It could be that the RIAA hit below the belt often enough to scare the crap out of an ISP and intimidate them into doing their dirty work for them.
If I was an ISP, and big black-suited RIAA lawyerosi came pounding on my door threatening to bankrupt me in court unless I agree to be a hardass against P2P users, I might not exactly have the might to do anything but settle, and then bitch about it on slashdot.
I'd probably do anything I could to get the EFF's attention though.
His exclusive license likely has nothing to do with his right to grant a covenant not to enforce his copyright against people who digitize his books for him.
He might not be able to sell the text elsewhere, however, as long as he still has title to the copyright itself nothing stops him from looking the other way if someone decides to scan it themselves.
If he signed over his rights to litigate for copyright infringement, then he's screwed.
Even better would be if they could make your bandwidth symmetric and stop discriminating against servers. Seriously, apart from a choked upstream (which btw is a crock of rent-seeking bullshit anyway), why shouldn't you be able to do as you please with your own damn machine as long as you're not breaking the law?
The sad part is that it's exactly that. Whereas "5gs" is the settlement they demand, and "all your money" is how fast you'll go bankrupt keeping a lawyer on the clock.
Even sadder is that, unlike "true extortion", doing it with lawyers is completely legal.
What we need even more is to remove the notion that you can file a frivolous lawsuit and simply win it by outspending the defendant.
Moving the US to a loser pays system would give the hapless and helpless "we the people" incentive to stand and fight instead of rolling over.
As it stands now, corporations are kings. They know that if you do something they don't like, all they have to do is squash you like a bug under a big fat lawsuit, and the law be damned. The only reason they don't treat EACH OTHER like that is they know they'd be in for a huge fight in court and they'd only be able to win on merit, so in the corporate world companies tend to pick their battles.
People cannot afford to defend themselves. Which means that, today, the legal landscape is full of nothing but "might makes right" akin to the middle ages of warfare where who won was determined by whoever had the biggest and baddest army, merit and fitness to rule be damned. And since currently you have to pay through the nose to defend yourself even if you are innocent, it's better for you to roll over and cough up whatever they ask for.
This is, indeed, a protection racket. Instead of "pay or die" it's "pay or go bankrupt". And the best part of it is that forcing someone to spend money on laywers isn't illegal so it isn't considered extortion!
Going to a loser pays system would allow people to stand and fight without fear, knowing that they'd be saved in the end when they're legal bills are refunded. And for those who are too poor to hire their own defense, having "everlast refundable dollars" to finance a defense would let folks like the EFF and like to throw their full weight in support of the innocent.
I am curious what NYCL thinks about "loser pays" though.
And even if the end user was entirely competent, there simply aren't enough resources for one person to take care of all his needs by himself.
At some point, if you want to expand past a certain point you have to start delegating and giving up control. And that, unfortunately, is where you are forced to implicitly trust that whoever you delegate to isn't going to stab you in the back, either by accident or on purpose.
Ideally, you should be able to trust people not to let you down. Unfortunately, in the real world it doesn't work that day, and you need to give Mr. Murphy a place to sit so he doesn't plop down on your lap and squash you like a bug.
While that is true in principle, there is also something to be said for hiring the best help and not trying to do everything yourself.
"Doing everything yourself" doesn't always work, particularly in the case of "a man who defends himself has a fool for a client".
However, the minute you want to have someone more competent than yourself handling the details, you are forced to trust them in one way or another.
When it comes down to it, simply accept that Murphy's law is an inevitable part of the world we live in, and it is certainly going to be aggravated by human nature being what it is.
Bottom line: There is NO way to guarantee that your data will survive no matter what. If lady luck decides to hold a grudge against you, you are screwed no matter how well you cover yourself.
You do realize that most of those problems were inherited from the Bush era, right?
Picture this:
Some manager ramps up production and profit at a factory by running machines to breaking point and shafting maintenance. His numbers are so good that he gets promoted.
Enter the next guy, who has to shut it down for extensive repairs. His production plummets.
Who was responsible for the problem? Who is actually going to get the blame?
Slashdot Mirror
It could be that the RIAA hit below the belt often enough to scare the crap out of an ISP and intimidate them into doing their dirty work for them.
If I was an ISP, and big black-suited RIAA lawyerosi came pounding on my door threatening to bankrupt me in court unless I agree to be a hardass against P2P users, I might not exactly have the might to do anything but settle, and then bitch about it on slashdot.
I'd probably do anything I could to get the EFF's attention though.
Not correct, IMVHO.
His exclusive license likely has nothing to do with his right to grant a covenant not to enforce his copyright against people who digitize his books for him.
He might not be able to sell the text elsewhere, however, as long as he still has title to the copyright itself nothing stops him from looking the other way if someone decides to scan it themselves.
If he signed over his rights to litigate for copyright infringement, then he's screwed.
No, you go to jail because using anything but your head to count cards is considered cheating.
And, cheating is a *felony* under Nevada state law. You will go to prison for 10 years.
I'll give you one guess as to which industry lobbied to have this statute passed...
[citation please]
Also, tell me where any law, except for civil rights reasons, says you can't "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
Private property means you can be booted for any or indeed no reason, just on the whim of the owner.
And finally, tell me one case where a big fat company ever had to follow a silly rule like that.
