One skill I learned in college that I found invaluable is that college teached me how to deal with managers. College forces you to deal with people you think are idiots (either classmates, TA's, or professors) and do tasks you find demeaning and pointless. If you want to be successful in any aspect of business, this skill is a must! Just something to keep in mind
Paypal is a website. You need a proper ID and password to enter. All the information is stored at Paypal.
Passport stores that information on your machine so your browser can automatically send it to anyone wishing to "Passport" authenticate you. This means that all someone has to do is request your passport authentication from your browser (not you), and they can get all your information.
To divert Internet traffic to his sites, Zuccarini admits that he registers domain names... because they are likely misspellings of famous marks or personal names
here is where the ambiguity disappears. If you say you did it to get diverted traffic, then you have already drawn the line for the court.
A lot of talk has been made that this will trash free speech and allow companies to shut down parody sites. I really don't see the connection here. For example, I remember when espm.com was a porn site. That would be an example of typosquatting. The name of the web site has nothing to do with the content and was only picked because it closely resemebles the name of another more famous web site. This person hoped to generate traffic solely through the mistakes of web surfers.
On the other hand, parodies are pretty obvious. The content has everything to do with the name of the web site (i.e. www.f*ckedcompany.com sp?). To say that this case is about shutting doen parody sites is pretty shortsighted. That's just my 2 cents.
I must disagree with your second point where you liken this situation to borrowing a friend's car. The computers they used were owned (or at least borrowed) by the FBI and they were warned when the logged in that their actions would be monitored. So the analogy doesn't quite hold in this scenario. You would have to borrow your friend's squad car, then get busted for storing marajuana in it.
The FBI did not even bend the law in this situation. These criminals freely and willingly gave them access to all their passwords and accounts by using the computers provided to them by the FBI. They even went so far as to trick these guys into coming to the US to do it.
"but the fact that so many companies are reaching settlements seems to indicate that they have some reasonably strong legal footing for these suits"
Actually, not one of these companies settled because of RAMBUS' "legal footing". They took one look at the cost of fighting the lawsuit in court, or settling and realized that it would be better to settle. It has also been presumed that to make settlement more attractive to these minor SDRAM players, RAMBUS offered small royalty fees. So, be careful when you say these "smart lawyers" are settling. It was probably the accountant who convinced these company to take that route.
I don't see how a photo of you would prove anything to them. It just shows you are a real person and not some figment of their imagination. Even a photo of your credit card is pretty dubious since there are many tools that can make a doctored photo look realistic. I would think the best form of verification is that, if they really want to see you are who you say you are is to call you. That information is readily available. They may not want to get bog downed in calling all the "questionable" customers, but is that really any less hassling than looking at all the pictures of people you thought were questionable?
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One skill I learned in college that I found invaluable is that college teached me how to deal with managers. College forces you to deal with people you think are idiots (either classmates, TA's, or professors) and do tasks you find demeaning and pointless. If you want to be successful in any aspect of business, this skill is a must!
Just something to keep in mind
Paypal is a website. You need a proper ID and password to enter. All the information is stored at Paypal.
Passport stores that information on your machine so your browser can automatically send it to anyone wishing to "Passport" authenticate you. This means that all someone has to do is request your passport authentication from your browser (not you), and they can get all your information.
here is where the ambiguity disappears. If you say you did it to get diverted traffic, then you have already drawn the line for the court.
A lot of talk has been made that this will trash free speech and allow companies to shut down parody sites. I really don't see the connection here. For example, I remember when espm.com was a porn site. That would be an example of typosquatting. The name of the web site has nothing to do with the content and was only picked because it closely resemebles the name of another more famous web site. This person hoped to generate traffic solely through the mistakes of web surfers.
On the other hand, parodies are pretty obvious. The content has everything to do with the name of the web site (i.e. www.f*ckedcompany.com sp?). To say that this case is about shutting doen parody sites is pretty shortsighted. That's just my 2 cents.
I must disagree with your second point where you liken this situation to borrowing a friend's car. The computers they used were owned (or at least borrowed) by the FBI and they were warned when the logged in that their actions would be monitored. So the analogy doesn't quite hold in this scenario. You would have to borrow your friend's squad car, then get busted for storing marajuana in it. The FBI did not even bend the law in this situation. These criminals freely and willingly gave them access to all their passwords and accounts by using the computers provided to them by the FBI. They even went so far as to trick these guys into coming to the US to do it.
"but the fact that so many companies are reaching settlements seems to indicate that they have some reasonably strong legal footing for these suits" Actually, not one of these companies settled because of RAMBUS' "legal footing". They took one look at the cost of fighting the lawsuit in court, or settling and realized that it would be better to settle. It has also been presumed that to make settlement more attractive to these minor SDRAM players, RAMBUS offered small royalty fees. So, be careful when you say these "smart lawyers" are settling. It was probably the accountant who convinced these company to take that route.
I don't see how a photo of you would prove anything to them. It just shows you are a real person and not some figment of their imagination. Even a photo of your credit card is pretty dubious since there are many tools that can make a doctored photo look realistic.
I would think the best form of verification is that, if they really want to see you are who you say you are is to call you. That information is readily available. They may not want to get bog downed in calling all the "questionable" customers, but is that really any less hassling than looking at all the pictures of people you thought were questionable?