Does this only apply to Windows because of the MS monopoly? That if he wanted a refund on the other bundled software (e.g. anti-virus) then he should simply choose another brand because there's actual consumer choice there? If so I see your point.
Can I send that back and get a refund for the cost of that? If I decide I don't need the mouse and keyboard from a desktop PC can I get a refund on them? How about if I get something on special offer - buy one get one free. Can I send the one I bought back back and keep the free one?
The licensing is probably a bulk deal negotiated with Microsoft for all its PCs. An individual copy doesn't have a cost of them. Only the right to install it on their PCs in the first place.
The cost of Windows isn't quantifiable. the pats aren't itemised. One way of looking at it is you buy a â400 copy of Windows and get a free PC. another way of looking at it is you buy a â400 PC and get a free copy of Windows.
The licence agreement gives the right to send the whole thing back. Not parts.
It was a crime to be gay, or at least to commit homosexual acts. There were laws against it. Therefore it was a crime. That's what crime means.
A pardon would be acknowledging that he committed a crime but that we forgive him. I'd prefer to accept that he committed a crime and that society was at fault for it being a crime. Something we have done.
Really, I think that's all the government can do. I suppose a pardon might make us feel better but it's not going to do much to help. I propose we simply recognise him as a pioneer and as an important part of the codebreaking at Bletchley Park.
Show me that royalty check and I'll feel ownership. What Agile means by "feel ownership" is "take responsibility for".
No. It's not about taking responsibility for something. That's the result we want, certainly.
If I was working for my salary, and I was tasked with producing some software, the software would work, adequately to expectations. If I really am interested in the work that I do, I'll want it to do more than that. I'll come up with suggestions as to how it can be made better. I'll not tolerate issues that are considered tolerable. I'll want it to be the best damn product you can buy. I'll care about it! Not just have a sense of responsibility.
If you'll do that just for salary then great. I won't. Unless you get me to invest in it, it will be merely adequate. I'll try and get myself to invest in it as well, because I enjoy working on things I care about, but if my employers does the same I'm a lot more likely to be able to.
Between Amazon, apple store, and best buy, etc. I can easily download the movie or buy it as easily as I can pirating it.
I can't.
Firstly, most of the stuff I pirate I can't buy! I like American TV shows. Sometimes we only have to wait a week, so that's fine, but there are a few shows that we wait months for. I'll happily pay for them. I just can't.
Secondly, I can't do what I want with them. Last week I was working away from home. I have my network media player. Lovely device. I can connect that to the hotel TV easily enough. It will not work with anything I can legally download.
Why is that an excuse for piracy? OK, you don't want DRM? That's not an excuse for piracy either. Nothing stops you from buying the actual DVD and ripping it into an avi.
We're not excusing it. We're looking into arguments as to why people are choosing to pirate rather than buy legally. Price is probably a factor. Is it the only factor?
Again, not true... If you didn't have the ability to download it illegally in the first place and you wanted the movie you would go buy it. Lost sale.
If I wanted the movie more than I wanted anything else that I could have spent that money on, then yes. Demand is elastic though. Just because I'm willing to download something for free doesn't mean I'm willing to pay for it. I may be. I may not be. Exactly what the ratio is between pirated copies and sales lost I'm not sure, but there's no way the estimates for pirated
I'm not a lawyer, but here is a potential legal argument that it is theft.
Copyright infringement and theft are totally different acts. To be guilty of theft, you have to have caused actual loss, not potential loss.
This is dealing with the symtoms of your messed up management rather then dealing with the course of it.
The symptoms are manageable by a fairly simple process. It eliminates all the problems. Fixing the cause would require a lot of work, involving a certain level of guessing, and has multiple sources. The actual solution to the cause may not be realistically achievable.
Your fired. Really, you need to do this to just do your fucking job? Here's some motivation for you, your paycheck.
So you'll fire people rather than provide a simple process that means you don't have to? Seems rather impractical. Firing people costs money. Ramping a replacement up takes time.
