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Rightscorp's New Plan: Hijack Browsers Until Infingers Pay Up
A few weeks ago, Rightscorp announced plans to have ISPs disconnect repeat copyright infringers. mpicpp (3454017) wrote in with news that Rightscorp announced during their latest earnings call further plans to require ISPs to block all web access (using a proxy system similar to hotel / college campus wifi logins) until users admit guilt and pay a settlement fine (replacing the current system of ISPs merely forwarding notices to users). Quoting TorrentFreak: [Rightscorp] says 75,000 cases have been settled so far with copyright holders picking up $10 from each. ... What is clear is that Rightscorp is determined to go after "Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Cable Vision and one more" in order to "get all of them compliant" (i.e forwarding settlement demands). The company predicts that more details on the strategy will develop in the fall, but comments from COO & CTO Robert Steele hint on how that might be achieved. ...
"[What] we really want to do is move away from termination and move to what's called a hard redirect, like, when you go into a hotel and you have to put your room number in order to get past the browser and get on to browsing the web."
The idea that mere allegations from an anti-piracy company could bring a complete halt to an entire household or business Internet connection until a fine is paid is less like a "piracy speeding ticket" and more like a "piracy wheel clamp", one that costs $20 to have removed.
they can be sued out of existence for every mistake they make, I'm cool with it.
These Rightscorp asshats should be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and serve multiple-lifetime prison sentences each.
Seems to me that any ISP that redirects browser HTTP requests becomes liable to suit from the customers - for substantially more than $20.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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You cannot prove a negative.
Sure you fucking can. Anything defined in such a way as to exclude other possible definitions can have the latter definitions be proven in the negative just as surely as the former definition can be in the positive.
3 != 4. A triangle is not a square. Red is not blue. Hydrogen is not helium. A dog is not a cat. If the coin landed heads-up, the coin did not land tails-up. If someone was in location A at time T, they could not have been in location B at time T committing crime C. You are not smart.
In your examples you are not actually proving a negative (that something didn't happen). You are proving that something is not possible or could not have happened.
Possible or not possible are easy by comparison. Proving a negative means, "take this thing that really could have possibly happened, and prove that it didn't happen". A shape cannot both be a triangle and a square. A pure color at a single wavelength cannot both be red and blue. You are drastically underestimating the scope of how difficult it is to prove a negative. "This couldn't have happened because it is impossible" is actually a positive claim and as such, can be proven.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein