Slashdot Mirror
Pay Or Else, News Site Threatens
WED Fan writes "The North Country Gazette, a news blog, says users who read beyond a single page of an article must pay up or they will be tracked down. They don't have a pay wall. If you go beyond page 1, you owe them. From the article: 'A subscription is required at North Country Gazette. We allow only one free read per visitor. We are currently gathering IPs and computer info on persistent intruders who refuse to buy subscription and are engaging in a theft of services. We have engaged an attorney who will be doing a bulk subpoena demand on each ISP involved, particularly Verizon Droids, Frontier and Road Runner, and will then pursue individual legal actions.'"
Somehow I doubt they have the money to prosecute all the slashdotters who will soon be hitting their pages. Just the slashdot effect alone will likely bankrupt them.
Id10ts.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
HAHA, damn, havent laughed that hard in a while...
Seems like a perfect solution to declining readership - sue them until they pay.
Seems like a lot of automated systems are racking up infractions
SURPRISE - By reading the word SURPRISE you have agreed to pay me a grillion megabucks! If you hide your IP you have also agreed to pay me the cost of a cyberpoliceman, and if you refuse to pay you have agreed to pay me the cost of a good beer! You are agreeing to even more as we speak! Surprise, huh? There, you read it again!
...add a little noise to their signal? I dunno about you guys, but I'll be firing up TOR on a one minute rotation and browsing to my hearts content.
It's password protected now. That was going to be fun. :/
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
HAHAHAHAHA.........Lame...they don't know how to make a website. Come hunt me down!
If you want that 1 free read but must subscribe, put a freaking paywall there.
2. profit!
The North Country Gazette. It's an interesting model. I wonder how it will work. We should all visit this and see.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
unless you have voluntarily agreed to the terms this is non binding. there is no mutual agreement to any payment and your actions of viewing a random page do not construe such a contract or agreement. furthermore the person agreeing to any contract terms on dhcp cannot be proven to be the same person who clicked in a week later. clueless asshats.
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 Server at www.northcountrygazette.org Port 80
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
0 Comments when I hit reply, and the site is already down.
Why do I suspect that somewhere in "upstate New York" there's a DSL modem sitting on a static IP that just got reduced to a molten pile of slag?
I'm going to go to the local StarBucks and register in their name and address and read/download about 100,000 pages. I hope they send starbucks a nice fat bill... Never did like them.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Or they'll sue me.
There is no -1 Disagree.
This slashdotting, I mean...
after all, a user/browser is simply requesting the info - the site (which is under their control) is then giving it to them. There's no copying here, except what they implicitly permit by their own actions.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Reads like a dumbass just trying to sound smart. You know the species. Vague legal threats with a bunch of "therefore" "forthwith" "hereby" "heretofore" and other such words that only _sound_ official.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Well if we're going that route, shouldn't they be shut down for facilitating the "theft"? Like Limewire?
A botnet would be useful about now.
I wouldn't give them the steam off my shit.
[un]fortunately, i was only able to actually view one page, as when i went to click on a second link i received a "Database Error".
the most interesting thing was that more recent articles have a password. that makes me wonder:
is there only one password? is it: ' and 1 = 1 ---?
do users "share" passwords?
what happens when someone clicks the "share" link? does having multiple people visit from your "share" cause additional copyright infringement?
Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's rack up huge legal expenses while we continue to lose profits! ...Then we can save our industry, we'll be heroes.
Even more impressive since the site in question wasn't even directly targeted; ./ linked to a story ABOUT the site in question. So two clicks (the second one requiring at least two seconds of scanning to find) were necessary.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Just add their site to Adblock Plus and you should be safe.
MWUHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I had to add the evil laugh; after all, it's almost Halloween.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Tell your army of pwned Windows machines to hit that server and read to page two: irritating blog vs. a couple hundred thousand clueless computer owners in court should be not only comedy gold but also a good lesson to everyone involved.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Reading the news now, using Google's cached pages. I'm sure they can foot my bill for me.
