Sony was sued in 15 different lawsuits and the federal government. Sony paid out US$1.5 million each to two states, US$4.5 million to 40 other states. I have not been able to find any information on a total settlement of the federal or individual lawsuits. The federal lawsuit paid out up to US$150.00 per person for issues related to removing the "rootkit" DRM. The amounts listed do not include the downloads and other forms of reimbursement.
So, what you are saying is that Slashdot has a bad karma system.
Nothing that inflammatory, just completely opposite of those that karma bombed me, backed up by evidence. They couldn't take being proven wrong.
And, then you get flame wars, cliques, and karma bombing. Nothing like watching a small group of people with multiple accounts spend a few weeks clobbering one's karma by modding down old posts. It has happened to me and can happen to anyone, including you. All it takes is offending the wrong fanboys.
But had the vote gone the other way, the only thing to change would be the other guy voting for the DMCA instead.
In other words, your interests do not line up with the vast majority of the rest of the voters. Just because something is important to you, it does not follow that it is important to the rest of the world nor does it follow that your opinion is right.
Nothing entitles you to have your opinion made into law, especially if it is a minority opinion
As long as you, as a group, do not press the issue with the candidates, and do not field your own candidates, then you will never change things. You will sit here on/. and whine about it and when the time comes to actually do something, you will just throw up your hands and say "We can't win so we aren't going to try".
Oh, and the reason you will never win is because you would be a one plank platform party. There is a huge middle ground out there that is tired of BOTH parties because the extremes run them both. If a party or coalition were to be formed for the CENTER, the CENTER and reason would actually have a chance. But, no, you can't do that because you are on the fringe yourselves.
I am really fucking tired of hearing people whine that they can't do anything when they don't even try. "Liking" something on Facebook is not trying. Complaining on Slashdot is not trying. DDOS and calling in bomb threats is not trying. Take a clue from the President. Organize, start a PAC or even a political party. Educate the public and the pols.
Tell me, did you even bother to join the PAC a slashdot user formed? One dedicated to tech and IP issues? The one that lasted less than a year because no one, even the people on slashdot wouldn't support? No, I didn't think so.
Now, just shut the fuck up because I am sick of hearing all you do-nothing, self-defeating whiners.
If you did vote, you didn't vote for someone who would represent your interests or your interests are so far from mainstream that it didn't matter to the majority of people.
If you didn't vote, you abdicated your civic responsibility and choose instead to bow to the will of others
Assuming you voted, YOU VOTED FOR THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR THE DMCA. But, if you are like so many people, you didn't even bother to vote so you have no right to complain.
If you think this has reached ammo box stage then you are more than just a fool, you are a dangerous, over-reacting ideologue. Rather than vote with one's wallet and using the ballot box, you would jump to committing murder. That is just insanity. It is the very fundamentalist mindset that powers the violence in the Middle East. Further, most people do not care about the laws you are willing to take up arms to destroy. You would murder to impose your ideals upon others. That makes you a militant oppressor.
Something else to remember, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have sworn oaths to stand against those who would take up arms against the constitutional government of the United States of America and we will stand against you should you try to use force to take over-throw the government.
We, The People, never actually had a say in the creation of those "laws" where were supposedly broken.
We, The People, elected the people who made the laws, therefore we had a say in the creation of the laws. If you want to change the laws, elect different people, people who will change the law. And, no one did anything against the wishes of the people. Most people didn't know and don't care what the laws actually say. It may be sad, and you may not like it, but it is the truth.
Actually, the code is so well tuned, that it is unlikely external agencies would have the information required. It would not surprise me to find out that someone working at an infected plant was the inside man.
I also would not be surprised to find out that the Iranian government wrote it to release on some other nation, say Israel, but it accidentally was released on their own network and they just can't get ahead of it.
Silly human, people would never have used it if they had to PAY for it because it is on the web. Everyone know that everything on the web is free or should be free.
But, that is not the retail rate of the companies he hit. If you had bothered to read the fucking article you would know that.
The value is determined using the retail price from the place one steals from, not from some random store. If one steals a diamond necklace from Tiffany's which Tiffany's sells for US$1,000.00, it will not matter if Uncle Joe's Discount Jewelery sells the exact same necklace for US$100.00, the value of the diamond necklace used to determine charges and restitution will be US$1,000.00.
Understand it yet, or do you need a more simplistic explanation?
Your little "equations" are fallacies. They do not reflect reality.
The reason the system has a hard time preventing crime inside prisons is because of people like yourself. You cry for the poor criminal. Your ilk thinks criminals stay in prison should be comfortable and they should be able to have all the comforts of home provided by the state.
