You proved my point, so there's little reason to rebut your post. There is a distinct difference between "innocent until proven guilty [beyond a reasonable doubt]" and "a preponderance of evidence." If there was no difference, it would be impossible for a civil suit to have a different outcome than a criminal suit over the same event (see the OJ Simpson trials for an example). The burden of proof may be on the plaintiff, but that does not equal "innocent until proven guilty [beyond a reasonable doubt]".
That's kinda the rub, isn't it. We don't know how the courts would interpret it at all. Also, since suing for illegal distribution is at-will, they could easily license files to another company without giving them the right to redistribute, however agreeing not to file suit against the company in exchange for IP logs of downloaders. As you can see, it's not hard at all to come up with a situation where the RIAA could sue downloaders.
Plus, even if a court threw out these tactics, someone would still have to fight it rather than just settling, which is extremely unlikely to occur.
I take issue with these actions for the same reason that P2P shouldn't be outlawed. What if you are using/allowing cheats on private servers? (Note: I didn't see in the article whether or not the cheats work on private servers or if they are explicitly written for Valve's servers.) In other words, there are legitimate reasons for the cheats. If Valve wants to ban CD keys of users who are using the cheats, that's really their own business. But trying to get the cheats removed is rather unacceptable.
Actually, those cases weren't thrown out. The reason is that entrapment is defined (at least in that state) as an action that would induce a normally law-abiding citizen to commit a crime. The courts found that normal, law-abiding citizens would not steal a car if it is left unlocked with the keys in the ignition, so the tactic was valid.
All that's really moot anyway, because as you postulate, entrapment is only applicable to law enforcement agencies. The RIAA, being a private organization, isn't subject to the same laws. I think that the only argument you could make is that since the RIAA is offering the files, there is an implied license to download/play them. But since it's fairly unlikely that anyone using P2P networks thinks that the songs are actually being provided by the RIAA (regardless of whether or not they actually are being provided by the RIAA) then it's a safe assumption that this defense wouldn't fly.
You sure are demanding a lot.. Before I rebut you, a question: Is owning a license to the content actually a right to the content, or only the content on the medium you purchased? Has this been tested in court? Is there any legislative backing to your claim? When I bought the record, I bought a lifetime right to the music. I'd like to see one shred of legislative evidence that this is the case.
Now.... I demand the right to download any and all of the songs that I bought as a kid in the mid 1960's. I demand that the RIAA prove that I didn't buy the recording before sueing me for downloading it. "... pretty, pretty, Peggy Sue...".
Assuming your statements about content vs medium are accurate, you have this right. In fact, they aren't suing US downloaders. They're suing the UPLOADERs, who do NOT have the right to distribute the music. Now your right doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the copyright owners don't provide some way for you to download the music. They don't have an obligation to help you fulfill your assumed right of download. They don't have to offer up every song for download at no charge, assuming that only people with a license to the content will download it. So until they actually sue a downloader for downloading the music, this argument has no bearing on these cases.
We are innocent until proven guilty.
In criminal law, sure. Not in a civil matter. So far, all the suits filed have been civil.
I demand the right to be able to download any song that has been played on the radio long enough to have had the copyright period expire. In this case I mean the copyright period in legal effect when the recording was originally released and purchased by me.
Then write your congresspersons and bitch about extended copyrights. But again, you should really be wanting the right to distribute such content legally, since that's the crux of the current situation. No one is obligated to provide you with downloadable music, so demanding the right to do so means very little. The RIAA could come out tomorrow and say, "Everyone is free to download any music they wish," but if they don't say "Everyone is free to upload any music they wish," then it's moot, since the only legal distributers would the the members of the RIAA, and you can bet that they're not going to give their product away for free.
I demand the right to publish on third world websites the names, addresses, and social security numbers of the members of the legal team that is using vague and legally unsubstantiated copyright to extort money from me.
Why third world? And why can't you do this now? All you have to do is get the information. I bet you could do it if you tried. Have you tried, before insinuating on Slashdot that you don't have the right and/or ability?
Fuck these people! Let's cut their heads off instead of those of ordinary technicians who just happen to be working in Allah-land and got kidnapped by religious psychopaths.
