Do people honestly have no idea how this works? This isn't AT&T's fault in the slightest.
AT&T got sent a bill by the international cell provider saying 'On such a day, this cell phone incurred X charges'. AT&T sends the bill on to the customer within their own bill, and was going to pass the money back to that provider.
Look, I have AT&T for cell service, and I don't like them either, but they are not to blame when passing on the bills of other people. Hell, from reading the article, it's sounds possible that AT&T is the one that canceled the bill, and that they're the one who has to eat the cost. (Although they'll probably eventually get it out of either the international cell provider or cruise ship.)
Incidentally, it's probably not the international cell provider who's at fault either. They sell cruise ships a cell transceiver and install it...they probably are not in charge of turning it on and off.
In fact, this is rather obviously a scam. Cruise ships have moderately strong cell towers, the boats are big and full of metal.
I wonder how many international roaming calls have been billed to people who didn't set foot on the ship. Anyone walking by this ship could end up on their network.
And wouldn't it be illegal to operate this thing in US waters? (And cruise ships know when they're in international waters...just ask the 18 year olds who can now order booze.)
Ah, but, if there's no law that's been violated by stealing the passwords... how could we be in... court?
...stealing passwords? How stupid are you? His behavior isn't even metaphorically stealing passwords.
Does the court entertain cases, render judgments, or imposes penalties, civil or otherwise, on the basis of anything... besides... laws?
Um, actually, yes. Civil law is based on the concept of harm, not on the concept of legality.
You can harm people, and forced to pay damages, without breaking the law in the slightest sense.
Likewise, you can break the law, be arrested and convicted in criminal court, and yet not be liable for any damages in civil court.
On top of this, to add to the confusion you'd have if you had managed to grasp even the simplest part of this, there are civil laws about what consists 'harm' and what the damages should be. Like 99% of copyright law. (The criminal aspects of copyright law are only applicable with very high volumes.)
So there are 'laws' that breaking of them cannot get you arrested.
Or do you suggest the judge could have decreed that Bill Gates stand on his head until he turned blue?
Limited liability corporations do not pass on liability to their corporate officers or owners. Nice grasp of the law you have there, thinking Bill Gates could be punished for the actions of Microsoft. (And, more to the point, that's a 'cruel and unusual punishment', you imbecilic. People couldn't be given that punishment anyway.)
In "US v Microsft," everything that occurred in that case was covered by law, including the remedies. Your argument seems to be that if a law gives latitude to a judge, for instance by saying "all the numbers between 1 and 100" and the judge says "55," this was somehow not governed by law...
No, I'm suggesting that nothing that occurs in civil court is something people can be arrested for. (Even ignoring the fact it's a corporation and can't be arrested anyway.)
Do you suggest that this applies to physical property only - or perhaps that intellectual property is also covered under the criminal umbrella?
First of all, intellectual property is not covered under the 'criminal umbrella', whatever that means. It's covered under an entirely different set of laws that are civil, not criminal. (Mostly.)
So, to recap, you have absolutely no idea of the difference between criminal and civil law, and you have absolutely no idea of what a 'corporation' is, and you don't understand that copyright is a different set of laws than theft.
I notice you avoided citing anything,
I'm not citing because I'm telling you basic knowledge. If I was writing a paper about this I wouldn't cite, as people are expected to know it function in society.
Oh, and I did cite when it was obscure. Way back when, when I pointed out that copyright requires the work being fixed in a medium. That is the bedrock foundation of copyright, there must be an original 'copy' that cannot be copied.
There are lots of rules that only apply to different types of copyrights, like TV shows vs. computer programs, but the 'fixed medium' rule applies to them all, including whatever copyright category you're insanely classifying passwords under. All copyrighted works must be fixed in a medium. Passwords are not fixed in a medium, they aren't stored anywhere at all, and hence, under no circumstances whatsoever, can they be copyrighted in any category, end of discussion. (And there are plenty of other objections, like they're wholly functional, and too short, etc, but 'no fixed medium' would get your case dismissed at the moment of filing, as you'd have to submit a copy of it.)
You just ignored it when I said it then, so I don't know why I should cite more. But, hey, here you go for a start at learning the difference between criminal and civil law.
Not only should he have to make an exception for new evidence, he shouldn't make it for evidence the prosecution had at the start.
Any evidence the defense has that might indicate innocence he should allow. Often time defensive stuff shows up late, especially if it's harmful in some other way to the defense. (For example, they might produce evidence they were with their mistress when they realize that they really are going to lose the case.) Obviously, the prosecution should have some time to recoup from this and present a new case.
Any evidence that the prosecution stumbles across during the case that would make their stronger he should also allow.
But any evidence the prosecution has from the start should not, and must not, be doled out in such a manner.
Especially if they're doing it to produce conflicting theories of criminal activities. For example, if they state you personally murdered someone, and you manage to demonstrate you didn't, they shouldn't be able to produce evidence, that they had from the start, that you hired someone to do it, as that clearly makes their theory that you did it personally total nonsense.
They don't get to keep throwing theories against the way until the defense can't disprove one, and that also screws up the defense, in that maybe they think it's an open and shut case because you have an alibi so don't bother to find other evidence or theories of the crime, when in reality the prosecution's going to switch theories in the middle.
If, OTOH, the prosecution realize it because of new evidence being discovered during the trial, it should be admitted. The defense will still mock their changing theory, though, and sometimes the entire case is ruled a mistrial and the prosecution has to start over.
Just because there's no law tell you to do something doesn't mean courts can't impose it as a civil penalty, you fucktard.
Do you not even grasp the difference between the penalty imposed by a civil trial and a criminal action?
I can't even begin to explain how utterly stupid that.
If you car coasts into my house by accident, do you really think the police can arrest you right then if you don't pay some random amount pulled out thin air by me? Because that's exactly what you're arguing with the password.
In reality, I can take you to court, where the courts would decide what sort of penalty you have to pay me. And then it would be enforceable under the law. Although you'd still not get arrested 'for it' if you refuse, you'd get arrested for 'contempt of court'.
There is no law stating 'You must give people passwords to systems they own'. You're the idiot who keeps moaning about cites, how about you cite any law that can be vaguely interpreted in that manner? Any law that would let the police arrest someone they saw doing that. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
That doesn't render the court unable to impose that, or almost anything else, as a civil remedy to wrongdoing in a civil case.
Microsoft once lost a court case and had to reveal the Windows API as a penalty, something which had never even been mentioned in any previously existing law. As far as the law was concerned, 'the Windows API' didn't exist, and so it certainly wasn't 'illegally' to not release it before that point. And yet the judge said they had to do it, so they did, or risk arrest for contempt.
