I'm with you all the way there. Anything that can't be applied to all sorts of everyday occurrences and also punishes this lady (assuming she's guilty) sounds reasonable.
Not what I was saying at all. What I was trying to say was that a distinction should be made between the two. I'm not arguing that she shouldn't be punished, just that the name of her crime should be something less broad than "inflicting emotional distress".
It's absolutely a bigger deal than that. The point I was making was that the same law shouldn't cover both. Of course that was based on what I now know to be a false reading of the article (turns out they ARE covered separately, such that one is illegal and the other isn't, as I was arguing that it should be), so it's a meaningless point now, but the point remains.
In many cases (believe it's above-a-misdemeanor or something like that, though it could just be specific types of crimes) a jury is required to even decide that you should be tried, separately from the trial itself. This is like saying "we believe the prosecution will be able to make a relatively good case that she's guilty, so we're having a trial", not saying "she's guilty".
Actually, we got into a discussion on this same subject lower down in the replies (I'd say later, but it was two hours earlier or so). The "emotional distress" bit wasn't actually part of the crime, her crimes were using false pretenses to gain access to Myspace (not using her real name) and conspiracy (I believe conspiracy to hurt the girl). So unless you have an elaborate plot to convince me I live under a bridge, feel free to mod me a troll.
I think I understand your TOS vs EULA comparison, but I'm not sure how it applies...the way I see it (which may be incorrect, IANAL) is that where she broke the letter of the law was using a false name when she created her account, i.e., if she had used her own name no crime would have been committed.
Turns out I misread TFA. The crime was accessing private data, not using it to "inflict emotional distress", it was just phrased badly in (or my brain was malfunctioning when I read) the article.
What I was addressing was that TFA (and the post) refer to one of her crimes as "inflict[ing] emotional distress" on the girl. I was pointing out that if "inflicting emotional distress" on the internet is a crime, you're basically making it a crime to offend people - which would include insulting someone in a Usenet (or Slashdot, you fool*) argument.
*In case you missed the irony, it was right there.
Not trying to imply that it's the same thing, or that it isn't wrong. We just need to redefine the crime that was committed. If it's "inflicting emotional distress (on a minor?)", we have a serious problem on our hands.
You just need legislators with a brain - finding them might be the real issue. Congratulations. I've never seen the main problem with our government summed up so succinctly.
More to the point...I saw your earlier post and recognize the situation here, and I don't disagree that this woman has violated the law. Just trying to point out that "infliction of emotional distress" sure as hell shouldn't be the crime here. Find something that should actually be illegal to prosecute her under. But as a minor, I don't want it to be illegal to offend me on the Internet - otherwise, I could sue you (and lose, hopefully) based on your disagreement with me there. I'm an emotionally vulnerable child, and he damaged my psyche! I have no self-respect!
Some people in my generation just need to get the fuck over themselves. I'm not trying to dismiss the pain she felt or say that this woman has done nothing wrong - just please, everyone-who-actually-has-a-voice-in-this-government, prosecute her for something that teenagers can't take advantage of. The law gets abused badly enough without things like "infliction of emotional distress" being illegal.
For once, an accurate first post. "Inflicting emotional distress" should not be a crime, because that means "insulting someone on Usenet" is a crime. Not only would we lose half the world's geeks within a year, but we'd have disgraced our legal system forever.
If you really feel "emotional distress", you can take the traditional response - a duel, either with swords a la D'argtanan or with pistols a la Jefferson or with words a la Usenet. It's entered into by mutual agreement, which means no one gets anything they weren't willing to get. You can walk away from an insult or even a duel - you can't walk away from a lawsuit.
My two cents (that's all I have, I'm not allowed to vote, those under 18 being clear idiots by definition) says that taking this into the courts is an insult to both parties. It's a private matter, and it should be settled privately.
Sure, the girl committed suicide, so there's an emotional investment here on the part of the people hearing about the case, but people should be able to realize just what kind of precedent they're setting here. It's not a good one.
"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." -- Bill Gates
This from the man whose company produces an operating system with over 50 million lines of code. It isn't an Airbus 380, it's just 380 buses bolted together.
If it's standard p2p, they aren't making a copy of it, they're just making the original copy available to others. If they were, say, hosting copyrighted content on MediaFire (cough cough warez-bb cough), THAT would be illegal by the copying clause.
I think Microsoft would love it if the OS became irrelevant as a marketable product; i.e., everyone bought Windows without thinking about it. Their market share is actually decreasing to the benefit of Apple and (to a lesser degree) Linux, but they still have 90% market share. As long as they can keep that number up, the rest of the picture just DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER.
So yes, Google is a threat in the ways you describe, but only in that it takes away some of the reasons to choose Windows. However, those reasons are already bullshit in a world with OpenOffice.org and so on - you don't need to do everything on the web if your desktop apps are all free, but that doesn't matter.
Why not? Because the Microsoft machine is so huge. I mean come on, when you can buy the right to service the Library of Congress (and do the same for many other organizations, governments, and corporations) and when 90% of the world grows up using your products, you're pretty fucking set, at least for the next few generations.
If more than this story is needed to explain the problems with U.S. patent law in particular and the concept of a patent in general, I'd love to see it.
Sounds good to me. Creative players, by the way, are notoriously unreliable (at least among my family, we've owned eight that have all crashed within six months of purchase, including one that was NEVER USED), and the Sansa software is junk.
Sorry, I was referring to its continued success in today's market. In terms of its initial blowout success, you're absolutely right that the small size and so on played a crucial role - but now that that's far from unique to their products, the reasons I cited are all I can find to explain its continued market dominance.
That, and the software is slightly less annoying than most Windows-based mp3 players.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm with you all the way there. Anything that can't be applied to all sorts of everyday occurrences and also punishes this lady (assuming she's guilty) sounds reasonable.
Ah, so severity does play into it. Thanks, that makes it a bit more reasonable...I guess we just hope for intelligent juries, as usual.
Thanks for the info. Not sure why you haven't been upmodded informative for it.
Not what I was saying at all. What I was trying to say was that a distinction should be made between the two. I'm not arguing that she shouldn't be punished, just that the name of her crime should be something less broad than "inflicting emotional distress".
It's absolutely a bigger deal than that. The point I was making was that the same law shouldn't cover both. Of course that was based on what I now know to be a false reading of the article (turns out they ARE covered separately, such that one is illegal and the other isn't, as I was arguing that it should be), so it's a meaningless point now, but the point remains.
In many cases (believe it's above-a-misdemeanor or something like that, though it could just be specific types of crimes) a jury is required to even decide that you should be tried, separately from the trial itself. This is like saying "we believe the prosecution will be able to make a relatively good case that she's guilty, so we're having a trial", not saying "she's guilty".
Actually, we got into a discussion on this same subject lower down in the replies (I'd say later, but it was two hours earlier or so). The "emotional distress" bit wasn't actually part of the crime, her crimes were using false pretenses to gain access to Myspace (not using her real name) and conspiracy (I believe conspiracy to hurt the girl). So unless you have an elaborate plot to convince me I live under a bridge, feel free to mod me a troll.
I think I understand your TOS vs EULA comparison, but I'm not sure how it applies...the way I see it (which may be incorrect, IANAL) is that where she broke the letter of the law was using a false name when she created her account, i.e., if she had used her own name no crime would have been committed.
If that's true, something's seriously fucked up.
Thanks for the information...I was sure I was reading the right comment above while I was posting, too, so it threw me for quite a loop.
Turns out I misread TFA. The crime was accessing private data, not using it to "inflict emotional distress", it was just phrased badly in (or my brain was malfunctioning when I read) the article.
What I was addressing was that TFA (and the post) refer to one of her crimes as "inflict[ing] emotional distress" on the girl. I was pointing out that if "inflicting emotional distress" on the internet is a crime, you're basically making it a crime to offend people - which would include insulting someone in a Usenet (or Slashdot, you fool*) argument.
*In case you missed the irony, it was right there.
What, so if I register for an email account with "Anonymous Anon" given as my name, I've broken the law? We really do live in a police state.
Disregard that, I suck cocks.
(Either I responded to the wrong comment, or slashdot's broke)
What, so if I register for an email account with "Anonymous Anon" given as my name, I've broken the law? We really do live in a police state.
Not trying to imply that it's the same thing, or that it isn't wrong. We just need to redefine the crime that was committed. If it's "inflicting emotional distress (on a minor?)", we have a serious problem on our hands.
More to the point...I saw your earlier post and recognize the situation here, and I don't disagree that this woman has violated the law. Just trying to point out that "infliction of emotional distress" sure as hell shouldn't be the crime here. Find something that should actually be illegal to prosecute her under. But as a minor, I don't want it to be illegal to offend me on the Internet - otherwise, I could sue you (and lose, hopefully) based on your disagreement with me there. I'm an emotionally vulnerable child, and he damaged my psyche! I have no self-respect!
Some people in my generation just need to get the fuck over themselves. I'm not trying to dismiss the pain she felt or say that this woman has done nothing wrong - just please, everyone-who-actually-has-a-voice-in-this-government, prosecute her for something that teenagers can't take advantage of. The law gets abused badly enough without things like "infliction of emotional distress" being illegal.
For once, an accurate first post. "Inflicting emotional distress" should not be a crime, because that means "insulting someone on Usenet" is a crime. Not only would we lose half the world's geeks within a year, but we'd have disgraced our legal system forever.
If you really feel "emotional distress", you can take the traditional response - a duel, either with swords a la D'argtanan or with pistols a la Jefferson or with words a la Usenet. It's entered into by mutual agreement, which means no one gets anything they weren't willing to get. You can walk away from an insult or even a duel - you can't walk away from a lawsuit. My two cents (that's all I have, I'm not allowed to vote, those under 18 being clear idiots by definition) says that taking this into the courts is an insult to both parties. It's a private matter, and it should be settled privately.
Sure, the girl committed suicide, so there's an emotional investment here on the part of the people hearing about the case, but people should be able to realize just what kind of precedent they're setting here. It's not a good one.
Yeah, but we've pirated Windows XP too.
If it's standard p2p, they aren't making a copy of it, they're just making the original copy available to others. If they were, say, hosting copyrighted content on MediaFire (cough cough warez-bb cough), THAT would be illegal by the copying clause.
I think Microsoft would love it if the OS became irrelevant as a marketable product; i.e., everyone bought Windows without thinking about it. Their market share is actually decreasing to the benefit of Apple and (to a lesser degree) Linux, but they still have 90% market share. As long as they can keep that number up, the rest of the picture just DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. So yes, Google is a threat in the ways you describe, but only in that it takes away some of the reasons to choose Windows. However, those reasons are already bullshit in a world with OpenOffice.org and so on - you don't need to do everything on the web if your desktop apps are all free, but that doesn't matter. Why not? Because the Microsoft machine is so huge. I mean come on, when you can buy the right to service the Library of Congress (and do the same for many other organizations, governments, and corporations) and when 90% of the world grows up using your products, you're pretty fucking set, at least for the next few generations.
If more than this story is needed to explain the problems with U.S. patent law in particular and the concept of a patent in general, I'd love to see it.
Sounds good to me. Creative players, by the way, are notoriously unreliable (at least among my family, we've owned eight that have all crashed within six months of purchase, including one that was NEVER USED), and the Sansa software is junk.
Sorry, I was referring to its continued success in today's market. In terms of its initial blowout success, you're absolutely right that the small size and so on played a crucial role - but now that that's far from unique to their products, the reasons I cited are all I can find to explain its continued market dominance. That, and the software is slightly less annoying than most Windows-based mp3 players.
Microsoft doesn't care how much money they make as long as they turn a profit!