May sound stupid, but where does the extra charge go?
If the device receives an electron on one side and sends a positively charge thing on the other side (a proton or K+), that leaves 2 electrons in the device, where do those go?
I know there's an android app that lets you do just that. I don't know for the iPhone.
I use neither so I couldn't point you in its direction but I've seen others do it.
This google+ thing is much better than facebook in my opinion.
It's like going from hotmail to gmail back when it launched.
It's sleek, doesn't get in the way, lets you do things easily. You manage your "friends" easily.
Hell, it's one service I wouldn't have any issue adding my boss and co-workers to, unlike facebook.
As a bonus, I don't get people posting asinine idiocies on my wall. Sure they can get me to eyeball their crap by mentionning me in their posts, but at least it won't bother everyone else who reads the things I write.
A negative side, not for me but for others, would be the lack of games, but we'll see...
You have bought a legitimate license for EVERY SINGLE GAME you've ever downloaded/copied illegally?
Oh, the nice fallacy of the indivisible middle...
"we do go back and buy", he said, not "we do go back and buy EVERY SINGLE TIME".
Now, if you're interested as to when, there's crap games, there's "meh" games not worth the money they're sold for and there's nice games. Those are the ones that are gone back for...
"You can put whatever you want on it, front or back."
Hmmm.... it's a good thing he didn't say "and", or if I was the instructor I would have said "Nice try, but logically your exam assistant can't be on the front *and* the back of the paper at the same time".
Simply fold the paper in a moebius strip (or, more simply, fold back 2cms)
I'm with you there.
I read the blurb here, then read the article, and I still can't figure out who did what to whom.
Idiot journalists...
If anyone cares to explain, that'd be much appreciated.
As a physicist, I do get a bit annoyed at the constant attacks on string theory in public media.
Let me just state a few points please:
If you complain at string theory, then PLEASE state what you are proposing. What is the use in complaining when you have no alternative?
What kind of scientist are you?
It doesn't matter if I can offer an alternative suggestion or not.
The use of "complaining" is to determine the validity of the theory. You can't test it, you can't determine if it's true. Simple enough for you?
If I were to say that invisible pink unicorns like small massive objects, you'd have every right to tear my suggestion apart without having to offer an alternative, that's the way it works...
There was no evidence of her acting as a distributor. That would have required proof that she
-disseminated copies
-to the public
-by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by a rental, lease or lending. There was no proof of any of those.
That's not what I was asking. I haven't checked the case, my question was wether there's a limit to monies awarded for the distribution.
The fact that the jury found her guilty of that despite the absence of proof really sucks, however the summary says the monies were awarded "for stealing and illegally distributing", hence my question.
The maximum actual damages is ~35 cents per infringed work, since the wholesale price is ~70 cents and the expenses are around ~35 cents. Under constitutional principles, the statutory damages awarded should not have exceeded $1.40 per infringed work, or a total of $33.60. Even the reduced award is 6428 times the actual damages, a grossly excessive amount.
What about the distribution part? I don't agree with the principle that unwillingly distributing (as is the case with P2P technologies) should be grounds for extra payment since it wasn't the person's objective, but since the money is for obtaining AND distributing, there should be something there as well, don't you think? Is there some kind of constitutional limit to that as well?
As a side note, where I live (belgium) we now have a "tax" on hard drives, recordable CDs/DVDs and all forms of storage to pay for the piracy going on, no matter what that storage device is going to be used for:-/
The upside is that I now have no moral issue whatsoever with downloading other's copyrighted works to my heart's content. I pay for it, I'm going to use it.
War is all about waiting and dicking around and about 10 minutes of fighting. WoW had to introduce the battlegrounds to give players a way to play PvP at no cost. Even Wintergrasp limits you to every few hours to make sure enough people join up so its "fun" There were no wars in Ultima Online, just a few assassins once in a while. Even major battles in EVE lasts only about 30 minutes.
That's not entirely true. Battles are short only if the number of people involved is small or one side overpowers the other. I've faught battles that have lasted between 2 and 6 hours. And once a whole week-end, with constant skirmishes faught over this gate or that, that POS or that one (there were a few).
Oh trust me, I have the highest contempt for the courts right now.
This verdict will be the cause of derision internationally, and will provide endless fodder for those who are fond of laughing in their beer at the USA. Unfortunately, they will have a pretty irrefutable point.
Actually, I believe most of us chose to laugh at selected parts of the USA, this is just some extra fodder.