You have got to be kidding me! At what point would this hold up, ever? I beg to wonder what stakeholder douche with a slight pinch of technological know-how came up with this toilet spin idea. Besides the fact of droning on about how stupid of an idea that is, for anyone who has actually spent time cross-referencing IP address to physical users and are NOT an ISP, it's exhaustive, expensive, mildly time consuming and with all the other entities involved, you better have a damn good reason other than a flawed model to gain income from your website.
Wake up North Country Gazette and welcome to the wide variety the internet has to offer. The amount of users who will just find somewhere else to get their content far outweighs the few dumb ones that will pay for it. That's not business, that's lunacy.
Does that include the Database Error Page I'm getting constantly? Cuz I've seen that a dozen times
Heaven forbid someone should happen to walk by a newspaper stand, or pick one up at a coffee shop somewhere.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Maybe one could reply to their request for money stating that you charge $1,000 per minute of your time when it comes to responding to legal inquiries and that they now owe you $10,000 for services rendered (i.e. you reading and responding to their request).
I'm going to miss all that critical news that only the North Country Gazette could give me. Whatever will I do??!!
Too bad the site is down right now.
The site is down... I guess they decided they gathered enough IPs for today ;)
It has already been changed. Suddenly, all news articles there now say "This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:"
All the new articles seem to be password protected. Furthermore, I do not see a "purchase access" link anywhere on the front page. With that kind of usability, I'm sure tens of people will subscribe to them!
How much does a page that reads "Error establishing a database connection" cost? I mean, I think local news is good, but if that's your only headline...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wait until they find out about my proof-reading fee. I charge $1000 per article, but the first one is free. I will be sending them my bill once the site is back up...
Dumbest business model ever.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Zero comments when I posted*, and when I tried to access the site about ten seconds after that, it was already down ;-)
I think we can all see how this is going to play out...
* My first First Post. Yippy doo dah.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
To access full text articles and see funny message search for " (%22): http://www.northcountrygazette.org/?s=%22
Direct example article link: http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2010/10/24/grannis_firing/#more-19080
1. Create website that charges visitors automatically
2. Write in outrage about it on Slashdot
3. ???? No wait
4. Profit!
Seems perfectly legitimate to me. In fact, I'm about to sue them because instead of returning the HTTP commands I'm lending to them, they are processing them and responding with web pages! My supply of HTTP commands is running low, and these thieves need to be brought to justice.
what if restaurants tryed to sue for refills (after that fact and don't do any thing to stop you) and they point to a small and out the way sign saying NO FREE refills.
what if they tried to press theft of services on you for taking a refill like that?
Whoever their advertising guy is who thought this up is going to be getting a nice Christmas bonus this year. The traffic that's causing has got to be worth millions.
seems they've only shifted the / redirect. They are still serving deeper pages, which you can find by doing a google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anorthcountrygazette.org
responding slowly, but does load when there isn't a connection error:
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/index.html
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/contact.html
Contact the North Country Gazette
Please send your questions or comments to news@northcountrygazette.org
Well, knew him virtually up till about two years ago on a MUSH.
Real asshat, I banned him a few times, he'd slink back and apologize and then be weird again.
"...We have engaged an attorney who will be doing a bulk subpoena demand on each ISP involved, particularly Verizon Droids, Frontier and Road Runner, and will then pursue individual legal actions.'"
Yes, because somehow this is so much cheaper than putting up a paywall...
IANAL, but I have a word for what they're doing...it's called extortion. Good luck finding any readers after pulling a stunt like this...
Wow... Are they retarded or what, lol. Their content isnt even that worthwhile.
This is just like in Germany, where you have to pay for a few crappy state funded TV channels if you own a computer with an internet connection, because these channels put a few fragments of some shows on the web for a few days after they aired.
If you found this comment not that interesting you might want to watch this cyanide&happiness cartoon instead (yes, it's related to this slashdot story): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcO9svaOahM "The Sign"
Lolz... Denial Of Service condition at time of posting.... could it be dying a natural death? :)
Didn't even have large files that were directly linked to. Lame.
