Does the ISP get to say to them these are the subscribers who's services where suspended without cause these are the ones that left and here is bill for that lost revenue? does the subscriber get to charge them for hook up fees when they move to a new service or damages when their accounts are suspended?
No, because the only penalty in the DMCA levied against the accuser is for falsely stating who you are. So if I claim that I'm Steven Tyler and you violated "my" copyrights by sharing "my" songs, I could get fined. However, if I claim that you violated copyright on songs that I actually do own the copyright to, I won't be fined even if you never even knew such songs existed - much less downloaded/uploaded them.
This means a rights holder could toss DMCA claims against everyone, demand settlement fees, quickly drop the cases where the user is going to fight back (without any penalty to the rights holder), and collect settlements from the rest. Pure profit!
So the judge is saying that Cox should shut off customers based on repeated allegations? As in, the proof isn't in yet and they've just been accused of something. Why even bother with trials or checking for proof then? Just fire a few dozen DMCA reports against random IP addresses and watch as people get taken offline. No proof required.
If this makes it into precedent/law, how long until many people accuse Rightscorp of copyright violations and take them offline? Or does the "guilty-and-taken-offline-before-proven-innocent" rule only apply if a company is accusing an individual. (To quote Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.")
You'll get no argument from me that the system is in serious need of changes at many levels to protect people from identity theft. Unfortunately, the credit agencies and credit card companies profit off of identity theft (selling people's data, taking in fees from fraudulent purchases and then writing them off if proven to be fraud, etc). They have powerful lobbying groups that will fight any changes that threaten their business - a category which includes increased consumer protections.
SSN is, unfortunately, a big deal. With your SSN, date of birth, and name, anyone can open lines of credit in your name. This includes credit cards, loans, etc. I found this out the hard way when someone opened a credit card in my name after somehow obtaining my name, DOB, SSN, and home address. (I never found out how they got this information and never will.)
I was lucky in that the thieves paid for rush delivery of the card and the card was sent out before their address change request (from my address - needed to open the account - to their address) went through. The card arrived at my house and I was able to close the account and freeze my credit to make sure this didn't happen again. Had the card gone to them, though, they would have run it to its limit (which was more than $5,000) and not paid the bill. I would have found out about it when the collection agencies banged on my door for payment and they wouldn't be likely to take "But I didn't open that account or spend that money" as an excuse for not paying "my" debts.
So threatening that you'll reveal someone's SSN is a very big deal - especially if you link it to their name and DOB.
And if the whole point of Star Wars is family, then why does Amidala die in Episode 3 for no other reason than "boo hoo, Anakin's crossed to the Dark Side"? She's a strong character up to that point but just decides not to live anymore. If Star Wars was about family, then she would have wanted to care for her new babies - or at least live long enough to make sure they were headed to decent homes. Instead, she just decides to die because that's what Lucas' script said for her to do.
There was also a horrible Daredevil movie, but Netflix made a wonderful series based on the character. Here's hoping Lost In Space follows this pattern.
Some of the shows Netflix has made have been hailed as great programming. I personally can't speak for what I haven't seen, but Daredevil was fantastic. I highly doubt that any network TV station could have produced anything of that quality. It would have degenerated into Criminal Of The Week stories, forced pre-commercial cliffhangers, post-commercial recaps, and a story that didn't flow as nicely from episode to episode. Only HBO might have been been able to do Daredevil as well as Netflix did. (Which isn't a coincidence as Netflix wants to have more original programming like HBO does.)
On the comedy/sitcom end, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was funny in a way that I wish more sitcoms were. Again, no commercials meant they didn't need to pause the episode's story to show ads.
This doesn't mean a Netflix produced Lost In Space is guaranteed to be fantastic, but - based on their past successes - it means there's a good chance that it'll be good.
Just choose the right position to hide context from the photo, the right angle for emotional effect or simply ask people to do something or rearrange some objects.
Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: http://filmmakeriq.com/images/calvin-hobbes-cameras-lie/
Also, I'm guilty of this. Taking photos of my boys and carefully making sure the mess of toys isn't in the frame so that our house doesn't look like the mess it is.
"Something must be done! This is something! Therefore, this must be done!"
Also the followup: "You oppose doing this something? Obviously, you don't want to fix this problem at all? Why do you want this problem to remain unfixed?"
Add in a "why do you hate America" if said problem is political in nature.
One only needs to look at the US presidential election to see this in progress. Candidates spout "we'll do something" promises regardless of whether that will actually work (or whether it would even be legal to do) and those candidates' poll numbers increase. They are seen as men of action and people on the other side are criticized for "not doing anything" even if they are doing something, but their action is more measured. Big bold actions get people's attention regardless of effectiveness.
Even in places that aren't crazy (Silicon Valley) and full of kids in startups, you have the expectation of working the occasional "crunch time" or odd hours. That's even something we were told to expect in college (in the midwest).
Growing up, I saw my father work 10 hour days, come home with a stack of work, dial into the office, and work another 4 hours. Then, on the weekends, he'd bring more work home and work hours upon hours. He wasn't getting paid more but was doing a lot of off-hours work on a daily basis. I asked him why he did all this work and his reply was that he had to because his boss expected this level of output from him.
When I entered the workforce, I made it clear that this wouldn't be me. When I left work, work got left behind. I didn't mind the occasional "log in from home because a system went down" or "work a couple extra hours to push a project over the line" but this was to be the exception rather than the rule. When I was home, that was family time, not do-more-work-without-extra-payment time.
My father has since retired and has said that all of that extra time he worked was time wasted because he could have been spending time with his family instead of getting a few more pages entered into the computer.
I meant things like learning disabilities, dyslexia, autism, and other issues that would require an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). These children require extra resources per student than for students who don't need assistance for day to day activities. This doesn't mean they can't excel, just that they need help overcoming various challenges. Charter schools (at least the ones in my area) frequently deny kids like this access because they are focused on bringing money in per student, not spending money helping the students. Students who require more resources/money aren't as profitable and are offloaded to the public schools.
At one point, we considered moving our son to a private school. It turned out that the school would have cost us $16,000 a year per child. (We have two children.) They offered financial breaks but we heard from multiple people that taking these meant opening up all of your spending to the school for them to scrutinize. (e.g. "Why did you take this one annual family vacation during summer break when you could have paid us more money?") It was way too expensive for us so we stuck with public schools. Since then, we have increased our advocacy to help public schools against politicians who seem hell-bent on closing all public schools and funneling money to their corporate donors (testing companies, charter schools, etc.).
And with the Charter schools it becomes a vicious cycle.
1. Charter school takes public school money. 2. Charter school only takes in "good" students (e.g. not kids with low grades or with difficulties that would require extra assistance). 3. Students with "difficulties" are left in the public schools who have less money to help them. 4. Charter schools get better test scores than public schools. (Since they get to pick and choose not only what students they take but what test results they publish.) 5. Businesses that run charter schools profit and donate money to politicians. 6. Politicians call for more charter schools and to close public schools. 7. Repeat 1 - 6.
Unfortunately, we're seeing this in action in NY and it's not pretty.
Regrettably, for many who are in power they do not acknowledge this inevitability and the closer things approach such a turning point the more they grasp for additional power in the belief that they can secure themselves from repercussion.
And this is where you start seeing things like calling people terrorists or traitors for exposing the problems in the system. Because people who speak out against those in power might hinder those in power from getting more power. They might even cause those in power to have LESS power. Obviously (to those in power) this cannot be allowed so laws are crafted to criminalize this. It might start slowly with armed resistance (something which is already illegal for much better reasons than "we need it to be so to maintain our power") and then slowly expands into "talked about our programs which we wanted to keep secret." If those in power had their wildest dreams come true, merely expressing disagreement with those in power would be illegal.
