The end users can not be held responsible for knowing everything a business is doing, has done, all it's specials, all it's contract deals, or it's treatment of employees. Well I have to agree with you there. If there's no law defining knowing operation of a faulty gambling machine for personal gain as fraud, then there's no criminal charge at all.
But I don't think there's any doubt at all that people knew. You stick in a dollar and you get ten on the screen? I don't think there's a "reasonable person" defense to the effect that a user couldn't tell. If there's fraud law on the Indiana books to that effect, they're screwed.
For example, you walk up to a blackjack dealer who you know can't count. You hand him a $20, get $200 in chips, and then walk away. Who's at fault here? I dunno. The H.R. department? That hypothetical is wildly improbable when compared to the frequency of software problems, though.
Caesar's probably has a reasonable civil liability case against the gambling machine vendor or even the software company. I doubt a EULA's gonna cover this breach of "Fitness for a particular purpose." Just as the casino may have a case against your retarded blackjack dealer if they can prove he mislead them when stating his qualifications.
In fact, I hope there's such a EULA, and they go after the software company, as this may finally establish precedent that such EULA "waivers" are garbage.
I'm guessing the physical machine vendor is the one that's going to be sued, however.
Eventually, we may see amendments to state fraud laws that players must report obvious defects in software to the machine operators, or that doing so for personal gain in excess of $x amount of money is fraud. I would expect it in Nevada.
Counting cards is not illegal, however, as the linked article notes, and Caesar's has a better civil liability case against the faulty machine vendor than they have a criminal case against these gamblers. If they provided the machines themselves, they should be S.O.L.
The summary says (or hopefully said after it is revised):
Yahoo has a new option: perhaps the users are criminally liable for using the software. "Yahoo News" is the website carrying an Associated Press article about a Caesars casino in Indiana.
Harrison County, Indiana is the legal entity considering criminal charges against players, probably at the behest of Caesar's.
I find the summary wording to be at least misleading, if not defamatory.
Beyond that, from TFA, the machine was crediting ten dollars for every dollar inserted, not paying out with more wins. It was clearly, demonstrably, and obviously faulty. So the answer to the question "Would your average user be able to distinguish 'faulty software' from 'lucky'?" is yes. They knew damned well they were getting $10 worth of chances for every $1. It was as obvious as finding that someone had left their wallet at the machine and pocketing it.
What the heck is going on here editors? This summary is beyond shoddy.
This is a business article by a person named "Graft." Isn't that a conflict of interest?
Remember how long it took the Genesis to succeed, guys? All they have to do is keep the thing on the market. MS is still making the right moves, and the race is far from over. It's only just begun now that the other major players have entered.
I buy a hammer, use it, then give it to someone as a gift - and go to jail because my "gift" prevents you from selling another hammer. Yes. This is exactly the hysterical conclusion the summary, and to a lesser extent TFA, is trying to induce, and it is not the case.
From TFA:
In this case, however, the company concedes that the eBay seller could rightfully resell the makeup on eBay if, as she claims, she purchased the makeup at a flea market. Merle Norman, however, suspects that the eBay seller is in fact buying the makeup from a salon that, pursuant to its contract with Merle Norman, has agreed not to sell anything on the Internet. In other words, they're trying to claim a reseller is bound by the contract that their vendor signed.
Guess who loses here? Not the lawyers, that's for sure. This is a BS test case, and no court in the U.S. would rule against the reseller. Property is property, and a contract you haven't signed is non-binding.
Just because an idiotic lawsuit is brought, or takedown notices are served, doesn't mean it's actually winnable. The implication here is that Merle Norman is run by morons. Nothing more.
The other case is, to my mind, a misreading of IP law and compounds it with a misreading of Leegin. If you call out every ridiculous commerce suit ever brought to court, you're going to find a lot of stuff like this. It doesn't matter what gets brought to the bar. What matters is what the judgements are, or that people are settling out of court rather than fighting for their rights.
IMO, both cases are attempting to extend Leegin, which only states that cartel behavior is not always illegal. Both companies are trying to claim a non-existent right to determine all price, and shut down any reseller which will not meet their demands. This kind of extension is unprecedented, and I believe it to be totally unwelcome in the current conservative makeup of the High Court.
The SCOTUS isn't about to throw capitalism in the trash can for some biazarro inverted socialist system where the workers are owned by the means of production! Sheesh.
That sounds slightly like feudalism, in which the unfree tenants would be attached to their land. That is truly insightful. Thanks.
"Feudalism" is the opposite of "socialism." Discuss.
