Anytime they change your contract, you can opt out without any penalties what-so-ever. It's the law.
Without any penalties whatsoever?
Of course having to change provider may be penalty enough in some areas, but let's say you the contract involves a bundle.. i.e. you get Phone X together with Plan Y for the special price of $N/month with a commitment to 2 years. Say they change it after just 6 months. You can cancel - but do you get to keep the phone? Usually not - so wouldn't that also be a penalty? (having to get a new one, re-configure it, etc.)
Yes, you may not have to pay an ETF - but to say it's "without any penalties what-so-ever" is a bit much.
( I guess the product in this particular story is not usually sold bundled, especially not for the devices affected. )
I'm just voicing the more common pirates here - the content of that post is not my own opinion;)
More specifically, it is the voice of the more common pirate in The Netherlands.
Keep in mind that people in The Netherlands still think that a service like Netflix being available in The Netherlands would practically wipe out piracy of TV shows and movies the same way that Spotify has done for piracy of songs. Except that they think that Netflix is like having the entire IMDB catalog on offer, and seem to miss the massive piracy of albums that still goes on - Spotify or no Spotify.
No doubt piracy has been reduced due to those offerings (in the U.S. and various EU countries respectively), but nowhere near the level of 'wipe out':)
My own opinion - should you ever come back to read it - is that a middle ground needs to be reached but that neither 'side' is particularly willing to make steps closer to that middle ground. Just as an example.. I don't think a downloadable movie should cost the exact same as e.g. the DVD. It's much cheaper to distribute and additionally the DVD will likely contain bonus features that a download is going to miss out on. However I also don't think that it should cost just $3 if it's a new release. If it's old as dirt, then maybe... but that's by the argument that old-as-dirt movies in brick-and-mortar stores can be as low as $3 or even lower because they need to get rid of that stock and sending it back will actually cost them more in administration/etc. Given that digital downloads never have to suffer from that phenomenon, that justification may not fly leading to minimum movie prices of, say, $5 even for older movies. In the U.S. the situation is even more complicated of course, with $1 Red Box movies.. but that does come with the 'hassle' of limited choice, checking out, having to return it, etc. All in all it's a complex matter and I'm certainly not the best-informed on either 'side' to negotiate... but I sure wish the people who are would.
Sorry, I might not have been entirely clear on that. The portal is just to log in (so you have an account), browse the catalog, and make your purchases. The material would still be downloaded, DRM-free, etc. thus satisfying the 'where' in terms or where you want to play the file. If the 'where' becomes "where I can acquire it" then there's additional demands to be made.. like kiosks (replacing the redbox ones, perhaps), offerings in video rental places, etc.
The only problem is - it has never actually been tested as far as damages go. Esperance's 'littering' claim (of Skylab pieces falling on a bit of Australia) was cute but more as part of marketing than a serious claim.
Still, one could invoke that, rather than suing from the get-go.
I'm pretty sure KickStarter really kickstarted with indie movies, music, etc. In fact, they are still the main projects on KickStarter (and similar sites, like indiegogo).
What's really 'kickstarting' KickStarter a second time, at least when it comes to tech, is the iDevice.
There's two areas for technology, the Tech section: www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/popular
And the Design section, which is vastly more tech than design: www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/design/popular
1 in 5 of the projects in either section section are iDevice-oriented - this includes, for example, the 'Sacred Grounds' smartphone app, by which they really mean iOS app and "they hope" to make an Android version as well.
For the Design section this of course makes sense.. the iPhone and iPad give a narrow target with lots of users so you're far more likely to gain success with e.g. a stand or enclosure there than you could when designing for any single random Android, BB, WP7 or whatever device.
Now I'm all for cable management solutions, even if there's dozens available in the world that doesn't mean we can't have one more. But the additional quality of this cable management is that it can double as a stand for an iPad, the project summary (as seen in widgets etc.) notes:
Cable.Gone hides the usual clutter and instantly turns your desk into a stylish working space. It can be also used as an iPad stand.
Yes.. then again, it could be used as any tablet stand. It could be used as a laptop stand. Similarly, a two-by-four could also be used as an iPad stand.
So why point out the iPad? Marketing, of course. And not just to end-users, but to KickStarter as well. I've more than once joked to people who are doing innovative tech that if they want to get listed on KickStarter, they should mention an iDevice in some way to increase their odds. With 1 in 5 projects being iDevice-exclusive or iDevice-targeting in those two sections, I'm not sure I should be treating it as just a joke anymore.
A bit more on-topic.. 'open hardware' is indeed a large portion of the other 4 in 5 projects in those sections - sometimes from the get-go, sometimes after deliberations and popular demand (such as with the HexBright Flex flashlight). 'open software' however lags behind quite a bit with most projects going nowhere fast. In part that's because those projects tend to be vague, and in part it's because there's often no visible ROI. With an indie movie, you get some exclusive images, a downloadable copy, perhaps even the DVD. With hardware you might get a kit to build it yourself, or a pre-assembled thing, or maybe you just get to see that a website that ends up selling the completed products was indeed launched and you get a sticker (hey, whatever you pledge for - it's not a bazaar after all, it's more like an investment round.. rewards are just for enticement). But with software, especially open source software.. what people, or the market, get is often unclear. E.g. TweetFree: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1100820943/tweetfree-secure-distributed-social-networking-pla?ref=category
Your generous donation will be used to fund continued development of TweetFree, to purchase support contracts for open source software we use and need support on, and to purchase hardware (computers) to run new relay and network servers from.
So in essence, any funding goes into a black box never to be seen, or accounted for, again, if the blurbs are the only thing to go by. And this for a service that vaguely de
Give us what we want, when we want it, and where we want it.
Okay... what - Everything! when - Now! where - Everywhere!
Very well. That will be $15/movie, $2.50/episode of a series and $1.99/song, you can log into our media portal and pay via credit card and paypal.
Not acceptable, right?
That's because you forgot two... price - Preferably free, but we're not unreasonable pirates - $2.50 for a movie, $0.50/episode of a series and $0.02/song (think of it as promotion, we'll be more likely to go see live concerts and buy merchandise - honest!) how - Nothing against portals, but we're not too keen on you lot having all of our data and you'd just be doing it wrong anyway by trying to shove crap at us instead of the content we want. So instead, allow anonymous public downloads from an open searchable system (interfacing with imdb and the like would be grand, thanks) and use payment processors to allow anonymous payments for the service. Yes, that does sound like an honor system - why do you ask? Do we not seem like honorable pirates?