NOTE: This doesn't just apply to government officials. The same could be said of companies who attain great power in their markets. For example, Cable ISPs (who have monopoly powers in most markets in the US) using every trick they can to prevent online streaming from causing too much cord cutting. In the case of companies, you just add another layer where the "in power" company uses lobbyists (and other methods) in order to make sure laws are written in their favor.
Especially in the light of the recent bombings in Paris it's tempting to react emotionally, but I think I'll stand with "rather let ten guilty people go than one innocent one be jailed".
Reacting emotionally is what people in power count on. Something bad happens (or threatens to happen) and those in power are all too eager to "help protect us" by increasing their powers. After all, when the threat passes, they'll give up the powers, right? Of course, they'll keep manufacturing threats if real ones don't exist or make minor threats seem like major ones. Anything to keep their powers for a little longer. And if they have their powers long enough, it will seem only natural for them to have these powers and nobody will resist. In fact, if they need a little more power to deal with this new threat, that's not a problem, right?
Law Enforcement Agencies: But getting a warrant is HAAAARD! It takes time! And it's so limiting versus just doing whatever we want to do! If you don't let us just do whatever we want to whomever we want, the terrorists win!!!!!
(Sadly, this is pretty much law enforcement agencies' actual argument.)
No, Australia was founded by criminals. The USA was founded by people sick of being persecuted for their religious beliefs - who then turned around and persecuted people for their religious beliefs once they got some power.
No. Not everything is attributable to global warming. However, the mere presence of snow in one place at one time doesn't disprove global warming. If it did, then I could prove that nobody is starving in the world because I'm feeling full right now.
You could have edit functionality available for a limited time. So you hit publish too quickly and see you made a mistake. Don't worry, you have 15 minutes or so to make edits before your comment becomes permanent. Also, all edited comments should contain a visible indicator of when it was edited.
Would some people use this to post inflammatory comments and then delete them/act like it never happened? Sure. All new features will wind up being abused in some way, though. (Case in point: Moderation used to mark people who disagree with you as trolls.) That doesn't mean you don't add a new feature. It just means you put checks in place to prevent the most common abuse scenarios.
The former wasn't a terrorist taking over the plane. It was a co-pilot who locked the pilot out and flew the plane into a mountain. You could argue that better procedures should be in place to ensure that one person isn't locked in the cabin by themselves at any given point - and you would be right. However, this doesn't disprove that a group of terrorists who are trying to take over the plane from the passenger area won't be able to do this thanks to locked cabin doors.
As for the latter, I don't know enough about the details of the Paris attack to know how long the executed people had to plan or whether they knew for certain that they would die if they did nothing. From the reports I heard, it was more "march in and shoot everyone on sight" than "line everyone up, tell them they're going to die, and then shoot."
Also, our security will never be at 100%. Bad things will happen. We can prevent most of them with some simple security measures, but you will never prevent ALL of them unless you also give up all of our freedom. In addition, governments (not to mention the corporations that make money off of "security") will often push for more powers/invasive technology to "increase our security" when it doesn't do this at all. It's security theater designed to make it seem like they're doing something, satisfy the appetites of power-hungry politicians, and line the pockets of corporate campaign donors.
I place credit for the lack of planes hitting skyscrapers in the US post-911 on two things:
1) Locked cabin doors - With these, it's next to impossible for a terrorist to simply walk into the cabin and take over.
2) Changed passenger attitudes - Pre-911 a hijacking meant you sat down, stayed quiet, and were flown to Cuba for a bit before being released. It was stressful and inconvenient, but if you played along you'd get out just fine. The 911 attacks changed this and meant that "this is a hijacking" now meant "you're all going to die." People who are going to die if they do nothing have nothing to lose and will act even if those actions don't raise their survival odds much. For example, Flight 93. The passengers aboard that plane found out what was going on and took action. They didn't survive, but they showed that passengers aren't simple hostages anymore.
If we were to rewind everything to pre-911 levels apart from those two items, we would still be protected against a "plane takeover" terrorist attack.
