I agree. I'm a parent of 3 kids, the oldest of whom is 11. I picked up GTA V the day after it released and I had my two year old with me. That does NOT mean that I bought it for him or any of my kids to play. Matter of fact, I don't even play it while any of them are in the same room.
What I'm trying to say is when someone walks into a store with their kid in tow it does not mean that the kid is going to get to play whatever is bought. Yes, even if the kid is the one that brings the game to the parent's attention and begs to play it. I realize that some parents have yet to realize that they can say no to their kid.
The difference is that if Tim Spengler decided that your "appropriate" comment was still defamatory he could just as easily sue for defamation. If you can't afford an attorney then it doesn't matter how much evidence you have to back up your comments - you lose. Assuming that you can afford an attorney, you still lose as you now have to pay that attorney and it's unlikely that you will be able to recover those costs from Tim. In the best-case scenario you eventually spend enough time in court (not getting paid at work) that you manage to defend yourself from Tim's lawsuit, get awarded attorney's fees, and successfully petition the court afterwards to garnish Tim's wages to pay for it all. After all that, your attorney will probably still end up taking about a third.
In today's court system, freedom of speech is only for those that can afford it.
Did you RTFA? The game isn't a first person shooter, and is "from the title on, a satire. It is a satire of how the media came to view the shooting but ALSO a satire on the conventions of video gaming itself. I wanted to deconstruct what a video game could be about while still using many of the conventions available in gaming. This is difficult for some to understand insomuch as the event itself was tragic and painful for so many people but I believe true satire can be aimed at even the most uncomfortable of topics (even nuclear war, per 'Dr. Strangelove.') In the case of SCMRPG, a GAME seemed to be the appropriate response to so much vilification of gaming."
According to the interview, he's decided to force the issue into court no matter what the MPAA does:
CH: So your position is that you aren't going to settle and that you didn't do anything wrong?
SH: Yep. At this point they have pushed me enough to where I'm going to do whatever I can to keep them from dropping the case. I can't prevent them from dropping it, but I am going to try and force them to go to a full trial. Basically, my lawyers aren't even going to file a motion to dismiss.
CH: That would be great, it would have to be pretty embarrassing for them to go to a full trial that ends up clearing you completely.
SH: It will set a precedent for everyone else, that's the whole point. Between the RIAA and the MPAA it's almost 20,000 people that have settled. All John Doe lawsuits, not a single one has gone to a final judgment. All these people settling for basically what adds up to extortion, I want to put a stop to it. At this point, I don't care what it costs. If they drop it, I will find something to counter with to keep it in court.
Adam Loewy, the lawyer who determined that $30 million was a good number based on the net worth of MySpace (how much you want to bet mom and teen get five digits tops?) can be found at:
Adam J. Loewy Firm: Barry & Loewy LLP Address: 111 Congress Avenue Suite 400 Austin, TX 78701
I found the method this lawyer used to figure out the penalty somewhat... confusing. MySpace is evidently "worth" $3 billion dollars. They've had 1 incident that peripherally involved them. Thus they should pay 1 percent of their net worth ($30,000,000) to the lawyer who will then turn around and give the teen and negligent parents some tiny percentage of that amount?? I'm thinking the formula should be more like this: take MySpace's profit for one year, divide that number by the number of registered users, then multiply it by the number of criminal charges that have been filed between your client and MySpace. Incidentally, I did some quick math and that number is a big fat ZERO.
If the ISP is filtering it instead of giving away filtering software then that would appear to be correct. Of course it should be relatively simple to get to a non-filtered computer and go to the website. I'm still not that fond of the law, I don't like anything that makes some other entity responsible for protecting your child in your home from a situation you instigated.
no way to know for sure until they implement it, but the AG is likely to go with the first implementation and just rate the page as non-kid-friendly. Essentially the law is saying that the list of sites should not be viewable by those who have opted not to view those sites.
Page 4, Line 117-118:
The attorney general shall make the adult content registry available for public dissemination in a readily accessible access restricted electronic format.
"Access restricted" is defined in Section 76-10-1230 as:
(1) "Access restricted" means that a content provider limits access to material harmful
to minors by:
(a) properly rating content;
(b) providing an age verification mechanism designed to prevent a minor's
material harmful to minors, including requiring use of a credit card, adult
digital certificate verifying age; or
(c) any other reasonable measures feasible under available technology.
