From the filing: [Plaintiffs] further argue that the defendant is not entitled to fees for work that could have been avoided had she assisted the plaintiffs or acceded to the settlement.
She can't charge for attorneys' fees because she decided not to settle? Does that imply that if she had settled, she would have gotten attorneys' fees? What planet are these people from?
Finally, [plaintiffs] contend the case was of too simple and mundane a nature to warrant a fee in excess of $100,000.
Yet they see nothing wrong with a fine of $100,000 per violation for copyright infringement.
How did the judge feel about this?
The plaintiffs argue that the defendant is not entitled to fees incurred after some point when she allegedly "could have avoided [fees] altogether but chose not to do so." Throughout the course of this litigation the plaintiffs have alleged that had the defendant appropriately assisted their copyright infringement investigation and litigation, she could have avoided being sued. The Court has rejected this argument on numerous occasions and declines to entertain it yet again. The defendant was entitled to litigate the claims the plaintiffs chose to bring against her and, as the prevailing party on those claims, she is entitled to recover the reasonable attorneys' fees she incurred in doing so.
Or, in layman's terms: Did your Mom drop you on your head when you were little?
Here's the response I sent to someone who argued that the commutation was just:
He was an extremely high ranking government official who lied to the FBI to protect the guilty. When that sort of thing is treated lightly, it sends a clear message to the public that our government is about politics and power, not about justice.
FWIW, I also think Rep Jefferson (D-LA) should be put under the jail.
The reason is this: a fine to Scooter Libby means exactly nothing. The PNAC will pay it for him. Moreover, for every Jefferson or Libby that gets caught, fifty scurry free through the halls of DC. And furthermore, the stakes are enormous. Libby will have power beyond yours or my imagining for the rest of his life for what he did. The only way to disincentivize the behavior, when one in fifty get caught and the rewards are frankly beyond my comprehension, is to make the penalty leviathan.
Why do you suppose our politicians are so corrupt? Is it because they are bad people? No. It is because they are human and they are faced with enormous profit and zero downside. No one could be expected to maintain their moral integrity in the face of that. We have to help them stand their ground, by making corruption unthinkable.
The only other option is to let it keep happening, and watch our nation continue to erode.
Solution: use POST requests for user actions, and add unique tokens to each form.
POST-only does help if your users have JavaScript and Flash disabled. Not entirely common, unfortunately.
Adding a unique token to each form doesn't work either. I haven't read the vulnerability anywhere, so I'm not going to say how it fails - but suffice it to say you should use something more robust. Have the user type in something that a computer can't. EG: their password or use a good CAPTCHA.
Federal Aviation Administration officials today launched what they hope will be pan U.S. and European Union joint action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Specifically the group announced the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions or AIRE
Additionally, the FAA announced that their agency would be renamed the 'American Institute for Regulation of Pilot Licensing and Aeronautical Navigation and Engineering' (AIRPLANE) to satisfy new federal requirements for cutesy acronyms.
>> Someone has to be the first to put out high quality AO content.
> Exactly what makes a game that exists only to sell itself by generating publicity over its intensly violent content "high-quality?" That's like calling Friday the Thirteenth Part 9 a cinematic masterpiece.
Not sure what will make it high quality, nor even if it will be so, because I haven't played the game yet (nor have you).
In GTA:SA, it was a gripping story-line, highly skilled voice actors, an immersive, continuous, free-roaming environment, intuitive controls, decent graphics (very good considering the hardware limitations), and a few dozen other things. But, if you've played GTA:SA (and I assume you have, or your comment would be devoid of the background necessary to elevate it above the prattling of zealots and trolls), you already know all that.
Love your work. Completely agreed that the "corruption" you mention is at the root of the IPR problems, and that the latter cannot be solved without addressing the former. It has to take a lot of courage to switch from a field in which you are a (perhaps the) luminary.
Best wishes, god speed, and I'll be watching and looking for opportunities to help.
Rockstar, if you're listening, please do us a favor. Keep the game just the way it is. Release it with the AO rating.
You have the capital to take a risk like this (especially with GTA 4 coming soon, and the tidal wave of cash it is sure to generate). Someone has to be the first to put out high quality AO content. The Atari 2600 came out in 1977. There are lots of adults that have been playing games for their entire lives, and want game content that falls in the same noire category as 300, Reservoir Dogs, and Sin City.