Yes. That's exactly what it is. Chat rooms. There are no pirate music or games or movies or TV there.
It's just chat rooms, and they're completely full of spammers, so just avoid the whole place. If you want to get to them, go there via Google Groups, and you will clearly see there's no binary groups or anything like that.
The idea that there's a robust distributed world-wide network of binary data, with local servers everywhere, is just preposterous. That would mean you could download without uploading, which is what gets all those music file-sharers in trouble. Obviously, there's no way to avoid that.
And there certainly aren't webpages that let you search through these servers and get nzb files you can stick in clients to download quickly. And there's no error correction software to help recover PARtial downloads.
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
You moron, I have at no point asserted that employees have the right to keep passwords from their employers. They have no such right. The courts could, and probably would, demand they get turned over.
I have simply asserted that your theory that passwords are copyrighted works for hire and hence can be forced to be reproduced is Completely Fucking Stupid for multiple reasons, mainly because a) passwords aren't copyrighted in the first place, and b) companies cannot make people reproduce works for hire if they can't find a copy of them. (Not 'turn over', reproduce. You can't make someone resign a song or redraw a painting, if you lost the copy you paid them to make. You can't make someone reproduce a password by writing it down. Of course, passwords were never 'produced', never written down in a fixed media in the first place, so by definition can't be 'reproduced' or, for that matter, copyrighted, which require the work be fixed in a medium.)
Some of us do live in the US and have crappy 150k connections that streaming doesn't look that good over. It takes me about 45 minutes to download 45 minutes worth of lowest quality TV shows out there in torrents at the fastest speed. I.e., the lowest quality shared video files are 150k, and that happens to be roughly my top download speed.
Any sort of streaming over my internet connection would require either a) lower quality, or b) stuttering if I can't keep up 100% absolutely top speed.
And heaven forbid if I wished to watch all this on HD instead of my large, but low def, SD TV. Those files are three times as big, so it would take roughly 3x viewing time to download. That would still work if downloaded in advance, though, as long as I watched less than eight hours a day.
There's an argument that people won't put up with slow downloads, but that's just fucking stupid. They will if it works by download encrypted shows in advance in the background, and then handing them the key when it 'airs' so they can watch it instantly. (And having streaming, of course, still be an option.)
I.e, it should work like a Tivo. People grasp that, they understand the idea of going through TV shows in advance and picking ones to 'record'.
And it should have Tivo logic to automatically pick 'favorites'...if someone likes Andy Griffin, the app can keep track of the episodes you've seen, and can download unseen episodes each night if it has nothing to do.
It's not rocket science, and it can do all this in addition to offering streaming if you're flipping around and want to check out a new show. (Or, to be very clever, they could have 'favorite' or 'premiere' episodes of things you don't watch, but might like to, already downloaded.)
The first rule of Usenet is that we do not talk about Usenet. Everyone has forgotten that still exists, so shuddup already.;)
But, yes. And the more I think about it, the more my 'remote' idea is a good one.
What they should be doing is selling people a $20 USB remote control, that just happens to come with an interface for downloading and watch TV shows. From them, with commercials. (And it can play DVDs, too.)
People would buy it, they'd use it out of laziness. Maybe it would even come with a cheap s-video/audio cable to easily hook up your computer.
It wouldn't be 'purchasable' in the UK, but if you somehow managed to get one from the US, it would work just fine, oops. (Or do it right and actually work with national distributors to a) first air the shows close to the same day, so they b) unlock the show in their interface and put their own ads in it.)
It would also have an iTunes functionality in that you could subscribe to their store and pay a fee to get the TV show without the ads.
Or, what I've always suggested, they should let you buy the DVD of a season still running. You get all the shows, as they come out, without the ads, and when the season finishes they ship you a DVD.
This setup would actually work. 80% of user would just keep using pure ad supported TV, maybe with purchasing a few DVDs. Another 19.9% would be buying episodes without commercials. (0.1% will crack the interface and download free, commercial free TV and distribute it online, but that's probably less than are already doing that.)
You, OTOH, are spending your time productively by tracking down online discussions of watching TV shows online. When you don't watch TV shows, online or otherwise.
Erm, except you've watched one movie, at least enough to reference it. I guess you magically knew it was a good movie before you watched it because it was postpostmodern in making fun of dumb people. (Wait, that's not postpostmodern, or even actually very clever.)
It's not that hard. You simply install utorrent and gbpvr.
In gbpvr, ignore all the 'recording' and 'tv tuner' stuff. You're using it solely for the interface. At some point in the config, you'll specify directories that video files can be in. Note you can also specify directories for music and photos, so do that too. Also, you can turn off irrelevant stuff on the menus, like you will want to turn off the 'tv listings' and 'watch live tv' that don't actually work. Also, you can tell gbpvr if you want it fullscreen on the first display, or the second. I don't even have a monitor plugged into mine, just s-video to TV, so that is the primary display.
Now go over to utorrent, and configure its default download location to where ever you told gbpvr to look at. Then add the rss feed 'http://tvrss.net/feed/unique/', call it 'tv shows' or something.
Now, when you click on that on the left, a list of recently-aired TV shows will show up. Right click on them to 'add to favorites' and get them to download each time they come around. You can segregate them into different directories per show, or give different priorities, or make them not start automatically, or whatever. Note this list only reaches back a few days, so when you want to add a show, you'll have to wait until it airs, wait about 24 hours, and then check utorrent to add it. (Or you can try to add it using the name in advance, but that's complicated.) There are usually two different forms of each show, a 350 meg avi and a 1.09 gig mkv, and you can pick the quality.
You also might want to bandwidth cap the download and upload in utorrent config, or even schedule them to specific times. You're not going to get TV shows until hours after they air, so only downloading overnight works pretty good. You'll wake up each morning with last night's shows.
I don't have this computer anywhere near a keyboard and mouse and monitor, so I have UltraVNC installed so I can manipulate utorrent from another computer (It's hard to even read normal applications on a TV.), and I have the MCE computer remote control with a program called HIP to start and operate gbpvr, but those aren't actually required parts of this...you can navigate gbpvr easily with a (wireless?) keyboard and/or mouse, and have a monitor hooked up also to manage utorrent.
