Almost, but if you look at how the FCRA defines the report you'll see it's more than just credit.
A "consumer report" is, in turn, defined in Section 603(d)(1) as a report containing information bearing on an individual's credit standing or his or her "character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living"
If you read other opinions on the FTC web page they are pretty strict about this. In one case a company hired truck drivers to check people out in the city hall while they drive their route. In this case they were pulling public records on the target person. The copies of the records were sent to the agency and combined into a report. The FTC opinion states that this company is a CRA and is subject FCRA.
1) "Among other things", i.e. not limited to. 2) Did you even read the rest of my post? Both the article and my post talked about the example where NWA employee's lost jobs because of the the Investigation. I would say that counts as using the report to determine continued employment. Although, as noted NWA probally already had written consent, the employee may still have had rights to see the report, and contest points on the report before termination took place under FCRA.
IANAL, however, the langauge that is used to describe what the company does such as "will receive a dossier detailing all information gathered about the subject during the inquiry." could classify them as a CRA (Credit Reporting Agency). This means that information they put into their report could be subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If this is the case then it brings many consumer protections.
William Haynes, Divison of Credit Practices (FTC) wrote in an opinion on June 9, 1998 :
'The first issue is whether your company is a "consumer reporting agency" (CRA) for purposes of the FCRA. Section 603(f) of the FCRA defines a CRA as any organization which, for monetary fees, "assembles or evaluates" credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of regularly furnishing "consumer reports" to third parties using any means or facility of interstate commerce. A "consumer report" is, in turn, defined in Section 603(d)(1) as a report containing information bearing on an individual's credit standing or his or her "character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living" that is used or expected to be used for the purpose of serving as a factor in establishing the consumer's eligibility for, among other things, employment, insurance, or credit.'
I've never seen a report from this company however, if they have to comply to to the FCRA then some points of interest: 1) Section 609 dictates for 2 years you have to record who's asked for the report. And disclose to the consumer the entire file to the consumer, including who has requested reports. 2) Section 607(b) requires a CRA to maintain "reasonable" procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy. Which means a report can't contain "Probally". Just the facts ma'am. 3) If the company happens to be an Employer then section 604(b) applies, which means they need written consent to conduct the investigation.
In the case of the Northwest Employee I'm sure they had a background check claus in the contract, however, if an employer terminated an employee because of the report and they did not have consent then there may be grounds for a lawsuit, and possible FTC fines.
Section 607(b) requires you to maintain "reasonable" procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy.
Tons of fun FTC stuff located at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra/index.htm
The problem isn't so much that it's an EU company. Hell, there are US defense contractors owned by EU companies. The problem is that it is a German company. There are laws that arouse from the holocaust and the disclosure of how much spying the DDR (East Germany) did on the public that make it difficult to share information with the gov't.
You have laws against sharing all sorts of information, creating central databases, harvesting infromation. Hell, I'm suprised double click isn't going to sue.
The problem is there could be a time where the Feds requests will put them at odds with German law, and when the cards fall, Germany has greater pull than the US.
I don't get this story. Most states that have sales tax also have "use tax". When a business buys something they don't pay tax to the retailer normally. Instead they simple pay the use tax on the item. This hasn't changed.
Buying from the internet bacisally follows the same laws that buying from mail order would be.
IANAL, however, the proposed laws I see for net taxes usually are the following:
Taxes on internet service: In most states there is no tax on "service" or "labor". Most ISP's aren't charging taxes to their customers. States look at this as an area to collect revenue.
Manditory reporting: Some states want to ensure that they know when a business buys online to verify that use tax is collected.
On the consumer side some states fear that increase in Internet Shopping will pose a threat to sales tax revenue. The premise being that out of state purchases will cut into that tax stream. Just like mail order would, but at a much larger rate.
For the most part these are reasons. California is a good example of sanity when looking at Internet taxes. In CA business are audited on a schedule. This ensures "Use Tax" complience. The largest stream of income to the state is cars and trucks. And the internet doesn't save you paying the DMV. The view is that auditing based on sales tax costs far more then could ever be recapped.
Todays Factiod: In Minnesota, you are required to claim mail order and internet purchases on your taxes if they exceed a certain ammount. Although the law has been on the books forever, the 1999 tax year was the first time the law was highlighted in the general instruction book. At the same time Minnesota runs a multi-billion tax surplus.
