Separate act, yes, but it also has evidentiary implications, hence the rules about spoliation of evidence.
It's the same thing that will burn you in a lawsuit about fraud if you get caught red handed shredding the invoices, since it is presumed that, by attempting to destroy foreseeably relevant evidence, you had something adverse to your position that you wished to conceal.
You see though, sunlight bouncing off of something else makes that imagery a derived work of the something else, so this is actually the Greeks slapping the cuffs on them for copyright infringement, and using "national security" as a cloak to hide their status as a mafiaa lap dog.
In other news, temperatures in hell are on the rise again.
Czech membership has nothing to do with it since the Czech government (probably) didn't sanction this "espionage"
Without that backing you are just a rogue citizen, and thus qualify for labelling as a terrorist.
If the Czech goverment WAS behind it, and not just Czech citzens, that would change things and it might be considered an act of war or something. But maverick citizens acting without state backing are not immune from being labelled as terrorists.
These were in effect punitive damages designed to punish the defendant for having the gall to defiantly make them available in the first place, regardless of if they were downloaded or not.
Furhtermore aparently the defendant was found to have attempted to destroy evidence, which even on a good day can lead to a spoliation inference, and in some cases could even be considered a crime not unlike perjury.
If the government was perfect and also impervious to infiltration I wouldn't mind. Fact is government is made of fallible humans, and there are malicious humans who are also competent that would be happy to steal the footage for their own ends.
Which is one reason I support the fourth amendment. Unless the government can prove a need to know by getting a search warrant, the risk/reward balance is in my favor and they have no business wasting my tax dollars by snooping in my life when they aren't likely to find anything they'd need to do their job.
Police payroll for investigating me comes out of my pocket, so unless there's a need for it, I don't want the cops wasting their time on my dime investigating me.
If I was a crook I'd say the same thing, but if I was a crook, then the police could probably get a warrant anyway. If I'm innocent, getting a search warrant rightly should be more difficult.
The fact that anyone with possession of the hashes can whisk the bitcoins away to his own personal wallet and then disappear means bitcoins are inherently prone to theft.
With real money you don't make someone get all the dollar bills back that he stole, you take it out of his bank account.
With bitcoins, there's no way to get the money back once it's been sent into oblivion.
Some guy working at an exchange could just dump everyone's coins into his wallet and bounce it through so many addresses that it cannot be easily traced, and by the time anyone finds out the guy may already be halfway to tahiti.
Tax burden measures who gets stuck with the burden, not whose income statement the taxes show up on. And I do mean stuck, because nobody really likes paying taxes and nobody will if they don't have to.
Who bears the burden depends almost entirely on relative elasticities of supply and demand. To be blunt, who has more bargaining power.
If I have perishable goods to sell, and can't withhold anything, my customers are all informed and ruthlessly play me against my competitors, and a new tax comes donw, guess who's going to be stuck eating it? Me. I cannot raise my prices without losing my customers, so down goes my margin.
Similiarly, if I am facing a monopoly supplier that has the only game in town, and a new tax comes down, what do they care? I have no choice other than to go without, so the tax gets shoved off on my own pocketbook regardless of whether or not the government wanted to do more than simply pay its own bills.
Tax burden boils down to bargaining power, and those in positions of strength will dump that burden on the weak.
If you hide it under your mattress, someone can break into your house and rob you. If you put it in the bank, the bank can fail and take your deposits with it...or the feds can simply accuse you of being a druggie or terrorist and flat out seize it. If you put it in bitcoins, someone can hack your wallet out from under your nose.
Face it, there is no way to keep money safe in this world except to spend it.
Best defense to being robbed is, sadly, not to have anything worth stealing in the first place. If you have something someone else wants and they're big and bad enough to take it from you, they will, and there's usually not a damn thing you can do about it.
Sometimes I wonder if "catch 22" is a valid legal defense, since in theory going too slow but still above the speed limit can get you ticketed for obstruction of traffic AND speeding both in one shot.
Slashdot Mirror
GP *did* say "except..." :)
I'm betting that the PRC government is propping them up.
"China's" is to be taken literally, to be blunt.
It's easy to win a race when the refs have pistols they can shoot your opponents with whenever they feel like it.
Separate act, yes, but it also has evidentiary implications, hence the rules about spoliation of evidence.
It's the same thing that will burn you in a lawsuit about fraud if you get caught red handed shredding the invoices, since it is presumed that, by attempting to destroy foreseeably relevant evidence, you had something adverse to your position that you wished to conceal.
You see though, sunlight bouncing off of something else makes that imagery a derived work of the something else, so this is actually the Greeks slapping the cuffs on them for copyright infringement, and using "national security" as a cloak to hide their status as a mafiaa lap dog.
In other news, temperatures in hell are on the rise again.
