That a think is downloaded off a pirate site doesn't represent a lost sale.
One download is not one lost sale, but a couple dozen downloads can easily be equivalent to 1-2 lost sales. Especially when the downloaders now learn that the stuff is available on some sharing site, instead of knowing where to download the (paid for) original.
The amount of "signal" on that Internet was far less than the amount of "signal" of the Internet as we have now. That the ratio has worsened, doesn't mean that the desired component also has decreased in value.
One of the great improvements of the Internet back then was the search engine. One of the first (and best at it's time) was AltaVista - and you may not realise it, but that whole site was an advertisement in itself: it was set up to advertise the performance of some new processor by DEC.
Of course you also never paid a penny for those cigarettes, and didn't even look at the brands advertised on the packing, right? Because of course they were as worthless to you as/. and the rest of the Internet is.
Already VW and other companies are planning to go way into electric vehicles. And why wouldn't they want to? It's an easier and cheaper way of passing the EPA buck onto someone else. Instead of having to try to meet every stringent reg they can let someone else entirely (power companies) deal with that issue. And will they be able to deal with the issue either? Doubtful.
That would be a management issue, rather than a technical issue.
For decades now there are off-the-shelf gas scrubbers and other technologies that can very thoroughly clean up the exhaust of a power plant, including coal fired ones. It's not cheap or so of course, but there is nothing technical in the way. Add to a small number of sites, all of which are permanent managed, this is the best scenario possible for limiting pollution. Even CO2 can be dealt with this way, but that's getting a lot harder of course.
For cars it's much harder to manage. Many, many small units, often poorly maintained (yearly checkups or less). The sheer number of units makes it impossible to install scrubbers, and catalytic converters go only that far. It's technically very hard to get car exhaust as clean as power plant exhaust, and cars are often spilling their pollution right inside densely populated areas.
For your argument about trucks: well, sure, for now they won't be able to go electric. But that's not an argument to stop electric in vehicles, and even should be an argument to improve electric cars as improving technology there may just make electric trucks a reality, possibly via the hybrid diesel/electric stage where pollution can be kept out of the cities (running electric in the stop-and-go traffic of cities where diesel has a hard time, diesel on the motorways where it can shine). There are already electric and hybrid buses out there, so trucks don't seem to be too far off, either.
This is a new market, with lots and lots of growth potential, it may easily grow 100 times the size it's now (not knowing the exact numbers I'd guess electric vehicles are less than 1% of the world car market currently).
A big problem that I see for electric vehicles is still the recharging, especially recharging while on the go. It may be technically possible in the lab, but not implemented much if at all in the real world, More electric vehicles means more electric infrastructure and that's good for Musk.
TFS mentions a lack of battery production capacity: expanding this is where Musk can also benefit. More factories producing more batteries means generally better availability and lower costs.
Then there's the second part: R&D. More R&D done by one company will always benefit other companies. Better batteries that come to the market, and become available to all. Better charging technology at roadside "gas" stations. All those will benefit Musk as well.
So sure, it's a smart move by them. Makes them look good, and will bring great benefits to the world at large (less roadside vehicle emissions). While the soup campaign of Campbell mostly benefited themselves... can't think of any benefits of increasing soup consumption vs. the benefits of replacing polluting diesel/petrol vehicles by zero-emission electric vehicles. Even hybrids could be a great improvement here.
This is what we've all been afraid of because it seems to open-up the possibility that the maker of the modem is liable,
Hardly. The maker of the modem does not retain control of that modem such that they could prohibit the illegal use. To have them be liable, they'd have to have a backdoor into it so they could monitor and then disable it.
Which, very soon, they all may have. That is, if those "anti-terrorism" laws requiring backdoors everywhere are indeed put in place. Of course these backdoors are meant for the NSA et.al., but the manufacturers can also use them (after all, they build the backdoor so they have the keys as well), and then it's a little step to get to the point where the court says "you have the keys, you have the access, you have been notified but didn't do anything so you're liable."
They won't, as it has other implications. A.o. they would have to provide Internet connection for anyone that asks, for a fixed fee. So same fee for someone living in an urban high-rise as someone living in the middle of nowhere. Just like the USPS can't impose surcharges for letters to a remote island.
I have always wondered why all dinosaurs died out, and not a single species managed to survive. It's odd. They seemingly just all disappeared, while many other reptilians managed to stay. Crocodiles for example are around from before the dinosaurs, they survived competition from dinosaurs, at least one huge asteroid impact, and competition from mammals (so far). So maybe we should look at this differently: birds ARE dinosaurs, and the birds ARE the surviving species of dinosaur.
