So, these things happened before and after the "war on terror". You're frothing at the mouth. Here, have a napkin.
Invading Afghanistan was a good thing, because it got rid of a bunch of murderous primitive fuckwits, regardless of whose fault it is that they were in power in the first place.
Invading Iraq would have been a good thing, if it had been done right, without lying about the reasons for it, because it got rid of a bunch of murderous primitive fuckwits, regardless of whose fault it is that they were in power in the first place.
"Getting rid of primitive, murderous fuckwits" is always a Good Thing (tm); it's just too bad nobody had the balls to do it in places like Rwanda and Liberia.
Yes, the "war on terror" is stupid. Yes, "mission accomplished" was stupid. Don't put words in peoples' mouths, and think before you post.
I'm no fan of the Iraq war (I would have been in favor of it if it hadn't happened under such false dishonest pretenses) but the posts spewing crap about "that's what you get for..." are vitriolic and ignorant.
Sept. 11 happened without Iraq, the Morocco bombings happened without Iraq (Morocco? Arab/muslim country? Hello?), the Turkish synagogue bombing happened without Iraq, the Paris bombings happaned without Iraq, and many others did as well. Get over yourselves.
My sympathy for the poor bastards who were killed or hurt in London.
Dunedin's network, however, will be protected by the AES encryption standard, used by the Department of Defense. Passwords will be required, and each computer will have to be authenticated by the network. There also will be firewalls. "I'm confident to say our subscribers are at zero risk for that kind of fraud," Guerin said. (emphasis mine)
There's a word I once learned for that. It's "You are a muppet". OK, that's 3 words, but it's a lot shorter than "blithering incompetents shouldn't be allowed in positions of technical authority, especially not when paid by public money." Alas.
Re:strange definitions of warez, xss, etc.
on
Anatomy of a Hack
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The article is not realistic, the scenarios described are way too simplified, and it's not something a true security guru would waste 5 minutes even contemplating as a "real life" example of how stuff works.
Remember, though, that by even knowing that the topic of security exists, you're ahead of 80% of the crowd. Firewall? 90%. What are ports and sockets? 95%. SQL Injection? Cross-site scripting? Packet rebuilding with Scapy? Memory manipulation? Bus mastering? Whoa.
If anything, I have noticed my overall technical clue level go down pretty drastically over the last few years, simply by virtue of having to choose how to talk to my audience (I'm a security consultant, although sometimes I wonder whether I'm worthy of the term. I start tending to describe myself as more of a well-paid kindergarden teacher.)
The article does a fine step-by-step description of the basics of intrusion, in sufficient-but-not-quite-overpowering-detail. It is not geared at you, but is rather meant to present some basics of the topic in a non-intimidating manner (no, "go memorize RFC 793" is NOT an acceptable answer for most of the world) to technically somewhat-but-not-overly-clued managers, developers, whatnot.
The mistake the slashdot crowd (and most '1337 security types) make is taking a very overbearingly arrogant stance to the wide-eyed and scared masses who just want someone to tell them "ok, we have a big problem here, but let me try to explain what it is and how it works." Remember that and you'll go far professionally.
Hm, I'm a well-adjusted, educated IT security professional in my early '30s, with a long-term girlfriend, a nice apartment, nice car, solid job, family, friends, and a propensity for really violent computer games. Haven't been in a physical altercation for going on 15 years now, although I've been tempted to smack some of my clients upside the head, and have had no desire at all to even consider pointing my fairly extensive firearms collection at a human being.
That said, I really really really don't relish the idea of being moved offworld to some sort of military training camp full of smelly gamer geeks.
Sorry, but it's disingenuous to compare racist comments to what this guy was saying. Frankly, unless these comments were made in a work environment, it's none of the employer's business if the gentleman in question is a card carrying member of the national front, american communist party, or whatever other radical group you can think of, unless he commits blatantly illegal acts and is prosecuted for it.
Last I checked, the UK has several anti-hate speech laws, and I imagine that police (and other similarly sensitive) employment is tied to fairly stringent standards of personal behavior. We're talking about a civil suit, not prosecutable views.
