I must have driven at least 1000 km on flats in my life, with nary a damaged rim to show for it.
Heck, a year ago, I drove for 2 days on a flat, until the entire tire ripped away and tore apart.
The rubber of the flat itself seems to protect the rim just fine, as long as you avoid deep potholes and such. So, yeah, when the rubber disintigrated, I put oon the spare.
Other than that... may as well drive to the garage on the flat. Heck, I've driven to the garage.. slowly, and even had them plug the tire. The garage was 15 km away...
Customer service. They have a horrible, HORRIBLE customer service record. They just simply are unable to do customer service.... and this product needs it.
There are many areas of Quebec that are very unilingual friendly. I live in an area that has almost a 50%/50% split of english/french language, and it is very rare to go to a store where you can't get service in english.
Of course, by some odd and strange course of events, this is also the poorest municipality in Quebec.:P
I'm Canadian too, and I have no idea what you mean when you say "We really hate the French".
Perhaps you shouldn't speak for a whole nation, when you're merely speaking for yourself, or your peer group?
I grew up in Southern Ontario, in a small community without a single Quebecer or French person around for hundreds of miles. I now live in Quebec, and (clearly) have no problem with "the french". I moved here because I live in the Capital region, and I can get an acre of land, 20 minutes from downtown Ottawa, surrounded by farmland, for 1/2 the price of a home on the Ontario side!
I do have issues with *some* french people, but I also have issues with *some* people from a broad spectrum of society.
I think what you really hate are 1) mostly quebec politicians and 2) dumbasses that happen to be french.
Suck it up buddy. #1 and #2 exist in every culture group, and language group, and genetic group, worldwide.;)
Google has really gotten out of control. Their entire business shows this, externally it appears as if they are completely disconnected from department to department, and that interdepartmental communication is poor.
It also "feels" like Google has little tyrants running around, pulling sections of departments in all sorts of weird directions.
Why do I say these things? Well, searching is very annoying on Google now, if you actually know what you want.
Often Google ignores quotes, providing responses as if the quotes were not even there. It now in many cases rejects the use of the + modifier, which used to allow one for force that search term to show in responses. Even words in quotes are often spell checked, and modified for you on the fly.
These features are neat, but they aren't neat if you can't turn them off. There needs to be a search option such as "never ever ever fucking change any aspect or part of this search term, no matter what, you damned idiots at Google, I want all words to show up from my query, I want words in quotes to appear precisely as they are written".
I've had issues trying to search for people, even in quotes. "David" mapping to "Dave", when I know the person never appears as "Dave" anywhere, etc. Issues with IT terms being modified, such as searching for (linux "hpsa") and getting matches for (linux "hspa") or (linux "hsdpa").
Many times Google provides these changes without any explanation, with any 'did you mean?' statements, and just jumbles those responses up with what you are looking for.
Fine Google, fine. You want to "help" people find what they want. That's great. However, there is a segment of the population that knows PRECISELY what they want, and can actually TYPE at a keyboard. For them, precise searches such as (dave OR david) are preferred to typing (david) and getting responses for "dave" too.
Provide an advanced interface, and one that actually works -- as your "search enhancements" have actually made your advanced search form useless as well! Stop messing with my search queries, so that every month my search queries don't mean something else. I'd like a search for "some phrase" to actually mean the same thing, and not become quoteless the one time I use your search engine, and remain quoted the next.
I hate, I mean absolutely loath M$. I came up through Pet -> vic20 -> c64 -> amiga -> linux. I've never, ever, ever had M$ as a main OS on any desktop. I hate them, their products.
How much does it say, and I can't stress this enough, that I've tried using Bing to see how it will response to direct search queries? How much does it say, that someone so anti-microsoft has been put off by Google's complete and total lack of any coherent or even remotely detectable customer service? You can't get an issue resolved, on any front, with any problem, with any product, period, at all, ever from Google.
Google's only response to anything, is complete and total silence -- unless there is some massive issue that has 90% of their customer base enraged.
Get this Google. Get it straight. The party is over. You have actual, real competition now. Yes, M$ is annoying, but now your products are in direct competition with other people's products, for the first time ever. You need a new corporate culture.
Google's voice search, and translate, and all other speech -> text products are absolutely useless. I find a very, very, very low success rate.
Good luck if I'm driving in a car too, and the background noise adds to the difficulty.
