Considering that she passed her drug test, the city already faced a arbitration judgement about it, is seeing a lawsuit, and this will probably get thrown back in their face next union contract negotiation, I'd say (a) was probably the cheaper call. She's not being fired over recreational drug use: she's being fired from a government agency over a 1-sentence joke about drug use in her spare time. Even if union rules did allow for that, the entire thing better be 100% squeaky or any competent lawyer is going to have a field day.
Also, how many emergency responders *aren't* on drugs? Seriously, how many responders out there do you know that don't drink, don't take stress meds, don't indulge in excessive behaviors, and otherwise are all-around well adjusted people? The people I've met all seemed to find unhealthy ways of dealing with the constant stress.
Some twitter viewing applications slide ads into people's twitter streams. Now that Twitter is introducing an official paid advertising service that slides ads into people's twitter streams, they want control over that revenue stream.
All of the incomprehensible corporate speak is smoke-and-mirrors. Sadly, it will be smoke and mirrors that lots of people will fall for. I've shown junk like this to rather intelligent friends, who then nodded and said "that makes sense." The fact that they actually agreed with it was only slightly less shocking than the fact that they survived the experience without their BS detectors exploding.
BP is doing everything possible to fix the problem, while we sit on the sidelines and debate their ineffectiveness.
To be fair, their ineffectiveness isn't up for debate. They were granted the rights to drill with their assurance that accidents like this could never happen. And while other engineers didn't think this could happen, the oil companies are the ones that are ultimately responsible for understanding and ensuring the safety of their operations. Proving ignorance, and not having a contingency plan, is no excuse.
Car accidents happen all of the time, and is an accepted risk of driving a car. This is more like the melamine-in-milk scandal, where something that was supposed to be assuradely safe was, in fact, quite not.
BP has been quite a bit more responsible about dealing with the problem than a lot of companies have been, and they deserve a degree of respect for that. We need more companies like that. But the fact still remains that their platform blew up which shouldn't have happened, caught fire which they should have been able to put out, broke off which it shouldn't have done, and then the failsafe failed. Thanks to their interactions here you can't add "failed to take responsibility for the accident," but they're still responsible for the rest of the stuff.
True, though why did we allow them a month of spilling millions of gallons of oil into the bay while attempting to save the well in a way that it could be re-used? Maybe I'm just old and jaded, but rescuing the bay should have been priority 1 over rescuing the financial investment.
Also, shrimp has been terrible for the past month. Thanks, BP!
I had meant better integrated TCP/IP and the new driver model. It also had system support for USB, DVD drives, and some other basic upgrade tricks. I can't remember if that was the first windows support for FAT 32.
Either way, it seemed much easier to me to get Win 98 machines online compared to Win 95 ones.
You need permission to tape a conversation over the phone, even though the other party is sending that information to you. Certainly you'd need permission to tap that phone line, even if you did so remotely somewhere else. Why should the principle be different, just because the medium is wireless?
I'm kind of surprised that they don't announce this at the beginning of every class, log all interactions, and present that data back to the student when deciding upon grades. When people know they're being watched, they tend to behave differently.
When you're not taking class in a room full of computers. All of my grad classes have involved desktops in front of us. Add to that students who have both laptops and iphones / androids out in front of them, and you have a pretty wired group. iPads are just starting to filter in, but look perfect for keeping up with information.
They're great for taking notes on. You can take some detailed notes, then send them around to absent students after class, or search your notes for snippets. Eight months later when you're wondering how you wrote that code to do a bubble sort, or what that cute anecdote about the October revolution was, you can just search. You can also search for clarification online, or bring up an example of something you'd be curious about.
Of course, lots of students drift off with them. It's a shame, really.
Touting Aero was a clear sign that the developers didn't understand usability. You don't get an easier-to-use system by making it prettier. You restructure your information in a way that is clear and intuitive to make an easier-to-use system. If the user still has to go to a control panel to set a preference for their e-mail client, it isn't an easy-to-use system.
