"Except that, if one reviews the linked article and comments, there does not seem to be a proper DMCA notice involved in this case. "
Define "proper DMCA notice".
There is no practical difference -- when sent to the poster of the original material -- between a DMCA takedown and a "cease and desist". They are in effect the same thing. The law doesn't say "You have to cite law #xxxx and its provisions to effect a takedown" it merely says that allegedly infringing material must be taken down. And a "cease & desist" is the document that is alleging that the material infringes.
If you know of some magic wording that the laws says has to be spouted for it to be an "official" takedown, please enlighten us.
"Unfortunately, if you read the article it's just a lawyer "Cease & Desist" letter, not an actual DMCA take-down notice."
That's what a DMCA takedown notice is. Same thing. With the sole exception that it apparently went to the actual poster of the material, not some site that was hosting the material. But (no pun intended) that's pretty much immaterial.
The exact wording doesn't matter. What's important is that they were told to take down allegedly infringing material. A DMCA take-down notice doesn't have to say "we implore you under Section Blah of U.S. Code BlahBlah to remove your offending subject matter". It's just a notice that you must cease posting allegedly infringing material.
The only substantial difference that the DMCA made is the action that the poster of the allegedly infringing material has to take, by law. It used to be, you didn't have to remove something until infringement was proven in court. Now, you have to take it down before any evidence is provided.
"However, personal experience tells me we need takedowns of infringing material."
Takedowns are one thing. But takedowns before you demonstrate genuine cause have pretty much proven themselves to do far more damage than good.
The OLD system we had, in which you had to show copyright violations before you could restrain someone else, worked BETTER than the current system. Granted, violations happened. But the abuse has gone so far in the other direction now that I think we can safely say that nearly everything about the DMCA is bad. It does offer some "safe harbors", but those safe harbors would not even be necessary if it weren't for the other, bad parts of the DMCA.
"Without takedowns there would have been nothing I could do about it."
Nonsense. You could sue for copyright violation, the same as everybody else did for the past 200 years, including AFTER the Internet became a household thing (but before DMCA).
"The North didn't win easily. If there had been significant public opposition during the last two years, there might not have been enough resources (including troops) to defeat the South. Having the newspapers as propaganda pieces during that period certainly had a benefit for the continuing war effort."
Well, you make a good argument, but I'm not so sure.
On the other hand, when I was a child, Lincoln was presented in my public-school education as though he was practically a Saint... which of course you and I know is not so. But then you and I probably know more about it than most.
So there may be something in what you say, but I maintain that it was an exception at best. I stick with my general statement.
"Because user authentication on the Internet is difficult, the Company cannot and does not confirm that users are who they claim to be."
Except that... they did!
But let's be real. It was pretty easy to tell someone who had the same name and email address for years versus someone who was on for only a couple of days.
Also, ToS or not, it is in their best interest to see that users aren't deliberately spamming or impersonating other users.
BTW... it wasn't "someone else's" username. It was MINE. Which I spent some years establishing. Don't like that? Too bad.
"The same market forces that cause no one I know to actually own a blackberry?"
That's a different subject.
People who expect a "walled garden" like Apple or even Google are surprised. Okay.
But the old saying, which has been around far longer than smartphones, is "Caveat Emptor". If you don't like a free marketplace then don't buy shit there. If you do like a free marketplace, don't download shit programs. Neither the law or the world are supposed to be designed to protect people from their own stupidity.
Having said that: yes, Blackberry made some marketing mistakes. But they are unrelated to what moves on their app store. Then, though, there is that third thing: Blackberry probably should not be counting 1k-byte shit apps in its total.
Unless you can provide a citation (which I doubt you can), I will stick with "no officer ever".
I don't have an actual citation, because it was too long ago. But it was all over the newspapers.
A local officer was caught using the computerized police record system to look up information on his girlfriend. By State law, those records can only be accessed if there is probably cause or, at the very least, "reasonable suspicion" that the person has broken the law. Officers have to log their accesses and give reasons. He couldn't come up with a good reason.
He is no longer a police officer.
That is not to say the system is never abused, of course. But they do get caught. Once in a while, anyway.
"Lincoln was pretty successful with locking up hundreds of editors of newspapers who published against his war of domination against the Confederate States of America."
As I said: it's been done before. And as I said: it's never worked. Eventually those stories got published anyway.
Unfortunately (in some respects), though, he also won the war. And as you know, it's those who win the wars who write the history books. I don't think that had much to do with the journalists he jailed.
Look at the Soviet-era Russians. Even they could not stop stories from getting out, no matter how many people they put in "mental hospitals".