Probably for the built-in USB module? Compatibility with Arduino libraries is not all that important for this device and those who would want to hack away at it.
The "industry" has been trying to shove 3D down our throats for at least 2 generations - give it up already.
Leaving aside here that what's discussed in the article is not the 3D you appear to be complaining about (though it, too, is no panacea.. viewing angles are too limited for its purpose, imho)... the industry hasn't been trying to shove much of anything. Most content is still 2D and aside from directors who decide to thrust every pointing object at the viewer every 3D movie works just fine in 2D as well. Sanctum, for example, was gorgeous in 3D but it's still quite nice in 2D (visually, that is, movie-wise it's quite 'meh' - but it would have been that if 2D from the get-go and would have been if presented as a book.). In addition, the current push is in many ways very different from earlier attempts simply due to changes in technology.
I'm not saying there aren't many aspects of it that suck (I feel sorry for those who get splitting headaches and count myself lucky that I'm not among them), but you can't really lump the anaglyph of old in with the polarized / glasses-free variants.
What the article is in part talking about is what a lot of people have been saying for years now.
People say if you don't want facebook to know anything about you, then you shouldn't post there. So others reply that it doesn't matter that you didn't give the data to facebook, one of your friends might.
So now the statement is that if you don't want facebook to know anything about you, then you shouldn't tell your friends, colleagues, etc. anything - after all, they may enter it on facebook.
But this still makes the presumption that you actually gave that information, knowingly and willingly, to that person - and that it it's reasonable to assume that facebook will then collect it as well.
Let's say you went to Slashdot High. So did some other person. That other person tells facebook to look for MikeB0Lton who attended Slashdot High. Now facebook has a reasonable assumption that you went to Slashdot High. You didn't give facebook that data. And you didn't really give that data to that person - it's just information that accumulates simply by existing. You could fo for a "well you could have chosen to be homeschooled" sort of retort, but setting aside that most people here went to highschool long before facebook even existed, that's of course asking for ridiculous steps to take just to prevent anybody from collecting data about you.
Now obviously pandora's box on this was opened a very long time ago and there's really no way that it'll ever change. Even if facebook were to be forced to kill all collected data beyond that required for direct facebook operations, there's plenty of companies and shady organizations who are not targeted and who will gladly not even bother with waiting for users to provide the data and instead crawl sites and official records for it.
But the suggestion that facebook only has data on you because you gave it to them - and now that it has it because you gave it to somebody else - seems to be putting some level of blame with people when really they needn't even do/say anything.
I, too, agree that Samsung (and others) are copying Apple in some ways more than others.
The questions are...
1. Is that a bad thing? For the end-users, I would say it isn't.
For Apple, I would say it isn't either. Nobody's going to walk around with Device X that may look like e.g. an iPhone and claim it's an iPhone - that would just make them posers. Without the claim, if you were to see such a Device X and think "ooh! iPhone sure seems popular!", I can't see how that would hurt Apple either, except from the anti-popular-things crowd. No store is going to put the Device X in their shop and then try to suggest it's an iPhone either. The people who buy a Device X, in short, buy it not because it's "just like an iPhone", but in part because it's [i]not[/i] an iPhone.. either in design details or in operating system or.. etc. Whatever the reason, it was reason enough not to just get the iPhone.
Now it may be a matter of principle, and that's all fine and dandy and they're in their right to defend that principle.
But if Apple are essentially just saying "you can't make a device that copies ours because with those copied elements your device is better than ours - please stick to crappy design elements so that our device is the only one the majority of people could reasonably want, thanks"... well, that's just sad.
2. At what point does the copying become something different? What I mean by that is this... you already point out that obviously it's not [i]just[/i] about having a rectangle with rounded corners, it's the complete package.
But presumably just doing a single thing different wouldn't break enough from that 'complete package' to get the case dropped.
I.e. if they dropped the 'the color gray appears as a rectangle at the front, center of the screen' and instead went with a bluish one, I'm going to guess that would not get them off the hook. I'm going to guess that if it was actually a shape with two curved edges going across the screen that it would also not be enough. Maybe the combination of curved shape + blue would be enough... but only for that single point. It would leave all the others. The problem with 'all the others' is that they're pretty generic. ( Mind you, even that rectangle is pretty generic if they're literally referring to the screen itself. Making the screen 'blue' would mean nothing less than tinting the LCD thus giving everything a bluish cast. Really now? I was half hoping they meant the grey rectangle used for the bottom set of icons, which could indeed be designed in a billion ways not 'copying' Apple.. but they specifically list that separately and as being 'silver' so perhaps the "[the screen]" is indeed meant literally. )
Yes, the older comparison model shows a completely different design direction that doesn't appear to copy most of the points made. But it still copies 4 of the 15 points. Is [i]that[/i] enough, then? Let's assume, just for kicks, 'yes' here. Now let's add one thing back in - colored icons. The black/white design is nice for those who like it, but most people are going to want colored icons these days. Putting aside the 'icon design' issues, the device would now find itself 'copying' the fact that it may use 'black, blue, brown, brown-gray (and a host of other colors) as part of its design. It would also make it vastly more appealing to the masses. So would it now be a target of litigation again?
Looks like the camera images have a fair bit of overlap - they could probably assign at least a low/high exposure patterning that would give additional exposure data beyond whatever the sensors can provide (I presume they used consumer sensors at 10bit at best but probably already coming out processed to 8bit).
Dude should have contacted Apple as soon as he knew what he had, and told them what happened.
why? Keep in mind that this was an old prototype from years ago. Not a prototype of a model not yet released (like the case in TFA). I have several prototype things, ebay is also full of them. There isn't a law saying you can't own or sell prototype things. There may have been such a stipulation in an agreement between Apple and the original Seller (or whoever they got it from) but that's something Dude couldn't possibly know.
He also couldn't have suspected the Seller of being a fence (and I'm not saying Seller was) as it wasn't being sold in a shady way or well below market price. In fact, Dude didn't know what it exactly was at the time of purchase.
Dude chose to be a doofas and attempts to cash in.
No actually he repaired it, because that's what he does. He chronicles this, and it's reported on several mac-centric sites. He doesn't really want to keep it, so he sells it on, himself, on Craigslist. He gets a few hundred dollars for it. That could well have been the end of the story right there if not for the fact that the Buyer took the thing to an Apple Store who then stated that it's not an Apple product. Yes, later on, once he learns it may have some value to collectors, he puts it up on e-bay. However he only expected to get maybe $2000 - never in a million years would he have thought it'd go up to $70k.
