I'm sure they'll stick him in a "normal" halfway house.
Back in the day (late 1991), I met one of the Atlanta Three. He'd recently gotten out of the pokey, and he had to spend a few months at a local halfway house, nothing special due to his hacking background. Fellow and I had mutual friends, and I had the guy speak at my weird-ass hacker/conspiracy/UFO/SubG/etc con that year.
With "The Matrix" - it's a fairly common practice these days, someone going in with a camcorder, etc etc.
With the SW trailers - they were coming out already. No biggie.
But with Buffy - the key fact here is that WB in a sense "promised" the airing of that show - by the fact that it was the second half of a 2-parter, from previews, and pre-airing hype - and went back on that promise - and The People found a way around it.
I think someone's yanking your chain. AFAIK, Flashcom and others (Comstar, DSC) can't supply you with xDSL unless Bellsouth can, as the signal would still be travelling over Bellsouth's lines. (Bellsouth itself just has no plans to offer commercial xDSL - they're letting others do it over their network, though. They might get into it later if they see enough $$$.) To read some of the other venting re: Flashcom, it wouldn't surprise me if they're not full of excrement.
Sorry to hear about your woes - I'm living in intown Atlanta (Ponce) and had no trouble getting ADSL through Bellsouth, except for the fact the dingbat contract installer guy had no clue about how to deal with a Mac - I had him write down the procedure to get a MAC addy for future use. Heh.
It seems to me that older neighborhoods tend to have more luck - older copper, less/no fiber. I've heard noise that they're working on getting ADSL to work with the rest of the world (i.e. those who have fiber between them and the CO).
They might be able to buy their way IN but generally have to work to stay there. Unless they're REALLY rich.
Buying a UO character is a one-time thing - buy it, it's yours. You could have the baddest-ass character on the server and know NOTHING about how to play... but that won't matter.
In the Near Future (grin), one could theoretically have a thumbprint or retinal scanner hooked directly up to your home PC... you go to log into whatever service... you have to identify yourself. Not like folks are going to sell their thumbs/eyeballs.
This of course would be great for much more important applications... financial/medical records, etc... but it'd sure put the kabosh on selling characters (or more specifically, the accounts).
As far as your analogy to buying the copyright to a work of art... I think it's more like "buying the ability to paint", in the case of UO characters. And they're not really buying the labor/skill of these players - but the RESULTS thereof - and those results are but, in the end, 1's and 0's on a drive array somewhere that could go *poof* at any time, come some disaster. Works of art can be insured - no such beast in this case.
...your next door neighbor, who's loaded, paying a top sports team to BE a star player. He's coming in with no skills - but he gets on the team because he's willing to shell out the big bucks.
That's the deal with the UO issue - players who have BUILT THEIR SKILLS and KNOWLEDGE while playing these characters up to their value, selling their accounts to folks who, quite possibly, haven't a clue how to play the game. Magic plate and swords may well be great, but if you don't know what's too tough to tackle, or where to tackle it... it's a very small part of the whole picture.
It'd be amusing if some of these accounts had characters that were utterly HATED by the populace on their servers... "Why won't anyone help me?"
Probably because "Doom" has been around longer - it's more lodged in the brains of those people spouting off... and it sounds more, well, "evil" than "Quake".
"Quake? They play a game about earthquakes? What?"
It just doesn't have that same "Oh my god my kid is evil for playing it" sound to it.
Requiring a domain to be paid for before it's sold won't deter the squatters. If they have a domain 'locked-up' with their re-registration scripts, and someone comes along and wants to buy it from them, all they have to do is PAY for the thing ($70), and then turn around and sell it to the client ($xxx). What's the delay, a few days? Unless of course the time it takes for NS (or whoever the squatter is using to register the said domain) to process a payment is horribly long...
This is akin to a video store perpetually keeping the new "Matrix" (hypothetical situation, of course) videotapes for their town on perpetual order, but not being delivered or paid for, to keep all the OTHER video stores from getting it... then when someone comes into their store (which they inevitably have to), they pay their distributor however much, have a kid run over and get the tape, and charge the customer oodles more.
I can see it now... the Yellow Pages selling the first full-page of every section to whoever pays the most. "Hmm... flipping through for 'pizza delivery'.... Honey's Escort Service? Whaaaa?"