It's not necessarily that we're fond of it, it's that you're definately not helping.
Your "justice" system has been a laughing stock for a looong time, as have your executive branch (come on, electing Bush, TWICE!), your televangelists, your puritans (omg, a boob on telly!), your failed healthcare and educational system, etc.
However, there's lots of good stuff in the people of the United States, most of it is the drive, the belief that you can accomplish things. Too bad it's dwarfed by everything else...
So the idea is to make some kind of legal argument limiting the capability of the defendant to defend themselves?
Yes. Because, if she were permitted to defend herself, there's a possibility that, like.......she might win.
This is getting really ludicrous, mind boggling. I mean... What the HELL?
Doesn't the lawyer attempting that kind of idiotic stuff know that he's basically kissing his carreer goodbye? Surely every lawyer who hears about this is laughing...
The thing is that the type of player who gets elected are ones who have a large following. This tends to be people in large alliances. In the current CSM, you find people representing:
- Northern Coalition
- Goonswarm
- BoB pets
- IRC/ED
- Etc.
As a matter of fact, there's 2 people in the current CSM not representing a large alliance (ankhewhatever and myself)
However, you'll find that even the large alliance players tend to care about the way things are in highsec, piracy, industry, etc.
On the other hand, the other player not representing a large alliance is a pure empire player and doesn't know *anything* about lowsec or 0.0. As such, the situation is quite the contrary to the situation you describe. 0.0 members usually offer have a wider view while empire players care only about their missions.
That's my experience with the current CSM. Now vote for Meissa Anunthiel to elect someone who cares about everything;-)
So you agree that the CSM can not be described as representing the player base?
It represents a share of the playerbase, you can't represent people who don't want to be represented.
Like for real elections, people who don't bother to vote don't have a ground to complain when they don't get what they want.
Part of what I'm doing at the moment is make sure people who don't vote do so knowingly. I meet a few people who say "hey, I'm not voting, the CSM is a joke". Frankly that's fine with me. What I don't like, however, is the bazillion others who ask "what's the CSM?"
The way I see things, it's not frequently that a game developer gives their community a chance to directly speak with them. My initial reaction was "just another PR thing", but I figured this is an opportunity worth taking and let's see where this goes...
When you take into account all the people who don't read forums or read news blurbs, people who don't even speak english, it's not really a surprise.
There's a sizeable share of the players who are french and don't speak english (the client is localized).
There's also a very large share of russian speaking players. The only CSM candidate who seems to understand a limited amount of russian is myself, and I'm not even bothering with getting the word out to them, they're mostly not interested and out of touch with all aspects of meta-gaming.
Besides, the fact that a small amount of the playerbase actually votes doesn't mean anything with regards to the attention CCP pays [or doesn't] to the CSM.
"I did some numbers checking and the council has brought up 128 topics for CCP. And out of that, nine have been denied. The rest has been either injected into a backlog, or if it was already in the backlog it has been given an added prioritization."
And of those not rejected, how many have been implemented? One I recall having cropped up at tje CSM a couple of times was black ops battleships, which failed pretty hard at anything, only in th last week or so have they begun to address them, but one of there most requested fixes, a fuel bay, is still out of the picture.
For all the talk and CSM meetings, very little of there suggestions seems to make it into the game, as CCP add what they want more than anything.
There have been 3 different improvements to the Black Ops ships over patches, the first 2 failed to significantly address the weakness of the black ops. The third and latest makes black ops useful, convenient and not overpowered.
I'm sure some black op pilots would have appreciated their ship to become FotM, but asking around, I think these patches finally fix the Black Ops issue for most of them.
As for other things proposed by the CSM, some have been implemented, some haven't yet. Changes take time.
One thing to remember is that the CSM also serves as an easy feedback for the devs, I can't comment on particulars due to NDA (I'm on the CSM), but they sometimes throw development ideas at us for comment before they make it into the game (or to give us a chance that they don't).
What kind of change could we possibly propose that would benefit us over our enemies? Asking them to do something like improving the quality of the space we live in (which is the best in the game, anyway) would be transparent and silly. At best, we can (and do) ask them to fix some of the absolutely broken 0.0 mechanics such as POS setup times, titans, broken loot tables, among other things. [snip]
I'm not saying that we wouldn't exploit the CSM for our own gain, but it just doesn't have the potential for doing so.