He wasn't trying to 'cash in'.
Dude is an insignificant individual, bought something that wasn't legally for sale,
Matter of contention and certainly wouldn't have been known to him.
and was clearly going to be crushed by the biggest and most secretive IT company on the planet.
Except that he wasn't, not even after the ebay listing got pulled. Only once Apple heard from cnet did they start taking a closer look.
Dude gets a lesson in life.
Apple don't miss his fanboyism or loss of his purchases.
Dude sees an old MacBook Pro on Craigslist listed by Seller as broken. Dude buys it thinking maybe he can fix it. Dude does indeed fix it, requiring reflowing of parts, adding parts (ram, HDD, etc.), chronicles it at Anandech, noting that it seems to be no ordinary MBP. http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2165252&highlight=macbook+antenna - Prototype Macbook Pro with 3G: In my shop now!
Buyer sues Dude, wins (in part based on Apple Store findings), Dude is out moneys. Dude thinks 'wtf', though, and takes a closer look at the MacBook Pro, asking around on forums. Dude learns that the red motherboard implies it's a prototype. Weeks pass and Dude does what anybody who isn't a fanboy would do - puts it up for sale on e-bay. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20092180-248/3g-equipped-macbook-prototype-pops-up-on-ebay/ - 3G-equipped MacBook prototype pops up on eBay
e-bay bids go up to $70k, listing is pulled due to request from Apple. Dude then hears nothing, sits around waiting for some manner of official explanation for days on end. CNet, however, now wants to know what happened, so arrange an interview, in which they of course also call Apple.
Dude gets call - Apple wants their hardware back and they can have somebody stop by Dude's private residence that evening. Dude says 'I think not, my lawyer will be in touch'.
Lawyer says Apple have no case. Lawyer and Apple chit chat. Lawyer says having no case matters shit all when you're Apple, so give up or incur huge costs.
Apple thus sends over a PI to pick up Prototype MBP. Dude hands over the MBP. Dude then sits around again wondering wtf just happened while waiting to see if he gets compensated in any way at all. Apple does nothing. Dude then petitions to Apple to get his shit back. Apple says nothing, but does send an unmarked FedEx box with parts back. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20117512-248/prototype-3g-macbook-buyer-gets-parts-back - Prototype 3G MacBook buyer gets parts back
Dude now left with little option but either go "oh well", or sue the original Seller for incurred costs. Seller however says he received the MBP in earnest.
It would have been nice of Apple if they had arranged an exchange for a shiny new MBP and cover Dude's costs, as there's no reason to believe that this prototype was stolen and - as of the latest reports - Apple never filed it as such either.
The 'best' part? Being on IRC, watching a guy go from not being a fanboy but certainly an admirer of Apple, to being completely disenchanted.
The main problem with filters is that they act when the mail is received, not after it's read. So you have to go into umpteen different folders to read your mail.
That's a mail client shortcoming. If using Thunderbird, just set up a search folder for all unread mail - there you go.
That may be the point of the article - but my point was that this is not what the headline reflects, thus being more likely to invite flamewars:) For reference, see other replies to your comment;)
The problem is that unless the sorting mechanism is perfect you can wind up in the situation where you never see an email and don't know that it's even arrived.
Wouldn't your mail client indicate that you have N unread e-mails (sometimes configurable to only show those N from up to M days ago) in the folder it was sorted to? Pretty hard to miss.
I do think the researchers' claim is a bit silly, but your concern is tangential with another..
The researchers checked two groups: 1. Those who simply let the computer search their entire inbox (be that with or without sorted folders) for the e-mail. 2. Those who go to the sorted folder they believe the e-mail to be in, and then manually look through all of the e-mails in that folder hoping to spot it.
The second group isn't very realistic. More commonly (that I've seen), that group goes to the folder that they believe the e-mail to be in, and then let the computer search that folder. That means the computer doesn't have to look through, say, 2,000 e-mails - it only has to look through, say, 100. Depending on whether or not the computer can scan every folder faster than you can click to the folder, the latter can be much faster. Certainly on older computers with slow harddisks.
However, there is one problem that crops up... what if the folder you think the e-mail is in, is not where it actually is. What if the e-mail from John about Vacation isn't in the folder 'John' but in the folder 'Vacation'? That's where time is usually wasted, which often results in having to search all of the folders anyway if you don't remember which other folder(s) it might be in.
I think the vastly increased speed with which e-mails can be searched - especially if you use e.g. gmail which can search many times faster than your home box - does mean that folders become less important in terms of organizing e-mails for faster retrieval purposes. They'll still have their place for organization in general, though (i.e. 'work' vs 'personal') - but alongside tags and 'search folders'.
Regardless of whether I like Apple or not (and you don't care, so I won't expand on that either way), the story headline itself is rather inviting inflammatory remarks. I'd mod it Flamebait if I could.
"Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag"
This implies that tablet makers are having a hard time trying to make a tablet that is less than $500. Yes, literally "try" doesn't mean "and fail" but in that sentence construction it's implied - otherwise the "Try To" would be superfluous. We all know however that the "Try To" is not true; you can get a tablet below $100. Ah, but you won't get the same objective quality for that sub-$100, you say.
So now the headline would be "Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag and Objective Quality". This then implies that tablet makers are having a hard time to beat that price and the objective quality. Also a falsehood - there's Android tablets around the $400 mark that are every single bit as capable as the iPad and, in fact, even more capable. Ah, but you won't get the same subjective quality (feel, user interface paradigms, brand association, etc.) for that ~$400, you say.
So now the headline changes to "Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag, Objective Quality and Subjective Quality". Now while a Galaxy Tab or Xoom may beat the iPad there it hinges on that Subjective bit - and whether it's alignment to users' desire, clever marketing or reality distortion fields, the fact of the matter remains that the iPad (well, iPad 2) is far, far more popular than any other tablet. So yes, that headline would be far more correct - but due to the subjective part it might as well have read "Apple Tries to Beat Xoom's Pricetag, Objective Quality and Nerd-appeal" (except that Apple wouldn't bother to win the 'nerd' market, really.)
So is it too much to ask to keep it from becoming a war-of-the-fanboys? Well with headlines like that, it just might be. The headline itself fails your own request to "stick to technology".
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I know you replied below stating that while this (bashing Apple) isn't new, it's gotten worse in recent years.