Until there is a proven market for this material, the vendors won't take a risk on it. But you have the ability to establish that market, and the cashflow to take the risk.
I don't even think it's that much of a risk; the first game to thumb its nose at the family-values whining minority. Everyone who would have bought the game will want it, 90% of them are old enough to legally buy it, and most of those will be willing and able to make the effort necessary to do so.
So please, give it a shot. You can always rerelease it with duckies and bunnies, and a gun that shoots hearts to make the furry animals love you, later.
OK, I just gotta ask: Why would you want a WiFi repeater to be mobile? Given its size, it can't be *that* mobile, especially in an environment with a little bomb debris. I can't imagine it would be able to keep up with the troops, and the recovery rate (if they're hoping for it to drive home) would be so miniscule as to be outweighed by the increased bulk and cost of the drive unit.
Leave the drive unit and motor control out, double the battery life, halve the weight and price, drop twice as many. Then design a separate device to do whatever they hell those tracks are on there for (giving the brass stiffies, is my guess).
JM2C, but this looks like a tits-on-a-mule cockup between war scientists and dipshit generals. "That looks good. Can you put wheels on it?" "Wheels, Sir?" "Yeah, wheels, so it can drive around, like that Grand Challenge thing you did. And the Predator. Autonomous warfighting robots, it's the future, son." "Umm, well, I guess it's possible." "Outstanding! Let me know when it's ready."
Not that I don't dig the shit out of DARPA, and I definitely want an autonomoous WiFi tank of my own, but this seems a little stupid.
At the risk of sounding a little jaded and anti-establishment (which would surely make me an outcast on this site, haha):
I think maybe this is a good thing. I think the scammers have been, to this point, largely targeting the gullible. Old people, drug abusers, the socially awkward. The problem with that is those sections of our society are, I would guess, significantly underrepresented in the political process.
If the friends and contributors of our ruling elite class start getting tagged, perhaps we will see some Internet legislation that is focused on taking out the really vile scum, instead of just the low grade malefactors that infringe copyright for personal use. Copyright legislation is going gangbusters because the people Congress talks to believe it is good. If those same people start to feel the bite of scammers, maybe they'll get serious about finding these assholes and putting them away.
I support drunk driving laws. And I have heard that cell driving is similar in impairment to drink driving (though I think the studies so far have been less than perfectly rigorous). So that makes me tend to support the idea of cell driving laws.
However, at the same time, I see plenty of erratic and dangerous drivers who aren't talking on cell phones. Why is a cell driving law a better idea than simply getting tougher on poor driving? Or at least shouldn't getting tougher on poor driving come first?
It seems like the main (or at least first) question should not be, "Are you on a cell phone?" but, "Do you present a risk to others?"
So what the hell is this guy talking about, and why is it on Slashdot?
In the past year, Al Gore's so-called "documentary" film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain's - more or less Tony Blair's - Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.
Hmmm: Al Gore - politician. Tony Blair - politician. UN Intergovernmental Panel - politicians. G8 - politicians.
The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: "the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda".
Yegads, I hope he's not holding Crichton up as a paragon of scientific virtue.
He rails against against politicized scientists. And yet...
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
Yah - no political bent in this guy at all.
Who gave this yahoo permission to use the word "science" anyway? He should have his toungue cut out, not get a page on FT.
Not that I'm saying global warming is known to be caused by human activity - it is not. But this guy's view is about as meaningful as Crichton's or Gore's, from a scientific perspective. That is; not.
Is the FBI allowed to do this? Did they get special dispensation from the RIAA and MPAA to work on a project that appears to be completely unrelated to copyright infringement?
Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
I thought we were talking about file sharing?
Illegal file-sharers don't care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
You can read minds?
Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
Bullshit. Copyright infringement does not change the relative ROI figures. Therefore, it does not have an impact on the ratio in which money is invested in high-risk/high-reward contracts versus low-risk/low-reward contracts. It may reduce the total amount of money, but it does not change the percentage allocation of that money (at least not for a rational firm).
ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
Facilitate it? So do Intel and Microsoft. So does oxygen - think about it - if people couldn't breathe, they wouldn't be alive to infringe copyright. If facilitation is the problem, go after the auto manufacturers - they facilitate drunk driving.
The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth
False. The movement does create jobs for lots of people. Mostly for the media, lobbyists, and fake study publishers.
Aside from the movement, reduced copyright would also create jobs, exports, and tax revenues - from cover bands, cover albums, music compilations, derivative works, etc. The unfortunate fact is we have no idea how many jobs it would create nor how many would be lost nor how the redistribution of wealth would affect society. It is far too radically different an economic system from anything that has existed in the past fifty years to be predicted.
it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
90% of everything is shit. Some of us, however, studied economics in college.
Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
This study cannot be accurate. iTunes just started selling major artist songs online without DRM within the past week. There is not remotely sufficient data yet to predict the behavior of consumers in a market that allows them to buy what they want. Making predictions about behavior when the legal options have been so limited and so limiting until this past week (and remain so for most labels and some operating systems) is meaningless.
a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank
All the micro-econ courses I took, every single one from micro-101 to price theory, stated pretty strenuously that fiat monopolies and the free market are antithetical. I'm not saying copyright is necessarily bad - maybe the free market is not efficient when it comes to creative works - but the intersection of the free market and copyright is the empty set.
Husband sleeps with his secretary. Wife finds out. He buys her a Tiffany's bracelet. For some wives it's the bracelet that matters. For some it's the remorse (or lack thereof). For some there is no uncheating. Same story here.
OK, I know that fake studies are a part of Microsoft's standard operating procedure for affecting the standards and codes proposed by governing bodies, but where's the rest? Shouldn't Microsoft be giving zero-interest "loans" to RMS, sending Eben Moglen to play golf in Scotland (a fact-finding tour), and buying a powerboat for Linus?
Seriously, though, who gives a crap what a Harvard professor, funded or unfunded, with or without a good sample size, claims the average developer wants? The GPL is not supposed to be populist, it's supposed to achieve a purpose. A purpose that most of the world - heck, even much if not most of Slashdot's readership - has never fully grasped. A purpose that is diametrically opposed to software patents.
I think the misguided idea here is that Google can single-handedly pressure the Chinese government into giving free speech to its citizens.
I think that is either a ridiculous straw-man, or you genuinely miss the point. It is not about changing China, it is about whether participating in a market implies that one condones that market. Google has chosen to remain in a market that requires them to engage in political self-censorship. Maybe for good reasons, maybe for bad. Maybe it makes them a good company, maybe bad. But the question here is not whether China should change (though that is an interesting, separate, question), but whether Google, by participating in that market, is violating their epithet, "do no evil".
It's not self-censorship if they are forced by law to do it. Or what did I miss?
I think you missed the meaning of the word, "Self." The fact that the government of China requires Google to censor their content does not mean that it is not self-censorship. Only that it is government mandated self-censorship.
When I go out on the freeway and drive 65 miles per hour, it is not the signs on the side of the road that cause my car to go 65 miles per hour, it is me self-regulating my speed. The government mandates that I self-regulate, and punishes me if I don't. They could install governors on cars that would make it impossible for me to speed, that would no longer be self-regulation.
Likewise, China could put a content filtering firewall around Google's servers - then Google would not be engaged in self-censorship. But when Google is the actor, it is, "self-censorship."
It seems that you are saying, "Google self-censoring is not wrong, because China requires it." That may be so, but you framed it as, "Google censoring their content does not count as self-censoring because they are required to self-censor." That is ridiculous.
According to the AC, it's standard MySpace operating procedure to just always say "he's in your extended network." I have neither confirmed nor disproved that assertion, but it seems reasonable, so take my above post with a grain of salt.
Slashdot Mirror
From the filing:
[Plaintiffs] further argue that the defendant is not entitled to fees for work that could have been avoided had she assisted the plaintiffs or acceded to the settlement.
She can't charge for attorneys' fees because she decided not to settle? Does that imply that if she had settled, she would have gotten attorneys' fees? What planet are these people from?
Finally, [plaintiffs] contend the case was of too simple and mundane a nature to warrant a fee in excess of $100,000.
