Well maybe they've decided to actually test the patch before releasing it?:)
I discovered today that a patch for a vulnerability in the IIS SMTP service causes the settings for the service to be reset if you're running it on Server 2008 (2003 doesn't seem to be affected, AFAIK).
Unfortunately we applied that patch (and others) last Wednesday and don't have regular automated testing of our website's ability to deliver mail to localhost, so took a while for us to notice... a quick Google lead me to this discussion where I discovered the cause.
Interesting point. The funny thing is, a large part of the reason for my proposal is precisely to try to reduce voter apathy! I mean, how many people actually believe that going out and casting your vote every couple of years on election day actually has any impact on how your country is run? How many people think politicians are honestly representing the best interests of their constituents? Most people seem to view politicians as dishonest spin doctors who say whatever they think will get them elected, and then do whatever they feel like until the next election, when they start making promises they have no intention (or ability, often) to keep.
Democracy is supposed to be about everyone who has a stake in their country's future having their say, but we have so many layers between Joe Voter and Joe Decision Maker that most Joe Voters end up feeling pretty disconnected from the whole thing. Not to mention the party system that pretty much forces you to pick between two groups of people with some ideas/policies that you agree with and some you disagree with.
I think a lot of the reason people don't get involved is because of the effort required to actually become informed about an issue. But if you can present the voter with a concise, factual summary of the proposals, you might be able to lower the barrier to entry enough to increase participation.
My thinking was that by having regular, frequent voting, people would get used to having a say in the policies that are being created to shape their life, and become more engaged in the process as a result. But it would be quite a cultural shift, especially for countries where voting is non-compulsory.
If you can't ensure no voter frauds exists with the current system, why is it a necessity to ensure that no voter fraud could possibly exist in a new system before adopting it?
Of course there's armed robberies in my country, but not on such a scale that it'd have any meaningful effect on a poll. Why would anyone who wanted to alter the outcome of a vote choose a method that requires maximum effort to achieve any kind of statistically significant effect while putting themselves at great risk, when there are perfectly legal and more effective alternatives (such as advertising campaigns, going door-to-door to spread your point of view, etc.)?
I mean, it's theoretically quite possible for me to abduct a schoolbus full of children and then blackmail every single one of their parents into voting a particular way and providing proof that they did. But that's a crapload of work, especially if I want to stand even a remote chance of not being punished for the crime, and even if I get a bus that's crammed full of 50 kids from different families all with two parents and four grandparents who all comply, that nets me a paltry 300 votes.
There certainly are problems with my proposal, but I don't think the possibility of fraud or coercion is one of them. Granted that it would be unlikely to work in a place like Iraq, but in stable countries existing law enforcement ought to provide sufficient deterrence.
I don't agree it's "impossible". You can issue tamper-resistant (i.e. they break if you try to open them) devices to all voters to verify their ID. Use them like an RSA SecurID token to provide a "something you have and something you know" login method, or stick a GSM/CDMA chip in them and make the device register votes via encrypted channels over the cell network. Make it law that you report their loss within a reasonable amount of time. If you have regular votes (weekly or monthly, say) then there's not really any excuse for not noticing your device is missing. Countries where voting is optional might need laxer rules, but even there it's probably acceptable to say you have to regularly register your lack of interest in voting.
I'm not convinced "voting at gunpoint" is a significant issue. It might depend on the country you're in, of course, but threatening any kind of violence is kind of looked down upon here. It would also be hard to do on any meaningful scale, and doing so on any meaningful scale would guarantee some pretty serious comeuppance for the perpetrators. I mean, theoretically you could get a pretty good compliance rate by kidnapping/threatening people's children if they don't vote a certain way, but the logistics make it really hard to pull off and the punishment for pulling it off acts as a pretty strong deterrent.
If it's really a concern, have a cooling-off period where people can revoke their vote via appropriate channels. So it's not enough to have a gun to their head on voting day, you need to keep it to their head for the rest of the week or they can go to the police and have their vote scrubbed.
Good thing we won't need people with long term experience in these matters to act as experts in the system.
If it's valuable to have people with long term experience, then they'll be able to make their case as to why they should remain on the floor. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with our system for getting representatives into the political system at present. The issue I see is what they do once they get there, as the most effective means for them to remain in the system don't seem to do a very good job of furthering the public interest. Even the most honest politician who truly is trying to do their best for their community still has to make deals with the other side, trading support for policies they don't really agree with in order to gain support for the policies they do.
Consider all the rhetoric from the Republican side in the US about how they're not going to support a single thing the Democrats ask for due to the passage of the health care reform bill. I expect this is just hot air, but if they actually follow through then you'll potentially have good policies being opposed because of a completely unrelated policy. That's an extreme example, but it's very common. It's often suggested that the internet filter in Australia is being supported by both parties because they're seeking the support of a particular senator in order to get another bill passed, for example.
This is part of the political system and how it's designed to work, but I really think it's subverting the process away from what the politicians are supposed to be doing. It's turning the leadership of nations into schoolyard popularity contests. Policies ought to be debated on their merits, and this "I'll pass yours if you pass mine" stuff is pure bullshit.
The non-political experience comes into the next question:
Good thing the people running stuff in the background can't be suborned to move votes around.
Most of the background jobs are just regular jobs that can be staffed as normal. Sensitive positions can have the usual safeguards of oversight and public scrutiny and accountability applied. It's not as if the current system is infallible and can't be subverted, and learning how to prevent that happening will continue to be part of our civilisation's evolution.
An additional idea is to have a lot of the "actual doing of things" done in a manner similar to jury duty: citizens are selected at random to form a panel charged with implementing something. Politicians don't really have, or need, that thorough a knowledge of their area. Witness how frequently Ministers/Senators are moved to different portfolios. They receive advice from their departments and experts with real knowledge in the field, and then act on that.
By randomly selecting groups of people to do that part of the job, you make it much harder for bribery or intimidation to work (especially if you keep the identities secret until they've finished their work).
Good thing the politicians will vote to change to this system as it will remove the old representation system and all their perks.
This is a major problem and one I sometimes worry about quite a lot. It seems pretty obvious that eventually the leadership is going to become so out of touch with the common folk that the common folk will get fed up and want significant change. It's pretty much the story of history. We don't really seem to have a mechanism for making significant changes to the political system, since all changes have to be proposed from within the system by the people who the system gave people to. There's got to be a better way than periodic violent uprisings. You seem to have to be pretty lucky to get something better after one of them, and it's a pretty huge gamble to take.
Ways to game the system: submit votes on lots and lots of issues - DoS the votetakers and makers
I don't think it really matters. It's already illegal here to assist people to die, so it doesn't apply. No medical professional is going to assist a teenager or divorcee to end their life, and people who would assist with that aren't going to in any way be deterred by a censor.
If someone wants to kill themselves, there's plenty of ways to do it and trying to deny access to anything that discusses it is going to be about as effective as denying sex education to kids in the belief that they'll not have sex if you don't tell them about it.
I agree parties wouldn't be needed anymore, but I don't see how it'd automatically make corporations and special groups any more powerful than they already are. I think it would make them less powerful, if the voters are reasonably well informed. If they're not, then it probably wouldn't make a lot of difference. And it would be more efficient, as you point out.
We should be able to leverage modern communication technology to be able to vote online, and therefore have frequent, even weekly, votes on policies. Maybe spend 30 minutes a week to read about and vote on policies that you're interested in. It would be really fascinating to see something like this in action.
I'd like to see something like this:
people come up with a policy proposal and present it to parliament
those opposed or with a different policy engage in a lively debate
once a "party" comes up with an actual policy, they create a short summary of it, which will be given to the voting public at the time they go to vote
such summaries are subject to argumentation by all and sundry, all statements must be proven to be true in order to be included (this process will probably take a while)
eventually, one or more policies are presented to the voting public
The "parties" referred to above would likely be temporary groupings of people who are backing a particular policy (because it's easier to make a workable policy without gaping holes if you work with others), not necessarily permanent parties like we have now.