These are people stealing food because they are starving. These are people who are committing robbery, dealing drugs, etc. because they didn't give a damn about getting an education and won't work at the low wage jobs they can get.
I am curious, do you know any criminals? Have you ever met one socially? I know several, including my step-brother.
Correlation is not causation.
Well, it would be easy to keep prisoners completely safe and off drugs. It would just take actions which you would protest as being a violation of the criminals rights. As for giving prisoners some sort of work, they have an opportunity to work. Many do not wish to do the work because they see it as menial. Those that do accept the work often use it to smuggle in contraband.
You opinion amuses me because it is in line with the way of thinking in the 60s and 70s: soft on crime, soft on punishment. The result was increased crime and increased recidivism. It was based on the idea that criminals have low self-esteem. No one ever examined or tested the proposition, the loud proponents just assumed they were right. When someone finally got around to examining the idea, he found that criminals have such high self-esteem that they are narcissists. And, when those criminals got out, they just went back to committing crimes, both new types and what put them in prison in the first place.
Your opinion is not based in reality. It is, in fact, worthless. Go out and get to know some criminals. What what they say and do. See how almost all of them slide, of their own desire, right back into their old lives of crime as soon as they get out of prison. Then, you can come talk to me about crime and punishment. Most of them aren't afraid of being caught because the U.S. is soft on crime and the odds are against them getting caught soon. And, if they are caught, their is a good chance they will be back on the streets in a few weeks if not sooner.
I know someone who was arrested for grand theft, lying to a pawn broker, and dealing in stolen property while he was on probation for delivering drugs. He was sentenced to less than a year in jail and completing in-jail drug treatment. He got out a few weeks ago and is already working on dealing drugs again. Not because he can't get a job, but because he doesn't want a job. He hasn't even tried to get a job.
Until you can say you know some criminals, please just keep your mouth shut about these things of which you are obviously ignorant.
Besides my personal experiences with criminals, the simple fact that even criminals that do get jobs often return to crime within two years. They often justify the return to crime by stating that the job they had was beneath them. Try researching recidivism and recidivism rates.
He wasn't charged with stealing wholesale minutes. He was charged with stealing retail minutes.
When one steals something from a retailer, one is not charged using the wholesale value the retail store paid for the item. One is charged with the retail value of the item. The same goes for this case. 10 million minutes at $.10 per minute == $1,000,000 in damages to the companies. Depending on to where the calls were made, the time per minute could be considerably higher.
Was that for crimes they committed in the U.S. or for crimes in their native countries? Or, was it like the U.S. sex tourism laws where if one goes to another country to have sex with a minor, one can be charged and convicted in the U.S.?
No, it is not a waste of time. For 10 years that person was prevented from committing other crimes and was imprisoned as punishment for his previous crimes. That is not a waste of time, especially YOUR time unless you are a prison guard or a prisoner.
As far as them getting "a life" after jail, they can get one. Most of them don't want to live a different life once they are on the outside. Most of them just want is to get back to being whatever they were before.
What you fail to understand is that most criminals do not believe the law should apply to them. The law is for other people, not them, so they just ignore the law until they are, in their minds unfairly, imprisoned, and just wait to get out so they can do it all over again.
No, doing both is not stupid. To punish him for his crime, he is confined for 10 years then he is kicked him out of the country. And, he can never enter the U.S. legally, at all, ever. He can not enter and claim asylum. He can't even enter under diplomatic immunity because he will be considered a persona non grata and will be kicked out of the country.
And, odds are he will not come out of prison a "nice guy". Prison rarely turns criminals into law abiding citizens. As a study of imprisoned criminals has shown, criminals have extremely high self-esteem. They literally feel they have done nothing wrong because they do not think the law should apply to them because they are so great.
But, Linux is not gaining any significant ground in Desktop adoption. While Linux may work well for everything YOU use it for, it does not follow that it works well for everything average users want, whether the issue capability, availability, ease of use, or something else.
It seems to me that there should be a large increase in the adoption of Linux by average desktop users in order for it to be "The Year of the Linux Desktop", and I don't see that happening.
The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400 - or $200 per song. That's an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act.
The judge found her an innocent infringer, which means the judge believes she didn't understand that what she was doing was illegal. That kicks in USC 17 504.C.2 which states:
In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.
The judge gave her the miminum fine for what he determined to be the truth of the case. The $750 is the minimum award for a finding of willful infringement and so his award is not well below anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Please list the laws that were broken by Sony.