Also note that gbpvr and utorrent are completely unrelated to each other. You could replace gbpvr with any nice looking media player designed to operated at a distance...Windows sometimes comes with one. In fact, gbpvr is probably the wrong choice for this, but I set it up when it was one of the few programs I could find, and have no reason to change. Likewise, most torrent clients can do rss feeds, although I don't know how many of them can do automatically filtered rss feeds, where they can pattern match on specific names in the feed.
You can literally use this setup entirely from gbpvr, as long as you remember to occasionally delete files to clear up space, which you can do within gbpvr. You can even turn the computer off within it. You'll probably also want to occasionally look in on utorrent and clear its huge list of finished (and broken, if you've deleted files out from under it) torrents.
Oh, and feel free to have a DVD drive in this setup too, as gbpvr can play DVDs. (Might want to also add the drive path as a video directory, so it can also play CDs or DVDs with TV shows burned on them not in DVD format. Oh, and the flash drive path. And any network paths TV shows might be at.)
I've actually got another TV that I'd like to hook this up to, and what I'm doing is looking for is a laptop with a broken display. (Right now I hook up my actual laptop, but I used that thing and can't leave it hooked up.)
I've told quite a few people that if their laptop breaks, they should run it by me if they're going to discard it. I'll possibly pay them 20 bucks for it, and I'll even pull all their data off it for free.
They're quiet, energy efficient (Especially if the actual downloading is on another computer and they spend all their time suspended.), and they all have s-video out. If I can find one, I'll run out and grab another remote control, and bam.
I got a discard MCE remote control a long time ago. The remote has since stopped working, but the valuable thing was, in fact, the sensor. I got a special driver for it, and piece of software called 'HIP'.
Now I can program any infrared signal, from any remote, to send any keystroke. Programmable per application. Along with the ability to launch and switch between apps.
It also does IR blasting (Sending a IR signal out.), and I can program HIP to do that through it. I control my stereo's volume that way. Push a button the remote, IR to the computer, computer recognizes it, sends IR to the stereo.
I'm on my third remote to control this thing with, I'm pretty harsh on them. Because I don't give a damn...it breaks, I'll find some other remote with directional keys and play/pause/ff/rewind buttons, spend ten minutes programming those signals in, and start using that.
If I had any other devices I used a remote for, like if I actually used the TV remote for anything, many of those have universal capability built in, and I'd just randomly pick a device for that remote to mimic and program those codes into HIP.
I thought about that WRT to streaming, but they could even do it with downloaded show...you download it the night before. It would be trivial to use a cheap form of 'DRM' to keep shows from being viewed before their time. And unlike normal DRM, it wouldn't be crackable...just encrypt it, and then release the key the exact moment the show airs.
Different markets would have different keys, so they could stagger releases. Yes, you 'could' download the wrong release, and crack it manually, but most people would just let the software do automated downloads.
And this form of DRM wouldn't require any sort of proprietary applications. They'd probably not be willing to do this, but it could easily be an open standard to decrypt it.
Of course, it's entirely possible they'd want to do a streaming-only setup, but, honestly, that's an absurdly horrendous use of bandwidth, especially during prime-time.
A torrent setup, where people download shows over the week before they air, and then decrypt them when the key is out, makes infinitely more sense. With you agreeing, when you install the application, that you will share back, with the software doing that automatically.
The easier the media conglomerates make it for us to watch their products, the more likely we are to accept some commercials. Be dicks about whole thing, and we'll watch your stuff commercial free. And considering how easy it is to watch commercial free RIGHT NOW, I don't think there's a whole lot they CAN do to get us to watch their commercials under any circumstances.
Exactly, that's what I saying.
They need, last month, to come out with a free fullscreen TV player with both streaming and downloading, with scheduling and favorites and whatnot, throw in a cheap remote for sale, and hope like hell it's not too late.
People have a fundamental level of laziness, legality, and inertia that will keep them doing the same thing. If TV studios can, right now, get a product in their hands that gives them on-demand TV on their TV, the general population will put up with commercials and DRM and expiring-after-a-week TV shows.
Or not, and they can get crippled when young adults just start using computers. (And let's not forget game consoles) to watch downloaded TV with no profit to them at all.
Moderately tech savvy 18-35 year olds? That's what, 0.001% of the national population?
As I already said, it doesn't matter how much of the population it is. 18-35 year olds are something like 60% of their advertising revenue. If 25% of them switch elsewhere, they just lost 15% of their revenue, which would almost destroy them.
The percent of the population is irrelevant.
And, no, the percentage of 18-35 year olds who know how to use a computer is actually around 80%. 18-25 is closer to 90%. (Over 75% of US all US adults regularly go online, and, obviously, a lot of the holdouts are fairly old.)
The percentage who are savvy enough to download and install applications they hear about from others is probably around 60%.
Do you not remember Napster? That was almost a decade ago, when people were a lot less comfortable with the internet. (Less than 50% of adults regularly went online then.)
We're about to see Napster 2.0, the TV version. All we need to do is for people to get the equivalent of mp3 players...computers hooked to their TV.
That was sorta my point. People have no trouble using Tivo.
This is a Tivo that, like I said, downloads shows without commercials.
But they're fucking around providing TV shows over the internet in the most crappy form they can imagine, without realizing they have two options:
Provide free, just aired TV shows. They can put in advertising, and even DRM to make them expire as most people don't care. They can even have only streaming.
Or they can slowly die as everyone just gets their TV shows from the internet, but without commercials.
They are this close to facing the 'mp3 Armageddon' that music companies barely somewhat avoided with iTunes, and it's going to be ten times worse for them, because they're ad supported and people don't expect to pay money for TV.
And it's not helped at all that people are getting used to Tivo, where they state shows they like and it just collects them for anytime viewing, exactly like automatic downloading does.
Don't bullshit me, free software means essentially 'you have to know what the fuck you're doing' to configure it, plain and simple.
I believe you've confused 'free software' with 'open source software'. However, while this software might be free, I point you to Windows Media Center, which often comes with a remote. People are buying those things. It's a commercial product. Works great. Usually used to record TV shows, but will happily play back downloaded TV in a very nice interface.
If you have that, it takes five minutes to download and install utorrent and stick in the tvrss.net rss feed to get a listing of TV shows. It's something that even a slightly competent computer user could do if they know it exists. Anyone who can install a game can do it.
Once that's setup, it's an installed application that any fool can use. It's the work of seconds to subscribe to a new TV show and have it magically come in, every airing, like clockwork, with no work.
And you push a button on your remote and the media player pops up and you sit down to watch TV.