The "people" referred to in #1 are presumably politicians of some kind, although this kind of system would be pretty receptive to "single-issue politicians" who go in to argue for their favourite policy and then disappear back into normal life afterwards. Since having every single citizen arguing at once is probably not really viable, some kind of representation system like we have now would probably be needed (i.e. you need a certain amount of popular support before you can make a proposal that'll actually end up being voted on).
So there you have it. I've fixed democracy in 10 minutes. Now to tackle climate change!
Oh yes, the other problem we share with most democracies is that we're normally limited to voting for a party, not particular policies. This works okay if there's a party which has policies you mostly agree with, but not so well otherwise. Since both of the major parties seem to be in favour of the Great (But Ineffective) Firewall of Australia, all you can do is vote for one of the minor parties (e.g. the Pirate Party) and hope they get the message about why you didn't vote for them. However, that only makes sense if the filter is a major issue for you -- but more likely, the Liberal party might actually come up with some kind of Health policy before the election and a lot of people will choose to vote based on that, since most people don't care one way or the other if the filter goes ahead (it may not achieve anything worthwhile, but it won't affect me, so what do I care?).
And of course, whichever party wins will believe it has a mandate to put in place a national internet filter with no public oversight.
IMHO, democracies really need to start leveraging technology to provide voting on policies, not on parties. Parties are popularity contests that no longer provide a benefit to the democratic process, IMHO.
Undemocratic? The Hungry Beast had a phone poll of 1,000 people conducted, the results are in this Wikipedia article. The results indicate that a lot of people actually are in favour of the filter, but it seems to largely depend on how it's phrased and explained.
I think we have the same problem as pretty much every democracy: everyone gets a vote, but only a small portion of people actually care/know enough about an issue to make an informed choice. And the governments don't seem to be under much pressure to actually be open and honest about what the policies they're pushing will actually achieve. So, the government asks "do you want the Australian Government to block access to things only sickos would want to see like child porn?" and most people say "yes". The government doesn't mention the filter will only block unencrypted HTTP and therefore by absolutely trivial to bypass, or how much it will cost vs the amount of content it'll be blocking, or how effective it will be compared to installing your own filtering software.
Various online polls show strong opposition to it, but that's pretty much as expected. People who have some idea of how the internet works are hugely opposed to it for technical as well as "freedom" related issues, but people who have no idea (which is most people) just hear "this will stop child rapists and not impact you at all" and are of course going to be for it.
In a way, it's a lot like the "Free software" debate. Most people don't give a crap if their software is "Free" or not, and don't even think about how having a healthy Free software ecosystem may benefit them (regardless of what they choose to use themselves). But if it all disappeared and there was no alternative but proprietary software from big corporations, they'd realise what they'd lost. But explaining it beforehand? There's just no interest.
I'm quite impressed you're able to teach ANY of your elderly firewalls how to properly navigate a website. My firewalls just filter packets! I guess it's true, they don't make 'em like they used to.
The choppers were there precisely because the ground troops asked them to come out and blow away the guys that had fired upon them earlier. The choppers saw guys with what they believed to be weapons (and as it turns out, some of them were in fact weapons) and blew them away. I'm not sure if the group the Apaches attacked was actually the same group that had earlier fired on the ground troops (who were apparently on a roof), but certainly they were in the same area and it's not inconceivable they'd left the roof by the time the Apaches arrived (hit and run tactics seem entirely logical).
A lot of people are saying that the heli crew should have passed the buck to someone else for making the decision, but to me it seems like the buck stopped with them. They didn't have anyone else to pass it to. They had to either decide to engage based on what they saw, or not engage and risk the ground troops suffering casualties because they made the wrong call.
Like it or not, but pretty much everyone in the military is going to put their colleague's lives first. Maybe this is something that needs to change, but I think Western militaries will have a very hard time with that kind of cultural shift. "Poke your head out and see if they shoot you" is a far cry from "leave no man behind". But maybe in this kind of situation, where you're fighting in a city with mostly civilians, the military will just have to accept that they will have to make themselves sitting ducks at times.
On the other hand, what would have happened if the Apache crews had just waited and watched while the ground forces approached? When they did get attacked, would they say "sorry, we're not 100% positive that every single one of the people attacking you is actually armed and firing. Looks like there might be some foolhardy reporters with them, so you're on your own. Good luck"? I'm not really convinced that "never firing upon civilians under any circumstances" is a reachable ideal, unless you're fighting enemies who never (or at least, very rarely) co-locate themselves with civilians.
Don't know if it's in the short version, but in the long version after the attack has finished and the ground forces have moved in to the area, there are two references to an RPG round under one of the victims of the attack. The first is saying it looks like there's an RPG round under one of them, and a while later someone asks if the round is still live (or something to that effect, I forget the exact terminology) and the response is that is still live. So at that point it seems pretty certain there was at the very least a round for an RPG in the group, which makes the theory of an RPG launcher being present much more likely.
I agree about the attack on the van seeming to be unprovoked, and was certainly a case of the gunner seeing what they wanted/expected to see. In the previous story on the subject someone mentioned that the "insurgents" often have someone come by after a battle to collect weapons and bodies, so perhaps from the point of view of the Apache crew it was expected behaviour, leading to a false assumption.
The thing about shots being fired was I think regarding the ground forces. There's a part where the subtitle says something about "the area we took fire from" (when someone in the helo is speaking), even though the audio clearly says "where you were taking fire from" (again I'm paraphrasing since I can't remember the exact text). But at no point did I hear the pilot/gunner saying they themselves were under fire. As I understand it, the Apaches were called in by ground forces who were under attack by small arms fire. There seems to be a bit of confusion here as the radio chatter suggests the people the helo engaged were on a roof, and the pilot jumps in to clarify that everyone they engaged was at ground level.
Another thing I found disturbing was that after a while the pilot asks if the ground forces need them to engage anywhere else, and they're directed to an abandoned/under construction building which some enemies are in. There seems to be no doubt that there's bad guys in it and it's a legitimate target. They get some distance and come around to put a Hellfire in it, and another man is seen walking past the front of the building - doesn't seem to be going in, and gives every appearance of just being a civilian who happens to be walking past the building. The gunner has a good few seconds with this guy in his camera, but fires the missile anyway.
There's two subsequent missile attacks on the building where a small crowd has gathered in front to look, and I can grant they didn't have much choice there since they had no way of dispersing the crowd. But that first one seemed to be entirely at their discretion and they could've waited for that guy to get clear.
Also, I fully agree about it being covered up afterwards. Yes, it would've been embarrassing and caused a bit of an outrage, but I don't think anyone was acting outside of the rules of engagement in effect at the time given the situation. Of course, any fallout probably would've been directed at those who set these rules, which probably explains why they decided to try to cover it up.
The main issue for me is that it was on the front page of a newspaper, i.e. a publication that takes quite some time to go from "receiving a story" to "being in print and distributed". That's a long time for such an earth-shattering event to be going on without any other reports.
Then when they read the article, instead of calling the paper and asking where they got their information from (and why the fuck didn't they immediately report it to authorities?!) and to see if they had any additional information that might be helpful, they decided to call in security forces to search the area.
Of course, we don't know all the details. Maybe they did call the paper and they continued/escalated the prank there; in which case they certainly deserve to be in a lot of trouble. Maybe communications with the town in question did actually happen to be down so they couldn't speak to anyone in the town to see if people had started fleeing before the paper was out on the stands. Nothing in the article suggests that either of these is the case, but then it doesn't explicitly state they weren't, either.
And finally, I suppose calling out security forces to sweep an area isn't really that big a deal. If it turns out to be just a hoax, hey, it's good practice for them anyway.