I'm a member of the CSM, and I can concur with Judinous. The representative of Goonswarm in the CSM, Darius Johnson (his character name), hasn't been unreasonable in the least.
Quite frankly, he's been reasonable and intelligent. Sure most of the thing he's been interested in was 0.0 improvements, although not limited to it at all.
In my experience, the ones you have to "fear" in the CSM are the carebears, empire dwellers who know nothing of the game except what happens in empire.
Can't the defendant produce his/her own expert and have them pitted one against the other?
Like you said it's amazingly one-sided!
On the other hand it's good that anything non-infringement related gets removed from the investigation, though that might make identifying the "operator" of the computer difficult.
You say you're not a troll, but you're arguing pretty hard for a "disinterested observer". And your arguments are pure bunk.
And I'm a disinterested observer in this case only in this that I'm no party to the case, however considering I engage in P2P activities, I like to know where I would stand, so in that sense I'm interested.
And that's why I seldom argue:-) It's too time consuming when you want, for a change, to try and defend [part of] an unpopular idea (in this case, that the RIAA may be partially right).
I'm not arguing for the RIAA itself for a number of reasons, the first of which is that they're a bunch of extortionist putting out low-value junk music to the point where (until recently) there was nothing else to listen. However, I'm trying to discuss the arguments made in the case, individually, and not as a bundle. Of the 5 presented, the RIAA vs Does thing should have been thrown out based on one (the bundling of Does), if only that. Does that means that I should accept at face value all the other arguments the defence presents? Not at all...
Of the other 4, the only one anyone ever replied to was the use of MediaSentry. Their methodology and their "expert" (great transcript of your bashing him btw;-) ) are junk and does not prove anything (you can't tell who's sitting at a computer at a given time, IP adress or not). If, however, a copyright holder were to file a suit against a single Doe, does the fact that the evidence was obtained illegally through an unlicensed investigator mean the case should be thrown out? That's what I'm asking and all the elements I could see initially lead me to think otherwise.
The case used as a reference (about the quasi-criminal illegal evidence thing) is way too technical for me to properly comprehend. Which is why I stopped trying to understand it (I'll come back to it when I have a law degree, in another life:p). As such, I don't feel qualified at all to discuss the technicality, which is why I stopped discussing it technically. All I'm left with arguing on that point is wether it's "right" to prevent one from trying to obtain proof based on non-proof/inadmissible/unlicensed/whatever, which is debatable (stricto sensu), and what that last post was about.
You say my arguments are bunk, I take that as your expert opinion on the matter. I now know for a fact that illegally obtained evidence, by non-government agents, is inadmissible in court, even in a civil trial. Case closed for that point as far as I'm concerned. I still think that it shouldn't be the case in this instance, as a matter of opinion.
Truth be told, I'd rather have noone else to defend me in a lawsuit against the RIAA should it ever happen (unlikely, I'm not a US citizen), I thought however that the comment section was for discussing, not just for chest-beating and rooting for the team. The fact that you've been winning case after case (or have them dismissed) means I'm most likely wrong, but does that means I should suspend any thinking ability I may possess and take everything said by the side I favor as truth? That would be the equivalent of an "appeal to authority" fallacy and that of division as well, and I just can't do that.
I'm away for the week-end, so I'll stop the discussion here. I'll just end this post with thanking you for your contribution, to the thread, to the news section in general and to my personal enlightenment:-)
Also, thanks for defending those people as you do, and for making the documents/discussions public, that's a lot of food for thought and interesting reads.
See, you come up with this straw men, but they are quite easy to blow down. The situation that I described and the one that you described are completely different. Case 1: Unlicensed investigator is trying to dig up dirt on a person. And comes up with an accusation of car theft. There is no evidence of theft except the statement of an unlicensed investigator. Case 2: Homeless person is hired to watch your car. Note that he isn't acting as an investigator. He doesn't need a license for car watching. He hasn't done anything wrong. And his statement is not the only evidence of theft: There is also the evidence of the car's owner, who found that his car is gone.
So yes, the police shouldn't get a search warrant on the word of a scumbag and nothing else. They should likely get a search warrant based on the word of a car owner who reports his car stolen and a homeless person who witnessed the theft.
I still agree that bundling the Does together is wrong.
I also agree that whatever mediasentry is doing is not a proof of anything.
I also agree that shooting wildly as the RIAA does is abusing the system.
However I still think that even if it is insufficient to prove infringement, it is reasonable enough a suspicion to warrant inspection, and thus the discovery of who the people are, albeit not ex-parte.
