I reported it a couple of weeks ago, too. It makes for a damn tricky phishing exploit. The URL has ebay.com in it, but had parameters further along that redirected it. They also obfuscated the redirect target by using escape characters. I might have been caught by it if they hadn't sent it to an e-mail address that only spammers use.
If they just required a 2-3 month subscription from people who do this they would make more money than they would from a retail package on the monthly fees! All this does is guarantee they have one less customer!
This is not a new thing. Specific machine software licenses have often been tagged to the power of the machine running them -- or the number of users.
Considering just the number of processors is kind of odd, though. When I've seen this done in the past, it's been based on the measure throughput of the application (and usually gave a discount to the higher performance machines).
I wonder if this is illegal if you slapped the wrong barcodes on a large number of items, but didn't buy them? Like if you just wanted to get back at the store for something. Remarking things with higher prices might make them even more annoyed, because it would back up the checkout lines...
I didn't say it was a sure thing, I said "more of a chance". To put it another way, it's one more claim thier lawyers can make if they decide to sue you.
IANAL; so, I don't remember what the legal definition of "silly" is, but I have heard it before ("frivilous", perhaps), but that isn't the main point. The main point is timing. If you pay them with a check, they still get to examine the check before you walk out of the store with the product. If you put down something reasonable sounding on the check (like "... warrantees the product for 5 years from date of purchase") and they endorse the check, it would very likely hold up. You would also never get out of the store with the merchandise... Or if you did, everybody would understand what the deal was.
In the case of a shrink wrap EULA, the money changes hands before the EULA is even mentioned; therefore, there is good reason to believe that it isn't binding (beyond restating copyright law and other regulations that would apply anyway).
And of course, nothing can prevent sued... EULA or no EULA.
This is, in many ways, like the surgeon general forcing cigarette makers to put cancer warnings on their packaging: It ended up absolving them of legal liability.
Now that the EULAs are referenced on the outside of the package, there is more of a chance that they are legally binding, not less.
Of course, one could have a lot of fun with this, too:
Go into a store.
Ask them to print out the EULA for you from the web.
Study it for a while and ask the saleman a lot of questions... then "decide" not to buy the software because you can't understand the EULA.
I get what you were going for, but the example isn't quite right. Comp USA would never accept such a check, because they could read it before accepting it (and before endorsing it for deposit). Endorsing such a check probably would count as a contract if the terms weren't quite so silly.
What you are trying to get at is that an implied contract is considered complete when the cash changes hands. Attempts to apply a EULA after the fact shouldn't be valid (and usually aren't).
Benchmark "tweaking" (euphamism alert) happens like this. You set up the benchmark on your machine and run it, but you find out your competitor's machine gets a better score. You know your machine is faster so you figure out what your competitor did to cheat. Then you either do the same thing or you don't eat. I can remember a transaction processing benchmark with a 256 drive RAID 0 array used for the main database. Never mind that a 256 drive RAID 0 array is a reliability nightmare and totally impractical: The real reason for it was that it made it unrealitically expensive for small vendors to get good numbers on the benchmark.
If you are a buyer, you run your own benchmarks or depend on benchmarks run by reputable third parties.
If you can't do that, then it's probably better to look at the raw power of the machines...
IANAL, but from what I do know, it is very unclear who owns the code written by a contractor if the contract doesn't specify it. It's not even completely clear regarding employees! It actually depends on what the content is. For example, movies are explicitly allowed to be "work for hire" (in the copyright law) while music is not mentioned. About half the lawyers commenting on music contracts think that music cannot be "work for hire" no matter what the contract says (think "expensive court costs" here). I'm not sure whether computer programs are mentioned explicitly. Even if they are, I'm pretty sure that a contract would be required before "work for hire" applies.
Massachusetts courts have held that e-mail (signed with your name in plain text) is a binding contract. It's certainly more binding than a verbal contract, which courts will also uphold if there are witnesses.
It does have to be signed. [Do you put your name in a tag line?:-)]
This sounds like the legal definition of a denial of service attack (the law doesn't specify the algorithm for causing a DOS). IMO, Penguin has been engagin in felony computer fraud.
I think Woody would have approved of the intent of the parody 100%, but maybe not of the writing quality... Woody had a way of writing the politics into the song in ways that kept most people from even realizing that he was doing it (as you have noticed). These guys just wack you over the head with the obvious. Kinda like Jack Benny overdubbing a violin solo on top of a Django Rheinhart - Stephane Grappelli recording. Still, I don't think Woody would have threatened a lawsuit...
Of course, nobody has actually filed a lawsuit. Press releases about lawsuits are almost always great for publicity:-)
ASCAP does NOT collect royalties from record labels. The Harry Fox agency collects royalties from record labels. Those kinds of royalties are called "mechanical royalties", as opposed to "performance royalties" which are what radio stations, restaurants and stores pay. ASCAP, BMI, et al collect performance royalties. Harry Fox collects mechanical royalties. This is music business 101 dude get your facts straight.