Just the next step in the whoring out of the Internet... anything and everything for sale. Feh.
This joker didn't send out emails saying "Open this Word Document to spread a virus to a bunch of folks in your email list", though.
And why should this guy have 'every right' to write a virus that screws with people? Calling the victims 'stupid' doesn't wash... 'uninformed,' perhaps, and that still doesn't excuse it. The *intent* behind the virus was malicious, and I challenge anyone to deny that.
I can't say I'm a legal-search expert, but maybe someone else is... is there anyone out there who can dig up a weblink (if the docs exist on the net) having to do with this case? I'm curious as to who the Canadian company in question is, what sort of business they're in (i.e. whether they're a domain squatter or not), etc... If they ARE squatters, I say, stick it to'em. Domain squatters are the financial bottom-feeders of the net anyhow. I can't say I like the thought of domains being able to be ripped away from someone en masse...
Heh... here's an amusing thought. Assuming the company IS a squatter... and Umbro/A&B *does* get the 27 domains... they're being handed over for the purpose of sale/auction to recoup the attorney's fees, right? Well, if the SQUATTER couldn't sell/auction them to someone (seeing as they still retain them), what makes Umbro/A&B think *they're* going to be successful? Unless they get about $1k per domain, and sell ALL of them... they're still in the hole.
Registering 'starwars.com' and sitting on it has the same effect as running a site on it - it denies its use to the trademark holder. Whether you make money off of the site is immaterial.
One of the big problems with the trademark issue is that there is only one.com address for any particular name - and no telling how many companies with that name (who all have the name trademarked, but in their area of business) will try and get that name.
Has anyone seen any cases where two companies with the same name, but completely different types of businesses, have fought for a single domain? If I were the judge, I'd grant ownership to whoever got the domain first, in cases like that - and not to whoever had the most expensive lawyers. Look at Delta, for example - delta.com is owned by some piddly company, and Delta went with 'delta-air.com'. Delta the airline didn't get there in time, and the other Delta had a legit claim to the domain, so they went elsewhere. Fair 'nuff.
The way it reads to me, if someone has a domain that you want (and you have the trademark and all the info to prove you should get it), you'd still need to go through the existing channels...
The problem here is that domain names were taken from one entity and given to another in lieu of $$$ damages in another case - the fact that the first case involved a trademark/domain issue is irrelevant. Said case could have been over "dog bites neighbor".
The issue here isn't whether domain names are able to be snagged through legal means due to trademark infringement. That was a done deal, in this case. The issue is that Umbro and their lawyers (I used to work at that firm about 12 yrs ago, FYI) should be able to get MORE domains out of this company as 'damages'. The NIC didn't sell the domains - the ruling was that Umbro/A&B were to be given ownership of the 27 domains so THEY could sell them in lieu of a direct cash settlement from the defendent (who didn't bother to show up in court, which is their OWN fault).
Trademarks aside - if I sued you for something, whatever, and won, and couldn't get anything tangible out of you (you're in another country)... but you have a domain or two... should the court be able to say "Ok, you can have that instead"? That's the 'treating domains as property' thing - being able to take them away and give them to someone else, even when there's no trademark dispute over the domain names themselves.
Seems that many of the OEMs have flat out refused to honor the EULA - saying "take it up with Microsoft." Kinda a case of "If Mommy says you can/if Daddy says you can", where neither party will take the final responsibility. Since MS is involved with EVERY situation, it makes sense to go to them. And, after all, MS *did* write the EULA in the first place, correct?
I have a feeling the end result of this will be that more OEMs *do* make arrangements to honor the EULA on their end, in a manner other than "return the whole machine".
With BellSouth, if you want to switch machines, you just call'em up and give'em the new MAC addy. They'll switch it. Pal in my building initially had his hooked up to a Mac, then once he was satisfied it was working ok and had a Linux box set up with dual ethernet cards and IP masquerading going, called'em up and gave'em a diff addy - and he's good to go.
Here they also supposedly cycle IPs every 12 hours, though they haven't done it on that schedule yet to my knowledge... we've had IPs last days at least before. Reasoning is to keep folks from running permanent servers... too bad ml.org killed that handy little service of theirs.
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...and a lot of the hoopla isn't so much about Mitnick as it is about the situation, and what it portends for the rest of us in the future...
I'm sure they'll stick him in a "normal" halfway house.