Good bet that their website admin is looking for a new job before the evening is over, poor bastard. (Not likely that the people actually responsible for this idiocy will be sacked, unfortunately)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
wonder what might be happening over there. ;) Hey, check out this gem:
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2010/10/27/raisinet_recall/
Raisinetcraft confirms it!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
I don't mean the top one to buy a subscription, I mean the one lower down, where you can simply "donate". To a company that will then sue you for not donating enough.
There is not enough Epic for this Fail. They've used up the supply of Epic Fail right through to New Years.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
She got in a fight with a retired attorney here, where he calls out her sockpuppetting and claims that "fair use doesn't apply," like just saying it would make it so.
Anyway - she's clearing using an autoblogging plugin like wp-robot (won't link, they are scum) to rip articles from other sites via RSS while stripping attribution in her attempt to extort money from people more ill-informed than her - if they exist. Basically, she is guilty of exactly what she's accusing others of doing.
I love cranks. They really keep the world interesting.
Full disclosure: I sysadmin blogs.law.harvard.edu.
not really : http://www.northcountrygazette.org/robots.txt
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
I just love your sense of humor and you almost made me cry for lol! ;)
Aaaahhhhh.... (recovering). More lol!
And then that stupid server went down,
CANTINERO: one beer for everybody!
Even assuming they could enforce this: What if you're behind a NAT? Are they going to try to sue me because my IP accessed 7 different articles after each person in my family accesses a single article as allowed by their terms? Even dozens or hundreds of views from a single IP isn't necessarily illegitimate (could be from a college or company). Clueless is right.
I await my subpoena with bated breath.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Frivolously suing all the people internationally who will be /.'ing your servers now. 4chan will have a ball with this.
I hear that the Cyber Police can help.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
read passed the title of my post, then you owe me five bucks for the benefit of my wisdom. I'm just going to presume that everyone who posts after has read my post... I'll be in touch.
I'm working in office right now so I'm not sure if I can contribute enough time to make a web crawler for this, and I'm surely not leaving for Starbucks in these few hours... but we can do this in Python...
http://code.google.com/p/harvestman-crawler/wiki/WritingCustomCrawlers
My basic idea is this... someone can be installing this crawler package into Python, write an event handler for each crawled URL from the crawler and ask the crawler to continue only for URLs inside the site's domain - which is simply a regex check.
That should be less than 50 lines of code. Someone write it, test it, and let's go to Starbucks and party tonight.
Where can I read more about this?
I can't get to the site to check, but do they allow you to print the article like every other news site that does multi-page layouts, cause that will be only one page.
Considering how often the Googlebot likely accesses their page, can you imagine the number of Subpoenas? Google will be filing Chapter 11 shortly.
...in bed
Wyatt calling anyone an asshot. talk about pot/kettle!
Need a bunch of traffic on your site? Threaten to sue your readers and wait for a popular site to call you out on it -- genius!
(yes, realize they are just a bunch of ya-hoos, but would be great if this was on purpose)
sue SUA USA!!!
I am not even able to read that precious single article, even on the homepage I get "403 Forbidden". I want my free article as you promised, or else I am suing you for breach of verbal contract!
I went to this page:
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2010/10/
And found over 30 ads in the righthand sidebar. They claim "only one free read per visitor", but since they've exposed me to their advertising messages, my read is no longer "free". This would be easy to prove in court since advertisers are still willing to pay per impression. If the Gazette wants to argue that my visit is "free", then they better refund all of the impression based fees they received from advertisers.
If they want people to pay for "free" content, they should make it free first.
Maybe I just don't understand how robots.txt works, but it looks to me like Google just can't index /axs/ and /cgi-bin/ which seems reasonable, but would mean they can index all the actual content. Isn't that what it means?
One was titled "Forbidden" and the other "Database error."
They were too short for my tastes, but I too invite them to hire a Canadian lawyer to come after me - and they better bring a translator, because I'll insist it all be in French!
My guess - they're doing this to try to bump their traffic up so they can show advertisers to their crappy wordpress site "look at our traffic stats."
When I have some free time, maybel I'll email a few of them, to help clue them in to the con game.
-- Barbie
if you have your eyes open while you read this you owe me $50 for every millisecond.. honor system does not apply.
If I find spelling errors on their site, can I charge them for my proofreading?