My point is, again, that jailing journalists just doesn't work. In Lincoln's case, I think many other factors overwhelmed that.
If we're going to have (I wish we did not... they're bad news) DMCA take-down orders, we also need a law WITH TEETH that criminalizes the abuse of same.
Once you start seeing actual damages for filing false notices, watch them stop.
Uh... "not ever" is not accurate (because I know of a local situation in which one was). Bad enough that this has often been the trend; best not to advocate extremes by saying "No officer ever".
"This ruling does not imply that Aaron Schwarz was acting illegally, and it isn't a slippery slope. Terms of use had nothing to do with the decision."
Did you read OP and TFA?
First, I didn't say the ruling implied Aaron Schwarz acted illegally. What I stated was that Aaron Schwarz's case was an example of the actual slippery slope related to attempts to criminalize violations of Terms of Use.
And I didn't say that terms of use had anything to do with THIS decision, although they did, at least peripherally. The "block" message (which wasn't really a block in any technical sense) was apparently sent because of a violation of the Terms of Use. Though that message was not itself part of their standard terms.
My point was that there *IS* an actual slippery slope in the general concept that violation of terms of use can constitute a crime. That may not apply to this specific case and ruling, but the slippery slope does exist, and the Schwarz case was a prime example of it.
"I wonder if this jpublic is any relation? Unlikely sir they spell and pronounce their names differently."
No relation!
Here is what happened: that person signed up a new account using my Slashdot name. (I won't explain how, because I don't want to encourage others to do the same.) I have been using this same name on Slashdot for years. Another person using the same name, as far as I was concerned, is unwelcome.
I contacted Slashdot, and they changed the name. It is now similar to mine, but it isn't the same. That is all I care about. I'm still the Jane Q. Public.
"It seems like Craigslist had to pass two hurdles to get to this result. First, they sent a cease and desist letter to 3taps which effectively withdrew authorization to use their website for scraping. Second, they put up a technological barrier (albeit a token one) to prevent 3taps from scraping. 3taps subsequently ignored the cease and desist letter willfully, as demonstrated by their use of proxies. I don't think 3taps has any legs to stand on. "
Sorry, but that doesn't follow. The issue here is not whether 3taps had permission. The issue is whether accessing the site without permission should be a crime (much less a felony).
And Aaron Schwarz is indeed a good example of that already happening. The problem here seems not to be that it's not a slippery slope, but that 3taps' did not present a good argument that it was.
The "slippery slope" is actually pretty darned evident, and 3taps should simply have made their argument better. For example, allowing CFAA prosecution simply on violation of the terms of use is itself a slippery slope, because in effect it allows website owners to write their own laws.
The judge's argument appears to be "but it would never be enforced that way". When if fact we know that it has been.
The person posting above is not the Jane Q. Public (me) who has been around Slashdot for years. That person, user #3023069, is an (apparently malicious) imposter.
"I don't live in a dreamland; I live in cold, hard reality. "
Is impersonating others an example of your "cold, hard reality"? That's an interesting point of view.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
The person posting above is not the Jane Q. Public (me) who has been around Slashdot for years. That person, user #3023069, is an (apparently malicious) imposter.
"I would like it to be very clear that the above person (1010737) is NOT the Jane Q. Pubic (3025353) who has been around Slashdot for minutes. This person has only been posting for about 2 years."
It has been longer than 2 years.
Regardless, it is difficult to refrain from calling you names. It is pretty clear that you are doing this maliciously, and I believe it is perfectly understandable that it makes me angry.
"Call the Internet Police. They will stop this nefarious impostor."
It's not funny. If you had been using the same name for years, and somebody suddenly popped up, pretending to be you, there is a pretty good chance you would be upset about it.
It isn't Illinois, and I'm not wrong. At least not here.
The bit about recording police officers in public would never stand for long, once challenged. It violates so many principles of common law that it had to fall.
Slashdot Mirror
"Except that, if one reviews the linked article and comments, there does not seem to be a proper DMCA notice involved in this case. "
Define "proper DMCA notice".
There is no practical difference -- when sent to the poster of the original material -- between a DMCA takedown and a "cease and desist". They are in effect the same thing. The law doesn't say "You have to cite law #xxxx and its provisions to effect a takedown" it merely says that allegedly infringing material must be taken down. And a "cease & desist" is the document that is alleging that the material infringes.
If you know of some magic wording that the laws says has to be spouted for it to be an "official" takedown, please enlighten us.
"Unfortunately, if you read the article it's just a lawyer "Cease & Desist" letter, not an actual DMCA take-down notice."
That's what a DMCA takedown notice is. Same thing. With the sole exception that it apparently went to the actual poster of the material, not some site that was hosting the material. But (no pun intended) that's pretty much immaterial.
