Well, to summarize responses to all there of these:
Epic was certainly caught 'history stealing' - the contention is if they continue this practice even if you opt out, not that the practice occurs in the first place.
While it goes through your web history, it separates out into 'interest segments' rather than directly pulling URLs; in other words, while directly collecting them WOULD count as personally identifiable information, Epic isn't doing that. They don't read 'You went to groupon!', they read 'You went to a site about mass-consumer deals, of which there are 37 sites in this segment.'
Hey, they're fighting over the definitions of it. It's the typical PR spin move - redefine the words of the pratice to something better for you (Changing 'Copyright Infringement' to 'Intellectual Property Theft/Piracy' for example, to associate with things already known and considered criminal by most people rather than having to convince each person over again that this is bad.) If this practice gets labelled as 'History Stealing', then Epic's considered automatically guilty. If they manage to change the name to 'Historical Data Collection', it sounds pretty harmless now, don't it. And that matters to the Congresscritters who would hold a healing on that. Everyone wants to hear about 'History Stealing', but the latter? People gonna fall asleep.
Alright, I read the article on this one, and, there's a divergence of evidence here. Mainly..
"We applied the methodology from last week's study to examine Epic Marketplace's opt-out practices. (Epic Marketplace was one of the eleven NAI members not included in that study.) We found that Epic Marketplace leaves its tracking cookies in place after both opting out with the NAI mechanism and enabling Do Not Track. We also found that history stealing continues after using either choice mechanism." - This one's from the study.
"Furthermore, when the user opts out, all data collection efforts cease. The student erroneously concludes that users are unable to avoid participating in segment verification because the opt-out mechanism does not delete the cookie that exists on the user’s computer. Like many other networks have pointed out already in their responses, this is misleading and inaccurate. When a user opts-out, all further collection of behavioral data from that user stops and existing profile data is deleted, even though the cookie itself is not deleted. The reason for this is simple: these cookies provide important operational information necessary for the delivery of any ad, not just targeted ads. For example, Epic Marketplace needs this data to determine how many times a particular ad has been shown to a user, and to analyze whether fraudulent activity is taking place. Ironically, in order to give effect to a consumer’s decision to avoid data collection, the cookie has to remain, otherwise advertisers have no way of knowing that that particular consumer has elected to opt-out of that advertiser’s data collection practices." - and here's Epic's counter.
These two statements seem strictly at-odds to me; the study states that the History Stealing continues to run, not just that a cookie remains as Epic sems to be saying. Epic claims the data collection stops - straight conflict here. Someone either screwed up their study, or Epic is lying, or Epic is unaware that their 'stop stealing' code doesn't actually work. It looks like they're not gathering personally identifiable or geographical location, and so are in the clear there - but now you've got a pure 'He said, she said' in terms of continuing collection after opt-out. Anyone interested in trying to duplicate this study and add some more evidence to if it continues or not?
Google actively searches for the links. I don't know what the innocent did.
The active search comparing Video IDs came up after the lawsuit was filed - I assume this is what you mean by an active search. Either way, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that doing this afterwards wouldn't have removed their liability for previous actions, so I think you're safe without some sort of active search going on. Pretty sure that just responding to DMCA takedown requests counted as enough.
What is the difference between what he did and what google does?
There's a difference here, be fair - Google, for one, doesn't run an index primarily of infringing content. Google's also big enough to be able to fight back directly with big money lawyers as well. And lastly, Google -WAS- sued under this logic once before, in the Viacom-Youtube incident, where Viacom held that Youtube was, essentially, engaging in mass infringement.
Actually, on thinking of it, the Viacom-Youtube incident should provide an interesting angle to this - does anyone know if he received, by chance, DMCA takedown requests? That was what threw out Viacom's suit against Google - that they had complied with the DMCA and thus were not liable. I don't see any mention of them here, but I don't know if that means "We didn't bother sending DMCA notifications to a known British National" or "We sent them and they got ignored so nobody cared enough to report them".