I'm sure it has dawned on you that Apple has become more popular in said recent years while also having become more polarizing. Some people oppose to the walled garden thing, others embrace it. Some people wonder what the heck is going on with all the patent lawsuits, others desire nothing less than Apple become the sole holder of all patents so that everything ever produced will be as good as the iPhone as Apple strong-arms others out of the market. Some people think Apple is entirely in their right to harass individuals, others wonder wtf they're thinking suggesting they send over a PI at night to come pick up hardware no questions asked and no paperwork drafted.
It's a bit like complaining that stories about Microsoft are less filled with vile remarks from people who have bile coming out of every orifice just at the mention of the name and can barely bring themselves to write it any other way than Micro$oft, just because MS has become a little less evil.
Precursor: I don't believe that there is any way to fully compete with the 'piracy' channels and to think otherwise is, I believe, chasing a pipe dream.
That said...
You can't prevent me from giving away a copy of a movie i purchased without creating an inconvenience when i want to use it legally, so get rid of DRM.
Presuming that industry still wanted to somewhat prevent you from just uploading the file straight to the pirate bay... what if it were a natural form of DRM? E.g. your name is inserted, encoded, as a watermark somewhere that lets the copy be traced back to you. Let's say as part of the end credits so there wouldn't even be any argument about 'invisible' watermarking technology messing up your re-encoding for iPad (or whatever). Would that be acceptable? ( note that I'm not saying anything about repercussions should that copy be found in the wild as there's a whole angry mob just waiting for the opportunity to jump at the opportunity to come up with "what if somebody hacked my network and distributed it!? Why should I be fined!?" excuses. )
Make it affordable, obviously.
Obviously. But now define affordable.
Where I'm from, $4.99 for a movie would not be considered affordable. For that matter, $1.99 wouldn't be - doesn't matter if that's less than a burger which they enjoy for less than 10 minutes and then again half an hour later if you know what I mean. They're cheap bastards. If anything at all, the people here would much rather see a monthly flat fee for an as-much-as-you-want return at, say, $25. In essence, something like Netflix... but without the extremely limited catalog and the ability to actually save the videos.
Make it accessible, if it's harder than downloading a torrent then you'll fail, people will pay but you can't make it harder than getting it for free.
But isn't it always going to be harder?
Streaming of course is probably not an issue to setup (the pirate bay / torrent downloads ares not very user-friendly compared to e.g. a Roku box that streams direct to your TV, so it would have to at least be similar to the latter) - but for the media companies you'd at least need some manner of account.. and payment information has to be given.. you need to keep an eye on expenses and billing, etc. For the free alternatives, there is no such hassle.
Make it global, nothing is more annoying (ok maybe not entirely true) than finding out you can't get particular content because your region isn't licensed for it.
This, of course, is going to be one of the major stumbling blocks. There are a lot of fractured interest groups globally, that often have laws on their side, that make distribution worldwide difficult at best. You can already see this at YouTube where some music videos from I believe it was Warner Music are not available to Europe. But if you then click the next result for that same Music Video, you're likely to get the official Vevo channel version backed by that very same Warner Music.
This is the one section where I would think the media companies would very much agree with you - after all, there's a lot of cost that can be reduced if you have a single distribution channel for the whole world and local interest groups be damned. But the fact that they haven't already makes me inclined to think that this isn't nearly as easy as either side would like. Either that or there's some crazy tax-related benefits to having a ton of local distributors for online content. ( traditional content obviously has to deal with physical distribution, warehousing, rack space etc. that is best dealt with by local distributors )
See that article and the questions that led to it for a previous round of "Ask William Shatner".
In fact, check all of the previous Slashdot stories for some good questions. Perhaps it'd be of interest to know what happened to the 'Starfleet Academy' show he pitched. And maybe it'll prevent the "Star Trek vs Star Wars?" question which he already addressed a while back.
One further, then... My Acer Aspire 2k (many years old) also boots two OS's.. it's just that the OS that isn't the main OS is on a fixed partition and all it loads is a media player - so that, if I were so inclined, it could go from power off to playing back a DVD in about 6 seconds.
Of course getting Windows out of hibernation only takes 8 and then I can play the DVD with whatever software I prefer, so there's little advantage to doing so.
But it's there.. makes me wonder what else it could be made to run.
I was not convinced by the SPDY argument myself, given that other map providers (such as, but not limited to, Bing Maps) performed much better. ( See also some other replies. )
However, your findings should imply that the same issue would in fact apply to other map providers as well. Though I suppose the converse could be equally true - Chrome may be even faster with those map services than with Google Maps.
I know you're posting as AC, but hopefully you revisit your replies once in a while and share your thoughts.
oh you silly anon.. you know very well I wasn't talking about Usenet as a technology. The discussion was regarding the service providers - such as News Service Europe - which most certainly are set up primarily for the aforementioned activities. As others have already pointed out, there are similar service providers that have dropped the binaries altogether - provided there isn't a shift in content location to the non-binaries groups, that should do just fine for the court order again News Service Europe. I don't think their revenue stream would be quite the same, though. What do you think?
the provider did offer a YouTube-type "if you tell us we'll remove it" deal but BREIN didn't want that.
Well, let's be honest... can you blame them?
Presume for a second that you're a content 'owner' in terms of having the sole distribution rights for that content.
You find such a site, and you find that your content is hosted on that site. You realize the site has such a "if you tell us we'll remove it" option, but it comes with a long list of provisions which you have to fulfill, and the document has to be (digitally) signed by yourself or a legal representative. So you do all that, probably at a cost. The site, after barely even reviewing the material (may even be automated, the way YouTube does it), removes the content. Done - victory for the content 'owner', right?
Except that the same file is back up the next day. If you were to come knocking at the provider's door, they'd just point to the "if you tell us, we'll remove it", put on a huge grin, then laugh as they walk away.
It's always been my belief that as much as people like to lambast the DMCA in the United States, the 'safe harbor' provision essentially makes 'piracy' sites legal as long as they comply with DMCA take-down notices (can be automated) and their users don't start fussing with counter-notices.
I'm not sure if BREIN wanted to set a precedent for 'a' service. These cases are often quite limited in scope. My co-replying commenter for example immediately does the knee-jerk thing stating that the entire internet may as well be shut down as e.g. Forum owners would have to monitor for user-posted content as well. Except that the judge didn't make a grand ruling - they ruled on a very specific case, one that is neither a forum nor particularly a service that is mostly associated with activity well within the boundary of the law. It may be precedent for a next news server provider to be targeted, however.
Slashdot Mirror
Without any penalties whatsoever?
