And that is why infrastructure is a government task (either direct or by government appointed company - which is how the POTS got rolled out and why it's available pretty much anywhere there is a public road), and everyone should be allowed to use that infrastructure at a fixed cost.
You want to run your car on a public road? You can do that, after you pay your vehicle taxes and get a driving license. You want to run a bus service? Sure, go ahead, just make sure you pay the vehicle taxes and have the proper licenses. Where those taxes are the same for everyone, and licenses are available for anyone who qualifies and passes certain exams. It's a level playing field.
I come from areas where data infrastructure is treated like that. Result? Excellent service at rock bottom price.
When you see a copyright notice on the work, you can not normally verify it to be valid. You can have doubts, but can never be sure. Also if you think it's the correct one, you can still not be sure.
If you REALLY aren't sure then that is a valid defense in court.
This is actually the opposite: where you ARE sure that you DO have a correctly licensed product.
How about you buy a CD from some shop in the local mall, or some digital media from a web site that accepts regular credit cards and paypal and whatnot, and the web site says they have the correct license for that. Then I take their word for it. Basically I am as sure as can be that the media for sale is legit.
Now imagine you buy it from a web site that is hosted in some small country you have never heard of, let's call it Antigua. Are you reasonably expected to know whether you can import (that's what you're doing) that media over the Internet from Antigua? Or that you need to pay other license fees? The media is fully legally distributed within Antigua after all. They may not even tell you they are in Antigua, and use a.com domain.
IANAL, and I really wouldn't know what you can and can not export when it comes to copyrighted materials. You buy a product in a country where it is legal, and it is not a typically restricted product (animal or plant parts, certain substances, weapons, antiques), and where the vendor offers it explicitly for export. I'd rely on the basics of the first sale doctrine, i.e. you buy a media item from someone who has the proper license to resell, and then you can take that with you across national borders, resell it, whatever - you just can't make copies of it as there is copyright on the item.
Reading the complete contract and help from a lawyer is not needed to know what you're buying.
It is quite clear, and obvious to everyone with half a brain, that such a discounted price is only valid if you buy a mobile service contract with it. The carrier is also not hiding that - they usually will advertise how much discount they are giving on the full price, and they will quite clearly print "price with 2-year contract worth $xxx" or something in those lines.
The problem is that the carriers are being allowed to commit fraud.
It is not fraud, and not misrepresented. You're mistaken in thinking they sell you a phone, because they don't. They sell you phone+contract as a combination. You can not buy that phone for that same price when bought separately. You may not be able to get that exact contract even when bought separately.
Part of the contract is an early termination fee, and maybe other charges. All listed out clearly in the document you sign when you buy phone+contract.
I think the first time someone actually gets sued for this crime, and assuming they have a good lawyer, they will take it all the way up to the final court to have it thrown out being unconstitutional for "unusual and cruel punishment" or however you guys call it.
In Hong Kong it's done rather differently - and I think better for the customer, and the carrier alike.
Here there are also plenty of subsidised phone plans.
What the carrier does: they offer phone+plan, then you have to pay for the phone full fee in advance, and get a monthly discount on your bill for the duration of your contract. Both those plans and phones are sold separately as well, and you have many mix-and-match options.
This is good for the customer: they get their phone at a discount, and can switch carriers any time they want. But when stopping a contract you have to pay an early termination fee (typically around USD 40-50), and you lose all future discounts. So if you stop halfway, you lose have the subsidy.
This is good for the carrier: they don't have to finance the phones, as they get the money for it upfront, and no extra losses on that phone were a customer to cancel the contract before it's finished.
Also that there is real competition here with at least five networks and more providers (including some without their own network), and by law when you want to switch providers you can take your number and it's ported over in a matter of days. The procedure is also very simple for the customer, as the new network will arrange everything for them. It makes for a very vibrant market, that's on top of the latest wireless technologies.
The claim that you didn't realize that the work was copyrighted is a defense you could raise. Under US law the defense of unintentional infringement is defeated by a copyright notice, but the law does NOT say that the defense is guaranteed in the absence of a notice.