Good employees need more motivation than just a salary. They need to have a feeling of ownership in the work they do. You want someone to work just for the paycheck? Don't expect any creativity or original thinking. Some of us like to know what we're meant to be doing.
So... you are kept more honest as long as their is no evidence?
Yup. Funny how it happens but it does.
He already should be knowing, if your teamlead doesn't know this throughout the day, he isn't doing his job.
How does he know? Distract each person on a regular basis? How about getting everyone together at the start of the day and asking.
If he thinks he can know for his entire team with just a few lines what is going on, he has no idea what is going on.
It will let him know when his impression is wrong. It also lets everyone else know.
Again, just dealing with the results of your messed up company structure, questions should not take days to answer. Deal with the causes not the symptoms.
It's not "faddish". It's not really a meeting. It's a team getting together and having a quick chat while everyone's there, to make sure they're on the same page.
If you have more than half a dozen or so people in the "meeting" then it becomes a mess.
You do this:
I amazed my manager at one job simply by keeping accurate notes of what happened in the meeting and following up on the items. By the time the next weekly meeting came around, all the items had been completed. Apparently this was a new concept.
Good idea. Actually getting people to do that isn't so easy. A meeting a fifth of the length each day has exactly the same benefit. Just that taking notes slows things down, and is not needed since if you can't remember what you said yesterday something's wrong.
Right you are. Because ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Ignorance of the fats is though. A taxi that I happen to take away from the scene of a crime is different from a getaway driver. Someone who provides a safehouse and protects me from the police is different from a hotel owner who had no idea of my crime
Read it, to determine what facilitating illegal file sharing would be.
Would seem to be violation of the exclusive rights under article 2. It seems by publishing a torrent, an indirect process of preparing a copy was carried out. They were part of this process. As was "King King". Nothing unusual in that. A crime can have multiple participants.
In conclusion, no actual crime was proven, but somehow TPB facilitated that crime.
Actually, I agree here. Unless people were using the torrents I don't think they were guilty.
In my post above, I "facilitated" crime worth penalties of just under 1 million with a jail time of 2 weeks to 2 months (based on the TPB trial, anyway, and scaled).
No sure how the length of penalty works. But yes, I agree that by the same standards, you're guilty of assisting copyright infringement, assuming that someone uses that file to infringe copyright.
Both Mens Rea and Actus Reus. I think someone should sue me next.
There's a prima facea argument. Don't think they would win since a defence of posting it purely as part of a discussion for an example and not with intent to facilitate infringement of copyright.
This is getting funny. YOU said TPB invented the Internet. Not me. Me quoting you for satiric reasons (read what YOU wrote). You can't even claim context; I ensured that I took enough to include context.
Ahhh, right! You interpreted in a manner that no sane person would ever interpret it, and then mock me for your insanity. Nice.
It does require a wilful act. Not an incidental and unintentional result. I apologise. I thought this was bloody obvious.
Just torrent files. Containing facts ABOUT the content (but not the content itself).
They weren't being charged with hosting infringing files. They were charged with "assisting in making copyright content available". The fact that they did so wilfully is implicit in that it's a criminal charge. When you have a file that allows a computer to automatically find lots of bits of a file, and therefore produce a copy of it, then you're providing a hell of a lot of assistance.
So yes, they are completely innocent of the crime of hosting infringing files. Sadly for their defence, this is a crime they weren't charged with.
Where is the infringement?
Well, technically you've possibly infringed copyright laws by wilfully assisting in making copyright content available. You'd probably need to show that people had actually used this to copy a file (I may be wrong here). Slashdot can reasonably claim innocence in that their involvement in the crime was clearly unintentional.
TPB can make no such claim. They knew full well that their site was used for piracy and it's hard to argue even that that wasn't the entire purpose of the site. This is a little different from Slashdot, who have no idea that your comment contains magnet data, and it's hard to argue that this is the entire purpose of Slashdot.
Everyone else can be forgotten, because it "is beside the point".
No it isn't.