The unlicensed investigator thing does not mean it's inadmissible in a civil lawsuit. If MediaSentry is breaking the law in any way, the Does should sue them.
To keep on with analogies, something that's closer to what's really happening then, since the last one failed. Suppose I own a hangar with stuff and I think some people are stealing. I pay some [unlicensed] dude to go take pictures of people leaving the hangar. He grabs license plate numbers.
That's definately not proof of anything, but shouldn't it be sufficient for me to file a suit against Doe with license plate number whatever and get the court to identify the person and get a search warrant?
Improper joinder.
No valid reason for ex parte proceedings.
And apparently a good part of your mind.
Thanks for questioning my sanity, I do that frequently too. Though that leads me to wonder how one can be objective about one's own sanity... Anyway;-)
My questions are not about the improper joinder, I agree with that.
OTHER arguments.
Obviously, you are much more satisfied with the Magistrate's decision than are 3 judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Which doesn't mean you're wrong and they're right. But looking at the composition of that panel, and having studied the law myself for the past 35 years, IMHO you are wrong and they are right to be concerned.
Frankly I'm happy to see the Court of Appeals being concerned, it at least means that whatever reasoning the Magistrate used is going to be examined and the defendants get a[nother] chance at making their point, which would otherwise be moot.
So far, however, they haven't said anything about the Magistrate being wrong, which is what I'm questioning. I don't frequently think that because someone is generally right, everything they say is right...
IANAL, etc. and I'm no fan of the MAFIAA at all... However...
I just read the lower court judge's ruling in denying the motion to quash and I frankly don't see a problem with the judge's reasoning.
You don't see the problem because you are not a lawyer.
I'm going out on a limb, here, but I would bet you that the vast majority of non-lawyers would also have "found" a lot of "problems" with the Magistrate Judge's decision. (Which is one of the reasons I raised my "troll" alert on the GP post, but I must confess that my primary reason for raising the "troll" alert was the language: "I'm no fan of the MAFIAA, however....." Most of the trolls -- or shills -- start out with that disclaimer.)
Hadn't I started with the disclaimer, I'd have been labelled one anyway, guess next time I'll avoid that starting sentence;-)
And that's right, I'm no lawyer, and I did see a problem with them bundling 16 cases together, my question was on the other 4 points.
I'm close to getting an answer on wether the judge should have thrown out the evidence presented by MediaSentry. However it seems that even if it's illegally obtained, it's admissible in a civil trial. The case cited (summary here?: http://supreme.justia.com/us/380/693/ ) to support that it shouldn't is way over my head to debate (after reading it about the quasi-criminal nature or whatnot), which is why I'll stop here and accept that until further notice, which leaves me with 3 points;-)
How about you bring suit based on your friend reporting whatever. Should the judge basically say "your friend is not a license investigator, you thereby have no argument whatsoever"? I realize the weakness of the analogy, but shouldn't the validity of the argument be discussed rather than dismissed without examining?
There is a difference. My friend is not a licensed investigator, but he can have a look around things if I ask him to, as long as he is not investigating for hire. Perfectly legal. If he goes to court, the judge can ask him questions to find out whether he is a reliable witness, and his evidence would be treated accordingly. The unlicensed investigator, on the other hand, has already broken the law just by taking money for investigating when he didn't have a license. We don't even need to examine what he says in court, he can't be trusted anyway.
If the judge is right, this is not true. Information obtained illegally is admissible in civil lawsuits. (The judge goes farther and says MediaSentry's activity is not illegal, which is another point entirely). The judge says this:
Even if the information was illegally obtained, this does not
necessarily foretell its inadmissibility during a civil trial. Other than an errant citation to a United
States Supreme Court case, the Doe Defendants do not proffer any other precedent to uphold this
notion that illegally obtained evidence is somehow excluded from a civil trial, and this Court has
been unable to unearth any case to confirm this novel concept.
You also miss that this unlicensed, illegal investigators testimony is used to breach the privacy of presumably innocent people. You have to have a very good reason to do that. For example, if my friend, he is just an ordinary and presumably honest person, claims that he saw you stealing something, then this may be enough for the police to get a search warrant and then breach your privacy. If that unlicensed, illegal investigator claims that he saw you stealing a car, then this is most likely not enough for the police to get a search warrant. And what the RIAA wanted was the equivalent of a search warrant.