I'm not a big fan of Rambus but people are just foaming at the mouth.
DRAM makers pay a royalty to TI for their patents. TI's cut is actually more than Rambus charges. Yet, in volume, DRAM is much cheaper than Rambus. You'll looking at pennies more on the whole sale, and couple bucks more on the retail side of things.
I agree, but for different reasons. I think the design of Minivend is sound, but if you get too complicated with the Minivend Markup language it slows to a snails pace. I've always attributed it to a slow parser.
Although I have heard the new version of Minivend is a total rewrite. I've wondered if it's gotten better.
I think Woz is probally a rare person in the world in terms of someone who has great ideas and actually made money at it without selling his soul.
A while ago I asked him about the DVD flap. He said the following:
"I truly hope that copyrights be weakened and that we be able to copy freely if not for gain. I've felt this way ever since I had a tape recorder in high school. All this time, every court case has backed the copyright holders, regardless of the media. So some much higher level thinking than the current lawsuits might be needed to have any impact. It's especially complicated by the fact that most of the civilized world treats such things the same way, and we have trade agreements.
In the case of DVD's I have mixed feelings. I sort of feel that 'we' made an agreement, a contract, with the entertainment industry to accept an encryption scheme in order to have movies released in this form. We truly won. Perhaps we have to pay for it. I'll keep my word even if I think that the deal is not fair or right."
The whole deal with background checks is that it varies state to state. And from there company to company. A former operations manager for a large retail chain that sold DIVX told me once that because of the cost the background checks were done rarely.
On the other extreme a corporation who makes a product with Blue Diamonds, and Purple Horseshoes was noted for turning down employeement because the applicant had a suspended drivers license.
IANAL, however, your rights as a citizen are slim because the reports are all based off of public domain information.
In fact these types of errors are fairly common. There have been many similar incidents with more extreme results. Some law enforcement warrent systems are based on common name, instead of State ID number or SSN. This means if you get pulled over in a traffic stop, mearly having the same name as someone who has an arrest warrent will put you in the back of a squad car.
In general your rights vary state to state. Some states allow random drug tests. Others don't. In some states, such as Minnesota, it is not legal to pre-screen applicants with a drug test. You must make a job offer, in writing, (i.e. make them an employee) before having them take the test.
I'm reading too many posts where no one read the article.
The model in question DRC-PC100 is indeed a CD-R camera. DO NOT confuse it for DCM-M1, which uses the 640 Megabyte MD-II format.
Although the DCM-M1 camera bests the CRC-PC100 in most areas with it's own ethernet port and webserver it's only a 640K pixel camera... No good for those high quality shutter bugs.
The DRC-PC100 will serve a nitch market, just like the DCM-M1 does. I'd personally love to see a 2 Mega-Pixel version of the DCM-M1.
It's not like MP3.com is just cutting 5 Million Dollar checks to just anyone. It's just like any other big business deal. MP3.com has a lot that the music producers want. Banner Ads, Listening Statistics, and a large community of people. Maybe even a little stock.
To add more to your idea... While the Gov't fees for a patent aren't that great the lawyers costs are. Alright, well, geeks are smart they don't need fancy lawyers to take their money. Nice idea, but the laws and legal cases on patents pretty much say that the lay person is unable to correctly file for a patent. Therefor, a patent that was prepared by the lay person is automagically throw out in court.
Remember, the majority of law makers are in fact lawyers by trade. The Judges are also lawyers. In the US we hate lawyers, yet they control most of the upper levels of gov't.
This is an odd move. Most Japanese companies encourage fan sites. For example AIC (Animation Intl. Corp.) has GFX and Clips online that fans can grab. All they request is that you state that the items are used with permission. This is pretty standard practice.
This looks like the standard Spelling Entertainment type move. (Read Squashing 90210 and Buffy Sites 101) One has to wonder if Fuji is behind it, or if Food Network is acting on behalf of Fuji.
MS isn't much on actual inovation. They are good at reconizing companies that have inovative idesa. Take for Example Windows. One of the biggest reasons Win95 was accepted was the "inovative" TCP/IP features. All that Dial-up Networking Jazz. Problem is, most of it was bought from Shiva Corp. Rebranded as Native MS product.
You don't have to be smart to make smart products. You just have to reconize where your products suck, and be willing to throw some cash at the problem.
Considering that Excite, like most national ISPs, are investing in content caching systems I doubt the tool booth is going to be a big deal.
CNN and MSNBC will load off the cache server just as fast. When it comes to streaming audio and video then you're going to see issues. Maybe Real won't work as fast as MS.
On the other hand this isn't anything all that new. PSInet has been offering peering arrangements for some time. And ISP can have a direct connection to PSInet sites, and PSInet has a direct connection to the ISP. Depending on traffic considerations it may not be that bad of a deal. Then again PSInet hosts a lot of servers and T's. Excite really doesn't.
I think this is a pretty big non-issue. Excite is obviously trying to make a dime off high bandwidth video streaming. Somehow I doubt the Opensoure, GNU, FreeWare, Freedom of speech market is going to be hurt. Maybe one porno site will load quicker than another. More power to them.
Ahh, nice idea about what to do, but really some of the ideas are just a waste of time:
BBB: That's a laugh, the BBB is great when weeding out small companies, but no one checks with the BBB before getting cable.
PUC: Unless MediaOne is offering phone service (which they have in a couple trial markets) they aren't going to do jack. The PUC has no power over them.
Trade Commision: Nice idea for long term, but there usually aren't customer advocates to work directly on your problem. After a bunch-o-complaints they may use your case as an example.
Media: Best Bet. Local TV Stations already view the cable company as something that cuts into their ratings. Only problem is they like sensationalism. You MAY get labeled a HACKER.
I'm not a lawyer, but this all seems to be a large waste of tax payer dollars. First even if it did go to court how could you declare criminal damages.
It's seems to me that at best it's a civil libel suit. I think once you got out of the bible belt the cops wouldn't do jack.
Most likely the kid simply wasn't liked by the school staff, and probally had run in's with the local donut eaters. The price you pay for putting Manic Panic in your hair.
Online E-tailers really put a lot on the line when it comes to credit cards. When you sign the merchant agreement you agree to a lot of things that give the merchant bank all the power.
Most merchant banks handle things about the same. Joe Schmoe says the charge isn't his. The merchant bank puts the funds on hold. It goes around a few times. If by the third time the Card holder hasn't admited they made the charge they merchant bank will demand a signiture and an imprint of the card. It doesn't matter if you have a recording of the call with the person authorizing the charge. You lose, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
The only recourse the merchant has is small claims court.
Getting paid is a tricky job sometimes. There are plenty of ways of messing with the system. The only one who really gets rich is a merchant bank.
If you grew up in the 80's Orange Road is a must see. Bad J-pop 80's music, Classic Love Triangle, , 80's clothing, and at times rather compelling story lines.
The best part of 80's Anime is watching the characters drink, smoke, etc. But at the same time pay homage to Japanesse Taboo's. It's like watching a Brat Pack movie with special effects.
I enjoyed picking up the box set from AnimeIgo on this series. For one thing they have a cultural guide included that explains all the little details. Like why some dude's nose is bleeding, what's the deal with the "famous cutlet sandwich". etc. etc.
Others worth a mention:
Armatage III (Both movie and OVA)
Tenchi: (OVA Great +++, TV Series, first movie, don't bother Tenchi in Tokyo)
The whole Neal Stephenson Datahaven bit is a neat idea. The problem is that while your website may be out of legal reach you are not. It seems fairly clear that the borders of where the HTTP transaction is taking place does matter to US judicial system.
Remeber etoy? Because one of thier memebers lived in the US they were able to be sued here.
Also of note are the operators of offshore gambling sites. They were recently found guilty of accepting bets from states where gambling is not permitted. Those webmasters aren't expected to see the light of day for 5-10 years.
Just because they can't take your site out doesn't mean they can't take YOU out.
3com and Cisco were both born out of the University system (Standford I think?). They had labs on campus, had research funded and walked away with the IP. This is pretty standard practice.
Universities want to make money. Providing a lab and some funding are pretty low risk in comparison to taking on the IP and marketing it. Why bother with that when you could simply fix the grades for some football players and get into a bowl game.
Slashdot Mirror
A "consumer report" is, in turn, defined in Section 603(d)(1) as a report containing information bearing on an individual's credit standing or his or her "character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living"
If you read other opinions on the FTC web page they are pretty strict about this. In one case a company hired truck drivers to check people out in the city hall while they drive their route. In this case they were pulling public records on the target person. The copies of the records were sent to the agency and combined into a report. The FTC opinion states that this company is a CRA and is subject FCRA.
How much reading did you do before posting?
1) "Among other things", i.e. not limited to.
2) Did you even read the rest of my post? Both the article and my post talked about the example where NWA employee's lost jobs because of the the Investigation. I would say that counts as using the report to determine continued employment. Although, as noted NWA probally already had written consent, the employee may still have had rights to see the report, and contest points on the report before termination took place under FCRA.
IANAL, however, the langauge that is used to describe what the company does such as "will receive a dossier detailing all information gathered about the subject during the inquiry." could classify them as a CRA (Credit Reporting Agency). This means that information they put into their report could be subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If this is the case then it brings many consumer protections.
William Haynes, Divison of Credit Practices (FTC) wrote in an opinion on June 9, 1998 :
'The first issue is whether your company is a "consumer reporting agency" (CRA) for purposes of
the FCRA. Section 603(f) of the FCRA defines a CRA as any organization which, for monetary fees, "assembles or evaluates" credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of regularly furnishing "consumer reports" to third parties using any means or facility of interstate commerce. A "consumer report" is, in turn, defined in Section 603(d)(1) as a report containing information bearing on an individual's credit standing or his or her "character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living" that is used or expected to be used for the purpose of serving as a factor in establishing the consumer's eligibility for, among other things, employment, insurance, or credit.'
I've never seen a report from this company however, if they have to comply to to the FCRA then some points of interest:
1) Section 609 dictates for 2 years you have to record who's asked for the report. And disclose to the consumer the entire file to the consumer, including who has requested reports.
2) Section 607(b) requires a CRA to maintain "reasonable" procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy. Which means a report can't contain "Probally". Just the facts ma'am.
3) If the company happens to be an Employer then section 604(b) applies, which means they need written consent to conduct the investigation.
In the case of the Northwest Employee I'm sure they had a background check claus in the contract, however, if an employer terminated an employee because of the report and they did not have consent then there may be grounds for a lawsuit, and possible FTC fines.
Section 607(b) requires you to maintain "reasonable" procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy.
Tons of fun FTC stuff located at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra/index.htm
*rolls eyes* See, it was a joke. Everyone knows Disney ain't in the castle...or epcot...or space mountain.
Jobs would have to be CEO over Eisners very dead body. (Which of course would be cryo-froze and put up in the castle along side Walt).
I realized about 3 seconds after posting. I was thinking of Sprint and DTT merger talks. My bad.
The problem isn't so much that it's an EU company. Hell, there are US defense contractors owned by EU companies. The problem is that it is a German company. There are laws that arouse from the holocaust and the disclosure of how much spying the DDR (East Germany) did on the public that make it difficult to share information with the gov't.
You have laws against sharing all sorts of information, creating central databases, harvesting infromation. Hell, I'm suprised double click isn't going to sue.
The problem is there could be a time where the Feds requests will put them at odds with German law, and when the cards fall, Germany has greater pull than the US.
I don't get this story. Most states that have sales tax also have "use tax". When a business buys something they don't pay tax to the retailer normally. Instead they simple pay the use tax on the item. This hasn't changed.
Buying from the internet bacisally follows the same laws that buying from mail order would be.
IANAL, however, the proposed laws I see for net taxes usually are the following:
Taxes on internet service: In most states there is no tax on "service" or "labor". Most ISP's aren't charging taxes to their customers. States look at this as an area to collect revenue.
Manditory reporting: Some states want to ensure that they know when a business buys online to verify that use tax is collected.
On the consumer side some states fear that increase in Internet Shopping will pose a threat to sales tax revenue. The premise being that out of state purchases will cut into that tax stream. Just like mail order would, but at a much larger rate.
For the most part these are reasons. California is a good example of sanity when looking at Internet taxes. In CA business are audited on a schedule. This ensures "Use Tax" complience. The largest stream of income to the state is cars and trucks. And the internet doesn't save you paying the DMV. The view is that auditing based on sales tax costs far more then could ever be recapped.