Excellent idea! Why have we (the US) been cutting the heads off of those ordinary technicians who just happened to be working in Allah-land and got kidnapped by religious psychopaths?!? All of a sudden, it all makes sense. We (the US) shouldn't be cutting off the heads of those technicians at all! You should be in politics!
It's highly unlikely that they're suing downloaders anyway. I believe everyone thus far sued have been sharing files. The media just latches on to "downloading music" for some reason--either as scare tactics, pressure from the RIAA to spin it this way, whatever. And really, it makes sense. Unless the RIAA were hosting files and tracking the IP of people who downloaded them (a shady practice to say the least) they've got no way of knowing who's downloading something. All they can really do is scan the P2P network and see who's offering, get the IP, and sue.
Now it's still alleged if they didn't actually check every file to make sure that it's actually music instead of crap, viruses, etc. But I suspect that unless you re-shared those files that you downloaded, you won't have any need to fear getting sued over your download.
No need to get snippy. Most of the time when people talk about "worth" they're talking monetarily. If there's added worth to you for not having to actually/USE/ Windows, that's another thing. I was just pointing out that, talking about money, it can be cheaper to just buy a copy of Windows.
Of course, there are still some games that WineX doesn't play well with, right? $5 a month... if you've got an older version of Windows lying around, that's less than 20 months worth before it becomes more useful just to buy a damn copy of Windows (look around, you can find copies of Windows XP for less than $100.. I've seen legit copies for as low as $60) and get compatability for every commercial PC game for the next several years.
Where should I begin grousing about this card.... First off, the drivers. They've been lousy at LEAST since the stock Radeon AiW. Sure, they give decent performance, but if you install them in the wrong order (there are three to install--four if you want DVD decoding) then you lose some functionality. Typically it's TV/Capture, however at least once I've lost all DirectX support. The only way to fix the problem is to uninstall everything ATI in the system and start over. It's a serious pain in the ass...not to mention the drivers (or Windows) wants you to reboot after installation, even though the instructions on ATI's website tell you not to reboot after the first install. So it's something like "Install Driver 1, DON'T REBOOT, Install Driver 2, REBOOT, Install Driver 3, REBOOT." I haven't messed with the drivers on my system for some time because right now, it works. I'm afraid of going through driver hell and not being able to play Thief 3:)
Then there's the software they provide for watching TV. It uses a funky custom windowing system, probably so they could make it easily skinnable. This is fine with me, although I prefer minimalistic skins. The problem comes with how often the display is refreshed. When you move a window over the TV window, the entire system bogs down. As soon as the window is clear of the TV window, everything returns to normal. It's quite frustrating, as it cripples multitasking while you're viewing the TV applet. Don't even think about multitasking while capturing--if you move a window over the TV program, you drop frames like mad, even though the computer system should be more than capable of running Firefox while capturing full frame video. It's hard to find a decent TV application--even harder to find one that does capture, and harder yet to find one that's inexpensive. For watching TV, I settled on MyTV, even though it has a number of bugs. For capture, I now use VirtualDub, although the lack of a timer is unfortunate.
Sooner or later, I'll upgrade my video card. It may still be an ATI--they've definately got performance going for them right now. But it will not be an All-in-Wonder. For video capture, I'll either get a firewire solution or WinTV (most of the WinTV cards also do quite well under Linux, incidentally).
Hate to ruin/spoil it for you, but climbing gloves don't make escape easy/at/all/. They are highly limited in their use (unfortunately) and can't be used like you would imagine them, such as climing around things or onto extended ledges. As such, except for a few specific purposes in the game, they are virtually useless. Overall, however, I'm very pleased with T:DS. Best $35 I've spent in a long time.
103 year old surgeons? Heh. I forget where, but one website I encountered wouldn't let you enter a birthdate that was 100 years ago or more. I guess my 103 year old grandmother wasn't allowed to view the site.
Two points here: 1) It's a valid use. Read the subject though. You are not the average user.
2) Most ISPs have a clause against running servers. Debate about which is the server in this case aside, the ISP would almost certainly consider you to be running a server. If you turn it around and say you want to access your work machine from home, you run into the clause that several ISPs have against this sort of thing (it's considered business use, and they want to bump you up to a business class level of service).
