I think the example I gave above, along with the questions it raises about the "evidence" against me, would be easy enough for any non-technical minded jury to grasp. Those questions, really make it clear that anybody could've done it. Basically, if there's just 3 people who had access to my internet account, then the likelyhood of any single individual being the one who did it, is only 33%, not 100% or even 50%. Therefore, it's more unlikely that said individual downloaded the copyrighted material, than it is likely they did it.
By the time the prosecution gets a search warrant to comb through all the files on all the devices, the downloaded copyrighted material could have been moved to another device or hard drive. If they finds signs that it existed on one of the devices & no longer exists, the defendant can claim they downloaded the file but it wasn't what they wanted or that they decided not to keep it, so they deleted it. That wouldn't be much different than buying something from Walmart & returning it to get your money back. Even better, it's like a thief who walks out of a store with something, but then returns it to the shelf before anyone busts him. Even if he's noticed on security camera's after the fact, they can't legally make you pay for something you're not keeping or using.
So the case against an individual is so weak that even preponderance isn't really a problem. In fact, it just wouldn't be worth the money it costs to try to fight it in court. For argument's sake though, imagine Rightscorp & the ISP's did allow cases like these to be brought to court and they win a lot of them. The moment ONE of them ends with the defendant being innocent, it creates a precedent. That'd be their worst nightmare, and they do NOT want to risk that happening. The gig would be up, forever.
I'd really love to see them do this to somebody who takes them to court for it. Rightscorp and the ISP will have to prove the guilty party is the account owner. If they can't, then they still have to prove who the guilty party is, and make them pay. It's called burden of proof. This company is simply attempting to circumvent the U.S. legal system because in most cases, they won't be able to prove who was downloading the copyrighted material.
The problem is rooted in the fact that an IP address is not the same as an individual. Take for example, a household of Dad, Mom, and two children. Which device in the house was used to download the copyrighted material? Which individual was using that device at the time? How does anyone know if maybe a family friend was visiting and used the device? Is it possible that a trojan or other malware was on the device and did it without any user consent? The company would have to be able to prove which individual was using the device that was downloading the material at the time it was downloaded, and probably need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was downloaded with the user's consent. Determining all that, is next to impossible in almost all the cases.
Rightscorp & The ISP's case, is very weak if anyone challenges it.
I was just thinking the same thing. For any serious governments, I think a BSD would seem a better choice from their perspective. The license allows them to keep their source changes closed to prying eyes, and the secure reputation of using something like OpenBSD would seem a natural for a nation with concerns about spying. Perhaps they're concerned they won't be able to spy on their own people that are using a BSD as easily as spying on users of other OS's?
I totally agree. I was getting 15 mod points every 3 days or so. I generally upvote stuff that I find worthy of it, and ignore comments "bad" comments unless they were seriously bad/trollish/obvious flambaiting. Recently, somebody down voted all of my comments in one thread so they were 0'd, and then/. suddenly decided that I'll only deserve 5 mod points every few days. That, to me, is obviously weird. I thought my comments weren't that bad, even if they weren't great. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me, and it happens far too easily. So I just stop commenting 'cause I don't want to risk losing all my karma over 1 comment just because somebody might not agree with my viewpoint.
For the record, I'm hesitating to submit this comment. I could do it anon, but, I'd like my thoughts to be attached to my identity..... otherwise it just feels like free speech is really dead around in this community.
I couldn't agree more. I haven't bought a CD, DVD, or cassette, in years, unless it's a CD of something I can't find anywhere else. Even then, I rip it and give the thing away 'cause it's worthless to me. Whenever I'm at Walmart's electronics section, seems there's nobody looking at the large swath of CD's & DVD's, but there are people lookin' at other stuff.
Can easily support business & participants by buying or renting non-physical copies too. Sharing/lending is a plus, for people who still do that. I don't really know anybody who does that anymore. With non-physical copies I can just hook my external drive up to a friend's computer or TV (via HDMI) and we can all enjoy the flick together. My Dad (who's in his 80's) still uses VHS tapes for everything. Friends of ours used to come over and borrow tapes from his large collection of stuff, but they haven't done that in years.... partly 'cause fewer people have VCR's now, but also because people just don't seem to be borrowing as much. People I know, either watch stuff together or get a copy themselves. Non-physical copies cost less & don't take up storage space, so it's easier for people to get copies of films (and music) they really like with the excess price or clutter.
Funny, I've found physical media to be quaint SINCE i was 25. I only buy a physical copy of something so I can rip a copy for myself, and I only do that when I cannot find a non-physical copy of the movie or song. It's been a few years since I wasn't surprised when somebody buys a physical copy of something. I just don't understand why anyone keeps doing it.