If it hasn't been done already, you could earn your Ph.D., or tenure even, on that. I concentrated in medieval history in undergrad, and studied under a few economic historians, and your description is apt.
The recent ruling applies to new product sales only, folks.
So don't panic. They can't do a thing about the used CD market because of the doctrine of first sale and similar law in the case of durable goods. Not without rewriting property law from scratch, which would, literally, require a revolution. There's too much precedent.
Carried to it's logical extreme, the article summary implies that the status quo established by this ruling even makes giving owned property away subject to legal action. I consider the tone to be somewhat hysterical. Rights to property transferral after purchase will be maintained by the SCOTUS, because that's how a private property system works in the first place. You have to maintain meaningful ownership.
The SCOTUS isn't about to throw capitalism in the trash can for some biazarro inverted socialist system where the workers are owned by the means of production! Sheesh.
Either that, or the RIAA is going to mobilize teams and start busting up garage sales. We'll see which happens.;^)
These actions will hurt few, and mostly only stop a large number of shady auctioneers that are probably fencing stolen items (and likely doing other shady things like shill bidding up their auctions.) It's a good thing, folks. An unregulated mass-market is an unruly mass-market, and eBay has had this coming for years.
-- Toro
(In other news, does it seem like there's a lot more FUD on/. these days?)
This article is featured in the "Internet Explorer" category, and has a big blue IE logo next to it.
It's an odd way to celebrate Firefox and Mozilla's success.
-- Toro
Piracy - the *other* way to grow market share
on
Zune DRM Cracked
·
· Score: 1
This is exactly the good news that could make the Zune take off. I wouldn't be surprised if the Zune division leaked the cracks into the marketplace itself to try to make the player more popular.
Exactly. If it's not doing 1080p (or 1080i if you can stand it), what's the point of hooking up an HD-DVD player to it? 720p? You're going to purchase a full-on HDMI system for 720p?
My point is (More carefully worded since I got modded down for "flamebaiting"):
a) You need at least a 50" screen for HD-DVD technology to make a difference. Otherwise, get a decent upsampler for that new 37" set. Your DVD's will look fine. b) You will be repurchasing DVDs if you want any of those benefits for movies in your collection. c) You will be adopting HDMI, which is about as smart as upgrading to Vista. d) You will be paying $99 for a glorified disk drive.
In other words, all the really important technology is in the monitor and the sound receivers, speakers, etc, and that is still quite costly because you need it to be fully HDMI. An HDMI compliant setup (all components) may not retail for my polemic $5000, but if you do it in a way that is worth bothering, it's going to run well over $2000. $1500 for the monitor alone.
(Sorry about the exaggerated prices, the last time I checked this out, plasma was king.)
When I think about it, and the apparent excitement over a $99 HD player, $99 is a lot of money for a disk drive. I think I'll wait till these things are down to $45, and hopefully HDMI will flop like Divx did all those years ago.
'One of the most frequently purchased items in Second Life is genitalia.'
I wonder what their return policy is? If you're waiting for some crude joke regarding George Carlin and "customer service..."
Wow! And after my $99 dollar purchase I'll just have to cough up $5000 for a 50" HDTV to realize *any* of the benefits, not to mention the HDMI non-benefits!
I'll stick with my standard VHS and DVD resolutions for the time being. The best televisions that use them cost little more than $1000. You early adopters can go fish.
All this affects is HD-DVD vs. BluRay adoption for people who have too much disposable income, and too little imagination on how best to spend it.
Hint: Repurchasing all your DVD's is a poor use. Try funding a scholarship or something.
Free speech my arse. I can't even get a Google cache of what he wrote. It's like navigating the Internet version of some Stalinese scorched earth maneuver.
Anyone have the full text of this thing? He "voluntarily" retracted the entire article, and I'd like to read his rant.
To spuriously quote an old New Hampshire congressman: "I've never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about."
Okay, so the very young Slashdotter that just popped out of his mother might not know what HTTP actually stands for, but I can't believe there are any Slashdotters who don't know what HTTP is. IMHO, the author of this article doesn't. I really doubt all that traffic is the result of HTTP 1.1 commands. HTTP, for instance, doesn't really support streaming video. The best you can do is grab 15 different animated gifs on a pipelined request.
I believe he's referring here to "port 80/TCP" traffic, which is a good deal different than "HTTP traffic." Port 80 is the most abused "well known port" in the business. It is assigned to be used as HTTP, but on the average client system it's used for just about anything.