The point is they copied a file from A to B. Whether they owned A or B makes no difference or the OS that A and B happened to be running, whether they used FTP, bittorrent or http, who invented the protocols, and the file format. None of these have any bearing on whether it was legal or not
Firstly I don't have a big problem with TPB being shut down. I consider TPB to have been a net cost to society.
It's not a morality thing. Never has been. The point of copyright is simply to provide an incentive to publish. You are publishing. Copyright is working. Not perfectly, but adequately.
If we actually explicitly allow large scale piracy then the system breaks down. It's hideously naive to assume that absolutely nobody will choose a pirate copy over an original, or that the "advertising" benefits outweigh these losses. If we punish people too harshly for copyright infringement then we end up with a totally unjust system. So we need to tolerate, grudgingly, a certain amount of infringement to balance these objectives. Still not a perfect system but one that apparently works in that people are publishing.
As for harm to consumers, I am pretty certain that piracy is largely responsible for films and TV shows coming out in Britain at about the same time as the US. I suspect that streaming services exist because the media companies recognised the need to compete with downloads. It's pretty rare that the price has any relation to the production cost (otherwise, why do popular musicians not sell their albums at a fraction of the price of less popular ones?) so prices aren't pushed up that much
Voting for a third part isn't totally useless. It's a little indirect, but the mere fact that some people will vote for a third party means that there's an incentive for the other candidates to adopt some of their policies in order to get some of those votes.
So it's basically a threat. One that only works if you can show you're willing to carry it out.
To be fair, There's a certain amount of choice in the primaries. Apparently this is where all the dirty tricks actually go on. In 2008, the effective choice was between Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Not a brilliant choice but it's not quite as narrow a field as it might appear.
2 - If there is no content, it can't be copyright infringement
There was content.
3 - Why should someone in Sweden care about United States of America law? DMCA is not a Swedish law, and has no force in Sweden.
The "safe Harbor" provisions are actually there to provide an specific defence. It's a specific set of actions that a service provider can undertake to be found innocent of infringement. Its sole purpose is to provide a process by which an internet based company can avoid prosecution. The fact that it only applies in the US is actually an argument against this defence, not in favour. Sweden has no such provision therefore TPB couldn't have relied on it even if they abided by it.
4 - The Pirate Bay certainly followed all copyright laws as they understood them
Are you using an ignorance of the law argument here or something?
(except that they, somehow, induced others to commit copyright offenses).
They facilitated copyright infringement. They provided the means of copying one file from one machine to another thereby infringing copyright. The mechanism is beside the point.
Now, Google CACHES Web pages. Um... that would be a copyright infraction right there. I didn't give Google permission to do any such thing. Happens every day...
Indeed. Now it's possible that this is fair use, fair dealing or whatever the Swedish equivalent is. If you have a problem then insist that charges are files against google.
Google even presents cached web pages with slightly altered content -- ALSO A DIRECT VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT!
Once again, true. Google will have to rely on a fairly subjective area of copyright law as a defence. Fair use provides an exception. A cached page may well not be covered by that exception.
In copyright law, it make little difference where the data is stored. The crime is in copying and distribution, and specifically in causing copying and distribution. If I borrow a thumbdrive from person A use it to copy person B's copyrighted data from person C's PC to person D's PC, I'm still the one who infringed B's copyright.
Julian Assange is being charged with rape. In Sweden. Whether valid or not blaming Hollywood or the US is little more than a conspiracy theory.
Gary Kinnock - trumped up charges, I agree, but that's the US government, not US/Hollywood. Hollywood's control via the US legal system is too far abstracted for it to be all that significant. So yes, the US has impressive power. Hollywood less so outside of the US.
Why do so many people assert that their actions were not illegal in Sweden?
Every time I ask, people point out that Google has a Swedish website, but Google has websites in just about every country with enforced copyright law, so by this argument, what they did would be legal everywhere.
Presumably there's meant to be something unique about the law in Sweden but I have no idea why people think this.
Google will remove search results if they're infringing.
But the main thing is that Google can realistically argue that its involvement with infringement is unintentional.
TPB's entire purpose is to aid piracy. Intent is important. Whether they actually hold content is immaterial. They're distributing content. Yes, the mechanism they use to do it is pretty abstract, but so what? they're causing the data to be copied.
Google's argument - "we weren't aware. We have millions of pages indexed, and the infringing ones are rare exceptions. Nobody pointed these out and once they did we removed them"
TPB's argument - "we weren't aware. Even though most of our most popular torrents are obviously for infringing content, the most popular are pretty unlikely to be there with the rightholder's permission and when we were informed of this we sent a mocking reply"
Apparently the point of the service is to make it look like the White House is listening to the people.
It's not doing a very good job then is it.
I'm being flippant, but seriously, anyone politically aware enough to actually care about the petition is also aware when they're being fobbed off. It just gives a feeling of impotence.
Yes, you're right. It's a contractual dispute rather than a copyright thing. I haven't read the contract, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it does quite clearly exclude this sort of thing.
Still have to wonder why the DVD CCA is so concerned abut this. Even if they're just acting as a proxy for the MPAA Kalaidoscope isn't actually costing them anything.
Seems to be a case of the DVD-CCA saying "the letter of the law states this", and Kaleidoscope saying "yes, but that's ridiculous, this in no way harms the DVD-CCA". The judge is simply siding with the law here. That's the way it should work. The problem is that the law's rubbish.
Strange that the DVD-CCA actually has an objection.
Thing is, the prejudice is against middle easterners.
Do you think that a Bosniak Muslim (White, eastern European) would suffer as much prejudice as an Arabic atheist? The religion thing is used as an excuse.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this only apply to Windows because of the MS monopoly? That if he wanted a refund on the other bundled software (e.g. anti-virus) then he should simply choose another brand because there's actual consumer choice there? If so I see your point.
Can I send that back and get a refund for the cost of that? If I decide I don't need the mouse and keyboard from a desktop PC can I get a refund on them? How about if I get something on special offer - buy one get one free. Can I send the one I bought back back and keep the free one?
The licensing is probably a bulk deal negotiated with Microsoft for all its PCs. An individual copy doesn't have a cost of them. Only the right to install it on their PCs in the first place.
The cost of Windows isn't quantifiable. the pats aren't itemised. One way of looking at it is you buy a â400 copy of Windows and get a free PC. another way of looking at it is you buy a â400 PC and get a free copy of Windows.
The licence agreement gives the right to send the whole thing back. Not parts.
It was a crime to be gay, or at least to commit homosexual acts. There were laws against it. Therefore it was a crime. That's what crime means.
A pardon would be acknowledging that he committed a crime but that we forgive him. I'd prefer to accept that he committed a crime and that society was at fault for it being a crime. Something we have done.
He was a criminal though. He committed a crime. He broke the law.
They've admitted it was terribly wrong to punish him, but claiming that he didn't break the law as written would require revising history.
The government owes Turing's family and the rest of the country, even the rest of the world an enormous apology.
Already done
Really, I think that's all the government can do. I suppose a pardon might make us feel better but it's not going to do much to help. I propose we simply recognise him as a pioneer and as an important part of the codebreaking at Bletchley Park.
To all the people pointing out this is a US only thing - So, when did this spelling die out in the US?
I was surprised to hear the word "aeroplane" in the original King Kong, so it was evidently still in use in the 1930's.
Show me that royalty check and I'll feel ownership. What Agile means by "feel ownership" is "take responsibility for".
No. It's not about taking responsibility for something. That's the result we want, certainly.
If I was working for my salary, and I was tasked with producing some software, the software would work, adequately to expectations. If I really am interested in the work that I do, I'll want it to do more than that. I'll come up with suggestions as to how it can be made better. I'll not tolerate issues that are considered tolerable. I'll want it to be the best damn product you can buy. I'll care about it! Not just have a sense of responsibility.
If you'll do that just for salary then great. I won't. Unless you get me to invest in it, it will be merely adequate. I'll try and get myself to invest in it as well, because I enjoy working on things I care about, but if my employers does the same I'm a lot more likely to be able to.