Like any combatant, helicopters don't get any closer to their targets than they need to, and helicopters can engage targets with their cannon from several kilometers out. Look at footage of attacks on people that are very clearly and unarguably armed enemies and you'll see that they very rarely, if ever, are paying any attention to the helicopters. At several kilometers out they're not very visible, and it wouldn't be obvious what they were looking at. They would be audible, but I imagine if they freaked out every time they heard a helicopter in the distance, they'd be freaking out constantly.
Besides which, if you're a resistance fighter trying to look inconspicuous and you hear an enemy helicopter flying around, what are you going to do? a) run around in a panic so as to attract as much attention to yourself as possible or b) act like you don't care so as to blend in with all the civilians around you?
Your primary argument is as bogus as my username.
If a helo pilot waits for the RPGs to start flying before becoming on-edge, they have essentially zero chance of returning alive. Yes, helicopter gunships are extremely formidable but they're not invulnerable. They're noisy, they're slow, and the enemy absolutely loathe them. Just because they can operate a good distance from the target area doesn't mean they aren't hovering right over another enemy with an RPG or machine gun. Of course they're going to be on edge, and unfortunately people who are on edge and looking for a fight tend to see enemies where none exist.
Okay, you're not lying, you're just delusional. I apologise.
as long as hosting mere links is not also illegal
Well that's the crux of the matter. If it was already established that linking to files whose function is to facilitate copyright infringement was illegal, then there'd be no reason for this to be dragging through the court system. This order, if it goes ahead, would provide an important precedent in establishing that such links are indeed illegal.
Your argument more or less boils down to "they're only linking to other sites, and linking to things isn't illegal". However it's quite clear that if that was actually an established fact, then this case wouldn't exist and there wouldn't be a slashdot story about it. Rather, this case is about establishing whether or not your supposed fact is actually a fact.
And so far, it looks like such links will not be protected. While that is disappointing, I do think it's a correct and inevitable interpretation of the current laws in Canada.
I'll admit I'm making a lot of assumptions about the laws that apply in this particular jurisdiction, however the fact that the case has been before the court for years, and that the judge has proposed this order, suggests that my assumptions are correct and the Canadian laws regarding copyright are very similar to those in my country. Either that or the judge is going to shortly find himself looking for a new job, which would be an excellent and highly amusing result, but one which I consider unlikely enough to dismiss the possibility.
The arguments used to try to defend this kind of site look about as stupid as all the "X on a computer" or "X on the internet" patents which are regularly derided by the/. community (where X is some very commonplace thing that shouldn't be patentable). You can bet someone who made a living from providing millions of people with references to drug dealers would be charged with something, and his claims that he had no idea that people would actually go and buy illegal drugs from the people he said could supply them with illegal drugs would be laughed at.
They say Joe Torrent does not have that right, but they really don't know, because they have no means to verify where Joe Torrent lives and/or if he bought a copy of the content (two of the dozen or so of circumstances that would give Joe Torrent that right).
There aren't many jurisdictions which give you the right to download a copy of copyrighted material just because you've bought a copy in another format. Even fewer give you the right to give someone copyrighted content if that someone else happens to have already bought a copy. Imaginary rights don't matter, even if they are morally sound and ought to be real rights.
This is completely irrelevant, of course. It doesn't really matter if an individual has the right to download some particular copyrighted content, because the site they're downloading it from does not have the right to distribute it (or to assist in its distribution). isoHunt is not indexing torrents hosted and blessed by the copyright holders. This is not difficult to determine, despite what you want to believe.
It doesn't matter if you believe, like me, that fighting this kind of distribution is harmful to their business. If they want to spend millions of dollars making a movie and then make actually watching it so difficult that nobody does causing them to become bankrupt, then that's their right. Even if it is stupid and short-sighted.
Well, take a look at most of Europe.
I don't really see how European laws affect rulings by the Canadian court system about a site hosted in Canada. I don't imagine the German courts would allow a German site to host pro-Nazism content because it happens to be perfectly legal in the United States.
Your entire argument seems to be based on unlikely possibilities such as "the person downloading it might already own a copy of it", as well as your confusing your own moral code with the actual laws. That was the point of using a comparison to something that was unlikely to register in your own moral code as being okay. These cases are based on the current law, not what Joe Torrent thinks the law ought to be.
However, this conversation is entirely pointless, as there's simply no way to argue with this kind of dishonesty:
most people would be found guilty, anyway, because they are
Short answer: no.
The likelihood that you actually believe that most people are using P2P to download things (and also upload things) they're legitimately allowed to is... zero. Yet you're willing to tell a bald-faced lie because to be honest would destroy your position.
"Not distributing content" is the technical loophole I'm talking about it. It doesn't matter if the site is distributing content or not. What matters is if the site is materially contributing to copyright infringement. And the copyright holders know if the people distributing it have the right to do so, and they have overwhelmingly said that no, Joe Torrent does not have a license to distribute their content. The proof of that is the fact that these companies who own the copyright are spending their own time and money to sue both people who are distributing it, and people who are assisting with the distribution.
The courts have been through this over several years. They've sampled the data and checked if it's infringing or not. They have a good idea of the ratio of the content the site links to which is legit and infringing. Over several years they've found what any rational person would find: the vast majority of content that isoHunt links to is not being distributed with the consent of the copyright holders.
Please elaborate on why the analogy is "pretty dumb". Aside from the hyperbole of comparing copyright infringement to wanton murder, it captures the spirit pretty well: the target dummies represent the fabled legitimate content and/or legitimate downloaders that are used to defend the legitimacy of the site; the firing range represents the sites that are indexed by their crawler, i.e. the "scope of operations"; the people wandering through represent the copyrighted material that is "inadvertently" being indexed and the ratio of people to targets suggests that the firing range is in a sub-optimal location; and the killer robots represent the software isoHunt use to run the site, which is quite understandably unable to differentiate between the two types of "targets".
By comparing it to actually killing people, we push aside the "but it shouldn't be illegal to download movies!" argument by using something that very few people would argue should be legal. Clearly, it's grossly negligent to allow your bots to keep operating if they accidentally kill a person. Letting them keep operating while they kill many more people than target dummies would undoubtedly make you criminally responsible for the deaths.
Whether or not sharing entertainment content should be allowed or not is not the issue, and if you think it should be allowed then hiding behind "but we're not actually distributing the content" is not the answer. Unless of course you think mass lawsuits against hundreds/thousands/more of individuals is a good thing. Because if you say "you can't sue the indexer, only the actual downloaders" then the companies aren't going to go "oh okay, in that case it's too hard, never mind". They're going to do exactly that, and most people don't have the resources, time or skills needed to ensure they get a fair trial.
And even if they did get a fair trial, most people would be found guilty, anyway, because they are.
Ah, but it doesn't need to be proven beyond any doubt, only beyond reasonable doubt. And after many years of back-and-forth, they have decided that.
How? Well, it's not that hard. Take a large random sample of the content they're helping people to find, and then find the owners of the copyright on that content, and ask if the site it's on has their blessing to be distributing the content. Unless you cherry pick the tiny handful of legitimate items that are indexed by IsoHunt, the overwhelming majority of content is being provided by people who have no rights to do so.
Let's go with another analogy. IsoHunt have built a robot that can automatically detect moving target dummies on a firing range and shoot them with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Let's also imagine that doing such a thing is perfectly legal in their jurisdiction. Nothing wrong with that. Except their firing range happens to intersect with a busy sidewalk and people are wandering into the line of fire without even knowing it. Needless to say, many of these people are ending up dead as a result of this.
Do you think an "we can't help it, our bot just shoots anything that moves and looks kind of like a target dummy" excuse will get them out of murder and/or manslaughter charges? Do you really believe it should?
Again, the law isn't going to be impressed by technical loopholes. The fact that someone, somewhere might have a legal right to download and view Alice in Wonderland doesn't magically give someone the right to make it available for anyone who asks for it.