I know many other people that are in the same boat, but these are all locals. I wonder if other people think it's just great to have to repeat themselves 10 times, or if others do not have the same issues. I do not believe that local dialects and pronunciation is the issue, the english I hear here, seems to be the same english I might hear on Northern US news reports, on TV stations.
No, it isn't free. Google has a for-profit motive in you using these services. Google makes money off of information you sign away, when you sign up to these services.
I suppose you think that a piece of fruit was free, if I demanded you give me a fish for it? No cash exchanged != free.
Outside of the whole free/not free argument, is the concept of longevity. Linux distros are "more free" than Google services, but I certainly wouldn't use one that would disappear without security updates on a regular basis. Likewise, Google throwing out lots of 'cool' services, and then canceling them without *years* of notice, means I simply am unable to trust Google with my time, my energy, and in fact, my trust.
So, where does that leave Google? It leaves Google with fewer and fewer people using their services (which they *do* make money from, when you use it).
How is that good for Google? How is that good for the end users?
It isn't, for either...
Google really, really, really needs to get over this adolescent stage, and move on to some form of stability.
Weekly delivery of bills, junk mail, offers etc is enough. Lay off 60% of the delivery workforce, the other 20% will be needed for daily "express" deliveries.
Alternatively, deliver 3 days a week. Does anyone really need mail delivery daily?
It was *international news* multiple times, for weeks on end (as each part of this incident hit the news, over the months).
Do you *read* the news.
By the way, before you try to claim that the above showed no wrongdoing by the cops:
1) you can be a cop, and be reprimanded without being charged or fired. That's still 'wrongdoing'.
2) there was a financial settlement involved. The burden of proof in civil court is 50.1%, and in criminal court it is much higher (beyond a reasonable doubt is likened to 99%). Financial settlements do NOT occur unless there is a very good chance of a finding of liability in civil court.
3) *FOUR COPS* tasered an unarmed man. FOUR. At once!
4) the RCMP tried to supress video of the incident
5) likely, charges will be laid when this is all over
Now, on the other side of the coin, this was the action of 4 police officers, not the entire RCMP. The real problem here is, that these cops should have been fired and charged with manslaughter, long long ago.
Note, if I'm operating a crane, and through misjudgement I kill a man -- I'd get charged and most likely convicted of manslaughter. The guy in the above wikipedia article was not threatening anyone, nor approaching anyone aggressively.
While I do think that cops get a bad rap too often, if you don't want to work in a profession where you must be *very* careful of how you perform your job (heavy equipment operator, electrician, medical profession, police, etc).. then, DO NOT APPLY FOR THAT JOB.
If you kill a man, in ANY profession, and you do so due to improper / accidental behaviour, YOU NEED TO BE CHARGED, IMMEDIATELY!
I understand that in the US things are a bit different -- but here, generally speaking (in Canada), not obeying a cop does NOT provide immediate cause to assault a citizen. For example, the 'don't tase me bro!' guy incident would not have happened here, unless a cop was acting illegally. That's because, there's nothing the 'don't tase me' guy did *wrong*, if he was in Canada.
I hope that if they produce a full scale Android device, that they actually produce a quality app!
I've been using the Kindle app on Android for about a year now.. or at least, since whenever it came out. It has *tons* of failings, including the ability to navigate it, backlight annoyances, and so on.
Even the Amazon store through the app, for some bizarre reason, is less function than the full web.
Heck, there are probably about 20 e-book reader apps, for free on the market, that actually provide more functionality than the Kindle app. *Far* more functionality. Heck, I can't even choose what precise colour, or font I want with this app!
The most annoying part of it all, is that I emailed the Kindle team about this. *No* response. Thanks guys, I actually spent time thinking about how this annoyed me, and provided something that companies sometimes pay millions for.. customer feedback!
For christ sake, it took me *7 minutes* to vote last time. SEVEN MINUTES. If people aren't showing up to vote, when (even in the very worst situation) it takes an hour every FEW YEARS, then the problem is NOT LACK OF EASY VOTING!
Frankly, the people that can't take that little time out of their lives, to vote, are NOT VOTES I WANT TO SEE ANYHOW!
How much apathy, how much lack of concern over that vote, do those people have? Clearly, anyone that does NOT vote, does not CARE enough to vote. It isn't an access issue. It isn't hard to get somewhere to vote.