I am a musician/songwriter and I have attempted to get my material played on the air (with extremely modest success -- I've been told it got some airplay, but didn't hear it myself). From my conversations with radio stations and other industry people, I can tell you that none of the ones I talked to pay for material. In fact, they have so much free material arriving every week, they usually don't even have time to listen to all of it. A small college station will recieve 50-100 CDs a week. I can assure you that any radio station that asked for a CD from me got it (at least up until the band broke up and I lost interest). How about coughing up an example of a real radio station that has to go out and buy CDs? Real radio station means they have an FCC license to broadcast on public airways (any wattage, any location). What is thier annual budget for buying CDs?
Most small restaurants and stores have been exempt from paying performance royalties since Congress passed a law exempting them (1999). If they are less than 2000 sq ft and just playing back radio or TV broadcast, they aren't paying any royalties (and even 2000 sq ft is a pretty good sized bar or restaurant -- most or the ones I go to aren't even half that big).
One could try to transfer money out of the account. It's illegal if they file a complaint, but I bet they wouldn't dare. I'm not sure if it's illegal if they don't file a complaint. Then again, I suppose you could always claim you misread the e-mail and initiated the transfer in the wrong direction....
As others have pointed out, this is nothing but a speedup of procedures that have existed for years in the recording industry.
The Sonic Solutions CD mastering system that has been around since some time around 1990 does most of the front end work described. It records while allowing simultaneous editing of the incoming file. What it doesn't allow for, by itself, is multiple workstations, BUT it would be possible to use multiple Sonic Solutions workstations with each operator recording a section of the concert and then combine the sections at the end of the concert. If you put SCSI raid boxes on them, you would have the redundancy mentioned in the patent.
Multi-ganged CD burners have been around forever, too.
I think this would have been obvious to average designer of Digital Audio Workstations.
If they have integrated all this stuff so they can start burning CD-Rs DURING the concert (once you start burning a CD, you can't stop until the end), they have done a very impressive bit of programming, but I don't see anything intellectually stimulating about the concept....
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All I can say is I don't have any account with them... And it's a really, really good thing.
On the bright side, we probably won't be seeing many more phishing exploits from the Russian hackers now that they have a more lucrative target.
I reported it a couple of weeks ago, too. It makes for a damn tricky phishing exploit. The URL has ebay.com in it, but had parameters further along that redirected it. They also obfuscated the redirect target by using escape characters. I might have been caught by it if they hadn't sent it to an e-mail address that only spammers use.
If they just required a 2-3 month subscription from people who do this they would make more money than they would from a retail package on the monthly fees! All this does is guarantee they have one less customer!
They don't deserve to stay in business.
This is not a new thing. Specific machine software licenses have often been tagged to the power of the machine running them -- or the number of users.
Considering just the number of processors is kind of odd, though. When I've seen this done in the past, it's been based on the measure throughput of the application (and usually gave a discount to the higher performance machines).
Let them know it's pretty lame to be making money on spammers when spammers are costing other companies billions.
hostmaster@mci.com
1-800-465-7187
1-800-264-1000
Can anybody find out what the DVD sample D2 was?
I wonder if this is illegal if you slapped the wrong barcodes on a large number of items, but didn't buy them? Like if you just wanted to get back at the store for something. Remarking things with higher prices might make them even more annoyed, because it would back up the checkout lines...
I didn't say it was a sure thing, I said "more of a chance". To put it another way, it's one more claim thier lawyers can make if they decide to sue you.
IANAL; so, I don't remember what the legal definition of "silly" is, but I have heard it before ("frivilous", perhaps), but that isn't the main point. The main point is timing. If you pay them with a check, they still get to examine the check before you walk out of the store with the product. If you put down something reasonable sounding on the check (like "... warrantees the product for 5 years from date of purchase") and they endorse the check, it would very likely hold up. You would also never get out of the store with the merchandise... Or if you did, everybody would understand what the deal was.
In the case of a shrink wrap EULA, the money changes hands before the EULA is even mentioned; therefore, there is good reason to believe that it isn't binding (beyond restating copyright law and other regulations that would apply anyway).
And of course, nothing can prevent sued... EULA or no EULA.
This is, in many ways, like the surgeon general forcing cigarette makers to put cancer warnings on their packaging: It ended up absolving them of legal liability.
Now that the EULAs are referenced on the outside of the package, there is more of a chance that they are legally binding, not less.
Of course, one could have a lot of fun with this, too:
Go into a store.
Ask them to print out the EULA for you from the web.
Study it for a while and ask the saleman a lot of questions... then "decide" not to buy the software because you can't understand the EULA.
I get what you were going for, but the example isn't quite right. Comp USA would never accept such a check, because they could read it before accepting it (and before endorsing it for deposit). Endorsing such a check probably would count as a contract if the terms weren't quite so silly.
What you are trying to get at is that an implied contract is considered complete when the cash changes hands. Attempts to apply a EULA after the fact shouldn't be valid (and usually aren't).