Back in the day (late 1991), I met one of the Atlanta Three. He'd recently gotten out of the pokey, and he had to spend a few months at a local halfway house, nothing special due to his hacking background. Fellow and I had mutual friends, and I had the guy speak at my weird-ass hacker/conspiracy/UFO/SubG/etc con that year.
He can't use computers or cellular phones "without the permission of his probation officer."
The "can't drive a car" comment, and its ilk, are just BS.
He means 'bootleg'. Get the films, watch'em on your own terms.
With "The Matrix" - it's a fairly common practice these days, someone going in with a camcorder, etc etc.
With the SW trailers - they were coming out already. No biggie.
But with Buffy - the key fact here is that WB in a sense "promised" the airing of that show - by the fact that it was the second half of a 2-parter, from previews, and pre-airing hype - and went back on that promise - and The People found a way around it.
I think someone's yanking your chain. AFAIK, Flashcom and others (Comstar, DSC) can't supply you with xDSL unless Bellsouth can, as the signal would still be travelling over Bellsouth's lines. (Bellsouth itself just has no plans to offer commercial xDSL - they're letting others do it over their network, though. They might get into it later if they see enough $$$.) To read some of the other venting re: Flashcom, it wouldn't surprise me if they're not full of excrement.
Sorry to hear about your woes - I'm living in intown Atlanta (Ponce) and had no trouble getting ADSL through Bellsouth, except for the fact the dingbat contract installer guy had no clue about how to deal with a Mac - I had him write down the procedure to get a MAC addy for future use. Heh.
It seems to me that older neighborhoods tend to have more luck - older copper, less/no fiber. I've heard noise that they're working on getting ADSL to work with the rest of the world (i.e. those who have fiber between them and the CO).
They might be able to buy their way IN but generally have to work to stay there. Unless they're REALLY rich.
Buying a UO character is a one-time thing - buy it, it's yours. You could have the baddest-ass character on the server and know NOTHING about how to play... but that won't matter.
In the Near Future (grin), one could theoretically have a thumbprint or retinal scanner hooked directly up to your home PC... you go to log into whatever service... you have to identify yourself. Not like folks are going to sell their thumbs/eyeballs.
This of course would be great for much more important applications... financial/medical records, etc... but it'd sure put the kabosh on selling characters (or more specifically, the accounts).
As far as your analogy to buying the copyright to a work of art... I think it's more like "buying the ability to paint", in the case of UO characters. And they're not really buying the labor/skill of these players - but the RESULTS thereof - and those results are but, in the end, 1's and 0's on a drive array somewhere that could go *poof* at any time, come some disaster. Works of art can be insured - no such beast in this case.
...your next door neighbor, who's loaded, paying a top sports team to BE a star player. He's coming in with no skills - but he gets on the team because he's willing to shell out the big bucks.
That's the deal with the UO issue - players who have BUILT THEIR SKILLS and KNOWLEDGE while playing these characters up to their value, selling their accounts to folks who, quite possibly, haven't a clue how to play the game. Magic plate and swords may well be great, but if you don't know what's too tough to tackle, or where to tackle it... it's a very small part of the whole picture.
It'd be amusing if some of these accounts had characters that were utterly HATED by the populace on their servers... "Why won't anyone help me?"
Probably because "Doom" has been around longer - it's more lodged in the brains of those people spouting off... and it sounds more, well, "evil" than "Quake".
"Quake? They play a game about earthquakes? What?"
It just doesn't have that same "Oh my god my kid is evil for playing it" sound to it.
Requiring a domain to be paid for before it's sold won't deter the squatters. If they have a domain 'locked-up' with their re-registration scripts, and someone comes along and wants to buy it from them, all they have to do is PAY for the thing ($70), and then turn around and sell it to the client ($xxx). What's the delay, a few days? Unless of course the time it takes for NS (or whoever the squatter is using to register the said domain) to process a payment is horribly long...
This is akin to a video store perpetually keeping the new "Matrix" (hypothetical situation, of course) videotapes for their town on perpetual order, but not being delivered or paid for, to keep all the OTHER video stores from getting it... then when someone comes into their store (which they inevitably have to), they pay their distributor however much, have a kid run over and get the tape, and charge the customer oodles more.