Similarly, the idea of comparing anti-abortion statements made by a hypothetical employee of an abortion clinic to this is a huge stretch. Naturally, the man's company "relies" on IP. Most companies do, it is in the nature of many technical companies. He is, however, not questioning the fundamental nature of IP, nor can you compare the issue of IP in any way shape or form to the abortion debate, no matter what side of it you are on.
As far as being allowed to dismiss him for whatever reason, although the UK has fairly lenient employment laws, I do not believe that it has the equivalent of what in the US are called "at-will" states, in which you can fire anyone for any reason (assuming the reason is not discriminatory or otherwise against the law.) In this case, you could, for example, ditch an employee for having a sticker of a political candidate you do not support on his/her car in the company parking lot--IANAL, so feel free to correct me.
DOSBox - While not a game per se, I use this to run X-COM
You realize of course that X-COM 1 & 2 run natively on XP now with a patch? I'll be glad to share if you're interested, I spent a lot of time digging up various X-COM stuff on a whim recently. I even found a multiplayer add-on for it (!).
Only problem for me was that, given my habit of building absurd bases, my game crashed irrecoverably pretty late in, but unless you build 10 psi-labs with several hundred guys on staff, you probably won't get this:)
That said, I also found Out of this World and the sequel, as well as Worms 1 & 2, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder and Xenon II just amazing time killers.
Ok, of course I'm single-minded, but seriously, folks, stick to working on the (fantastic) OS, let the sysadmins smuggle it into the enterprise like they've been doing for years:)
The company is in trouble and the individuals are in trouble.
Ok, that's more like it. Notwithstanding what happens to the individuals concerned, I would expect such a lawsuit to also name a legally authorized agent of the company as at least an interested party. To be fair, it's also not clear whether, as "senior systems administrators" they are just that.
They knew about the emails because they "treated them like spam"
I treat a lot of my mails like spam (usually because that's what it is). The problem here is that there is simply insufficient information in the article to determine whether they knowingly binned them. Note that the lower court ruled them inappropriate as respondents--other stories on the subject that I can find simply associate them with infringement notices (having their names as addressees constitutes "association".)
As you imply, there is insufficient information, but what is evident is that they're at least inconsistent with their handling of infringement notices.
That said, I would stand by the assertion that, no matter what Australian law says about the legality of certain forms of communication, any law firm or organization failing to include a plain old letter as part of a notification of, say, infringement, is amateurish, and I would question the rationale of a judge who does not take this into consideration when deciding on the admissability of respondents/defendants.
There's actual writing there? I mean, beside those giant 90 point font OI SOD GRANNY BIFF RUMPY PUMPY SUITS YOU SIR or whatever headlines?
I was too busy looking at the big colorful pictures of the queen's sex change, Alice Jones from Bristol who was violated by a giant alien cucumber, and of course Tina, aspiring hairdresser, on page 3...
They asked for the logs. They didn't get them, so they went to a judge and got a search warrant instead. Completely correct procedure.
That's like police showing up at your door and asking you to come along to the station for questioning; if you refuse, an arrest warrant is issued. However, if you cooperate, you may unwittingly incriminate yourself despite being innocent. It's happened.
Few are questioning that, with a warrant, the police were legally empowered to seize the server. I simply question the tactics employed, knowing full-well that it would have been possible to dump the disks instead.
Let's face it, most police departments have access to some sort of computer forensic specialists; checking out logfiles on a mirrored drive is far below that in terms of sophistication and time required.
NOT true. In Australia, a business is responsible for the actions of its staff members. They are agents of the ISP and they and their actions within the working hours constitute actions of the ISP.
Contradictory. The business is responsible for the actions of its staff members, correct. This is a case for the staff members being responsible for the actions of the business. If the two are, I don't know the proper Australian legal term, but here it's "procurists", i.e. authorized to make legal representation of the company, as a member of the executive board would be, then yes. Otherwise, they should not be held personally responsible. Note that they didn't commit a crime per se, simply ignored or were blissfully unaware of, communication attempts with no guarantee of contact.
