So then how is your proposal applicable to the current situation? Zuckerberg didn't officially condone or sponsor the activity.
I wouldn't expect it to be applicable. I hope the outcome is that Pakistan's laws do not apply to Facebook's IP services, because Facebook's IP address space is not in pakistan.
His employees were following policy and allowed the activity to continue, after a "draw muhammad day" page was posted on Facebook.
I am assuming FB were notified of the offensiveness through the "Report as offensive" link on Facebook, and made aware of the fact that there was a page violating Facebook's policies.
So it was their legal responsibility to know if the page was in violation of local law or take it down (after anyone had taken action to report it to them)
If you allow ignorance of their customers' activities as a defense, your proposal would be impotent. In fact, you'd have pretty much exactly what you have now. "Your Honor, I didn't realize that the purchaser of that assault rifle intended to go on a shooting spree with it... I thought he only intended to display it on his wall..."
That is a fair defense, unless it can be proven the customer indicated something illegal was intended.
OR someone else provided them information that it would be used to facilitate an illegal activity, before the transaction was completed.
And if they send you to the shop telling pirate copies, after the manufacturer of the product notifies the person that particular shop is selling pirated stuff, and politely asks them in writing to stop sending people there?
In that case, could the person still believably claim it was in good faith, and they are innocent?
Unless they're really stupid, they have already sent DMCA letters to all the operators of the sites Google had linked to.
They may also send (possibly) demands, subpoenas, or other requests for download/transfer logs from sites hosting the files.
And slashdotters really might not want to be pulling URLS that appeared in a DMCA letter and downloading the file.
If you got the links from there, it can be assumed you read the letter, and if it ever goes to court, willful infringement is oh so much worse.
And the **AA escapades and suing of individual downloaders never really stopped, by all indications, if anything they outsourced and may be upscaling it
I would assume they do normal cooking, but to boil potatos in sufficient quantities to actually have a useful source of electrical power, will require more fuel to burn for their fire.
Otherwise, they might as well stick with sediment batteries...
Collusion is because they have coordinated the change with a change by their competitor, AT and T.
There is no reason for them to make that particular type of pricing change at this point in time, which makes pricing poorer for the consumer, other than their competitor has just made that same change.
That's what they're doing. It's called "charging by the minute" (or megabyte).
Which is not a normal method of billing a metered internet connection, it is highly irregular. Typically when you buy a connection from an ISP, you and the ISP commit to a certain data rate, the commit, pay this much a month, and the ISP commits to provide you the entire data rate 24/7.
(Or) there actually is a common scenario where the ISP only commits to a certain data rate X hours a day or X days a week.
So an Enterprise might commit to 1M during the daylight hours, and 10M during evenings, for backup operations.
Of course a 24/7 100 megabit committed connection is very expensive, much too expensive for home users. Most small businesses would buy a CIR of say 1 megabit, burstable to 10 megs, or just buy a crappy DSL connection which provides no guaranteed rate ("10 megabit DSL is not a 10 megabit commitment").
Further, if you kicked all those users off your service tomorrow, you wouldn't lose that much money.
That is debatable.
Who are those users?
How many people will they tell about their experience?
How many people will they not refer to you, or tell to avoid your service?
Many of these high bandwidth users are computer savvy folks, computer scientists, and engineers....
How many products will they NOT create that would make your service look more attractive?
How many congressmen will the people you kicked off whine to, and write articulate persusaive letters to demanding more (costly) regulation of the Wireless broadband industry?
The ultimate cost is a bit difficult to quantify.
It makes sense to build better infrastructure so you can keep and retain customers who will buy your services at a profitable rate.
There should be a fair answer that uses technology to make access to your network fair enough for you to avoid kicking anyone off, giving anyone a poor experience, or charging outlandish fees.
You can copyright a form and means of expression of knowledge or ideas.
The structure of a program is often developed along with the source code itself in the form of what programmers commonly call a "design"
For example, in an OO program, you might make a class diagram of the software, with a list of classes, and methods for each class.
This is often part of the normal process of develping software, and some of the basic elements of the structure are often developed first, in that manner.
If that program is GPL, and you take it, and write all the same classes from scratch, and even all the methods from scratch, not re-using any _code_ from the GPL program...
It is still non-literal copying, because the structure of the program is the same.
The actual code in your functions may be completely new, but the choice of how you arranged those functions, and what each function did is substantially similar to the original product.
Anyways, the GPL doesn't apply just to "parts of a program", it applies to packages as a whole, and every part.
If part of the structure of the program was specified by someone who released their work under the GPL, then the entirety of the code and structure they contributed are GPL.
It may even be that code someone wanted to release under less-strict terms, actually cannot legally be released under less-strict terms, due to GPL infringement.
The structure of one part of a program tends to be copied into another part of the program...
this is commonly referred to as "calling a function"
Also, the entire package is the body of a work.
Re-writing parts of it to be functionally equivalent does not change the body of the work.
It is still substantially similar (in the non-literal copying sense), and therefore, infringement to redistribute without a license.
If you make a work based on a GPL work, even if you "rewrote" parts of it, it is still non-literal copying of the work, if the structure of the program is based on the GPL program, which is copyright infringement (unless you obey the GPL license, and distribute the rewritten non-literal copied work under GPL terms.)
Hm... wouldn't we normally call it entrapment if an agent of the government coerces a confession under false pretense, and represents to the defendant they will have rights or protections that they will not?
Yes... just remember it's secret for national security reasons... the familiar cry of the oppressor.
At least in the US, we are not at the stage yet where the military can openly admit that they are beginning an ongoing operation whose objective is to slaughter civillians en masse, and not expect to get an overwhelmingly negative response frmo the public....
If the world you hypothesize were to be made into reality, then nearly every company in the entire world would have to cease operation overnight. No one could make phones or offer phone service because they could be used for drug deals or contract hits or run-of-the-mill blasphemy.
You know, there are other worlds besides ones where the most extreme stance possible is implemented (and that still would cause more companies to follow the law)..
Phone companies aren't liable for customer usage that they are unaware of, to facilitate a crime , and would not be expected to become aware of, because they are a common carrier.
However, if a customer goes to a Phone Co. store that sells cell phones, and tells the employee "I'd like to get a disposable cell phone, so I can make illegal drug deals more easily."
Then if the company has a policy of selling service anyways, and that employee sells that service, then it would discourage crime, for the company's management and that employee to be personally criminally responsible for facilitating the crime.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way... displayed very prominently; note that there is no such prominent notice on Facebook..:)
Well, Facebook has customers in Pakistan, and that is probably enough, for FB to be considered a fugitive.
However, it should probably be noted that Zuckerberg is NOT facebook.
Can you imagine what would happen if CEOs for companies were actually personally criminally responsible for any illegal action anyone at their company committed, or that their company enabled any customer to commit?
If that were true we might have companies actually following the law....
It should probably be noted, that the US has an extradition treaty with Pakistan, the court could in theory demand extradition of Mark Zuckerberg by US authorities, to be turned over to the custody of the court in Pakistan, to face the charges.
I thought the US was the only country that thought it could apply its laws to anyone in the world, even its own citizens when they don't reside in the country.
If Spamhaus were really just a free service, this would not be an issue.
You could need an appliance because DNSBLs alone are not an effective anti-spam measure. You need to supplement with content-based filters, gray listing, SPF, ASPAM, ASSP, pyzor,dcc, vipul's razor, SpamAssassin, or other technologies, to get a high spam rejection rate.
Content-based filters are expensive maintain on your own... expensive as in time consuming for configuration, setup and require specialized expertise to maintain.
They definitely are not maintenance free, most require constant training to remain effective as the type of spam being received changes.
Most individuals and small businesses will want to use an anti-spam appliance or virtual appliance, because a complete anti-spam setup is beyond their ability to configure, or their mail server is Windows-based.
If almost all your employees spend most of their time using computer equipment, then IT has an important job to do for every employee and every department
Basically, IT is directly related to how you do business.
IT picks the software... IT trains the user... IT determines HOW all your employees work.
Before you decide where IT goes, you need to determine what the options are?
Of course, if most of your employees do not rely on computers or IT's say in how they use technology to accomplish jobs, IT will be a much more marginal role.
Especially in technology companies, like software development companies, IT is worthy of its own department, however, whose department head(s) answer directly to the CEO/President.
Next best place for IT would be Operations, Facilities, or Human Resources
I say Human Resources, because IT is technology employees use to do their work.
IT supports humans, enables them to use technology, sets the policies and procedures, and provides support regarding how technology is used by people to do their jobs.
About the only way to be 100% safe is to live in a boat anchored offshore a good distance. Of course, then you'll have to worry about storms, waves, hurricanes, etc.
A well-maintained submarine anchored offshore a good distance would be much safer from waves.
Anchor it somewhere in the arctic region, where there are no hurricanes.
A geologist is not like a BP engineer. Engineers are responsible for their engineering methods. If an engineer uses poorly understood methods, then they are responsible for the results if they let their project proceed.
Geologists do not in general do things that might cause earthquakes.
A geologist is not like a building inspector that you can hire to tell you that your house is safe and has no termites.
Geologists study their earth. Their job is not to do impossible things like make short term predictions about what might happen or not.
It is more like hauling an entomologist into court, because he didn't properly predict that a swarm of termites would arrive in your state.
Or New Orleans government pressing charges against the meteorologist who predicted the storm would take a different path.
Electric companies hauling a heliologist to court, because he didn't predict a massive solar flare on X date.
Or the astronomer who didn't notice a huge meteor and recognize that it would be colliding with earth.
Some things are called acts of God for a reason.....
Even if the scientists had that information, that might have indicated a possibility of an earthquake in someone's opinion, are they really legally obligated to do anything?
If they published something and said it was just a guess -- but caused a panic anyways, and riots and looting, then there was no earthquake, wouldn't they possibly wind up in court because they predicted something that turned out to not happen, and the fear of it happening caused businesses hundreds of thousands of $$$ in damage, at the hands of local citizens?
Slashdot Mirror
So then how is your proposal applicable to the current situation? Zuckerberg didn't officially condone or sponsor the activity.
I wouldn't expect it to be applicable. I hope the outcome is that Pakistan's laws do not apply to Facebook's IP services, because Facebook's IP address space is not in pakistan.
His employees were following policy and allowed the activity to continue, after a "draw muhammad day" page was posted on Facebook.
I am assuming FB were notified of the offensiveness through the "Report as offensive" link on Facebook, and made aware of the fact that there was a page violating Facebook's policies.
So it was their legal responsibility to know if the page was in violation of local law or take it down (after anyone had taken action to report it to them)
If you allow ignorance of their customers' activities as a defense, your proposal would be impotent. In fact, you'd have pretty much exactly what you have now. "Your Honor, I didn't realize that the purchaser of that assault rifle intended to go on a shooting spree with it... I thought he only intended to display it on his wall..."
That is a fair defense, unless it can be proven the customer indicated something illegal was intended.
OR someone else provided them information that it would be used to facilitate an illegal activity, before the transaction was completed.
Careful... putting things in another entity's name could be considered fraudulent conveyance.
Courts can and do unwind transactions that take things out of a person's name, when assets were moved, solely to evade paying a judgement.
Also, whatever entity owns your computer equipment can be liable, for contributory infringement.
Of course for the moment, the RIAA has juicier targets to go after.. stopping file downloaders isn't worth much to them.
It's like the police going after drug users.... dealers are definitely the more important targets.
And if they send you to the shop telling pirate copies, after the manufacturer of the product notifies the person that particular shop is selling pirated stuff, and politely asks them in writing to stop sending people there?
In that case, could the person still believably claim it was in good faith, and they are innocent?
Unless they're really stupid, they have already sent DMCA letters to all the operators of the sites Google had linked to.
They may also send (possibly) demands, subpoenas, or other requests for download/transfer logs from sites hosting the files.
And slashdotters really might not want to be pulling URLS that appeared in a DMCA letter and downloading the file.
If you got the links from there, it can be assumed you read the letter, and if it ever goes to court, willful infringement is oh so much worse.
And the **AA escapades and suing of individual downloaders never really stopped, by all indications, if anything they outsourced and may be upscaling it
Google is providing links to the material through search results, and that's what the letter is demanding be removed.
Google could refuse to remove it, at risk of being targetted for some sort of contributory infringement charges
I would assume they do normal cooking, but to boil potatos in sufficient quantities to actually have a useful source of electrical power, will require more fuel to burn for their fire.
Otherwise, they might as well stick with sediment batteries...
Don't eat potatoes after using them for a battery.
So much for it being a green technology :)
So... more energy efficient... because it takes no energy at all to boil potatos?
Two companies out of the blue decide to suddenly impose a usage charge on a service that used to be free? (Bits of data transfer)
This is not 'price matching'; this is changing conditions of service to create mutually beneficial revenue opportunities for both companies.
And it has been coordinated, as the changes for both companies are announced in close time proximity.
Do you have a reasonably believable explanation for this other than collusion, planning, or orchestration?
Collusion is because they have coordinated the change with a change by their competitor, AT and T.
There is no reason for them to make that particular type of pricing change at this point in time, which makes pricing poorer for the consumer, other than their competitor has just made that same change.
I'm a customer. I have ample reason to decide what we deserve. Or else I'll be taking my business elsewhere.
Or building a competing service....
That's what they're doing. It's called "charging by the minute" (or megabyte).
Which is not a normal method of billing a metered internet connection, it is highly irregular. Typically when you buy a connection from an ISP, you and the ISP commit to a certain data rate, the commit, pay this much a month, and the ISP commits to provide you the entire data rate 24/7.
(Or) there actually is a common scenario where the ISP only commits to a certain data rate X hours a day or X days a week. So an Enterprise might commit to 1M during the daylight hours, and 10M during evenings, for backup operations.
Of course a 24/7 100 megabit committed connection is very expensive, much too expensive for home users. Most small businesses would buy a CIR of say 1 megabit, burstable to 10 megs, or just buy a crappy DSL connection which provides no guaranteed rate ("10 megabit DSL is not a 10 megabit commitment").
Further, if you kicked all those users off your service tomorrow, you wouldn't lose that much money.
That is debatable. Who are those users? How many people will they tell about their experience?
How many people will they not refer to you, or tell to avoid your service?
Many of these high bandwidth users are computer savvy folks, computer scientists, and engineers....
How many products will they NOT create that would make your service look more attractive?
How many congressmen will the people you kicked off whine to, and write articulate persusaive letters to demanding more (costly) regulation of the Wireless broadband industry?
The ultimate cost is a bit difficult to quantify.
It makes sense to build better infrastructure so you can keep and retain customers who will buy your services at a profitable rate.
There should be a fair answer that uses technology to make access to your network fair enough for you to avoid kicking anyone off, giving anyone a poor experience, or charging outlandish fees.
You can copyright a form and means of expression of knowledge or ideas.
The structure of a program is often developed along with the source code itself in the form of what programmers commonly call a "design"
For example, in an OO program, you might make a class diagram of the software, with a list of classes, and methods for each class. This is often part of the normal process of develping software, and some of the basic elements of the structure are often developed first, in that manner.
If that program is GPL, and you take it, and write all the same classes from scratch, and even all the methods from scratch, not re-using any _code_ from the GPL program...
It is still non-literal copying, because the structure of the program is the same.
The actual code in your functions may be completely new, but the choice of how you arranged those functions, and what each function did is substantially similar to the original product.
Anyways, the GPL doesn't apply just to "parts of a program", it applies to packages as a whole, and every part.
If part of the structure of the program was specified by someone who released their work under the GPL, then the entirety of the code and structure they contributed are GPL.
It may even be that code someone wanted to release under less-strict terms, actually cannot legally be released under less-strict terms, due to GPL infringement.
The structure of one part of a program tends to be copied into another part of the program... this is commonly referred to as "calling a function"
Also, the entire package is the body of a work. Re-writing parts of it to be functionally equivalent does not change the body of the work. It is still substantially similar (in the non-literal copying sense), and therefore, infringement to redistribute without a license.
If you make a work based on a GPL work, even if you "rewrote" parts of it, it is still non-literal copying of the work, if the structure of the program is based on the GPL program, which is copyright infringement (unless you obey the GPL license, and distribute the rewritten non-literal copied work under GPL terms.)
Hm... wouldn't we normally call it entrapment if an agent of the government coerces a confession under false pretense, and represents to the defendant they will have rights or protections that they will not?
Yes... just remember it's secret for national security reasons... the familiar cry of the oppressor.
At least in the US, we are not at the stage yet where the military can openly admit that they are beginning an ongoing operation whose objective is to slaughter civillians en masse, and not expect to get an overwhelmingly negative response frmo the public....
If the world you hypothesize were to be made into reality, then nearly every company in the entire world would have to cease operation overnight. No one could make phones or offer phone service because they could be used for drug deals or contract hits or run-of-the-mill blasphemy.
You know, there are other worlds besides ones where the most extreme stance possible is implemented (and that still would cause more companies to follow the law)..
Phone companies aren't liable for customer usage that they are unaware of, to facilitate a crime , and would not be expected to become aware of, because they are a common carrier.
However, if a customer goes to a Phone Co. store that sells cell phones, and tells the employee "I'd like to get a disposable cell phone, so I can make illegal drug deals more easily."
Then if the company has a policy of selling service anyways, and that employee sells that service, then it would discourage crime, for the company's management and that employee to be personally criminally responsible for facilitating the crime.
You forgot the slashdot disclaimer...
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way... displayed very prominently; note that there is no such prominent notice on Facebook.. :)
Well, Facebook has customers in Pakistan, and that is probably enough, for FB to be considered a fugitive.
However, it should probably be noted that Zuckerberg is NOT facebook.
Can you imagine what would happen if CEOs for companies were actually personally criminally responsible for any illegal action anyone at their company committed, or that their company enabled any customer to commit?
If that were true we might have companies actually following the law....
It should probably be noted, that the US has an extradition treaty with Pakistan, the court could in theory demand extradition of Mark Zuckerberg by US authorities, to be turned over to the custody of the court in Pakistan, to face the charges.
I thought the US was the only country that thought it could apply its laws to anyone in the world, even its own citizens when they don't reside in the country.
If Spamhaus were really just a free service, this would not be an issue.
You could need an appliance because DNSBLs alone are not an effective anti-spam measure. You need to supplement with content-based filters, gray listing, SPF, ASPAM, ASSP, pyzor,dcc, vipul's razor, SpamAssassin, or other technologies, to get a high spam rejection rate.
Content-based filters are expensive maintain on your own... expensive as in time consuming for configuration, setup and require specialized expertise to maintain.
They definitely are not maintenance free, most require constant training to remain effective as the type of spam being received changes.
Most individuals and small businesses will want to use an anti-spam appliance or virtual appliance, because a complete anti-spam setup is beyond their ability to configure, or their mail server is Windows-based.
If almost all your employees spend most of their time using computer equipment, then IT has an important job to do for every employee and every department
Basically, IT is directly related to how you do business.
IT picks the software... IT trains the user... IT determines HOW all your employees work.
Before you decide where IT goes, you need to determine what the options are?
Of course, if most of your employees do not rely on computers or IT's say in how they use technology to accomplish jobs, IT will be a much more marginal role.
Especially in technology companies, like software development companies, IT is worthy of its own department, however, whose department head(s) answer directly to the CEO/President.
Next best place for IT would be Operations, Facilities, or Human Resources
I say Human Resources, because IT is technology employees use to do their work. IT supports humans, enables them to use technology, sets the policies and procedures, and provides support regarding how technology is used by people to do their jobs.
About the only way to be 100% safe is to live in a boat anchored offshore a good distance. Of course, then you'll have to worry about storms, waves, hurricanes, etc.
A well-maintained submarine anchored offshore a good distance would be much safer from waves.
Anchor it somewhere in the arctic region, where there are no hurricanes.
A geologist is not like a BP engineer. Engineers are responsible for their engineering methods. If an engineer uses poorly understood methods, then they are responsible for the results if they let their project proceed. Geologists do not in general do things that might cause earthquakes.
A geologist is not like a building inspector that you can hire to tell you that your house is safe and has no termites.
Geologists study their earth. Their job is not to do impossible things like make short term predictions about what might happen or not.
It is more like hauling an entomologist into court, because he didn't properly predict that a swarm of termites would arrive in your state.
Or New Orleans government pressing charges against the meteorologist who predicted the storm would take a different path.
Electric companies hauling a heliologist to court, because he didn't predict a massive solar flare on X date.
Or the astronomer who didn't notice a huge meteor and recognize that it would be colliding with earth.
Some things are called acts of God for a reason.....
Even if the scientists had that information, that might have indicated a possibility of an earthquake in someone's opinion, are they really legally obligated to do anything?
If they published something and said it was just a guess -- but caused a panic anyways, and riots and looting, then there was no earthquake, wouldn't they possibly wind up in court because they predicted something that turned out to not happen, and the fear of it happening caused businesses hundreds of thousands of $$$ in damage, at the hands of local citizens?