So you're saying if I hire some homeless person (hey, I'm cheap) to watch over my car, someone steals it, the homeless guy I hired tells me who the thief is and I go to the police, they won't be able to get a search warrant? If that's true that's fucked up...
How on earth does someone suspecting someone they can only partially identify go about and find out who the person really is if what you say is true?
Slashdot Mirror
May sound stupid, but where does the extra charge go? If the device receives an electron on one side and sends a positively charge thing on the other side (a proton or K+), that leaves 2 electrons in the device, where do those go?
I know there's an android app that lets you do just that. I don't know for the iPhone. I use neither so I couldn't point you in its direction but I've seen others do it.
It's like going from hotmail to gmail back when it launched.
It's sleek, doesn't get in the way, lets you do things easily. You manage your "friends" easily.
Hell, it's one service I wouldn't have any issue adding my boss and co-workers to, unlike facebook.
As a bonus, I don't get people posting asinine idiocies on my wall. Sure they can get me to eyeball their crap by mentionning me in their posts, but at least it won't bother everyone else who reads the things I write.
A negative side, not for me but for others, would be the lack of games, but we'll see...
Yes, we do go back and buy.
You have bought a legitimate license for EVERY SINGLE GAME you've ever downloaded/copied illegally?
Oh, the nice fallacy of the indivisible middle... "we do go back and buy", he said, not "we do go back and buy EVERY SINGLE TIME".
Now, if you're interested as to when, there's crap games, there's "meh" games not worth the money they're sold for and there's nice games. Those are the ones that are gone back for...
"You can put whatever you want on it, front or back."
Hmmm.... it's a good thing he didn't say "and", or if I was the instructor I would have said "Nice try, but logically your exam assistant can't be on the front *and* the back of the paper at the same time".
Simply fold the paper in a moebius strip (or, more simply, fold back 2cms)
I'm with you there. I read the blurb here, then read the article, and I still can't figure out who did what to whom. Idiot journalists... If anyone cares to explain, that'd be much appreciated.
As a physicist, I do get a bit annoyed at the constant attacks on string theory in public media.
Let me just state a few points please:
If you complain at string theory, then PLEASE state what you are proposing. What is the use in complaining when you have no alternative?
What kind of scientist are you? It doesn't matter if I can offer an alternative suggestion or not.
The use of "complaining" is to determine the validity of the theory. You can't test it, you can't determine if it's true. Simple enough for you?
If I were to say that invisible pink unicorns like small massive objects, you'd have every right to tear my suggestion apart without having to offer an alternative, that's the way it works...
What about the distribution part?
There was no evidence of her acting as a distributor. That would have required proof that she -disseminated copies -to the public -by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by a rental, lease or lending. There was no proof of any of those.
That's not what I was asking. I haven't checked the case, my question was wether there's a limit to monies awarded for the distribution.
The fact that the jury found her guilty of that despite the absence of proof really sucks, however the summary says the monies were awarded "for stealing and illegally distributing", hence my question.
What about the distribution part? I don't agree with the principle that unwillingly distributing (as is the case with P2P technologies) should be grounds for extra payment since it wasn't the person's objective, but since the money is for obtaining AND distributing, there should be something there as well, don't you think? Is there some kind of constitutional limit to that as well?
As a side note, where I live (belgium) we now have a "tax" on hard drives, recordable CDs/DVDs and all forms of storage to pay for the piracy going on, no matter what that storage device is going to be used for :-/
The upside is that I now have no moral issue whatsoever with downloading other's copyrighted works to my heart's content. I pay for it, I'm going to use it.
War is all about waiting and dicking around and about 10 minutes of fighting. WoW had to introduce the battlegrounds to give players a way to play PvP at no cost. Even Wintergrasp limits you to every few hours to make sure enough people join up so its "fun" There were no wars in Ultima Online, just a few assassins once in a while. Even major battles in EVE lasts only about 30 minutes.
That's not entirely true. Battles are short only if the number of people involved is small or one side overpowers the other. I've faught battles that have lasted between 2 and 6 hours. And once a whole week-end, with constant skirmishes faught over this gate or that, that POS or that one (there were a few).
Just my 2 cents
Oh trust me, I have the highest contempt for the courts right now.
This verdict will be the cause of derision internationally, and will provide endless fodder for those who are fond of laughing in their beer at the USA. Unfortunately, they will have a pretty irrefutable point.
Actually, I believe most of us chose to laugh at selected parts of the USA, this is just some extra fodder. It's not necessarily that we're fond of it, it's that you're definately not helping.