Sony was sued in 15 different lawsuits and the federal government. Sony paid out US$1.5 million each to two states, US$4.5 million to 40 other states. I have not been able to find any information on a total settlement of the federal or individual lawsuits. The federal lawsuit paid out up to US$150.00 per person for issues related to removing the "rootkit" DRM. The amounts listed do not include the downloads and other forms of reimbursement.
Oh, and just remembered, Columbia/HCA paid a total of US$1.7 billion for 14 counts in 2002
When was the last time a large corporation was caught knowingly violating a law 4.4 million times?
So, what you are saying is that Slashdot has a bad karma system. Nothing that inflammatory, just completely opposite of those that karma bombed me, backed up by evidence. They couldn't take being proven wrong.
And, then you get flame wars, cliques, and karma bombing. Nothing like watching a small group of people with multiple accounts spend a few weeks clobbering one's karma by modding down old posts. It has happened to me and can happen to anyone, including you. All it takes is offending the wrong fanboys.
But had the vote gone the other way, the only thing to change would be the other guy voting for the DMCA instead.
In other words, your interests do not line up with the vast majority of the rest of the voters. Just because something is important to you, it does not follow that it is important to the rest of the world nor does it follow that your opinion is right.
/. and whine about it and when the time comes to actually do something, you will just throw up your hands and say "We can't win so we aren't going to try".
Nothing entitles you to have your opinion made into law, especially if it is a minority opinion
As long as you, as a group, do not press the issue with the candidates, and do not field your own candidates, then you will never change things. You will sit here on
Oh, and the reason you will never win is because you would be a one plank platform party. There is a huge middle ground out there that is tired of BOTH parties because the extremes run them both. If a party or coalition were to be formed for the CENTER, the CENTER and reason would actually have a chance. But, no, you can't do that because you are on the fringe yourselves.
I am really fucking tired of hearing people whine that they can't do anything when they don't even try. "Liking" something on Facebook is not trying. Complaining on Slashdot is not trying. DDOS and calling in bomb threats is not trying. Take a clue from the President. Organize, start a PAC or even a political party. Educate the public and the pols.
Tell me, did you even bother to join the PAC a slashdot user formed? One dedicated to tech and IP issues? The one that lasted less than a year because no one, even the people on slashdot wouldn't support? No, I didn't think so.
Now, just shut the fuck up because I am sick of hearing all you do-nothing, self-defeating whiners.
If you did vote, you didn't vote for someone who would represent your interests or your interests are so far from mainstream that it didn't matter to the majority of people.
If you didn't vote, you abdicated your civic responsibility and choose instead to bow to the will of others
Either way you have no reason to complain.
Assuming you voted, YOU VOTED FOR THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR THE DMCA. But, if you are like so many people, you didn't even bother to vote so you have no right to complain.
If you think this has reached ammo box stage then you are more than just a fool, you are a dangerous, over-reacting ideologue. Rather than vote with one's wallet and using the ballot box, you would jump to committing murder. That is just insanity. It is the very fundamentalist mindset that powers the violence in the Middle East. Further, most people do not care about the laws you are willing to take up arms to destroy. You would murder to impose your ideals upon others. That makes you a militant oppressor.
Something else to remember, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have sworn oaths to stand against those who would take up arms against the constitutional government of the United States of America and we will stand against you should you try to use force to take over-throw the government.
We, The People, elected the people who made the laws, therefore we had a say in the creation of the laws. If you want to change the laws, elect different people, people who will change the law. And, no one did anything against the wishes of the people. Most people didn't know and don't care what the laws actually say. It may be sad, and you may not like it, but it is the truth.
Then don't use an app that is free and relies on advertising for income.
Good summaries do not offer commentary. Save the commentary for the comments.
Actually, the code is so well tuned, that it is unlikely external agencies would have the information required. It would not surprise me to find out that someone working at an infected plant was the inside man.
I also would not be surprised to find out that the Iranian government wrote it to release on some other nation, say Israel, but it accidentally was released on their own network and they just can't get ahead of it.
I think Iran did it to themselves.
Silly human, people would never have used it if they had to PAY for it because it is on the web. Everyone know that everything on the web is free or should be free.
But, that is not the retail rate of the companies he hit. If you had bothered to read the fucking article you would know that.
The value is determined using the retail price from the place one steals from, not from some random store. If one steals a diamond necklace from Tiffany's which Tiffany's sells for US$1,000.00, it will not matter if Uncle Joe's Discount Jewelery sells the exact same necklace for US$100.00, the value of the diamond necklace used to determine charges and restitution will be US$1,000.00.
Understand it yet, or do you need a more simplistic explanation?
Your little "equations" are fallacies. They do not reflect reality.
The reason the system has a hard time preventing crime inside prisons is because of people like yourself. You cry for the poor criminal. Your ilk thinks criminals stay in prison should be comfortable and they should be able to have all the comforts of home provided by the state.
These are people stealing food because they are starving. These are people who are committing robbery, dealing drugs, etc. because they didn't give a damn about getting an education and won't work at the low wage jobs they can get.
I am curious, do you know any criminals? Have you ever met one socially? I know several, including my step-brother.
Correlation is not causation.
Well, it would be easy to keep prisoners completely safe and off drugs. It would just take actions which you would protest as being a violation of the criminals rights. As for giving prisoners some sort of work, they have an opportunity to work. Many do not wish to do the work because they see it as menial. Those that do accept the work often use it to smuggle in contraband.
You opinion amuses me because it is in line with the way of thinking in the 60s and 70s: soft on crime, soft on punishment. The result was increased crime and increased recidivism. It was based on the idea that criminals have low self-esteem. No one ever examined or tested the proposition, the loud proponents just assumed they were right. When someone finally got around to examining the idea, he found that criminals have such high self-esteem that they are narcissists. And, when those criminals got out, they just went back to committing crimes, both new types and what put them in prison in the first place.
Your opinion is not based in reality. It is, in fact, worthless. Go out and get to know some criminals. What what they say and do. See how almost all of them slide, of their own desire, right back into their old lives of crime as soon as they get out of prison. Then, you can come talk to me about crime and punishment. Most of them aren't afraid of being caught because the U.S. is soft on crime and the odds are against them getting caught soon. And, if they are caught, their is a good chance they will be back on the streets in a few weeks if not sooner.
I know someone who was arrested for grand theft, lying to a pawn broker, and dealing in stolen property while he was on probation for delivering drugs. He was sentenced to less than a year in jail and completing in-jail drug treatment. He got out a few weeks ago and is already working on dealing drugs again. Not because he can't get a job, but because he doesn't want a job. He hasn't even tried to get a job.
Until you can say you know some criminals, please just keep your mouth shut about these things of which you are obviously ignorant.
Besides my personal experiences with criminals, the simple fact that even criminals that do get jobs often return to crime within two years. They often justify the return to crime by stating that the job they had was beneath them. Try researching recidivism and recidivism rates.
He wasn't charged with stealing wholesale minutes. He was charged with stealing retail minutes.
When one steals something from a retailer, one is not charged using the wholesale value the retail store paid for the item. One is charged with the retail value of the item. The same goes for this case. 10 million minutes at $.10 per minute == $1,000,000 in damages to the companies. Depending on to where the calls were made, the time per minute could be considerably higher.
Was that for crimes they committed in the U.S. or for crimes in their native countries? Or, was it like the U.S. sex tourism laws where if one goes to another country to have sex with a minor, one can be charged and convicted in the U.S.?
No, it is not a waste of time. For 10 years that person was prevented from committing other crimes and was imprisoned as punishment for his previous crimes. That is not a waste of time, especially YOUR time unless you are a prison guard or a prisoner.
As far as them getting "a life" after jail, they can get one. Most of them don't want to live a different life once they are on the outside. Most of them just want is to get back to being whatever they were before.
What you fail to understand is that most criminals do not believe the law should apply to them. The law is for other people, not them, so they just ignore the law until they are, in their minds unfairly, imprisoned, and just wait to get out so they can do it all over again.
No, doing both is not stupid. To punish him for his crime, he is confined for 10 years then he is kicked him out of the country. And, he can never enter the U.S. legally, at all, ever. He can not enter and claim asylum. He can't even enter under diplomatic immunity because he will be considered a persona non grata and will be kicked out of the country.
And, odds are he will not come out of prison a "nice guy". Prison rarely turns criminals into law abiding citizens. As a study of imprisoned criminals has shown, criminals have extremely high self-esteem. They literally feel they have done nothing wrong because they do not think the law should apply to them because they are so great.
In other words, it is not the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop.
But, Linux is not gaining any significant ground in Desktop adoption. While Linux may work well for everything YOU use it for, it does not follow that it works well for everything average users want, whether the issue capability, availability, ease of use, or something else.
It seems to me that there should be a large increase in the adoption of Linux by average desktop users in order for it to be "The Year of the Linux Desktop", and I don't see that happening.
The judge found her an innocent infringer, which means the judge believes she didn't understand that what she was doing was illegal. That kicks in USC 17 504.C.2 which states:
The judge gave her the miminum fine for what he determined to be the truth of the case. The $750 is the minimum award for a finding of willful infringement and so his award is not well below anything.
I can't tell if you are serious or being sardonic.