Every time I read something like this, I wonder if any habitable planets we find will still be habitable by the time we can get to them. If we find a habitable planet just a relatively close 10 light years away, then we're already seeing it as it was 10 years ago. Something could've changed there by the time we're seeing it. It's probably unlikely there'd be THAT much change in just 10 years, but then you have to figure it'd take us thousands of years to reach it with our current technology 'cause we can't even go 1% the speed of light yet. I haven't done the math, but wouldn't that take thousands of years just to get 10 light year away? So even a habitable planet 10 light years away would be well beyond our reach for the foreseeable future.
I couldn't agree with you more. I love XML far more than JSON. I don't get why so many seem to want to use JSON these days. Quite often, it's easy to glance at some XML and get an idea what to do with it, but you can't quite do that with JSON. Is there an XSLT equivalent for JSON? I haven't heard of one.
I'm a bit different, I didn't bother gettin' a license 'til 2006 (I was 32). So naturally, I drive more than I did a decade ago. My situation changed since then and that meant I needed to learn to drive. I don't like to drive. Someday, I won't drive anymore.
Sounds like the underlying issue is that some people (who should know better) still believe security through obscurity is a viable way of business.
This also reminds me of the case of Julian Harris. A man in Brisbane who was recently fined $44 for leaving his car window down while he was away from the car. The reason, is because it makes it easier for a thief to steal things from the car or steal the car itself. So clearly, Australian authorities understand that leaving oneself vulnerable (aka. "security negligence") should be punished even if you're not taken advantage of.
The NSA will catch them before anything goes seriously wrong, and that's why we allow the gov't to spy on us. It's a service we're paying for. Remember guys, if the gov't spies on its own innocent people then they will be able to stop terror attacks and stuff against the people. So, there's nothing to worry about, the government has already got our backs and they won't let anything happen to us.
But you can't study "how X has changed over time" if you don't even have the original data that you'd be comparing it to?
Still, that's not really my point. I'm saying that without the original data (and remember this is data that cannot be gotten again even with effort), one cannot re-do the study and see if the results are reproducible. Therefore, the entire scientific process is impossible with studies that have lost & irretrievable data.
The very fact that "Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other data sets are expensive to regenerate.", makes me wonder if this could even be considered "scientific data" anymore. Since the data is unique to a time & place and irreplaceable, it would completely destroy the reproducibility aspect of the scientific process. Given that, should the lack of reproducibility mean that lost scientific data should be redefined as experimental data or hypothesis data? It also brings up the idea in my mind that scientific data has a half life since it can degrade back to hypothesis or experimental data if not properly stored.
Fantastic PR here, but I'll wait and see if anything really comes of it. Sorry to say, I'm very skeptical that this is anything more than good press for these companies. At best, I think it's got very little to do with the 'freedom of the people' and a whole lot to do with the companies fear that the people aren't trusting them anymore. That hits the wallet. I'm sure that group of tech companies has enough cash to throw at Washington to get something done if they want to, but I'm not sure they want to. So like I said, I'll wait and see if anything really comes of this before I get my hopes up.
Are you serious? This is entirely enforceable without unreasonable difficulty. It's easy to find out who owns an IP address and there's always contact info attached to that record. If the fine isn't paid or isn't paid on time, it's only a simple matter of shutting the company's site down 'til the fine is paid. We're not talkin' about individuals here, but companies, especially hosting services, etc. Notification would come through an official gov't somebody, not something like a spamish-lookin-email. Anybody who's setting up servers that falls for a spamish-looking-email about this, deserves whatever problems they get as a result of believing such an email. They really should know better.
And while they're at it, they should fine everyone who's DB is stolen due to stupid insecure setups... SQL injections, plaintext passwords, etc. This stuff isn't excusable, and it's pretty shocking that it's still common in late 2013. Can you imagine how much money the gov't would've made off Adobe and SONY over the past few years? That'd probably help lower our taxes (in theory).
Jellyfish is a delicacy in China. Maybe if the seafood restaurants around the world can start promoting jellyfish as a Chinese delicacy, we balance the seas out again.
Wasn't it just last year that SONY kept gettin' hacked for stupid security? And they weren't the only ones. Just a couple years ago, PC Pro had an article called "Is This The Golden Age of Hacking?". Last year, Ars Technica had an article "Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger". The state of security on the internet is appalling & that was well known before Snowden woke people up with more facts about the appalling nature of internet security.
Back in '82-'83, I was in 3rd grade (US). We were taught a little programming, I think it was BASIC. Nothing spectacular, but it was enough to make us feel like we could do something AND give us a foundation for learning it hardcore in the future. So it makes sense to me, that kids could be taught the basics when they're 8 years old, and then progressively teach them a bit more as they progress through their school years.
Slashdot Mirror
Daleks have infiltrated the BBC.