I was forced to post, so I could undo a mistaken moderation. Why does moderation happen instantly? Why can't you undo it, if your mouse slips, except via this method?
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/category/adirondacks/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/advertise/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/investigative-reports/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/letters-to-the-editor/
Maybe this will be more interesting
I noticed the only name that keeps popping up is June Maxims.
Sounds to me like it might be a 1 horse show. Some blogger with dreams of world domination.
If its an actual paper then Instead of complaining to them Call the people who use them for advertising. Say you wont do business with any company that does business with a company like this one.
Heres a list of some of the adds I saw on the site.
US Legal Forms
http://www.uslegalforms.com/?auslf=northcountry
1-877-389-0141
Ace Hardware
http://www.acehardwaresuperstore.com/
1 (888) 230-2323
Adopt a Pet
http://www.adoptapet.com/
1-800-Save-A-Pet (1-800-728-3273)
Shop The Adirondacks
http://www.shoptheadirondacks.com/
(310) 480-3737
The Sierra Club
https://tioga.sierraclub.org/joinorgive/member4.htm
415-977-5500
Purrs and Paws
http://www.purrsandpawsrescue.org/
518.798.0718
Handtrux Toys
http://www.handtruxtoys.com/
973.812.5222
Miles Kimball
http://www.mileskimball.com/
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/
Dollar Days .com
http://www.dollardays.com/
877-837-9569
And Ironically (to me anyway)
Cyberbullying
http://www.cyberbullying.us/
Call all of the people paying them to advertise for them and let them know how you feel.
I don't think the site was Slash-dotted to 403 status, when the slash-dotting started I think they saw that a big "theft" was about to occur and they had to put a stop to it by cutting off access before they went bankrupt from so much "theft" occurring taking dollars out of their pockets! Hopefully they stay offline, whoever is running the site seems insane!
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Please, no one tell this paper that the cost of hiring a lawyer to track down every internet user reading their site will likely cost 10 to 20x as much as just building the site correctly in the first place.
/b/..."
"Dear
I like music
Good answer, wasn't aware wget could do that. So it's just this...
$ while true; do wget --mirror --delete-after http://www.northcountrygazette.org/; done
You can pretty much do this in a jailbroken iPhone with wget installed, sipping coffee leisurely in a Starbucks.
I accidentally my entire /20 to this page. Is this dangerous?
This "newspaper" site seems to blocking traffic that comes from the link on the techdirt site. I assume they would also block shashdot too. Thus the 403 error. More clever than I would have expected them to be.
But if you type the URL in your browser, the site is still up and working, such as it is.
Due to what I assume is a typo on that page, Googlebot is not excluded from reading any pages on the site...
By reading more than five words of this post, you now owe me $50. Additionally, I consider blinking to be a second viewing. Successive views cost $(50^n) where n is the number of sandwiches in the nearest bakery.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Congratulations the excessive stupidity of your idle legal threats has gained the attention of slashdot. You no longer need to worry about subscriptions as the traffic you are getting will effectively DDOS you for the foreseeable future.
Sample quote
-- Barbie
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 Server at www.northcountrygazette.org Port 80
So there was an error trying to get the error document that was needed for the first error... wow
I think the whole point of this is to scare users who have been doing this into buying subscriptions. I'm sure they'll even get a few people, but their little notice isn't a legally binding contract. The user didn't agree to the terms, so this isn't going to hold up in court. They have no reasonable expectation that people are only going to look at one page. They know people aren't going to listen to it and they might not even see the notice to begin with. This is like putting a jar of candies outside your house on Halloween, and leaving a tiny note that says: "You may only take one candy. Take more than one candy and we will sue you" - It's not illegal to take more than one candy, even if it's not the most courteous thing to do.
It used to be that only porn sites had these warnings.
Figures. Thanks for the info, Hatta. Shortly after I posted my comment I found out that the web site was already inaccessible, so I couldn't even read anything past the post on techdirt. Didn't pursue it past that, it isn't worth my time.
One could almost feel sorry for her, as she's obviously batshit insane; but considering the amount of resources she costs other people in insisting on spreading her demented bullshit, maybe not.