Ah, that is clever. But the bomb/drug making comparison is interesting, as many governments do in fact ban publications that include explicit instructions for making bombs or drugs. That is, specific facts that could be utilised in order to make a bomb are okay, but step by step instructions are not. The courts decide where the line is drawn between "information" and "instructions".
Or in other words, if the primary purpose of the publication appears to be to provide instructions for how to do something illegal, then it can be deemed illegal itself.
One measure of that is to look at who's buying/using that publication, and what they're using it for. If the majority of the users are legitimate, e.g. students studying chemistry and using it as a reference text, then it's likely to the considered okay. If the majority of the people using it are building bombs and blowing things up with them, then it's likely to be considered not okay.
Apply the same logic to IsoHunt and the answer is pretty obvious. The majority of people using the service to assist them with downloading things don't have the legal right to do so. Not even a significant minority do.
The law doesn't get care about technical "loopholes". You can't go around selling marijuana on the street (assuming it's banned in your country) and then say "well I just assume my customers have permission to use it on medical grounds, it's not up to me to verify their claims" and expect to be allowed to go on your merry way.
One difference is that Google doesn't actually host the.torrent file. The other, actually important difference is that Google indexes much, much more than copyrighted material located on sites which don't have permission to redistribute. Hence, the "intent" part. isoHunt's intent is to provide an index of mostly-copyrighted material. Google's intent is to provide an index of web content, the vast majority of which is intended by its owners to be indexed.
Fundamentally, whoever who owns the rights to a particular piece of content is allowed to distribute it or not distribute it under whatever terms they want. They don't have to make sense, they don't have to make that person a profit. They can be completely arbitrary, although probably with a few exceptions.
So if they choose to say, it's okay to watch it on TV, and it's okay to record it from TV and watch it later so you can skip the ads, but it's not okay to download it via BitTorrent... that's their right.
What do you have to say to that, smart guy?
(P.S. I torrent all the TV shows I watch too and wouldn't bother watching them if I had to wait for them to come to free-to-air with ads every few minutes, but I don't try to convince myself I have some kind of "right" to do so. Although I think you ought to have to the right to download anything produced by the BBC.)
Yep, fair enough. I think this is a good reminder that people are generally irrational, and will get a bee in their bonnet about the strangest things. I guess some people just like to think that everyone is out to screw them over.
I didn't get into the original BioShock so I don't know if the community had a reasonable expectation of being treated better with the sequel; I've never considered 2K to be a particularly nice/community-oriented publisher though. They don't seem to go out of their way to be dicks to their customers (unlike, say, Ubisoft and EA) but they're certainly no friendly indie game-lovers that just want everyone to be happy... they're definitely in it for the money. But that's just my view, and as such releasing DLC etc. doesn't surprise me at all.
Or as you put it, "making the very calculating, very self-absorbed move" of selling additional content for a game you've already bought. But again, that comes back to the irrational logic: it's okay for a company to plan to release DLC but only if it's not finished before the product is released. I don't like these tiny DLCs myself, I prefer additional content to be made available either in free patches (for minor things) or expansion packs (for more significant things). But I don't really understand why people who are okay with the DLC approach in general are upset by this.
But again... it doesn't have to make sense. People can bitch and whine about whatever they want, I suppose. Back to my cave.
If you can provide some kind of citation that the content was originally intended to be a part of the game at release, but then they decided to change it to be a paid add-on later, then I'll believe that explanation. But I don't see any evidence to support that assumption.
It's not as if DLC is a new concept, and I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that they didn't plan to release paid add-ons for the game from very early in the development of the game. So why is it so hard to believe that the content in question was always intended to be a paid add-on? As you said yourself, they must have finalised it quite some time before the game was released in order for it to have been including on the disc. The small download sizes suggest that they tested their mechanism for enabling the content and it worked as expected. Clearly, this was planned from a long time ago.
If you hate having to pay extra to get additional things in a game, then it's fair to be annoyed - I don't like it either, and I deal with that by avoiding games that have (or are likely to have) DLC for important content. I'm not sure if this could be considered "important" though.
Additionally, their technical explanation is that the game requires everyone to have the same data files when playing multiplayer, and they used this mechanism to avoid splitting the playerbase between those who had the DLC and those who didn't (since everyone has the same data, even if they haven't bought this add-on). Their alternative would have been to require everyone to download a 100 MB patch which would've added nothing for the people who hadn't bought the add-on, aside from the ability to play with people who had.
It really is surreal that people are complaining about this, as if there's some inherent right to be able to play all the data on the disc. It's exactly the same as any other paid add-on, just the delivery method is different. And personally, if I'd found out that they had the add-on completely finished but chose to make me download it when they had the ability to put it on the disc, I'd find that to be a bit obnoxious.
Hmm your government salaries must be very different to the ones here... the benefits and working conditions tend to be much better (e.g. 37.5 hour standard week, vs 40 hour standard week in most private sector companies; and many that have way more than 40 hour weeks); but these things and more job security are used to offset the fact that most people in the public sector could get paid significantly more doing the same thing in the private sector.
These days, most people who bought a new car would expect it to come with an FM radio. Providing the car with an AM radio by default and charging another 100 for an FM radio would be an easy way to make extra money, since most people who are in the position to buy a new car would listen to FM radio. Imagine further that it is only possible to install an FM radio if it comes from the manufacturer.
Why would anyone who bought the game think/expect it came with this particular content? It wasn't advertised as being present in the game, and any advertising that did appear was saying it was an optional add-on that would cost you a few dollars. Your analogy is broken. The optional FM radio analogy is better, but I don't understand why you think it's a Dick Move. It's also still flawed, because if people see a radio in the car they might believe it'd be AM/FM and thus not think to check. But did anyone see this faux-DLC content advertised on the packaging or in marketing material and so think it'd be part of the game when they got it? Uhhh... no, no I don't think so. So how could they possibly have gone against anyone's expectations? Nobody expected this particular content to be in the game. It wasn't in the game they bought. It could be added to the game by paying for it later, just as advertised. What's the fucking problem?
The packaging does not say that it is not included. It really doesn't make a difference what the packaging says here.
You keep saying things like this, as if all along everyone who bought the game thought they had this Sinclair Solutions content, and now have suddenly discovered that they don't and will have to pay money to use it. But that's not the case at all, and if you would just understand that one simple point, things might suddenly look very different to you. That point is this: The "Sinclair Solutions" thing was not sold as part of the original game.
Do you believe then that it was acceptable that 2k games included all of the necessary information to use this content in the release, suggested this was a post-release feature, and then charged consumers for something they already technically had?
Absolutely. So what if they technically had it? Besides, it's clear they technically didn't, since the small amount of additional data was required to actually make the game use it. Otherwise nobody playing the game would have even suspected this content was there. Do you throw a hissy fit every time you discover some unused art asset in a game's data files because a monster didn't make it to the final cut, or a texture that was packed into the game data but is never actually referenced due to a design change? Do you complain that an AI script that gives a particular entity a different behaviour ended up not ever being used because the designers decided that behaviour didn't fit the character, and neglected to delete the script file?
I'll ask again... at what point does the experience start to belong to the consumer? What is the exact point of demarcation?
This seems a strange question. The experience you get is entirely dependent on what the development team have programmed into the game, in terms of programming, graphics, sound effects, music, dialog, script, performance optimisation, and so on. The customer always has very little say in how they experience any kind of art, whether it's a film or music or a video game. That's kind of the whole point. In this case, you had exactly the experience the developers intended you to have, and just as much opportunity to customise that experience to your liking as you'd get with any comparable game.
Why is it different? It's still a justification for the developers to continue working on and release new content (assuming that it sells well, of course).
The content was always intended to be a paid add-on available post-release. What does it matter if they managed to get it finished before the game was released? Game development is a large and highly parallel process, with lots of different people doing lots of different things. Maybe the new content is primarily artwork, and that was finished before the programming was done - or vice-versa. Should they have a whole bunch of people sitting around doing nothing because not everyone happened to finish their tasks at the exact same time? Even though they already know what the next project is, and don't need to wait for anything else to be completed before they can get started?