So while most species of dinosaur died out, some species (especially the small ones that could fly - an obvious advantage to seek out habitable places, without the need of massive quantities of food) managed to survive and find a new niche, from where they started to spread and evolve in other species as they adapted to new habitats.
Insects survived, though probably also there many species went extinct.
Mammals survived, smaller than dinosaurs they can live off scarcer resources. But again I would expect many mammal species went extinct as well after the meteorite hit.
And of course the same for many, many other classes of animal and plant life.
And it is probably just as much the fault of that asteroid that you exist in the first place (because with the extinction of the dinosaurs, the mammals of course also got a chance to evolve, with humans as one of the many results).
Like a typical start-up nowadays: start a company, get your name out, wait for the take-over offers to come in.
And stop writing introductions like the above if you want some real interest. Like that it'll end up with the rest of the "I'm interested in your product, please open the attachment" scams I get every day.
For every person I've seen reading a book while walking on the street over the past 30 years or so I see at least 10 people every day walking on the street looking at their phone instead of at what happens around them.
"The internet is so important that for every 10 people who gain internet access, about one person is lifted out of poverty and about one new job is created."
Interesting, but I've never heard such a claim before.
And I always thought the Internet was supposed to make everything more efficient, which generally means less people are needed to actually do stuff. On the other hand, all that "e-commerce" (mailorder-via-the-Internet) does create heaps of low-paid jobs for people to run around delivering parcels.
This works until he actually starts using the stock for good things.
For example, the foundation decides to spend $1 bln in finding a cure for cancer. To do this, they have to sell stock to raise the cash to pay the researchers and equipment for finding this cure. I assume at least those people want to get paid, and most prefer to get paid money rather than stock. Even if they are paid in stock, ownership of that stock is transferred away from Zuckerman or his foundation.
So he will only keep his voting rights as long as he doesn't actually fulfill his promise of using this 99% of his Facebook stock for whatever charitable purposes he can think of.
For examples, look at countries that suffered from hyperinflation, such as Zimbabwe recently, and in the 1930s Germany.
As long as people trust that someone else will value this banknote at $20 as well, they're happy to accept it as payment for goods or services. Stock in a company however is not so accepted - I for one would happily accept a pile of $20 banknotes, but not a pile of stock certificates with the same face value. This as I know that I can use those $20 notes in the restaurant to pay a meal, or in the shop to buy clothes. Stock certificates are not that easily used.
Part of the attraction of money is its scarcity; now the USD is a bad example but normally flooding the market with more money (like the Federal Reserve is doing) means steep inflation - loss of value of the notes, as the scarcity goes down. The same happens when flooding the market with more of a stock, like in Facebook, where Zuckerman selling all his shares would easily double or even triple the amount of freely traded shares that are available in the market.
For the vast majority of the population (myself included) a router is a fire-and-forget thing. It's set up, it works, that's it. I never log in to my router to see if there's a firmware update (even while I faintly remember there is such an option, most people won't realise this at all). I don't get notified that there is a new update, so will have to remember and manually check for it. That just doesn't happen, and I like to play with those devices. Most people are less interested and really won't check ever for updates.
So if my router is vulnerable, it'll stay so for very long. The same so for many other routers. They probably stay vulnerable until they break down and are replaced (10 years for my previous wifi router, which actually still works - never had a software update, don't know if it's even possible). Routers have to be perfect the moment they leave the factory, that's the only way to keep them safe.
Lives of people so concentrated looking at Facebook on their phone while walking (or, worse, riding their bike or driving a motor vehicle) that they don't pay attention and have an accident.
Owning stock worth $x != $x in your pocket. Until you have a buyer for your share, it's worth about as much as the paper your share certificate is printed on. Considering nowadays it's usually just bits on a computer, that value is about $0.
There's some $45 bln worth of stock in his account. To use this to actually do stuff such as finding a solution to malaria would mean you have to sell it. Now here's the problem: are there enough people willing to put down cash to make the total amount they put down for that stock $45 bln? Honestly, I doubt it. It's paper value. He may be able to sell out his 1% of stock and convert it into about $450 mln in usable cash, usable as in being able to use it to buy a home, a car, gas for the car, put food on the table. Now the other 99%. That's going to be a lot harder. Especially if he wants to sell it out in a reasonable short term - it's as much or maybe even more as the total amount of stock currently on the free market (there's a lot in the hands of a relative small number of shareholders).
