Breaching a contract is illegal. It's not criminal behaviour in most cases, but you know, contracts are legal documents and have the force of law.
Fine. But by that rationale, it's also illegal to threaten to sue someone, at least under Erols AUP (part 1i, banning threats and intimidation). It seems clear to me that there's a huge distinction between criminal law and contract law.
I should rephrase. Valid contracts are legally binding documents; to the extent of their invalidity, they're not binding.
You can't contract out your right to sue. (You can contract out your right to sue in the jurisdiction of your choice, though.) There are things that contracts cannot force you to do: for example, a contract to commit murder is not legally binding, on either party.
Turn the speakerphone on. Pay occasional attention to the spammer at the other end while getting on with your life.
Faxing is a no-time-investment deal. Run your fave wordpro, use its wizard to make an invoice, and then use the print driver for your faxmodem to send it. Five minutes, tops.
Breaking an ISP TOS is not at all illegal. It may be a breach of contract, but in most cases the spammer is not going to get in any more trouble than having his/her account deleted. Besides, if the spammer is breaking the ISP TOS, it makes little sense to make legal threats when you can just contact the ISP.
Nice logic, buddy.
Contracts. Breach of contract.
Contract law.
Breaching a contract is illegal. It's not criminal behaviour in most cases, but you know, contracts are legal documents and have the force of law.
BTW, entering into a contract with the intent to violate it is usually considered fraud, which is a criminal offense.
I'm beginning to seriously thinking about going to RBL. I'm averaging about 10 spams an hour now, with peak times sometimes giving me about 5-10 a minute. This is too much to deal with reasonably.
You're quite correct. They're engaging in unauthorized copying.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to prove. But yeah, email harvester bots are probably illegal, unless the site author (not the owner, the author, the one who owns the copyright) authorizes them.
I don't think that the Holocaust is a legitimate subject for that type of treatment. In effect it is accusing IBM of being complicit in Genocide. I don't find that type of accusation amusing.
You're right, it's not amusing. It is however a reasonable accusation, and you don't have to go any further than the L.A. Times to find it.
The WTO is only going on the basis of copyright: it's not basing its claim on passing off or trademark laws.
However, the objectionable statement you quote is:
Much has been made lately of IBM's participation in the Holocaust. Indeed, IBM proactively and creatively helped the Nazis identify all of Germany's Jews, which in turn made possible the biggest slaughter of all time.
I read the same statement, and took it as a straightforward parody.
It's not, however, technically deceitful. IBM technology did help the Nazis identify Jews, and assisted them in the Holocaust. Read this.
Exactly who needs the ESRB logo on the side to know what Grand Theft Auto (to pick a random example) is like?
Bah.
The only people who need the censorship logos are the people too young to have clued in to where the dirty words are. That's why, when Ice T started creating his own warning labels, his sales went up.
Oh, yeah. It might help stupid parents too. But it probably won't, because their intelligent children will just hide the (game/music/movie) discs beneath the bed.
That's interesting. The canonical Zwicky book takes a hard line against packet-based firewalling, for exactly the reason that this whole discussion suggests: you don't know what's going on on a port unless you do some kind of inspection of the packet.
I run a partial application-based proxy setup on my home network (mostly, I run things through nec socks5, but I have some app-specific proxies setup, and as soon as I get a box with a fast & big HD I'm going to have squid, oh yes:) and I couldn't be happier. In some ways, it's more of a hassle than NAT; but from a security standpoint...
No question. Zwicky - and AT&T - are right. Proxies are better.
It no longer matters under U.S. law when they claim invention, under the new patent regime, which is since 1987 IIRC. (The U.S. in the eighties amended its patent and copyright laws to make them conformant to international standards.)
As another poster pointed out, they're allowed public disclosure of the content of the patent for a year before their filing date. Any earlier disclosure and they themselves are prior art.
However, for prior art from other companies or from private individuals, the day before the patent is filed is early enough to qualify as valid prior art. There was an interesting case with the patent on the Magic: the Gathering collectible card game, as TSR released a competitor to Magic about four days before the patent was filed. Hasbro now owns both companies, but I believe Steve Jackson Games was still able to use the TSR game as prior art to knock down the collectible card game patent.
Yes, the U.S. Patent Office lets you patent the rules to games. No other patent office in the world does. There are worse things than software patents out there.