Hell, you can vote by mail if it is a PITA for you.
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country!
If it's a free country, shouldn't the private company be free to do what they want, barring any agreement with you that precludes them from doing otherwise?
Or is your "free country" just free for YOU?
There are many things that my ISP can not do. They can not, for example, terminate my service because I am a minority. They can not engage in anti-competitive behaviour. They can not slander me, without repercussions. They can not lie about the services they offer. I could go on and on, about the things one person can not do to another person in a business capacity.
The problem with this system is... well, let's compare it.
You're in a restaurant. Someone approaches the restaurant owner, and informs them that you, and the person you are dining in, are currently breaking civil law. Without verifying that information, the restaurant owner then approaches you, and informs you that this is the 6th time someone has said such things about you, and therefore you are on longer allowed in the restaurant.
I assure you I can bring suit against people for such things. Just watch me.
In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
Yep - but you probably signed away that right when you agreed to your ISPs TOS.
Yeah, it sucks if someone wants to pay ISPs to play copyright cop. But given who the MAFIAA has in their pocket (remember, you can't spell DMCA without tha big fat "D"....) I don't see any realistic way that's going to change any time soon.
A TOS is *not* a contract. Further, I've never once -- not once, signed anything to receive service from an ISP.
All a TOS says is "I'm giving you service, and if I see these things happening, I will cut you off". That's all fine and good, but many companies in the past have gotten in legal trouble over the wrong condition for their TOS.
Frankly, I'm not sure what country you live in, but it seems like a place where all the legal strength is on the side of corporations! The USA perhaps?
At least in Canada, the court system isn't that broken yet...
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
And private industry has absolutely no responsibility to give you a luxury like Internet access if they don't feel like it. If you set up a warez site in the old days, they would shut you off. No DMCA required, just the fact that they pay for their upstream bandwidth by the megabyte and you're using 90%+ of it.
There are court cases that back up the concept of 'abuse of service'. One I recall has to do with the use of water, as it is not metered in many cities.
Regardless, this has no comparison with a stranger approaching my ISP, and saying I am stealing from them -- and my ISP cutting me off without required sufficient proof first.
Or, do you believe that the ISP is going to personally spend *hours* investigating every incident? Validating that it really is copyright infringement? Investigating your torrent traffic?
If they don't, they open themselves to legal issues. Further, if the person that slander/libeled you is wrong (the copyright holder), then they open themselves to lawsuit as well...
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country!
If it's a free country, shouldn't the private company be free to do what they want, barring any agreement with you that precludes them from doing otherwise?
Or is your "free country" just free for YOU?
No. They can't refuse service if I'm a minority. They can't discriminate against me. They can't take part in anti-competitive behaviour. They can't break about 100 other laws, either.
They certainly can't bar me from service, based upon insufficient proof either... that opens them to suit. In a free society, I have rights too, you see... not just mega-corp.
In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
Yep - but you probably signed away that right when you agreed to your ISPs TOS.
Yeah, it sucks if someone wants to pay ISPs to play copyright cop. But given who the MAFIAA has in their pocket (remember, you can't spell DMCA without tha big fat "D"....) I don't see any realistic way that's going to change any time soon.
I've never, in my entire life, signed a contract with an ISP. TOS is *not* a contract, but 'terms of service'. It's one sided, and basically a document that tells you what the ISP expects, and says it will tolerate. It certainly is not binding for you, legally.
Further, if the TOS contains illegal elements (and they act on them), they can find themselves in legal trouble. Imagine a clause that said "If you have negro ancestry, and do not disclose it to us, your service is terminated".
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country! In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in an area with very poor roads.
I must have driven at least 1000 km on flats in my life, with nary a damaged rim to show for it.
Heck, a year ago, I drove for 2 days on a flat, until the entire tire ripped away and tore apart.
The rubber of the flat itself seems to protect the rim just fine, as long as you avoid deep potholes and such. So, yeah, when the rubber disintigrated, I put oon the spare.
Other than that... may as well drive to the garage on the flat. Heck, I've driven to the garage.. slowly, and even had them plug the tire. The garage was 15 km away...
As soon as you start driving, your tires warm up..
Google will fail utterly and completely at this.
Why?
Customer service. They have a horrible, HORRIBLE customer service record. They just simply are unable to do customer service.... and this product needs it.
Partially frozen chocolate milk is AWESOME when she's hot outside...
