Soldiers are citizens too. And tend to dislike firing on their own countrymen.
Most successful revolutions have had a large chunk of the army on their side as well. Although you do need a pretty corrupt government for this to happen, and the Us is nowhere near there yet.
When did real terrorist ever issue a bomb threat (and had a real bomb)? They simply blow things up. They don't want people to be able to react. "Dear unbelievers, we spent months planning a dangerous and tricky plot to smuggle a bomb on an airplane. Now that we've succeeded, here's how you can find and disarm it before anything happens: [...]"?
So, it's been established that making a bomb threat, in itself, can be used to cause considerable cost and inconvenience, which is why it's illegal. What do you propose as an alternative?
Ignore all bomb threats? This would include warnings such as those the IRA gave when they did actually have bombs.
Treat bomb threats seriously, but that the airport should laugh it off and jsut chuckle over the incredible cost as a cost of doing business, thus allowing anyone with a slight grudge to cause considerable disruption without any legal reprecussions?
Guess which bomb threats are genuine and act accordingly? this would require 100% accuracy for guessing.
Something else entirely. If so, what?
Lots of things are illegal. Murder is illegal. Armed robbery is illegal. Should these be legalised? People do commit murder and armed robbery. Should internet fraud be legalised? have I misunderstood your argument?
If you did make a genuine bomb threat, then, yes, it would result in chaos and it would cost a lot of money, even if there was no bomb.
As a result, making a bomb threat is itself a crime.
It being a joke may well be a defence. However, a defence is something to be used in court, not for the police to determine when they're investigating something that could, conceivably, be serious.
Making a bomb threat is a crime in itself even if there's no intent to plant a bomb. Was he intentionally making a bomb threat? Most likely not. Is it actually possible that he intended this to be taken seriously? It's certainly possible. Unlikely but possible.
Are you suggesting that this guy was actually taking about reinflating Robin Hood airport? From the context, he was talking about using explosives to destroy the place. Yes, it was a joke but the meaning was exactly what they claim.
I mean, did anyone, for example, ask the kid what the device was and perhaps he said "It's a bomb! I'm going to blow myself and all of you up as a sacrifice for the great god Satan!" because had he said that, I'd suggest most of the rest of the article makes sense.
Why write a book when it will only sell a single copy before being copied all over the internet?
Because it won't.
I can't make a living off the time spent writing when sales drop.
Alas, those who can't write popular enough books will have to make a living doing something else but that's no different from the current situation.
The biggest pirates I know are also the biggest consumers of legitimate material. You can make a profit even with rampant piracy. Maybe it's not as easy as it was. Why should that matter? The point of copyright is to make it possible to make a living by being creative. Not to make it absolutely certain. It never has done and it never will. Technology sometimes makes it easier and sometimes makes it harder, as does society.
Fair enough. In that case the case should never have been brought. The law makes it clear that encouraging copyright infringement is not criminal, therefore it's wrong to try to shoehorn another law in to fit.
Defrauding seems a bit of an odd charge to lay for this. It suggests that he was taking wealth from the record industry for direct personal gain.
The money cam from subscribers. They were not making any money from the file sharing. Even if he had a website that was explicitly dedicated to getting people in contact to fence actually stolen property I'd have thought this would be hard to make stick.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
We actually have useful data from the iPhone because it's locked down. Assuming reasonably that 100% of all pirated apps are on jailbroken iPhones, and taking a figure of 7% of iPhones being jailbroken (according to Pinch media), this means that for 100% of downloads to be equivalent to a purchase, and the purchase rates are equivalent, each pirated copy would equate to 13 purchased copies. This is not the case. Each pirated application accounts for at most 1/3 purchased copies. My calculations may be wrong but I think this gives an upper limit of about 2.5% and this is assuming that owners of jailbroken iPhones never purchase an application.
"Xerox PARC was the first research group to widely adopt the mouse"
Uhm... no. I don't think they did write it off so much as invest in it research the possibilities and come up with the basic concepts behind the WIMP GUI.
Failure to fully capitalise the possibilities isn't the same as writing something off.
Well, yeah, but as a rule you'll do pretty well to bet against Dvorak. I think he's been right roughly once in his career. But a stopped clock is right twice a day!
True, but he's the one who needs to be convinced of this. How do you convince someone that something they are absolutely certain is true is not true? Could I convince you that hammering nails into your head is harmless? His certainty that wi-fi signals are harmful are as great as your certainty that hammering nails into your head is harmful. You just happen to be right.
He's not really abusing torts though. At least not deliberately. He does suffer from a genuine medical condition. The fact that it's psychological rather than physical doesn't make it any less of a problem.
The most common reason is that they don't know any better. Statistically this will at worst be no worse than choosing at random, and might conceivably be better.
There is an argument for hotmail - You may have created one for MSN. It has the advantage - assuming you use MSN - of alerting you to new emails on any machine you might use. I don't think any other webmail based services offer this without installing additional software. (MSN is also additional software but common enough not to be a problem)
Slashdot Mirror
At a tactical disadvantage because it's a lot easier to find someone willing to lay down their life for a cause or for their country than for money.
Soldiers are citizens too. And tend to dislike firing on their own countrymen.
Most successful revolutions have had a large chunk of the army on their side as well. Although you do need a pretty corrupt government for this to happen, and the Us is nowhere near there yet.
When did real terrorist ever issue a bomb threat (and had a real bomb)? They simply blow things up. They don't want people to be able to react. "Dear unbelievers, we spent months planning a dangerous and tricky plot to smuggle a bomb on an airplane. Now that we've succeeded, here's how you can find and disarm it before anything happens: [...]"?