I can see it now... the Yellow Pages selling the first full-page of every section to whoever pays the most. "Hmm... flipping through for 'pizza delivery'.... Honey's Escort Service? Whaaaa?"
Just the next step in the whoring out of the Internet... anything and everything for sale. Feh.
This joker didn't send out emails saying "Open this Word Document to spread a virus to a bunch of folks in your email list", though.
And why should this guy have 'every right' to write a virus that screws with people? Calling the victims 'stupid' doesn't wash... 'uninformed,' perhaps, and that still doesn't excuse it. The *intent* behind the virus was malicious, and I challenge anyone to deny that.
I can't say I'm a legal-search expert, but maybe someone else is... is there anyone out there who can dig up a weblink (if the docs exist on the net) having to do with this case? I'm curious as to who the Canadian company in question is, what sort of business they're in (i.e. whether they're a domain squatter or not), etc... If they ARE squatters, I say, stick it to'em. Domain squatters are the financial bottom-feeders of the net anyhow. I can't say I like the thought of domains being able to be ripped away from someone en masse...
Heh... here's an amusing thought. Assuming the company IS a squatter... and Umbro/A&B *does* get the 27 domains... they're being handed over for the purpose of sale/auction to recoup the attorney's fees, right? Well, if the SQUATTER couldn't sell/auction them to someone (seeing as they still retain them), what makes Umbro/A&B think *they're* going to be successful? Unless they get about $1k per domain, and sell ALL of them... they're still in the hole.
Registering 'starwars.com' and sitting on it has the same effect as running a site on it - it denies its use to the trademark holder. Whether you make money off of the site is immaterial.
.com address for any particular name - and no telling how many companies with that name (who all have the name trademarked, but in their area of business) will try and get that name.
One of the big problems with the trademark issue is that there is only one
Has anyone seen any cases where two companies with the same name, but completely different types of businesses, have fought for a single domain? If I were the judge, I'd grant ownership to whoever got the domain first, in cases like that - and not to whoever had the most expensive lawyers. Look at Delta, for example - delta.com is owned by some piddly company, and Delta went with 'delta-air.com'. Delta the airline didn't get there in time, and the other Delta had a legit claim to the domain, so they went elsewhere. Fair 'nuff.
I don't think that's the way this is going.
The way it reads to me, if someone has a domain that you want (and you have the trademark and all the info to prove you should get it), you'd still need to go through the existing channels...
The problem here is that domain names were taken from one entity and given to another in lieu of $$$ damages in another case - the fact that the first case involved a trademark/domain issue is irrelevant. Said case could have been over "dog bites neighbor".
The issue here isn't whether domain names are able to be snagged through legal means due to trademark infringement. That was a done deal, in this case. The issue is that Umbro and their lawyers (I used to work at that firm about 12 yrs ago, FYI) should be able to get MORE domains out of this company as 'damages'. The NIC didn't sell the domains - the ruling was that Umbro/A&B were to be given ownership of the 27 domains so THEY could sell them in lieu of a direct cash settlement from the defendent (who didn't bother to show up in court, which is their OWN fault).
Trademarks aside - if I sued you for something, whatever, and won, and couldn't get anything tangible out of you (you're in another country)... but you have a domain or two... should the court be able to say "Ok, you can have that instead"?
That's the 'treating domains as property' thing - being able to take them away and give them to someone else, even when there's no trademark dispute over the domain names themselves.
Ick.
Seems that many of the OEMs have flat out refused to honor the EULA - saying "take it up with Microsoft." Kinda a case of "If Mommy says you can/if Daddy says you can", where neither party will take the final responsibility. Since MS is involved with EVERY situation, it makes sense to go to them. And, after all, MS *did* write the EULA in the first place, correct?
I have a feeling the end result of this will be that more OEMs *do* make arrangements to honor the EULA on their end, in a manner other than "return the whole machine".
With BellSouth, if you want to switch machines, you just call'em up and give'em the new MAC addy. They'll switch it. Pal in my building initially had his hooked up to a Mac, then once he was satisfied it was working ok and had a Linux box set up with dual ethernet cards and IP masquerading going, called'em up and gave'em a diff addy - and he's good to go.
Here they also supposedly cycle IPs every 12 hours, though they haven't done it on that schedule yet to my knowledge... we've had IPs last days at least before. Reasoning is to keep folks from running permanent servers... too bad ml.org killed that handy little service of theirs.