A months notice?
Bizarre. Apple usually isn't this silly.
Any quality company should give months and months notice for something like this. A year would be good.
Hell, some people's summer vacation will last longer than the whole warning period!
Burned people will remember this!
Yeah.. but does printing work yet? :P It's been broken for what?
A decade?
That was never the case, ever.
There are many areas of Quebec that are very unilingual friendly. I live in an area that has almost a 50%/50% split of english/french language, and it is very rare to go to a store where you can't get service in english.
Of course, by some odd and strange course of events, this is also the poorest municipality in Quebec. :P
I'm Canadian too, and I have no idea what you mean when you say "We really hate the French".
Perhaps you shouldn't speak for a whole nation, when you're merely speaking for yourself, or your peer group?
I grew up in Southern Ontario, in a small community without a single Quebecer or French person around for hundreds of miles. I now live in Quebec, and (clearly) have no problem with "the french". I moved here because I live in the Capital region, and I can get an acre of land, 20 minutes from downtown Ottawa, surrounded by farmland, for 1/2 the price of a home on the Ontario side!
I do have issues with *some* french people, but I also have issues with *some* people from a broad spectrum of society.
I think what you really hate are 1) mostly quebec politicians and 2) dumbasses that happen to be french.
Suck it up buddy. #1 and #2 exist in every culture group, and language group, and genetic group, worldwide. ;)
Google has really gotten out of control. Their entire business shows this, externally it appears as if they are completely disconnected from department to department, and that interdepartmental communication is poor.
It also "feels" like Google has little tyrants running around, pulling sections of departments in all sorts of weird directions.
Why do I say these things? Well, searching is very annoying on Google now, if you actually know what you want.
Often Google ignores quotes, providing responses as if the quotes were not even there. It now in many cases rejects the use of the + modifier, which used to allow one for force that search term to show in responses. Even words in quotes are often spell checked, and modified for you on the fly.
These features are neat, but they aren't neat if you can't turn them off. There needs to be a search option such as "never ever ever fucking change any aspect or part of this search term, no matter what, you damned idiots at Google, I want all words to show up from my query, I want words in quotes to appear precisely as they are written".
I've had issues trying to search for people, even in quotes. "David" mapping to "Dave", when I know the person never appears as "Dave" anywhere, etc. Issues with IT terms being modified, such as searching for (linux "hpsa") and getting matches for (linux "hspa") or (linux "hsdpa").
Many times Google provides these changes without any explanation, with any 'did you mean?' statements, and just jumbles those responses up with what you are looking for.
Fine Google, fine. You want to "help" people find what they want. That's great. However, there is a segment of the population that knows PRECISELY what they want, and can actually TYPE at a keyboard. For them, precise searches such as (dave OR david) are preferred to typing (david) and getting responses for "dave" too.
Provide an advanced interface, and one that actually works -- as your "search enhancements" have actually made your advanced search form useless as well! Stop messing with my search queries, so that every month my search queries don't mean something else. I'd like a search for "some phrase" to actually mean the same thing, and not become quoteless the one time I use your search engine, and remain quoted the next.
I hate, I mean absolutely loath M$. I came up through Pet -> vic20 -> c64 -> amiga -> linux. I've never, ever, ever had M$ as a main OS on any desktop. I hate them, their products.
How much does it say, and I can't stress this enough, that I've tried using Bing to see how it will response to direct search queries? How much does it say, that someone so anti-microsoft has been put off by Google's complete and total lack of any coherent or even remotely detectable customer service? You can't get an issue resolved, on any front, with any problem, with any product, period, at all, ever from Google.
Google's only response to anything, is complete and total silence -- unless there is some massive issue that has 90% of their customer base enraged.
Get this Google. Get it straight. The party is over. You have actual, real competition now. Yes, M$ is annoying, but now your products are in direct competition with other people's products, for the first time ever. You need a new corporate culture.
Because your current corporate culture?
IT FUCKING SUCKS!
Goatcx link
Google's voice search, and translate, and all other speech -> text products are absolutely useless. I find a very, very, very low success rate.
Good luck if I'm driving in a car too, and the background noise adds to the difficulty.
I know many other people that are in the same boat, but these are all locals. I wonder if other people think it's just great to have to repeat themselves 10 times, or if others do not have the same issues. I do not believe that local dialects and pronunciation is the issue, the english I hear here, seems to be the same english I might hear on Northern US news reports, on TV stations.