The only thing I'm using the USB plug on my phone for is charging (I've used it for file transfer but that was mostly as I was too lazy to pair the Bluetooth instead).
With wireless charging options available already, the logical next step would be to create a phone with no external connections. Everything wireless. The only thing I don't have a ready solution for is the SIM card (I don't consider the US way of SIM-less, carrier-locked phones a solution). After that making phones waterproof becomes easy as well.
Next challenge: a touch screen that works under water. Preferably seawater.
Flexible electronics and screens exist (if only in the lab).
How about a phone you can fold a few times to have a nice form factor to hold when making a call, then unfold and put on the table for some browsing, after that roll up and stick in your bag.
Of course he used to be paid to fight for increased copyright protection for a big company (Disney). That's against him.
On the other hand, having had a solid career in copyright protection, means he knows all the ins and outs of copyright law. Now assuming he's been a very good lawyer (fair assumption considering he made it into a high ranking judge) he'll know the arguments for both sides just as well: that's after all the job of a lawyer. You have to know how to argue your side well, but also the opposing side: that's how you prepare for the opposing side's attacks, and how to defend against that. And that goes for him.
As a judge he's supposed to be neutral and unbiased (as much as a human can be - they may be judges, they're humans, too). As long as he remains neutral and unbiased, he should make a fine judge for copyright cases.
However coming with remarks of who's on the side of the law before the trial even has started, that's bad, and an indication of a biased or prejudiced judge.
1) It will be much harder to find individuals willing to do certain categories of high risk or menial labor. You would end up having to pay a LOT more.
A much-heard argument this is, and I really wonder how much of it is true.
If you continue to pay the current wages, the basic income is the wage increase. The basic income is supposed to cover the basics: basic housing, basic food, basic clothing. Nothing fancy, just the basics to live a simple life. Now everything above this basic income goes to luxuries. Better housing, better food, better clothing, vacations, nice electronic gadgets. Of course this is simplified, I know, but it is the idea behind basic income.
These jobs (especially the high-risk ones pay a lot more than minimum already) will allow people to afford luxuries. Any job will allow them to afford luxuries. The interesting thing is going to be how wages are going to develop. Will they have to go up a lot, to entice people to take up the job? Can they go down to have the overall income level (basic income + new wage) stay the same as it is now (current wage)? Down part of the basic income amount?
For sure there will be people to take up any job - as long as the money is right.
The basic income changes this game, and I think it's really hard to predict in which way. After all, also other jobs will change wages. More desirable jobs may see their wages cut by as much as the basic income amount, automatically making other jobs more attractive even if those wages remain the same as they are now.
The desire "to take a job, any job" may be less - however you must remember that currently people out of a job also get a state income, a social security or whatever it's called. Much more cumbersome, but nevertheless also a form of basic income. Yet still people take up the menial jobs. Sitting at home watching TV on basic income may be fun for a while, but most people will get bored out of their minds. Some will look for a job, others (like me) will look for other things to do, other business ventures to start.
Probably the difference is that those trillions to normal people actually end up back in the general economy, instead of in secret Swiss bank accounts owned by the top execs.
The license is not necessarily exclusive to Epic Records, which means he can license it to other people as well.
So now it may happen that Bob has licensed the same video, and is using it legally, and then Epic Records via Sony tries to sue him over copyright infringement. That's bad not only for Bob, but also for Mitch, as he may get a bad name and can't sell his material any more. Bob will also have no idea what's happening to him, as he knows he properly licensed the video from Mitch, who is not related to Sony, yet it's Sony that comes with the infringement claims.
The only way to get a GPS location from a phone is if the phone has the GPS function switched on,
The consumer-available GPS function does not need to be "on" for E911 to get that data.
Interesting, as Android at least does not allow apps to switch on the GPS receiver - it can only send users to the settings, asking the user to switch it on. So either it's a backdoor, or (more likely) they get the location not from GPS, but from the mobile network which can triangulate a phone's location - that failing, as you need to see at least three towers for that, the network can narrow down the search area considerably.
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That a think is downloaded off a pirate site doesn't represent a lost sale.
One download is not one lost sale, but a couple dozen downloads can easily be equivalent to 1-2 lost sales. Especially when the downloaders now learn that the stuff is available on some sharing site, instead of knowing where to download the (paid for) original.