Yet they see nothing wrong with a fine of $100,000 per violation for copyright infringement.
How did the judge feel about this?
The plaintiffs argue that the defendant is not entitled to fees incurred after some point when she allegedly "could have avoided [fees] altogether but chose not to do so." Throughout the course of this litigation the plaintiffs have alleged that had the defendant appropriately assisted their copyright infringement investigation and litigation, she could have avoided being sued. The Court has rejected this argument on numerous occasions and declines to entertain it yet again. The defendant was entitled to litigate the claims the plaintiffs chose to bring against her and, as the prevailing party on those claims, she is entitled to recover the reasonable attorneys' fees she incurred in doing so.
Or, in layman's terms: Did your Mom drop you on your head when you were little?
In some key European markets FF has already reached parity is threatening to overtake IE as the market leading browser.
Suddenly monopolies don't sound so bad. OK, how do we abuse this new power?
Here's the response I sent to someone who argued that the commutation was just:
He was an extremely high ranking government official who lied to the FBI to protect the guilty. When that sort of thing is treated lightly, it sends a clear message to the public that our government is about politics and power, not about justice.
FWIW, I also think Rep Jefferson (D-LA) should be put under the jail.
The reason is this: a fine to Scooter Libby means exactly nothing. The PNAC will pay it for him. Moreover, for every Jefferson or Libby that gets caught, fifty scurry free through the halls of DC. And furthermore, the stakes are enormous. Libby will have power beyond yours or my imagining for the rest of his life for what he did. The only way to disincentivize the behavior, when one in fifty get caught and the rewards are frankly beyond my comprehension, is to make the penalty leviathan.
Why do you suppose our politicians are so corrupt? Is it because they are bad people? No. It is because they are human and they are faced with enormous profit and zero downside. No one could be expected to maintain their moral integrity in the face of that. We have to help them stand their ground, by making corruption unthinkable.
The only other option is to let it keep happening, and watch our nation continue to erode.
Solution: use POST requests for user actions, and add unique tokens to each form.
POST-only does help if your users have JavaScript and Flash disabled. Not entirely common, unfortunately.
Adding a unique token to each form doesn't work either. I haven't read the vulnerability anywhere, so I'm not going to say how it fails - but suffice it to say you should use something more robust. Have the user type in something that a computer can't. EG: their password or use a good CAPTCHA.
For the requests that come from the malicious browser, the referrer header would have to be forged for it to work correctly.
True. And unfortunately, easy to do with JavaScript.
Federal Aviation Administration officials today launched what they hope will be pan U.S. and European Union joint action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Specifically the group announced the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions or AIRE
Additionally, the FAA announced that their agency would be renamed the 'American Institute for Regulation of Pilot Licensing and Aeronautical Navigation and Engineering' (AIRPLANE) to satisfy new federal requirements for cutesy acronyms.
>> Someone has to be the first to put out high quality AO content.
> Exactly what makes a game that exists only to sell itself by generating publicity over its intensly violent content "high-quality?" That's like calling Friday the Thirteenth Part 9 a cinematic masterpiece.
Not sure what will make it high quality, nor even if it will be so, because I haven't played the game yet (nor have you).
In GTA:SA, it was a gripping story-line, highly skilled voice actors, an immersive, continuous, free-roaming environment, intuitive controls, decent graphics (very good considering the hardware limitations), and a few dozen other things. But, if you've played GTA:SA (and I assume you have, or your comment would be devoid of the background necessary to elevate it above the prattling of zealots and trolls), you already know all that.
Love your work. Completely agreed that the "corruption" you mention is at the root of the IPR problems, and that the latter cannot be solved without addressing the former. It has to take a lot of courage to switch from a field in which you are a (perhaps the) luminary.
Best wishes, god speed, and I'll be watching and looking for opportunities to help.
They took a 25 million dollar loss last year, are you sure they have this capital you speak of?
Wow! I did not know that. So I guess extreme ping-pong wasn't the shoo-in winner we all assumed it would be, haha.
Rockstar, if you're listening, please do us a favor. Keep the game just the way it is. Release it with the AO rating.