As you say, an individual is responsible of wrongdoing in most jurisdictions if he is aware of an illegal act and fails to take some sort of action on it. However, as sysadmins, such awareness is not guaranteed, and I suppose it's up to the courts to decide whether a failed attempt to contact the sysadmins through an unreliable method constitutes "informing".
That is completely beside the point. The point is that ANYONE can alert a responsible agent of illegal activities and that responsible agent MUST take action by law if they find these claims to be true.
What's a 'responsible agent' in your phrasing? Responsible agent of the law? In that case, wouldn't this be a criminal rather than a civil case? When I read the article, I noted that they were being sued rather than prosecuted.
That said, it's not beside the point at all. I am admittedly unaware of Australian law on this, but the (European) jurisdictions I am familiar with generally require something like at least a registered letter to inform a party of wrongdoing and of a demand for remediation. As I recall from my conversations with my grandfather (an attorney in CA) there is also a requirement of somehow, in a recognizable and provable manner, serving a complaint tosomeone to be able to claim they were aware of it.
What's a 'responsible agent' in your phrasing? Responsible agent of the law? In that case, wouldn't this be a criminal rather than a civil case?
In the UK, any 'ISP' is responsible upon a legal order to prevent illegal activity on their systems and network. If they don't then they are in breach of the law.
You got it right and used two important words/phrases.
1. "ISP" != sysadmins at the ISP.. ISP = legally authorized representatives of ISP, ISP management, whatever.
2. "legal order". Not emails, not phone calls. In most of the world this takes the form of a subpoena, a court order, visit by a duly authorized officer of the law, notarized & witnessed document, whatever.
The law does not support the right to share, nup, no it doesn't (at least it restricts the right to share in certain very specific instances, but I'm sure that's what you meant.)
But wait a moment, these guys weren't sharing, they were just "running" a bittorrent hub, weren't they? Those dastardly pirates, trying to hide between the mask of a third party! Oh wait, hold on a moment, they weren't actually "running" the hub, they are sysadmins for the ISP where the hub is present.
Ah, but surely they must be responsible for content on their servers? Well, barring that pesky common carrier concept for a moment, sure they are, which is why they were informed by legally binding documents. Hang on, what's that you say? Emails? Phone calls? You mean to imply that these two do-no-goods ignored emails from a rightfully authorized agent of the RECORDING INDUSTRY? Why, the blackguards, swing they must.
Whoa, thousands of mails a day to sysadmins, you say? Damn their eyes, they can't shield their guilt behind a spam filter. Sue them! In fact, sue their boss! Sue the accountants who work there! Sue the janitor! Who does he think he is, claiming that he's not party to technical operatoins. I'm _sure_ he overheard one of aforementioned phone calls. For that matter, sue the landlords, they must have known that illegal activity was going on!
What you've missed is that this spammer is spamming for their own benefits, and is also the most prolific spammer (at least, that is identifiable) in this country.
Hey hey hey, no, I didn't miss it. My point is just that going after spammers is not the full solution the problem, maybe that didn't come across.
By all means, prosecute him, fine him, beat him, flay him, boil him in oil, force him to watch Silver Spoons reruns, whatever. But go after everyone involved.
But you would accept "swift beating" as something to be applied to particularly egregious offenders? At least most of the Australians I know seem to be in favor of this as a remediation for gross negligence, dishonesty and stupidity, and they're the better for it:)
That said, you could send him to Singapore and claim he spray-painted a few cars.
I would love to have a hand on my forehead. I have tried to convince my girlfriend that this would, in fact be wicked cool (even more so than my idea for over-and-under double barreled penises) but she doesn't seem to get it.
Think about it--sipping coffee, smoking a cigarette, keeping your sunglases from slipping off your forehead, reading maps while driving, the possibilities are endless.
As for "wouldn't look appealing"? Well, if someone ever criticized my third forehead hand, I'd lean in real close, look them in the eye, and SLAP THEM.
The fully correct way of doing this would include, to use a well-worn phrase, following the money. Go to the source. Find the guys who use this dude's services.
Mass unsolicited mail isn't always viagra spams and pre-approved mortgage scams. A colleague who does email security for (insert major UK bank here) recently forwarded a mail their head postmaster dude received from an eager (one would presume) intern at some marketing outfit.