First Cisco trying it from Canada, now the MPAA through Britain. An important thing to note through the article is that copyright laws exist in both countries - but that so far, it seems in Britain that link-sharing alone is not as damning as it is in the US. Mainly, it looks like TVShack was much more commercialized than Hotfile, and that's always something that results in a bigger hammer coming down the line. An important thing to note as well is the previous experience British judges have had with copyright litigation - I remember ACS Law and Crossley being torn into, as seen here (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/amounts-to-blackmail-inside-a-p2p-settlement-letter-factory.ars)
Really, I don't think he's getting extradited. Britain is markedly hostile to US-style copyright infringement proceedings, and I doubt they failed to figure out where Crossley got his tactics from. Unless if they get someone to play rubber stamp and not examine the case, I'd lay my money on O'Dwyer staying right where he is.
Interesting note about Google+ vs Facebook - go ahead and look, at the least, at the airlines/cable companies, which Facebook's rating is being compared to. They're hated because they're seen to offer 'homogenous products', or rather, it's that people have a beef with the whole airline/cable experience because of shared problems (Local Monopolies, substandard service, hidden fees, the TSA in the case of airlines)
So, in all seriousness - what are the chances of Google+ picking up some of those 'destructive practices' that Facebook has? Privacy is probably not the biggest reason people hate it; spammy updates (From app developers), the whole social drama thing (Anywhere you have people, you have drama) and difficulty deleting data (Do you really think Google wants to delete your data eithe?) are 'traps' I can see Google+ falling into just as easily. The only thing I'm dead sure Google+ will do right that Facebook does wrong, is to not shuffle their UI every few months and reset all your settings. Considering how much of an advantage that gave hem in search over Yahoo and competitors ages ago, I doubt they'll ever forget. That said, I'll still join Google+ (I care about privacy), but, I'm not as sure you're going to see a mass exodus unless if the geeks like us drive it somehow - see the family photographer converting to G+ and pulling the family photos with them. Go ahead and do it yourself too if you can - we'll probably need it if we really want to pull people away from FB.
A sign that they're recognizing that the system has a problem, which, let's be honest - is a great step forward in and of itself. With more pressure from judges like Alsup, maybe we can start to see a move away from the purely-adversarial legal process; where both sides demand the moon because not doing so will just weaken their position to no gain...and because with less time wasted in trial, the lawyers earn less in legal fees.
But, hey, even if he just stops at fixing the symptom, at least he's bloody fixing the symptom. Good for the judge.
Their contract specifies (Unsurprisingly) that they have some rights to the Modern Warfare series as a whole. Go back and look at the old papers - the first lawsuit - to see that contract.
In other words: What they want, I would expect, is that Activision doesn't get to make more Modern Warfare at all. It's not like Activision came up with it, they're firing the people who did. They might not be able legally to take the Modern Warfare name with them, but if they can't, they'll take the money from it at least.
Either way, Activision's actions here are pretty patently and obviously illegal. IANAL, but the California Legal Code in terms of 'you must pay people all owed money within 72 hours of their departure' doesn't require one to interpret. The other stuff may be up in the air, but Activision's definitely ripping them off here.
Alright, just as a note, reading the article here provides a lot of enlightenment. Specifically, the second paragraph from the person.
"Yesterday I got called into the Managers office because the network manager had been contacted by Mediasentry and emailed one of the generic copyright infringement emails as a result of me downloading Angels and Demons.
The manager then proceeded to adopt an -as far as i can tell- exageratingly literal interpretation of the following exerpt from the automated email:
1.) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and
2.) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through youâ
With less than a month left to the semester and in the misdt of the examination period he has asked me to leave the dorm.
While I understand he does reserve the right to terminate my stay at his descretion I was just inquiring about the seriousness of recieving a MediaSentry email and if they are infact even lisensed to conduct their âoeinvestigativeâ work outside of the United States.
Now instead of studying for my exams and working on my final assignments I must take time to find a place to live before the 29th of May (2009)."
Looking over this, I'd actually paint a different villain. I think the manager already had it out for this guy, or, at the least, is a serious douchebag.