However, as it sits? Useless!
No, it isn't free. Google has a for-profit motive in you using these services. Google makes money off of information you sign away, when you sign up to these services.
I suppose you think that a piece of fruit was free, if I demanded you give me a fish for it? No cash exchanged != free.
Outside of the whole free/not free argument, is the concept of longevity. Linux distros are "more free" than Google services, but I certainly wouldn't use one that would disappear without security updates on a regular basis. Likewise, Google throwing out lots of 'cool' services, and then canceling them without *years* of notice, means I simply am unable to trust Google with my time, my energy, and in fact, my trust.
So, where does that leave Google? It leaves Google with fewer and fewer people using their services (which they *do* make money from, when you use it).
How is that good for Google? How is that good for the end users?
It isn't, for either...
Google really, really, really needs to get over this adolescent stage, and move on to some form of stability.
Weekly delivery of bills, junk mail, offers etc is enough. Lay off 60% of the delivery workforce, the other 20% will be needed for daily "express" deliveries.
Alternatively, deliver 3 days a week. Does anyone really need mail delivery daily?
Bah.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident
It was *international news* multiple times, for weeks on end (as each part of this incident hit the news, over the months).
Do you *read* the news.
By the way, before you try to claim that the above showed no wrongdoing by the cops:
1) you can be a cop, and be reprimanded without being charged or fired. That's still 'wrongdoing'.
2) there was a financial settlement involved. The burden of proof in civil court is 50.1%, and in criminal court it is much higher (beyond a reasonable doubt is likened to 99%). Financial settlements do NOT occur unless there is a very good chance of a finding of liability in civil court.
3) *FOUR COPS* tasered an unarmed man. FOUR. At once!
4) the RCMP tried to supress video of the incident
5) likely, charges will be laid when this is all over
Now, on the other side of the coin, this was the action of 4 police officers, not the entire RCMP. The real problem here is, that these cops should have been fired and charged with manslaughter, long long ago.
Note, if I'm operating a crane, and through misjudgement I kill a man -- I'd get charged and most likely convicted of manslaughter. The guy in the above wikipedia article was not threatening anyone, nor approaching anyone aggressively.
While I do think that cops get a bad rap too often, if you don't want to work in a profession where you must be *very* careful of how you perform your job (heavy equipment operator, electrician, medical profession, police, etc).. then, DO NOT APPLY FOR THAT JOB.
If you kill a man, in ANY profession, and you do so due to improper / accidental behaviour, YOU NEED TO BE CHARGED, IMMEDIATELY!
I understand that in the US things are a bit different -- but here, generally speaking (in Canada), not obeying a cop does NOT provide immediate cause to assault a citizen. For example, the 'don't tase me bro!' guy incident would not have happened here, unless a cop was acting illegally. That's because, there's nothing the 'don't tase me' guy did *wrong*, if he was in Canada.
I hope that if they produce a full scale Android device, that they actually produce a quality app!
I've been using the Kindle app on Android for about a year now.. or at least, since whenever it came out. It has *tons* of failings, including the ability to navigate it, backlight annoyances, and so on.
Even the Amazon store through the app, for some bizarre reason, is less function than the full web.
Heck, there are probably about 20 e-book reader apps, for free on the market, that actually provide more functionality than the Kindle app. *Far* more functionality. Heck, I can't even choose what precise colour, or font I want with this app!
The most annoying part of it all, is that I emailed the Kindle team about this. *No* response. Thanks guys, I actually spent time thinking about how this annoyed me, and provided something that companies sometimes pay millions for.. customer feedback!
NO!
NO NO NO!
That is *not* a way to fix the problem!
For christ sake, it took me *7 minutes* to vote last time. SEVEN MINUTES. If people aren't showing up to vote, when (even in the very worst situation) it takes an hour every FEW YEARS, then the problem is NOT LACK OF EASY VOTING!
Frankly, the people that can't take that little time out of their lives, to vote, are NOT VOTES I WANT TO SEE ANYHOW!
How much apathy, how much lack of concern over that vote, do those people have? Clearly, anyone that does NOT vote, does not CARE enough to vote. It isn't an access issue. It isn't hard to get somewhere to vote.
Hell, you can vote by mail if it is a PITA for you.