Basically, it was a survey spammed to all postmasters of large outfits, making no attempt at subterfuge or hiding content, saying "what email filters do you use if any? How do they work? How can we get an exception for our mails? We mass-mail for large, reputable clients" with example spam from Nike and other big, well-known companies attached. The reply from postmaster was hilarious sardonic--you could tell that he realized that marketing-boy just didn't have a clue what he'd just sent; postmaster was barely restraining his trigger finger and trying to be at least vaguely civil.
Point being? Someone is paying these fuckwads to spam. Just like the Lycos screensaver attempted to do with basically a DDoS, it is technically doable to find spammers' clients and take them out. Spammers are just the messengers, middle-men, crooked little street dealers--nailing their shrivelled little testicles to the wall, while gratifyiing and a right step, won't solve the problem.
That said, I don't think fines are a good thing in this case. Public beatings, well...
You're essentially correct with most of your points, but I take issue with #1.
I, as a casual downloader, do not see myself as "stealing" a non-unique piece of information which can be copied at no cost to anyone. No, opportunity cost/lost revenue does not count--I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. It's not an ideological question about "information wanting to be free"--I simply either want something for free or not at all, and if it does not remove either that "something" or an equivalent already present monetary value from someone else's possession, I don't consider it theft.
Mind, the law says differently, so YMMV. That said, although this is a total fallacy of equation, the law says a lot of things.
However, someone who takes said information and _sells_ a copy to someone else without publisher's permission, that's where I have a problem. They are making money off someone else's work without due compensation. And by buying from them, even at a discount, you are aiding them in doing so.
You don't sit down and read a lot of the crap that gets copyrighted as "literature" either:-)
Doesn't matter, really. My point was that what's unique, the product of someone's labor when creating either a book or a piece of software, is the specific combination of bits and bytes which make up the content.
So, vaguely leaning on RMS' analogy of literature, while a SW patent would let you control any usage or permutation of a particular story idea, a copyright would allow William Shakespeare to limit access to and reproduction of the specific contents of Romeo & Juliet, while not preventing me from publishing and making money off "see, there's these two kids, they fall in love & get it on, then there's some fighting and they both off themselves. The End."
To be honest, judging from the pictures they have, these are not people you really _want_ to see naked in public. At least Spencer Tunick (sp?) pieces have some cute girls.
As for stain-free dockers, just don't spill shit all over yourself:-)
Specifically, I spend my time making little metal masses go really fast and studying trajectories, sonic effects, and impact patterns. If you don't want to call it "potting away at the gun range..."
Aside from that, I enjoy studying basic physio-chemical effects of complex carbohydrate distillates on the human body, and piecing together the hormonal puzzle of the effect of the female of the species in really short skirts on drunken guy^H^H^Hscientists.
I'm not really up to speed on the whole IP debate, but it seems to me that, if you're going to apply _something_ to software, copyright would be the restriction that makes sense, no?
Basically, instead of limiting use of a method or idea, you're limiting the use of an actual, tangible implementation of said method or idea--so rather than patenting, say, asymmetric crypto, or even the mathematical algorithm used to accomplish DH, you copyright the specific code with which you build that particular use of DH (such as the source for a Cisco VPN client, whatever).
Include protections for "markedly similar source" and require openness of any source code wanting protection (same as with patents--you essentially open your idea to the public for x years in return for protection of said idea.) Let the concerned parties fight it out in court what constitutes "excessive similarity."
Slashdot Mirror
So, these things happened before and after the "war on terror".
You're frothing at the mouth. Here, have a napkin.
Invading Afghanistan was a good thing, because it got rid of a bunch of murderous primitive fuckwits, regardless of whose fault it is that they were in power in the first place.
Invading Iraq would have been a good thing, if it had been done right, without lying about the reasons for it, because it got rid of a bunch of murderous primitive fuckwits, regardless of whose fault it is that they were in power in the first place.
"Getting rid of primitive, murderous fuckwits" is always a Good Thing (tm); it's just too bad nobody had the balls to do it in places like Rwanda and Liberia.