Vista broke compatibility with a lot of applications and hardware drivers, and ran slower. In exchange, the user got... another layer of confusing dialogs plastered over everything, and a security model that trained users to automatically click "ok" whenever a pop-up came up. It didn't provide the resolution-independent user interface that would have justified the graphics card requirement. It didn't have the badly-needed filesystem upgrade. All networking additions were just one more layer of kruft to go wrong, and broke compatibility with lots of XP servers for no appreciable benefit (partly because the file system upgrade didn't happen).
Win 98 provided much needed stability and internet integration over Win 95. Win Me was a stopgap Win 98, and failed in the market. Windows XP was a huge security and stability step up from Windows 98. Windows Vista was another stopgap, and failed. Windows 7 was an attempt to atone for Vista, providing a more coherent user experience and some nice UI upgrades, and has done well.
Remember when innovating actually meant "taking something good, and make it a little bit better?" Not massively better, just a little bit. Now the term innovation gets thrown around to mean everything from re-releasing old software to creating entire new forms of human endeavors.
"Our new human teleporter is an innovation like the world has never seen before." "What is it innovating on?" "...Paradigms!"
Clearly, innovating on multimedia superhighways will empower your manpower to leverage crowdsourced intellectual property into killer app development process upgrades. All of the previous words technically have meaning, but you insult the intelligence of your audience by using them.
I'm really curious about the emotional state of people who seem to find illicit material everywhere they go. What exactly is going on at the state house in Australia?
Are you saying that all of the Mexican restaurants around Los Angeles aren't just there to steal the secrets of the movie making industry? Do you think Robert Rodriguez could have developed El Mariachi without Hollywood secrets of formulaic plot and prosaic dialog?
Sure, there is good reason to defend against state-run hacking. And I'm sure a degree of industrial espionage goes on. But does James Bond set up a chip shop wherever he goes? Do US spies die of hunger if they don't eat at McDonalds every day?
And you can get black / thousand year old eggs in Asian supermarkets here in Boston. I've seen them on menus under various names.
According to TFA, the researchers used theoretical juries of undergrads, and merely swapped the photo associated with them. I haven't seen the photos myself, but researchers usually use a distribution of attractive or unattractive photos that don't include "disfigured in a bar fight" and "barely cognizant heroin addict."
Of course, being a theoretical study on paper does mean that real-world influences could be much lower... or higher. For example, any signs of remorse in the courtroom, performance on the stand, etc might be much more significant to the overall judgement process. Or maybe the juries take real courtroom activity more seriously. Or maybe undergrads all just need to get laid.
Good luck "supervising destruction" in a modern sense. Other than attempting to verify that the data has been deleted, what are you going to do? If this is stored anywhere in Google's cloud, chances are they'd have to copy it to a hard drive first, before being able to hand it all over. Then what, destroy that hard drive?
Except that this sets precedent for indefinite incarceration without due process. Whether or not you're limiting it to a particular group that society doesn't like, the underlying logic can be applied to anyone that might re-commit a crime. By the same logic, Guantanamo was legal, indefinite incarceration of hackers would be legal, etc. It's like reverse parole: You've paid your debt to society, but society doesn't think you're ready yet.
Something has to be done about re-offending sexual offenders. But indefinite incarceration of someone past their sentence, without appeal, who never actually assaulted anyone? At that point it's not about re-offending, it's about fear of first-time offending. And taking away years of someone's life because of fear that they might offend at some point rings as counter to founding principles.
Think of the PC in the 90's. If you want the best games, applications, etc, you need a PC. If you're making something, chances are your platform is a PC. Microsoft's control of the platform extended out into control over the world. Sure, Apple hadn't completely failed. Amiga devotees were eagerly expecting the second coming. But Microsoft's monopoly was unassailable, and was weilded like a sledgehammer against its enemies.