I think the example I gave above, along with the questions it raises about the "evidence" against me, would be easy enough for any non-technical minded jury to grasp. Those questions, really make it clear that anybody could've done it. Basically, if there's just 3 people who had access to my internet account, then the likelyhood of any single individual being the one who did it, is only 33%, not 100% or even 50%. Therefore, it's more unlikely that said individual downloaded the copyrighted material, than it is likely they did it.
By the time the prosecution gets a search warrant to comb through all the files on all the devices, the downloaded copyrighted material could have been moved to another device or hard drive. If they finds signs that it existed on one of the devices & no longer exists, the defendant can claim they downloaded the file but it wasn't what they wanted or that they decided not to keep it, so they deleted it. That wouldn't be much different than buying something from Walmart & returning it to get your money back. Even better, it's like a thief who walks out of a store with something, but then returns it to the shelf before anyone busts him. Even if he's noticed on security camera's after the fact, they can't legally make you pay for something you're not keeping or using.
So the case against an individual is so weak that even preponderance isn't really a problem. In fact, it just wouldn't be worth the money it costs to try to fight it in court. For argument's sake though, imagine Rightscorp & the ISP's did allow cases like these to be brought to court and they win a lot of them. The moment ONE of them ends with the defendant being innocent, it creates a precedent. That'd be their worst nightmare, and they do NOT want to risk that happening. The gig would be up, forever.
I'd really love to see them do this to somebody who takes them to court for it. Rightscorp and the ISP will have to prove the guilty party is the account owner. If they can't, then they still have to prove who the guilty party is, and make them pay. It's called burden of proof. This company is simply attempting to circumvent the U.S. legal system because in most cases, they won't be able to prove who was downloading the copyrighted material.
The problem is rooted in the fact that an IP address is not the same as an individual. Take for example, a household of Dad, Mom, and two children. Which device in the house was used to download the copyrighted material? Which individual was using that device at the time? How does anyone know if maybe a family friend was visiting and used the device? Is it possible that a trojan or other malware was on the device and did it without any user consent? The company would have to be able to prove which individual was using the device that was downloading the material at the time it was downloaded, and probably need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was downloaded with the user's consent. Determining all that, is next to impossible in almost all the cases.
Rightscorp & The ISP's case, is very weak if anyone challenges it.
I was just thinking the same thing. For any serious governments, I think a BSD would seem a better choice from their perspective. The license allows them to keep their source changes closed to prying eyes, and the secure reputation of using something like OpenBSD would seem a natural for a nation with concerns about spying. Perhaps they're concerned they won't be able to spy on their own people that are using a BSD as easily as spying on users of other OS's?
I totally agree. I was getting 15 mod points every 3 days or so. I generally upvote stuff that I find worthy of it, and ignore comments "bad" comments unless they were seriously bad/trollish/obvious flambaiting. Recently, somebody down voted all of my comments in one thread so they were 0'd, and then /. suddenly decided that I'll only deserve 5 mod points every few days. That, to me, is obviously weird. I thought my comments weren't that bad, even if they weren't great. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me, and it happens far too easily. So I just stop commenting 'cause I don't want to risk losing all my karma over 1 comment just because somebody might not agree with my viewpoint.
For the record, I'm hesitating to submit this comment. I could do it anon, but, I'd like my thoughts to be attached to my identity..... otherwise it just feels like free speech is really dead around in this community.
I couldn't agree more. I haven't bought a CD, DVD, or cassette, in years, unless it's a CD of something I can't find anywhere else. Even then, I rip it and give the thing away 'cause it's worthless to me. Whenever I'm at Walmart's electronics section, seems there's nobody looking at the large swath of CD's & DVD's, but there are people lookin' at other stuff.
Can easily support business & participants by buying or renting non-physical copies too. Sharing/lending is a plus, for people who still do that. I don't really know anybody who does that anymore. With non-physical copies I can just hook my external drive up to a friend's computer or TV (via HDMI) and we can all enjoy the flick together. My Dad (who's in his 80's) still uses VHS tapes for everything. Friends of ours used to come over and borrow tapes from his large collection of stuff, but they haven't done that in years.... partly 'cause fewer people have VCR's now, but also because people just don't seem to be borrowing as much. People I know, either watch stuff together or get a copy themselves. Non-physical copies cost less & don't take up storage space, so it's easier for people to get copies of films (and music) they really like with the excess price or clutter.
Funny, I've found physical media to be quaint SINCE i was 25. I only buy a physical copy of something so I can rip a copy for myself, and I only do that when I cannot find a non-physical copy of the movie or song. It's been a few years since I wasn't surprised when somebody buys a physical copy of something. I just don't understand why anyone keeps doing it.
Every time I read something like this, I wonder if any habitable planets we find will still be habitable by the time we can get to them. If we find a habitable planet just a relatively close 10 light years away, then we're already seeing it as it was 10 years ago. Something could've changed there by the time we're seeing it. It's probably unlikely there'd be THAT much change in just 10 years, but then you have to figure it'd take us thousands of years to reach it with our current technology 'cause we can't even go 1% the speed of light yet. I haven't done the math, but wouldn't that take thousands of years just to get 10 light year away? So even a habitable planet 10 light years away would be well beyond our reach for the foreseeable future.
Actually, as idiotic as it sounds, corporations are persons in the U.S. legal system. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
I couldn't agree with you more. I love XML far more than JSON. I don't get why so many seem to want to use JSON these days. Quite often, it's easy to glance at some XML and get an idea what to do with it, but you can't quite do that with JSON. Is there an XSLT equivalent for JSON? I haven't heard of one.
I'm a bit different, I didn't bother gettin' a license 'til 2006 (I was 32). So naturally, I drive more than I did a decade ago. My situation changed since then and that meant I needed to learn to drive. I don't like to drive. Someday, I won't drive anymore.
I can see that logic for a convertible, but I don't see how it could ever be better for businesses to leave security vulnerabilities in place.
Sounds like the underlying issue is that some people (who should know better) still believe security through obscurity is a viable way of business.
This also reminds me of the case of Julian Harris. A man in Brisbane who was recently fined $44 for leaving his car window down while he was away from the car. The reason, is because it makes it easier for a thief to steal things from the car or steal the car itself. So clearly, Australian authorities understand that leaving oneself vulnerable (aka. "security negligence") should be punished even if you're not taken advantage of.
The NSA will catch them before anything goes seriously wrong, and that's why we allow the gov't to spy on us. It's a service we're paying for. Remember guys, if the gov't spies on its own innocent people then they will be able to stop terror attacks and stuff against the people. So, there's nothing to worry about, the government has already got our backs and they won't let anything happen to us.
If I could mod that up, I would. Very interesting & insightful.
But you can't study "how X has changed over time" if you don't even have the original data that you'd be comparing it to?
Still, that's not really my point. I'm saying that without the original data (and remember this is data that cannot be gotten again even with effort), one cannot re-do the study and see if the results are reproducible. Therefore, the entire scientific process is impossible with studies that have lost & irretrievable data.
The very fact that "Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other data sets are expensive to regenerate.", makes me wonder if this could even be considered "scientific data" anymore. Since the data is unique to a time & place and irreplaceable, it would completely destroy the reproducibility aspect of the scientific process. Given that, should the lack of reproducibility mean that lost scientific data should be redefined as experimental data or hypothesis data? It also brings up the idea in my mind that scientific data has a half life since it can degrade back to hypothesis or experimental data if not properly stored.
Fantastic PR here, but I'll wait and see if anything really comes of it. Sorry to say, I'm very skeptical that this is anything more than good press for these companies. At best, I think it's got very little to do with the 'freedom of the people' and a whole lot to do with the companies fear that the people aren't trusting them anymore. That hits the wallet. I'm sure that group of tech companies has enough cash to throw at Washington to get something done if they want to, but I'm not sure they want to. So like I said, I'll wait and see if anything really comes of this before I get my hopes up.
Are you serious? This is entirely enforceable without unreasonable difficulty. It's easy to find out who owns an IP address and there's always contact info attached to that record. If the fine isn't paid or isn't paid on time, it's only a simple matter of shutting the company's site down 'til the fine is paid. We're not talkin' about individuals here, but companies, especially hosting services, etc. Notification would come through an official gov't somebody, not something like a spamish-lookin-email. Anybody who's setting up servers that falls for a spamish-looking-email about this, deserves whatever problems they get as a result of believing such an email. They really should know better.
And while they're at it, they should fine everyone who's DB is stolen due to stupid insecure setups... SQL injections, plaintext passwords, etc. This stuff isn't excusable, and it's pretty shocking that it's still common in late 2013. Can you imagine how much money the gov't would've made off Adobe and SONY over the past few years? That'd probably help lower our taxes (in theory).
Jellyfish is a delicacy in China. Maybe if the seafood restaurants around the world can start promoting jellyfish as a Chinese delicacy, we balance the seas out again.
Wasn't it just last year that SONY kept gettin' hacked for stupid security? And they weren't the only ones. Just a couple years ago, PC Pro had an article called "Is This The Golden Age of Hacking?". Last year, Ars Technica had an article "Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger". The state of security on the internet is appalling & that was well known before Snowden woke people up with more facts about the appalling nature of internet security.
It can't go any further 'cause the government shutdown.
Back in '82-'83, I was in 3rd grade (US). We were taught a little programming, I think it was BASIC. Nothing spectacular, but it was enough to make us feel like we could do something AND give us a foundation for learning it hardcore in the future. So it makes sense to me, that kids could be taught the basics when they're 8 years old, and then progressively teach them a bit more as they progress through their school years.
Sounds like the Justice Dept. needs a better CMS.