The amount of "signal" on that Internet was far less than the amount of "signal" of the Internet as we have now. That the ratio has worsened, doesn't mean that the desired component also has decreased in value.
One of the great improvements of the Internet back then was the search engine. One of the first (and best at it's time) was AltaVista - and you may not realise it, but that whole site was an advertisement in itself: it was set up to advertise the performance of some new processor by DEC.
Of course you also never paid a penny for those cigarettes, and didn't even look at the brands advertised on the packing, right? Because of course they were as worthless to you as /. and the rest of the Internet is.
Already VW and other companies are planning to go way into electric vehicles. And why wouldn't they want to? It's an easier and cheaper way of passing the EPA buck onto someone else. Instead of having to try to meet every stringent reg they can let someone else entirely (power companies) deal with that issue. And will they be able to deal with the issue either? Doubtful.
That would be a management issue, rather than a technical issue.
For decades now there are off-the-shelf gas scrubbers and other technologies that can very thoroughly clean up the exhaust of a power plant, including coal fired ones. It's not cheap or so of course, but there is nothing technical in the way. Add to a small number of sites, all of which are permanent managed, this is the best scenario possible for limiting pollution. Even CO2 can be dealt with this way, but that's getting a lot harder of course.
For cars it's much harder to manage. Many, many small units, often poorly maintained (yearly checkups or less). The sheer number of units makes it impossible to install scrubbers, and catalytic converters go only that far. It's technically very hard to get car exhaust as clean as power plant exhaust, and cars are often spilling their pollution right inside densely populated areas.
For your argument about trucks: well, sure, for now they won't be able to go electric. But that's not an argument to stop electric in vehicles, and even should be an argument to improve electric cars as improving technology there may just make electric trucks a reality, possibly via the hybrid diesel/electric stage where pollution can be kept out of the cities (running electric in the stop-and-go traffic of cities where diesel has a hard time, diesel on the motorways where it can shine). There are already electric and hybrid buses out there, so trucks don't seem to be too far off, either.
This is a new market, with lots and lots of growth potential, it may easily grow 100 times the size it's now (not knowing the exact numbers I'd guess electric vehicles are less than 1% of the world car market currently).
A big problem that I see for electric vehicles is still the recharging, especially recharging while on the go. It may be technically possible in the lab, but not implemented much if at all in the real world, More electric vehicles means more electric infrastructure and that's good for Musk.
TFS mentions a lack of battery production capacity: expanding this is where Musk can also benefit. More factories producing more batteries means generally better availability and lower costs.
Then there's the second part: R&D. More R&D done by one company will always benefit other companies. Better batteries that come to the market, and become available to all. Better charging technology at roadside "gas" stations. All those will benefit Musk as well.
So sure, it's a smart move by them. Makes them look good, and will bring great benefits to the world at large (less roadside vehicle emissions). While the soup campaign of Campbell mostly benefited themselves... can't think of any benefits of increasing soup consumption vs. the benefits of replacing polluting diesel/petrol vehicles by zero-emission electric vehicles. Even hybrids could be a great improvement here.
This is what we've all been afraid of because it seems to open-up the possibility that the maker of the modem is liable,
Hardly. The maker of the modem does not retain control of that modem such that they could prohibit the illegal use. To have them be liable, they'd have to have a backdoor into it so they could monitor and then disable it.
Which, very soon, they all may have. That is, if those "anti-terrorism" laws requiring backdoors everywhere are indeed put in place. Of course these backdoors are meant for the NSA et.al., but the manufacturers can also use them (after all, they build the backdoor so they have the keys as well), and then it's a little step to get to the point where the court says "you have the keys, you have the access, you have been notified but didn't do anything so you're liable."
They won't, as it has other implications. A.o. they would have to provide Internet connection for anyone that asks, for a fixed fee. So same fee for someone living in an urban high-rise as someone living in the middle of nowhere. Just like the USPS can't impose surcharges for letters to a remote island.
I have always wondered why all dinosaurs died out, and not a single species managed to survive. It's odd. They seemingly just all disappeared, while many other reptilians managed to stay. Crocodiles for example are around from before the dinosaurs, they survived competition from dinosaurs, at least one huge asteroid impact, and competition from mammals (so far). So maybe we should look at this differently: birds ARE dinosaurs, and the birds ARE the surviving species of dinosaur.
