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Lawyer Banned for Threatening File-Sharers
S. Hare brings us a report from TorrentFreak about a lawyer working for a Swiss anti-piracy group who was recently given a 6-month ban for her attempts to intimidate file-sharers though letters threatening fines and court fees. Elizabeth Martin demanded 400 Euros each from "hundreds of thousands of file-sharers," and suggested that they would have to face large settlements if they did not comply. The Paris Bar Council took exception to this and instituted the ban. Martin worked for Logistep, a company who has had trouble following laws in the past.
"The disciplinary board decided that 'By choosing to reproduce aggressive foreign methods, intended to force payments, the interested party also violated [the code] which specifies that the lawyer cannot unfairly represent a situation or seriousness of threat.' In addition, the lawyer also violated the code by cashing payments into a private account, not the usual dedicated litigation account, known as a 'Carpa'. Martin also refused to reveal how many payments had been received from file-sharers."
Ever heard of Linux? Jackass. Go back under your bridge.
RIAA and their lawyers do the same (scare tactics), and do it more and more blatantly.
How does the RIAA know that it's theft? That's the issue many take with them. It's the way they go after people through their ISP's. Which they SHOULDN'T have access to in the first place. But silly me, I always assumed "Innocent until PROVEN guilty" meant just that. My mistake.
If they had any real ballz they would have permanently dis-barred her, especially given her past abuses.... oh wait the law really doesn't apply to those who are supposed to enforce it...
Also I wonder if anyone who received the letter could sue?
Nope, banned from doing lawyer stuff temporarily.
Should not such an act as this hold a penalty of disbarment?
This is only another situation that shows there is no position a human can hold that prevents him from committing some deception against others.
It is because of such evidence that some positions of power should be eliminated or have built-in checks that would at least require wide scope and unlikely collusion to perform.
Especially those positions of initiating war.
Yeah, and some of us can keep producing value, not like other people who _apparently_ can only produce value once in their lifetime and so require copyright terms of > 100 years to support them (or long patent terms).
To the latter bunch I say, go find something you are better at and stop wasting time and resources.
If the speed of communications has got faster, and people want a faster pace of progress, then the length of all these monopolies should be getting shorter and shorter, not longer and longer. In the old days it takes a long time for a book (or other work) to get from an author to people (takes time for people to get to know about the book, and for payment to reach the author etc). Now I believe it should be much faster if you are doing things right.
Linguists dropped prescriptivism a century ago, and English speakers are often proud of the fact that they have no body directing usage like e.g. the Academie Francaise. Your ranting about what is correct English isn't going to change anything and you'd have peace of mind if you finally got with the times.
In much writing things are still going to take a while. Peer review takes time, because peer reviewers have busy lives. Doing fine typesetting is still a laborious task (yes, computers help, but you still have to painstakingly tweak their output).
Still, for some forms of entertainment, things do move fast, and once things are out they can be quickly duplicated. But in fact, they have always moved fast and copyright was an unnatural innovation forced into the the market only a few hundred years ago. In Ancient Rome, for instance, people would transcribe poetry recitals, have copies mass-produced by a team of amanuenses, and then sell it in the marketplace. No one seems to have had a problem with this lightning-speed duplication and sale of material. In his Epigrams , the poet Martial complains only that someone else was putting his own name on his poems, but he had no problem with people profiting from the poetry itself, even if he didn't see a dime. The arts flourished even without copyright.
The digital era has brought nothing new in many respects. Art just fine existed before copyright, and we should dismantle it now because it will exist after copyright.
Makes you wish you lived in Freedom, doesn't it?
Stick Men
Try to circumvent the law.
BANNED FOR LIFE from practising law
anywhere on the planet, PLUS banned
from running for public office.
Time to get medieval on these types.
And besides, this is a suspended sentence, ie she will not be banned for 6 months this time, but would in the future if she commits more ethics violations.
