Agreed. I'll point out that the law is what it is, and our society is based on the rule of law. Thus, breaking the law is widely viewed as "evil" (widely being defined as a majority of the population). Debate on the moral qualities of specific laws can become quite contentious, and is beyond the scope of this discussion.
I'm not seeing the "evil" until they either start ignoring take down notices (which they haven't) or start actively engaging in violations themselves (Which they apparently did at one point and which may end up getting them/google nailed).
That is exactly my point. Everything that's public now is pretty damning, and I'm certain Viacom is going to be pursuing any and all internal records at Google that have any relation at all to this matter. Depending on what they find, it could be catastrophic. If they find nothing at all, it shows that Google failed at proper due diligence prior to buying YouTube. Either way, it's bad.
This is much, much worse than what you're describing. Please read through all the materials provided in the article (it'll take a while). These are records of intimate knowledge of, flagrant disregard for, and active encouragement of copyright violations on a massive scale, including documented specific instances where employees are aware that copyrighted materials were being posted and not only did absolutely nothing, they were laughing about it.
I'm betting they're going after internal Google documents that will prove Google's knowledge about this from the start. I'm not saying such documents exist, but if they don't it sure makes for a heck of a case of failure on Google's part to adequately research YouTube's internals prior to purchasing the company. That alone can be immensely damaging.
This is certainly possible, although given the massive potential for repercussions, such an action could easily be called one of the gravest errors in calculation in memory. Given the fact that Google is a publicly traded company, the potential for damage here is just absolutely insane.
What free speech laws of yours are being abridged? I published software under the Artistic and BSD licenses, which is my right under the law. People can use the things I create under very liberal terms because I want it that way. Others choose different licensing mechanisms; how precisely are they abridging your rights? Am I abridging your right to free speech if I take you to court for incorporating my software into a commercial product without following the license? I don't want to hear about pie in the sky philosophical "what if" scenarios, I want to hear specific references to United States law.
I'm sorry, but after examining the internal communications myself, I cannot agree with your view. This is a plain old fashioned case of a company doing whatever it wants, regardless of the law, and history coming back to haunt it.
Please provide proof that Viacom would have gone through with the deal after discovering this kind of information. I'll state that (1) they wouldn't have bought YouTube, and that (2) they would have instead started massive legal action against the company had they been in possession of this data. I suppose it's possible that had YouTube opened the internal records floodgates for Viacom's perusal, maybe YouTube would have been bought for $10 and subsequently dismantled or converted hastily into a full blown paid subscription-based site in short order (with the alternative being getting sued out of existence). Somehow, I just don't see it.
As I responded elsewhere, this stuff is coming out now, which means there's absolutely no way Google performed any kind of real due diligence prior to spending over a billion dollars for YouTube without knowing about it. To believe otherwise is simply ridiculous, or to say you think we've been witness to one of the most epic due diligence failures in history.
Given the nature of YouTube's content over the years, and the fact that all these emails and IM transcripts are coming out now, don't you think there might have been a need for just a little more due diligence prior to acquiring YouTube? Holy cow, thoroughly research a company before you buy it for over a billion dollars. What a concept.
The word "evil" is actually used (as in the context of "I don't care how evil we have to be, just do it") in the emails and instant messaging transcripts disclosed in TFA. Other choice expressions include "fucking copyright assholes" and "we don't actually care, we're just doing this to avoid being sued." I'm an open source software author myself (reference rpush.org, among other things), and I choose to license my stuff quite liberally. However, I absolutely demand that others respect the licensing terms I distribute my materials under, and I respect the licenses chosen by others. Violating that is absolutely inexcusable. It irritates me to no end that the open source community will frequently scream bloody murder over a GPL violation, then turn around and say stuff like this "isn't evil."
If ever there were a case for RTFA, this is surely it. I would have modded you down, but felt it was better to respond in full. Other mods, please mod parent down.
Patronizing? What are you talking about? I was correcting the poster who indicated her gender as being male. Quite the reverse of your misinterpretation of my point, I was lending credence to the oft-ignored fact that there are some brilliant women in computer science. I considered her article one of the best things I've read in years, regardless of gender. What are you smoking?
Are you aware that the majority of security vendors employ such personnel? The most effective means of finding vulnerabilities like these is, oh I don't know, to attempt to exploit systems. Reference Internet Security Systems (now owned by IBM), several key members of which I used to have coffee with once or twice a week.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. I'll point out that the law is what it is, and our society is based on the rule of law. Thus, breaking the law is widely viewed as "evil" (widely being defined as a majority of the population). Debate on the moral qualities of specific laws can become quite contentious, and is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Well in that case I respect your respect for my opinion, and thank you for being the most polite person I've conversed with on Slashdot today =)
I'm not seeing the "evil" until they either start ignoring take down notices (which they haven't) or start actively engaging in violations themselves (Which they apparently did at one point and which may end up getting them/google nailed).