Between Amazon, apple store, and best buy, etc. I can easily download the movie or buy it as easily as I can pirating it.
I can't.
Firstly, most of the stuff I pirate I can't buy! I like American TV shows. Sometimes we only have to wait a week, so that's fine, but there are a few shows that we wait months for. I'll happily pay for them. I just can't.
Secondly, I can't do what I want with them. Last week I was working away from home. I have my network media player. Lovely device. I can connect that to the hotel TV easily enough. It will not work with anything I can legally download.
Why is that an excuse for piracy? OK, you don't want DRM? That's not an excuse for piracy either. Nothing stops you from buying the actual DVD and ripping it into an avi.
We're not excusing it. We're looking into arguments as to why people are choosing to pirate rather than buy legally. Price is probably a factor. Is it the only factor?
Again, not true... If you didn't have the ability to download it illegally in the first place and you wanted the movie you would go buy it. Lost sale.
If I wanted the movie more than I wanted anything else that I could have spent that money on, then yes. Demand is elastic though. Just because I'm willing to download something for free doesn't mean I'm willing to pay for it. I may be. I may not be. Exactly what the ratio is between pirated copies and sales lost I'm not sure, but there's no way the estimates for pirated
I'm not a lawyer, but here is a potential legal argument that it is theft.
Copyright infringement and theft are totally different acts. To be guilty of theft, you have to have caused actual loss, not potential loss.
This is dealing with the symtoms of your messed up management rather then dealing with the course of it.
The symptoms are manageable by a fairly simple process. It eliminates all the problems. Fixing the cause would require a lot of work, involving a certain level of guessing, and has multiple sources. The actual solution to the cause may not be realistically achievable.
Your fired. Really, you need to do this to just do your fucking job? Here's some motivation for you, your paycheck.
So you'll fire people rather than provide a simple process that means you don't have to? Seems rather impractical. Firing people costs money. Ramping a replacement up takes time.
Good employees need more motivation than just a salary. They need to have a feeling of ownership in the work they do. You want someone to work just for the paycheck? Don't expect any creativity or original thinking. Some of us like to know what we're meant to be doing.
So... you are kept more honest as long as their is no evidence?
Yup. Funny how it happens but it does.
He already should be knowing, if your teamlead doesn't know this throughout the day, he isn't doing his job.
How does he know? Distract each person on a regular basis? How about getting everyone together at the start of the day and asking.
If he thinks he can know for his entire team with just a few lines what is going on, he has no idea what is going on.
It will let him know when his impression is wrong. It also lets everyone else know.
Again, just dealing with the results of your messed up company structure, questions should not take days to answer. Deal with the causes not the symptoms.
What are the causes?
It's not "faddish". It's not really a meeting. It's a team getting together and having a quick chat while everyone's there, to make sure they're on the same page.
If you have more than half a dozen or so people in the "meeting" then it becomes a mess.
You do this:
I amazed my manager at one job simply by keeping accurate notes of what happened in the meeting and following up on the items. By the time the next weekly meeting came around, all the items had been completed. Apparently this was a new concept.
Good idea. Actually getting people to do that isn't so easy. A meeting a fifth of the length each day has exactly the same benefit. Just that taking notes slows things down, and is not needed since if you can't remember what you said yesterday something's wrong.
Right you are. Because ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Ignorance of the fats is though. A taxi that I happen to take away from the scene of a crime is different from a getaway driver. Someone who provides a safehouse and protects me from the police is different from a hotel owner who had no idea of my crime
Read it, to determine what facilitating illegal file sharing would be.
Would seem to be violation of the exclusive rights under article 2. It seems by publishing a torrent, an indirect process of preparing a copy was carried out. They were part of this process. As was "King King". Nothing unusual in that. A crime can have multiple participants.
In conclusion, no actual crime was proven, but somehow TPB facilitated that crime.
Actually, I agree here. Unless people were using the torrents I don't think they were guilty.