A friend of mine had a kid sister who got in with some bad friends, and was involved in some apparent shop lifting shenanigans at the local mall. She never stole anything, but her friends did, and this was made pretty clear with store management, so nothing ever came of it.
A few months later they get a letter from a law firm in Tennessee (they live in Canada), threatening to sue unless they turned over $500. My friend's family was quite intimidated, and was even ready to fork over the cash until I wrote them a letter for them in response. I basically told them to fuck off, and that if they wanted to pursue charges we would see them in court.
The knew full well that there isn't a lick of evidence that my friend's sister ever stole anything, they also know that there's no fricking way they're going to go through all the trouble of getting a local (Canadian) law firm to sue. It was all one big scare tactic.
And people wonder why lawyers are so hated.
... the interested party also violated [the code] which specifies that the lawyer cannot unfairly represent a situation or seriousness of threat.
I would think that there'd be similar Federal or State law here in the U.S. Not that it would matter: copyright law is so screwed up here that when the RIAA says you might go down for hundreds of thousands of dollars they actually aren't lying. Not about that, anyway.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Don't use Microsoft Word for serious work then. Computer typesetting is a solved problem. Has been since the eighties.
All ye Slashdotters listen up: Each of you must PAY ME ONE THOUSAND POUNDS STERLING immediately, or else I will tell your mommy on you!
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
All nazis must die, and grammar nazis are not excluded from this.
Yes, but as we've known since Saussure and his concept of l'arbitraire du signe, the rules are ever-shifting and based on mutual intelligibility, which can stretch much more than you give it credit for.
Definitions are established by usage, and dictionaries do not set the meaning of a word, they merely reflect the meanings given to it by the community. Any dictionary maker will readily admit to this. If people start using "who" with non-animates, as they have already been doing in some varieties of English for decades or centuries, dictionaries will eventually reflect this usage.
Assigning grammatical animacy to non-animate items is a common development in languages. It's already happened once in the history of English (when Proto-Indo-European innovated animate terms for water and fire).
Actually, what I found most interesting was the add for Myka, a BitTorrent based set-top box. Could have potential.
The home page looks a bit suspect though. Anyone have any real information on it?
Companies are a collection of people. 'Who' can refer to plural. So yes, it is perfectly acceptable.
Here is the really disturbing part. That lawyer may have collected a fortune from people seeking to avoid a court hearing. By simply suspending him for six months the court effectively encourages others to do exactly the same thing. This is a case where a staggering fine would have sent a message that no other party dare pull such nonsense.
I am well aware of all these points, however, this particular use of the word is still wrong, according the majority of people who speak the English language, and therefore your own logic shoots down your argument. You make the point that things can change, and yes they can. But you also point out that these changes are based on common usage, and that is where your argument falls down. In order for your defense to have merit, calling an inanimate object "who" would have to be a usage that is becoming commonly accepted... but it is NOT. It is simply illiteracy. In fact it is something that people who have possessed low levels of literacy have "commonly" gotten WRONG for at least a couple of hundred years, and in that time the commonly accepted rules concerning it -- and the definition of the word "who" -- have not changed significantly. If you want to talk commonality here, the exact form used in the post is "commonly" accepted to be incorrect!
Languages do change. And you may be very knowledgeable in the history of same. But trying to defend a usage that is acknowledged to be incorrect by the vast majority of English speakers looks to me like nothing more than talking out your ass just so you can admire the sound it makes.
A company at it's core is a group of people (even though their humanity may be open to debate) therefore who is perfectly applicable.
do u get it? lolz
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
And mutual intelligibility does not exist without generally accepted commonalities. You are arguing in circles.
:o)
What you call "prescriptivism" is the basis of those accepted commonalities... in fact it is those, and nothing more. You made that point yourself. You can deride it all you want, but you cannot eliminate it without also eliminating those necessary commonalities. If you think it is folly to have mutually understandable languages, more power to you. You can go invent your own and try to communicate with others using it. I have no reason to care.