Todays Factiod: In Minnesota, you are required to claim mail order and internet purchases on your taxes if they exceed a certain ammount. Although the law has been on the books forever, the 1999 tax year was the first time the law was highlighted in the general instruction book. At the same time Minnesota runs a multi-billion tax surplus.
I'm not a big fan of Rambus but people are just foaming at the mouth.
DRAM makers pay a royalty to TI for their patents. TI's cut is actually more than Rambus charges. Yet, in volume, DRAM is much cheaper than Rambus. You'll looking at pennies more on the whole sale, and couple bucks more on the retail side of things.
I agree, but for different reasons. I think the design of Minivend is sound, but if you get too complicated with the Minivend Markup language it slows to a snails pace. I've always attributed it to a slow parser.
Although I have heard the new version of Minivend is a total rewrite. I've wondered if it's gotten better.
A while ago I asked him about the DVD flap. He said the following:
"I truly hope that copyrights be weakened and that we be able to copy freely if not for gain. I've felt this way ever since I had a tape recorder in high school. All this time, every court case has backed the copyright holders, regardless of the media. So some much higher level thinking than the current lawsuits might be needed to have any impact. It's especially complicated by the fact that most of the civilized world treats such things the same way, and we have trade agreements.
In the case of DVD's I have mixed feelings. I sort of feel that 'we' made an agreement, a contract, with the entertainment industry to accept an encryption scheme in order to have movies released in this form. We truly won. Perhaps we have to pay for it. I'll keep my word even if I think that the deal is not fair or right."
Full Text at:http://www.scc.net/~ytrah/woz.html
The whole deal with background checks is that it varies state to state. And from there company to company. A former operations manager for a large retail chain that sold DIVX told me once that because of the cost the background checks were done rarely.
On the other extreme a corporation who makes a product with Blue Diamonds, and Purple Horseshoes was noted for turning down employeement because the applicant had a suspended drivers license.
IANAL, however, your rights as a citizen are slim because the reports are all based off of public domain information.
In fact these types of errors are fairly common. There have been many similar incidents with more extreme results. Some law enforcement warrent systems are based on common name, instead of State ID number or SSN. This means if you get pulled over in a traffic stop, mearly having the same name as someone who has an arrest warrent will put you in the back of a squad car.
In general your rights vary state to state. Some states allow random drug tests. Others don't. In some states, such as Minnesota, it is not legal to pre-screen applicants with a drug test. You must make a job offer, in writing, (i.e. make them an employee) before having them take the test.
I'm reading too many posts where no one read the article.
The model in question DRC-PC100 is indeed a CD-R camera. DO NOT confuse it for DCM-M1, which uses the 640 Megabyte MD-II format.
Although the DCM-M1 camera bests the CRC-PC100 in most areas with it's own ethernet port and webserver it's only a 640K pixel camera... No good for those high quality shutter bugs.
The DRC-PC100 will serve a nitch market, just like the DCM-M1 does. I'd personally love to see a 2 Mega-Pixel version of the DCM-M1.
It's not like MP3.com is just cutting 5 Million Dollar checks to just anyone. It's just like any other big business deal. MP3.com has a lot that the music producers want. Banner Ads, Listening Statistics, and a large community of people. Maybe even a little stock.
I don't want to seem like a troll. But Tenchi in Tokyo was a disapointing end to a long running series. It's pure shlock.
To add more to your idea... While the Gov't fees for a patent aren't that great the lawyers costs are. Alright, well, geeks are smart they don't need fancy lawyers to take their money. Nice idea, but the laws and legal cases on patents pretty much say that the lay person is unable to correctly file for a patent. Therefor, a patent that was prepared by the lay person is automagically throw out in court.
Remember, the majority of law makers are in fact lawyers by trade. The Judges are also lawyers. In the US we hate lawyers, yet they control most of the upper levels of gov't.
This is an odd move. Most Japanese companies encourage fan sites. For example AIC (Animation Intl. Corp.) has GFX and Clips online that fans can grab. All they request is that you state that the items are used with permission. This is pretty standard practice.
This looks like the standard Spelling Entertainment type move. (Read Squashing 90210 and Buffy Sites 101) One has to wonder if Fuji is behind it, or if Food Network is acting on behalf of Fuji.