Now, communications and daily use are switching over to phones. PC gaming is a second-rung platform behind consoles. The bookseller, Amazon, is a platform. The educational company Apple has a music and movie platform. Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PSN are platforms. Custom business applications are built for Flash, Java, Web technologies, and other platform agnostic development environments. Steam is a platform. The PC is just there. The biggest update lately has been Direct X 10, and who actually remembers Direct X 10?
There was a time when PC was king. Microsoft could hide an API or tweak an interface, and their competition would just disappear. System updates could save thousands of hours of effort or destroy millions of dollars of software. Now, it's just a platform. It's not irrelevant as a piece of hardware. It's irrelevant as a player.
6) Incompability. I just bought a blu-ray copy of The Watchmen. It comes with a "digital copy." Ok, that seems fine. However: A: there is some sort of nonstandard DRM on the disk itself, preventing it from working on my PC, and B: the digital copy "offer" expires at the end of the month,
So to get the digital copy that was legally purchased, I'd have to illegally download it. And, of course, the digital copy was intended to reduce piracy by providing protected copies for people to watch on their laptops. Now, of course, it has to be pirated.
That may work for major corporations. But I'm publishing a tiny little board game here in the US. Should people in the UK be able to copy it and re-sell it simply because I don't have distribution tools in that area?
I've worked on video games in the US, whose music publishers didn't have overseas rights. Should I be punished because of auxiliary copyright restrictions of 3rd parties?
I have friends whose bands were screwed by music publishers for political reasons. Should anyone now be free to cover their songs without royalty, as they aren't currently being distributed?
Sometimes the goal of music publishers is not to make the most money possible with a piece of music. The goal is to keep it enough in the public eye that people remember the song, but not so much that they get burnt out on it. 4x the exposure for 2x the money might not be worth it in their calculations, as it de-values other exposure opportunities.
Also, copyright holders are desperate to maintain the perception of value. They'd rather make 25% less on this particular product if it means not degrading their entire product line values by 10%. Setting the precedent of selling blockbuster games at $40 rather than the normal 60 would erode margins across the board. Better adjust the price-reduction scale than lower player's expected prices.
Of course, this console generation we had the revolutionary idea of scaling hardware royalties based upon base system cost and a percentage of total system income. But system publishers want individual title prices to remain high as well, in order to maximize overall revenues.
Reasons to pirate movies. Listed here as a series of things to address.
1. Movie is only available in other territories. 2. Spinning disks are loud. 3. Physical disks take up a ton of space, especially the more you get. 4. Because it isn't available on Netflix Streaming yet. 5. Unskippable previews. 6. Will just need to get the director's cut / blu-ray / director's cut blu-ray / 3D version later.
We have the technology and know-how to address all of these. We just need to get the content industry to smarten up and treat piracy as a competitor rather than an enemy.
I'm kind of surprised they don't integrate it into the movies themselves. Public service product placements, if you will.
"The terrorists are about to blow up New New York! How will we stop them?" "Get Frank in Homeland Security to evacuate everyone who hasn't been stealing movies on the Internet. Not that guy: that guy is going to die. Then let's take this thoroughly American designed and built AK-47 to those commie muslim scum." "Um, the AK-47 was made in Russia. Like those evil bastards at AllOfMp3.com" "Fine, let's see them terrorize my good friend, Mr. M16. After we clean it a bit. Pull out that jammed casing. Maybe add a heavier barrel. No, it jammed again... Let's just issue a DMCA takedown notice for the trademarked logos they're stealing on their website. That will thwart their communications network and demoralize their comrades." "And the bomb?" "Eh. Fertilizer doesn't actually explode if you just throw a match at it."
The founding fathers were largely Christians. They were also carnivores, city-dwellers, people with spectacles, wife-cheaters, and men. Just because the founders were something doesn't mean that the nation is that thing. You'd have to argue quite eloquently that the USA was founded on meat-eating principles, urban principles, or bespectacled principles. Male chauvinism and racism were codified, though later removed.