And there are even easier applications, designed to download TV shows, like 'TV Shows' for Mac and TVTAD for Windows. I'm a geek, I do things complicated and cheap. That doesn't mean easy-to-use things don't exist.
This is literal tettering on the edge of total disaster for TV companies. All it takes is people willing to watch 'TV' on 'their computer', which is, of course, an absurd false dichotomy as more and more people hooks computers up to TVs. At that point one fad, or 'meme' or whatever they're calling them these days, that sweeps like wildfire through teh Facebook and suddenly, bam, 25% of their prime demographic is gone.
The most valuable demographic in the country is also the most tech savvy. It doesn't matter how much of the TV watching public knows what an iPod...the people from 18-25, and 25-35, do, and they're the ones selling ad space.
And as people upgrade computers this time around, expect to see a lot more of them moved to next to the TV. USB remote controls are about $40.
And even that's a bit costly, in that what they should actually be selling you is simply a sensor, and you could use your already existing universal remote on it.
Screw mininova. People will just go to tvrss.net and stick the rss feed of TV shows into utorrent or whatever, and 'Add to favorites' and watch it automatically download a few hours after it airs. Download manually is for losers.:)
The TV industry: Living a decade in the past since 1980.
And I think the hypothesis in the summary is correct. They thought people were watching Hulu on computer. Because they're apparently complete and total morons who don't understand the different between computers and TVs is...nothing.
I'm going to explain this carefully to the TV companies:
I literally have not watched an ad on TV in three years, cause my 'TV' is hooked to a computer that runs utorrent downloading an rss feed, and a program called gbpvr. This is a 'computer' that serves the purpose of a DVD player. It's not some tiny screen, it's hooked to my actual main TV, and only to that. It has a remote control on it.
It is a computer by technical definition, but I want you goofs to think of it as a TiVo that illegally downloads TV shows. I went to bed last time, and I woke up with Lost, Lie to Me, Knight Rider, and Life on Mars downloaded. Without ads. For free. With an interface I can operate like a TiVo, with a remote, on a television.
This system wasn't hard to setup. The hardware requirement was a $40 remote control and an old computer. The two pieces of software were both free. In terms of technical skill required, it wasn't much at all.
To recap: I can walk into my living room, sit down at my couch and use a remote control to watch the episode of Lost that aired last night, and then delete it to make room for more. Without ads. No hassle whatsoever, it happened entirely automatically. It is there, now. It is easier to watch than using hulu in a web browser.
Now I want to tell you I'm 30. And I want you TV executives to imagine the 25% of the 18-35 year olds that are moderately technically savvy switching to my setup. Now I want you to imagine them helping their friends set it up. (There are a lot of old computers out there.)
I will give you a second to change your underwear. Are you people perhaps grasping the fucking seriousness of your situation?
There is one, and exactly one, way for you to show me an ad: Some sort of automatic downloading application (Not real-time streaming crap. I don't have infinite bandwidth.) that lets me subscribe to TV shows and download and watch them. Like I do now, but legally.
If you would provide this, I would switch. Even if the shows had ads. Away from the same system without ads. I'm okay with ads, I understand that's how you make your money. Other people might not be so noble, but if your application was easier to use, and came with a remote control, they'd never set anything up...but once they do, they aren't switching.
However, my choices now are the current system, and fucking stupid hulu in a web browser that I can't operate with a remote control and stutters if I'm downloading something else. I'd never heard of boxee, might have used that too if I knew about it (Although I hate streaming), but congrats on breaking that.
I think your argument relies on fixing the sense of the term "insurance" in a specific way that is convenient to your argument; in that regard, I think it begs the question. If you define "insurance" more abstractly, as something like "a scheme where most participants overpay for what they get, so that a minority of them underpay," then health expenditures based on taxes are a form of insurance.
Well, you're kinda right. Technically, insurance is the product you purchase to reduce financial damage(1) in the future. Usually by paying a steady fee.
So health insurance is, indeed, technically insurance. (It often doesn't work, but that just makes it incredibly poor quality...the intent of the purchaser is that it is insurance.) Collision insurance isn't though, as almost no one's purchasing that to reduce financial damage...they're paying it because the law says so. It's a privately-operated tax on car operation.
I don't think the two statements can be easily reconciled. If we can forbid the insurance companies from using race to set costs, why can't we forbid them from using other factors? (For example, prohibiting health insurance companies, in their current form in the USA, from using DNA test results as a cost factor.)
You have a point. The reason we forbid certain protected classes from being discriminated against is that society has traditionally discriminated in just that way, and we are trying to undo that discrimination. So we don't normally worry about new forms of discrimination.
However, the reason we don't worry about such new forms is that they tend not to be society-wide, and no one has any sort of incentive for starting new forms, so even if a company or two did, it wouldn't really matter. 7/10 diners that won't seat black people is a societal problem, 1/100000 diners that won't seat people with tattoos isn't actually relevant to anything. Said diners will slightly suffer in the market, and that's it.
Except, as you point out, health insurance companies have motive to start discriminating, and they'd all do it in exactly the same way.
The problem is that their discrimination is legitimate. It's not some random choice based on bigoted opinion, it's actually statistically based. In actuality, insurance companies have to discriminate.
I can just imagine 'Hello, I'd like you to insure this Monet from theft.' '...you're keeping this $200,000 painting behind a glass window on the outside of your house with no alarms?' 'I like people to be able to see it.' 'Well, under the law, please pay our standard fee of $2000 a month. Or why don't we just write you a check for $180,000 now, burn the painting, and assume it will be stolen in the first month?'
Making insurance 'fair' is nonsense. Half the point of insurance companies is not only can they charge whatever they think will statistically make them money in this instance (But not a lot, or other companies would underbid.), but they can also demand changes in the behavior of the insured to reduce the risk. Just ask the skydiver people about what they're required to do to have their insurance.
But no one wants individuals being subject to it. This is why normal individuals shouldn't be anywhere near insurance companies to start with. The closest they should be is dealing with regulations that businesses impose on them because the business's insurance requires it, like the skydiver businesses I mentioned. If taxpayers cannot handle the financial risk in perfectly normal activities, (Like 'living' in the case of health insurance.) then such activities need to be taxed and the money pooled to cover such risk.
1) Life insurance is possibly unique in that the person who would suffer the damage isn't the one paying for it, but it's still insurance. It's like your house paying homeowner insurance.
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AT&T didn't assess any sort of penalty.
Do people honestly have no idea how this works? This isn't AT&T's fault in the slightest.
AT&T got sent a bill by the international cell provider saying 'On such a day, this cell phone incurred X charges'. AT&T sends the bill on to the customer within their own bill, and was going to pass the money back to that provider.
Look, I have AT&T for cell service, and I don't like them either, but they are not to blame when passing on the bills of other people. Hell, from reading the article, it's sounds possible that AT&T is the one that canceled the bill, and that they're the one who has to eat the cost. (Although they'll probably eventually get it out of either the international cell provider or cruise ship.)
Incidentally, it's probably not the international cell provider who's at fault either. They sell cruise ships a cell transceiver and install it...they probably are not in charge of turning it on and off.
In fact, this is rather obviously a scam. Cruise ships have moderately strong cell towers, the boats are big and full of metal.
I wonder how many international roaming calls have been billed to people who didn't set foot on the ship. Anyone walking by this ship could end up on their network.
And wouldn't it be illegal to operate this thing in US waters? (And cruise ships know when they're in international waters...just ask the 18 year olds who can now order booze.)
Ah, but, if there's no law that's been violated by stealing the passwords... how could we be in... court?
Does the court entertain cases, render judgments, or imposes penalties, civil or otherwise, on the basis of anything... besides... laws?
Um, actually, yes. Civil law is based on the concept of harm, not on the concept of legality.
You can harm people, and forced to pay damages, without breaking the law in the slightest sense.
Likewise, you can break the law, be arrested and convicted in criminal court, and yet not be liable for any damages in civil court.
On top of this, to add to the confusion you'd have if you had managed to grasp even the simplest part of this, there are civil laws about what consists 'harm' and what the damages should be. Like 99% of copyright law. (The criminal aspects of copyright law are only applicable with very high volumes.)
So there are 'laws' that breaking of them cannot get you arrested.
Or do you suggest the judge could have decreed that Bill Gates stand on his head until he turned blue?
Limited liability corporations do not pass on liability to their corporate officers or owners. Nice grasp of the law you have there, thinking Bill Gates could be punished for the actions of Microsoft. (And, more to the point, that's a 'cruel and unusual punishment', you imbecilic. People couldn't be given that punishment anyway.)
In "US v Microsft," everything that occurred in that case was covered by law, including the remedies. Your argument seems to be that if a law gives latitude to a judge, for instance by saying "all the numbers between 1 and 100" and the judge says "55," this was somehow not governed by law...
No, I'm suggesting that nothing that occurs in civil court is something people can be arrested for. (Even ignoring the fact it's a corporation and can't be arrested anyway.)
Do you suggest that this applies to physical property only - or perhaps that intellectual property is also covered under the criminal umbrella?
First of all, intellectual property is not covered under the 'criminal umbrella', whatever that means. It's covered under an entirely different set of laws that are civil, not criminal. (Mostly.)
So, to recap, you have absolutely no idea of the difference between criminal and civil law, and you have absolutely no idea of what a 'corporation' is, and you don't understand that copyright is a different set of laws than theft.
I notice you avoided citing anything,
I'm not citing because I'm telling you basic knowledge. If I was writing a paper about this I wouldn't cite, as people are expected to know it function in society.
Oh, and I did cite when it was obscure. Way back when, when I pointed out that copyright requires the work being fixed in a medium. That is the bedrock foundation of copyright, there must be an original 'copy' that cannot be copied.
There are lots of rules that only apply to different types of copyrights, like TV shows vs. computer programs, but the 'fixed medium' rule applies to them all, including whatever copyright category you're insanely classifying passwords under. All copyrighted works must be fixed in a medium. Passwords are not fixed in a medium, they aren't stored anywhere at all, and hence, under no circumstances whatsoever, can they be copyrighted in any category, end of discussion. (And there are plenty of other objections, like they're wholly functional, and too short, etc, but 'no fixed medium' would get your case dismissed at the moment of filing, as you'd have to submit a copy of it.)
You just ignored it when I said it then, so I don't know why I should cite more. But, hey, here you go for a start at learning the difference between criminal and civil law.
Not only should he have to make an exception for new evidence, he shouldn't make it for evidence the prosecution had at the start.
Any evidence the defense has that might indicate innocence he should allow. Often time defensive stuff shows up late, especially if it's harmful in some other way to the defense. (For example, they might produce evidence they were with their mistress when they realize that they really are going to lose the case.) Obviously, the prosecution should have some time to recoup from this and present a new case.
Any evidence that the prosecution stumbles across during the case that would make their stronger he should also allow.
But any evidence the prosecution has from the start should not, and must not, be doled out in such a manner.
Especially if they're doing it to produce conflicting theories of criminal activities. For example, if they state you personally murdered someone, and you manage to demonstrate you didn't, they shouldn't be able to produce evidence, that they had from the start, that you hired someone to do it, as that clearly makes their theory that you did it personally total nonsense.
They don't get to keep throwing theories against the way until the defense can't disprove one, and that also screws up the defense, in that maybe they think it's an open and shut case because you have an alibi so don't bother to find other evidence or theories of the crime, when in reality the prosecution's going to switch theories in the middle.
If, OTOH, the prosecution realize it because of new evidence being discovered during the trial, it should be admitted. The defense will still mock their changing theory, though, and sometimes the entire case is ruled a mistrial and the prosecution has to start over.
Just because there's no law tell you to do something doesn't mean courts can't impose it as a civil penalty, you fucktard.
Do you not even grasp the difference between the penalty imposed by a civil trial and a criminal action?
I can't even begin to explain how utterly stupid that.
If you car coasts into my house by accident, do you really think the police can arrest you right then if you don't pay some random amount pulled out thin air by me? Because that's exactly what you're arguing with the password.
In reality, I can take you to court, where the courts would decide what sort of penalty you have to pay me. And then it would be enforceable under the law. Although you'd still not get arrested 'for it' if you refuse, you'd get arrested for 'contempt of court'.
There is no law stating 'You must give people passwords to systems they own'. You're the idiot who keeps moaning about cites, how about you cite any law that can be vaguely interpreted in that manner? Any law that would let the police arrest someone they saw doing that. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
That doesn't render the court unable to impose that, or almost anything else, as a civil remedy to wrongdoing in a civil case.
Microsoft once lost a court case and had to reveal the Windows API as a penalty, something which had never even been mentioned in any previously existing law. As far as the law was concerned, 'the Windows API' didn't exist, and so it certainly wasn't 'illegally' to not release it before that point. And yet the judge said they had to do it, so they did, or risk arrest for contempt.
Don't be sil-oh, I see. *shiftyeyes*
Yes. That's exactly what it is. Chat rooms. There are no pirate music or games or movies or TV there.