I don't like this law either, but on the bright side I'll now have a nice list of porn sites to surf!
My suggestion? If I were an ISP in Utah, I would simply post a link to the Proxomitron [proxomitron.info] on my home page and be done with it. After all, I don't see anything in the article (didn't read the bill) to say that the third-party filtering product that the ISP provides has to cost anything or be easy to use.
Page 9, lines 260-265:
A service provider may comply with Subsection(1) by:
i) providing in-network filtering to prevent receipt of material harmful to minors:
or
ii) providing software for contemporaneous installation on the consumer's computer that blocks, in an easy-to-enable and commercially reasonable manner, receipt of material harmful to minors.
I don't think Proxomitron would qualify as easy-to-enable.
in my three years of working at eBay (yes, in SafeHarbor), I've never referred to or been referred to as a "pink" except for the team of about 5 reps who are allowed to post on the chat boards. I doubt "Ron" ever worked for eBay, let alone that he happened to be in a position to deal with anybody in the Powerseller program.
Maybe you missed this part of the article (no wonder, since the biased columnist put it as deep as he could: "That contention was supported by a Justice Department official who has been involved in numerous investigations of online auction fraud. The official, who spoke with MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity, indicated that eBay has been "very responsive" in cooperating with federal authorities and has approached law enforcement agencies to request that criminal investigations be initiated.
"EBay would be happy if every instance where they thought fraud was involved would be picked up by law enforcement," the official said."
In other words, what would happen if eBay reported each purported fraud case to the police for that area? Most of the smaller police departments would find their fax/email accounts flooded by eBay, they would throw away most of the reports from eBay, and nothing would get done. I personally know of one case eBay referred to Miami PD over a year ago for over $100,000 in computer parts that still hasn't moved into real investigation because it just isn't worth the police department's time!
It's also interesting to note that a few months back, eBay asked members if they were willing to pay an additional amount on an auction-to-auction basis for additional insurance (in other words, the seller would pay say $1 per $100 additional and in turn would get some kind of nifty icon that says how much insurance is available). Overwhelmingly, buyers and sellers basically told them to stay out of the insurance part of the transaction.
My suggestion, as well as eBay's, is to always go for escrow on larger bids. The extra shipping is well worth the peace of mind. And for goodness sake, what were these people thinking sending cash and money orders to some guy with so little feedback!
you forgot the number one rule when signing contracts (especially contracts drafted by lawyers): read the small print.
If GAIM belonged to Pre-Paid Legal, or anything like it, they'd be covered for exactly one letter to be written and a few hours of consultation. Even that's debatable (I've got a friend who's suing them for breach of contract, how's that for irony?) So do you pay $300+ a year for a service that's not worth anything other than writing up a will or similar rare times?
wait, because of the inneffectiveness of filters you support the bill? In other words, the more inneffective a filter is, the more you like it? Since the Library of Congress contains images and subjects not appropriate for minors, we should block the entire thing. That's the only way we can be sure we got all of it, after all!
If parents aren't willing to educate their children on how to press the back button if they see naughty things, they should also force the schools to keep their kids out of the library's Internet access completely. Heck, they shouldn't even be in public school, they teach sex ed in there!
Think about the number of complaints they get on the phone thanks to the ease of fraud on these items. I work for eBay, and when I heard that Sony had finally filed the necessary paperwork, I celebrated! Over 90% of the EQ stuff was touched by fraud, misrepresentation, shill bidding, or some other type of cheating. And when it did happen, who got the blame? Well, the sucker who bought it won't take the blame, and "everybody" knows it's not the seller's fault. That leaves Sony and/or eBay! Never mind that it was your decision to pay a 14 year old $4000 for a piece of data that you knew wasn't even a legal transaction!
Personally, whoever gets to me first has me. If that's DSL, I'll probably stick with DSL. If it's cable, ditto. Wireless? Only if you're within a few miles of downtown. I think the LOS requirement for wireless might be why it just never took off, at least in my area.
well, the MPAA and/or the RIAA have sued every other peer-to-peer network that's come up, which one's going to get this one? And who do you think they'll sue? the owners of the web site? the "piratical developers"?
if I remember right, one of Napster's points on appeal was that it was technologically impossible for them to only block the copyrighted material in question. Could the MPAA force Napster to recognize their "fingerprints" and deny users the ability to download music with those specific fingerprints?