Slashdot Mirror
Well maybe they've decided to actually test the patch before releasing it? :)
I discovered today that a patch for a vulnerability in the IIS SMTP service causes the settings for the service to be reset if you're running it on Server 2008 (2003 doesn't seem to be affected, AFAIK).
Unfortunately we applied that patch (and others) last Wednesday and don't have regular automated testing of our website's ability to deliver mail to localhost, so took a while for us to notice... a quick Google lead me to this discussion where I discovered the cause.
Interesting point. The funny thing is, a large part of the reason for my proposal is precisely to try to reduce voter apathy! I mean, how many people actually believe that going out and casting your vote every couple of years on election day actually has any impact on how your country is run? How many people think politicians are honestly representing the best interests of their constituents? Most people seem to view politicians as dishonest spin doctors who say whatever they think will get them elected, and then do whatever they feel like until the next election, when they start making promises they have no intention (or ability, often) to keep.
Democracy is supposed to be about everyone who has a stake in their country's future having their say, but we have so many layers between Joe Voter and Joe Decision Maker that most Joe Voters end up feeling pretty disconnected from the whole thing. Not to mention the party system that pretty much forces you to pick between two groups of people with some ideas/policies that you agree with and some you disagree with.
I think a lot of the reason people don't get involved is because of the effort required to actually become informed about an issue. But if you can present the voter with a concise, factual summary of the proposals, you might be able to lower the barrier to entry enough to increase participation.
My thinking was that by having regular, frequent voting, people would get used to having a say in the policies that are being created to shape their life, and become more engaged in the process as a result. But it would be quite a cultural shift, especially for countries where voting is non-compulsory.
If you can't ensure no voter frauds exists with the current system, why is it a necessity to ensure that no voter fraud could possibly exist in a new system before adopting it?
Of course there's armed robberies in my country, but not on such a scale that it'd have any meaningful effect on a poll. Why would anyone who wanted to alter the outcome of a vote choose a method that requires maximum effort to achieve any kind of statistically significant effect while putting themselves at great risk, when there are perfectly legal and more effective alternatives (such as advertising campaigns, going door-to-door to spread your point of view, etc.)?
I mean, it's theoretically quite possible for me to abduct a schoolbus full of children and then blackmail every single one of their parents into voting a particular way and providing proof that they did. But that's a crapload of work, especially if I want to stand even a remote chance of not being punished for the crime, and even if I get a bus that's crammed full of 50 kids from different families all with two parents and four grandparents who all comply, that nets me a paltry 300 votes.
There certainly are problems with my proposal, but I don't think the possibility of fraud or coercion is one of them. Granted that it would be unlikely to work in a place like Iraq, but in stable countries existing law enforcement ought to provide sufficient deterrence.
I don't agree it's "impossible". You can issue tamper-resistant (i.e. they break if you try to open them) devices to all voters to verify their ID. Use them like an RSA SecurID token to provide a "something you have and something you know" login method, or stick a GSM/CDMA chip in them and make the device register votes via encrypted channels over the cell network. Make it law that you report their loss within a reasonable amount of time. If you have regular votes (weekly or monthly, say) then there's not really any excuse for not noticing your device is missing. Countries where voting is optional might need laxer rules, but even there it's probably acceptable to say you have to regularly register your lack of interest in voting.
I'm not convinced "voting at gunpoint" is a significant issue. It might depend on the country you're in, of course, but threatening any kind of violence is kind of looked down upon here. It would also be hard to do on any meaningful scale, and doing so on any meaningful scale would guarantee some pretty serious comeuppance for the perpetrators. I mean, theoretically you could get a pretty good compliance rate by kidnapping/threatening people's children if they don't vote a certain way, but the logistics make it really hard to pull off and the punishment for pulling it off acts as a pretty strong deterrent.
If it's really a concern, have a cooling-off period where people can revoke their vote via appropriate channels. So it's not enough to have a gun to their head on voting day, you need to keep it to their head for the rest of the week or they can go to the police and have their vote scrubbed.
Good thing we won't need people with long term experience in these matters to act as experts in the system.
If it's valuable to have people with long term experience, then they'll be able to make their case as to why they should remain on the floor. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with our system for getting representatives into the political system at present. The issue I see is what they do once they get there, as the most effective means for them to remain in the system don't seem to do a very good job of furthering the public interest. Even the most honest politician who truly is trying to do their best for their community still has to make deals with the other side, trading support for policies they don't really agree with in order to gain support for the policies they do.
Consider all the rhetoric from the Republican side in the US about how they're not going to support a single thing the Democrats ask for due to the passage of the health care reform bill. I expect this is just hot air, but if they actually follow through then you'll potentially have good policies being opposed because of a completely unrelated policy. That's an extreme example, but it's very common. It's often suggested that the internet filter in Australia is being supported by both parties because they're seeking the support of a particular senator in order to get another bill passed, for example.
This is part of the political system and how it's designed to work, but I really think it's subverting the process away from what the politicians are supposed to be doing. It's turning the leadership of nations into schoolyard popularity contests. Policies ought to be debated on their merits, and this "I'll pass yours if you pass mine" stuff is pure bullshit.
The non-political experience comes into the next question:
Good thing the people running stuff in the background can't be suborned to move votes around.
Most of the background jobs are just regular jobs that can be staffed as normal. Sensitive positions can have the usual safeguards of oversight and public scrutiny and accountability applied. It's not as if the current system is infallible and can't be subverted, and learning how to prevent that happening will continue to be part of our civilisation's evolution.
An additional idea is to have a lot of the "actual doing of things" done in a manner similar to jury duty: citizens are selected at random to form a panel charged with implementing something. Politicians don't really have, or need, that thorough a knowledge of their area. Witness how frequently Ministers/Senators are moved to different portfolios. They receive advice from their departments and experts with real knowledge in the field, and then act on that.
By randomly selecting groups of people to do that part of the job, you make it much harder for bribery or intimidation to work (especially if you keep the identities secret until they've finished their work).
Good thing the politicians will vote to change to this system as it will remove the old representation system and all their perks.
This is a major problem and one I sometimes worry about quite a lot. It seems pretty obvious that eventually the leadership is going to become so out of touch with the common folk that the common folk will get fed up and want significant change. It's pretty much the story of history. We don't really seem to have a mechanism for making significant changes to the political system, since all changes have to be proposed from within the system by the people who the system gave people to. There's got to be a better way than periodic violent uprisings. You seem to have to be pretty lucky to get something better after one of them, and it's a pretty huge gamble to take.
Ways to game the system: submit votes on lots and lots of issues - DoS the votetakers and makers
The system seems to hold up well enough to that
I don't think it really matters. It's already illegal here to assist people to die, so it doesn't apply. No medical professional is going to assist a teenager or divorcee to end their life, and people who would assist with that aren't going to in any way be deterred by a censor.
If someone wants to kill themselves, there's plenty of ways to do it and trying to deny access to anything that discusses it is going to be about as effective as denying sex education to kids in the belief that they'll not have sex if you don't tell them about it.
I agree parties wouldn't be needed anymore, but I don't see how it'd automatically make corporations and special groups any more powerful than they already are. I think it would make them less powerful, if the voters are reasonably well informed. If they're not, then it probably wouldn't make a lot of difference. And it would be more efficient, as you point out.
We should be able to leverage modern communication technology to be able to vote online, and therefore have frequent, even weekly, votes on policies. Maybe spend 30 minutes a week to read about and vote on policies that you're interested in. It would be really fascinating to see something like this in action.
I'd like to see something like this:
The "parties" referred to above would likely be temporary groupings of people who are backing a particular policy (because it's easier to make a workable policy without gaping holes if you work with others), not necessarily permanent parties like we have now.