Then how about, as I suggested, a copyright notice from someone else on the work; someone who claims to have the copyright and gives you the right to use the work.
This is getting quite close to the "safe haven" clause in the DMCA, where in case a site gets a claim of "that work belongs to me and is not allowed" they have to remove it, but as soon as they get a second claim "that work belongs to me and I want it published on your site" they may publish it again, and are safe from prosecution.
When you see a copyright notice on the work, you can not normally verify it to be valid. You can have doubts, but can never be sure. Also if you think it's the correct one, you can still not be sure.
Firefox's FlashBlock (click-to-play for Flash) extension works just fine. I don't have problems with sites being broken - or at least I don't notice they're broken. And if they're really broken (IE-only kind of sites, they still exist) I just get a blank screen.
If they say it is legal to buy their stuff with a US mailing address, then who are you to doubt that?
Or will you also not download from Amazon or iTunes for those reasons?
After all you can also not check their copyright agreements with the various copyright holders, let alone verify who actually owns the copyright on an item, and whether the reseller actually is allowed to resell the item.
Note that the summary even mentions the US, as part of the WTO, approved the ruling.
Wrong. The summary says that the US approved an agreement that allows rulings like this under certain circumstances.
Casual readers will easily misread the summary. I did, too. I re-read it as I couldn't believe the US would approve this exact ruling. It is just written ambiguously.
Key point is where you as receiver are not in a position to determine who the copyright belongs to. You get a work which is marked "(c) CleverAuthorFromAntigua, 2013". For all you know, that work belongs to the person it claims to belong to.
Closer to home: imagine you go to a shop to buy a book or a CD. How do you determine who owns the copyright? You look on the marking on the box, I suppose. How do you know the shop is selling a genuine copy, and not a pirated copy? You assume it is so, because it is from a nice looking shop in a fancy mall.
For a piece of software, say most of the packages that come with your favourite Linux distro, you will assume it can be redistributed if it contains a file that says you can. Now if you get a copy of Windows you may know that its copyrights belong to Microsoft. Or at least that's what we've always been told. But how about that copy on that brand new laptop in the shop, is the copyright paid for that? Can you tell, really? Is it because it contains some tiny sticker with some letters saying "Genuine Windows" on the bottom of the device?
The bottom line is, you can not ascertain whether such a claim is valid. You have no choice but to take it at face value.
And now for the interesting part: you download say a movie from a site that claims to be fully legal in your territory, and that even takes money for your downloads. This may be iTunes.com, amazon.co.uk or magnamovies.ru - they provide video and other media files for download. There is of course no way you can verify such a claim, legally speaking. In how much can you be held legally liable for copyright infringement in such as situation? And if you can be held liable - is it worth the risk using any such services?
Lactase persistence into adulthood is a relatively recent, as you speculated, and is thought to have been introduced approximately 10,000 years ago.
Then AC's comment makes more sense. At first I thought "but how about breast milk? Isn't that also a form of dairy?"
Of course there are differences between milk from various mammals such as cows and humans but the similarities must be great, too. It's quite common to raise say kittens whose mother died using cow's milk.
Not this parliament maybe, but how about the next parliament? After this vote you know which MP or party you should vote for next time. And put this same (or updated) bill up for public poll and subsequent parliamentary vote again.
It probably does not include requests that Google is not allowed to talk about. Like stuff under things like that patriot act, and probably some more scary and secret(ive) laws you guys have.
Pity that Google even has user's private data [...]
That's the key of that comment. Google has heaps of private data of heaps of users. And that's not just the e-mail you ask them to store on your behalf in a gmail account.
And humans are a known exeption to this rule, living about twice as long as this formula would predict: at about 60 heartbeats per minute there are over 2.5 bln in the average life span of about 80 years for humans.
I'm a big fan of long-term releases, only because I may be one of those individuals who might be responsible for systems that do not have access to the internet in order to support the "rolling release" model.
I'm also a fan of those long term releases, for other reasons. That 20 Mbit fibre link is reliably enough, still on 10.04LTS here.