Of course having to change provider may be penalty enough in some areas, but let's say you the contract involves a bundle.. i.e. you get Phone X together with Plan Y for the special price of $N/month with a commitment to 2 years. Say they change it after just 6 months. You can cancel - but do you get to keep the phone? Usually not - so wouldn't that also be a penalty? (having to get a new one, re-configure it, etc.)
Yes, you may not have to pay an ETF - but to say it's "without any penalties what-so-ever" is a bit much.
( I guess the product in this particular story is not usually sold bundled, especially not for the devices affected. )
I'm just voicing the more common pirates here - the content of that post is not my own opinion ;)
More specifically, it is the voice of the more common pirate in The Netherlands.
Keep in mind that people in The Netherlands still think that a service like Netflix being available in The Netherlands would practically wipe out piracy of TV shows and movies the same way that Spotify has done for piracy of songs.
Except that they think that Netflix is like having the entire IMDB catalog on offer, and seem to miss the massive piracy of albums that still goes on - Spotify or no Spotify.
No doubt piracy has been reduced due to those offerings (in the U.S. and various EU countries respectively), but nowhere near the level of 'wipe out' :)
My own opinion - should you ever come back to read it - is that a middle ground needs to be reached but that neither 'side' is particularly willing to make steps closer to that middle ground. Just as an example.. I don't think a downloadable movie should cost the exact same as e.g. the DVD. It's much cheaper to distribute and additionally the DVD will likely contain bonus features that a download is going to miss out on. However I also don't think that it should cost just $3 if it's a new release. If it's old as dirt, then maybe... but that's by the argument that old-as-dirt movies in brick-and-mortar stores can be as low as $3 or even lower because they need to get rid of that stock and sending it back will actually cost them more in administration/etc. Given that digital downloads never have to suffer from that phenomenon, that justification may not fly leading to minimum movie prices of, say, $5 even for older movies. In the U.S. the situation is even more complicated of course, with $1 Red Box movies.. but that does come with the 'hassle' of limited choice, checking out, having to return it, etc.
All in all it's a complex matter and I'm certainly not the best-informed on either 'side' to negotiate... but I sure wish the people who are would.
Sorry, I might not have been entirely clear on that. The portal is just to log in (so you have an account), browse the catalog, and make your purchases. The material would still be downloaded, DRM-free, etc. thus satisfying the 'where' in terms or where you want to play the file. If the 'where' becomes "where I can acquire it" then there's additional demands to be made.. like kiosks (replacing the redbox ones, perhaps), offerings in video rental places, etc.
No need to sue, though;
Read up on the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention
The only problem is - it has never actually been tested as far as damages go. Esperance's 'littering' claim (of Skylab pieces falling on a bit of Australia) was cute but more as part of marketing than a serious claim.
Still, one could invoke that, rather than suing from the get-go.
I'm pretty sure KickStarter really kickstarted with indie movies, music, etc. In fact, they are still the main projects on KickStarter (and similar sites, like indiegogo).
What's really 'kickstarting' KickStarter a second time, at least when it comes to tech, is the iDevice.
There's two areas for technology, the Tech section:
www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/popular
And the Design section, which is vastly more tech than design:
www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/design/popular
1 in 5 of the projects in either section section are iDevice-oriented - this includes, for example, the 'Sacred Grounds' smartphone app, by which they really mean iOS app and "they hope" to make an Android version as well.
For the Design section this of course makes sense.. the iPhone and iPad give a narrow target with lots of users so you're far more likely to gain success with e.g. a stand or enclosure there than you could when designing for any single random Android, BB, WP7 or whatever device.
But also keep in mind it includes such gems as this:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcnab-lazar/cablegone-cable-managing-solution?ref=category
Now I'm all for cable management solutions, even if there's dozens available in the world that doesn't mean we can't have one more. But the additional quality of this cable management is that it can double as a stand for an iPad, the project summary (as seen in widgets etc.) notes:
Yes.. then again, it could be used as any tablet stand. It could be used as a laptop stand. Similarly, a two-by-four could also be used as an iPad stand.
So why point out the iPad? Marketing, of course. And not just to end-users, but to KickStarter as well. I've more than once joked to people who are doing innovative tech that if they want to get listed on KickStarter, they should mention an iDevice in some way to increase their odds.
With 1 in 5 projects being iDevice-exclusive or iDevice-targeting in those two sections, I'm not sure I should be treating it as just a joke anymore.
A bit more on-topic.. 'open hardware' is indeed a large portion of the other 4 in 5 projects in those sections - sometimes from the get-go, sometimes after deliberations and popular demand (such as with the HexBright Flex flashlight). 'open software' however lags behind quite a bit with most projects going nowhere fast. In part that's because those projects tend to be vague, and in part it's because there's often no visible ROI. With an indie movie, you get some exclusive images, a downloadable copy, perhaps even the DVD. With hardware you might get a kit to build it yourself, or a pre-assembled thing, or maybe you just get to see that a website that ends up selling the completed products was indeed launched and you get a sticker (hey, whatever you pledge for - it's not a bazaar after all, it's more like an investment round.. rewards are just for enticement). But with software, especially open source software.. what people, or the market, get is often unclear.
E.g. TweetFree: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1100820943/tweetfree-secure-distributed-social-networking-pla?ref=category
So in essence, any funding goes into a black box never to be seen, or accounted for, again, if the blurbs are the only thing to go by. And this for a service that vaguely de
Okay...
what - Everything!
when - Now!
where - Everywhere!
Very well. That will be $15/movie, $2.50/episode of a series and $1.99/song, you can log into our media portal and pay via credit card and paypal.
Not acceptable, right?
That's because you forgot two...
price - Preferably free, but we're not unreasonable pirates - $2.50 for a movie, $0.50/episode of a series and $0.02/song (think of it as promotion, we'll be more likely to go see live concerts and buy merchandise - honest!)
how - Nothing against portals, but we're not too keen on you lot having all of our data and you'd just be doing it wrong anyway by trying to shove crap at us instead of the content we want. So instead, allow anonymous public downloads from an open searchable system (interfacing with imdb and the like would be grand, thanks) and use payment processors to allow anonymous payments for the service. Yes, that does sound like an honor system - why do you ask? Do we not seem like honorable pirates?
Probably for the built-in USB module? Compatibility with Arduino libraries is not all that important for this device and those who would want to hack away at it.
I do.
Leaving aside here that what's discussed in the article is not the 3D you appear to be complaining about (though it, too, is no panacea.. viewing angles are too limited for its purpose, imho)... the industry hasn't been trying to shove much of anything. Most content is still 2D and aside from directors who decide to thrust every pointing object at the viewer every 3D movie works just fine in 2D as well. Sanctum, for example, was gorgeous in 3D but it's still quite nice in 2D (visually, that is, movie-wise it's quite 'meh' - but it would have been that if 2D from the get-go and would have been if presented as a book.).