It's just chat rooms, and they're completely full of spammers, so just avoid the whole place. If you want to get to them, go there via Google Groups, and you will clearly see there's no binary groups or anything like that.
The idea that there's a robust distributed world-wide network of binary data, with local servers everywhere, is just preposterous. That would mean you could download without uploading, which is what gets all those music file-sharers in trouble. Obviously, there's no way to avoid that.
And there certainly aren't webpages that let you search through these servers and get nzb files you can stick in clients to download quickly. And there's no error correction software to help recover PARtial downloads.
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
You moron, I have at no point asserted that employees have the right to keep passwords from their employers. They have no such right. The courts could, and probably would, demand they get turned over.
I have simply asserted that your theory that passwords are copyrighted works for hire and hence can be forced to be reproduced is Completely Fucking Stupid for multiple reasons, mainly because a) passwords aren't copyrighted in the first place, and b) companies cannot make people reproduce works for hire if they can't find a copy of them. (Not 'turn over', reproduce. You can't make someone resign a song or redraw a painting, if you lost the copy you paid them to make. You can't make someone reproduce a password by writing it down. Of course, passwords were never 'produced', never written down in a fixed media in the first place, so by definition can't be 'reproduced' or, for that matter, copyrighted, which require the work be fixed in a medium.)
Some of us do live in the US and have crappy 150k connections that streaming doesn't look that good over. It takes me about 45 minutes to download 45 minutes worth of lowest quality TV shows out there in torrents at the fastest speed. I.e., the lowest quality shared video files are 150k, and that happens to be roughly my top download speed.
Any sort of streaming over my internet connection would require either a) lower quality, or b) stuttering if I can't keep up 100% absolutely top speed.
And heaven forbid if I wished to watch all this on HD instead of my large, but low def, SD TV. Those files are three times as big, so it would take roughly 3x viewing time to download. That would still work if downloaded in advance, though, as long as I watched less than eight hours a day.
There's an argument that people won't put up with slow downloads, but that's just fucking stupid. They will if it works by download encrypted shows in advance in the background, and then handing them the key when it 'airs' so they can watch it instantly. (And having streaming, of course, still be an option.)
I.e, it should work like a Tivo. People grasp that, they understand the idea of going through TV shows in advance and picking ones to 'record'.
And it should have Tivo logic to automatically pick 'favorites'...if someone likes Andy Griffin, the app can keep track of the episodes you've seen, and can download unseen episodes each night if it has nothing to do.
It's not rocket science, and it can do all this in addition to offering streaming if you're flipping around and want to check out a new show. (Or, to be very clever, they could have 'favorite' or 'premiere' episodes of things you don't watch, but might like to, already downloaded.)
The first rule of Usenet is that we do not talk about Usenet. Everyone has forgotten that still exists, so shuddup already. ;)
But, yes. And the more I think about it, the more my 'remote' idea is a good one.
What they should be doing is selling people a $20 USB remote control, that just happens to come with an interface for downloading and watch TV shows. From them, with commercials. (And it can play DVDs, too.)
People would buy it, they'd use it out of laziness. Maybe it would even come with a cheap s-video/audio cable to easily hook up your computer.
It wouldn't be 'purchasable' in the UK, but if you somehow managed to get one from the US, it would work just fine, oops. (Or do it right and actually work with national distributors to a) first air the shows close to the same day, so they b) unlock the show in their interface and put their own ads in it.)
It would also have an iTunes functionality in that you could subscribe to their store and pay a fee to get the TV show without the ads.
Or, what I've always suggested, they should let you buy the DVD of a season still running. You get all the shows, as they come out, without the ads, and when the season finishes they ship you a DVD.
This setup would actually work. 80% of user would just keep using pure ad supported TV, maybe with purchasing a few DVDs. Another 19.9% would be buying episodes without commercials. (0.1% will crack the interface and download free, commercial free TV and distribute it online, but that's probably less than are already doing that.)
You, OTOH, are spending your time productively by tracking down online discussions of watching TV shows online. When you don't watch TV shows, online or otherwise.
Erm, except you've watched one movie, at least enough to reference it. I guess you magically knew it was a good movie before you watched it because it was postpostmodern in making fun of dumb people. (Wait, that's not postpostmodern, or even actually very clever.)
You are my hero!
It's not that hard. You simply install utorrent and gbpvr.
In gbpvr, ignore all the 'recording' and 'tv tuner' stuff. You're using it solely for the interface. At some point in the config, you'll specify directories that video files can be in. Note you can also specify directories for music and photos, so do that too. Also, you can turn off irrelevant stuff on the menus, like you will want to turn off the 'tv listings' and 'watch live tv' that don't actually work. Also, you can tell gbpvr if you want it fullscreen on the first display, or the second. I don't even have a monitor plugged into mine, just s-video to TV, so that is the primary display.
Now go over to utorrent, and configure its default download location to where ever you told gbpvr to look at. Then add the rss feed 'http://tvrss.net/feed/unique/', call it 'tv shows' or something.
Now, when you click on that on the left, a list of recently-aired TV shows will show up. Right click on them to 'add to favorites' and get them to download each time they come around. You can segregate them into different directories per show, or give different priorities, or make them not start automatically, or whatever. Note this list only reaches back a few days, so when you want to add a show, you'll have to wait until it airs, wait about 24 hours, and then check utorrent to add it. (Or you can try to add it using the name in advance, but that's complicated.) There are usually two different forms of each show, a 350 meg avi and a 1.09 gig mkv, and you can pick the quality.
You also might want to bandwidth cap the download and upload in utorrent config, or even schedule them to specific times. You're not going to get TV shows until hours after they air, so only downloading overnight works pretty good. You'll wake up each morning with last night's shows.
I don't have this computer anywhere near a keyboard and mouse and monitor, so I have UltraVNC installed so I can manipulate utorrent from another computer (It's hard to even read normal applications on a TV.), and I have the MCE computer remote control with a program called HIP to start and operate gbpvr, but those aren't actually required parts of this...you can navigate gbpvr easily with a (wireless?) keyboard and/or mouse, and have a monitor hooked up also to manage utorrent.
Also note that gbpvr and utorrent are completely unrelated to each other. You could replace gbpvr with any nice looking media player designed to operated at a distance...Windows sometimes comes with one. In fact, gbpvr is probably the wrong choice for this, but I set it up when it was one of the few programs I could find, and have no reason to change. Likewise, most torrent clients can do rss feeds, although I don't know how many of them can do automatically filtered rss feeds, where they can pattern match on specific names in the feed.