In my post above, I "facilitated" crime worth penalties of just under 1 million with a jail time of 2 weeks to 2 months (based on the TPB trial, anyway, and scaled).
No sure how the length of penalty works. But yes, I agree that by the same standards, you're guilty of assisting copyright infringement, assuming that someone uses that file to infringe copyright.
Both Mens Rea and Actus Reus. I think someone should sue me next.
There's a prima facea argument. Don't think they would win since a defence of posting it purely as part of a discussion for an example and not with intent to facilitate infringement of copyright.
This is getting funny. YOU said TPB invented the Internet. Not me. Me quoting you for satiric reasons (read what YOU wrote). You can't even claim context; I ensured that I took enough to include context.
Ahhh, right! You interpreted in a manner that no sane person would ever interpret it, and then mock me for your insanity. Nice.
It does require a wilful act. Not an incidental and unintentional result. I apologise. I thought this was bloody obvious.
Just torrent files. Containing facts ABOUT the content (but not the content itself).
They weren't being charged with hosting infringing files. They were charged with "assisting in making copyright content available". The fact that they did so wilfully is implicit in that it's a criminal charge. When you have a file that allows a computer to automatically find lots of bits of a file, and therefore produce a copy of it, then you're providing a hell of a lot of assistance.
So yes, they are completely innocent of the crime of hosting infringing files. Sadly for their defence, this is a crime they weren't charged with.
Where is the infringement?
Well, technically you've possibly infringed copyright laws by wilfully assisting in making copyright content available. You'd probably need to show that people had actually used this to copy a file (I may be wrong here). Slashdot can reasonably claim innocence in that their involvement in the crime was clearly unintentional.
TPB can make no such claim. They knew full well that their site was used for piracy and it's hard to argue even that that wasn't the entire purpose of the site. This is a little different from Slashdot, who have no idea that your comment contains magnet data, and it's hard to argue that this is the entire purpose of Slashdot.
TPB invented the Internet.
No they didn't.
Everyone else can be forgotten, because it "is beside the point".
No it isn't.
The point is they copied a file from A to B. Whether they owned A or B makes no difference or the OS that A and B happened to be running, whether they used FTP, bittorrent or http, who invented the protocols, and the file format. None of these have any bearing on whether it was legal or not
Firstly I don't have a big problem with TPB being shut down. I consider TPB to have been a net cost to society.
It's not a morality thing. Never has been. The point of copyright is simply to provide an incentive to publish. You are publishing. Copyright is working. Not perfectly, but adequately.
If we actually explicitly allow large scale piracy then the system breaks down. It's hideously naive to assume that absolutely nobody will choose a pirate copy over an original, or that the "advertising" benefits outweigh these losses. If we punish people too harshly for copyright infringement then we end up with a totally unjust system. So we need to tolerate, grudgingly, a certain amount of infringement to balance these objectives. Still not a perfect system but one that apparently works in that people are publishing.
As for harm to consumers, I am pretty certain that piracy is largely responsible for films and TV shows coming out in Britain at about the same time as the US. I suspect that streaming services exist because the media companies recognised the need to compete with downloads. It's pretty rare that the price has any relation to the production cost (otherwise, why do popular musicians not sell their albums at a fraction of the price of less popular ones?) so prices aren't pushed up that much
Voting for a third part isn't totally useless. It's a little indirect, but the mere fact that some people will vote for a third party means that there's an incentive for the other candidates to adopt some of their policies in order to get some of those votes.
So it's basically a threat. One that only works if you can show you're willing to carry it out.
To be fair, There's a certain amount of choice in the primaries. Apparently this is where all the dirty tricks actually go on. In 2008, the effective choice was between Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Not a brilliant choice but it's not quite as narrow a field as it might appear.
1 - The Pirate Bay didn't host any content.
Irrelevant. They wrere facilitating distribution.
2 - If there is no content, it can't be copyright infringement
There was content.
3 - Why should someone in Sweden care about United States of America law? DMCA is not a Swedish law, and has no force in Sweden.