Reason: it works. It receives important updates (Firefox is at latest release), security updates, etc. All the while keeping my interface the same, the basic set of applications the same, and most importantly: it works.
Rolling releases mean any time, any day you may receive a very different UI. You may have applications replaced. Functionality seriously changed. All those big changes that are now rolled out every half year or so in one go (and where you KNOW a big change is bound to happen - like replacement of Gnome by Unity) are spread out over time, and when they're released or when you're going to get them, you don't know. It's as if you're running a perpetual beta version, that's still being polished and worked on.
Sounds great for experimental and hobby systems, not for systems where you want to get work done. Like my workstation at office. Or my system at home.
Oh yes I like to play around with it now and then too, but in the end of the day when I want to print something, it has to print. When I want to quickly edit a photo or a document, it has to do this, preferably in the same way as it was done yesterday and last week. And this stability is what LTS offers, and what even a six-month release cycle offers (especially if you can safely skip a release as support doesn't stop instantly).
Agreed. 14.04 will still be supported for 5 years, 16.04 for 5 years, etc. The rolling release jsut means more updates in the OS. Personally I'd like this better, I like to be with the new releases and experiment with the new features, but everytime I install a new version of Ubuntu it mucks up a setting I had before..
So with the rolling release you risk having some setting mucked up any time, without warning. Instead of having it mucked up when you install a new release, where the mere fact of installing a new release IS the warning that some settings will be mucked up (if only for the simple reason of changed functionality).
Well it prevents multiple-vendor networks from combining logs from different vendors, but I bet all monitoring devices from a single vendor use the same hash.
Only if they would salt the MAC addresses. Not likely to happen. They probably just take a plain MD5 or SHA2 hash.
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And that is why infrastructure is a government task (either direct or by government appointed company - which is how the POTS got rolled out and why it's available pretty much anywhere there is a public road), and everyone should be allowed to use that infrastructure at a fixed cost.
You want to run your car on a public road? You can do that, after you pay your vehicle taxes and get a driving license. You want to run a bus service? Sure, go ahead, just make sure you pay the vehicle taxes and have the proper licenses. Where those taxes are the same for everyone, and licenses are available for anyone who qualifies and passes certain exams. It's a level playing field.
I come from areas where data infrastructure is treated like that. Result? Excellent service at rock bottom price.
When you see a copyright notice on the work, you can not normally verify it to be valid. You can have doubts, but can never be sure. Also if you think it's the correct one, you can still not be sure.
If you REALLY aren't sure then that is a valid defense in court.
This is actually the opposite: where you ARE sure that you DO have a correctly licensed product.
How about you buy a CD from some shop in the local mall, or some digital media from a web site that accepts regular credit cards and paypal and whatnot, and the web site says they have the correct license for that. Then I take their word for it. Basically I am as sure as can be that the media for sale is legit.
Now imagine you buy it from a web site that is hosted in some small country you have never heard of, let's call it Antigua. Are you reasonably expected to know whether you can import (that's what you're doing) that media over the Internet from Antigua? Or that you need to pay other license fees? The media is fully legally distributed within Antigua after all. They may not even tell you they are in Antigua, and use a .com domain.
IANAL, and I really wouldn't know what you can and can not export when it comes to copyrighted materials. You buy a product in a country where it is legal, and it is not a typically restricted product (animal or plant parts, certain substances, weapons, antiques), and where the vendor offers it explicitly for export. I'd rely on the basics of the first sale doctrine, i.e. you buy a media item from someone who has the proper license to resell, and then you can take that with you across national borders, resell it, whatever - you just can't make copies of it as there is copyright on the item.
Reading the complete contract and help from a lawyer is not needed to know what you're buying.
It is quite clear, and obvious to everyone with half a brain, that such a discounted price is only valid if you buy a mobile service contract with it. The carrier is also not hiding that - they usually will advertise how much discount they are giving on the full price, and they will quite clearly print "price with 2-year contract worth $xxx" or something in those lines.