Yes, the "war on terror" is stupid. Yes, "mission accomplished" was stupid. Don't put words in peoples' mouths, and think before you post.
I'm no fan of the Iraq war (I would have been in favor of it if it hadn't happened under such false dishonest pretenses) but the posts spewing crap about "that's what you get for..." are vitriolic and ignorant.
Sept. 11 happened without Iraq, the Morocco bombings happened without Iraq (Morocco? Arab/muslim country? Hello?), the Turkish synagogue bombing happened without Iraq, the Paris bombings happaned without Iraq, and many others did as well. Get over yourselves.
My sympathy for the poor bastards who were killed or hurt in London.
Dunedin's network, however, will be protected by the AES encryption standard, used by the Department of Defense. Passwords will be required, and each computer will have to be authenticated by the network. There also will be firewalls. "I'm confident to say our subscribers are at zero risk for that kind of fraud," Guerin said. (emphasis mine)
There's a word I once learned for that. It's "You are a muppet". OK, that's 3 words, but it's a lot shorter than "blithering incompetents shouldn't be allowed in positions of technical authority, especially not when paid by public money." Alas.
The article is not realistic, the scenarios described are way too simplified, and it's not something a true security guru would waste 5 minutes even contemplating as a "real life" example of how stuff works.
Remember, though, that by even knowing that the topic of security exists, you're ahead of 80% of the crowd. Firewall? 90%. What are ports and sockets? 95%. SQL Injection? Cross-site scripting? Packet rebuilding with Scapy? Memory manipulation? Bus mastering? Whoa.
If anything, I have noticed my overall technical clue level go down pretty drastically over the last few years, simply by virtue of having to choose how to talk to my audience (I'm a security consultant, although sometimes I wonder whether I'm worthy of the term. I start tending to describe myself as more of a well-paid kindergarden teacher.)
The article does a fine step-by-step description of the basics of intrusion, in sufficient-but-not-quite-overpowering-detail. It is not geared at you, but is rather meant to present some basics of the topic in a non-intimidating manner (no, "go memorize RFC 793" is NOT an acceptable answer for most of the world) to technically somewhat-but-not-overly-clued managers, developers, whatnot.
The mistake the slashdot crowd (and most '1337 security types) make is taking a very overbearingly arrogant stance to the wide-eyed and scared masses who just want someone to tell them "ok, we have a big problem here, but let me try to explain what it is and how it works." Remember that and you'll go far professionally.
Hm, I'm a well-adjusted, educated IT security professional in my early '30s, with a long-term girlfriend, a nice apartment, nice car, solid job, family, friends, and a propensity for really violent computer games. Haven't been in a physical altercation for going on 15 years now, although I've been tempted to smack some of my clients upside the head, and have had no desire at all to even consider pointing my fairly extensive firearms collection at a human being.
That said, I really really really don't relish the idea of being moved offworld to some sort of military training camp full of smelly gamer geeks.
Sorry, but it's disingenuous to compare racist comments to what this guy was saying. Frankly, unless these comments were made in a work environment, it's none of the employer's business if the gentleman in question is a card carrying member of the national front, american communist party, or whatever other radical group you can think of, unless he commits blatantly illegal acts and is prosecuted for it.
Last I checked, the UK has several anti-hate speech laws, and I imagine that police (and other similarly sensitive) employment is tied to fairly stringent standards of personal behavior. We're talking about a civil suit, not prosecutable views.
Similarly, the idea of comparing anti-abortion statements made by a hypothetical employee of an abortion clinic to this is a huge stretch. Naturally, the man's company "relies" on IP. Most companies do, it is in the nature of many technical companies. He is, however, not questioning the fundamental nature of IP, nor can you compare the issue of IP in any way shape or form to the abortion debate, no matter what side of it you are on.
As far as being allowed to dismiss him for whatever reason, although the UK has fairly lenient employment laws, I do not believe that it has the equivalent of what in the US are called "at-will" states, in which you can fire anyone for any reason (assuming the reason is not discriminatory or otherwise against the law.) In this case, you could, for example, ditch an employee for having a sticker of a political candidate you do not support on his/her car in the company parking lot--IANAL, so feel free to correct me.
