We have these logs showing _______ was done from ___.___.___.___ at __:__ on __/__/200_. Which student was assigned the aforementioned IP at the aforesaid time?
That's basically true of most legal questions. For instance, the applicability of the Second Amendment to gun-issues is quite rare. The reason is that as soon as either side tries to push for a definitive ruling, it's going to go to the Supreme Court, and once there it's a crapshoot as to how they'll rule. As a result, the Second Amendment is almost never brought up in court by either side (though they may bring it up outside the courtroom).
Or did the University police (they are not allowed, at least in CA, to call themselves police unless they have true police powers, IIRC)
IIRC, autopr0n goes to Iowa State (at least, for a while his website was on the residential network). It may well be that the ISU police have been given by the IA legislature authority to act as a full police department (especially if Ames doesn't want the trouble).
At UMass, the UMass Police Department is of the same status as the police in any other town in the Commonwealth. This pays dividends, because they cannot enter a dorm room without a warrant. If you go to a private college, this may not necessarily be true; according to a friend who goes to BU, the BU security people can enter a room on suspicion of wrongdoing, as you explicitly authorize them to do so as a condition of the residential agreement, apparently.
RIAA members own the copyrights to the songs. What the bands say doesn't mean shit.
This is why it's effectively OK to share out Metallica tunes; Metallica has not gotten involved in the post-Napster RIAA actions and the RIAA can't sue for material they don't own.
He's not blaming Google in this. He's attacking the mindset that's developed that Google is the best tool for every job.
You can't really hold Google responsible for these blind spots. Each of them is just a reflection of the way the Web has been organized by the millions who have contributed to its structure. But the existence of Googleholes suggests an important caveat to the Google-as-oracle rhetoric: Google may be the closest thing going to a vision of the "group mind," but that mind is shaped by the interests and habits of the people who create hypertext links.
(Emphasis mine --LR).
The author is pointing out that Google manifests the tendencies of the webmastering population out there; that the reason the NY Times doesn't get mondo pagerank is because people don't link to them (because the NY Times is subscription for the archives).
Try actually reading the article, rather than skimming it...
And in the UK (where the company is located), the standard of proof for libel is far more lenient than in the US (IIRC, you only need to demonstrate intent to defame, regardless of whether it's true or not).
I was impressed that many Dutch people had almost perfect spoken English, even well outside the standard tourist spots.
Part of that is that, for a long time, the high school gradution exam in the Netherlands was approximately one-quarter in Dutch, one-quarter in German, one-quarter English, and a quarter French.
To remain on topic however, I should add that perhaps the reason why the Quebec born 'courriel' word was adopted by France is that quebec does have an elaborate mechanism aimed at preserving and expanding the french language.
And the French don't? Have you ever heard of l'Academie Francaise?
You know what... I'm fucking sick and tired of all this "I want to have my big house in the suburbs with all that sprawl, but I can't get DSL or cable service! WAAAAAAAAH!!! WAAAAAH!" bullshit.
If the inner city has broadband, then move there if its so fucking important to you.
A bunch of (primarily, in the early days) college students that were too cheap to buy CDs?
I did an experiment not too long ago. I put MP3s of the then-top 100 songs according to Billboard, on a system connected to KaZaa. I put files from 1000 or so indie artists online. In a day, I had served up:
500 downloads from the top-100 songs
0 downloads from the 1000 indie bands
This result correlates pretty well with other similar studies; the RIAA owned material dominates KaZaa just as much as, if not more than, it dominates the airwaves (at least the airwaves in Boston, where there's three major radio station operators, plus several indies).
Getting indie music is the motive of, at most, a tiny proportion of P2P users,at least judging by their usage habits.
And this action is not going after the Kazaa network in any way shape or form. It's going after those who have been accused of violating the law. The cure for cancer is still distributable over Kazaa.
All BT does is force you to share while you yourself are downloading the file. As soon as you finish download a file, it doesn't matter if you stop serving it the instant you download it; because each tracker essentially functions as its own network, the reputation doesn't carry over. It's trivial to modify the python client to pull that stunt, and effectively allow leeching.
At this point, since BitTorrent's leech-prevention (while better than anything since ratio ftp) isn't that effective (and I can't, off the top of my head, think of an alternative anti-leech system that's neither centralized nor obscenely easy to poison with invalid data).
Probably the best P2P protocol in that department is something like IRC or IM file transfer, but that's only as scalable as one's circle of friends.
Am I the only one who thinks the *AA are going after piracy in the stupid way (viewed from the perspective of protecting their interests)? I mean, they don't need to file a single suit. Just take advantage of the fact that, now that most Universities have throttled P2P connections to external nets to a trickle, most of the traffic is from cable and DSL ISPs. So if I were the *AA, here's what I'd do:
Pay the ISPs $10 per customer per month (or some similar figure) to have them drop prices across the board by say 10 bucks a month, but in the process impose an upload cap of say 2GB a month with a charge of $2.50 per GB or portion thereof uploaded over the 2GB level. The list of ISPs that would not take this deal (since it's virtually guaranteed not to decrease their revenues). Toss in the agreement a clause that you won't put them through the cost of revealing user info through the courts and probably every ISP would jump at the chance.
If Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and SBC are all effectively eliminated as content providers for the P2P networks (especially on large files), then the traffic clusters even more around other servers which would degrade the performance of those networks to the point that their use would probably decline. With the numbers proposed above, a user who wishes to upload a 700 MB DivX 80 times in a month would end up paying $135 on top of their base rate for the privilege to the ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
2.7.0 should be out sometime this winter...
The only forms of privacy that you have when a court order (which is basically what a subpoena is) is issued are:
Beyond that, all privacy laws are basically thrown out the window.
What they're saying to the schools is:
We have these logs showing _______ was done from ___.___.___.___ at __:__ on __/__/200_. Which student was assigned the aforementioned IP at the aforesaid time?
That's basically true of most legal questions. For instance, the applicability of the Second Amendment to gun-issues is quite rare. The reason is that as soon as either side tries to push for a definitive ruling, it's going to go to the Supreme Court, and once there it's a crapshoot as to how they'll rule. As a result, the Second Amendment is almost never brought up in court by either side (though they may bring it up outside the courtroom).
IIRC, autopr0n goes to Iowa State (at least, for a while his website was on the residential network). It may well be that the ISU police have been given by the IA legislature authority to act as a full police department (especially if Ames doesn't want the trouble).
At UMass, the UMass Police Department is of the same status as the police in any other town in the Commonwealth. This pays dividends, because they cannot enter a dorm room without a warrant. If you go to a private college, this may not necessarily be true; according to a friend who goes to BU, the BU security people can enter a room on suspicion of wrongdoing, as you explicitly authorize them to do so as a condition of the residential agreement, apparently.
And LL Bean has that total satisfaction guarantee...
Not many Mainers must call for tech support... they're accent is far more atrocious than even a Worcester or Revere accent!
Yuh cain't get theyuh from heuh...
RIAA members own the copyrights to the songs. What the bands say doesn't mean shit.
This is why it's effectively OK to share out Metallica tunes; Metallica has not gotten involved in the post-Napster RIAA actions and the RIAA can't sue for material they don't own.
it certainly is!
It would also cut down on the requirements for conjugal visits!
He's not blaming Google in this. He's attacking the mindset that's developed that Google is the best tool for every job.
(Emphasis mine --LR).
The author is pointing out that Google manifests the tendencies of the webmastering population out there; that the reason the NY Times doesn't get mondo pagerank is because people don't link to them (because the NY Times is subscription for the archives).
Try actually reading the article, rather than skimming it...
I think he's talking about the cracking aspect...
And in the UK (where the company is located), the standard of proof for libel is far more lenient than in the US (IIRC, you only need to demonstrate intent to defame, regardless of whether it's true or not).
Part of that is that, for a long time, the high school gradution exam in the Netherlands was approximately one-quarter in Dutch, one-quarter in German, one-quarter English, and a quarter French.
And the French don't? Have you ever heard of l'Academie Francaise?
Or perhaps he hasn't used OS X in so long, the memory of the coloration of the beach ball has slipped?
You know what... I'm fucking sick and tired of all this "I want to have my big house in the suburbs with all that sprawl, but I can't get DSL or cable service! WAAAAAAAAH!!! WAAAAAH!" bullshit.
If the inner city has broadband, then move there if its so fucking important to you.
A bunch of (primarily, in the early days) college students that were too cheap to buy CDs?
I did an experiment not too long ago. I put MP3s of the then-top 100 songs according to Billboard, on a system connected to KaZaa. I put files from 1000 or so indie artists online. In a day, I had served up:
This result correlates pretty well with other similar studies; the RIAA owned material dominates KaZaa just as much as, if not more than, it dominates the airwaves (at least the airwaves in Boston, where there's three major radio station operators, plus several indies).
Getting indie music is the motive of, at most, a tiny proportion of P2P users,at least judging by their usage habits.
Uh, Maverick is under the Warner Bros. Records banner...
First rule of the Marcel Marceau fan club: you do not talk about the Marcel Marceau fan club!
And this action is not going after the Kazaa network in any way shape or form. It's going after those who have been accused of violating the law. The cure for cancer is still distributable over Kazaa.
Idiot.
Tell me, Jack, is daylight savings time right around the corner? ;o)
Conclusive proof that moderators are susceptible to reverse suggestion...
[This post is not funny]
All BT does is force you to share while you yourself are downloading the file. As soon as you finish download a file, it doesn't matter if you stop serving it the instant you download it; because each tracker essentially functions as its own network, the reputation doesn't carry over. It's trivial to modify the python client to pull that stunt, and effectively allow leeching.
At this point, since BitTorrent's leech-prevention (while better than anything since ratio ftp) isn't that effective (and I can't, off the top of my head, think of an alternative anti-leech system that's neither centralized nor obscenely easy to poison with invalid data).
Probably the best P2P protocol in that department is something like IRC or IM file transfer, but that's only as scalable as one's circle of friends.
Am I the only one who thinks the *AA are going after piracy in the stupid way (viewed from the perspective of protecting their interests)? I mean, they don't need to file a single suit. Just take advantage of the fact that, now that most Universities have throttled P2P connections to external nets to a trickle, most of the traffic is from cable and DSL ISPs. So if I were the *AA, here's what I'd do:
Pay the ISPs $10 per customer per month (or some similar figure) to have them drop prices across the board by say 10 bucks a month, but in the process impose an upload cap of say 2GB a month with a charge of $2.50 per GB or portion thereof uploaded over the 2GB level. The list of ISPs that would not take this deal (since it's virtually guaranteed not to decrease their revenues). Toss in the agreement a clause that you won't put them through the cost of revealing user info through the courts and probably every ISP would jump at the chance.
If Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and SBC are all effectively eliminated as content providers for the P2P networks (especially on large files), then the traffic clusters even more around other servers which would degrade the performance of those networks to the point that their use would probably decline. With the numbers proposed above, a user who wishes to upload a 700 MB DivX 80 times in a month would end up paying $135 on top of their base rate for the privilege to the ISP.