The exact wording doesn't matter. What's important is that they were told to take down allegedly infringing material. A DMCA take-down notice doesn't have to say "we implore you under Section Blah of U.S. Code BlahBlah to remove your offending subject matter". It's just a notice that you must cease posting allegedly infringing material.
The only substantial difference that the DMCA made is the action that the poster of the allegedly infringing material has to take, by law. It used to be, you didn't have to remove something until infringement was proven in court. Now, you have to take it down before any evidence is provided.
"Troll"? Really?
Give me a break, folks. I wasn't trolling, that is my honest opinion.
"... and we also need DMCA takedowns that are not abused..."
The ONLY way to have "DMCA takedowns that are not abused" is to force people to actually show cause BEFORE they can take something down.
But hey... wait a minute! That's the way the law was before the DMCA existed!
Getting rid of the DMCA is by far the best way to go. There are just too many things about it that suck, big time, and have made everything worse.
Things worked BETTER before DMCA. Ergo, they will work better again once we get rid of it.
"However, personal experience tells me we need takedowns of infringing material."
Takedowns are one thing. But takedowns before you demonstrate genuine cause have pretty much proven themselves to do far more damage than good.
The OLD system we had, in which you had to show copyright violations before you could restrain someone else, worked BETTER than the current system. Granted, violations happened. But the abuse has gone so far in the other direction now that I think we can safely say that nearly everything about the DMCA is bad. It does offer some "safe harbors", but those safe harbors would not even be necessary if it weren't for the other, bad parts of the DMCA.
"Without takedowns there would have been nothing I could do about it."
Nonsense. You could sue for copyright violation, the same as everybody else did for the past 200 years, including AFTER the Internet became a household thing (but before DMCA).
"The North didn't win easily. If there had been significant public opposition during the last two years, there might not have been enough resources (including troops) to defeat the South. Having the newspapers as propaganda pieces during that period certainly had a benefit for the continuing war effort."
Well, you make a good argument, but I'm not so sure.
On the other hand, when I was a child, Lincoln was presented in my public-school education as though he was practically a Saint... which of course you and I know is not so. But then you and I probably know more about it than most.
So there may be something in what you say, but I maintain that it was an exception at best. I stick with my general statement.
"Because user authentication on the Internet is difficult, the Company cannot and does not confirm that users are who they claim to be."
Except that... they did!
But let's be real. It was pretty easy to tell someone who had the same name and email address for years versus someone who was on for only a couple of days.
Also, ToS or not, it is in their best interest to see that users aren't deliberately spamming or impersonating other users.
BTW... it wasn't "someone else's" username. It was MINE. Which I spent some years establishing. Don't like that? Too bad.
"The same market forces that cause no one I know to actually own a blackberry?"
That's a different subject.
People who expect a "walled garden" like Apple or even Google are surprised. Okay.
But the old saying, which has been around far longer than smartphones, is "Caveat Emptor". If you don't like a free marketplace then don't buy shit there. If you do like a free marketplace, don't download shit programs. Neither the law or the world are supposed to be designed to protect people from their own stupidity.
Having said that: yes, Blackberry made some marketing mistakes. But they are unrelated to what moves on their app store. Then, though, there is that third thing: Blackberry probably should not be counting 1k-byte shit apps in its total.
"It can do everything"
Except that it's based on Google Chrome... so it DOESN'T do everything that Linux does, and everything it DOES do is reported when it phones home.
Thanks, but the NSA isn't much worse. I'll stick with Linux.
Unless you can provide a citation (which I doubt you can), I will stick with "no officer ever".
I don't have an actual citation, because it was too long ago. But it was all over the newspapers.
A local officer was caught using the computerized police record system to look up information on his girlfriend. By State law, those records can only be accessed if there is probably cause or, at the very least, "reasonable suspicion" that the person has broken the law. Officers have to log their accesses and give reasons. He couldn't come up with a good reason.
He is no longer a police officer.
That is not to say the system is never abused, of course. But they do get caught. Once in a while, anyway.
"Lincoln was pretty successful with locking up hundreds of editors of newspapers who published against his war of domination against the Confederate States of America."
As I said: it's been done before. And as I said: it's never worked. Eventually those stories got published anyway.
Unfortunately (in some respects), though, he also won the war. And as you know, it's those who win the wars who write the history books. I don't think that had much to do with the journalists he jailed.
Look at the Soviet-era Russians. Even they could not stop stories from getting out, no matter how many people they put in "mental hospitals".
My point is, again, that jailing journalists just doesn't work. In Lincoln's case, I think many other factors overwhelmed that.