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I agree. I'm a parent of 3 kids, the oldest of whom is 11. I picked up GTA V the day after it released and I had my two year old with me. That does NOT mean that I bought it for him or any of my kids to play. Matter of fact, I don't even play it while any of them are in the same room.
What I'm trying to say is when someone walks into a store with their kid in tow it does not mean that the kid is going to get to play whatever is bought. Yes, even if the kid is the one that brings the game to the parent's attention and begs to play it. I realize that some parents have yet to realize that they can say no to their kid.
Isn't this the same state that recently began building an infamous bridge to nowhere?
The difference is that if Tim Spengler decided that your "appropriate" comment was still defamatory he could just as easily sue for defamation. If you can't afford an attorney then it doesn't matter how much evidence you have to back up your comments - you lose. Assuming that you can afford an attorney, you still lose as you now have to pay that attorney and it's unlikely that you will be able to recover those costs from Tim. In the best-case scenario you eventually spend enough time in court (not getting paid at work) that you manage to defend yourself from Tim's lawsuit, get awarded attorney's fees, and successfully petition the court afterwards to garnish Tim's wages to pay for it all. After all that, your attorney will probably still end up taking about a third.
In today's court system, freedom of speech is only for those that can afford it.
Did you RTFA? The game isn't a first person shooter, and is "from the title on, a satire. It is a satire of how the media came to view the shooting but ALSO a satire on the conventions of video gaming itself. I wanted to deconstruct what a video
game could be about while still using many of the conventions available in gaming. This is difficult for some to understand insomuch as the event itself was tragic and painful for so many people but I believe true satire can be aimed at even the most uncomfortable of topics (even nuclear war, per 'Dr. Strangelove.') In the case of SCMRPG, a GAME seemed to be the
appropriate response to so much vilification of gaming."
(from the article)
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/6466/MPAA+v+Shawn+Hog an:+The+Zeropaid+Interview
According to the interview, he's decided to force the issue into court no matter what the MPAA does:
CH: So your position is that you aren't going to settle and that you didn't do anything wrong?
SH: Yep. At this point they have pushed me enough to where I'm going to do whatever I can to keep them from dropping the case. I can't prevent them from dropping it, but I am going to try and force them to go to a full trial. Basically, my lawyers aren't even going to file a motion to dismiss.
CH: That would be great, it would have to be pretty embarrassing for them to go to a full trial that ends up clearing you completely.
SH: It will set a precedent for everyone else, that's the whole point. Between the RIAA and the MPAA it's almost 20,000 people that have settled. All John Doe lawsuits, not a single one has gone to a final judgment. All these people settling for basically what adds up to extortion, I want to put a stop to it. At this point, I don't care what it costs. If they drop it, I will find something to counter with to keep it in court.
Adam Loewy, the lawyer who determined that $30 million was a good number based on the net worth of MySpace (how much you want to bet mom and teen get five digits tops?) can be found at:
Adam J. Loewy
Firm: Barry & Loewy LLP
Address: 111 Congress Avenue
Suite 400
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: (800) 892-5044 (Toll Free)
Fax: (800) 892-5044
E-mail: aloewy@barryloewy.com
Web site: http://www.barryloewy.com/
I found the method this lawyer used to figure out the penalty somewhat... confusing. MySpace is evidently "worth" $3 billion dollars. They've had 1 incident that peripherally involved them. Thus they should pay 1 percent of their net worth ($30,000,000) to the lawyer who will then turn around and give the teen and negligent parents some tiny percentage of that amount?? I'm thinking the formula should be more like this: take MySpace's profit for one year, divide that number by the number of registered users, then multiply it by the number of criminal charges that have been filed between your client and MySpace. Incidentally, I did some quick math and that number is a big fat ZERO.
If the ISP is filtering it instead of giving away filtering software then that would appear to be correct. Of course it should be relatively simple to get to a non-filtered computer and go to the website. I'm still not that fond of the law, I don't like anything that makes some other entity responsible for protecting your child in your home from a situation you instigated.
no way to know for sure until they implement it, but the AG is likely to go with the first implementation and just rate the page as non-kid-friendly. Essentially the law is saying that the list of sites should not be viewable by those who have opted not to view those sites.
i) providing in-network filtering to prevent receipt of material harmful to minors:
or
ii) providing software for contemporaneous installation on the consumer's computer that blocks, in an easy-to-enable and commercially reasonable manner, receipt of material harmful to minors.