Link Link Link Link
Given that there's at least some chance that a bomb threat involves an actual bomb, does this affect your opinion at all?
So, it's been established that making a bomb threat, in itself, can be used to cause considerable cost and inconvenience, which is why it's illegal. What do you propose as an alternative?
Ignore all bomb threats? This would include warnings such as those the IRA gave when they did actually have bombs.
Treat bomb threats seriously, but that the airport should laugh it off and jsut chuckle over the incredible cost as a cost of doing business, thus allowing anyone with a slight grudge to cause considerable disruption without any legal reprecussions?
Guess which bomb threats are genuine and act accordingly? this would require 100% accuracy for guessing.
Something else entirely. If so, what?
Lots of things are illegal. Murder is illegal. Armed robbery is illegal. Should these be legalised? People do commit murder and armed robbery. Should internet fraud be legalised? have I misunderstood your argument?
If you did make a genuine bomb threat, then, yes, it would result in chaos and it would cost a lot of money, even if there was no bomb.
As a result, making a bomb threat is itself a crime.
It being a joke may well be a defence. However, a defence is something to be used in court, not for the police to determine when they're investigating something that could, conceivably, be serious.
Depends on what you mean by serious.
Making a bomb threat is a crime in itself even if there's no intent to plant a bomb. Was he intentionally making a bomb threat? Most likely not. Is it actually possible that he intended this to be taken seriously? It's certainly possible. Unlikely but possible.
Go to the garage and blow them up.
Are you suggesting that this guy was actually taking about reinflating Robin Hood airport? From the context, he was talking about using explosives to destroy the place. Yes, it was a joke but the meaning was exactly what they claim.
I think part of what they know is that per-unit R&D costs are a lot lower when you have thousands of customers than when you have dozens...
And the other part is that users will not pay as much as hospitals.
I mean, did anyone, for example, ask the kid what the device was and perhaps he said "It's a bomb! I'm going to blow myself and all of you up as a sacrifice for the great god Satan!" because had he said that, I'd suggest most of the rest of the article makes sense.
Why write a book when it will only sell a single copy before being copied all over the internet?
Because it won't.
I can't make a living off the time spent writing when sales drop.
Alas, those who can't write popular enough books will have to make a living doing something else but that's no different from the current situation.
The biggest pirates I know are also the biggest consumers of legitimate material. You can make a profit even with rampant piracy. Maybe it's not as easy as it was. Why should that matter? The point of copyright is to make it possible to make a living by being creative. Not to make it absolutely certain. It never has done and it never will. Technology sometimes makes it easier and sometimes makes it harder, as does society.
Fair enough. In that case the case should never have been brought. The law makes it clear that encouraging copyright infringement is not criminal, therefore it's wrong to try to shoehorn another law in to fit.
No. The US doesn't.
Honestly though, it all seems backwards. I think it a lot more likely that libraries displace book sales than piracy displaces music sales.
Well, in the UK, they lend out books and pay a small per-loan royalty to the authors.
"Conspiracy to defraud"
Defrauding seems a bit of an odd charge to lay for this. It suggests that he was taking wealth from the record industry for direct personal gain.
The money cam from subscribers. They were not making any money from the file sharing. Even if he had a website that was explicitly dedicated to getting people in contact to fence actually stolen property I'd have thought this would be hard to make stick.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
We actually have useful data from the iPhone because it's locked down. Assuming reasonably that 100% of all pirated apps are on jailbroken iPhones, and taking a figure of 7% of iPhones being jailbroken (according to Pinch media), this means that for 100% of downloads to be equivalent to a purchase, and the purchase rates are equivalent, each pirated copy would equate to 13 purchased copies. This is not the case. Each pirated application accounts for at most 1/3 purchased copies. My calculations may be wrong but I think this gives an upper limit of about 2.5% and this is assuming that owners of jailbroken iPhones never purchase an application.
Someone check my calculations please:)P
So, 510 million paid apps at $3 each. That's $1.53 billion
Piracy costs $4.59 billion dollars dollars dollars.
So that means losses of some $3.06 billion. It's amazing the app store has survived this long.
"Xerox PARC was the first research group to widely adopt the mouse"
Uhm... no. I don't think they did write it off so much as invest in it research the possibilities and come up with the basic concepts behind the WIMP GUI.
Failure to fully capitalise the possibilities isn't the same as writing something off.
Well, yeah, but as a rule you'll do pretty well to bet against Dvorak. I think he's been right roughly once in his career. But a stopped clock is right twice a day!
Some people wrote off the mouse too
Uhmm... did they?
and many wrote off the GUI in general.
Who?
But if nobody is going to prevent the government agents from violating the constitution, then it doesn't make much difference what the thing says.
True, but he's the one who needs to be convinced of this. How do you convince someone that something they are absolutely certain is true is not true? Could I convince you that hammering nails into your head is harmless? His certainty that wi-fi signals are harmful are as great as your certainty that hammering nails into your head is harmful. You just happen to be right.
He's not really abusing torts though. At least not deliberately. He does suffer from a genuine medical condition. The fact that it's psychological rather than physical doesn't make it any less of a problem.
It's pretty cool that you can do this. Trouble is, most of us aren't really in that position. It's a buyers' market.
The most common reason is that they don't know any better. Statistically this will at worst be no worse than choosing at random, and might conceivably be better.
There is an argument for hotmail - You may have created one for MSN. It has the advantage - assuming you use MSN - of alerting you to new emails on any machine you might use. I don't think any other webmail based services offer this without installing additional software. (MSN is also additional software but common enough not to be a problem)