The "people" referred to in #1 are presumably politicians of some kind, although this kind of system would be pretty receptive to "single-issue politicians" who go in to argue for their favourite policy and then disappear back into normal life afterwards. Since having every single citizen arguing at once is probably not really viable, some kind of representation system like we have now would probably be needed (i.e. you need a certain amount of popular support before you can make a proposal that'll actually end up being voted on).
So there you have it. I've fixed democracy in 10 minutes. Now to tackle climate change!
Oh yes, the other problem we share with most democracies is that we're normally limited to voting for a party, not particular policies. This works okay if there's a party which has policies you mostly agree with, but not so well otherwise. Since both of the major parties seem to be in favour of the Great (But Ineffective) Firewall of Australia, all you can do is vote for one of the minor parties (e.g. the Pirate Party) and hope they get the message about why you didn't vote for them. However, that only makes sense if the filter is a major issue for you -- but more likely, the Liberal party might actually come up with some kind of Health policy before the election and a lot of people will choose to vote based on that, since most people don't care one way or the other if the filter goes ahead (it may not achieve anything worthwhile, but it won't affect me, so what do I care?).
And of course, whichever party wins will believe it has a mandate to put in place a national internet filter with no public oversight.
IMHO, democracies really need to start leveraging technology to provide voting on policies, not on parties. Parties are popularity contests that no longer provide a benefit to the democratic process, IMHO.
Undemocratic? The Hungry Beast had a phone poll of 1,000 people conducted, the results are in this Wikipedia article. The results indicate that a lot of people actually are in favour of the filter, but it seems to largely depend on how it's phrased and explained.
I think we have the same problem as pretty much every democracy: everyone gets a vote, but only a small portion of people actually care/know enough about an issue to make an informed choice. And the governments don't seem to be under much pressure to actually be open and honest about what the policies they're pushing will actually achieve. So, the government asks "do you want the Australian Government to block access to things only sickos would want to see like child porn?" and most people say "yes". The government doesn't mention the filter will only block unencrypted HTTP and therefore by absolutely trivial to bypass, or how much it will cost vs the amount of content it'll be blocking, or how effective it will be compared to installing your own filtering software.
Various online polls show strong opposition to it, but that's pretty much as expected. People who have some idea of how the internet works are hugely opposed to it for technical as well as "freedom" related issues, but people who have no idea (which is most people) just hear "this will stop child rapists and not impact you at all" and are of course going to be for it.
In a way, it's a lot like the "Free software" debate. Most people don't give a crap if their software is "Free" or not, and don't even think about how having a healthy Free software ecosystem may benefit them (regardless of what they choose to use themselves). But if it all disappeared and there was no alternative but proprietary software from big corporations, they'd realise what they'd lost. But explaining it beforehand? There's just no interest.
I'm quite impressed you're able to teach ANY of your elderly firewalls how to properly navigate a website. My firewalls just filter packets! I guess it's true, they don't make 'em like they used to.
The choppers were there precisely because the ground troops asked them to come out and blow away the guys that had fired upon them earlier. The choppers saw guys with what they believed to be weapons (and as it turns out, some of them were in fact weapons) and blew them away. I'm not sure if the group the Apaches attacked was actually the same group that had earlier fired on the ground troops (who were apparently on a roof), but certainly they were in the same area and it's not inconceivable they'd left the roof by the time the Apaches arrived (hit and run tactics seem entirely logical).
A lot of people are saying that the heli crew should have passed the buck to someone else for making the decision, but to me it seems like the buck stopped with them. They didn't have anyone else to pass it to. They had to either decide to engage based on what they saw, or not engage and risk the ground troops suffering casualties because they made the wrong call.
Like it or not, but pretty much everyone in the military is going to put their colleague's lives first. Maybe this is something that needs to change, but I think Western militaries will have a very hard time with that kind of cultural shift. "Poke your head out and see if they shoot you" is a far cry from "leave no man behind". But maybe in this kind of situation, where you're fighting in a city with mostly civilians, the military will just have to accept that they will have to make themselves sitting ducks at times.
On the other hand, what would have happened if the Apache crews had just waited and watched while the ground forces approached? When they did get attacked, would they say "sorry, we're not 100% positive that every single one of the people attacking you is actually armed and firing. Looks like there might be some foolhardy reporters with them, so you're on your own. Good luck"? I'm not really convinced that "never firing upon civilians under any circumstances" is a reachable ideal, unless you're fighting enemies who never (or at least, very rarely) co-locate themselves with civilians.
Don't know if it's in the short version, but in the long version after the attack has finished and the ground forces have moved in to the area, there are two references to an RPG round under one of the victims of the attack. The first is saying it looks like there's an RPG round under one of them, and a while later someone asks if the round is still live (or something to that effect, I forget the exact terminology) and the response is that is still live. So at that point it seems pretty certain there was at the very least a round for an RPG in the group, which makes the theory of an RPG launcher being present much more likely.
I agree about the attack on the van seeming to be unprovoked, and was certainly a case of the gunner seeing what they wanted/expected to see. In the previous story on the subject someone mentioned that the "insurgents" often have someone come by after a battle to collect weapons and bodies, so perhaps from the point of view of the Apache crew it was expected behaviour, leading to a false assumption.
The thing about shots being fired was I think regarding the ground forces. There's a part where the subtitle says something about "the area we took fire from" (when someone in the helo is speaking), even though the audio clearly says "where you were taking fire from" (again I'm paraphrasing since I can't remember the exact text). But at no point did I hear the pilot/gunner saying they themselves were under fire. As I understand it, the Apaches were called in by ground forces who were under attack by small arms fire. There seems to be a bit of confusion here as the radio chatter suggests the people the helo engaged were on a roof, and the pilot jumps in to clarify that everyone they engaged was at ground level.
Another thing I found disturbing was that after a while the pilot asks if the ground forces need them to engage anywhere else, and they're directed to an abandoned/under construction building which some enemies are in. There seems to be no doubt that there's bad guys in it and it's a legitimate target. They get some distance and come around to put a Hellfire in it, and another man is seen walking past the front of the building - doesn't seem to be going in, and gives every appearance of just being a civilian who happens to be walking past the building. The gunner has a good few seconds with this guy in his camera, but fires the missile anyway.
There's two subsequent missile attacks on the building where a small crowd has gathered in front to look, and I can grant they didn't have much choice there since they had no way of dispersing the crowd. But that first one seemed to be entirely at their discretion and they could've waited for that guy to get clear.
Also, I fully agree about it being covered up afterwards. Yes, it would've been embarrassing and caused a bit of an outrage, but I don't think anyone was acting outside of the rules of engagement in effect at the time given the situation. Of course, any fallout probably would've been directed at those who set these rules, which probably explains why they decided to try to cover it up.
The main issue for me is that it was on the front page of a newspaper, i.e. a publication that takes quite some time to go from "receiving a story" to "being in print and distributed". That's a long time for such an earth-shattering event to be going on without any other reports.
Then when they read the article, instead of calling the paper and asking where they got their information from (and why the fuck didn't they immediately report it to authorities?!) and to see if they had any additional information that might be helpful, they decided to call in security forces to search the area.
Of course, we don't know all the details. Maybe they did call the paper and they continued/escalated the prank there; in which case they certainly deserve to be in a lot of trouble. Maybe communications with the town in question did actually happen to be down so they couldn't speak to anyone in the town to see if people had started fleeing before the paper was out on the stands. Nothing in the article suggests that either of these is the case, but then it doesn't explicitly state they weren't, either.
And finally, I suppose calling out security forces to sweep an area isn't really that big a deal. If it turns out to be just a hoax, hey, it's good practice for them anyway.
Like any combatant, helicopters don't get any closer to their targets than they need to, and helicopters can engage targets with their cannon from several kilometers out. Look at footage of attacks on people that are very clearly and unarguably armed enemies and you'll see that they very rarely, if ever, are paying any attention to the helicopters. At several kilometers out they're not very visible, and it wouldn't be obvious what they were looking at. They would be audible, but I imagine if they freaked out every time they heard a helicopter in the distance, they'd be freaking out constantly.