Now I'm generally of the opinion that the ISP should just give you an IP address and let you run with it (throttling everyone's bandwidth as appropriate--I'm not saying they should HAVE to offer you 6mbps or anythihng). But MOST users have no use for 3gigs of download a day if they aren't commercial or accessing remote desktops. ISPs sell their broadband based on people violating copyright, and I'd say most people get broadband for that very reason. (if you reply, remember I said MOST people. Obviously there are exceptions)
Sure. Again, though, what would you be hosting or downloading from Freenet that's legal? Sure, there are examples, but your average user won't be hosting/downloading Linux distros.
What does your average user need with 3 gigs/day?
on
Comcast Gets Tough on Spam
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· Score: 4, Insightful
What legal use could a person possibly have for needing 3 gigs per day of bandwidth, out of curiousity? I peak when I download or significantly update my systems, but even that rarely goes over a couple of gigs, and that's certainly not an every day thing.
The problem is that 90% of games require the "tripwire and turret" approach because they have no alternatives. Then, when a game offers such a choice, many players may not even recognize the options. They're so trained to go down the hallway with guns blazing that they don't realize there's a stealthier approach. Of course, that was one of the great aspects of Deus Ex. There were typically multiple solutions to a puzzle, if you just looked hard enough. We just aren't used to looking for alternate solutions, since most of the time there aren't any.
I did this in the Dos days to run games that were... slow, to say the least. As long as the game was less than my 32megs of ram, it worked just fine. Luckily, this was almost always the case. Nowadays...? Notsomuch.
Actually, the article says WAN, not WLAN. WAN == Wide Area Network, meaning the Internet, which you are probably connected to if you have a device like this. WLAN == WireLess Area Network, I guess, and is the wireless part you're talking about.
They can't put any restrictions on redistribution, but they can revoke your subscription at any time for any reason. Technically, they still have to provide the source to anything they provided you, but revoking your subscription means they don't have to provide you with any more updates.
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You proved my point, so there's little reason to rebut your post. There is a distinct difference between "innocent until proven guilty [beyond a reasonable doubt]" and "a preponderance of evidence." If there was no difference, it would be impossible for a civil suit to have a different outcome than a criminal suit over the same event (see the OJ Simpson trials for an example).
The burden of proof may be on the plaintiff, but that does not equal "innocent until proven guilty [beyond a reasonable doubt]".
Sure. Doesn't make it right, though.
That's kinda the rub, isn't it. We don't know how the courts would interpret it at all. Also, since suing for illegal distribution is at-will, they could easily license files to another company without giving them the right to redistribute, however agreeing not to file suit against the company in exchange for IP logs of downloaders. As you can see, it's not hard at all to come up with a situation where the RIAA could sue downloaders.
Plus, even if a court threw out these tactics, someone would still have to fight it rather than just settling, which is extremely unlikely to occur.
I take issue with these actions for the same reason that P2P shouldn't be outlawed. What if you are using/allowing cheats on private servers? (Note: I didn't see in the article whether or not the cheats work on private servers or if they are explicitly written for Valve's servers.) In other words, there are legitimate reasons for the cheats. If Valve wants to ban CD keys of users who are using the cheats, that's really their own business. But trying to get the cheats removed is rather unacceptable.
Actually, those cases weren't thrown out. The reason is that entrapment is defined (at least in that state) as an action that would induce a normally law-abiding citizen to commit a crime. The courts found that normal, law-abiding citizens would not steal a car if it is left unlocked with the keys in the ignition, so the tactic was valid.
All that's really moot anyway, because as you postulate, entrapment is only applicable to law enforcement agencies. The RIAA, being a private organization, isn't subject to the same laws. I think that the only argument you could make is that since the RIAA is offering the files, there is an implied license to download/play them. But since it's fairly unlikely that anyone using P2P networks thinks that the songs are actually being provided by the RIAA (regardless of whether or not they actually are being provided by the RIAA) then it's a safe assumption that this defense wouldn't fly.
You sure are demanding a lot.. Before I rebut you, a question:
Is owning a license to the content actually a right to the content, or only the content on the medium you purchased? Has this been tested in court? Is there any legislative backing to your
claim?
When I bought the record, I bought a lifetime right to the music.
I'd like to see one shred of legislative evidence that this is the case.
Now....