The problem is that the carriers are being allowed to commit fraud.
It is not fraud, and not misrepresented. You're mistaken in thinking they sell you a phone, because they don't. They sell you phone+contract as a combination. You can not buy that phone for that same price when bought separately. You may not be able to get that exact contract even when bought separately.
Part of the contract is an early termination fee, and maybe other charges. All listed out clearly in the document you sign when you buy phone+contract.
I think the first time someone actually gets sued for this crime, and assuming they have a good lawyer, they will take it all the way up to the final court to have it thrown out being unconstitutional for "unusual and cruel punishment" or however you guys call it.
In Hong Kong it's done rather differently - and I think better for the customer, and the carrier alike.
Here there are also plenty of subsidised phone plans.
What the carrier does: they offer phone+plan, then you have to pay for the phone full fee in advance, and get a monthly discount on your bill for the duration of your contract. Both those plans and phones are sold separately as well, and you have many mix-and-match options.
This is good for the customer: they get their phone at a discount, and can switch carriers any time they want. But when stopping a contract you have to pay an early termination fee (typically around USD 40-50), and you lose all future discounts. So if you stop halfway, you lose have the subsidy.
This is good for the carrier: they don't have to finance the phones, as they get the money for it upfront, and no extra losses on that phone were a customer to cancel the contract before it's finished.
Also that there is real competition here with at least five networks and more providers (including some without their own network), and by law when you want to switch providers you can take your number and it's ported over in a matter of days. The procedure is also very simple for the customer, as the new network will arrange everything for them. It makes for a very vibrant market, that's on top of the latest wireless technologies.
Get yourself a bicycle. Way faster and less energy expenditure (i.e. less sweating) than walking or running.
The claim that you didn't realize that the work was copyrighted is a defense you could raise. Under US law the defense of unintentional infringement is defeated by a copyright notice, but the law does NOT say that the defense is guaranteed in the absence of a notice.
Then how about, as I suggested, a copyright notice from someone else on the work; someone who claims to have the copyright and gives you the right to use the work.
This is getting quite close to the "safe haven" clause in the DMCA, where in case a site gets a claim of "that work belongs to me and is not allowed" they have to remove it, but as soon as they get a second claim "that work belongs to me and I want it published on your site" they may publish it again, and are safe from prosecution.
When you see a copyright notice on the work, you can not normally verify it to be valid. You can have doubts, but can never be sure. Also if you think it's the correct one, you can still not be sure.
Don't mix up greed with stupidity. This is all about greed. And I'm sure the people involved are anything but stupid.
Firefox's FlashBlock (click-to-play for Flash) extension works just fine. I don't have problems with sites being broken - or at least I don't notice they're broken. And if they're really broken (IE-only kind of sites, they still exist) I just get a blank screen.
If they say it is legal to buy their stuff with a US mailing address, then who are you to doubt that?
Or will you also not download from Amazon or iTunes for those reasons?
After all you can also not check their copyright agreements with the various copyright holders, let alone verify who actually owns the copyright on an item, and whether the reseller actually is allowed to resell the item.
And either way the US customers pay more for their light trucks than they would without that tariff.
Note that the summary even mentions the US, as part of the WTO, approved the ruling.
Wrong. The summary says that the US approved an agreement that allows rulings like this under certain circumstances.
Casual readers will easily misread the summary. I did, too. I re-read it as I couldn't believe the US would approve this exact ruling. It is just written ambiguously.
Key point is where you as receiver are not in a position to determine who the copyright belongs to. You get a work which is marked "(c) CleverAuthorFromAntigua, 2013". For all you know, that work belongs to the person it claims to belong to.
Closer to home: imagine you go to a shop to buy a book or a CD. How do you determine who owns the copyright? You look on the marking on the box, I suppose. How do you know the shop is selling a genuine copy, and not a pirated copy? You assume it is so, because it is from a nice looking shop in a fancy mall.