I don't think Proxomitron would qualify as easy-to-enable.
in my three years of working at eBay (yes, in SafeHarbor), I've never referred to or been referred to as a "pink" except for the team of about 5 reps who are allowed to post on the chat boards. I doubt "Ron" ever worked for eBay, let alone that he happened to be in a position to deal with anybody in the Powerseller program.
Maybe you missed this part of the article (no wonder, since the biased columnist put it as deep as he could:
"That contention was supported by a Justice Department official who has been involved in numerous investigations of online auction fraud. The official, who spoke with MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity, indicated that eBay has been "very responsive" in cooperating with federal authorities and has approached law enforcement agencies to request that criminal investigations be initiated.
"EBay would be happy if every instance where they thought fraud was involved would be picked up by law enforcement," the official said."
In other words, what would happen if eBay reported each purported fraud case to the police for that area? Most of the smaller police departments would find their fax/email accounts flooded by eBay, they would throw away most of the reports from eBay, and nothing would get done. I personally know of one case eBay referred to Miami PD over a year ago for over $100,000 in computer parts that still hasn't moved into real investigation because it just isn't worth the police department's time!
It's also interesting to note that a few months back, eBay asked members if they were willing to pay an additional amount on an auction-to-auction basis for additional insurance (in other words, the seller would pay say $1 per $100 additional and in turn would get some kind of nifty icon that says how much insurance is available). Overwhelmingly, buyers and sellers basically told them to stay out of the insurance part of the transaction.
My suggestion, as well as eBay's, is to always go for escrow on larger bids. The extra shipping is well worth the peace of mind. And for goodness sake, what were these people thinking sending cash and money orders to some guy with so little feedback!
you forgot the number one rule when signing contracts (especially contracts drafted by lawyers): read the small print. If GAIM belonged to Pre-Paid Legal, or anything like it, they'd be covered for exactly one letter to be written and a few hours of consultation. Even that's debatable (I've got a friend who's suing them for breach of contract, how's that for irony?) So do you pay $300+ a year for a service that's not worth anything other than writing up a will or similar rare times?
wait, because of the inneffectiveness of filters you support the bill? In other words, the more inneffective a filter is, the more you like it? Since the Library of Congress contains images and subjects not appropriate for minors, we should block the entire thing. That's the only way we can be sure we got all of it, after all! If parents aren't willing to educate their children on how to press the back button if they see naughty things, they should also force the schools to keep their kids out of the library's Internet access completely. Heck, they shouldn't even be in public school, they teach sex ed in there!
Think about the number of complaints they get on the phone thanks to the ease of fraud on these items. I work for eBay, and when I heard that Sony had finally filed the necessary paperwork, I celebrated! Over 90% of the EQ stuff was touched by fraud, misrepresentation, shill bidding, or some other type of cheating. And when it did happen, who got the blame? Well, the sucker who bought it won't take the blame, and "everybody" knows it's not the seller's fault. That leaves Sony and/or eBay! Never mind that it was your decision to pay a 14 year old $4000 for a piece of data that you knew wasn't even a legal transaction!
Does this mean that next time I go to vote I'll get a blue screen of death if I vote for anybody but Gates for President?
Personally, whoever gets to me first has me. If that's DSL, I'll probably stick with DSL. If it's cable, ditto. Wireless? Only if you're within a few miles of downtown. I think the LOS requirement for wireless might be why it just never took off, at least in my area.
Excellent book, took me 2 days to read it! Of course, now we've gotta wait another year or two to get volume 10 :(
just looked up the guy's feedback, looks like eBay's SafeHarbor got him.
It's from the movie, Pi You know, the one where he finds the pattern in the stock market?
well, the MPAA and/or the RIAA have sued every other peer-to-peer network that's come up, which one's going to get this one? And who do you think they'll sue? the owners of the web site? the "piratical developers"?
for those interested:
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
155053 Ventura blvd
Encino, California 91436
PHONE: (818)995-6600
WEB SITE: www.mpaa.org
if I remember right, one of Napster's points on appeal was that it was technologically impossible for them to only block the copyrighted material in question. Could the MPAA force Napster to recognize their "fingerprints" and deny users the ability to download music with those specific fingerprints?