You can literally use this setup entirely from gbpvr, as long as you remember to occasionally delete files to clear up space, which you can do within gbpvr. You can even turn the computer off within it. You'll probably also want to occasionally look in on utorrent and clear its huge list of finished (and broken, if you've deleted files out from under it) torrents.
Oh, and feel free to have a DVD drive in this setup too, as gbpvr can play DVDs. (Might want to also add the drive path as a video directory, so it can also play CDs or DVDs with TV shows burned on them not in DVD format. Oh, and the flash drive path. And any network paths TV shows might be at.)
I've actually got another TV that I'd like to hook this up to, and what I'm doing is looking for is a laptop with a broken display. (Right now I hook up my actual laptop, but I used that thing and can't leave it hooked up.)
I've told quite a few people that if their laptop breaks, they should run it by me if they're going to discard it. I'll possibly pay them 20 bucks for it, and I'll even pull all their data off it for free.
They're quiet, energy efficient (Especially if the actual downloading is on another computer and they spend all their time suspended.), and they all have s-video out. If I can find one, I'll run out and grab another remote control, and bam.
I got a discard MCE remote control a long time ago. The remote has since stopped working, but the valuable thing was, in fact, the sensor. I got a special driver for it, and piece of software called 'HIP'.
Now I can program any infrared signal, from any remote, to send any keystroke. Programmable per application. Along with the ability to launch and switch between apps.
It also does IR blasting (Sending a IR signal out.), and I can program HIP to do that through it. I control my stereo's volume that way. Push a button the remote, IR to the computer, computer recognizes it, sends IR to the stereo.
I'm on my third remote to control this thing with, I'm pretty harsh on them. Because I don't give a damn...it breaks, I'll find some other remote with directional keys and play/pause/ff/rewind buttons, spend ten minutes programming those signals in, and start using that.
If I had any other devices I used a remote for, like if I actually used the TV remote for anything, many of those have universal capability built in, and I'd just randomly pick a device for that remote to mimic and program those codes into HIP.
Yeah, I forgot about release speed.
I thought about that WRT to streaming, but they could even do it with downloaded show...you download it the night before. It would be trivial to use a cheap form of 'DRM' to keep shows from being viewed before their time. And unlike normal DRM, it wouldn't be crackable...just encrypt it, and then release the key the exact moment the show airs.
Different markets would have different keys, so they could stagger releases. Yes, you 'could' download the wrong release, and crack it manually, but most people would just let the software do automated downloads.
And this form of DRM wouldn't require any sort of proprietary applications. They'd probably not be willing to do this, but it could easily be an open standard to decrypt it.
Of course, it's entirely possible they'd want to do a streaming-only setup, but, honestly, that's an absurdly horrendous use of bandwidth, especially during prime-time.
A torrent setup, where people download shows over the week before they air, and then decrypt them when the key is out, makes infinitely more sense. With you agreeing, when you install the application, that you will share back, with the software doing that automatically.
The easier the media conglomerates make it for us to watch their products, the more likely we are to accept some commercials. Be dicks about whole thing, and we'll watch your stuff commercial free. And considering how easy it is to watch commercial free RIGHT NOW, I don't think there's a whole lot they CAN do to get us to watch their commercials under any circumstances.
Exactly, that's what I saying.
They need, last month, to come out with a free fullscreen TV player with both streaming and downloading, with scheduling and favorites and whatnot, throw in a cheap remote for sale, and hope like hell it's not too late.
People have a fundamental level of laziness, legality, and inertia that will keep them doing the same thing. If TV studios can, right now, get a product in their hands that gives them on-demand TV on their TV, the general population will put up with commercials and DRM and expiring-after-a-week TV shows.
Or not, and they can get crippled when young adults just start using computers. (And let's not forget game consoles) to watch downloaded TV with no profit to them at all.
Moderately tech savvy 18-35 year olds? That's what, 0.001% of the national population?
As I already said, it doesn't matter how much of the population it is. 18-35 year olds are something like 60% of their advertising revenue. If 25% of them switch elsewhere, they just lost 15% of their revenue, which would almost destroy them.
The percent of the population is irrelevant.
And, no, the percentage of 18-35 year olds who know how to use a computer is actually around 80%. 18-25 is closer to 90%. (Over 75% of US all US adults regularly go online, and, obviously, a lot of the holdouts are fairly old.)
The percentage who are savvy enough to download and install applications they hear about from others is probably around 60%.
Do you not remember Napster? That was almost a decade ago, when people were a lot less comfortable with the internet. (Less than 50% of adults regularly went online then.)
We're about to see Napster 2.0, the TV version. All we need to do is for people to get the equivalent of mp3 players...computers hooked to their TV.
Yes, it is how Tivo works. Exactly how it works.
That was sorta my point. People have no trouble using Tivo.
This is a Tivo that, like I said, downloads shows without commercials.
But they're fucking around providing TV shows over the internet in the most crappy form they can imagine, without realizing they have two options:
Provide free, just aired TV shows. They can put in advertising, and even DRM to make them expire as most people don't care. They can even have only streaming.
Or they can slowly die as everyone just gets their TV shows from the internet, but without commercials.
They are this close to facing the 'mp3 Armageddon' that music companies barely somewhat avoided with iTunes, and it's going to be ten times worse for them, because they're ad supported and people don't expect to pay money for TV.
And it's not helped at all that people are getting used to Tivo, where they state shows they like and it just collects them for anytime viewing, exactly like automatic downloading does.
Don't bullshit me, free software means essentially 'you have to know what the fuck you're doing' to configure it, plain and simple.
I believe you've confused 'free software' with 'open source software'. However, while this software might be free, I point you to Windows Media Center, which often comes with a remote. People are buying those things. It's a commercial product. Works great. Usually used to record TV shows, but will happily play back downloaded TV in a very nice interface.
If you have that, it takes five minutes to download and install utorrent and stick in the tvrss.net rss feed to get a listing of TV shows. It's something that even a slightly competent computer user could do if they know it exists. Anyone who can install a game can do it.
Once that's setup, it's an installed application that any fool can use. It's the work of seconds to subscribe to a new TV show and have it magically come in, every airing, like clockwork, with no work.
And you push a button on your remote and the media player pops up and you sit down to watch TV.
And there are even easier applications, designed to download TV shows, like 'TV Shows' for Mac and TVTAD for Windows. I'm a geek, I do things complicated and cheap. That doesn't mean easy-to-use things don't exist.