It sounds to me like she's suffering from some form of dementia.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
just saying. They should be using that for the pay-for site, they aren't really an org, per se. And www.northcountrygazette.net tickles my site's porn blocker, so check that out home /.ers, or good work you crafty URL parking collectors!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
North Country Gazette is gonna backtrace you!
Their approach appears to be consistent with contract law.
IF you understand their terms, and
IF your understanding of their terms matches their understanding of their terms, and
IF their terms are not illegal. and
IF you click on the 'next page' icon,
THEN you ought to be liable under general contract law.
It's like a lemonade stand that's operated on trust. You can't just steal the lemonade, you have to pay for it.
But just because you can do it, doesn't mean that you should. For some reason, I find the newspaper's conduct disgusting. I'm having a hard time expressing the reasons behind that feeling, though Probably because most newspapers just recycle news service stories anyway.
Exercise for the reader: select any article on the site. Any one. First one or two sentences are enough. Copy-paste into google. Have fun finding original sources for most of what they threateningly repost. If not all, that is - my 6 random tries were all successes. I think it's them who are in hot water.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You people seem to think the GPL is fine as a binding contract
The GPL is not a contract. It is a licence that allows a person to use redistribute somebody else's copyrighted work under certain conditions.
> Contracts do not have to be signed to be binding (though it helps) with the exception of Real Estate (here in the US).
Purchase of real estate is a typical example, but there are other things, too. To be sure, always consult a lawyer in your state--and always do that when lots of money is at stake, just in case.
Historically, the "statute of frauds" in England listed a bunch of things that had to be in writing if they were to be binding, as opposed to a contract for the sale of a watch, for example, which can be made by swapping the watch for some cash. (Although laws in most states create default rules about what happens if the watch is defective, for example, and you try to return it.) Hundreds of years ago, you couldn't sell land without a signature, or make a contract that by its terms would last for more than one year, or make a wedding contract (IIRC) without a signature, and there are other things on the list.
The idea is "formalism," requiring written contracts and specific procedures. Formal laws are useful beforehand because they tell you what you're getting into and make it clear what you have to do to get it done, but they're bad afterwards because you often can't point out to the court afterwords that you were trying to do something else and you messed it up, or that it might not make sense to do what the documents say. Formalism is appropriate for the things in the statute of frauds because they're important contracts that you don't want someone to be able to lie about, so you want the evidentiary function of a clear-cut document saying what you've agreed to.
A classic example of the downsides to formalism is accidentally building a foundation an inch into your neighbor's yard: formalism says you have to tear down your new house, realism says you have to pay for the land at fair market value. Unless there's evidence you did it deliberately, in which case the court will hit you over the head with a baseball bat. (As always, consult a lawyer for the rules in your particular state.)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The site was up again briefly, but then I was suddenly unable to access. Did it go down again, or did she ban me?
They have a great money-making scheme. The pages are loaded with advertisements and now their pay-per-view stats have gone through the roof.
Nobody is allowed to look at my precious website! NOBODY!
It is MINE! My precioussss!
Seems to be working now. But I'm having a hard time with understanding the issue. Can someone please put it in a car analogy?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
By that same token, you might consider their site offering you a page of data an implicit agreement to YOUR contract (the one that says you own all data that is given to your browser and expect royalties), no?
Anyone in the know about Firefox plugins feel like writing one that puts exactly that as an EULA in a cookie and sends it to all web sites you browse?
I guess they heard how dumb it was to have a paywall -- so they set up something even dumber!
The North Country Gazette welcomes letters of up to 300 words. The editor reserves the right to reject letters or edit for clarity, brevity, good taste and accuracy, and to prevent libel. No poetry or letter writing campaigns will be accepted. Submissions are limited to one every 30 days. All letters must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. We will not publish street address, e-mail address or phone number.
Letters can be submitted at news@northcountrygazette.org. All letters become the property of The North Country Gazette.
So...a letter writing campaign consisting of an anonymous 301 word bad-taste poem sent every 29 days would not be well received? Interesting...
NAT / PROXY - let them pay.....Suckers!
If you read this post, you owe me one million dollars. Mwah ha ha!
That implies more than one person is involved.