Well, in the minds of the British Conservatives the best way to defend our freedom is and always will be to strengthen the police state.
I always liken this to a collector who obsessively keeps a prize in a box, behind protective glass, in a room with special lights, etc. - all designed to keep their collection in mint condition. These people want to "protect our freedoms" by locking them away so nobody can touch them as if this will "keep them in mint condition." The thing is, though, freedoms aren't comic books or toys. When we "play" with our freedoms, they don't get worn out and less valuable, they strengthen and get more valuable.
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No, because the only penalty in the DMCA levied against the accuser is for falsely stating who you are. So if I claim that I'm Steven Tyler and you violated "my" copyrights by sharing "my" songs, I could get fined. However, if I claim that you violated copyright on songs that I actually do own the copyright to, I won't be fined even if you never even knew such songs existed - much less downloaded/uploaded them.
This means a rights holder could toss DMCA claims against everyone, demand settlement fees, quickly drop the cases where the user is going to fight back (without any penalty to the rights holder), and collect settlements from the rest. Pure profit!
So the judge is saying that Cox should shut off customers based on repeated allegations? As in, the proof isn't in yet and they've just been accused of something. Why even bother with trials or checking for proof then? Just fire a few dozen DMCA reports against random IP addresses and watch as people get taken offline. No proof required.
If this makes it into precedent/law, how long until many people accuse Rightscorp of copyright violations and take them offline? Or does the "guilty-and-taken-offline-before-proven-innocent" rule only apply if a company is accusing an individual. (To quote Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.")
You'll get no argument from me that the system is in serious need of changes at many levels to protect people from identity theft. Unfortunately, the credit agencies and credit card companies profit off of identity theft (selling people's data, taking in fees from fraudulent purchases and then writing them off if proven to be fraud, etc). They have powerful lobbying groups that will fight any changes that threaten their business - a category which includes increased consumer protections.
SSN is, unfortunately, a big deal. With your SSN, date of birth, and name, anyone can open lines of credit in your name. This includes credit cards, loans, etc. I found this out the hard way when someone opened a credit card in my name after somehow obtaining my name, DOB, SSN, and home address. (I never found out how they got this information and never will.)
I was lucky in that the thieves paid for rush delivery of the card and the card was sent out before their address change request (from my address - needed to open the account - to their address) went through. The card arrived at my house and I was able to close the account and freeze my credit to make sure this didn't happen again. Had the card gone to them, though, they would have run it to its limit (which was more than $5,000) and not paid the bill. I would have found out about it when the collection agencies banged on my door for payment and they wouldn't be likely to take "But I didn't open that account or spend that money" as an excuse for not paying "my" debts.
So threatening that you'll reveal someone's SSN is a very big deal - especially if you link it to their name and DOB.
And if the whole point of Star Wars is family, then why does Amidala die in Episode 3 for no other reason than "boo hoo, Anakin's crossed to the Dark Side"? She's a strong character up to that point but just decides not to live anymore. If Star Wars was about family, then she would have wanted to care for her new babies - or at least live long enough to make sure they were headed to decent homes. Instead, she just decides to die because that's what Lucas' script said for her to do.
There was also a horrible Daredevil movie, but Netflix made a wonderful series based on the character. Here's hoping Lost In Space follows this pattern.
Some of the shows Netflix has made have been hailed as great programming. I personally can't speak for what I haven't seen, but Daredevil was fantastic. I highly doubt that any network TV station could have produced anything of that quality. It would have degenerated into Criminal Of The Week stories, forced pre-commercial cliffhangers, post-commercial recaps, and a story that didn't flow as nicely from episode to episode. Only HBO might have been been able to do Daredevil as well as Netflix did. (Which isn't a coincidence as Netflix wants to have more original programming like HBO does.)
On the comedy/sitcom end, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was funny in a way that I wish more sitcoms were. Again, no commercials meant they didn't need to pause the episode's story to show ads.