MS isn't much on actual inovation. They are good at reconizing companies that have inovative idesa. Take for Example Windows. One of the biggest reasons Win95 was accepted was the "inovative" TCP/IP features. All that Dial-up Networking Jazz. Problem is, most of it was bought from Shiva Corp. Rebranded as Native MS product.
You don't have to be smart to make smart products. You just have to reconize where your products suck, and be willing to throw some cash at the problem.
Considering that Excite, like most national ISPs, are investing in content caching systems I doubt the tool booth is going to be a big deal.
CNN and MSNBC will load off the cache server just as fast. When it comes to streaming audio and video then you're going to see issues. Maybe Real won't work as fast as MS.
On the other hand this isn't anything all that new. PSInet has been offering peering arrangements for some time. And ISP can have a direct connection to PSInet sites, and PSInet has a direct connection to the ISP. Depending on traffic considerations it may not be that bad of a deal. Then again PSInet hosts a lot of servers and T's. Excite really doesn't.
I think this is a pretty big non-issue. Excite is obviously trying to make a dime off high bandwidth video streaming. Somehow I doubt the Opensoure, GNU, FreeWare, Freedom of speech market is going to be hurt. Maybe one porno site will load quicker than another. More power to them.
Ahh, nice idea about what to do, but really some of the ideas are just a waste of time:
BBB: That's a laugh, the BBB is great when weeding out small companies, but no one checks with the BBB before getting cable.
PUC: Unless MediaOne is offering phone service (which they have in a couple trial markets) they aren't going to do jack. The PUC has no power over them.
Trade Commision: Nice idea for long term, but there usually aren't customer advocates to work directly on your problem. After a bunch-o-complaints they may use your case as an example.
Media: Best Bet. Local TV Stations already view the cable company as something that cuts into their ratings. Only problem is they like sensationalism. You MAY get labeled a HACKER.
I'm not a lawyer, but this all seems to be a large waste of tax payer dollars. First even if it did go to court how could you declare criminal damages.
It's seems to me that at best it's a civil libel suit. I think once you got out of the bible belt the cops wouldn't do jack.
Most likely the kid simply wasn't liked by the school staff, and probally had run in's with the local donut eaters. The price you pay for putting Manic Panic in your hair.
Online E-tailers really put a lot on the line when it comes to credit cards. When you sign the merchant agreement you agree to a lot of things that give the merchant bank all the power.
Most merchant banks handle things about the same. Joe Schmoe says the charge isn't his. The merchant bank puts the funds on hold. It goes around a few times. If by the third time the Card holder hasn't admited they made the charge they merchant bank will demand a signiture and an imprint of the card. It doesn't matter if you have a recording of the call with the person authorizing the charge. You lose, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
The only recourse the merchant has is small claims court.
Getting paid is a tricky job sometimes. There are plenty of ways of messing with the system. The only one who really gets rich is a merchant bank.
If you grew up in the 80's Orange Road is a must see. Bad J-pop 80's music, Classic Love Triangle, , 80's clothing, and at times rather compelling story lines.
The best part of 80's Anime is watching the characters drink, smoke, etc. But at the same time pay homage to Japanesse Taboo's. It's like watching a Brat Pack movie with special effects.
I enjoyed picking up the box set from AnimeIgo on this series. For one thing they have a cultural guide included that explains all the little details. Like why some dude's nose is bleeding, what's the deal with the "famous cutlet sandwich". etc. etc.
Others worth a mention:
Armatage III (Both movie and OVA)
Tenchi: (OVA Great +++, TV Series, first movie, don't bother Tenchi in Tokyo)
The whole Neal Stephenson Datahaven bit is a neat idea. The problem is that while your website may be out of legal reach you are not. It seems fairly clear that the borders of where the HTTP transaction is taking place does matter to US judicial system.
Remeber etoy? Because one of thier memebers lived in the US they were able to be sued here.
Also of note are the operators of offshore gambling sites. They were recently found guilty of accepting bets from states where gambling is not permitted. Those webmasters aren't expected to see the light of day for 5-10 years.
Just because they can't take your site out doesn't mean they can't take YOU out.
3com and Cisco were both born out of the University system (Standford I think?). They had labs on campus, had research funded and walked away with the IP. This is pretty standard practice.
Universities want to make money. Providing a lab and some funding are pretty low risk in comparison to taking on the IP and marketing it. Why bother with that when you could simply fix the grades for some football players and get into a bowl game.