Did the guy confess or not? Who knows. He -does- claim to have challenged MediaSentry's right to even send the e-mail, as well as being kicked out for it, and the person who followed through with it was the manager. I'm going to guess that the manager is either an asshole with a vendetta, or had his balls cut off twenty years ago and is scared shitless of anything that even smacks of legal action directed within fifty miles of him.
Oh, and, seriously, what the hell? "You deserve to lose the place you live right before exams?" Seriously, what the hell is your idea of 'proper punishment'. This is the kind of stuff that can ruin the rest of someone's life. Does someone deserve to have their college degree taken away for what is, basically, a form of shoplifting? Or sneaking into a movie without paying for it? Copyright infringement is more popular then actual shoplifting, but carries a hell of a lot less risk to all parties involved. There's no real reason for such a disproportionate punishment as seen here. The question isn't "Does the punishment fit the crime" - it doesn't.
The questions are if the guy actually confessed, and what the hell was going through his manager's head.
I work in tech support on my college, and have done so throughout the semester. What this basically means, is that people bring in their broken laptops, and I help fix them. This has ranged from the computer-illiterate who can't follow the instructions for getting their computer's security validated and on the network, to "It won't boot up anymore" and even one case where the RAM got unseated and I had to open it up and reseat it.
So far? Outside of the very first week, where computer-illiterate people abound walked in to just get on the network, EVERY machine that's come in here is either Vista or plain hardware damage from swinging it around. And I've seen dozens of Vista machines in. They frequently deny their user is an administrator even when they are, corrupt files, crash stuff, quit playing sound, just dozens upon dozen of pain-in-the-ass errors. And I haven't met one person (I've looked) who is happy with Vista on campus, and very few even with the new Office.
Vista is just beyond your average user. It doesn't look like, from these posts, that SP1 is going to fix this. And, yes, I realize these are just 'anecdotes' - but the only ones I'm hearing is that Vista stink, and I'm not working in a really closed environment, since I have basically harassed almost every Vista user on campus now (It's only 600 people total in this school, a fraction of which use Vista. It's not too hard.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, to summarize responses to all there of these:
Epic was certainly caught 'history stealing' - the contention is if they continue this practice even if you opt out, not that the practice occurs in the first place.
While it goes through your web history, it separates out into 'interest segments' rather than directly pulling URLs; in other words, while directly collecting them WOULD count as personally identifiable information, Epic isn't doing that. They don't read 'You went to groupon!', they read 'You went to a site about mass-consumer deals, of which there are 37 sites in this segment.'
Hey, they're fighting over the definitions of it. It's the typical PR spin move - redefine the words of the pratice to something better for you (Changing 'Copyright Infringement' to 'Intellectual Property Theft/Piracy' for example, to associate with things already known and considered criminal by most people rather than having to convince each person over again that this is bad.) If this practice gets labelled as 'History Stealing', then Epic's considered automatically guilty. If they manage to change the name to 'Historical Data Collection', it sounds pretty harmless now, don't it. And that matters to the Congresscritters who would hold a healing on that. Everyone wants to hear about 'History Stealing', but the latter? People gonna fall asleep.
Alright, I read the article on this one, and, there's a divergence of evidence here. Mainly..
"We applied the methodology from last week's study to examine Epic Marketplace's opt-out practices. (Epic Marketplace was one of the eleven NAI members not included in that study.) We found that Epic Marketplace leaves its tracking cookies in place after both opting out with the NAI mechanism and enabling Do Not Track. We also found that history stealing continues after using either choice mechanism." - This one's from the study.
"Furthermore, when the user opts out, all data collection efforts cease. The student erroneously concludes that users are unable to avoid participating in segment verification because the opt-out mechanism does not delete the cookie that exists on the user’s computer. Like many other networks have pointed out already in their responses, this is misleading and inaccurate. When a user opts-out, all further collection of behavioral data from that user stops and existing profile data is deleted, even though the cookie itself is not deleted. The reason for this is simple: these cookies provide important operational information necessary for the delivery of any ad, not just targeted ads. For example, Epic Marketplace needs this data to determine how many times a particular ad has been shown to a user, and to analyze whether fraudulent activity is taking place. Ironically, in order to give effect to a consumer’s decision to avoid data collection, the cookie has to remain, otherwise advertisers have no way of knowing that that particular consumer has elected to opt-out of that advertiser’s data collection practices." - and here's Epic's counter.