The "safe Harbor" provisions are actually there to provide an specific defence. It's a specific set of actions that a service provider can undertake to be found innocent of infringement. Its sole purpose is to provide a process by which an internet based company can avoid prosecution. The fact that it only applies in the US is actually an argument against this defence, not in favour. Sweden has no such provision therefore TPB couldn't have relied on it even if they abided by it.
4 - The Pirate Bay certainly followed all copyright laws as they understood them
Are you using an ignorance of the law argument here or something?
(except that they, somehow, induced others to commit copyright offenses).
They facilitated copyright infringement. They provided the means of copying one file from one machine to another thereby infringing copyright. The mechanism is beside the point.
Now, Google CACHES Web pages. Um... that would be a copyright infraction right there. I didn't give Google permission to do any such thing. Happens every day...
Indeed. Now it's possible that this is fair use, fair dealing or whatever the Swedish equivalent is. If you have a problem then insist that charges are files against google.
Google even presents cached web pages with slightly altered content -- ALSO A DIRECT VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT!
Once again, true. Google will have to rely on a fairly subjective area of copyright law as a defence. Fair use provides an exception. A cached page may well not be covered by that exception.
In copyright law, it make little difference where the data is stored. The crime is in copying and distribution, and specifically in causing copying and distribution. If I borrow a thumbdrive from person A use it to copy person B's copyrighted data from person C's PC to person D's PC, I'm still the one who infringed B's copyright.
Julian Assange is being charged with rape. In Sweden. Whether valid or not blaming Hollywood or the US is little more than a conspiracy theory.
Gary Kinnock - trumped up charges, I agree, but that's the US government, not US/Hollywood. Hollywood's control via the US legal system is too far abstracted for it to be all that significant. So yes, the US has impressive power. Hollywood less so outside of the US.
Why do so many people assert that their actions were not illegal in Sweden?
Every time I ask, people point out that Google has a Swedish website, but Google has websites in just about every country with enforced copyright law, so by this argument, what they did would be legal everywhere.
Presumably there's meant to be something unique about the law in Sweden but I have no idea why people think this.
Where does that end?
With "substantial non infringing use".
What is the substantial non-infringing use of a torrent file for the latest Mission Impossible movie, or for that matter for the Pirate Bay?
Google will remove search results if they're infringing.
But the main thing is that Google can realistically argue that its involvement with infringement is unintentional.
TPB's entire purpose is to aid piracy. Intent is important. Whether they actually hold content is immaterial. They're distributing content. Yes, the mechanism they use to do it is pretty abstract, but so what? they're causing the data to be copied.
Google's argument - "we weren't aware. We have millions of pages indexed, and the infringing ones are rare exceptions. Nobody pointed these out and once they did we removed them"
TPB's argument - "we weren't aware. Even though most of our most popular torrents are obviously for infringing content, the most popular are pretty unlikely to be there with the rightholder's permission and when we were informed of this we sent a mocking reply"
Intent matters.
Apparently the point of the service is to make it look like the White House is listening to the people.
It's not doing a very good job then is it.
I'm being flippant, but seriously, anyone politically aware enough to actually care about the petition is also aware when they're being fobbed off. It just gives a feeling of impotence.
Yes, you're right. It's a contractual dispute rather than a copyright thing. I haven't read the contract, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it does quite clearly exclude this sort of thing.
Still have to wonder why the DVD CCA is so concerned abut this. Even if they're just acting as a proxy for the MPAA Kalaidoscope isn't actually costing them anything.
Seems to be a case of the DVD-CCA saying "the letter of the law states this", and Kaleidoscope saying "yes, but that's ridiculous, this in no way harms the DVD-CCA". The judge is simply siding with the law here. That's the way it should work. The problem is that the law's rubbish.
Strange that the DVD-CCA actually has an objection.
Thing is, the prejudice is against middle easterners.
Do you think that a Bosniak Muslim (White, eastern European) would suffer as much prejudice as an Arabic atheist? The religion thing is used as an excuse.