Besides which, if you're a resistance fighter trying to look inconspicuous and you hear an enemy helicopter flying around, what are you going to do? a) run around in a panic so as to attract as much attention to yourself as possible or b) act like you don't care so as to blend in with all the civilians around you?
Your primary argument is as bogus as my username.
If a helo pilot waits for the RPGs to start flying before becoming on-edge, they have essentially zero chance of returning alive. Yes, helicopter gunships are extremely formidable but they're not invulnerable. They're noisy, they're slow, and the enemy absolutely loathe them. Just because they can operate a good distance from the target area doesn't mean they aren't hovering right over another enemy with an RPG or machine gun. Of course they're going to be on edge, and unfortunately people who are on edge and looking for a fight tend to see enemies where none exist.
Okay, you're not lying, you're just delusional. I apologise.
as long as hosting mere links is not also illegal
Well that's the crux of the matter. If it was already established that linking to files whose function is to facilitate copyright infringement was illegal, then there'd be no reason for this to be dragging through the court system. This order, if it goes ahead, would provide an important precedent in establishing that such links are indeed illegal.
Your argument more or less boils down to "they're only linking to other sites, and linking to things isn't illegal". However it's quite clear that if that was actually an established fact, then this case wouldn't exist and there wouldn't be a slashdot story about it. Rather, this case is about establishing whether or not your supposed fact is actually a fact.
And so far, it looks like such links will not be protected. While that is disappointing, I do think it's a correct and inevitable interpretation of the current laws in Canada.
I'll admit I'm making a lot of assumptions about the laws that apply in this particular jurisdiction, however the fact that the case has been before the court for years, and that the judge has proposed this order, suggests that my assumptions are correct and the Canadian laws regarding copyright are very similar to those in my country. Either that or the judge is going to shortly find himself looking for a new job, which would be an excellent and highly amusing result, but one which I consider unlikely enough to dismiss the possibility.
The arguments used to try to defend this kind of site look about as stupid as all the "X on a computer" or "X on the internet" patents which are regularly derided by the /. community (where X is some very commonplace thing that shouldn't be patentable). You can bet someone who made a living from providing millions of people with references to drug dealers would be charged with something, and his claims that he had no idea that people would actually go and buy illegal drugs from the people he said could supply them with illegal drugs would be laughed at.
They say Joe Torrent does not have that right, but they really don't know, because they have no means to verify where Joe Torrent lives and/or if he bought a copy of the content (two of the dozen or so of circumstances that would give Joe Torrent that right).
There aren't many jurisdictions which give you the right to download a copy of copyrighted material just because you've bought a copy in another format. Even fewer give you the right to give someone copyrighted content if that someone else happens to have already bought a copy. Imaginary rights don't matter, even if they are morally sound and ought to be real rights.
This is completely irrelevant, of course. It doesn't really matter if an individual has the right to download some particular copyrighted content, because the site they're downloading it from does not have the right to distribute it (or to assist in its distribution). isoHunt is not indexing torrents hosted and blessed by the copyright holders. This is not difficult to determine, despite what you want to believe.
It doesn't matter if you believe, like me, that fighting this kind of distribution is harmful to their business. If they want to spend millions of dollars making a movie and then make actually watching it so difficult that nobody does causing them to become bankrupt, then that's their right. Even if it is stupid and short-sighted.
Well, take a look at most of Europe.
I don't really see how European laws affect rulings by the Canadian court system about a site hosted in Canada. I don't imagine the German courts would allow a German site to host pro-Nazism content because it happens to be perfectly legal in the United States.
Your entire argument seems to be based on unlikely possibilities such as "the person downloading it might already own a copy of it", as well as your confusing your own moral code with the actual laws. That was the point of using a comparison to something that was unlikely to register in your own moral code as being okay. These cases are based on the current law, not what Joe Torrent thinks the law ought to be.
However, this conversation is entirely pointless, as there's simply no way to argue with this kind of dishonesty:
most people would be found guilty, anyway, because they are
Short answer: no.
The likelihood that you actually believe that most people are using P2P to download things (and also upload things) they're legitimately allowed to is... zero. Yet you're willing to tell a bald-faced lie because to be honest would destroy your position.
"Not distributing content" is the technical loophole I'm talking about it. It doesn't matter if the site is distributing content or not. What matters is if the site is materially contributing to copyright infringement. And the copyright holders know if the people distributing it have the right to do so, and they have overwhelmingly said that no, Joe Torrent does not have a license to distribute their content. The proof of that is the fact that these companies who own the copyright are spending their own time and money to sue both people who are distributing it, and people who are assisting with the distribution.
The courts have been through this over several years. They've sampled the data and checked if it's infringing or not. They have a good idea of the ratio of the content the site links to which is legit and infringing. Over several years they've found what any rational person would find: the vast majority of content that isoHunt links to is not being distributed with the consent of the copyright holders.
Please elaborate on why the analogy is "pretty dumb". Aside from the hyperbole of comparing copyright infringement to wanton murder, it captures the spirit pretty well: the target dummies represent the fabled legitimate content and/or legitimate downloaders that are used to defend the legitimacy of the site; the firing range represents the sites that are indexed by their crawler, i.e. the "scope of operations"; the people wandering through represent the copyrighted material that is "inadvertently" being indexed and the ratio of people to targets suggests that the firing range is in a sub-optimal location; and the killer robots represent the software isoHunt use to run the site, which is quite understandably unable to differentiate between the two types of "targets".
By comparing it to actually killing people, we push aside the "but it shouldn't be illegal to download movies!" argument by using something that very few people would argue should be legal. Clearly, it's grossly negligent to allow your bots to keep operating if they accidentally kill a person. Letting them keep operating while they kill many more people than target dummies would undoubtedly make you criminally responsible for the deaths.
Whether or not sharing entertainment content should be allowed or not is not the issue, and if you think it should be allowed then hiding behind "but we're not actually distributing the content" is not the answer. Unless of course you think mass lawsuits against hundreds/thousands/more of individuals is a good thing. Because if you say "you can't sue the indexer, only the actual downloaders" then the companies aren't going to go "oh okay, in that case it's too hard, never mind". They're going to do exactly that, and most people don't have the resources, time or skills needed to ensure they get a fair trial.
And even if they did get a fair trial, most people would be found guilty, anyway, because they are.
Ah, but it doesn't need to be proven beyond any doubt, only beyond reasonable doubt. And after many years of back-and-forth, they have decided that.
How? Well, it's not that hard. Take a large random sample of the content they're helping people to find, and then find the owners of the copyright on that content, and ask if the site it's on has their blessing to be distributing the content. Unless you cherry pick the tiny handful of legitimate items that are indexed by IsoHunt, the overwhelming majority of content is being provided by people who have no rights to do so.
Let's go with another analogy. IsoHunt have built a robot that can automatically detect moving target dummies on a firing range and shoot them with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Let's also imagine that doing such a thing is perfectly legal in their jurisdiction. Nothing wrong with that. Except their firing range happens to intersect with a busy sidewalk and people are wandering into the line of fire without even knowing it. Needless to say, many of these people are ending up dead as a result of this.
Do you think an "we can't help it, our bot just shoots anything that moves and looks kind of like a target dummy" excuse will get them out of murder and/or manslaughter charges? Do you really believe it should?
Again, the law isn't going to be impressed by technical loopholes. The fact that someone, somewhere might have a legal right to download and view Alice in Wonderland doesn't magically give someone the right to make it available for anyone who asks for it.
Ah, that is clever. But the bomb/drug making comparison is interesting, as many governments do in fact ban publications that include explicit instructions for making bombs or drugs. That is, specific facts that could be utilised in order to make a bomb are okay, but step by step instructions are not. The courts decide where the line is drawn between "information" and "instructions".