These two statements seem strictly at-odds to me; the study states that the History Stealing continues to run, not just that a cookie remains as Epic sems to be saying. Epic claims the data collection stops - straight conflict here. Someone either screwed up their study, or Epic is lying, or Epic is unaware that their 'stop stealing' code doesn't actually work. It looks like they're not gathering personally identifiable or geographical location, and so are in the clear there - but now you've got a pure 'He said, she said' in terms of continuing collection after opt-out. Anyone interested in trying to duplicate this study and add some more evidence to if it continues or not?
Google actively searches for the links. I don't know what the innocent did.
The active search comparing Video IDs came up after the lawsuit was filed - I assume this is what you mean by an active search. Either way, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that doing this afterwards wouldn't have removed their liability for previous actions, so I think you're safe without some sort of active search going on. Pretty sure that just responding to DMCA takedown requests counted as enough.
What is the difference between what he did and what google does?
There's a difference here, be fair - Google, for one, doesn't run an index primarily of infringing content. Google's also big enough to be able to fight back directly with big money lawyers as well. And lastly, Google -WAS- sued under this logic once before, in the Viacom-Youtube incident, where Viacom held that Youtube was, essentially, engaging in mass infringement. Actually, on thinking of it, the Viacom-Youtube incident should provide an interesting angle to this - does anyone know if he received, by chance, DMCA takedown requests? That was what threw out Viacom's suit against Google - that they had complied with the DMCA and thus were not liable. I don't see any mention of them here, but I don't know if that means "We didn't bother sending DMCA notifications to a known British National" or "We sent them and they got ignored so nobody cared enough to report them".
First Cisco trying it from Canada, now the MPAA through Britain. An important thing to note through the article is that copyright laws exist in both countries - but that so far, it seems in Britain that link-sharing alone is not as damning as it is in the US. Mainly, it looks like TVShack was much more commercialized than Hotfile, and that's always something that results in a bigger hammer coming down the line. An important thing to note as well is the previous experience British judges have had with copyright litigation - I remember ACS Law and Crossley being torn into, as seen here (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/amounts-to-blackmail-inside-a-p2p-settlement-letter-factory.ars) Really, I don't think he's getting extradited. Britain is markedly hostile to US-style copyright infringement proceedings, and I doubt they failed to figure out where Crossley got his tactics from. Unless if they get someone to play rubber stamp and not examine the case, I'd lay my money on O'Dwyer staying right where he is.
Interesting note about Google+ vs Facebook - go ahead and look, at the least, at the airlines/cable companies, which Facebook's rating is being compared to. They're hated because they're seen to offer 'homogenous products', or rather, it's that people have a beef with the whole airline/cable experience because of shared problems (Local Monopolies, substandard service, hidden fees, the TSA in the case of airlines) So, in all seriousness - what are the chances of Google+ picking up some of those 'destructive practices' that Facebook has? Privacy is probably not the biggest reason people hate it; spammy updates (From app developers), the whole social drama thing (Anywhere you have people, you have drama) and difficulty deleting data (Do you really think Google wants to delete your data eithe?) are 'traps' I can see Google+ falling into just as easily. The only thing I'm dead sure Google+ will do right that Facebook does wrong, is to not shuffle their UI every few months and reset all your settings. Considering how much of an advantage that gave hem in search over Yahoo and competitors ages ago, I doubt they'll ever forget. That said, I'll still join Google+ (I care about privacy), but, I'm not as sure you're going to see a mass exodus unless if the geeks like us drive it somehow - see the family photographer converting to G+ and pulling the family photos with them. Go ahead and do it yourself too if you can - we'll probably need it if we really want to pull people away from FB.