I demand the right to download any and all of the songs that I bought as a kid in the mid 1960's. I demand that the RIAA prove that I didn't buy the recording before sueing me for downloading it. "... pretty, pretty, Peggy Sue...".
Assuming your statements about content vs medium are accurate, you have this right. In fact, they aren't suing US downloaders. They're suing the UPLOADERs, who do NOT have the right to distribute the music.
Now your right doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the copyright owners don't provide some way for you to download the music. They don't have an obligation to help you fulfill your assumed right of download. They don't have to offer up every song for download at no charge, assuming that only people with a license to the content will download it. So until they actually sue a downloader for downloading the music, this argument has no bearing on these cases.
We are innocent until proven guilty.
In criminal law, sure. Not in a civil matter. So far, all the suits filed have been civil.
I demand the right to be able to download any song that has been played on the radio long enough to have had the copyright period expire. In this case I mean the copyright period in legal effect when the recording was originally released and purchased by me.
Then write your congresspersons and bitch about extended copyrights. But again, you should really be wanting the right to distribute such content legally, since that's the crux of the current situation. No one is obligated to provide you with downloadable music, so demanding the right to do so means very little. The RIAA could come out tomorrow and say, "Everyone is free to download any music they wish," but if they don't say "Everyone is free to upload any music they wish," then it's moot, since the only legal distributers would the the members of the RIAA, and you can bet that they're not going to give their product away for free.
I demand the right to publish on third world websites the names, addresses, and social security numbers of the members of the legal team that is using vague and legally unsubstantiated copyright to extort money from me.
Why third world? And why can't you do this now? All you have to do is get the information. I bet you could do it if you tried. Have you tried, before insinuating on Slashdot that you don't have the right and/or ability?
Fuck these people! Let's cut their heads off instead of those of ordinary technicians who just happen to be working in Allah-land and got kidnapped by religious psychopaths.
Excellent idea! Why have we (the US) been cutting the heads off of those ordinary technicians who just happened to be working in Allah-land and got kidnapped by religious psychopaths?!? All of a sudden, it all makes sense. We (the US) shouldn't be cutting off the heads of those technicians at all! You should be in politics!
It's highly unlikely that they're suing downloaders anyway. I believe everyone thus far sued have been sharing files. The media just latches on to "downloading music" for some reason--either as scare tactics, pressure from the RIAA to spin it this way, whatever. And really, it makes sense. Unless the RIAA were hosting files and tracking the IP of people who downloaded them (a shady practice to say the least) they've got no way of knowing who's downloading something. All they can really do is scan the P2P network and see who's offering, get the IP, and sue.
Now it's still alleged if they didn't actually check every file to make sure that it's actually music instead of crap, viruses, etc. But I suspect that unless you re-shared those files that you downloaded, you won't have any need to fear getting sued over your download.
No need to get snippy. Most of the time when people talk about "worth" they're talking monetarily. If there's added worth to you for not having to actually /USE/ Windows, that's another thing. I was just pointing out that, talking about money, it can be cheaper to just buy a copy of Windows.
Of course, there are still some games that WineX doesn't play well with, right?
$5 a month... if you've got an older version of Windows lying around, that's less than 20 months worth before it becomes more useful just to buy a damn copy of Windows (look around, you can find copies of Windows XP for less than $100.. I've seen legit copies for as low as $60) and get compatability for every commercial PC game for the next several years.
Our power grid is more vulnerable than you realize...
I've got an ATI Radeon AiW 9000. I wish I didn't.
:)
Where should I begin grousing about this card....