Or in other words, if the primary purpose of the publication appears to be to provide instructions for how to do something illegal, then it can be deemed illegal itself.
One measure of that is to look at who's buying/using that publication, and what they're using it for. If the majority of the users are legitimate, e.g. students studying chemistry and using it as a reference text, then it's likely to the considered okay. If the majority of the people using it are building bombs and blowing things up with them, then it's likely to be considered not okay.
Apply the same logic to IsoHunt and the answer is pretty obvious. The majority of people using the service to assist them with downloading things don't have the legal right to do so. Not even a significant minority do.
The law doesn't get care about technical "loopholes". You can't go around selling marijuana on the street (assuming it's banned in your country) and then say "well I just assume my customers have permission to use it on medical grounds, it's not up to me to verify their claims" and expect to be allowed to go on your merry way.
One difference is that Google doesn't actually host the .torrent file. The other, actually important difference is that Google indexes much, much more than copyrighted material located on sites which don't have permission to redistribute. Hence, the "intent" part. isoHunt's intent is to provide an index of mostly-copyrighted material. Google's intent is to provide an index of web content, the vast majority of which is intended by its owners to be indexed.
Fundamentally, whoever who owns the rights to a particular piece of content is allowed to distribute it or not distribute it under whatever terms they want. They don't have to make sense, they don't have to make that person a profit. They can be completely arbitrary, although probably with a few exceptions.
So if they choose to say, it's okay to watch it on TV, and it's okay to record it from TV and watch it later so you can skip the ads, but it's not okay to download it via BitTorrent... that's their right.
What do you have to say to that, smart guy?
(P.S. I torrent all the TV shows I watch too and wouldn't bother watching them if I had to wait for them to come to free-to-air with ads every few minutes, but I don't try to convince myself I have some kind of "right" to do so. Although I think you ought to have to the right to download anything produced by the BBC.)
Yep, fair enough. I think this is a good reminder that people are generally irrational, and will get a bee in their bonnet about the strangest things. I guess some people just like to think that everyone is out to screw them over.
I didn't get into the original BioShock so I don't know if the community had a reasonable expectation of being treated better with the sequel; I've never considered 2K to be a particularly nice/community-oriented publisher though. They don't seem to go out of their way to be dicks to their customers (unlike, say, Ubisoft and EA) but they're certainly no friendly indie game-lovers that just want everyone to be happy... they're definitely in it for the money. But that's just my view, and as such releasing DLC etc. doesn't surprise me at all.
Or as you put it, "making the very calculating, very self-absorbed move" of selling additional content for a game you've already bought. But again, that comes back to the irrational logic: it's okay for a company to plan to release DLC but only if it's not finished before the product is released. I don't like these tiny DLCs myself, I prefer additional content to be made available either in free patches (for minor things) or expansion packs (for more significant things). But I don't really understand why people who are okay with the DLC approach in general are upset by this.
But again... it doesn't have to make sense. People can bitch and whine about whatever they want, I suppose. Back to my cave.
If you can provide some kind of citation that the content was originally intended to be a part of the game at release, but then they decided to change it to be a paid add-on later, then I'll believe that explanation. But I don't see any evidence to support that assumption.
It's not as if DLC is a new concept, and I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that they didn't plan to release paid add-ons for the game from very early in the development of the game. So why is it so hard to believe that the content in question was always intended to be a paid add-on? As you said yourself, they must have finalised it quite some time before the game was released in order for it to have been including on the disc. The small download sizes suggest that they tested their mechanism for enabling the content and it worked as expected. Clearly, this was planned from a long time ago.
If you hate having to pay extra to get additional things in a game, then it's fair to be annoyed - I don't like it either, and I deal with that by avoiding games that have (or are likely to have) DLC for important content. I'm not sure if this could be considered "important" though.
Additionally, their technical explanation is that the game requires everyone to have the same data files when playing multiplayer, and they used this mechanism to avoid splitting the playerbase between those who had the DLC and those who didn't (since everyone has the same data, even if they haven't bought this add-on). Their alternative would have been to require everyone to download a 100 MB patch which would've added nothing for the people who hadn't bought the add-on, aside from the ability to play with people who had.
It really is surreal that people are complaining about this, as if there's some inherent right to be able to play all the data on the disc. It's exactly the same as any other paid add-on, just the delivery method is different. And personally, if I'd found out that they had the add-on completely finished but chose to make me download it when they had the ability to put it on the disc, I'd find that to be a bit obnoxious.
Hmm your government salaries must be very different to the ones here... the benefits and working conditions tend to be much better (e.g. 37.5 hour standard week, vs 40 hour standard week in most private sector companies; and many that have way more than 40 hour weeks); but these things and more job security are used to offset the fact that most people in the public sector could get paid significantly more doing the same thing in the private sector.
These days, most people who bought a new car would expect it to come with an FM radio. Providing the car with an AM radio by default and charging another 100 for an FM radio would be an easy way to make extra money, since most people who are in the position to buy a new car would listen to FM radio. Imagine further that it is only possible to install an FM radio if it comes from the manufacturer.
Why would anyone who bought the game think/expect it came with this particular content? It wasn't advertised as being present in the game, and any advertising that did appear was saying it was an optional add-on that would cost you a few dollars. Your analogy is broken. The optional FM radio analogy is better, but I don't understand why you think it's a Dick Move. It's also still flawed, because if people see a radio in the car they might believe it'd be AM/FM and thus not think to check. But did anyone see this faux-DLC content advertised on the packaging or in marketing material and so think it'd be part of the game when they got it? Uhhh... no, no I don't think so. So how could they possibly have gone against anyone's expectations? Nobody expected this particular content to be in the game. It wasn't in the game they bought. It could be added to the game by paying for it later, just as advertised. What's the fucking problem?
The packaging does not say that it is not included. It really doesn't make a difference what the packaging says here.
You keep saying things like this, as if all along everyone who bought the game thought they had this Sinclair Solutions content, and now have suddenly discovered that they don't and will have to pay money to use it. But that's not the case at all, and if you would just understand that one simple point, things might suddenly look very different to you. That point is this: The "Sinclair Solutions" thing was not sold as part of the original game.
Do you believe then that it was acceptable that 2k games included all of the necessary information to use this content in the release, suggested this was a post-release feature, and then charged consumers for something they already technically had?
Absolutely. So what if they technically had it? Besides, it's clear they technically didn't, since the small amount of additional data was required to actually make the game use it. Otherwise nobody playing the game would have even suspected this content was there. Do you throw a hissy fit every time you discover some unused art asset in a game's data files because a monster didn't make it to the final cut, or a texture that was packed into the game data but is never actually referenced due to a design change? Do you complain that an AI script that gives a particular entity a different behaviour ended up not ever being used because the designers decided that behaviour didn't fit the character, and neglected to delete the script file?
I'll ask again... at what point does the experience start to belong to the consumer? What is the exact point of demarcation?
This seems a strange question. The experience you get is entirely dependent on what the development team have programmed into the game, in terms of programming, graphics, sound effects, music, dialog, script, performance optimisation, and so on. The customer always has very little say in how they experience any kind of art, whether it's a film or music or a video game. That's kind of the whole point. In this case, you had exactly the experience the developers intended you to have, and just as much opportunity to customise that experience to your liking as you'd get with any comparable game.
Why is it different? It's still a justification for the developers to continue working on and release new content (assuming that it sells well, of course).
The content was always intended to be a paid add-on available post-release. What does it matter if they managed to get it finished before the game was released? Game development is a large and highly parallel process, with lots of different people doing lots of different things. Maybe the new content is primarily artwork, and that was finished before the programming was done - or vice-versa. Should they have a whole bunch of people sitting around doing nothing because not everyone happened to finish their tasks at the exact same time? Even though they already know what the next project is, and don't need to wait for anything else to be completed before they can get started?