A sign that they're recognizing that the system has a problem, which, let's be honest - is a great step forward in and of itself. With more pressure from judges like Alsup, maybe we can start to see a move away from the purely-adversarial legal process; where both sides demand the moon because not doing so will just weaken their position to no gain...and because with less time wasted in trial, the lawyers earn less in legal fees. But, hey, even if he just stops at fixing the symptom, at least he's bloody fixing the symptom. Good for the judge.
Their contract specifies (Unsurprisingly) that they have some rights to the Modern Warfare series as a whole. Go back and look at the old papers - the first lawsuit - to see that contract. In other words: What they want, I would expect, is that Activision doesn't get to make more Modern Warfare at all. It's not like Activision came up with it, they're firing the people who did. They might not be able legally to take the Modern Warfare name with them, but if they can't, they'll take the money from it at least. Either way, Activision's actions here are pretty patently and obviously illegal. IANAL, but the California Legal Code in terms of 'you must pay people all owed money within 72 hours of their departure' doesn't require one to interpret. The other stuff may be up in the air, but Activision's definitely ripping them off here.
Alright, just as a note, reading the article here provides a lot of enlightenment. Specifically, the second paragraph from the person. "Yesterday I got called into the Managers office because the network manager had been contacted by Mediasentry and emailed one of the generic copyright infringement emails as a result of me downloading Angels and Demons. The manager then proceeded to adopt an -as far as i can tell- exageratingly literal interpretation of the following exerpt from the automated email: 1.) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2.) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through youâ With less than a month left to the semester and in the misdt of the examination period he has asked me to leave the dorm. While I understand he does reserve the right to terminate my stay at his descretion I was just inquiring about the seriousness of recieving a MediaSentry email and if they are infact even lisensed to conduct their âoeinvestigativeâ work outside of the United States. Now instead of studying for my exams and working on my final assignments I must take time to find a place to live before the 29th of May (2009)." Looking over this, I'd actually paint a different villain. I think the manager already had it out for this guy, or, at the least, is a serious douchebag. Did the guy confess or not? Who knows. He -does- claim to have challenged MediaSentry's right to even send the e-mail, as well as being kicked out for it, and the person who followed through with it was the manager. I'm going to guess that the manager is either an asshole with a vendetta, or had his balls cut off twenty years ago and is scared shitless of anything that even smacks of legal action directed within fifty miles of him. Oh, and, seriously, what the hell? "You deserve to lose the place you live right before exams?" Seriously, what the hell is your idea of 'proper punishment'. This is the kind of stuff that can ruin the rest of someone's life. Does someone deserve to have their college degree taken away for what is, basically, a form of shoplifting? Or sneaking into a movie without paying for it? Copyright infringement is more popular then actual shoplifting, but carries a hell of a lot less risk to all parties involved. There's no real reason for such a disproportionate punishment as seen here. The question isn't "Does the punishment fit the crime" - it doesn't. The questions are if the guy actually confessed, and what the hell was going through his manager's head.
I work in tech support on my college, and have done so throughout the semester. What this basically means, is that people bring in their broken laptops, and I help fix them. This has ranged from the computer-illiterate who can't follow the instructions for getting their computer's security validated and on the network, to "It won't boot up anymore" and even one case where the RAM got unseated and I had to open it up and reseat it. So far? Outside of the very first week, where computer-illiterate people abound walked in to just get on the network, EVERY machine that's come in here is either Vista or plain hardware damage from swinging it around. And I've seen dozens of Vista machines in. They frequently deny their user is an administrator even when they are, corrupt files, crash stuff, quit playing sound, just dozens upon dozen of pain-in-the-ass errors. And I haven't met one person (I've looked) who is happy with Vista on campus, and very few even with the new Office. Vista is just beyond your average user. It doesn't look like, from these posts, that SP1 is going to fix this. And, yes, I realize these are just 'anecdotes' - but the only ones I'm hearing is that Vista stink, and I'm not working in a really closed environment, since I have basically harassed almost every Vista user on campus now (It's only 600 people total in this school, a fraction of which use Vista. It's not too hard.)