ONLINE VOTING WILL NOT HELP VOTER TURNOUT!
After I heard this, I had a horrible dream!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guGchg4mbLs
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country!
If it's a free country, shouldn't the private company be free to do what they want, barring any agreement with you that precludes them from doing otherwise?
Or is your "free country" just free for YOU?
There are many things that my ISP can not do. They can not, for example, terminate my service because I am a minority. They can not engage in anti-competitive behaviour. They can not slander me, without repercussions. They can not lie about the services they offer. I could go on and on, about the things one person can not do to another person in a business capacity.
The problem with this system is... well, let's compare it.
You're in a restaurant. Someone approaches the restaurant owner, and informs them that you, and the person you are dining in, are currently breaking civil law. Without verifying that information, the restaurant owner then approaches you, and informs you that this is the 6th time someone has said such things about you, and therefore you are on longer allowed in the restaurant.
I assure you I can bring suit against people for such things. Just watch me.
In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
Yep - but you probably signed away that right when you agreed to your ISPs TOS.
Yeah, it sucks if someone wants to pay ISPs to play copyright cop. But given who the MAFIAA has in their pocket (remember, you can't spell DMCA without tha big fat "D"....) I don't see any realistic way that's going to change any time soon.
A TOS is *not* a contract. Further, I've never once -- not once, signed anything to receive service from an ISP.
All a TOS says is "I'm giving you service, and if I see these things happening, I will cut you off". That's all fine and good, but many companies in the past have gotten in legal trouble over the wrong condition for their TOS.
Frankly, I'm not sure what country you live in, but it seems like a place where all the legal strength is on the side of corporations! The USA perhaps?
At least in Canada, the court system isn't that broken yet...
And private industry has absolutely no responsibility to give you a luxury like Internet access if they don't feel like it. If you set up a warez site in the old days, they would shut you off. No DMCA required, just the fact that they pay for their upstream bandwidth by the megabyte and you're using 90%+ of it.
There are court cases that back up the concept of 'abuse of service'. One I recall has to do with the use of water, as it is not metered in many cities.
Regardless, this has no comparison with a stranger approaching my ISP, and saying I am stealing from them -- and my ISP cutting me off without required sufficient proof first.
Or, do you believe that the ISP is going to personally spend *hours* investigating every incident? Validating that it really is copyright infringement? Investigating your torrent traffic?
If they don't, they open themselves to legal issues. Further, if the person that slander/libeled you is wrong (the copyright holder), then they open themselves to lawsuit as well...
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country!
If it's a free country, shouldn't the private company be free to do what they want, barring any agreement with you that precludes them from doing otherwise?
Or is your "free country" just free for YOU?
No. They can't refuse service if I'm a minority. They can't discriminate against me. They can't take part in anti-competitive behaviour. They can't break about 100 other laws, either.
They certainly can't bar me from service, based upon insufficient proof either... that opens them to suit. In a free society, I have rights too, you see... not just mega-corp.
In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
Yep - but you probably signed away that right when you agreed to your ISPs TOS.
Yeah, it sucks if someone wants to pay ISPs to play copyright cop. But given who the MAFIAA has in their pocket (remember, you can't spell DMCA without tha big fat "D"....) I don't see any realistic way that's going to change any time soon.
I've never, in my entire life, signed a contract with an ISP. TOS is *not* a contract, but 'terms of service'. It's one sided, and basically a document that tells you what the ISP expects, and says it will tolerate. It certainly is not binding for you, legally.
Further, if the TOS contains illegal elements (and they act on them), they can find themselves in legal trouble. Imagine a clause that said "If you have negro ancestry, and do not disclose it to us, your service is terminated".
Private industry has absolutely NO place as judge, jury and executioner. NONE. Zero. Zilch.
If one is to be found guilty of anything, a court should be involved. Perhaps there should be changes to the law, to make small claim's court responsible for minor copyright infractions by users.
Regardless, in no way should one private company provide proof to another private company, which results in any sort of detrimental action being taken against a citizen of a free country! In fact, if that information is wrong, the copyright holder could be sued for slander/libel, along with the ISP being sued for various other things.
This is a big problem for me. Every time I travel, I get interference when I sleep.
Here's what happened last time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guGchg4mbLs
No kidding .. look at what java has done to my dreams!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guGchg4mbLs
This sort of tracking, still feels better than this....!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZqPQPhsuX4