It seems like Google is starting to fall into the same trap MS did, adding every feature that sounds neat because they can. This may elicit a response of "oh neat!" from people who read about it, but how often will you actually use it? I have a tough time imagining myself saying "oh I want to go 20 minutes out of my way so I can drive past the beach on my way to get my oil changed". My guess is that more people will accidently mess up their route when they are viewing the map than will get any real use out of it.
Although I think that the basic idea is terribly useful, the implementation of it appears to be pretty good.
I would contend that they were very much an engineering shop back then. It isnt reasonable to compare MS products of the early 90s to Vista/Leopard/Whatever today. Back when windows 95 shipped it was head and shoulders technically better than the other operating systems targeting average everyday folks. Although in retrospect its pretty obvious that it was a mistake, noone at MS or anywhere else really worried too much about things like security on consumer PCs. It wasnt bad engineering so much as it was just not an issue at the time. Virtually all companies didnt see the consumer security problems coming, not just MS.
Unlike most people here I do like Vista, but I honestly think that compared to their competitors they have lost a lot of ground in engineering strength compared to what they once were.
Well most stuff in the real world has pretty poor security. The thing that stops thieves is that whole "youll go to jail if you do this" thing. I mean how easy is it for a waiter to copy down your credit card number when he goes back to run it? Or take a quick cell phone picture when the guy in front of you in line hands the clerk his credit card. And yet somehow people still use their credit cards. I suspect that it is because we have this cool thing called law enforcement in this country that deters people from committing crimes. It wont be any easier to steal your info now than it was then.
If anything I would trust this more because it actually has the potential (if implemented well) to be far more secure than a number printed on the front of the card for the world to see. Even if they are broadcasting data unencrypted it will still be more secure than regular credit card use because the difficulty of electronic eavesdropping is much higher than the difficulty of reading a number on a card.
Unscrupulous debt collectors, private investigers, etc. use it more often than you think. If you have any reason not to want to pick up the phone there is a good chance the organization that wants to talk to you will try this trick.
I am not familiar with these updates, but I doubt that this is whats going on, it seems unlikely that MS is writing microcode updates for intel processors. Its probably modifications to the windows kernel to work around some bugs. As an oversimplified example one time I was working on a project and it was discovered that one of the processors we build for could generate a spurious interrupt under rare circumstances as a result of a tlb miss but the cache being hit at the same time. (it was more complicated than this, I am oversimplifying) So we simply added a check to the exception handler to see if the cache and tlb were in this state and ignoring the exception if it was. My point here is that software workarounds in the kernel for hardware problems are not unheard of or even that rare. In many cases they are absolutely necessary.
Now all that being said, I have no idea what the content of MSs patches were. But it sounds like they are just working around intels bugs.:)
I work at a company that makes operating systems. It is not uncommon for us to issue workarounds when hardware problems are found with processors. Just because MS is issuing a patch doesnt mean that it is their fault.
OK, those are fair questions. Note that I am only responding to the points you phrased as questions, I am not trying to dodge the other ones.
"- Even in the worst case scenario - that the downloader and everyone they uploaded to are truly stealing the content (morally wrong), the suits they are bringing are orders of magnitude greater than the theft committed. $3k-$5k out-of-court settlements are nearly universal; tet most people will not upload much more than the amount they downloaded, and even in extreme cases not more than several times what they downloaded. So, if they downloaded a music CD worth $15, they have (assuming all parties are stealing) stolen (or willingly facilitated stealing) 2x-5x that (5x is a bit arbitrary), or $30-$75. Even at the high end of theft ($75) and low end of damages ($3k), that is *40 times* the value of that which was stolen; the other way around ($30 and $5k), it's almost 200 times the value. Can you honestly tell me that you support that? "
I think its reasonable because 75 dollars is not an effective deterrent. If you shoplift a purse from a department store and the penalty is you have to pay whatever the purse is worth it seems kind of pointless doesnt it? Damages should be high enough to deter people from committing the crime, this is a principle that is often espoused by members of our legal system.
"- The RIAA has been using legal but immoral tactics to bring these cases. Most commonly, the RIAA picks people who they believe do not have the resources to defend against the suit, making the outcome the same, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent (and short-circuiting the justice system entirely): they have to settle, because they can't afford a lawyer to defend themselves (and if they do hire a lawyer, the RIAA lets them accumulate a sizable bill, then drops the case, so the people will usually have to pay more than the settlement would have been). This is done to build fear by maintaining a perfect prosecution record, to discourage others from sharing files or hiring a lawyer to defend themselves. I know of not a single case the RIAA has won - that is, the case has gone to verdict and the verdict was in their favor; if you know of a single case, click "reply" and link to it, right now. And because they drop cases once it becomes obvious they cannot win them, they have just the same never suffered a loss (though that tide appears to be slowly turning). They care so much about their perfect record that they will continue suits against people who they either knew from the beginning or learned during the trial are innocent, because dropping the case would show that they don't have absolute power, and diminish the fear they seek to create. Do you support each and every one of these methods? "
You claim that they go after people who cant afford to defend themselves, but I think it has been well established that they have no idea who they are going after when they first send out their letters. I am not entirely certain that your claim that they continue to pursue cases they know are erroneous is correct. If it is, then no of course I do not support that. But I do believe they have every right to pursue the basic idea of sueing people who unlawfully distribute their music.
All this being said, I am not a huge fan of the RIAA in general. I think it is regrettable that the success of an artist is primarily determined by getting 'signed' by a label. But copyrights are basically a good thing, and is your copyright is being violated then I do believe you should have legal recourse. And that should not be revoked just because it is happening on a large scale or because your company is less popular. And frankly, everyone who makes their living by producing copyrighted material (Like me, I am a software engineer) is benefiting from the RIAA's actions, whether they want to recognize it or not.
OK, so do you think record/movie/software companies that arent members of that organization should have the right to sue? What rights should companies other than Atlanta/TimeWarner/Sony/whatever have?
Also, I take issue with your assertion that they are looking for a certain 'type' of violater. They have no idea who the violater is when they start sending letters to ISPs. The fact of the matter is you just hear about the more sympathetic ones on slashdot. Single mothers, unemployed, etc. Should their legal rights be any different from the rest of us?
"Note the psychological kickback: If people pay a very reasonable fee for something, they will be less interested in seeding it to others for free"
This seems very unlikely to me. Currently people pay for CDs then immediately rip them and post the mp3s to various file sharing networks. They arent going to be loyal because they paid you.
I have heard your logic many times. Yet, I know of no artists who have been successfull at using this strategy for any extended period of time. Maybe there are a few, but in practice I doubt it would work very well for very many. And note that this strategy even if it was successfull would only work for musicians. What about filmmakers? That is a far more costly endeavor and much more dependent on copyrights. I could go on for a while about people who would become unemployed very quickly if copyrights could not be enforced, programmers, many types of engineers, authors, anyone who produces intellectual property really.
A bunch of screenshots with someone who is willing to claim that they took them and how it all happened is as good as eyewitness testimony. I think your example would be more like if you doctored a bunch of photos of stolen stuff in my house and then testified in court that this all happened. It will always be possible to frame someone. At some level you just have to make a reasonable assesment as to whether witnesses are telling the truth in everything from copyright cases to murders. Frankly, I very seriously doubt the RIAA is committing perjury and whatever other host of crimes would be necessary to fake evidence.
Theoretically at least they should only be going after people who were sharing copyrighted files on line. I dont see anything wrong with looking for people who are doing this, downloading the files from them, taking a few screenshots as this is happening to document what happened and sending a subpoena to a university. Do you have a better method? How do you think they should be pursuing violaters?
So how do you think indie movie companies, small record companies, software companies, etc. should protect their rights then? If you want we can exclude the big RIAA members from this. How should regular companies that thrive by producing copyrighted materials protect themselves when their work ends up on the internet where anyone can get it for free? Do you believe that they should be allowed any recourse at all? Should they be forced to sit back and watch as everyone in the world downloads for free what they invested a lot of hard work into producing?
I dont understand this attitude. The RIAA is just a regular business. If you dont like what they sell dont buy it or copy it. I dont like some channels on TV, I just choose not to watch them. (or record their broadcasts and post them on the internet if you want a better analogy)
So its pretty clear that going after individual copyright violaters is looked down upon on slashdot. I also remember back when napster was big everyone on here was upset that they were getting sued because they werent actually breaking the law, it was just the individual users.
So is it just one group who thinks that indivuals shouldnt be sued and a different group who thinks that the companies should be immune? How should the RIAA protect its intellectual property rights? Is it just a fundamental belief on here that copyright holders should have no recourse against violaters?
While there may not have been enough evidence to win they were just going out and sueing people at random. They had reasons to honestly believe she was infringing. If the ISP pointed the finger at the wrong person thats not the RIAAs fault. It sounds to me like they acted with the information that they had available to them. They may have gone ahead with a case that wasnt strong enough to win, but that doesnt mean that they were knowingly chasing down someone they knew to be innocent. I have a very difficult time believing that they honestly thought she was innocent and decided to pursue it anyway.
Offering to let them search a computer/hard drive doesnt prove much, you could hand any computer or hard drive over, there is no way to know it was the same one that was used.
Given the kinds of responses I am getting here I cant help but think that there must be something I am totally missing here that proves her innocence and the RIAA knew about it. Is there anything besides the computer without copyrighted materials on it? I searched around on the internet but I couldnt find much beyond a bunch of people that hate the RIAA for very reasons. Is there something I am missing here?
So if the ISP gave the RIAA bad information doesnt the fault lie with the ISP? The RIAA acted on what they had. They knew a certain IP was sharing copyrighted materials and they knew the ISP pointed the finger at her. And offering up a computer doesnt mean much, there is no way to know it was the same computer, or the hard drive was the same. Even if there was a mistake (which I doubt, but truthfully I dont know for certain and neither do most of the people on here) they are guilty of poor judgement at best, if an ISP told me she was assigned that IP at that time I would have sued her too. I have a tough time seeing this as "they knowingly persecuted someone they knew to be innocent".
Incidentally, I am a little disappointed to note that you added me to your 'foes' list. I would think a real lawyer would be above such things, I am not here to make enemies. Do you consider people who argue against you in court to be your enemies as well? I am surprised at the level of hostility that my responses have elicited. I just dont see how the recording industry is doing anything 'evil' here.
I didnt say that she had to prove her innocence. Others responded that a computer without copyrighted files on it conclusively showed her innocence and I was just pointing out that it wasnt true at all. One could easily have copyrighted material on one computer and then give the RIAA another computer when they sue you.
Yes, I am reading the replies. What I am trying to say when pointing out the cost of going after cases like this is that they are unlikely to be motivated by profit as others claim. The costs are high and any potential revenues are trivial compared to how much money they make from selling CDs.
I do understand that they lost the case, what I am trying to say is that just because there wasnt sufficient evidence to win doesnt mean they were in the wrong.
My point here is that they had evidence that showed a particulat IP was sharing copyrighted files. The ISP told them the IP belonged to her. Even if this was false, the blame lies on the ISP, not the RIAA. They acted on the information they given, I dont see anything wrong with that,
OK, since you and a few others are claiming that I am factually incorrect I will respond and ask how. They had her IP address didnt they? Thats an honest question, I cant imagine they went after her without an IP address. And please dont respond with some discussion about dynamic IP addresses and so forth, I mean the IP address that was assigned to her at the time they found shared files. If they didnt have an IP address or some other way to identify her how on earth did they find her?
Just because nothing was found on the computer doesnt mean she is innocent, it isnt hard to completely remove some files from a computer. Logically, their presence may prove guilt but their absence proves nothing. As long as they found her IP address sharing copyrighted material I dont see what the problem is. If they couldnt get enough evidence on top of that to get a guilty verdict that doesnt necessarily mean that suit was motivated by malicous reasons. I mean come on, it costs WAY more than 4000 dollars to go through with a lawsuit like this, if she was innocent they would have no logical reason to pursue it.
Do you really believe that they were sueing her just to be dicks? It makes no sense.
I have a very cynical reaction to cries of "person XYZ was sued by the RIAA and is innocent". I mean, its so easy to find people who are guilty that it just seems ridiculous that they would go after someone who has done nothing in spite of all the costs involved. Also you hear a lot of arguments about how "screenshots can be faked!" and so forth that dont necessarily hold water. Anything can be faked, pictures can be too and are often used as evidence. If you have someone who is sitting there saying they took the screenshot/picture thats as good as eyewitness testimony. Probably even better since you have a picture of what they saw instead of just a fuzzy memory.
All that being said, if she actually is innocent I hope she wins, but I doubt that is the case and if it is she is a very small minority among the people getting sued.
So you would have modded it troll/overrated just because you disagree with it and think the RIAA "doesn't have a lot of good karma"? Dont you see anything fundamentally wrong with that? Arent peer moderated discussions supposed to foster intelligent debate, not just modding down anything that the majority disagrees with?
It has nothing to do with which product is better. Honestly, I use google maps.
What I am saying is that they have used their dominant search engine to drive users to their maps program which has taken a huge share from mapquest because of this. It is very similar to how MS wants to use their dominant operating system to drive users to their search engine.
Sure, if I dont like it I can use a different search engine. The exact same way if I dont like it when MS does it I can use a different operating system.
I am not saying they are 'being evil' just that they are using their powerful position with maps to push around the littler dot coms, the same way that MS used to use their powerful OS position to push around the littler software companies back in their heyday.
Its flamebait because he is ripping on Alberto Gonzales the head of the Justice Department. That whole mess is totally unrelated to this, but it is a divisive issue and people are likely to argue over it in an impolite manner. Sidetracking a thread into an unrelated flamewar == flamebait.
I think this is a good change, but does Google really have the high ground here? They are using an extremely dominant product to market their other products. They use their search engine to push everything from google maps to gmail.
As an example can mapquest come along and demand that when a user searches for a street in google that their map be displayed prominantly as the first search item instead of google maps? This has a huge impact in the online maps business. Google has used a dominant product to gain a massive advantage in a new area. Not entirely unlike what the boys from Redmond like to do. Im not saying its evil, but it does seem kind of like a bully who starts crying when a bigger bully comes along.
Every time I read something like this I cant help but roll my eyes. 4000 dollars may sound like a lot of money to the average guy on the street, but think about how much they are spending running this whole legal operation. You have to pay people to investigate it, people to organize contacting everyone involved, and then hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in legal fees for anyone who doesnt immediately settle. Any quick back the envelope math calculation should immediatly reveal that this operation is running deep in the red. They cannot possibly be doing this to make a quick buck from 'extortion'.
It is not extortion because extortion is done to make money. There is absolutely no chance the RIAA is making any money with all the legal fees they are spending here. Typically they ask people to settle for very small amounts. Lawyers cost hundreds of thousands or even millions just to hire a few.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like Google is starting to fall into the same trap MS did, adding every feature that sounds neat because they can. This may elicit a response of "oh neat!" from people who read about it, but how often will you actually use it? I have a tough time imagining myself saying "oh I want to go 20 minutes out of my way so I can drive past the beach on my way to get my oil changed". My guess is that more people will accidently mess up their route when they are viewing the map than will get any real use out of it.
Although I think that the basic idea is terribly useful, the implementation of it appears to be pretty good.
I would contend that they were very much an engineering shop back then. It isnt reasonable to compare MS products of the early 90s to Vista/Leopard/Whatever today. Back when windows 95 shipped it was head and shoulders technically better than the other operating systems targeting average everyday folks. Although in retrospect its pretty obvious that it was a mistake, noone at MS or anywhere else really worried too much about things like security on consumer PCs. It wasnt bad engineering so much as it was just not an issue at the time. Virtually all companies didnt see the consumer security problems coming, not just MS.
Unlike most people here I do like Vista, but I honestly think that compared to their competitors they have lost a lot of ground in engineering strength compared to what they once were.
Well most stuff in the real world has pretty poor security. The thing that stops thieves is that whole "youll go to jail if you do this" thing. I mean how easy is it for a waiter to copy down your credit card number when he goes back to run it? Or take a quick cell phone picture when the guy in front of you in line hands the clerk his credit card. And yet somehow people still use their credit cards. I suspect that it is because we have this cool thing called law enforcement in this country that deters people from committing crimes. It wont be any easier to steal your info now than it was then.
If anything I would trust this more because it actually has the potential (if implemented well) to be far more secure than a number printed on the front of the card for the world to see. Even if they are broadcasting data unencrypted it will still be more secure than regular credit card use because the difficulty of electronic eavesdropping is much higher than the difficulty of reading a number on a card.
Unscrupulous debt collectors, private investigers, etc. use it more often than you think. If you have any reason not to want to pick up the phone there is a good chance the organization that wants to talk to you will try this trick.
After looking around a little bit more it sounds like you are right. My bad.
I am not familiar with these updates, but I doubt that this is whats going on, it seems unlikely that MS is writing microcode updates for intel processors. Its probably modifications to the windows kernel to work around some bugs. As an oversimplified example one time I was working on a project and it was discovered that one of the processors we build for could generate a spurious interrupt under rare circumstances as a result of a tlb miss but the cache being hit at the same time. (it was more complicated than this, I am oversimplifying) So we simply added a check to the exception handler to see if the cache and tlb were in this state and ignoring the exception if it was. My point here is that software workarounds in the kernel for hardware problems are not unheard of or even that rare. In many cases they are absolutely necessary.
:)
Now all that being said, I have no idea what the content of MSs patches were. But it sounds like they are just working around intels bugs.
I work at a company that makes operating systems. It is not uncommon for us to issue workarounds when hardware problems are found with processors. Just because MS is issuing a patch doesnt mean that it is their fault.
OK, those are fair questions. Note that I am only responding to the points you phrased as questions, I am not trying to dodge the other ones.
"- Even in the worst case scenario - that the downloader and everyone they uploaded to are truly stealing the content (morally wrong), the suits they are bringing are orders of magnitude greater than the theft committed. $3k-$5k out-of-court settlements are nearly universal; tet most people will not upload much more than the amount they downloaded, and even in extreme cases not more than several times what they downloaded. So, if they downloaded a music CD worth $15, they have (assuming all parties are stealing) stolen (or willingly facilitated stealing) 2x-5x that (5x is a bit arbitrary), or $30-$75. Even at the high end of theft ($75) and low end of damages ($3k), that is *40 times* the value of that which was stolen; the other way around ($30 and $5k), it's almost 200 times the value. Can you honestly tell me that you support that? "
I think its reasonable because 75 dollars is not an effective deterrent. If you shoplift a purse from a department store and the penalty is you have to pay whatever the purse is worth it seems kind of pointless doesnt it? Damages should be high enough to deter people from committing the crime, this is a principle that is often espoused by members of our legal system.
"- The RIAA has been using legal but immoral tactics to bring these cases. Most commonly, the RIAA picks people who they believe do not have the resources to defend against the suit, making the outcome the same, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent (and short-circuiting the justice system entirely): they have to settle, because they can't afford a lawyer to defend themselves (and if they do hire a lawyer, the RIAA lets them accumulate a sizable bill, then drops the case, so the people will usually have to pay more than the settlement would have been). This is done to build fear by maintaining a perfect prosecution record, to discourage others from sharing files or hiring a lawyer to defend themselves. I know of not a single case the RIAA has won - that is, the case has gone to verdict and the verdict was in their favor; if you know of a single case, click "reply" and link to it, right now. And because they drop cases once it becomes obvious they cannot win them, they have just the same never suffered a loss (though that tide appears to be slowly turning). They care so much about their perfect record that they will continue suits against people who they either knew from the beginning or learned during the trial are innocent, because dropping the case would show that they don't have absolute power, and diminish the fear they seek to create. Do you support each and every one of these methods? "
You claim that they go after people who cant afford to defend themselves, but I think it has been well established that they have no idea who they are going after when they first send out their letters. I am not entirely certain that your claim that they continue to pursue cases they know are erroneous is correct. If it is, then no of course I do not support that. But I do believe they have every right to pursue the basic idea of sueing people who unlawfully distribute their music.
All this being said, I am not a huge fan of the RIAA in general. I think it is regrettable that the success of an artist is primarily determined by getting 'signed' by a label. But copyrights are basically a good thing, and is your copyright is being violated then I do believe you should have legal recourse. And that should not be revoked just because it is happening on a large scale or because your company is less popular. And frankly, everyone who makes their living by producing copyrighted material (Like me, I am a software engineer) is benefiting from the RIAA's actions, whether they want to recognize it or not.
OK, so do you think record/movie/software companies that arent members of that organization should have the right to sue? What rights should companies other than Atlanta/TimeWarner/Sony/whatever have?
Also, I take issue with your assertion that they are looking for a certain 'type' of violater. They have no idea who the violater is when they start sending letters to ISPs. The fact of the matter is you just hear about the more sympathetic ones on slashdot. Single mothers, unemployed, etc. Should their legal rights be any different from the rest of us?
"Note the psychological kickback: If people pay a very reasonable fee for something, they will be less interested in seeding it to others for free"
This seems very unlikely to me. Currently people pay for CDs then immediately rip them and post the mp3s to various file sharing networks. They arent going to be loyal because they paid you.
I have heard your logic many times. Yet, I know of no artists who have been successfull at using this strategy for any extended period of time. Maybe there are a few, but in practice I doubt it would work very well for very many. And note that this strategy even if it was successfull would only work for musicians. What about filmmakers? That is a far more costly endeavor and much more dependent on copyrights. I could go on for a while about people who would become unemployed very quickly if copyrights could not be enforced, programmers, many types of engineers, authors, anyone who produces intellectual property really.
A bunch of screenshots with someone who is willing to claim that they took them and how it all happened is as good as eyewitness testimony. I think your example would be more like if you doctored a bunch of photos of stolen stuff in my house and then testified in court that this all happened. It will always be possible to frame someone. At some level you just have to make a reasonable assesment as to whether witnesses are telling the truth in everything from copyright cases to murders. Frankly, I very seriously doubt the RIAA is committing perjury and whatever other host of crimes would be necessary to fake evidence.
Theoretically at least they should only be going after people who were sharing copyrighted files on line. I dont see anything wrong with looking for people who are doing this, downloading the files from them, taking a few screenshots as this is happening to document what happened and sending a subpoena to a university. Do you have a better method? How do you think they should be pursuing violaters?
So how do you think indie movie companies, small record companies, software companies, etc. should protect their rights then? If you want we can exclude the big RIAA members from this. How should regular companies that thrive by producing copyrighted materials protect themselves when their work ends up on the internet where anyone can get it for free? Do you believe that they should be allowed any recourse at all? Should they be forced to sit back and watch as everyone in the world downloads for free what they invested a lot of hard work into producing?
I dont understand this attitude. The RIAA is just a regular business. If you dont like what they sell dont buy it or copy it. I dont like some channels on TV, I just choose not to watch them. (or record their broadcasts and post them on the internet if you want a better analogy)
So its pretty clear that going after individual copyright violaters is looked down upon on slashdot. I also remember back when napster was big everyone on here was upset that they were getting sued because they werent actually breaking the law, it was just the individual users.
So is it just one group who thinks that indivuals shouldnt be sued and a different group who thinks that the companies should be immune? How should the RIAA protect its intellectual property rights? Is it just a fundamental belief on here that copyright holders should have no recourse against violaters?
While there may not have been enough evidence to win they were just going out and sueing people at random. They had reasons to honestly believe she was infringing. If the ISP pointed the finger at the wrong person thats not the RIAAs fault. It sounds to me like they acted with the information that they had available to them. They may have gone ahead with a case that wasnt strong enough to win, but that doesnt mean that they were knowingly chasing down someone they knew to be innocent. I have a very difficult time believing that they honestly thought she was innocent and decided to pursue it anyway.
Offering to let them search a computer/hard drive doesnt prove much, you could hand any computer or hard drive over, there is no way to know it was the same one that was used.
Given the kinds of responses I am getting here I cant help but think that there must be something I am totally missing here that proves her innocence and the RIAA knew about it. Is there anything besides the computer without copyrighted materials on it? I searched around on the internet but I couldnt find much beyond a bunch of people that hate the RIAA for very reasons. Is there something I am missing here?
So if the ISP gave the RIAA bad information doesnt the fault lie with the ISP? The RIAA acted on what they had. They knew a certain IP was sharing copyrighted materials and they knew the ISP pointed the finger at her. And offering up a computer doesnt mean much, there is no way to know it was the same computer, or the hard drive was the same. Even if there was a mistake (which I doubt, but truthfully I dont know for certain and neither do most of the people on here) they are guilty of poor judgement at best, if an ISP told me she was assigned that IP at that time I would have sued her too. I have a tough time seeing this as "they knowingly persecuted someone they knew to be innocent".
Incidentally, I am a little disappointed to note that you added me to your 'foes' list. I would think a real lawyer would be above such things, I am not here to make enemies. Do you consider people who argue against you in court to be your enemies as well? I am surprised at the level of hostility that my responses have elicited. I just dont see how the recording industry is doing anything 'evil' here.
I didnt say that she had to prove her innocence. Others responded that a computer without copyrighted files on it conclusively showed her innocence and I was just pointing out that it wasnt true at all. One could easily have copyrighted material on one computer and then give the RIAA another computer when they sue you.