DOSBox - While not a game per se, I use this to run X-COM
:)
You realize of course that X-COM 1 & 2 run natively on XP now with a patch? I'll be glad to share if you're interested, I spent a lot of time digging up various X-COM stuff on a whim recently. I even found a multiplayer add-on for it (!).
Only problem for me was that, given my habit of building absurd bases, my game crashed irrecoverably pretty late in, but unless you build 10 psi-labs with several hundred guys on staff, you probably won't get this
That said, I also found Out of this World and the sequel, as well as Worms 1 & 2, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder and Xenon II just amazing time killers.
Here are a few to please corporate marketing, sales and management types (yes, they're work safe):
g -- Remember, sometimes less is more.
g (yeah yeah, I know, but they could learn a thing or two from them)
2 80.jpg
9 .LZZZZZZZ.jpg (what is it about Japanese graphics that just screams "weird!"?)
:)
http://prague.tv/galleries/funny-pics7/freebsd.jp
http://www.nrg4u.com/freebsd/baby-doll-1-small.jp
http://intdata.homeip.net/img/freeBSD-girl.jpg (mmh, amazing how many critical pieces of infrastructure are held together by duct tape)
Redundant components: http://tinyurl.com/a2uhp
One for the marketing department: http://www.servepath.com/images/better_devil_250x
One to compensate for corporate randomness: http://images-jp.amazon.com/images/P/483990930X.0
And finally of course, http://homepage.tinet.ie/~cullenm/2dart/regi.jpg (just to piss off the zealots)
Ok, of course I'm single-minded, but seriously, folks, stick to working on the (fantastic) OS, let the sysadmins smuggle it into the enterprise like they've been doing for years
The company is in trouble and the individuals are in trouble.
Ok, that's more like it. Notwithstanding what happens to the individuals concerned, I would expect such a lawsuit to also name a legally authorized agent of the company as at least an interested party. To be fair, it's also not clear whether, as "senior systems administrators" they are just that.
They knew about the emails because they "treated them like spam"
I treat a lot of my mails like spam (usually because that's what it is). The problem here is that there is simply insufficient information in the article to determine whether they knowingly binned them. Note that the lower court ruled them inappropriate as respondents--other stories on the subject that I can find simply associate them with infringement notices (having their names as addressees constitutes "association".)
As you imply, there is insufficient information, but what is evident is that they're at least inconsistent with their handling of infringement notices.
That said, I would stand by the assertion that, no matter what Australian law says about the legality of certain forms of communication, any law firm or organization failing to include a plain old letter as part of a notification of, say, infringement, is amateurish, and I would question the rationale of a judge who does not take this into consideration when deciding on the admissability of respondents/defendants.
There's actual writing there? I mean, beside those giant 90 point font OI SOD GRANNY BIFF RUMPY PUMPY SUITS YOU SIR or whatever headlines?
I was too busy looking at the big colorful pictures of the queen's sex change, Alice Jones from Bristol who was violated by a giant alien cucumber, and of course Tina, aspiring hairdresser, on page 3...
They asked for the logs. They didn't get them, so they went to a judge and got a search warrant instead. Completely correct procedure.
That's like police showing up at your door and asking you to come along to the station for questioning; if you refuse, an arrest warrant is issued. However, if you cooperate, you may unwittingly incriminate yourself despite being innocent. It's happened.
Few are questioning that, with a warrant, the police were legally empowered to seize the server. I simply question the tactics employed, knowing full-well that it would have been possible to dump the disks instead.
Let's face it, most police departments have access to some sort of computer forensic specialists; checking out logfiles on a mirrored drive is far below that in terms of sophistication and time required.
NOT true. In Australia, a business is responsible for the actions of its staff members. They are agents of the ISP and they and their actions within the working hours constitute actions of the ISP.
Contradictory. The business is responsible for the actions of its staff members, correct. This is a case for the staff members being responsible for the actions of the business. If the two are, I don't know the proper Australian legal term, but here it's "procurists", i.e. authorized to make legal representation of the company, as a member of the executive board would be, then yes. Otherwise, they should not be held personally responsible. Note that they didn't commit a crime per se, simply ignored or were blissfully unaware of, communication attempts with no guarantee of contact.