So while most species of dinosaur died out, some species (especially the small ones that could fly - an obvious advantage to seek out habitable places, without the need of massive quantities of food) managed to survive and find a new niche, from where they started to spread and evolve in other species as they adapted to new habitats.
Insects survived, though probably also there many species went extinct.
Mammals survived, smaller than dinosaurs they can live off scarcer resources. But again I would expect many mammal species went extinct as well after the meteorite hit.
And of course the same for many, many other classes of animal and plant life.
Indeed!
And it is probably just as much the fault of that asteroid that you exist in the first place (because with the extinction of the dinosaurs, the mammals of course also got a chance to evolve, with humans as one of the many results).
It provides great opportunity for foreign companies to produce similar products, but better and cheaper as they don't have to add this insecurity.
Thanks to the FBI, Chinese-built software may very well become the more secure choice over US-built software.
And that's before the keys to the FBI-mandated back doors are leaked or cracked or whatever making them available to the world at large...
Like a typical start-up nowadays: start a company, get your name out, wait for the take-over offers to come in.
And stop writing introductions like the above if you want some real interest. Like that it'll end up with the rest of the "I'm interested in your product, please open the attachment" scams I get every day.
For every person I've seen reading a book while walking on the street over the past 30 years or so I see at least 10 people every day walking on the street looking at their phone instead of at what happens around them.
Interesting, but I've never heard such a claim before.
And I always thought the Internet was supposed to make everything more efficient, which generally means less people are needed to actually do stuff. On the other hand, all that "e-commerce" (mailorder-via-the-Internet) does create heaps of low-paid jobs for people to run around delivering parcels.
This works until he actually starts using the stock for good things.
For example, the foundation decides to spend $1 bln in finding a cure for cancer. To do this, they have to sell stock to raise the cash to pay the researchers and equipment for finding this cure. I assume at least those people want to get paid, and most prefer to get paid money rather than stock. Even if they are paid in stock, ownership of that stock is transferred away from Zuckerman or his foundation.
So he will only keep his voting rights as long as he doesn't actually fulfill his promise of using this 99% of his Facebook stock for whatever charitable purposes he can think of.
As a matter of fact, you're totally correct.
For examples, look at countries that suffered from hyperinflation, such as Zimbabwe recently, and in the 1930s Germany.
As long as people trust that someone else will value this banknote at $20 as well, they're happy to accept it as payment for goods or services. Stock in a company however is not so accepted - I for one would happily accept a pile of $20 banknotes, but not a pile of stock certificates with the same face value. This as I know that I can use those $20 notes in the restaurant to pay a meal, or in the shop to buy clothes. Stock certificates are not that easily used.
Part of the attraction of money is its scarcity; now the USD is a bad example but normally flooding the market with more money (like the Federal Reserve is doing) means steep inflation - loss of value of the notes, as the scarcity goes down. The same happens when flooding the market with more of a stock, like in Facebook, where Zuckerman selling all his shares would easily double or even triple the amount of freely traded shares that are available in the market.
For hackers, maybe.
For the vast majority of the population (myself included) a router is a fire-and-forget thing. It's set up, it works, that's it. I never log in to my router to see if there's a firmware update (even while I faintly remember there is such an option, most people won't realise this at all). I don't get notified that there is a new update, so will have to remember and manually check for it. That just doesn't happen, and I like to play with those devices. Most people are less interested and really won't check ever for updates.
So if my router is vulnerable, it'll stay so for very long. The same so for many other routers. They probably stay vulnerable until they break down and are replaced (10 years for my previous wifi router, which actually still works - never had a software update, don't know if it's even possible). Routers have to be perfect the moment they leave the factory, that's the only way to keep them safe.
It'd save countless lives.
Lives of people so concentrated looking at Facebook on their phone while walking (or, worse, riding their bike or driving a motor vehicle) that they don't pay attention and have an accident.
Owning stock worth $x != $x in your pocket. Until you have a buyer for your share, it's worth about as much as the paper your share certificate is printed on. Considering nowadays it's usually just bits on a computer, that value is about $0.
There's some $45 bln worth of stock in his account. To use this to actually do stuff such as finding a solution to malaria would mean you have to sell it. Now here's the problem: are there enough people willing to put down cash to make the total amount they put down for that stock $45 bln? Honestly, I doubt it. It's paper value. He may be able to sell out his 1% of stock and convert it into about $450 mln in usable cash, usable as in being able to use it to buy a home, a car, gas for the car, put food on the table. Now the other 99%. That's going to be a lot harder. Especially if he wants to sell it out in a reasonable short term - it's as much or maybe even more as the total amount of stock currently on the free market (there's a lot in the hands of a relative small number of shareholders).