But I am not the one here who is arguing in logical circles... you are. And there is very little in this world that is more "masturbatory" than that particular brand of circle-jerk.
Have a nice day.
"In much writing things are still going to take a while"
;). If you're good or entertainingly crap you can get $$$.
AFAIK the copyright term stuff is _after_ publication. So if you're not done yet, don't publish.
My point was nowadays, after you publish, you should be able to get word out really quickly. Just some emails to your friends linking to your "teaser material" and word will soon get around, especially if you didn't actually produce crap. Or your crap is so crap that it "wrapped round to great" - just look at some of the "internet phenoms"
If the teaser material is all you've managed to produce, perhaps you should just do it as a hobby and get different job.
Wouldn't it be great if my employer paid me for the next 100 years just because I created one piece of work? It might be cushy for me, but I doubt this sort of thing benefits society, especially if it means nobody else can use that piece of work or a close derivative without my permission for the next 100 years. I think that's very wrong.
Lastly, someone else putting name on your work = plagiarism, which is something different from copying since it involves lying.
A copyright term of even just 7 years should be ok. Microsoft will still get money from XP, but they'd then have to make something much better than Vista, since people could use Win2K instead.
If they don't like it, I'm sure Apple or IBM will happily step up to take their place.
It's truely amazing that people continue to support copyright theft here. It's an indection that most Slashdotter's don't actually produce anything of value.
I produce shit, and since you seem to eat shit, it is valuable to you.
I'm no lawyer and I don't know anything about the French legal system --- but I think it is fairly rare for a lawyer to get a ban and this will look bad on his CV, and I'm pretty sure the penalties will get heavier for repeat offense or copycats.
It would also be interesting to see whether some of the threatened people are willing to take civil action...
In much writing things are still going to take a while. Peer review takes time, because peer reviewers have busy lives. Doing fine typesetting is still a laborious task (yes, computers help, but you still have to painstakingly tweak their output).
All of that is absolutely NOTHING compared to the days when goods were carried by horse, typesetting involved blocks of metal, strips of lead, and a hammer, and a printing press' speed was measurable in seconds per page.
At that time, marketing was primarily word of mouth and equally slow to produce print ads in entirely local papers (no such thing as buying a national ad). The time between an author completing a work and having it ready for printing was measured in years. Still more years would pass between publishing and mots potentially interested buyers hearing of a work's existance.
At that time, in spite of the long lead time to market, 28 years was considered adequate time on a copyright.
By contrast, these days, the time between an author completing a work and it being bulk printed and marketed to all potential buyers is measurable in months. In spite of that, we seem to think a copyright measured in lifetimes is needed.
It's especially a travesty in software where a 28 year old program is of historical interest at best (more likely forgotten entirely).
Get some actual training in linguistics and then come back, OK?
I agree that people should stop nitpicking on grammar or spelling errors in comments --- part of the community here is not a native speaker of English (including yours truly) and we will often get tense or prepositions wrong. Also, punctuation rules differ per language; using commas and apostrophes correctly is not trivial in your native tongue so have a bit of patience with your fellow slashgeek.
:-) They post an average of one article per hour, so surely they have time to proofread a paragraph and check links (and link to print versions) in that time...?
For the editors I have no mercy, however: they are paid professionals and should get their spelling and grammar right. And avoid dupes!
Why is she getting just banned, as opposed to sued? IANAL, and if I were to go around sending settlement requests to thousands of people, there must be some law that could be used to stop me.
Is she being treated more lightly just because she's a lawyer?
By everything that you've said, Shakespeare was a hopeless illiterate. Without him, the modern vocabulary would be significantly smaller, as well as totally lacking in contractions. Changes in grammar do not happen over night, the majority of the populace doesn't wake up one morning and say, 'Oh, I think we should all talk like this today.' It has to start somewhere. Anyways, you're the one that started arguing in circles, pretty much ignoring the arguments provided against you in order to drive home your supposed point that this was WRONG. Well, scratch the circles, actually, you're just arguing like a brick wall, everything just bounces off.