This is literal tettering on the edge of total disaster for TV companies. All it takes is people willing to watch 'TV' on 'their computer', which is, of course, an absurd false dichotomy as more and more people hooks computers up to TVs. At that point one fad, or 'meme' or whatever they're calling them these days, that sweeps like wildfire through teh Facebook and suddenly, bam, 25% of their prime demographic is gone.
The most valuable demographic in the country is also the most tech savvy. It doesn't matter how much of the TV watching public knows what an iPod...the people from 18-25, and 25-35, do, and they're the ones selling ad space.
Four letters: D.M.C.A.
Service is state of the art at Circuit City.
It is provided by the best AIs in the world. They can repeat back what you say in the form of a question, and interject related trivia.
Someday, forty or fifty years from now, salespeople might actually pass the Turing test.
What's the rack-rate per minute for advertising via illegal torrents?
And as people upgrade computers this time around, expect to see a lot more of them moved to next to the TV. USB remote controls are about $40.
And even that's a bit costly, in that what they should actually be selling you is simply a sensor, and you could use your already existing universal remote on it.
Screw mininova. People will just go to tvrss.net and stick the rss feed of TV shows into utorrent or whatever, and 'Add to favorites' and watch it automatically download a few hours after it airs. Download manually is for losers. :)
The TV industry: Living a decade in the past since 1980.
Back? When did we stop?
And I think the hypothesis in the summary is correct. They thought people were watching Hulu on computer. Because they're apparently complete and total morons who don't understand the different between computers and TVs is...nothing.
I'm going to explain this carefully to the TV companies:
I literally have not watched an ad on TV in three years, cause my 'TV' is hooked to a computer that runs utorrent downloading an rss feed, and a program called gbpvr. This is a 'computer' that serves the purpose of a DVD player. It's not some tiny screen, it's hooked to my actual main TV, and only to that. It has a remote control on it.
It is a computer by technical definition, but I want you goofs to think of it as a TiVo that illegally downloads TV shows. I went to bed last time, and I woke up with Lost, Lie to Me, Knight Rider, and Life on Mars downloaded. Without ads. For free. With an interface I can operate like a TiVo, with a remote, on a television.
This system wasn't hard to setup. The hardware requirement was a $40 remote control and an old computer. The two pieces of software were both free. In terms of technical skill required, it wasn't much at all.
To recap: I can walk into my living room, sit down at my couch and use a remote control to watch the episode of Lost that aired last night, and then delete it to make room for more. Without ads. No hassle whatsoever, it happened entirely automatically. It is there, now. It is easier to watch than using hulu in a web browser.
Now I want to tell you I'm 30. And I want you TV executives to imagine the 25% of the 18-35 year olds that are moderately technically savvy switching to my setup. Now I want you to imagine them helping their friends set it up. (There are a lot of old computers out there.)
I will give you a second to change your underwear. Are you people perhaps grasping the fucking seriousness of your situation?
There is one, and exactly one, way for you to show me an ad: Some sort of automatic downloading application (Not real-time streaming crap. I don't have infinite bandwidth.) that lets me subscribe to TV shows and download and watch them. Like I do now, but legally.
If you would provide this, I would switch. Even if the shows had ads. Away from the same system without ads. I'm okay with ads, I understand that's how you make your money. Other people might not be so noble, but if your application was easier to use, and came with a remote control, they'd never set anything up...but once they do, they aren't switching.
However, my choices now are the current system, and fucking stupid hulu in a web browser that I can't operate with a remote control and stutters if I'm downloading something else. I'd never heard of boxee, might have used that too if I knew about it (Although I hate streaming), but congrats on breaking that.
I think your argument relies on fixing the sense of the term "insurance" in a specific way that is convenient to your argument; in that regard, I think it begs the question. If you define "insurance" more abstractly, as something like "a scheme where most participants overpay for what they get, so that a minority of them underpay," then health expenditures based on taxes are a form of insurance.
Well, you're kinda right. Technically, insurance is the product you purchase to reduce financial damage(1) in the future. Usually by paying a steady fee.
So health insurance is, indeed, technically insurance. (It often doesn't work, but that just makes it incredibly poor quality...the intent of the purchaser is that it is insurance.) Collision insurance isn't though, as almost no one's purchasing that to reduce financial damage...they're paying it because the law says so. It's a privately-operated tax on car operation.
I don't think the two statements can be easily reconciled. If we can forbid the insurance companies from using race to set costs, why can't we forbid them from using other factors? (For example, prohibiting health insurance companies, in their current form in the USA, from using DNA test results as a cost factor.)
You have a point. The reason we forbid certain protected classes from being discriminated against is that society has traditionally discriminated in just that way, and we are trying to undo that discrimination. So we don't normally worry about new forms of discrimination.
However, the reason we don't worry about such new forms is that they tend not to be society-wide, and no one has any sort of incentive for starting new forms, so even if a company or two did, it wouldn't really matter. 7/10 diners that won't seat black people is a societal problem, 1/100000 diners that won't seat people with tattoos isn't actually relevant to anything. Said diners will slightly suffer in the market, and that's it.
Except, as you point out, health insurance companies have motive to start discriminating, and they'd all do it in exactly the same way.
The problem is that their discrimination is legitimate. It's not some random choice based on bigoted opinion, it's actually statistically based. In actuality, insurance companies have to discriminate.
I can just imagine 'Hello, I'd like you to insure this Monet from theft.' '...you're keeping this $200,000 painting behind a glass window on the outside of your house with no alarms?' 'I like people to be able to see it.' 'Well, under the law, please pay our standard fee of $2000 a month. Or why don't we just write you a check for $180,000 now, burn the painting, and assume it will be stolen in the first month?'
Making insurance 'fair' is nonsense. Half the point of insurance companies is not only can they charge whatever they think will statistically make them money in this instance (But not a lot, or other companies would underbid.), but they can also demand changes in the behavior of the insured to reduce the risk. Just ask the skydiver people about what they're required to do to have their insurance.
But no one wants individuals being subject to it. This is why normal individuals shouldn't be anywhere near insurance companies to start with. The closest they should be is dealing with regulations that businesses impose on them because the business's insurance requires it, like the skydiver businesses I mentioned. If taxpayers cannot handle the financial risk in perfectly normal activities, (Like 'living' in the case of health insurance.) then such activities need to be taxed and the money pooled to cover such risk.
1) Life insurance is possibly unique in that the person who would suffer the damage isn't the one paying for it, but it's still insurance. It's like your house paying homeowner insurance.