This doesn't mean a Netflix produced Lost In Space is guaranteed to be fantastic, but - based on their past successes - it means there's a good chance that it'll be good.
Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: http://filmmakeriq.com/images/calvin-hobbes-cameras-lie/
Also, I'm guilty of this. Taking photos of my boys and carefully making sure the mess of toys isn't in the frame so that our house doesn't look like the mess it is.
Also the followup: "You oppose doing this something? Obviously, you don't want to fix this problem at all? Why do you want this problem to remain unfixed?"
Add in a "why do you hate America" if said problem is political in nature.
One only needs to look at the US presidential election to see this in progress. Candidates spout "we'll do something" promises regardless of whether that will actually work (or whether it would even be legal to do) and those candidates' poll numbers increase. They are seen as men of action and people on the other side are criticized for "not doing anything" even if they are doing something, but their action is more measured. Big bold actions get people's attention regardless of effectiveness.
Growing up, I saw my father work 10 hour days, come home with a stack of work, dial into the office, and work another 4 hours. Then, on the weekends, he'd bring more work home and work hours upon hours. He wasn't getting paid more but was doing a lot of off-hours work on a daily basis. I asked him why he did all this work and his reply was that he had to because his boss expected this level of output from him.
When I entered the workforce, I made it clear that this wouldn't be me. When I left work, work got left behind. I didn't mind the occasional "log in from home because a system went down" or "work a couple extra hours to push a project over the line" but this was to be the exception rather than the rule. When I was home, that was family time, not do-more-work-without-extra-payment time.
My father has since retired and has said that all of that extra time he worked was time wasted because he could have been spending time with his family instead of getting a few more pages entered into the computer.
I meant things like learning disabilities, dyslexia, autism, and other issues that would require an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). These children require extra resources per student than for students who don't need assistance for day to day activities. This doesn't mean they can't excel, just that they need help overcoming various challenges. Charter schools (at least the ones in my area) frequently deny kids like this access because they are focused on bringing money in per student, not spending money helping the students. Students who require more resources/money aren't as profitable and are offloaded to the public schools.
At one point, we considered moving our son to a private school. It turned out that the school would have cost us $16,000 a year per child. (We have two children.) They offered financial breaks but we heard from multiple people that taking these meant opening up all of your spending to the school for them to scrutinize. (e.g. "Why did you take this one annual family vacation during summer break when you could have paid us more money?") It was way too expensive for us so we stuck with public schools. Since then, we have increased our advocacy to help public schools against politicians who seem hell-bent on closing all public schools and funneling money to their corporate donors (testing companies, charter schools, etc.).
And with the Charter schools it becomes a vicious cycle.
1. Charter school takes public school money.
2. Charter school only takes in "good" students (e.g. not kids with low grades or with difficulties that would require extra assistance).
3. Students with "difficulties" are left in the public schools who have less money to help them.
4. Charter schools get better test scores than public schools. (Since they get to pick and choose not only what students they take but what test results they publish.)
5. Businesses that run charter schools profit and donate money to politicians.
6. Politicians call for more charter schools and to close public schools.
7. Repeat 1 - 6.
Unfortunately, we're seeing this in action in NY and it's not pretty.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
And this is where you start seeing things like calling people terrorists or traitors for exposing the problems in the system. Because people who speak out against those in power might hinder those in power from getting more power. They might even cause those in power to have LESS power. Obviously (to those in power) this cannot be allowed so laws are crafted to criminalize this. It might start slowly with armed resistance (something which is already illegal for much better reasons than "we need it to be so to maintain our power") and then slowly expands into "talked about our programs which we wanted to keep secret." If those in power had their wildest dreams come true, merely expressing disagreement with those in power would be illegal.
NOTE: This doesn't just apply to government officials. The same could be said of companies who attain great power in their markets. For example, Cable ISPs (who have monopoly powers in most markets in the US) using every trick they can to prevent online streaming from causing too much cord cutting. In the case of companies, you just add another layer where the "in power" company uses lobbyists (and other methods) in order to make sure laws are written in their favor.