The only thing I'm using the USB plug on my phone for is charging (I've used it for file transfer but that was mostly as I was too lazy to pair the Bluetooth instead).
With wireless charging options available already, the logical next step would be to create a phone with no external connections. Everything wireless. The only thing I don't have a ready solution for is the SIM card (I don't consider the US way of SIM-less, carrier-locked phones a solution). After that making phones waterproof becomes easy as well.
Next challenge: a touch screen that works under water. Preferably seawater.
Flexible electronics and screens exist (if only in the lab).
How about a phone you can fold a few times to have a nice form factor to hold when making a call, then unfold and put on the table for some browsing, after that roll up and stick in your bag.
Sounds convenient to me.
Well, maybe, maybe not.
Of course he used to be paid to fight for increased copyright protection for a big company (Disney). That's against him.
On the other hand, having had a solid career in copyright protection, means he knows all the ins and outs of copyright law. Now assuming he's been a very good lawyer (fair assumption considering he made it into a high ranking judge) he'll know the arguments for both sides just as well: that's after all the job of a lawyer. You have to know how to argue your side well, but also the opposing side: that's how you prepare for the opposing side's attacks, and how to defend against that. And that goes for him.
As a judge he's supposed to be neutral and unbiased (as much as a human can be - they may be judges, they're humans, too). As long as he remains neutral and unbiased, he should make a fine judge for copyright cases.
However coming with remarks of who's on the side of the law before the trial even has started, that's bad, and an indication of a biased or prejudiced judge.
1) It will be much harder to find individuals willing to do certain categories of high risk or menial labor. You would end up having to pay a LOT more.
A much-heard argument this is, and I really wonder how much of it is true.
If you continue to pay the current wages, the basic income is the wage increase. The basic income is supposed to cover the basics: basic housing, basic food, basic clothing. Nothing fancy, just the basics to live a simple life. Now everything above this basic income goes to luxuries. Better housing, better food, better clothing, vacations, nice electronic gadgets. Of course this is simplified, I know, but it is the idea behind basic income.
These jobs (especially the high-risk ones pay a lot more than minimum already) will allow people to afford luxuries. Any job will allow them to afford luxuries. The interesting thing is going to be how wages are going to develop. Will they have to go up a lot, to entice people to take up the job? Can they go down to have the overall income level (basic income + new wage) stay the same as it is now (current wage)? Down part of the basic income amount?
For sure there will be people to take up any job - as long as the money is right.
The basic income changes this game, and I think it's really hard to predict in which way. After all, also other jobs will change wages. More desirable jobs may see their wages cut by as much as the basic income amount, automatically making other jobs more attractive even if those wages remain the same as they are now.
The desire "to take a job, any job" may be less - however you must remember that currently people out of a job also get a state income, a social security or whatever it's called. Much more cumbersome, but nevertheless also a form of basic income. Yet still people take up the menial jobs. Sitting at home watching TV on basic income may be fun for a while, but most people will get bored out of their minds. Some will look for a job, others (like me) will look for other things to do, other business ventures to start.
Probably the difference is that those trillions to normal people actually end up back in the general economy, instead of in secret Swiss bank accounts owned by the top execs.
It can easily go a step further.
The license is not necessarily exclusive to Epic Records, which means he can license it to other people as well.
So now it may happen that Bob has licensed the same video, and is using it legally, and then Epic Records via Sony tries to sue him over copyright infringement. That's bad not only for Bob, but also for Mitch, as he may get a bad name and can't sell his material any more. Bob will also have no idea what's happening to him, as he knows he properly licensed the video from Mitch, who is not related to Sony, yet it's Sony that comes with the infringement claims.
A big, big mess.
The only way to get a GPS location from a phone is if the phone has the GPS function switched on,
The consumer-available GPS function does not need to be "on" for E911 to get that data.
Interesting, as Android at least does not allow apps to switch on the GPS receiver - it can only send users to the settings, asking the user to switch it on. So either it's a backdoor, or (more likely) they get the location not from GPS, but from the mobile network which can triangulate a phone's location - that failing, as you need to see at least three towers for that, the network can narrow down the search area considerably.