The site is using something called ax.pl to log off-site URL clicks. It states that it doesn't limit the size of its log and will simply crash when used too much. The URL is http://www.northcountrygazette.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://www.google.com I am not suggesting to continually bombard this website to crash it via filling up its logs with clicks. I am suggesting that you don't do anything and simply smirk at the sillyness of the situation.
It's not a paywall because you are allowed through before agreeing to pay.
I suggest: Bullywall, extortionwall, sleazewall
I'm going to send them an invoice for 10 cents for each pixel on my screen they have consumed.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Check out http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2010/10/21/sexy_emails/ (but use Firefox, Chrome or Konqueror.)
Let's hope the site is at one of those hosting companies that charge a hefty per-gigabyte fee for going over your bandwidth cap.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Did they do something stupid? Idiotic, even? Certainly. But since when did /. mods emply 4chan methods, such as intentionally creating a DDoS? I can understand if there was an actual news article people were wanting to discuss, but this was an entirely transparent DDoS. And 4chan mods can always fall back on the fact that anyone can start a thread, whereas here a very specific mod very specifically did this...just to be obnoxious.
An eye for an eye? Is that what we're going for? Is this "news for nerds"? Socially redeeming, in any way?
Gee, I wonder if I'll get sued for reading this fascinating content:
https://www.northcountrygazette.org/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi
The newpaper's site (http://www.northcountrygazette.org/) is now throwing up a 403 error. Fastest slashdotting ever?
No, THey are, apparently, blocking referrers because once the story got out is seems that a lot of sites are linking to them because of it. If you get there via google, for example, no problem. Most of the new posts are password protected but there are a number of stories down the page that are accessible. My analysis: Meh.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Am I only allowed to get one news post on my RSS before they shut me down?
activestudios web design
DRM@Work: If someone runs a private webserver, and wants to restrict access to content what ever reason, they can knock themselves out enabling that restriction... but they should at least utilize a fig of authentication. How hard can it be to install basic access authentication and registration?
DRM@Home: If someone sells me media intended for my personal, private use, and then puts limits on my personal, private use, then I'll knock myself out working around the limits.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Tor FTW!
Anyone who reads this post owes me $100
... follow her on twitter?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'll admit, I didn't read the article, but from the summary I don't see a whole lot wrong with what she's doing. Moronic, yes, but legally unsound...I don't think so. If you click through to an article on her site and on that page it says that by clicking through to another page you agree to purchase a subscription, then I'm not sure why everyone thinks there's some sort of legal problem with this. Electronic signatures are just as enforceable as their paper counterparts, and like it or not, that text would qualify as a contract that you agreed to by clicking through. This has been upheld numerous times on sites where the TOS is just a link in the site's header or footer, I think they call it clickwrapping? Users would say, "well I never read the TOS", and the judge says "sorry, it was available to you, guess you shoulda read it".
... write on her wall?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
How many hits did they sucker you guys into giving them?
I work for an ISP. We charge to respond to subpoena requests (yes, even for law enforcement). When the site comes back up I'll hit it enough to raise our EPS.
The difference with the GPL is you can download and use it to your heart's content. The GPL GRANTS you rights to redistribute the stuff, rights you otherwise wouldn't have under normal copyright law.
The GPL is a PERMISSIVE license. This thing is a RESTRICTIVE license, and it's applied retroactively. Neither of which happens with the GPL.
Next time you go to court, represent yourself. The Internet needs a laugh.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Their robots.txt disallows indexing from a lot of spiders. Weird.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/02/12/home-care-agency-chief-accused-of-embezzling-900k/
Things like this always make me wonder if the poor bastard involved is a /. reader, and how he feels. Not that I am advocating sympathy for this idiotic idea or its implementers.
To all of those that noticed that there are passwords: The passwords don't exist if you access the articles through the archives.
Lesson learned? Indeed.
@ Grimbleton: Ultimately there is only one person involved, the one who made the decision to do it this way.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
wget
This reminds me of Rick Sutcliffe's Modula-2 site where he claims a viewing price on a publicly viewable website. http://www.arjay.bc.ca/Modula-2/Text/index.html
sig = null;
If their servers hadn't already been DDoS'd (whether by us or by anon), I would use all my processing power to post URL's to trollface on every article.
Johnny: I want my two dollars!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
North Country Gazette uses Google AdSense, as well as several competing ad providers, which violates the AdSense terms of service. I feel, as a conscientious citizen of the internets, that I am honor bound to report it to their Violations department.
The cow goes "tink"
Begun, the Droid Wars have.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Unfortunately, common law, including the Restatement of Contracts (Second) requires that a "meeting of the minds" take place in order to form a binding contract. In order for such a "meeting of the minds" to occur, each side must have been provided the ability to review, consider, and agree to any applicable terms and conditions. Absent "assent" or "agreement" there can be no "meeting of the minds" and thus no contract can be formed or enforced. If I can access your content freely, without action indicating my assent to your terms, then you may not enforce such terms against me. Waiver and estoppel need not even be introduced in such context - this is a situation in which every 1L across the U.S. has been tested, and the bottom line is: go fuck yourself, you may not enforce against me an agreement to which I did not agree (the cunning use of flags aside).
Seriously, grow up. Hire an attorney if needs be, preferably one that graduated from an accredited institution (not a CA non ABA school or Wal-Mart U) and you will win attorneys fees as well as damages (as may be warranted in your case).
The above is not legal advice, just the rant of an anonymous poster who may or may not be a licensed member of the bar of any state.
And, just like your valet and such, I have a sign that says I am not liable for homicide, malpractice, theft, loss, or nuclear holocaust. Because there is a sign, it is enforceable in a court, right?
GROW UP.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/ He's dead Jim...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm fine with people not bound by the GPL when using my programs. Then they are bound by copyright, which means they have to delete their unauthorized copy of the program.
Now isn't that fun.
I can see the flames from here..
I gotta contact my operatives over at 4chan..
For the first minute I was happy to see the slashdot effect on this site, but on second thought isn't this just a way to get advertisement? I mean how ridiculous can they be?
127.0.0.1 northcountrygazette.org
Bye!
If you put it on the Internet, it's free - or will be soon enough... Stop thinking you can make money from things that should be free.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
the 404 also has an error now:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /sitemap8.xml on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
You may not have noticed, but my HTTP request encapsuled a link to my EPLA (End-Provider Licence Agreement) that resides on my HDD under c: (or /home/$user, for you linux geeks)
This EPLA describes the rules governing the sending of your IP packets to MY computer and gives a formula to account for eyeball time allowed to your packets and the just compensation I should receive for your use of eyeball and brain time (standard time-sharing agreement).
It grants you a non exclusive right to my eyeballs, and excludes any right you might think you have to present me with advertisement without proper compensation for my eyeball/brain time.
To make it simple there is a mandatory 50/50 share for any advertisement revenue derived from my eyeball time, plus a one-off, annual fee of 5000$ for non exclusive access to my eyeball.
Another 5000$ fee is mandatory for the implementation and maintenance of the eyeball-to-brain connection, and has to be paid in full before sending me any IP packets and / or advertising.
We are currently gathering IPs and computer info on persistent intruders who refuse to buy subscription to my eyeball and eyeball-brain connection, and are engaging in a theft of eyeball and brain services. We have engaged an attorney who will be doing a bulk subpoena demand on each ISP involved,..
If you want to stop the legal proceeding, please kindly forward your money to me.
Regards,
Da5id
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
No, "we people" think that the GPL doesn't need to be a binding contract. Try reading it, it even says that it is not a contract, and you do not need to accept it.
Most people use GPL'ed software without even realizing that the GPL exists. They haven't accepted anything. They just download the software, install it and use it. Of course the site they downloaded it from needs a distribution license, and the GPL is such a license. Not a contract. No accept needed, you can distribute if you want to, or not distribute if you don't want to.
Now, some people seem to think that the GPL requires you to distribute source to any modification you make to a program. Not true. The GPL simply allows you to distribute the modifications WITH source, but NOT WITHOUT source. Same thing? Not at all. You can make all the changes you want to, provided you don't distribute them. Or you can distribute them without source PROVIDED you have a license to do so (the GPL doesn't give you permission to do this).
You could even distribute without a license. In that case the GPL doesn't come into play at all, and so it cannot tell you to provide source code. Distributing without a license does not fall under the GPL, it falls under copyright law. Copyright law requires no signature. However, it is not a binding contract, it's a law. A contract is a two way deal. "If you do that, I'll do this". A law is one way. "Do this or else..."
Conclusion: No signatures are needed, because no contract is needed. And no contract is needed, because the GPL doesn't put up any demands. It relies on the restrictions put up by copyright law.
This is the first time I've seen something like this in reality. I am in awe. (And yes, I realize that the two scenarios are not exactly the same, but still...)
invite them to hire a Canadian lawyer to come after me.
Good thing I live in Spain...
If I click on your sig, are you going to sue me?
Do I owe them money for this "access forbidden" ominous warning?
When I try to access http://www.northcountrygazette.org/ I get Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server.
According to section 416.8 of International Blog-Law, any contract written in Comic Sans on a blog is automatically agreed to and enforceable in a court of Blog-Law
And I thought Rupert Murdoch was crazy, these guys take the cake.
http://www.judicialaccountability.org/articles/maximoathproject.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8010717@N02/5123264762/
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
...can't get on the site now without a username and password. Good riddance.
Bulk subpoena's for John Does is a stupid state that allows for it and then changing states to sue it.
Oh USA your so funny it makes me sad.
Thanks for reading this, you owe me £10, cash is fine, thanks
They solved their problem. Now you have to logon to even reach the page.
The server www.northcountrygazette.org at admin requires a username and password.
Warning: This server is requesting that your username and password be sent in an insecure manner (basic authentication without a secure connection).
Does ignoring a threat count as circumvention?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
401, 402, 403, and now 404...
I wish I had a botnet, just to make several thousand IPs visit the site. It wouldn't take long for them to catch onto the fact that it's a botnet, then they wouldn't be able to tell who the humans are.
In the meantime, I'm going to plug their article links into some cheap PPC sites. That should keep them busy.
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
You are not allowed to read the next sentence in this comment.
From a strict legal perspective, you are only allowed to browse a web site if you have its operator's permission to do so.
This is far more important than contract law for this. Federal law also has the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030 et al) which makes it similarly illegal to access a computer without authorization. There has been a lot of debate as to whether or not this law can make terms of use for websites into binding rules with criminal enforcement without any need to be a successful contract. It seems to on its face, but I can't remember how the case law goes on this. IIRC, it hasn't really been tested before.
Of course, the big problem in both a contract and computer fraud action is claiming damages. In both cases, civil actions are limited to economic damages, which will be hard to argue for mere access to a website.
(I am also not a lawyer, by the way.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
i.e. the browser may without your intent or knowledge prefetch data that you never see.
And spam bots and more could hide URLs to such a site not unlike one pixel display of images and more. Perhaps hidden in a CSS.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
The site was effectively offline when I first saw this article yesterday, and as of right now the site is still dead; a server answers and demands a username and password (which might be "password", hmmm?).
Serves them right, I think. Somebody's learning a lesson, all right, and it's NOT the "intruders".
When you load any page, it does an HTML login request, and goes to a 401 if you don't login.
For the home page, it does a whole bunch of login requests, and if you click cancel on each, you finally get their homepage.
A homepage where all new stories since yesterday require a password.
And even dopier, EVERY SINGLE STORY has a "Tweet this/Post to Facebook/Digg/Del.icio.us" set of links! Uh, if you don't want people to get to it, why do you provide that crap?!?!?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
The GPL is a PERMISSIVE license. This thing is a RESTRICTIVE license, and it's applied retroactively. Neither of which happens with the GPL.
GPL is a non-permissive copyleft license. GPL does not permit you to distribute copies under a more restrictive license. MIT and BSD licenses are examples of permissive (copyfree) licenses.
The GPL gives you rights you don't have otherwise. It's not trying to take away rights you already have. That's what is meant by "permissive" vs. "restrictive".
Don't be stupid.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
wget -r -p http://www.northcountrygazette.org/center.html ;) Working now.