I think we need to start differentiating between all the different kinds of apps that run over port 80, not because it's the right choice of port but because they're badly written, and whether or not a streaming movie (or application update) can any longer be properly described as "HTTP."
I am going to say "no." Many of these are apps in their own right that aren't really using HTTP for anything other than a handshake/init and should be doing their business over their own ports, especially all the streaming Flash video. 554/TCP anyone? What gives?
Anyone know the nuts and bolts of streaming Flash? That can't possibly be just a GET request, can it? If it's anything more, the traffic isn't really HTTP in my book. It's misused port 80. I know Windows Update isn't proper HTTP. That goes waaay beyond GET.
If A is illegal, but people continue to engage in A, than either the anti-A laws/procedures ought to become stricter, or it should stop being illegal....
This logic is equally true, whether A is murder, marijuana smoking, speeding, or, indeed, copying/sharing somebody else's works. By this logic, the punishment for "jaywalking" (to which I feel "infringement without gain" is roughly equivalent) would be eventually raised to beheading.
We had a system like this. It's was originally called the "Hammurabi code." As recently as a few centuries ago, there were gallows rows. It's a backwards justice system we abandoned decades ago.
We no longer have a binary "right/wrong" switch in our system any more, because it doesn't make sense, for example, for starvation (and an accompanying bread theft) to be a hanging offense. There are therefore shades of wrong in our system, perspective, mercy, restraint, and punishments that are meant to fit the degree of the crime.
This is something apparently new to you, as you insist on limiting the argument to whether a given crime is right or wrong, with no mention of severity.
But in our current justice system, sometimes things are "illegal" so that if an issue is made of it we can determine who is in "the wrong." In other words, we're more interested in whether harm was done.
Any crime can go unpunished, for instance, if no one presses charges.
In the case of copyright, there's an issue of when a "criminal offense," as opposed to "civil liability," is even indicated.
Thus, with our jaywalking example, if someone strikes a jaywalker with his car, that driver is saved an awful lot of liability, and possibly criminal charges, by saying "but the guy was jaywalking. He ran out in front of me." He's got a much more troublesome defense if he hits someone in the crosswalk.
And that's why jaywalking is a ticketable offense. A lot of the law works like this. It's there to determine who is wrong should the issue see a court. Not to deter the action, but to make it an action with consequences that can determine culpability when there is actual harm done.
Thus, sure copying without permission is "wrong," but that's a red herring. The degree of wrong is the real question. "What is a reasonable penalty, if any?" is the question to be asked.
Now you run along and try to prove the actual "grave harm" that one guy copying one song does that is somehow commensurate to the maximum sentence set forth in the U.S. DMCA, and not about $1.
Slashdot Mirror
But I don't think there's any doubt at all that people knew. You stick in a dollar and you get ten on the screen? I don't think there's a "reasonable person" defense to the effect that a user couldn't tell. If there's fraud law on the Indiana books to that effect, they're screwed.
--
Toro
Caesar's probably has a reasonable civil liability case against the gambling machine vendor or even the software company. I doubt a EULA's gonna cover this breach of "Fitness for a particular purpose." Just as the casino may have a case against your retarded blackjack dealer if they can prove he mislead them when stating his qualifications.
In fact, I hope there's such a EULA, and they go after the software company, as this may finally establish precedent that such EULA "waivers" are garbage.
I'm guessing the physical machine vendor is the one that's going to be sued, however.
Eventually, we may see amendments to state fraud laws that players must report obvious defects in software to the machine operators, or that doing so for personal gain in excess of $x amount of money is fraud. I would expect it in Nevada.
--
Toro
No, but you will be banned from casinos if you know how to count cards well enough.
;^)
Counting cards is not illegal, however, as the linked article notes, and Caesar's has a better civil liability case against the faulty machine vendor than they have a criminal case against these gamblers. If they provided the machines themselves, they should be S.O.L.
We'll see where the chips fall.
--
Toro
Harrison County, Indiana is the legal entity considering criminal charges against players, probably at the behest of Caesar's.
I find the summary wording to be at least misleading, if not defamatory.
Beyond that, from TFA, the machine was crediting ten dollars for every dollar inserted, not paying out with more wins. It was clearly, demonstrably, and obviously faulty. So the answer to the question "Would your average user be able to distinguish 'faulty software' from 'lucky'?" is yes. They knew damned well they were getting $10 worth of chances for every $1. It was as obvious as finding that someone had left their wallet at the machine and pocketing it.
What the heck is going on here editors? This summary is beyond shoddy.
--
Toro
...completely different.
This is a business article by a person named "Graft." Isn't that a conflict of interest?
Remember how long it took the Genesis to succeed, guys? All they have to do is keep the thing on the market. MS is still making the right moves, and the race is far from over. It's only just begun now that the other major players have entered.
--
Toro
From TFA: In this case, however, the company concedes that the eBay seller could rightfully resell the makeup on eBay if, as she claims, she purchased the makeup at a flea market. Merle Norman, however, suspects that the eBay seller is in fact buying the makeup from a salon that, pursuant to its contract with Merle Norman, has agreed not to sell anything on the Internet. In other words, they're trying to claim a reseller is bound by the contract that their vendor signed.
Guess who loses here? Not the lawyers, that's for sure. This is a BS test case, and no court in the U.S. would rule against the reseller. Property is property, and a contract you haven't signed is non-binding.
Just because an idiotic lawsuit is brought, or takedown notices are served, doesn't mean it's actually winnable. The implication here is that Merle Norman is run by morons. Nothing more.
The other case is, to my mind, a misreading of IP law and compounds it with a misreading of Leegin. If you call out every ridiculous commerce suit ever brought to court, you're going to find a lot of stuff like this. It doesn't matter what gets brought to the bar. What matters is what the judgements are, or that people are settling out of court rather than fighting for their rights.
IMO, both cases are attempting to extend Leegin, which only states that cartel behavior is not always illegal. Both companies are trying to claim a non-existent right to determine all price, and shut down any reseller which will not meet their demands. This kind of extension is unprecedented, and I believe it to be totally unwelcome in the current conservative makeup of the High Court.
--
Toro
"Feudalism" is the opposite of "socialism." Discuss.
If it hasn't been done already, you could earn your Ph.D., or tenure even, on that. I concentrated in medieval history in undergrad, and studied under a few economic historians, and your description is apt.
--
Toro
...is how Linus Torvalds pronounces "Chinook."
--
Toro
(who just gave up mod points to make that dumb joke.)
The recent ruling applies to new product sales only, folks.
;^)
/. these days?)
So don't panic. They can't do a thing about the used CD market because of the doctrine of first sale and similar law in the case of durable goods. Not without rewriting property law from scratch, which would, literally, require a revolution. There's too much precedent.
Carried to it's logical extreme, the article summary implies that the status quo established by this ruling even makes giving owned property away subject to legal action. I consider the tone to be somewhat hysterical. Rights to property transferral after purchase will be maintained by the SCOTUS, because that's how a private property system works in the first place. You have to maintain meaningful ownership.
The SCOTUS isn't about to throw capitalism in the trash can for some biazarro inverted socialist system where the workers are owned by the means of production! Sheesh.
Either that, or the RIAA is going to mobilize teams and start busting up garage sales. We'll see which happens.
These actions will hurt few, and mostly only stop a large number of shady auctioneers that are probably fencing stolen items (and likely doing other shady things like shill bidding up their auctions.) It's a good thing, folks. An unregulated mass-market is an unruly mass-market, and eBay has had this coming for years.
--
Toro
(In other news, does it seem like there's a lot more FUD on
This article is featured in the "Internet Explorer" category, and has a big blue IE logo next to it.
It's an odd way to celebrate Firefox and Mozilla's success.
--
Toro
This is exactly the good news that could make the Zune take off. I wouldn't be surprised if the Zune division leaked the cracks into the marketplace itself to try to make the player more popular.
--
Toro
Exactly. If it's not doing 1080p (or 1080i if you can stand it), what's the point of hooking up an HD-DVD player to it? 720p? You're going to purchase a full-on HDMI system for 720p?
My point is (More carefully worded since I got modded down for "flamebaiting"):
a) You need at least a 50" screen for HD-DVD technology to make a difference. Otherwise, get a decent upsampler for that new 37" set. Your DVD's will look fine.
b) You will be repurchasing DVDs if you want any of those benefits for movies in your collection.
c) You will be adopting HDMI, which is about as smart as upgrading to Vista.
d) You will be paying $99 for a glorified disk drive.
In other words, all the really important technology is in the monitor and the sound receivers, speakers, etc, and that is still quite costly because you need it to be fully HDMI. An HDMI compliant setup (all components) may not retail for my polemic $5000, but if you do it in a way that is worth bothering, it's going to run well over $2000. $1500 for the monitor alone.
(Sorry about the exaggerated prices, the last time I checked this out, plasma was king.)
When I think about it, and the apparent excitement over a $99 HD player, $99 is a lot of money for a disk drive. I think I'll wait till these things are down to $45, and hopefully HDMI will flop like Divx did all those years ago.
--
Toro
I can't do it. I just can't.
--
Toro
Wow! And after my $99 dollar purchase I'll just have to cough up $5000 for a 50" HDTV to realize *any* of the benefits, not to mention the HDMI non-benefits!
I'll stick with my standard VHS and DVD resolutions for the time being. The best televisions that use them cost little more than $1000. You early adopters can go fish.
All this affects is HD-DVD vs. BluRay adoption for people who have too much disposable income, and too little imagination on how best to spend it.
Hint: Repurchasing all your DVD's is a poor use. Try funding a scholarship or something.
--
Toro
Widespread Blu-Ray adoption not likely for 10 years.
Coincidence? Possibly.
--
Toro
Robot insurance doesn't seem so silly now, huh?
I'll be darned if they use my per-scrip-shun drugs for fuel! (Medicare "D" was just a ploy!)
--
Toro
After all, all American R&D could come up with was a big ass table.
--
Toro
Lose lift? If they didn't bend they couldn't flap!
;^) )
(Betcha' didn't know the 787 was an ornithopter?
--
Toro
Here's the original, for as long as it stays up.
Yahoo's cache of retracted blog entry.
Free speech my arse. I can't even get a Google cache of what he wrote. It's like navigating the Internet version of some Stalinese scorched earth maneuver.
Anyone have the full text of this thing? He "voluntarily" retracted the entire article, and I'd like to read his rant.
To spuriously quote an old New Hampshire congressman: "I've never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about."
--
Toro
--
Toro
I believe he's referring here to "port 80/TCP" traffic, which is a good deal different than "HTTP traffic." Port 80 is the most abused "well known port" in the business. It is assigned to be used as HTTP, but on the average client system it's used for just about anything.
--
Toro
I think we need to start differentiating between all the different kinds of apps that run over port 80, not because it's the right choice of port but because they're badly written, and whether or not a streaming movie (or application update) can any longer be properly described as "HTTP."
I am going to say "no." Many of these are apps in their own right that aren't really using HTTP for anything other than a handshake/init and should be doing their business over their own ports, especially all the streaming Flash video. 554/TCP anyone? What gives?
Anyone know the nuts and bolts of streaming Flash? That can't possibly be just a GET request, can it? If it's anything more, the traffic isn't really HTTP in my book. It's misused port 80. I know Windows Update isn't proper HTTP. That goes waaay beyond GET.
--
Toro
This logic is equally true, whether A is murder, marijuana smoking, speeding, or, indeed, copying/sharing somebody else's works. By this logic, the punishment for "jaywalking" (to which I feel "infringement without gain" is roughly equivalent) would be eventually raised to beheading.
We had a system like this. It's was originally called the "Hammurabi code." As recently as a few centuries ago, there were gallows rows. It's a backwards justice system we abandoned decades ago.
We no longer have a binary "right/wrong" switch in our system any more, because it doesn't make sense, for example, for starvation (and an accompanying bread theft) to be a hanging offense. There are therefore shades of wrong in our system, perspective, mercy, restraint, and punishments that are meant to fit the degree of the crime.
This is something apparently new to you, as you insist on limiting the argument to whether a given crime is right or wrong, with no mention of severity.
But in our current justice system, sometimes things are "illegal" so that if an issue is made of it we can determine who is in "the wrong." In other words, we're more interested in whether harm was done.
Any crime can go unpunished, for instance, if no one presses charges.
In the case of copyright, there's an issue of when a "criminal offense," as opposed to "civil liability," is even indicated.
Thus, with our jaywalking example, if someone strikes a jaywalker with his car, that driver is saved an awful lot of liability, and possibly criminal charges, by saying "but the guy was jaywalking. He ran out in front of me." He's got a much more troublesome defense if he hits someone in the crosswalk.
And that's why jaywalking is a ticketable offense. A lot of the law works like this. It's there to determine who is wrong should the issue see a court. Not to deter the action, but to make it an action with consequences that can determine culpability when there is actual harm done.
Thus, sure copying without permission is "wrong," but that's a red herring. The degree of wrong is the real question. "What is a reasonable penalty, if any?" is the question to be asked.
Now you run along and try to prove the actual "grave harm" that one guy copying one song does that is somehow commensurate to the maximum sentence set forth in the U.S. DMCA, and not about $1.
That's a conversation worth having.
--
Toro
The judge *ordered* a core dump?
Hilarious. They should crash their machines and redirect the dump to his fax.
--
Toro