Your "justice" system has been a laughing stock for a looong time, as have your executive branch (come on, electing Bush, TWICE!), your televangelists, your puritans (omg, a boob on telly!), your failed healthcare and educational system, etc.
However, there's lots of good stuff in the people of the United States, most of it is the drive, the belief that you can accomplish things. Too bad it's dwarfed by everything else...
So the idea is to make some kind of legal argument limiting the capability of the defendant to defend themselves?
Yes. Because, if she were permitted to defend herself, there's a possibility that, like.......she might win.
This is getting really ludicrous, mind boggling. I mean... What the HELL?
Doesn't the lawyer attempting that kind of idiotic stuff know that he's basically kissing his carreer goodbye? Surely every lawyer who hears about this is laughing...
- Northern Coalition
- Goonswarm
- BoB pets
- IRC/ED
- Etc.
As a matter of fact, there's 2 people in the current CSM not representing a large alliance (ankhewhatever and myself)
However, you'll find that even the large alliance players tend to care about the way things are in highsec, piracy, industry, etc.
On the other hand, the other player not representing a large alliance is a pure empire player and doesn't know *anything* about lowsec or 0.0. As such, the situation is quite the contrary to the situation you describe. 0.0 members usually offer have a wider view while empire players care only about their missions.
That's my experience with the current CSM. Now vote for Meissa Anunthiel to elect someone who cares about everything ;-)
So you agree that the CSM can not be described as representing the player base?
It represents a share of the playerbase, you can't represent people who don't want to be represented.
Like for real elections, people who don't bother to vote don't have a ground to complain when they don't get what they want.
Part of what I'm doing at the moment is make sure people who don't vote do so knowingly. I meet a few people who say "hey, I'm not voting, the CSM is a joke". Frankly that's fine with me. What I don't like, however, is the bazillion others who ask "what's the CSM?"
The way I see things, it's not frequently that a game developer gives their community a chance to directly speak with them. My initial reaction was "just another PR thing", but I figured this is an opportunity worth taking and let's see where this goes...
So... just like a real election then?
Yep... Oh, by the way, vote Meissa Anunthiel ;-)
There's a sizeable share of the players who are french and don't speak english (the client is localized).
There's also a very large share of russian speaking players. The only CSM candidate who seems to understand a limited amount of russian is myself, and I'm not even bothering with getting the word out to them, they're mostly not interested and out of touch with all aspects of meta-gaming. Besides, the fact that a small amount of the playerbase actually votes doesn't mean anything with regards to the attention CCP pays [or doesn't] to the CSM.
"I did some numbers checking and the council has brought up 128 topics for CCP. And out of that, nine have been denied. The rest has been either injected into a backlog, or if it was already in the backlog it has been given an added prioritization."
And of those not rejected, how many have been implemented? One I recall having cropped up at tje CSM a couple of times was black ops battleships, which failed pretty hard at anything, only in th last week or so have they begun to address them, but one of there most requested fixes, a fuel bay, is still out of the picture.
For all the talk and CSM meetings, very little of there suggestions seems to make it into the game, as CCP add what they want more than anything.
There have been 3 different improvements to the Black Ops ships over patches, the first 2 failed to significantly address the weakness of the black ops. The third and latest makes black ops useful, convenient and not overpowered.
I'm sure some black op pilots would have appreciated their ship to become FotM, but asking around, I think these patches finally fix the Black Ops issue for most of them.
As for other things proposed by the CSM, some have been implemented, some haven't yet. Changes take time.
One thing to remember is that the CSM also serves as an easy feedback for the devs, I can't comment on particulars due to NDA (I'm on the CSM), but they sometimes throw development ideas at us for comment before they make it into the game (or to give us a chance that they don't).
What kind of change could we possibly propose that would benefit us over our enemies? Asking them to do something like improving the quality of the space we live in (which is the best in the game, anyway) would be transparent and silly. At best, we can (and do) ask them to fix some of the absolutely broken 0.0 mechanics such as POS setup times, titans, broken loot tables, among other things. [snip] I'm not saying that we wouldn't exploit the CSM for our own gain, but it just doesn't have the potential for doing so.
I'm a member of the CSM, and I can concur with Judinous. The representative of Goonswarm in the CSM, Darius Johnson (his character name), hasn't been unreasonable in the least.
Quite frankly, he's been reasonable and intelligent. Sure most of the thing he's been interested in was 0.0 improvements, although not limited to it at all.