As you say, an individual is responsible of wrongdoing in most jurisdictions if he is aware of an illegal act and fails to take some sort of action on it. However, as sysadmins, such awareness is not guaranteed, and I suppose it's up to the courts to decide whether a failed attempt to contact the sysadmins through an unreliable method constitutes "informing".
That is completely beside the point. The point is that ANYONE can alert a responsible agent of illegal activities and that responsible agent MUST take action by law if they find these claims to be true.
What's a 'responsible agent' in your phrasing? Responsible agent of the law? In that case, wouldn't this be a criminal rather than a civil case? When I read the article, I noted that they were being sued rather than prosecuted.
That said, it's not beside the point at all. I am admittedly unaware of Australian law on this, but the (European) jurisdictions I am familiar with generally require something like at least a registered letter to inform a party of wrongdoing and of a demand for remediation. As I recall from my conversations with my grandfather (an attorney in CA) there is also a requirement of somehow, in a recognizable and provable manner, serving a complaint tosomeone to be able to claim they were aware of it.
What's a 'responsible agent' in your phrasing? Responsible agent of the law? In that case, wouldn't this be a criminal rather than a civil case?
As I said, IANA(Australian)L
In the UK, any 'ISP' is responsible upon a legal order to prevent illegal activity on their systems and network. If they don't then they are in breach of the law.
You got it right and used two important words/phrases.
1. "ISP" != sysadmins at the ISP.. ISP = legally authorized representatives of ISP, ISP management, whatever.
2. "legal order". Not emails, not phone calls. In most of the world this takes the form of a subpoena, a court order, visit by a duly authorized officer of the law, notarized & witnessed document, whatever.
The law does not support the right to share, nup, no it doesn't (at least it restricts the right to share in certain very specific instances, but I'm sure that's what you meant.)
But wait a moment, these guys weren't sharing, they were just "running" a bittorrent hub, weren't they? Those dastardly pirates, trying to hide between the mask of a third party! Oh wait, hold on a moment, they weren't actually "running" the hub, they are sysadmins for the ISP where the hub is present.
Ah, but surely they must be responsible for content on their servers? Well, barring that pesky common carrier concept for a moment, sure they are, which is why they were informed by legally binding documents. Hang on, what's that you say? Emails? Phone calls? You mean to imply that these two do-no-goods ignored emails from a rightfully authorized agent of the RECORDING INDUSTRY? Why, the blackguards, swing they must.
Whoa, thousands of mails a day to sysadmins, you say? Damn their eyes, they can't shield their guilt behind a spam filter. Sue them! In fact, sue their boss! Sue the accountants who work there! Sue the janitor! Who does he think he is, claiming that he's not party to technical operatoins. I'm _sure_ he overheard one of aforementioned phone calls. For that matter, sue the landlords, they must have known that illegal activity was going on!
Good lord, man...
What you've missed is that this spammer is spamming for their own benefits, and is also the most prolific spammer (at least, that is identifiable) in this country.
Hey hey hey, no, I didn't miss it. My point is just that going after spammers is not the full solution the problem, maybe that didn't come across.
By all means, prosecute him, fine him, beat him, flay him, boil him in oil, force him to watch Silver Spoons reruns, whatever. But go after everyone involved.
But you would accept "swift beating" as something to be applied to particularly egregious offenders? At least most of the Australians I know seem to be in favor of this as a remediation for gross negligence, dishonesty and stupidity, and they're the better for it :)
That said, you could send him to Singapore and claim he spray-painted a few cars.
I would love to have a hand on my forehead. I have tried to convince my girlfriend that this would, in fact be wicked cool (even more so than my idea for over-and-under double barreled penises) but she doesn't seem to get it.
Think about it--sipping coffee, smoking a cigarette, keeping your sunglases from slipping off your forehead, reading maps while driving, the possibilities are endless.
As for "wouldn't look appealing"? Well, if someone ever criticized my third forehead hand, I'd lean in real close, look them in the eye, and SLAP THEM.