Reacting emotionally is what people in power count on. Something bad happens (or threatens to happen) and those in power are all too eager to "help protect us" by increasing their powers. After all, when the threat passes, they'll give up the powers, right? Of course, they'll keep manufacturing threats if real ones don't exist or make minor threats seem like major ones. Anything to keep their powers for a little longer. And if they have their powers long enough, it will seem only natural for them to have these powers and nobody will resist. In fact, if they need a little more power to deal with this new threat, that's not a problem, right?
Law Enforcement Agencies: But getting a warrant is HAAAARD! It takes time! And it's so limiting versus just doing whatever we want to do! If you don't let us just do whatever we want to whomever we want, the terrorists win!!!!!
(Sadly, this is pretty much law enforcement agencies' actual argument.)
No, Australia was founded by criminals. The USA was founded by people sick of being persecuted for their religious beliefs - who then turned around and persecuted people for their religious beliefs once they got some power.
If only we could make it work like this.
No. Not everything is attributable to global warming. However, the mere presence of snow in one place at one time doesn't disprove global warming. If it did, then I could prove that nobody is starving in the world because I'm feeling full right now.
You could have edit functionality available for a limited time. So you hit publish too quickly and see you made a mistake. Don't worry, you have 15 minutes or so to make edits before your comment becomes permanent. Also, all edited comments should contain a visible indicator of when it was edited.
Would some people use this to post inflammatory comments and then delete them/act like it never happened? Sure. All new features will wind up being abused in some way, though. (Case in point: Moderation used to mark people who disagree with you as trolls.) That doesn't mean you don't add a new feature. It just means you put checks in place to prevent the most common abuse scenarios.
The former wasn't a terrorist taking over the plane. It was a co-pilot who locked the pilot out and flew the plane into a mountain. You could argue that better procedures should be in place to ensure that one person isn't locked in the cabin by themselves at any given point - and you would be right. However, this doesn't disprove that a group of terrorists who are trying to take over the plane from the passenger area won't be able to do this thanks to locked cabin doors.
As for the latter, I don't know enough about the details of the Paris attack to know how long the executed people had to plan or whether they knew for certain that they would die if they did nothing. From the reports I heard, it was more "march in and shoot everyone on sight" than "line everyone up, tell them they're going to die, and then shoot."
Also, our security will never be at 100%. Bad things will happen. We can prevent most of them with some simple security measures, but you will never prevent ALL of them unless you also give up all of our freedom. In addition, governments (not to mention the corporations that make money off of "security") will often push for more powers/invasive technology to "increase our security" when it doesn't do this at all. It's security theater designed to make it seem like they're doing something, satisfy the appetites of power-hungry politicians, and line the pockets of corporate campaign donors.
I place credit for the lack of planes hitting skyscrapers in the US post-911 on two things:
1) Locked cabin doors - With these, it's next to impossible for a terrorist to simply walk into the cabin and take over.
2) Changed passenger attitudes - Pre-911 a hijacking meant you sat down, stayed quiet, and were flown to Cuba for a bit before being released. It was stressful and inconvenient, but if you played along you'd get out just fine. The 911 attacks changed this and meant that "this is a hijacking" now meant "you're all going to die." People who are going to die if they do nothing have nothing to lose and will act even if those actions don't raise their survival odds much. For example, Flight 93. The passengers aboard that plane found out what was going on and took action. They didn't survive, but they showed that passengers aren't simple hostages anymore.
If we were to rewind everything to pre-911 levels apart from those two items, we would still be protected against a "plane takeover" terrorist attack.
I always liken this to a collector who obsessively keeps a prize in a box, behind protective glass, in a room with special lights, etc. - all designed to keep their collection in mint condition. These people want to "protect our freedoms" by locking them away so nobody can touch them as if this will "keep them in mint condition." The thing is, though, freedoms aren't comic books or toys. When we "play" with our freedoms, they don't get worn out and less valuable, they strengthen and get more valuable.