In my experience, the ones you have to "fear" in the CSM are the carebears, empire dwellers who know nothing of the game except what happens in empire.
Like you said it's amazingly one-sided!
On the other hand it's good that anything non-infringement related gets removed from the investigation, though that might make identifying the "operator" of the computer difficult.
You say you're not a troll, but you're arguing pretty hard for a "disinterested observer". And your arguments are pure bunk.
And I'm a disinterested observer in this case only in this that I'm no party to the case, however considering I engage in P2P activities, I like to know where I would stand, so in that sense I'm interested.
And that's why I seldom argue :-) It's too time consuming when you want, for a change, to try and defend [part of] an unpopular idea (in this case, that the RIAA may be partially right).
I'm not arguing for the RIAA itself for a number of reasons, the first of which is that they're a bunch of extortionist putting out low-value junk music to the point where (until recently) there was nothing else to listen. However, I'm trying to discuss the arguments made in the case, individually, and not as a bundle. Of the 5 presented, the RIAA vs Does thing should have been thrown out based on one (the bundling of Does), if only that. Does that means that I should accept at face value all the other arguments the defence presents? Not at all...
Of the other 4, the only one anyone ever replied to was the use of MediaSentry. Their methodology and their "expert" (great transcript of your bashing him btw ;-) ) are junk and does not prove anything (you can't tell who's sitting at a computer at a given time, IP adress or not). If, however, a copyright holder were to file a suit against a single Doe, does the fact that the evidence was obtained illegally through an unlicensed investigator mean the case should be thrown out? That's what I'm asking and all the elements I could see initially lead me to think otherwise.
The case used as a reference (about the quasi-criminal illegal evidence thing) is way too technical for me to properly comprehend. Which is why I stopped trying to understand it (I'll come back to it when I have a law degree, in another life :p). As such, I don't feel qualified at all to discuss the technicality, which is why I stopped discussing it technically. All I'm left with arguing on that point is wether it's "right" to prevent one from trying to obtain proof based on non-proof/inadmissible/unlicensed/whatever, which is debatable (stricto sensu), and what that last post was about.
You say my arguments are bunk, I take that as your expert opinion on the matter. I now know for a fact that illegally obtained evidence, by non-government agents, is inadmissible in court, even in a civil trial. Case closed for that point as far as I'm concerned. I still think that it shouldn't be the case in this instance, as a matter of opinion.
Truth be told, I'd rather have noone else to defend me in a lawsuit against the RIAA should it ever happen (unlikely, I'm not a US citizen), I thought however that the comment section was for discussing, not just for chest-beating and rooting for the team. The fact that you've been winning case after case (or have them dismissed) means I'm most likely wrong, but does that means I should suspend any thinking ability I may possess and take everything said by the side I favor as truth? That would be the equivalent of an "appeal to authority" fallacy and that of division as well, and I just can't do that.
I'm away for the week-end, so I'll stop the discussion here. I'll just end this post with thanking you for your contribution, to the thread, to the news section in general and to my personal enlightenment :-)
Also, thanks for defending those people as you do, and for making the documents/discussions public, that's a lot of food for thought and interesting reads.
See, you come up with this straw men, but they are quite easy to blow down. The situation that I described and the one that you described are completely different. Case 1: Unlicensed investigator is trying to dig up dirt on a person. And comes up with an accusation of car theft. There is no evidence of theft except the statement of an unlicensed investigator. Case 2: Homeless person is hired to watch your car. Note that he isn't acting as an investigator. He doesn't need a license for car watching. He hasn't done anything wrong. And his statement is not the only evidence of theft: There is also the evidence of the car's owner, who found that his car is gone. So yes, the police shouldn't get a search warrant on the word of a scumbag and nothing else. They should likely get a search warrant based on the word of a car owner who reports his car stolen and a homeless person who witnessed the theft.
I still agree that bundling the Does together is wrong.
I also agree that whatever mediasentry is doing is not a proof of anything.
I also agree that shooting wildly as the RIAA does is abusing the system.
However I still think that even if it is insufficient to prove infringement, it is reasonable enough a suspicion to warrant inspection, and thus the discovery of who the people are, albeit not ex-parte.
The unlicensed investigator thing does not mean it's inadmissible in a civil lawsuit. If MediaSentry is breaking the law in any way, the Does should sue them.