That is exactly my point. Everything that's public now is pretty damning, and I'm certain Viacom is going to be pursuing any and all internal records at Google that have any relation at all to this matter. Depending on what they find, it could be catastrophic. If they find nothing at all, it shows that Google failed at proper due diligence prior to buying YouTube. Either way, it's bad.
This is much, much worse than what you're describing. Please read through all the materials provided in the article (it'll take a while). These are records of intimate knowledge of, flagrant disregard for, and active encouragement of copyright violations on a massive scale, including documented specific instances where employees are aware that copyrighted materials were being posted and not only did absolutely nothing, they were laughing about it.
You know, on that note I think I'll go grab a beer.
I think you're right, and if you are it's very, very sad.
I'm betting they're going after internal Google documents that will prove Google's knowledge about this from the start. I'm not saying such documents exist, but if they don't it sure makes for a heck of a case of failure on Google's part to adequately research YouTube's internals prior to purchasing the company. That alone can be immensely damaging.
This is certainly possible, although given the massive potential for repercussions, such an action could easily be called one of the gravest errors in calculation in memory. Given the fact that Google is a publicly traded company, the potential for damage here is just absolutely insane.
What free speech laws of yours are being abridged? I published software under the Artistic and BSD licenses, which is my right under the law. People can use the things I create under very liberal terms because I want it that way. Others choose different licensing mechanisms; how precisely are they abridging your rights? Am I abridging your right to free speech if I take you to court for incorporating my software into a commercial product without following the license? I don't want to hear about pie in the sky philosophical "what if" scenarios, I want to hear specific references to United States law.
I'm sorry, but after examining the internal communications myself, I cannot agree with your view. This is a plain old fashioned case of a company doing whatever it wants, regardless of the law, and history coming back to haunt it.
That's ridiculous.
Please provide proof that Viacom would have gone through with the deal after discovering this kind of information. I'll state that (1) they wouldn't have bought YouTube, and that (2) they would have instead started massive legal action against the company had they been in possession of this data. I suppose it's possible that had YouTube opened the internal records floodgates for Viacom's perusal, maybe YouTube would have been bought for $10 and subsequently dismantled or converted hastily into a full blown paid subscription-based site in short order (with the alternative being getting sued out of existence). Somehow, I just don't see it.
Again, that's absolutely ridiculous.
As I responded elsewhere, this stuff is coming out now, which means there's absolutely no way Google performed any kind of real due diligence prior to spending over a billion dollars for YouTube without knowing about it. To believe otherwise is simply ridiculous, or to say you think we've been witness to one of the most epic due diligence failures in history.
Given the nature of YouTube's content over the years, and the fact that all these emails and IM transcripts are coming out now, don't you think there might have been a need for just a little more due diligence prior to acquiring YouTube? Holy cow, thoroughly research a company before you buy it for over a billion dollars. What a concept.
The word "evil" is actually used (as in the context of "I don't care how evil we have to be, just do it") in the emails and instant messaging transcripts disclosed in TFA. Other choice expressions include "fucking copyright assholes" and "we don't actually care, we're just doing this to avoid being sued." I'm an open source software author myself (reference rpush.org, among other things), and I choose to license my stuff quite liberally. However, I absolutely demand that others respect the licensing terms I distribute my materials under, and I respect the licenses chosen by others. Violating that is absolutely inexcusable. It irritates me to no end that the open source community will frequently scream bloody murder over a GPL violation, then turn around and say stuff like this "isn't evil."
If ever there were a case for RTFA, this is surely it. I would have modded you down, but felt it was better to respond in full. Other mods, please mod parent down.
Considering the average Slashdotter and the men she's surrounded by at MIT every day, I'm really not surprised.
No. Jessica wrote the full article on stripping "hello world" down to the minimum possible byte count. Please read it again.
There's nothing confusing here if you actually read the full article by Jessica.
Patronizing? What are you talking about? I was correcting the poster who indicated her gender as being male. Quite the reverse of your misinterpretation of my point, I was lending credence to the oft-ignored fact that there are some brilliant women in computer science. I considered her article one of the best things I've read in years, regardless of gender. What are you smoking?
Kinda my point... it seems there's been a rash of failure to RTFS recently, in addition to the usual failure to RTFA.
Are you aware that the majority of security vendors employ such personnel? The most effective means of finding vulnerabilities like these is, oh I don't know, to attempt to exploit systems. Reference Internet Security Systems (now owned by IBM), several key members of which I used to have coffee with once or twice a week.
It is just a toy program that returns 42 to the OS, but he gets it down to 45 bytes.
Since computer science tends to be such a male dominated field, I think it's worth pointing out that the author is a woman.
I type DNS a bit too often these days.
FYI
You should have a look over his posting history. He's a complete wacko, but sadly I think he believes what he writes.
This kind of universal "man, I'm so much smarter than the police" attitude is tiresome.