In other news, manufacturers of loaded dice get good business from casino cheats.
The only QoSing an internet router should be doing is using DoD-spec traffic class, qos bits, and the like to determine packet priorities.
We already have the capability to give VoIP the low-latency treatment it needs...it's called "RTFRFC", or "Read the fucking RFC".
Applications like VoIP are EXACTLY what those bits are for.
Unfortunately in this messed up legal system it will NOT prevent someone else from patenting your invention.
Defensive publication works in theory only.
It shouldn't even be an issue.
Why should consent be considered permanent?
Shouldn't I reserve the right to revoke consent at any time?
I wish they'd do that here in the US.
Even better would be if they could make your bandwidth symmetric and stop discriminating against servers. Seriously, apart from a choked upstream (which btw is a crock of rent-seeking bullshit anyway), why shouldn't you be able to do as you please with your own damn machine as long as you're not breaking the law?
The sad part is that it's exactly that. Whereas "5gs" is the settlement they demand, and "all your money" is how fast you'll go bankrupt keeping a lawyer on the clock.
Even sadder is that, unlike "true extortion", doing it with lawyers is completely legal.
What we need even more is to remove the notion that you can file a frivolous lawsuit and simply win it by outspending the defendant.
Moving the US to a loser pays system would give the hapless and helpless "we the people" incentive to stand and fight instead of rolling over.
As it stands now, corporations are kings. They know that if you do something they don't like, all they have to do is squash you like a bug under a big fat lawsuit, and the law be damned. The only reason they don't treat EACH OTHER like that is they know they'd be in for a huge fight in court and they'd only be able to win on merit, so in the corporate world companies tend to pick their battles.
People cannot afford to defend themselves. Which means that, today, the legal landscape is full of nothing but "might makes right" akin to the middle ages of warfare where who won was determined by whoever had the biggest and baddest army, merit and fitness to rule be damned. And since currently you have to pay through the nose to defend yourself even if you are innocent, it's better for you to roll over and cough up whatever they ask for.
This is, indeed, a protection racket. Instead of "pay or die" it's "pay or go bankrupt". And the best part of it is that forcing someone to spend money on laywers isn't illegal so it isn't considered extortion!
Going to a loser pays system would allow people to stand and fight without fear, knowing that they'd be saved in the end when they're legal bills are refunded. And for those who are too poor to hire their own defense, having "everlast refundable dollars" to finance a defense would let folks like the EFF and like to throw their full weight in support of the innocent.
I am curious what NYCL thinks about "loser pays" though.
UAC was microsoft's hardball response to app writers stubbornly refusing to stop requiring admin privileges to run.
Sadly, they are similiar in that people cheat either way.
Whether it's loaded dice or insider data, someone is always happy to rip someone else off.
And even if the end user was entirely competent, there simply aren't enough resources for one person to take care of all his needs by himself.
At some point, if you want to expand past a certain point you have to start delegating and giving up control. And that, unfortunately, is where you are forced to implicitly trust that whoever you delegate to isn't going to stab you in the back, either by accident or on purpose.
Ideally, you should be able to trust people not to let you down. Unfortunately, in the real world it doesn't work that day, and you need to give Mr. Murphy a place to sit so he doesn't plop down on your lap and squash you like a bug.
While that is true in principle, there is also something to be said for hiring the best help and not trying to do everything yourself.
"Doing everything yourself" doesn't always work, particularly in the case of "a man who defends himself has a fool for a client".
However, the minute you want to have someone more competent than yourself handling the details, you are forced to trust them in one way or another.
When it comes down to it, simply accept that Murphy's law is an inevitable part of the world we live in, and it is certainly going to be aggravated by human nature being what it is.
Bottom line: There is NO way to guarantee that your data will survive no matter what. If lady luck decides to hold a grudge against you, you are screwed no matter how well you cover yourself.
Unfortunately, being "commercially viable" means surviving the political assault that the oil industry is going to launch against any competition.
You do realize that most of those problems were inherited from the Bush era, right?
Picture this:
Some manager ramps up production and profit at a factory by running machines to breaking point and shafting maintenance. His numbers are so good that he gets promoted.
Enter the next guy, who has to shut it down for extensive repairs. His production plummets.
Who was responsible for the problem? Who is actually going to get the blame?
If you get multiple guesses per number and get told hints about high or low then that's a good tutorial on binary searches.
Actually if MS contributed anything to a GPLv3'ed version of SAMBA then they've triggered the automatic patent license.
Well they at least got half of it right.
Decoding an EEG into a 0 or a 1 on the demand of the thinker is an accomplishment by itself.
I wonder how long the pirate bay would survive if they were in the USA...
Which would happen first? Being drained of content by DMCA takedowns or being shut down by the feds?
Anything you put into a third party, trusted or not, can be destroyed.
What's to stop someone bigger and badder from forcing them to cough it up or stomp it out?
My opinion is that data will never be truly safe no matter how many times you back it up.
The only case I've known so far is live replication ala googlefs.
If someone wants to badly enough, they can and will destroy your data no matter how well you protect it.
Google was already sued over this and prevailed because they used industry standard methods of webpage exclusion.
Besides that, if he wants his links removed all he has to do is exclude the damned googlebot or file a DMCA request.
'nuff said.