Lawyers can only do so much by themselves. It helps to have evidence, too. And it helps to have the law on your side.
This guy has some really cool evidence: photos are yummy. And he's in the United States, international leader in damages for negligence liability.
No - I believe you when you say UPS has plenty of lawyers, but usually what that means is that you've got a lot of lawyers who spend all day making settlement agreements.
People who win all their court cases usually don't have very many.
Most of the musicians I know actually are pretty heavy Napster/fs users.
Of course, I don't know any signed musicians.:)
This is one of the things that drives me crazy: most musicians get no benefit at all from the RIAA, because most musicians do not have record contracts. (Of course, it can be argued that even the musicians who do have record contracts, most of them would be better off without them: see e.g. Hole, Concrete Blonde, TLC...)
Bailments are medieval English common law. Works pretty much the same everywhere that used to be an English colony, plus England of course:)
The guy who shipped this stuff should get a lawyer, and sue the bastards. He's got some pretty excellent evidence, and he gets to sue in Florida.
Florida courts aren't the most generous in the United States, but they're not bad. I could see punitive damages, yes: hire a lawyer, it won't be hard- any lawyer will look at those photos and think "oooh, an easy case, huge contingency, mmmm":)
Purolator is really designed for office-to-office packages.
They suck for home delivery. However, if you're shipping direct to another business, they're stellar.
XpressPost is an excellent service, you're right, though. It's not quite as fast as Purolator for office-to-office ships, but it's fantastically reliable, and very fast (Vancouver-Fredericton in 3 days the one time I went that far, and anywhere in Ontario to anywhere else in Ontario next day).
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I should rephrase. Valid contracts are legally binding documents; to the extent of their invalidity, they're not binding.
You can't contract out your right to sue. (You can contract out your right to sue in the jurisdiction of your choice, though.) There are things that contracts cannot force you to do: for example, a contract to commit murder is not legally binding, on either party.
Unwittingly, you've put your finger on the nub of the problem.
You have to prove a negative. This is difficult; it can be done, at least to the level a court of law needs, but it's still not all that easy.
Want to tie up lines? Easy.
Turn the speakerphone on. Pay occasional attention to the spammer at the other end while getting on with your life.
Faxing is a no-time-investment deal. Run your fave wordpro, use its wizard to make an invoice, and then use the print driver for your faxmodem to send it. Five minutes, tops.
Talking to police, now, takes time.
Nice logic, buddy.
Contracts. Breach of contract.
Contract law.
Breaching a contract is illegal. It's not criminal behaviour in most cases, but you know, contracts are legal documents and have the force of law.
BTW, entering into a contract with the intent to violate it is usually considered fraud, which is a criminal offense.
I'm beginning to seriously thinking about going to RBL. I'm averaging about 10 spams an hour now, with peak times sometimes giving me about 5-10 a minute. This is too much to deal with reasonably.
Luckily, I have my own mailserver. :)
You're quite correct. They're engaging in unauthorized copying.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to prove. But yeah, email harvester bots are probably illegal, unless the site author (not the owner, the author, the one who owns the copyright) authorizes them.
You're right, it's not amusing. It is however a reasonable accusation, and you don't have to go any further than the L.A. Times to find it.
Man, this is old news. Get with it.
The WTO is only going on the basis of copyright: it's not basing its claim on passing off or trademark laws.
However, the objectionable statement you quote is:
I read the same statement, and took it as a straightforward parody.
It's not, however, technically deceitful. IBM technology did help the Nazis identify Jews, and assisted them in the Holocaust. Read this.
I can feel not-guilty about posting this, karmacap boy that I am. :)
The World Trade Organization is not an ordinary corporation; it's an international UN organization.
Imagine if the Red Cross wanted people to take down websites complaining about people who were infected by HIV via blood transfusions. Get it?
Oh, come on.
Exactly who needs the ESRB logo on the side to know what Grand Theft Auto (to pick a random example) is like?
Bah.
The only people who need the censorship logos are the people too young to have clued in to where the dirty words are. That's why, when Ice T started creating his own warning labels, his sales went up.
Oh, yeah. It might help stupid parents too. But it probably won't, because their intelligent children will just hide the (game/music/movie) discs beneath the bed.
Please, only email messages that you believe to be intelligent if you know how to spell the word.