In addition, the current push is in many ways very different from earlier attempts simply due to changes in technology.
I'm not saying there aren't many aspects of it that suck (I feel sorry for those who get splitting headaches and count myself lucky that I'm not among them), but you can't really lump the anaglyph of old in with the polarized / glasses-free variants.
What the article is in part talking about is what a lot of people have been saying for years now.
People say if you don't want facebook to know anything about you, then you shouldn't post there.
So others reply that it doesn't matter that you didn't give the data to facebook, one of your friends might.
So now the statement is that if you don't want facebook to know anything about you, then you shouldn't tell your friends, colleagues, etc. anything - after all, they may enter it on facebook.
But this still makes the presumption that you actually gave that information, knowingly and willingly, to that person - and that it it's reasonable to assume that facebook will then collect it as well.
Let's say you went to Slashdot High. So did some other person. That other person tells facebook to look for MikeB0Lton who attended Slashdot High. Now facebook has a reasonable assumption that you went to Slashdot High.
You didn't give facebook that data. And you didn't really give that data to that person - it's just information that accumulates simply by existing. You could fo for a "well you could have chosen to be homeschooled" sort of retort, but setting aside that most people here went to highschool long before facebook even existed, that's of course asking for ridiculous steps to take just to prevent anybody from collecting data about you.
Now obviously pandora's box on this was opened a very long time ago and there's really no way that it'll ever change. Even if facebook were to be forced to kill all collected data beyond that required for direct facebook operations, there's plenty of companies and shady organizations who are not targeted and who will gladly not even bother with waiting for users to provide the data and instead crawl sites and official records for it.
But the suggestion that facebook only has data on you because you gave it to them - and now that it has it because you gave it to somebody else - seems to be putting some level of blame with people when really they needn't even do/say anything.
hey hey hey! That's RIAA/MPAA accounting you've got going on there.
Were you going to buy those apps?
If no, then clearly they lose nothing by just giving them to you.
Ergo their worth is actually $0.
Aren't you pissed that RIM would compensate you for the annoyance - and others for the full-on downtime - with squat?
Hmm wait, I think I'm wielding that double-edged sword wrong..
I, too, agree that Samsung (and others) are copying Apple in some ways more than others.
The questions are...
1. Is that a bad thing?
For the end-users, I would say it isn't.
For Apple, I would say it isn't either. Nobody's going to walk around with Device X that may look like e.g. an iPhone and claim it's an iPhone - that would just make them posers.
Without the claim, if you were to see such a Device X and think "ooh! iPhone sure seems popular!", I can't see how that would hurt Apple either, except from the anti-popular-things crowd.
No store is going to put the Device X in their shop and then try to suggest it's an iPhone either.
The people who buy a Device X, in short, buy it not because it's "just like an iPhone", but in part because it's [i]not[/i] an iPhone.. either in design details or in operating system or.. etc. Whatever the reason, it was reason enough not to just get the iPhone.
Now it may be a matter of principle, and that's all fine and dandy and they're in their right to defend that principle.
But if Apple are essentially just saying "you can't make a device that copies ours because with those copied elements your device is better than ours - please stick to crappy design elements so that our device is the only one the majority of people could reasonably want, thanks"... well, that's just sad.
2. At what point does the copying become something different?
What I mean by that is this... you already point out that obviously it's not [i]just[/i] about having a rectangle with rounded corners, it's the complete package.
But presumably just doing a single thing different wouldn't break enough from that 'complete package' to get the case dropped.
I.e. if they dropped the 'the color gray appears as a rectangle at the front, center of the screen' and instead went with a bluish one, I'm going to guess that would not get them off the hook. I'm going to guess that if it was actually a shape with two curved edges going across the screen that it would also not be enough. Maybe the combination of curved shape + blue would be enough... but only for that single point. It would leave all the others.
The problem with 'all the others' is that they're pretty generic.
( Mind you, even that rectangle is pretty generic if they're literally referring to the screen itself. Making the screen 'blue' would mean nothing less than tinting the LCD thus giving everything a bluish cast. Really now? I was half hoping they meant the grey rectangle used for the bottom set of icons, which could indeed be designed in a billion ways not 'copying' Apple.. but they specifically list that separately and as being 'silver' so perhaps the "[the screen]" is indeed meant literally. )
Yes, the older comparison model shows a completely different design direction that doesn't appear to copy most of the points made. But it still copies 4 of the 15 points. Is [i]that[/i] enough, then?
Let's assume, just for kicks, 'yes' here. Now let's add one thing back in - colored icons. The black/white design is nice for those who like it, but most people are going to want colored icons these days. Putting aside the 'icon design' issues, the device would now find itself 'copying' the fact that it may use 'black, blue, brown, brown-gray (and a host of other colors) as part of its design. It would also make it vastly more appealing to the masses. So would it now be a target of litigation again?
If so, that would mean that a whole range of devices would be fair game.
E.g. the Dell Aero:
http://cdn.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/articleimage/Jerry%20Hildenbrand/2010/05/Dell-Aero.jpg
Looks like the camera images have a fair bit of overlap - they could probably assign at least a low/high exposure patterning that would give additional exposure data beyond whatever the sensors can provide (I presume they used consumer sensors at 10bit at best but probably already coming out processed to 8bit).
why? Keep in mind that this was an old prototype from years ago. Not a prototype of a model not yet released (like the case in TFA). I have several prototype things, ebay is also full of them. There isn't a law saying you can't own or sell prototype things. There may have been such a stipulation in an agreement between Apple and the original Seller (or whoever they got it from) but that's something Dude couldn't possibly know.
He also couldn't have suspected the Seller of being a fence (and I'm not saying Seller was) as it wasn't being sold in a shady way or well below market price. In fact, Dude didn't know what it exactly was at the time of purchase.
No actually he repaired it, because that's what he does. He chronicles this, and it's reported on several mac-centric sites.
He doesn't really want to keep it, so he sells it on, himself, on Craigslist. He gets a few hundred dollars for it.
That could well have been the end of the story right there if not for the fact that the Buyer took the thing to an Apple Store who then stated that it's not an Apple product.
Yes, later on, once he learns it may have some value to collectors, he puts it up on e-bay. However he only expected to get maybe $2000 - never in a million years would he have thought it'd go up to $70k.