"Peer review" refers to scientific writing, and specifically to research papers. Is copyright actually significant to those ? From what I've understood, the authors actually have to pay to get their papers published, so it seems to me that having them spread for free would help, not hinder, the scientists.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Since you challenge my assertions, it is on your shoulders to show where I was wrong. So... where was it? The simple statement that I was wrong will not suffice to make a real argument. Please... explain to me, if you can.
The Shakespeare thing does not cut it... you might want to try actually reading the thread before you make such outrageous claims. Shakespeare was not around in the "last couple of hundred years", which I clearly stated was the period under discussion.
So, really. I am serious. If you can actually address the issues I raised and show where I was wrong, by all means do so. I have always enjoyed being educated.
I agree with your first statement, but that is not the point. It is not what the argument was about.
First, my initial post was a response to someone else who was being a Troll, and who ALSO demonstrated little grasp of English. I was being sarcastic, true, but I was also making a point. The other comment was nothing more than an aside about a pet peeve of mine, clearly labeled as such. That hardly constitutes being a "grammar nazi".
But someone else argued with me -- incorrectly, in my view -- about my point. The rest followed.
So what you are doing here is telling me to shut up and take it when someone else tells me, without proper justification, that I am full of shit.
So... uh... WHO is being the nazi here?
Bitch!
No, it is not. Look it up! A company is an inanimate object that could never be mistaken for a person or animal.
Even a corporation -- an entity that is legally a person in many ways -- still does not qualify. I like your logic, but it simply ain't so.
Not so. Look it up. A company is not a "collection of people". A company is an inanimate object that exists only on paper. If you are referring to the group of people who work for a company, then yes... but that was not the case here.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
The fact that I disagree with you does not imply ignorance on my part. I know what "prescriptivism" is, and I have very solid and intelligible reasons for disagreeing.
On the other hand, I have known a number of Language majors, and even PhDs, who knew nothing about logic.
All insults aside, and in all seriousness, I can explain why your argument is wrong. But it is a long explanation, and I have some work to get done today, so it will not be for a few hours at least. But I can make it clear, no fear there.
AND, it should probably take place somewhere else, since these posts are getting marked down as "off topic", and for a change I agree with the moderators.
If you want my explanation, ask. I will not take the time to write it all out unless you do. Tell me where to send it.
It should be, um, large numbers of people.
IMHO, many lawyers, esp. North American ones, care far more about profits than their profession or their ethical standards. The law has essentially become a servant and slave to monied interests and no longer serves the people.
It's such a shame that corruption and greed are destroying this once great land.
I don't think the AC was too far off. At the very least, the /. groupthink is confused.
File sharing violates the license that most music is released under. That license happens to be based on copyright law. But, the prevailing attitude on /. seems to be that it doesn't matter because music is just data, and sharing data is easy/cheap, so file sharing should be okay.
On the other hand, every time a story breaks about some company violating the GPL, the /. crowd throws a hissy fit, even though the same principle still applies.
The **AA's tactics are a bit heavy handed, and their "evidence" gathering is a bit suspect,but they're as in the right as people suing GPL violators.
Maybe not
Yes, but they are still required to follow certain rules, and operate within the law. Stepping outside of certain boundaries can result in being disbarred, or charged, or both.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Burn her!
Honesty should be worth the extra points.
From what I understand, this is plain old extortion. Toss the bitch in jail with a very aggressive butch, so we'll have a precedent to use against the RIAA/MPAA's thugs.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
What ISP's could handle the requests for tens of thousands of subscribers information based in what? IP number and timestamp?
Why wouldn't such an immense data dump have been known about before now?
And who identified all these filesharers in the first place?
Somewhere this just isn't adding up.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
they did not have copyright or IP in ancient Rome and look what happened to them - where are they now?