For a piece of software, say most of the packages that come with your favourite Linux distro, you will assume it can be redistributed if it contains a file that says you can. Now if you get a copy of Windows you may know that its copyrights belong to Microsoft. Or at least that's what we've always been told. But how about that copy on that brand new laptop in the shop, is the copyright paid for that? Can you tell, really? Is it because it contains some tiny sticker with some letters saying "Genuine Windows" on the bottom of the device?
The bottom line is, you can not ascertain whether such a claim is valid. You have no choice but to take it at face value.
And now for the interesting part: you download say a movie from a site that claims to be fully legal in your territory, and that even takes money for your downloads. This may be iTunes.com, amazon.co.uk or magnamovies.ru - they provide video and other media files for download. There is of course no way you can verify such a claim, legally speaking. In how much can you be held legally liable for copyright infringement in such as situation? And if you can be held liable - is it worth the risk using any such services?
Lactase persistence into adulthood is a relatively recent, as you speculated, and is thought to have been introduced approximately 10,000 years ago.
Then AC's comment makes more sense. At first I thought "but how about breast milk? Isn't that also a form of dairy?"
Of course there are differences between milk from various mammals such as cows and humans but the similarities must be great, too. It's quite common to raise say kittens whose mother died using cow's milk.
Not this parliament maybe, but how about the next parliament? After this vote you know which MP or party you should vote for next time. And put this same (or updated) bill up for public poll and subsequent parliamentary vote again.
It probably does not include requests that Google is not allowed to talk about. Like stuff under things like that patriot act, and probably some more scary and secret(ive) laws you guys have.
Ah yes, the right to be forgotten. It's impossible to have stuff forgotten these days.
You misread the comment you replied to.
Pity that Google even has user's private data [...]
That's the key of that comment. Google has heaps of private data of heaps of users. And that's not just the e-mail you ask them to store on your behalf in a gmail account.
This is not new indeed.
And humans are a known exeption to this rule, living about twice as long as this formula would predict: at about 60 heartbeats per minute there are over 2.5 bln in the average life span of about 80 years for humans.
Hey, why else are we all visiting /. and bothering to comment?!
I'm impressed that you're putting so much effort in installing something you don't actually like.
I'm a big fan of long-term releases, only because I may be one of those individuals who might be responsible for systems that do not have access to the internet in order to support the "rolling release" model.
I'm also a fan of those long term releases, for other reasons. That 20 Mbit fibre link is reliably enough, still on 10.04LTS here.
Reason: it works. It receives important updates (Firefox is at latest release), security updates, etc. All the while keeping my interface the same, the basic set of applications the same, and most importantly: it works.
Rolling releases mean any time, any day you may receive a very different UI. You may have applications replaced. Functionality seriously changed. All those big changes that are now rolled out every half year or so in one go (and where you KNOW a big change is bound to happen - like replacement of Gnome by Unity) are spread out over time, and when they're released or when you're going to get them, you don't know. It's as if you're running a perpetual beta version, that's still being polished and worked on.
Sounds great for experimental and hobby systems, not for systems where you want to get work done. Like my workstation at office. Or my system at home.
Oh yes I like to play around with it now and then too, but in the end of the day when I want to print something, it has to print. When I want to quickly edit a photo or a document, it has to do this, preferably in the same way as it was done yesterday and last week. And this stability is what LTS offers, and what even a six-month release cycle offers (especially if you can safely skip a release as support doesn't stop instantly).
Agreed. 14.04 will still be supported for 5 years, 16.04 for 5 years, etc. The rolling release jsut means more updates in the OS. Personally I'd like this better, I like to be with the new releases and experiment with the new features, but everytime I install a new version of Ubuntu it mucks up a setting I had before..
So with the rolling release you risk having some setting mucked up any time, without warning. Instead of having it mucked up when you install a new release, where the mere fact of installing a new release IS the warning that some settings will be mucked up (if only for the simple reason of changed functionality).
Doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
Well it prevents multiple-vendor networks from combining logs from different vendors, but I bet all monitoring devices from a single vendor use the same hash.
Only if they would salt the MAC addresses. Not likely to happen. They probably just take a plain MD5 or SHA2 hash.