The fully correct way of doing this would include, to use a well-worn phrase, following the money. Go to the source. Find the guys who use this dude's services.
Mass unsolicited mail isn't always viagra spams and pre-approved mortgage scams. A colleague who does email security for (insert major UK bank here) recently forwarded a mail their head postmaster dude received from an eager (one would presume) intern at some marketing outfit.
Basically, it was a survey spammed to all postmasters of large outfits, making no attempt at subterfuge or hiding content, saying "what email filters do you use if any? How do they work? How can we get an exception for our mails? We mass-mail for large, reputable clients" with example spam from Nike and other big, well-known companies attached. The reply from postmaster was hilarious sardonic--you could tell that he realized that marketing-boy just didn't have a clue what he'd just sent; postmaster was barely restraining his trigger finger and trying to be at least vaguely civil.
Point being? Someone is paying these fuckwads to spam. Just like the Lycos screensaver attempted to do with basically a DDoS, it is technically doable to find spammers' clients and take them out. Spammers are just the messengers, middle-men, crooked little street dealers--nailing their shrivelled little testicles to the wall, while gratifyiing and a right step, won't solve the problem.
That said, I don't think fines are a good thing in this case. Public beatings, well...
You're essentially correct with most of your points, but I take issue with #1.
I, as a casual downloader, do not see myself as "stealing" a non-unique piece of information which can be copied at no cost to anyone. No, opportunity cost/lost revenue does not count--I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. It's not an ideological question about "information wanting to be free"--I simply either want something for free or not at all, and if it does not remove either that "something" or an equivalent already present monetary value from someone else's possession, I don't consider it theft.
Mind, the law says differently, so YMMV. That said, although this is a total fallacy of equation, the law says a lot of things.
However, someone who takes said information and _sells_ a copy to someone else without publisher's permission, that's where I have a problem. They are making money off someone else's work without due compensation. And by buying from them, even at a discount, you are aiding them in doing so.
You don't sit down and read a lot of the crap that gets copyrighted as "literature" either :-)
Doesn't matter, really. My point was that what's unique, the product of someone's labor when creating either a book or a piece of software, is the specific combination of bits and bytes which make up the content.
So, vaguely leaning on RMS' analogy of literature, while a SW patent would let you control any usage or permutation of a particular story idea, a copyright would allow William Shakespeare to limit access to and reproduction of the specific contents of Romeo & Juliet, while not preventing me from publishing and making money off "see, there's these two kids, they fall in love & get it on, then there's some fighting and they both off themselves. The End."
To be honest, judging from the pictures they have, these are not people you really _want_ to see naked in public. At least Spencer Tunick (sp?) pieces have some cute girls.
:-)
As for stain-free dockers, just don't spill shit all over yourself
Specifically, I spend my time making little metal masses go really fast and studying trajectories, sonic effects, and impact patterns. If you don't want to call it "potting away at the gun range..."
Aside from that, I enjoy studying basic physio-chemical effects of complex carbohydrate distillates on the human body, and piecing together the hormonal puzzle of the effect of the female of the species in really short skirts on drunken guy^H^H^Hscientists.
I'm not really up to speed on the whole IP debate, but it seems to me that, if you're going to apply _something_ to software, copyright would be the restriction that makes sense, no?
Basically, instead of limiting use of a method or idea, you're limiting the use of an actual, tangible implementation of said method or idea--so rather than patenting, say, asymmetric crypto, or even the mathematical algorithm used to accomplish DH, you copyright the specific code with which you build that particular use of DH (such as the source for a Cisco VPN client, whatever).
Include protections for "markedly similar source" and require openness of any source code wanting protection (same as with patents--you essentially open your idea to the public for x years in return for protection of said idea.) Let the concerned parties fight it out in court what constitutes "excessive similarity."
This is awesome.
.sig is questioned, ok, so far so good.
A guy posts his (supposed, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt) girlfriend's lingerie site on Slashdot.
Its presence in his
Comment is made on the niceness of her "uh, creations". Ibid, nothing new there.
And the discussion ends up at his photographic technique.
I love the Internet.
...How does her top stay up?