He wasn't trying to 'cash in'.
Matter of contention and certainly wouldn't have been known to him.
Except that he wasn't, not even after the ebay listing got pulled. Only once Apple heard from cnet did they start taking a closer look.
Those two are obvious, yes.
Quick summary timeline...
Dude sees an old MacBook Pro on Craigslist listed by Seller as broken.
Dude buys it thinking maybe he can fix it.
Dude does indeed fix it, requiring reflowing of parts, adding parts (ram, HDD, etc.), chronicles it at Anandech, noting that it seems to be no ordinary MBP.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2165252&highlight=macbook+antenna - Prototype Macbook Pro with 3G: In my shop now!
Dude then sells it on Craigslist himself as he has no use for it and doesn't yet realize its uniqueness.
Buyer takes it to an Apple Store for some service, Apple Store Genius bar says "This is not an Apple product." on account of weird things in there.
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/30/apple-genius-bar-didnt-recognize-macbook-pro-3g-prototype-apple-now-wants-it-back/ - Apple Genius Bar Didn't Recognize MacBook Pro 3G Prototype
Buyer sues Dude, wins (in part based on Apple Store findings), Dude is out moneys.
Dude thinks 'wtf', though, and takes a closer look at the MacBook Pro, asking around on forums.
Dude learns that the red motherboard implies it's a prototype.
Weeks pass and Dude does what anybody who isn't a fanboy would do - puts it up for sale on e-bay.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20092180-248/3g-equipped-macbook-prototype-pops-up-on-ebay/ - 3G-equipped MacBook prototype pops up on eBay
e-bay bids go up to $70k, listing is pulled due to request from Apple.
Dude then hears nothing, sits around waiting for some manner of official explanation for days on end.
CNet, however, now wants to know what happened, so arrange an interview, in which they of course also call Apple.
Apple suddenly takes very keen notice.
http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml?nid=20099494&cid=null&bcid=&bid=-248 - Apple wants its 3G MacBook prototype back
Dude gets call - Apple wants their hardware back and they can have somebody stop by Dude's private residence that evening.
Dude says 'I think not, my lawyer will be in touch'.
Lawyer says Apple have no case.
Lawyer and Apple chit chat.
Lawyer says having no case matters shit all when you're Apple, so give up or incur huge costs.
Apple thus sends over a PI to pick up Prototype MBP.
Dude hands over the MBP.
Dude then sits around again wondering wtf just happened while waiting to see if he gets compensated in any way at all.
Apple does nothing.
Dude then petitions to Apple to get his shit back.
Apple says nothing, but does send an unmarked FedEx box with parts back.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20117512-248/prototype-3g-macbook-buyer-gets-parts-back - Prototype 3G MacBook buyer gets parts back
Dude now left with little option but either go "oh well", or sue the original Seller for incurred costs. Seller however says he received the MBP in earnest.
It would have been nice of Apple if they had arranged an exchange for a shiny new MBP and cover Dude's costs, as there's no reason to believe that this prototype was stolen and - as of the latest reports - Apple never filed it as such either.
The 'best' part? Being on IRC, watching a guy go from not being a fanboy but certainly an admirer of Apple, to being completely disenchanted.
That's a mail client shortcoming. If using Thunderbird, just set up a search folder for all unread mail - there you go.
That may be the point of the article - but my point was that this is not what the headline reflects, thus being more likely to invite flamewars :) For reference, see other replies to your comment ;)
Wouldn't your mail client indicate that you have N unread e-mails (sometimes configurable to only show those N from up to M days ago) in the folder it was sorted to?
Pretty hard to miss.
I do think the researchers' claim is a bit silly, but your concern is tangential with another..
The researchers checked two groups:
1. Those who simply let the computer search their entire inbox (be that with or without sorted folders) for the e-mail.
2. Those who go to the sorted folder they believe the e-mail to be in, and then manually look through all of the e-mails in that folder hoping to spot it.
The second group isn't very realistic. More commonly (that I've seen), that group goes to the folder that they believe the e-mail to be in, and then let the computer search that folder. That means the computer doesn't have to look through, say, 2,000 e-mails - it only has to look through, say, 100.
Depending on whether or not the computer can scan every folder faster than you can click to the folder, the latter can be much faster. Certainly on older computers with slow harddisks.
However, there is one problem that crops up... what if the folder you think the e-mail is in, is not where it actually is. What if the e-mail from John about Vacation isn't in the folder 'John' but in the folder 'Vacation'?
That's where time is usually wasted, which often results in having to search all of the folders anyway if you don't remember which other folder(s) it might be in.
I think the vastly increased speed with which e-mails can be searched - especially if you use e.g. gmail which can search many times faster than your home box - does mean that folders become less important in terms of organizing e-mails for faster retrieval purposes. They'll still have their place for organization in general, though (i.e. 'work' vs 'personal') - but alongside tags and 'search folders'.
Regardless of whether I like Apple or not (and you don't care, so I won't expand on that either way), the story headline itself is rather inviting inflammatory remarks. I'd mod it Flamebait if I could.
"Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag"
This implies that tablet makers are having a hard time trying to make a tablet that is less than $500. Yes, literally "try" doesn't mean "and fail" but in that sentence construction it's implied - otherwise the "Try To" would be superfluous. We all know however that the "Try To" is not true; you can get a tablet below $100.
Ah, but you won't get the same objective quality for that sub-$100, you say.
So now the headline would be "Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag and Objective Quality".
This then implies that tablet makers are having a hard time to beat that price and the objective quality. Also a falsehood - there's Android tablets around the $400 mark that are every single bit as capable as the iPad and, in fact, even more capable.
Ah, but you won't get the same subjective quality (feel, user interface paradigms, brand association, etc.) for that ~$400, you say.
So now the headline changes to "Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag, Objective Quality and Subjective Quality".
Now while a Galaxy Tab or Xoom may beat the iPad there it hinges on that Subjective bit - and whether it's alignment to users' desire, clever marketing or reality distortion fields, the fact of the matter remains that the iPad (well, iPad 2) is far, far more popular than any other tablet. So yes, that headline would be far more correct - but due to the subjective part it might as well have read "Apple Tries to Beat Xoom's Pricetag, Objective Quality and Nerd-appeal" (except that Apple wouldn't bother to win the 'nerd' market, really.)
So is it too much to ask to keep it from becoming a war-of-the-fanboys? Well with headlines like that, it just might be. The headline itself fails your own request to "stick to technology".
-----
I know you replied below stating that while this (bashing Apple) isn't new, it's gotten worse in recent years.