You have the capital to take a risk like this (especially with GTA 4 coming soon, and the tidal wave of cash it is sure to generate). Someone has to be the first to put out high quality AO content. The Atari 2600 came out in 1977. There are lots of adults that have been playing games for their entire lives, and want game content that falls in the same noire category as 300, Reservoir Dogs, and Sin City.
Until there is a proven market for this material, the vendors won't take a risk on it. But you have the ability to establish that market, and the cashflow to take the risk.
I don't even think it's that much of a risk; the first game to thumb its nose at the family-values whining minority. Everyone who would have bought the game will want it, 90% of them are old enough to legally buy it, and most of those will be willing and able to make the effort necessary to do so.
So please, give it a shot. You can always rerelease it with duckies and bunnies, and a gun that shoots hearts to make the furry animals love you, later.
OK, I just gotta ask: Why would you want a WiFi repeater to be mobile? Given its size, it can't be *that* mobile, especially in an environment with a little bomb debris. I can't imagine it would be able to keep up with the troops, and the recovery rate (if they're hoping for it to drive home) would be so miniscule as to be outweighed by the increased bulk and cost of the drive unit.
Leave the drive unit and motor control out, double the battery life, halve the weight and price, drop twice as many. Then design a separate device to do whatever they hell those tracks are on there for (giving the brass stiffies, is my guess).
JM2C, but this looks like a tits-on-a-mule cockup between war scientists and dipshit generals. "That looks good. Can you put wheels on it?" "Wheels, Sir?" "Yeah, wheels, so it can drive around, like that Grand Challenge thing you did. And the Predator. Autonomous warfighting robots, it's the future, son." "Umm, well, I guess it's possible." "Outstanding! Let me know when it's ready."
Not that I don't dig the shit out of DARPA, and I definitely want an autonomoous WiFi tank of my own, but this seems a little stupid.
At the risk of sounding a little jaded and anti-establishment (which would surely make me an outcast on this site, haha):
I think maybe this is a good thing. I think the scammers have been, to this point, largely targeting the gullible. Old people, drug abusers, the socially awkward. The problem with that is those sections of our society are, I would guess, significantly underrepresented in the political process.
If the friends and contributors of our ruling elite class start getting tagged, perhaps we will see some Internet legislation that is focused on taking out the really vile scum, instead of just the low grade malefactors that infringe copyright for personal use. Copyright legislation is going gangbusters because the people Congress talks to believe it is good. If those same people start to feel the bite of scammers, maybe they'll get serious about finding these assholes and putting them away.
I support drunk driving laws. And I have heard that cell driving is similar in impairment to drink driving (though I think the studies so far have been less than perfectly rigorous). So that makes me tend to support the idea of cell driving laws.
However, at the same time, I see plenty of erratic and dangerous drivers who aren't talking on cell phones. Why is a cell driving law a better idea than simply getting tougher on poor driving? Or at least shouldn't getting tougher on poor driving come first?
It seems like the main (or at least first) question should not be, "Are you on a cell phone?" but, "Do you present a risk to others?"
So what the hell is this guy talking about, and why is it on Slashdot?
In the past year, Al Gore's so-called "documentary" film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain's - more or less Tony Blair's - Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.
Hmmm:
Al Gore - politician.
Tony Blair - politician.
UN Intergovernmental Panel - politicians.
G8 - politicians.
The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: "the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda".
Yegads, I hope he's not holding Crichton up as a paragon of scientific virtue.
He rails against against politicized scientists. And yet...
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
Yah - no political bent in this guy at all.
Who gave this yahoo permission to use the word "science" anyway? He should have his toungue cut out, not get a page on FT.
Not that I'm saying global warming is known to be caused by human activity - it is not. But this guy's view is about as meaningful as Crichton's or Gore's, from a scientific perspective. That is; not.
Is the FBI allowed to do this? Did they get special dispensation from the RIAA and MPAA to work on a project that appears to be completely unrelated to copyright infringement?
New mod type: "Well said. Is OP retarded?"
1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL ... faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison
Maximum of five minutes in prison for each of the people he spammed. Seems a little light.
Typo in parent:
Isn't lying to Congress illegal?
It's a French word, easy to misspell. The correct spelling is, "de rigueur."
Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
I thought we were talking about file sharing?
Illegal file-sharers don't care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
You can read minds?
Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
Bullshit. Copyright infringement does not change the relative ROI figures. Therefore, it does not have an impact on the ratio in which money is invested in high-risk/high-reward contracts versus low-risk/low-reward contracts. It may reduce the total amount of money, but it does not change the percentage allocation of that money (at least not for a rational firm).
ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
Facilitate it? So do Intel and Microsoft. So does oxygen - think about it - if people couldn't breathe, they wouldn't be alive to infringe copyright. If facilitation is the problem, go after the auto manufacturers - they facilitate drunk driving.
The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth
False. The movement does create jobs for lots of people. Mostly for the media, lobbyists, and fake study publishers.
Aside from the movement, reduced copyright would also create jobs, exports, and tax revenues - from cover bands, cover albums, music compilations, derivative works, etc. The unfortunate fact is we have no idea how many jobs it would create nor how many would be lost nor how the redistribution of wealth would affect society. It is far too radically different an economic system from anything that has existed in the past fifty years to be predicted.
it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
90% of everything is shit. Some of us, however, studied economics in college.
Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
This study cannot be accurate. iTunes just started selling major artist songs online without DRM within the past week. There is not remotely sufficient data yet to predict the behavior of consumers in a market that allows them to buy what they want. Making predictions about behavior when the legal options have been so limited and so limiting until this past week (and remain so for most labels and some operating systems) is meaningless.
a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank
All the micro-econ courses I took, every single one from micro-101 to price theory, stated pretty strenuously that fiat monopolies and the free market are antithetical. I'm not saying copyright is necessarily bad - maybe the free market is not efficient when it comes to creative works - but the intersection of the free market and copyright is the empty set.
Husband sleeps with his secretary. Wife finds out. He buys her a Tiffany's bracelet. For some wives it's the bracelet that matters. For some it's the remorse (or lack thereof). For some there is no uncheating. Same story here.
OK, I know that fake studies are a part of Microsoft's standard operating procedure for affecting the standards and codes proposed by governing bodies, but where's the rest? Shouldn't Microsoft be giving zero-interest "loans" to RMS, sending Eben Moglen to play golf in Scotland (a fact-finding tour), and buying a powerboat for Linus?
Seriously, though, who gives a crap what a Harvard professor, funded or unfunded, with or without a good sample size, claims the average developer wants? The GPL is not supposed to be populist, it's supposed to achieve a purpose. A purpose that most of the world - heck, even much if not most of Slashdot's readership - has never fully grasped. A purpose that is diametrically opposed to software patents.
I think the misguided idea here is that Google can single-handedly pressure the Chinese government into giving free speech to its citizens.
I think that is either a ridiculous straw-man, or you genuinely miss the point. It is not about changing China, it is about whether participating in a market implies that one condones that market. Google has chosen to remain in a market that requires them to engage in political self-censorship. Maybe for good reasons, maybe for bad. Maybe it makes them a good company, maybe bad. But the question here is not whether China should change (though that is an interesting, separate, question), but whether Google, by participating in that market, is violating their epithet, "do no evil".
It's not self-censorship if they are forced by law to do it.
Or what did I miss?
I think you missed the meaning of the word, "Self." The fact that the government of China requires Google to censor their content does not mean that it is not self-censorship. Only that it is government mandated self-censorship.
When I go out on the freeway and drive 65 miles per hour, it is not the signs on the side of the road that cause my car to go 65 miles per hour, it is me self-regulating my speed. The government mandates that I self-regulate, and punishes me if I don't. They could install governors on cars that would make it impossible for me to speed, that would no longer be self-regulation.
Likewise, China could put a content filtering firewall around Google's servers - then Google would not be engaged in self-censorship. But when Google is the actor, it is, "self-censorship."
It seems that you are saying, "Google self-censoring is not wrong, because China requires it." That may be so, but you framed it as, "Google censoring their content does not count as self-censoring because they are required to self-censor." That is ridiculous.
I'd like to point to this informative comment.
According to the AC, it's standard MySpace operating procedure to just always say "he's in your extended network." I have neither confirmed nor disproved that assertion, but it seems reasonable, so take my above post with a grain of salt.