Czech membership has nothing to do with it since the Czech government (probably) didn't sanction this "espionage"
Without that backing you are just a rogue citizen, and thus qualify for labelling as a terrorist.
If the Czech goverment WAS behind it, and not just Czech citzens, that would change things and it might be considered an act of war or something. But maverick citizens acting without state backing are not immune from being labelled as terrorists.
The court said it doesn't matter.
The statutory damages were treated as punitive in nature to punish him for uploading period, and actual damages were not even needed to be calculated
The court ruled that it doesn't matter.
These were in effect punitive damages designed to punish the defendant for having the gall to defiantly make them available in the first place, regardless of if they were downloaded or not.
Furhtermore aparently the defendant was found to have attempted to destroy evidence, which even on a good day can lead to a spoliation inference, and in some cases could even be considered a crime not unlike perjury.
I think I have a reasonable expectation of privacy due to the existence of wiretapping laws that expressly prohibit meddling without a warrant.
The statute itself is my "no eavesdropping plz" notice to everyone, including the government.
Somehow I think that Google would be interested in this case being brought before the FTC's case against Google for data slurping.
I was actually suggesting a plausible alternative to bribery.
I call it extortion.
So rather than ONLY look for evidence of payoffs, maybe also put a magnifying glass over possible leverage that may have been used.
I actually never offered evidence, and never claimed to, so my hands are clean.
If the government was perfect and also impervious to infiltration I wouldn't mind. Fact is government is made of fallible humans, and there are malicious humans who are also competent that would be happy to steal the footage for their own ends.
Which is one reason I support the fourth amendment. Unless the government can prove a need to know by getting a search warrant, the risk/reward balance is in my favor and they have no business wasting my tax dollars by snooping in my life when they aren't likely to find anything they'd need to do their job.
Police payroll for investigating me comes out of my pocket, so unless there's a need for it, I don't want the cops wasting their time on my dime investigating me.
If I was a crook I'd say the same thing, but if I was a crook, then the police could probably get a warrant anyway. If I'm innocent, getting a search warrant rightly should be more difficult.
No.
Many tradeoffs can be countered if we use our brains.
You can bribe a horse with sticks as well as carrots you know...
See US v. $124,700
The feds confiscated six figures from someone just because it smelled like drugs.
The fact that anyone with possession of the hashes can whisk the bitcoins away to his own personal wallet and then disappear means bitcoins are inherently prone to theft.
With real money you don't make someone get all the dollar bills back that he stole, you take it out of his bank account.
With bitcoins, there's no way to get the money back once it's been sent into oblivion.
Some guy working at an exchange could just dump everyone's coins into his wallet and bounce it through so many addresses that it cannot be easily traced, and by the time anyone finds out the guy may already be halfway to tahiti.
Seems bitcoins are valuable enough to steal.
That makes them real enough for me.
Tax burden measures who gets stuck with the burden, not whose income statement the taxes show up on. And I do mean stuck, because nobody really likes paying taxes and nobody will if they don't have to.
Who bears the burden depends almost entirely on relative elasticities of supply and demand. To be blunt, who has more bargaining power.
If I have perishable goods to sell, and can't withhold anything, my customers are all informed and ruthlessly play me against my competitors, and a new tax comes donw, guess who's going to be stuck eating it? Me. I cannot raise my prices without losing my customers, so down goes my margin.
Similiarly, if I am facing a monopoly supplier that has the only game in town, and a new tax comes down, what do they care? I have no choice other than to go without, so the tax gets shoved off on my own pocketbook regardless of whether or not the government wanted to do more than simply pay its own bills.
Tax burden boils down to bargaining power, and those in positions of strength will dump that burden on the weak.
Honest politicians can't get into office because the corporate run media won't let them get their faces in front of the voters.
I plan to so long as it remains legal to do so.
Money isn't safe, period.
If you hide it under your mattress, someone can break into your house and rob you.
If you put it in the bank, the bank can fail and take your deposits with it...or the feds can simply accuse you of being a druggie or terrorist and flat out seize it.
If you put it in bitcoins, someone can hack your wallet out from under your nose.
Face it, there is no way to keep money safe in this world except to spend it.
Best defense to being robbed is, sadly, not to have anything worth stealing in the first place. If you have something someone else wants and they're big and bad enough to take it from you, they will, and there's usually not a damn thing you can do about it.
Just don't let Diebold make the cameras.
Our information is simply too valuable for companies to leave alone.
They will take it by force if they have to.
The value of our personal information to corporations exceeds the cost to us of protecting it.
Try protecting your farmland from prospectors during a gold rush.
Sometimes I wonder if "catch 22" is a valid legal defense, since in theory going too slow but still above the speed limit can get you ticketed for obstruction of traffic AND speeding both in one shot.