To the latter bunch I say, go find something you are better at and stop wasting time and resources.
This from "TheLink", who is not content to f*ck with people using a link that people can read and decide to avoid. Now he has TinyURL'd the link.
There are lawyers, d*mn lawyers, and TheLink.
I come here for the love
The fact you remember prepositions exist, can spell it, and use it in a sentence puts you leaps and bounds ahead of 90% of the native-English speaking people. When I started seeing bad grammar in respectable advertisements (not parody, puns, trying to be funny, etc), repeatedly, I came to the realization it's now considered perfectly normal to butcher the Queen's English (pardon the pun) here in the US. I still cringe, though, when I hear, "Where are you at?"
You preferred the logout link? I thought the new one was an improvement.
You insensitive woman assumer!
"they did not have copyright or IP in ancient Rome and look what happened to them - where are they now?"
A better question is where will our civilisation and its trappings be 800 years in the future, because theirs lasted over a thousand years, while ours is less than 300 years old, and the cracks are already showing.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
" the prevailing attitude on /. seems to be that it doesn't matter because music is just data, and sharing data is easy/cheap, so file sharing should be okay."
/. crowd throws a hissy fit"
The problem for those whose livelihoods or businesses depend on copyright isn't what a few Slashdot geeks say and think, but the fact that most cultures believe sharing what one has with others is a positive trait (generosity), while hoarding stuff that isn't actually scarce by nature so one can charge for it is a negative one (greed). This is why every major survey that's been done indicates that the public sees nothing morally wrong whatsoever in sharing files as long as it isn't being done for profit.
"every time a story breaks about some company violating the GPL, the
The key here is "company", i.e. commercial piracy, which most Slashdotters agree with the vast majority of non-Slashdotters is wrong, irrespective of what's being pirated.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
You're confused. Greed is a positive trait. It's the trait that makes the world go round. Do you think the people who built your house did it for the joy of giving you a place to live? Or the guys who built your car were thinking "Wow, I sure feel great some guy is going to have transportation!"? No, they did it for the paycheck. Everybody is greedy, and the sooner you realize it's not a bad thing the happier you'll be.
No, it's not. The Slashdot community is pissed whenever anybody violates the GPL. IIRC, there was (some) outrage when some small distro tried distributing compiled ISOs and linking to the source code instead of providing it from their server. And it doesn't change the fact that individuals violating the GPL *could* be sued if the copyright holder wanted to.
Maybe not
Paragraph 1 of your reply shows that it is you who is hopelessly confused, because the bit you quoted from my post made it quite clear that I was claiming _most cultures_ believe sharing is a positive trait and greed is a negative one, not that I believed it (there is nothing anywhere in my post that says what my own position is).
"The Slashdot community is pissed whenever anybody violates the GPL"
You really are confused if you think that Slashdot is a community with a single coherent opinion on any topic.
" IIRC, there was (some) outrage when some small distro tried distributing compiled ISOs and linking to the source code instead of providing it from their server."
There was indeed "Some outrage", just as there's "some outrage" in Slashdot discussions about any topics that _some people_ feel strongly about. And the ones who have the strongest feelings tend to be both the most polarised and prolific posters when topics they care about are being discussed, hence the fact that these topics also attract more trolls and sock-puppets than less controversial ones.
Slashdot has around a million members, yet even the rare topics that get more than a thousand posts have contributors who number in the low hundreds, and the vast bulk of the discussions on them usually come from a couple of dozen people with either opposed but equally strongly held viewpoints, or posters who are playing "devil's advocate", trolling, etc. (I'm not implying that trolling and playing Devil's Advocate are in any way equivalent here).
So the "Slashdot community" that you claim is "pissed whenever anybody violates the GPL" is in fact a few tens or hundreds of people, while 99.9% of Slashdotters either completely ignore the entire topic because it isn't something they're interested in, or are only interested enough to read what others have to say about it.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.