Jeez, guys. :)
That's interesting. The canonical Zwicky book takes a hard line against packet-based firewalling, for exactly the reason that this whole discussion suggests: you don't know what's going on on a port unless you do some kind of inspection of the packet.
I run a partial application-based proxy setup on my home network (mostly, I run things through nec socks5, but I have some app-specific proxies setup, and as soon as I get a box with a fast & big HD I'm going to have squid, oh yes :) and I couldn't be happier. In some ways, it's more of a hassle than NAT; but from a security standpoint...
No question. Zwicky - and AT&T - are right. Proxies are better.
1992 is the filing date.
It no longer matters under U.S. law when they claim invention, under the new patent regime, which is since 1987 IIRC. (The U.S. in the eighties amended its patent and copyright laws to make them conformant to international standards.)
As another poster pointed out, they're allowed public disclosure of the content of the patent for a year before their filing date. Any earlier disclosure and they themselves are prior art.
However, for prior art from other companies or from private individuals, the day before the patent is filed is early enough to qualify as valid prior art. There was an interesting case with the patent on the Magic: the Gathering collectible card game, as TSR released a competitor to Magic about four days before the patent was filed. Hasbro now owns both companies, but I believe Steve Jackson Games was still able to use the TSR game as prior art to knock down the collectible card game patent.
Yes, the U.S. Patent Office lets you patent the rules to games. No other patent office in the world does. There are worse things than software patents out there.
They didn't inherit it in 1992, the filing date of the patent :)
The web-stats package I use generates PNG as its output.
Maybe you've heard of it: the webalizer.
PNG is definitely out there; I would think of it as the third format behind GIF/JPEG.
Lawyers can only do so much by themselves. It helps to have evidence, too. And it helps to have the law on your side.
This guy has some really cool evidence: photos are yummy. And he's in the United States, international leader in damages for negligence liability.
No - I believe you when you say UPS has plenty of lawyers, but usually what that means is that you've got a lot of lawyers who spend all day making settlement agreements.
People who win all their court cases usually don't have very many.
And I notice the original poster limits it specifically to "sound recordings."
Artists under contract to the RIAA produce less than 10% of all music, I would wager. You've got to remember garage bands. They're out there.
The RIAA may not care, but they're still out there.
Most of the musicians I know actually are pretty heavy Napster/fs users.
Of course, I don't know any signed musicians. :)
This is one of the things that drives me crazy: most musicians get no benefit at all from the RIAA, because most musicians do not have record contracts. (Of course, it can be argued that even the musicians who do have record contracts, most of them would be better off without them: see e.g. Hole, Concrete Blonde, TLC...)
Bailments are medieval English common law. Works pretty much the same everywhere that used to be an English colony, plus England of course :)
The guy who shipped this stuff should get a lawyer, and sue the bastards. He's got some pretty excellent evidence, and he gets to sue in Florida.
Florida courts aren't the most generous in the United States, but they're not bad. I could see punitive damages, yes: hire a lawyer, it won't be hard- any lawyer will look at those photos and think "oooh, an easy case, huge contingency, mmmm" :)
Purolator is really designed for office-to-office packages.
They suck for home delivery. However, if you're shipping direct to another business, they're stellar.
XpressPost is an excellent service, you're right, though. It's not quite as fast as Purolator for office-to-office ships, but it's fantastically reliable, and very fast (Vancouver-Fredericton in 3 days the one time I went that far, and anywhere in Ontario to anywhere else in Ontario next day).
MAXUSERS is explained perfectly reasonably in the Handbook.
Also, the things in the kernel it tweaks have been user-rewritable for some time now.
FreeBSD ports are precompiled, at least on the i386 platform. Not enough people use FreeBSD for Alpha to justify precompiling the ports for it.
just building a custom kernel takes about 15 minutes on my bastion box... which is running 3.4, and is a P133.
buildworld is much, much bigger :)
Firewire has some pretty handy server uses too. Think about it: hot-pluggable high-speed drives?
Firewire backup... mmm, yummy.
The MacOS filename limit under HFS is 31 characters IIRC. I suspect this no longer applies under OS X, with its native ufs support.
They'll probably add resource.frk files still, or perhaps .AppleDouble directories (which is what appear on my netatalk server).
However, they do support tons of disk formats natively.
And, BTW, what's more, you can mount HFS drives on Linux. :)