Yes, I am reading the replies. What I am trying to say when pointing out the cost of going after cases like this is that they are unlikely to be motivated by profit as others claim. The costs are high and any potential revenues are trivial compared to how much money they make from selling CDs.
I do understand that they lost the case, what I am trying to say is that just because there wasnt sufficient evidence to win doesnt mean they were in the wrong.
My point here is that they had evidence that showed a particulat IP was sharing copyrighted files. The ISP told them the IP belonged to her. Even if this was false, the blame lies on the ISP, not the RIAA. They acted on the information they given, I dont see anything wrong with that,
OK, since you and a few others are claiming that I am factually incorrect I will respond and ask how. They had her IP address didnt they? Thats an honest question, I cant imagine they went after her without an IP address. And please dont respond with some discussion about dynamic IP addresses and so forth, I mean the IP address that was assigned to her at the time they found shared files. If they didnt have an IP address or some other way to identify her how on earth did they find her?
Just because nothing was found on the computer doesnt mean she is innocent, it isnt hard to completely remove some files from a computer. Logically, their presence may prove guilt but their absence proves nothing. As long as they found her IP address sharing copyrighted material I dont see what the problem is. If they couldnt get enough evidence on top of that to get a guilty verdict that doesnt necessarily mean that suit was motivated by malicous reasons. I mean come on, it costs WAY more than 4000 dollars to go through with a lawsuit like this, if she was innocent they would have no logical reason to pursue it.
Do you really believe that they were sueing her just to be dicks? It makes no sense.
I have a very cynical reaction to cries of "person XYZ was sued by the RIAA and is innocent". I mean, its so easy to find people who are guilty that it just seems ridiculous that they would go after someone who has done nothing in spite of all the costs involved. Also you hear a lot of arguments about how "screenshots can be faked!" and so forth that dont necessarily hold water. Anything can be faked, pictures can be too and are often used as evidence. If you have someone who is sitting there saying they took the screenshot/picture thats as good as eyewitness testimony. Probably even better since you have a picture of what they saw instead of just a fuzzy memory.
All that being said, if she actually is innocent I hope she wins, but I doubt that is the case and if it is she is a very small minority among the people getting sued.
So you would have modded it troll/overrated just because you disagree with it and think the RIAA "doesn't have a lot of good karma"? Dont you see anything fundamentally wrong with that? Arent peer moderated discussions supposed to foster intelligent debate, not just modding down anything that the majority disagrees with?
It has nothing to do with which product is better. Honestly, I use google maps.
What I am saying is that they have used their dominant search engine to drive users to their maps program which has taken a huge share from mapquest because of this. It is very similar to how MS wants to use their dominant operating system to drive users to their search engine.
Sure, if I dont like it I can use a different search engine. The exact same way if I dont like it when MS does it I can use a different operating system.
I am not saying they are 'being evil' just that they are using their powerful position with maps to push around the littler dot coms, the same way that MS used to use their powerful OS position to push around the littler software companies back in their heyday.
Its flamebait because he is ripping on Alberto Gonzales the head of the Justice Department. That whole mess is totally unrelated to this, but it is a divisive issue and people are likely to argue over it in an impolite manner. Sidetracking a thread into an unrelated flamewar == flamebait.
I think this is a good change, but does Google really have the high ground here? They are using an extremely dominant product to market their other products. They use their search engine to push everything from google maps to gmail.
As an example can mapquest come along and demand that when a user searches for a street in google that their map be displayed prominantly as the first search item instead of google maps? This has a huge impact in the online maps business. Google has used a dominant product to gain a massive advantage in a new area. Not entirely unlike what the boys from Redmond like to do. Im not saying its evil, but it does seem kind of like a bully who starts crying when a bigger bully comes along.
Every time I read something like this I cant help but roll my eyes. 4000 dollars may sound like a lot of money to the average guy on the street, but think about how much they are spending running this whole legal operation. You have to pay people to investigate it, people to organize contacting everyone involved, and then hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in legal fees for anyone who doesnt immediately settle. Any quick back the envelope math calculation should immediatly reveal that this operation is running deep in the red. They cannot possibly be doing this to make a quick buck from 'extortion'.
It is not extortion because extortion is done to make money. There is absolutely no chance the RIAA is making any money with all the legal fees they are spending here. Typically they ask people to settle for very small amounts. Lawyers cost hundreds of thousands or even millions just to hire a few.