer without even a damn video card for a console. And I don't need to: Ingo Molnar's realtime patches are coming along, and my quad Opteron box wipes the floor with the Origin and cost, oh yeah: $19,992 including shipping, and $7k of that is pimpin' SCSI disks.
Yay for your death! Ding dong, bitches.
I got their email notice the other day and I thought, "who would go through all the trouble of a class action lawsuit just to get approx 3-4 DVD rentals for free[...]"
Nobody. Instead, the plaintiff got $2k, and the lawyers got $2.5 million.
There should be a modification to class action law that limits the lawyers' payment to at most 1/3rd of the cash value of the benefits actually claimed by the class members.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I sure hope it is
This time the MPAA wants "as much as $600,000" in damages. ... Not sure where the MPAA comes up with these figures."
17 USC 504(c)(2) is where.
There are two types of damages available in a copyright infringement suit: actual and statutory. The plaintiff gets to pick which one he wants. The maximum possible statutory damages are $150,000 per work willfully infringed. In this case there are apparently four works. 4 times $150,000 is $600,000.
Of course, they would need to not only prove infringement, but that the infringement was willful. Furthermore, that only results in the court being able to award any amount it feels appropriate, within the range of $750 - $150,000 per work. The amount awarded may well be less than the amount sought.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Check this out:
XCP SUPPORT
ActiveX Unsupported
Sorry, your Internet Browser does not support ActiveX Controls.
Please use Microsoft Internet Explorer to continue.
Download Internet Explorer from the Microsoft website
More Lock in! Thank god I'm on Linux.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
2. If you only install the service pack once, then presumably there must be a service/daemon running to detect the insertion of future corrupt CDs to stop the rootkit being installed. In which case, the service pack will need to use continual PC resources to be constantly running.
3. If the format of the corrupt CDs is such that the rootkit needed to be in place to allow three rips of the CD to be made, what happens once the rootkit is disabled? Can you no longer exercise your fair usage rights to rip the CD for personal use?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Send Sony some feedback about their DRM software: http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form11.html I sure did.
IAAL working in IP and media law and I take strong exception to your attitude. Lawyers are not the cause of this problem. Lawyers are paid money to argue for their clients interests (or perceived interests). If the MPAA pays money to a good lawyer and gives them instructions, that lawyer goes and researches the law, determines what tactics will be effective, and ASKS THE CLIENT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. It is the client who decides to go ahead and sue a grandfather for $400K, and the client who decides to lobby Washington.
If you want to obliquely suggest killing any group of people because you think this will solve the problem I suggest you review and include (in reverse order):
4. Artists who continue to participate in the corrupt entertainment industry
3. The MPAA for ruthlessly trying to protect its own profits and interests
2. Politicians for being so pathetically weak that they can be bought and sold like prostitutes
1. Yourself and everyone else who does not fall into 4, 3 or 2 but who (a) funds the MPAA and the artists by buying their crap, (b) funds the politicians with their taxes, and (c) allows the politicians to get away with it by being politically disengaged and reelecting them all the time.
Do not blame lawyers. In my experience most lawyers tend to be more sympathetic to the views of people like us who are unhappy with these stupid laws and stupid lawsuits than they are to the views of organisations like the MPAA. Most lawyers I know think that the DMCA and its international equivalents are idiotic and outrageously biased, for example. But lawyers are part of an adversarial system, and their duty is to represent the interests of those who retain them to the best of their abilities. So instead of attacking lawyers, why not pony up some cash for your beliefs and help the EFF or someone like that get their own kick ass legal team.
I am so sick of people who bitch about the corporations owning everything but ignore the fact that the corporations only have as much power as you, the consumer, gives them. And I am SO SICK of people bashing lawyers, who tend to be progressive, intelligent, and politically and socially engaged individuals (real lawyers, not ambulance chasers).
Read Pynchon.
I had over 27 hits on my blog today for "sony rootkit" or something similar to that search.
Here's where you can complain to Sony about DRM and Rootkits:
http://www.sonymusic.com/about/feedback.cgi
Here's my letter, please modify it if you use it:
Dear Sony,
I'd like you to know how displeased I am that you've put DRM in your Compact Discs, and I'm shocked that "Van Zant's" CD is reported to have a "rootkit" virus that infects Windows so that certain file names remain hidden from even anti-virus scanners. Your product has endangered thousands of music fans, by crippling their Windows system in yet another way that virus writers can exploit.
I think you owe your customers better.
Sincerely,
Saskboy
Yorkton, SK CANADA
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
They're using statutory damages, not actual damages. Statutory damages are always inflated to deter career criminals from engaging in systematic infringement.
Unfortunately the statute does not discriminate between the head of a mass producing piracy ring making millions of dollars in illegal sales and an individual downloading three backup copies and one unpurchased movie for personal use.
Inflated figures you see when they seek to make a small-time CD duplication operation among friends seem like a major criminal enterprise by multiplying the number of actual CD burners by their top burn speeds. Then one person with a single burner can be labeled as a mass pirate by saying he had equipment equivalent to 52 1x CD burners!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
$5.4billion per year loss is probably how much they spend on their lawyers. :-)
Don't forget they stopped using the cool cube logo, too.
Managers and clients don't want to see an effete little "sgi," that hardly inspires confidence.
Where's the logo that booms, "Damn straight, I AM graphics?"
24mbit/sec? Sounds like "across the street from the provider" has suddenly become prime nerd real estate
When you combine it with fiber to the curb (FTTC) you get your 24 Mbps just fine all over the place, not just on the same block with the Central Office (CO).
The fiber carries the signal to the RT ("remote terminal" in telephone parlence: a line concentrator located outside the CO). That is located within a couple blocks of your house. The ADSL2+ carries it from there to your house over a copper pair.
Even if your neighborhood is too sparse and/or the company planners goofed and put the RTs too far apart for everybody to get full speed, you'll do a lot better with ADSL2+ than with the older ADSL standards.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
you think with all the money that we are supposed to be ripping off of the mpaa and the riaa that they would be out of business already.
guess they are still doing pretty good to last this long.
Look at their bottom line. Look at their balance sheets. Look at their bank account with all those big piles of cash. Look at their increases in profits year to year. (the RIAA says in one press release they're at poverty's doorstep, but on their very website, they post profit increases in the double digit percentages. When the economy does bad, they don't gain in sales... imagine that! Basic economics DOES make sense... except to them. IT's all you damn pirates' fault.)
So, it stands to reason that if piracy is indeed hurting them, we'd see their money shrivel up and disappear.... making them destitute and on the street corner begging for change. After all, that's what their core argument is. The industry is "fighting for its very survival" to paraphrase the good ol' MPAA. So if they are making money, how can they claim lost revenue? It's a specious argument to begin with, and with their "calculated" damages, it's delusional. (After all, a lost sale is what $20 per DVD? $8.50 per ticket? $1 per song?)
So if piracy cannot be proven to cause harm.... why do we even need to prove it provides benefit? If it does nothing, then there is no need to bother. If it provides benefit, great. Either way, since it does no harm, THERE IS NO CASE.
All they want to do is "rent" their "content" to you. That way, they can make money forever on something that should've been in the public domain decades ago.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
We would be interested in speaking to any California residents that have experienced this problem before the EULA was changed. We have looked at many DRM cases and Sony went too far with this particular scheme. You can contact us at gw@classcounsel.com or by visiting our web site at http://www.classcounsel.com./
The MPAA (or any group with money to pay for politicians) will continue to extort your money from you until you either (1) kill the lawyers yourself, or (2) pay someone to do it for you.
(Wasn't this an audio disk? That would be the RIAA.)
Given the RIAA's origin in organized crime (the jukebox syndicate) and ongoing business model (extortion), I strongly suspect that even going after them with tommyguns - and killing off a number of them - would affect their strategy. (In fact, some of them might find it a refreshing return to the good old days of gang wars - and come after you in return. B-) )
There are alternatives to violence. Reread the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi for powerful accounts of effective alternatives. Nonviolent tactics did work against far more dangerous and evil enemies than the entertainment industry.
The canonization of King and Ghandi is convenient for the ruling class. But claiming they prove the success of non-violence is a rewrite of history:
Ghandi succeeded in India - against the British colonial occupation, when a major British government faction was already trying to unload the colony. Ghandi's movement helped empower them to achieve their aims. But remember that he started his political carreer in South Africa, attempting to end Apartheit by similar tactics - a dismal failure. And his prescription for the Jews in Nazi Germany was to commit mass suicide in protest of their treatment.
MLK's non-violent opposition to Jim Crow segregation was a necessary step in the Civil Rights movement. But the movement didn't succeed until it switched to violence after his assasination and cities burned. King's contribution was to sieze the moral high ground, enabling the claim that non-violence had been tried and had failed.
(Ghandi's revolution was getting a bit bloody toward the end, too.)
The current ruling class raises King and Ghandi as role models and conveniently forgets the roles of people like H. Rap Brown an Muhammad X. This detours people from the not-so-non-violent tactics that finished the job - and were the whole of many other successful revolutions - and gets them stuck in an endless loop of non-violent and ineffective protests that can be easily ignored.
(Please note that I'm not advocating the use of violence - merely trying to correct the never-ending misstatement of the historic record.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...
2. Politicians for being so pathetically weak that they can be bought and sold like prostitutes
Let me let you in a little secret. People here don't hate corporations per se. What they hate is how most corporations put money ahead of little things like, oh, the greater good of society. Ask yourself if the ones you're defending are doing the same thing.
That's all well and good -- I know a lot of lawyers, and as you say by and large they don't support stupid laws or overbearing tactics. But clearly there are also far too many lawyers who put the job (and the paycheck) ahead of personal ethics -- after all, your client didn't put a gun to your head and force you to engage in slimeball tactics against people who cannot reasonably defend themselves.
It occurs to me that this is much like the situation of a military grunt receiving an illegal order from his commanding officer. The grunt's legal and ethical duty is to refuse such an order. Likewise, it should be a lawyer's ethical duty to refuse orders from a slimeball client who uses coercive, illegal, or legal-but-unfair tactics.
Perhaps if more lawyers would stand up against such clients (despite the enticing mega-fees), lawyers would be perceived as heroes rather than as demon familiars.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
So the lawer who sued Netflix gets paid $2,528,000.
The "Class Representative" gets $2,000. Everyone else gets just about nothing but a junk email.
If I punched you, and you didn't die, would it then stand to reason that you were not hurt by the punch because you remained alive?
And that we can't tell exactly how much the industry is hurt by piracy doesn't really matter. There are still statutory damages, and claiming that they were hurt at least some by the infringement seems reasonable.
It's not that I feel they are fully in the right or that suing one's customers is a good business model, but claiming that they are not hurt by piracy at all seems a bit extreem.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
I disagree that it would be unethical to refuse a case from the MPAA. We're not talking about defending a person accused of a gruesome murder who is most likely bound for death row. If lawyers refused a case like that, I could understand someone saying they are unethical.
/ bagaric_full.jsp/
But the cab rank rule doesn't apply in the United States.
In the United States and elsewhere, the general rule is that there is no duty for lawyers to accept work, except where the professional association or a court assigns them to the client. According to the International Code of Ethics of the International Bar Association, 'Lawyers shall at any time be free to refuse to handle a case, unless it is assigned by a competent body'.[62] While the cab rank rule does not apply in the United States, it has a strong foundation so far as barristers are concerned in England[63] and Australia.
http://www.law.qut.edu.au/about/ljj/editions/v3n2
We're talking about an organization made up of one of the richest industries in America suing its own customers for even more money. While I don't agree with the concept of people downloading full movies, you have to wonder if the lawyers who take these cases are thinking with wallets when their firm gets the call from the **AA.
My Sysadmin Blog
This time the MPAA wants "as much as $600,000" in damages. The article also claims that "illegal downloading" costs the industry $5.4 billion per year.
It is obvious how they got their figures. 9000 people caught, sued for $600,000 in damages each, makes a total amount of damages to the industry of $5.4b.
Of course this means that all the other file downloaders are doing no damage at all.
I think I would be quicker and easier just to charge everyone on the planet $5 a year and let them download as much as they want. Then they would quickly get their $5.4 billion, plus more. And happy customers.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Their stock price lost about 1/3rd overnight, 1/100th of what is was in their glory days. It's interesting that they peaked in late 1995 while most other software companies hit their peak in 2000. Their stock chart looks like a big triangle, and you barely see it wiggle when the dot com bubble burst. Too bad for all those XFS users out there. At least it's open source.
A few reverse splits ought to help fix their delisting problem, depending on the extra requirements they must meet to be relisted.
No, it doesn't. It just makes the files visible again, but leaves everything in place. It just removes the opportunity for virus writers to hide files by naming them $sys$foo. So you could consider that it removes the most dangerous part of the rootkit, but it still cripples your system (scanning active processes periodically) and cannot be uninstalled easily.
It does not have to do that, as the original DRM software ("rootkit") is still in place. That one consumes resources already, so there is no need to consume even more resources with another daemon. As the DRM software is still running, re-inserting the CD will not change anything because the software will detect that it is already installed. The only difference is that the files are visible instead of being hidden.
This is irrelevant, as they do not uninstall the DRM software. So it still counts the number of copies that you make. If you have already made your three copies before applying the "service pack", then you will have none left afterwards. Guess why they do not make it easy to uninstall the software?
-Raphaël
Agreed to a point. Unfortunately, the only way to make a living as a musician is to participate in the corrupt entertainment industry. Since popular musicians provide real value to society, it's hard to fault this group. They could work in another profession as a day job, but then they could not concentrate on their chosen profession, and the public would not benefit from their musical talent.
This one is obvious. As with any megacorp, the MPAA members are responsible for doing everything in their power to maximize their profits. This includes exploiting artists wanting to make a living, exploiting the public domain by extending copyrights, and exploiting a weak government by bullying in the courts and buying laws protecting their profits.
Unfortunately, this is primarily the result of living in a republic with lax campaign finance rules. Since with our "fat and happy" populace and two-party system, votes can essentially be bought and sold with media exposure, political money is what is required to be reelected. Those politicians who stand up to the big corporate interests will fail to receive campaign funding and will not be reelected. Those who are left are the "weak" or corrupt ones who do whatever the corporations ask of them.
This is really three groups.
When it comes down to it, we have a self-sustaining system where corporations pay to elect politicians, politicians establish and protect the corporations, and politicians further protect the right of corporations to do so by not enacting real campaign finance reform. To sustain the system they must keep the populace happy and well-fed (give them their soma, as it were) thus preventing violent revolution and maintaining the ability to buy votes with media attention. For the people to effect any real change in such a system is difficult, since it is virtually impossible to get a sufficiently large group to care, especially since the two-party system ensures that everything but the largest or most well-funded group gets zero voice in government.
As for your overall point, I agree, lawyers in general are not the problem. However, the profession has become a poster child for a profession full of corrupt individuals, and with good reason. Like politicians, there is more work available for the lawyer who is willing to produce frivolous lawsuits for a client, and our court system makes such lawsuits prof
If I punched you, and you didn't die, would it then stand to reason that you were not hurt by the punch because you remained alive?
More accurately, if you punched me in the gut and I claimed you tried to kill me, my failure to die (or even require medical treatment) would be evidence to the contrary. For you, it would be the difference between a life sentence for attempted murder vs. a few months for simple battery.