To keep on with analogies, something that's closer to what's really happening then, since the last one failed. Suppose I own a hangar with stuff and I think some people are stealing. I pay some [unlicensed] dude to go take pictures of people leaving the hangar. He grabs license plate numbers.
That's definately not proof of anything, but shouldn't it be sufficient for me to file a suit against Doe with license plate number whatever and get the court to identify the person and get a search warrant?
Improper joinder. No valid reason for ex parte proceedings. And apparently a good part of your mind.
Thanks for questioning my sanity, I do that frequently too. Though that leads me to wonder how one can be objective about one's own sanity... Anyway ;-)
My questions are not about the improper joinder, I agree with that.
OTHER arguments.
Obviously, you are much more satisfied with the Magistrate's decision than are 3 judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Which doesn't mean you're wrong and they're right. But looking at the composition of that panel, and having studied the law myself for the past 35 years, IMHO you are wrong and they are right to be concerned.
Frankly I'm happy to see the Court of Appeals being concerned, it at least means that whatever reasoning the Magistrate used is going to be examined and the defendants get a[nother] chance at making their point, which would otherwise be moot.
So far, however, they haven't said anything about the Magistrate being wrong, which is what I'm questioning. I don't frequently think that because someone is generally right, everything they say is right...
IANAL, etc. and I'm no fan of the MAFIAA at all... However... I just read the lower court judge's ruling in denying the motion to quash and I frankly don't see a problem with the judge's reasoning.
You don't see the problem because you are not a lawyer.
I'm going out on a limb, here, but I would bet you that the vast majority of non-lawyers would also have "found" a lot of "problems" with the Magistrate Judge's decision. (Which is one of the reasons I raised my "troll" alert on the GP post, but I must confess that my primary reason for raising the "troll" alert was the language: "I'm no fan of the MAFIAA, however....." Most of the trolls -- or shills -- start out with that disclaimer.)
Hadn't I started with the disclaimer, I'd have been labelled one anyway, guess next time I'll avoid that starting sentence ;-)
And that's right, I'm no lawyer, and I did see a problem with them bundling 16 cases together, my question was on the other 4 points.
I'm close to getting an answer on wether the judge should have thrown out the evidence presented by MediaSentry. However it seems that even if it's illegally obtained, it's admissible in a civil trial. The case cited (summary here?: http://supreme.justia.com/us/380/693/ ) to support that it shouldn't is way over my head to debate (after reading it about the quasi-criminal nature or whatnot), which is why I'll stop here and accept that until further notice, which leaves me with 3 points ;-)
How about you bring suit based on your friend reporting whatever. Should the judge basically say "your friend is not a license investigator, you thereby have no argument whatsoever"? I realize the weakness of the analogy, but shouldn't the validity of the argument be discussed rather than dismissed without examining?
There is a difference. My friend is not a licensed investigator, but he can have a look around things if I ask him to, as long as he is not investigating for hire. Perfectly legal. If he goes to court, the judge can ask him questions to find out whether he is a reliable witness, and his evidence would be treated accordingly. The unlicensed investigator, on the other hand, has already broken the law just by taking money for investigating when he didn't have a license. We don't even need to examine what he says in court, he can't be trusted anyway.
If the judge is right, this is not true. Information obtained illegally is admissible in civil lawsuits. (The judge goes farther and says MediaSentry's activity is not illegal, which is another point entirely). The judge says this:
Even if the information was illegally obtained, this does not necessarily foretell its inadmissibility during a civil trial. Other than an errant citation to a United States Supreme Court case, the Doe Defendants do not proffer any other precedent to uphold this notion that illegally obtained evidence is somehow excluded from a civil trial, and this Court has been unable to unearth any case to confirm this novel concept.
You also miss that this unlicensed, illegal investigators testimony is used to breach the privacy of presumably innocent people. You have to have a very good reason to do that. For example, if my friend, he is just an ordinary and presumably honest person, claims that he saw you stealing something, then this may be enough for the police to get a search warrant and then breach your privacy. If that unlicensed, illegal investigator claims that he saw you stealing a car, then this is most likely not enough for the police to get a search warrant. And what the RIAA wanted was the equivalent of a search warrant.
So you're saying if I hire some homeless person (hey, I'm cheap) to watch over my car, someone steals it, the homeless guy I hired tells me who the thief is and I go to the police, they won't be able to get a search warrant? If that's true that's fucked up...
How on earth does someone suspecting someone they can only partially identify go about and find out who the person really is if what you say is true?