I'm sure it has dawned on you that Apple has become more popular in said recent years while also having become more polarizing.
Some people oppose to the walled garden thing, others embrace it.
Some people wonder what the heck is going on with all the patent lawsuits, others desire nothing less than Apple become the sole holder of all patents so that everything ever produced will be as good as the iPhone as Apple strong-arms others out of the market.
Some people think Apple is entirely in their right to harass individuals, others wonder wtf they're thinking suggesting they send over a PI at night to come pick up hardware no questions asked and no paperwork drafted.
It's a bit like complaining that stories about Microsoft are less filled with vile remarks from people who have bile coming out of every orifice just at the mention of the name and can barely bring themselves to write it any other way than Micro$oft, just because MS has become a little less evil.
Precursor: I don't believe that there is any way to fully compete with the 'piracy' channels and to think otherwise is, I believe, chasing a pipe dream.
That said...
Presuming that industry still wanted to somewhat prevent you from just uploading the file straight to the pirate bay... what if it were a natural form of DRM? E.g. your name is inserted, encoded, as a watermark somewhere that lets the copy be traced back to you. Let's say as part of the end credits so there wouldn't even be any argument about 'invisible' watermarking technology messing up your re-encoding for iPad (or whatever). Would that be acceptable?
( note that I'm not saying anything about repercussions should that copy be found in the wild as there's a whole angry mob just waiting for the opportunity to jump at the opportunity to come up with "what if somebody hacked my network and distributed it!? Why should I be fined!?" excuses. )
Obviously. But now define affordable.
Where I'm from, $4.99 for a movie would not be considered affordable. For that matter, $1.99 wouldn't be - doesn't matter if that's less than a burger which they enjoy for less than 10 minutes and then again half an hour later if you know what I mean. They're cheap bastards. If anything at all, the people here would much rather see a monthly flat fee for an as-much-as-you-want return at, say, $25. In essence, something like Netflix... but without the extremely limited catalog and the ability to actually save the videos.
But isn't it always going to be harder?
Streaming of course is probably not an issue to setup (the pirate bay / torrent downloads ares not very user-friendly compared to e.g. a Roku box that streams direct to your TV, so it would have to at least be similar to the latter) - but for the media companies you'd at least need some manner of account.. and payment information has to be given.. you need to keep an eye on expenses and billing, etc.
For the free alternatives, there is no such hassle.
This, of course, is going to be one of the major stumbling blocks. There are a lot of fractured interest groups globally, that often have laws on their side, that make distribution worldwide difficult at best. You can already see this at YouTube where some music videos from I believe it was Warner Music are not available to Europe. But if you then click the next result for that same Music Video, you're likely to get the official Vevo channel version backed by that very same Warner Music.
This is the one section where I would think the media companies would very much agree with you - after all, there's a lot of cost that can be reduced if you have a single distribution channel for the whole world and local interest groups be damned. But the fact that they haven't already makes me inclined to think that this isn't nearly as easy as either side would like. Either that or there's some crazy tax-related benefits to having a ton of local distributors for online content.
( traditional content obviously has to deal with physical distribution, warehousing, rack space etc. that is best dealt with by local distributors )
Of course he has.
http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/02/12/05/1444246/William-Shatner-Replies
See that article and the questions that led to it for a previous round of "Ask William Shatner".
In fact, check all of the previous Slashdot stories for some good questions. Perhaps it'd be of interest to know what happened to the 'Starfleet Academy' show he pitched. And maybe it'll prevent the "Star Trek vs Star Wars?" question which he already addressed a while back.
One further, then... My Acer Aspire 2k (many years old) also boots two OS's.. it's just that the OS that isn't the main OS is on a fixed partition and all it loads is a media player - so that, if I were so inclined, it could go from power off to playing back a DVD in about 6 seconds.
Of course getting Windows out of hibernation only takes 8 and then I can play the DVD with whatever software I prefer, so there's little advantage to doing so.
But it's there.. makes me wonder what else it could be made to run.
Thanks for the write-up.
I was not convinced by the SPDY argument myself, given that other map providers (such as, but not limited to, Bing Maps) performed much better.
( See also some other replies. )
However, your findings should imply that the same issue would in fact apply to other map providers as well.
Though I suppose the converse could be equally true - Chrome may be even faster with those map services than with Google Maps.
I know you're posting as AC, but hopefully you revisit your replies once in a while and share your thoughts.
There, there... I honestly didn't mean to step on your long toes.
You do realize that it was part of an argument as to why people might choose / stick with Google Chrome, right?
Not a "Mozilla shouldn't release a new FireFox version unless it's 100% perfect"-tirade.
Which would be silly to assume anyway considering I stated that I use FireFox myself.
Silly kneejerk anons :)
oh you silly anon.. you know very well I wasn't talking about Usenet as a technology. The discussion was regarding the service providers - such as News Service Europe - which most certainly are set up primarily for the aforementioned activities. As others have already pointed out, there are similar service providers that have dropped the binaries altogether - provided there isn't a shift in content location to the non-binaries groups, that should do just fine for the court order again News Service Europe. I don't think their revenue stream would be quite the same, though. What do you think?
Well, let's be honest... can you blame them?
Presume for a second that you're a content 'owner' in terms of having the sole distribution rights for that content.
You find such a site, and you find that your content is hosted on that site.
You realize the site has such a "if you tell us we'll remove it" option, but it comes with a long list of provisions which you have to fulfill, and the document has to be (digitally) signed by yourself or a legal representative.
So you do all that, probably at a cost.
The site, after barely even reviewing the material (may even be automated, the way YouTube does it), removes the content.
Done - victory for the content 'owner', right?
Except that the same file is back up the next day.
If you were to come knocking at the provider's door, they'd just point to the "if you tell us, we'll remove it", put on a huge grin, then laugh as they walk away.
It's always been my belief that as much as people like to lambast the DMCA in the United States, the 'safe harbor' provision essentially makes 'piracy' sites legal as long as they comply with DMCA take-down notices (can be automated) and their users don't start fussing with counter-notices.
I'm not sure if BREIN wanted to set a precedent for 'a' service. These cases are often quite limited in scope. My co-replying commenter for example immediately does the knee-jerk thing stating that the entire internet may as well be shut down as e.g. Forum owners would have to monitor for user-posted content as well.
Except that the judge didn't make a grand ruling - they ruled on a very specific case, one that is neither a forum nor particularly a service that is mostly associated with activity well within the boundary of the law. It may be precedent for a next news server provider to be targeted, however.