First off, the drivers. They've been lousy at LEAST since the stock Radeon AiW. Sure, they give decent performance, but if you install them in the wrong order (there are three to install--four if you want DVD decoding) then you lose some functionality. Typically it's TV/Capture, however at least once I've lost all DirectX support. The only way to fix the problem is to uninstall everything ATI in the system and start over. It's a serious pain in the ass...not to mention the drivers (or Windows) wants you to reboot after installation, even though the instructions on ATI's website tell you not to reboot after the first install. So it's something like "Install Driver 1, DON'T REBOOT, Install Driver 2, REBOOT, Install Driver 3, REBOOT." I haven't messed with the drivers on my system for some time because right now, it works. I'm afraid of going through driver hell and not being able to play Thief 3
Then there's the software they provide for watching TV. It uses a funky custom windowing system, probably so they could make it easily skinnable. This is fine with me, although I prefer minimalistic skins. The problem comes with how often the display is refreshed. When you move a window over the TV window, the entire system bogs down. As soon as the window is clear of the TV window, everything returns to normal. It's quite frustrating, as it cripples multitasking while you're viewing the TV applet. Don't even think about multitasking while capturing--if you move a window over the TV program, you drop frames like mad, even though the computer system should be more than capable of running Firefox while capturing full frame video. It's hard to find a decent TV application--even harder to find one that does capture, and harder yet to find one that's inexpensive. For watching TV, I settled on MyTV, even though it has a number of bugs. For capture, I now use VirtualDub, although the lack of a timer is unfortunate.
Sooner or later, I'll upgrade my video card. It may still be an ATI--they've definately got performance going for them right now. But it will not be an All-in-Wonder. For video capture, I'll either get a firewire solution or WinTV (most of the WinTV cards also do quite well under Linux, incidentally).
Hate to ruin/spoil it for you, but climbing gloves don't make escape easy /at/all/. They are highly limited in their use (unfortunately) and can't be used like you would imagine them, such as climing around things or onto extended ledges. As such, except for a few specific purposes in the game, they are virtually useless.
Overall, however, I'm very pleased with T:DS. Best $35 I've spent in a long time.
The prices probably included thousands--if not millions--of feet of wireless ethernet cable.
Here and here, but I don't recall this game being on the Commodore 64.
103 year old surgeons? Heh. I forget where, but one website I encountered wouldn't let you enter a birthdate that was 100 years ago or more. I guess my 103 year old grandmother wasn't allowed to view the site.
AC says: FreeBSD 4.0 DOES have SMP.
Reply says: I wanted to post this link to back up his claim.
You: I will refute you by proving your point.
Everyone from the AC down the thread was saying that FreeBSD 4.0 had SMP.;)
Two points here:
1) It's a valid use. Read the subject though. You are not the average user.
2) Most ISPs have a clause against running servers. Debate about which is the server in this case aside, the ISP would almost certainly consider you to be running a server. If you turn it around and say you want to access your work machine from home, you run into the clause that several ISPs have against this sort of thing (it's considered business use, and they want to bump you up to a business class level of service).
Now I'm generally of the opinion that the ISP should just give you an IP address and let you run with it (throttling everyone's bandwidth as appropriate--I'm not saying they should HAVE to offer you 6mbps or anythihng). But MOST users have no use for 3gigs of download a day if they aren't commercial or accessing remote desktops. ISPs sell their broadband based on people violating copyright, and I'd say most people get broadband for that very reason.
(if you reply, remember I said MOST people. Obviously there are exceptions)
Sure. Again, though, what would you be hosting or downloading from Freenet that's legal? Sure, there are examples, but your average user won't be hosting/downloading Linux distros.
What legal use could a person possibly have for needing 3 gigs per day of bandwidth, out of curiousity? I peak when I download or significantly update my systems, but even that rarely goes over a couple of gigs, and that's certainly not an every day thing.
Yeah, it's almost as if innovative solutions to problems are being patented these days... Crazy.
The problem is that 90% of games require the "tripwire and turret" approach because they have no alternatives. Then, when a game offers such a choice, many players may not even recognize the options. They're so trained to go down the hallway with guns blazing that they don't realize there's a stealthier approach.
Of course, that was one of the great aspects of Deus Ex. There were typically multiple solutions to a puzzle, if you just looked hard enough. We just aren't used to looking for alternate solutions, since most of the time there aren't any.
Ah yes, thank you ;)
I did this in the Dos days to run games that were ... slow, to say the least. As long as the game was less than my 32megs of ram, it worked just fine. Luckily, this was almost always the case. Nowadays...? Notsomuch.
Actually, the article says WAN, not WLAN. WAN == Wide Area Network, meaning the Internet, which you are probably connected to if you have a device like this. WLAN == WireLess Area Network, I guess, and is the wireless part you're talking about.
They can't put any restrictions on redistribution, but they can revoke your subscription at any time for any reason. Technically, they still have to provide the source to anything they provided you, but revoking your subscription means they don't have to provide you with any more updates.