The only thing I ever put in an unsubcribe link are the ARIN e-mail contacts for the level 1 provider for the unsub link.
Benchmark "tweaking" (euphamism alert) happens like this. You set up the benchmark on your machine and run it, but you find out your competitor's machine gets a better score. You know your machine is faster so you figure out what your competitor did to cheat. Then you either do the same thing or you don't eat. I can remember a transaction processing benchmark with a 256 drive RAID 0 array used for the main database. Never mind that a 256 drive RAID 0 array is a reliability nightmare and totally impractical: The real reason for it was that it made it unrealitically expensive for small vendors to get good numbers on the benchmark.
If you are a buyer, you run your own benchmarks or depend on benchmarks run by reputable third parties.
If you can't do that, then it's probably better to look at the raw power of the machines...
If you don't think it's a problem, why didn't you post YOUR e-mail address?
IANAL, but from what I do know, it is very unclear who owns the code written by a contractor if the contract doesn't specify it. It's not even completely clear regarding employees! It actually depends on what the content is. For example, movies are explicitly allowed to be "work for hire" (in the copyright law) while music is not mentioned. About half the lawyers commenting on music contracts think that music cannot be "work for hire" no matter what the contract says (think "expensive court costs" here). I'm not sure whether computer programs are mentioned explicitly. Even if they are, I'm pretty sure that a contract would be required before "work for hire" applies.
Massachusetts courts have held that e-mail (signed with your name in plain text) is a binding contract. It's certainly more binding than a verbal contract, which courts will also uphold if there are witnesses.
:-)]
It does have to be signed. [Do you put your name in a tag line?
95% ?
.biz or .info web site?
You mean you have actually seen a legit
I haven't.
This sounds like the legal definition of a denial of service attack (the law doesn't specify the algorithm for causing a DOS). IMO, Penguin has been engagin in felony computer fraud.
At least they won't be spamming any more....
I think Woody would have approved of the intent of the parody 100%, but maybe not of the writing quality... Woody had a way of writing the politics into the song in ways that kept most people from even realizing that he was doing it (as you have noticed). These guys just wack you over the head with the obvious. Kinda like Jack Benny overdubbing a violin solo on top of a Django Rheinhart - Stephane Grappelli recording. Still, I don't think Woody would have threatened a lawsuit...
:-)
Of course, nobody has actually filed a lawsuit. Press releases about lawsuits are almost always great for publicity
ASCAP does NOT collect royalties from record labels. The Harry Fox agency collects royalties from record labels. Those kinds of royalties are called "mechanical royalties", as opposed to "performance royalties" which are what radio stations, restaurants and stores pay. ASCAP, BMI, et al collect performance royalties. Harry Fox collects mechanical royalties. This is music business 101 dude get your facts straight.
I am a musician/songwriter and I have attempted to get my material played on the air (with extremely modest success -- I've been told it got some airplay, but didn't hear it myself). From my conversations with radio stations and other industry people, I can tell you that none of the ones I talked to pay for material. In fact, they have so much free material arriving every week, they usually don't even have time to listen to all of it. A small college station will recieve 50-100 CDs a week. I can assure you that any radio station that asked for a CD from me got it (at least up until the band broke up and I lost interest). How about coughing up an example of a real radio station that has to go out and buy CDs? Real radio station means they have an FCC license to broadcast on public airways (any wattage, any location). What is thier annual budget for buying CDs?
Most small restaurants and stores have been exempt from paying performance royalties since Congress passed a law exempting them (1999). If they are less than 2000 sq ft and just playing back radio or TV broadcast, they aren't paying any royalties (and even 2000 sq ft is a pretty good sized bar or restaurant -- most or the ones I go to aren't even half that big).
1. ASCAP doesn't collect any money for purchased CDs.
2. Radio stations NEVER buy CDs. The labels give them free ones along with the payola.
3. Most retail locations don't have to play if they are airing broadcasts..
One could try to transfer money out of the account. It's illegal if they file a complaint, but I bet they wouldn't dare. I'm not sure if it's illegal if they don't file a complaint. Then again, I suppose you could always claim you misread the e-mail and initiated the transfer in the wrong direction....
Like 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov.
I was looking for an e-mail with the Nigerian police, but couldn't find any...
As others have pointed out, this is nothing but a speedup of procedures that have existed for years in the recording industry.
The Sonic Solutions CD mastering system that has been around since some time around 1990 does most of the front end work described. It records while allowing simultaneous editing of the incoming file. What it doesn't allow for, by itself, is multiple workstations, BUT it would be possible to use multiple Sonic Solutions workstations with each operator recording a section of the concert and then combine the sections at the end of the concert. If you put SCSI raid boxes on them, you would have the redundancy mentioned in the patent.
Multi-ganged CD burners have been around forever, too.
I think this would have been obvious to average designer of Digital Audio Workstations.
If they have integrated all this stuff so they can start burning CD-Rs DURING the concert (once you start burning a CD, you can't stop until the end), they have done a very impressive bit of programming, but I don't see anything intellectually stimulating about the concept....