If we're going to have (I wish we did not... they're bad news) DMCA take-down orders, we also need a law WITH TEETH that criminalizes the abuse of same.
Once you start seeing actual damages for filing false notices, watch them stop.
"I'm glad that's working out well for you!"
It isn't working badly. You *DO* know your IP address is recorded, yes?
It doesn't matter much if it's a proxy, because it isn't mine.
Do you REALLY want to mess things up here for everyone? Just let us know, eh?
Uh... "not ever" is not accurate (because I know of a local situation in which one was). Bad enough that this has often been the trend; best not to advocate extremes by saying "No officer ever".
"If push comes to shove, the victors will eventually be Western governments closing the door on journalists. F"
Absolute bullshit. It's been done before, and it's never worked.
I have NO reason to believe it will work now any better than it has any other time in history.
"Not in the second sentence, which is what he replied to, I didn't."
Well, it seemed to me the reply was to the whole comment, not just one sentence, but I could be wrong about that.
"This ruling does not imply that Aaron Schwarz was acting illegally, and it isn't a slippery slope. Terms of use had nothing to do with the decision."
Did you read OP and TFA?
First, I didn't say the ruling implied Aaron Schwarz acted illegally. What I stated was that Aaron Schwarz's case was an example of the actual slippery slope related to attempts to criminalize violations of Terms of Use.
And I didn't say that terms of use had anything to do with THIS decision, although they did, at least peripherally. The "block" message (which wasn't really a block in any technical sense) was apparently sent because of a violation of the Terms of Use. Though that message was not itself part of their standard terms.
My point was that there *IS* an actual slippery slope in the general concept that violation of terms of use can constitute a crime. That may not apply to this specific case and ruling, but the slippery slope does exist, and the Schwarz case was a prime example of it.
"I wonder if this jpublic is any relation? Unlikely sir they spell and pronounce their names differently."
No relation!
Here is what happened: that person signed up a new account using my Slashdot name. (I won't explain how, because I don't want to encourage others to do the same.) I have been using this same name on Slashdot for years. Another person using the same name, as far as I was concerned, is unwelcome.
I contacted Slashdot, and they changed the name. It is now similar to mine, but it isn't the same. That is all I care about. I'm still the Jane Q. Public.
"It seems like Craigslist had to pass two hurdles to get to this result. First, they sent a cease and desist letter to 3taps which effectively withdrew authorization to use their website for scraping. Second, they put up a technological barrier (albeit a token one) to prevent 3taps from scraping. 3taps subsequently ignored the cease and desist letter willfully, as demonstrated by their use of proxies. I don't think 3taps has any legs to stand on. "
Sorry, but that doesn't follow. The issue here is not whether 3taps had permission. The issue is whether accessing the site without permission should be a crime (much less a felony).
And Aaron Schwarz is indeed a good example of that already happening. The problem here seems not to be that it's not a slippery slope, but that 3taps' did not present a good argument that it was.
The "slippery slope" is actually pretty darned evident, and 3taps should simply have made their argument better. For example, allowing CFAA prosecution simply on violation of the terms of use is itself a slippery slope, because in effect it allows website owners to write their own laws.
The judge's argument appears to be "but it would never be enforced that way". When if fact we know that it has been.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
The person posting above is not the Jane Q. Public (me) who has been around Slashdot for years. That person, user #3023069, is an (apparently malicious) imposter.
"I don't live in a dreamland; I live in cold, hard reality. "
Is impersonating others an example of your "cold, hard reality"? That's an interesting point of view.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
The person posting above is not the Jane Q. Public (me) who has been around Slashdot for years. That person, user #3023069, is an (apparently malicious) imposter.
"I never mentioned myself, so it's rather odd how you acted as if I did."
Yes, you did. Unless you think the word "my" is not a personal reference.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
The person posting above is not the Jane Q. Public (me) who has been around Slashdot for years. This person is an (apparently malicious) imposter.
"I would like it to be very clear that the above person (1010737) is NOT the Jane Q. Pubic (3025353) who has been around Slashdot for minutes. This person has only been posting for about 2 years."
It has been longer than 2 years.
Regardless, it is difficult to refrain from calling you names. It is pretty clear that you are doing this maliciously, and I believe it is perfectly understandable that it makes me angry.
What is wrong with you, anyway?
"Call the Internet Police. They will stop this nefarious impostor."
It's not funny. If you had been using the same name for years, and somebody suddenly popped up, pretending to be you, there is a pretty good chance you would be upset about it.
It isn't Illinois, and I'm not wrong. At least not here.
The bit about recording police officers in public would never stand for long, once challenged. It violates so many principles of common law that it had to fall.