None of our laws refer to the bible. Only 3 of the ten commandments actually made it into country law. The law doesn't reference pages in the bible, and goes out of its way to outlaw religious persecution (a very un-Christian thing, at the time). You have to stretch out to interpretations of Christianity to get to the point where America becomes a Christian nation: "See, the founding fathers said 'Stop stabbing each other you damned monkeys.' That's clearly a Christian interpretation of love." As you point out, individual rights and self-governance aren't exactly what the Christian Church of europe was known for.
Compare that to other nations where Muslim or Jewish texts are lifted verbatim and inserted into law. Where skipping worship is a punishable offense. Where other religions are at best swept under the rug, instead of given jobs in Hollywood. Sure, there is "in god we trust" on our money, but we don't dunk witches into vats of water in the courtrooms. We refer to "one nation, under god," but we have extensive missile defense shields and nuclear deterrents.
Nobody is arguing what should happen. Only what has been.
Accessory, inducing, and conspiracy have all come up in copyright cases in recent years. I don't recall if they were civil or criminal offhand, which is one reason I'd love a lawyer to chime in here.
Second, the digital age has added so many messed up conditions around copyright law that it seems greatly outmoded. Making a "copy" in RAM for normal playback had to be given an exception in copyright law. Some judges have swallowed the argument that this copy is why click-through agreements are binding: otherwise the user wouldn't have the right to make that RAM copy, or install to hard disk. In other cases, such as kiddie porn, browsing to a site that caches an image on your hard drive, even if it never displays it, is enough to make you legally liable. MPEG-LA has made clear that they believe the end-viewer of a YouTube video that hasn't properly licensed their codec patents is technically also in violation of their codec patents.
As another poster pointed out, you make copies all the time of websites. Your computer puts it in RAM, caches it to hard disk, sends it off to be displayed, the display might have its own RAM, Firefox will cache it somewhere else for offline use and might make a thumbnail, etc. Or you can "save-as," and read it later. This is all technically copying. Sure, we give it all fair-use exemptions because that's how the internet works. But these exemptions exist because the internet breaks the old copyright rules in ways that the system cannot handle. When you take a photograph of someone wearing a t-shirt and put it up on Flickr are you violating the t-shirt creator's copyright? Stupidly, yes, you are. What if your router caches a copy of the photograph as it goes by? There is an exemption for that. But it is an exemption because it otherwise goes against the outdated structure of copyright law.
The system is an outdated mess the needs a major overhaul to bring it in-line with the realities of the digital age. One of those would be what you suggest: the downloader shouldn't be responsible for knowing if something is properly licensed so long as they reasonably believe that it was. But as far as I know, any behaviors like that are currently based around convention and exeptions rather than proper, well-thought-out lawmaking.
In the US, all expressive works are automatically covered under copyright. You can waive those rights, or retain some rights while waiving others. But yes, unless they're straight compendiums of data they're all covered under copyright.
Also, with the exception of a few distros, basically everything you could get an iso for would be a redistribution from said disk-based medium. It's not a far jump to say that if someone wants to distribute a movie online, they put it in MPG. If they want to distribute music, it goes to Monkey, AAC, or MP3. Games distributed online go into exe or equivalent format. Really, the only things that use iso's are a few things you boot up to fix your computer, and a large portion of the world's commercially copyrighted creative output.
Remember, you're not talking about "is there a legal exception to the rule." Sure there is. But if nearly everything that is offered through your site is copyright infringement, and your name implies copyright infringement, you're just asking for legal trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that she passed her drug test, the city already faced a arbitration judgement about it, is seeing a lawsuit, and this will probably get thrown back in their face next union contract negotiation, I'd say (a) was probably the cheaper call. She's not being fired over recreational drug use: she's being fired from a government agency over a 1-sentence joke about drug use in her spare time. Even if union rules did allow for that, the entire thing better be 100% squeaky or any competent lawyer is going to have a field day.
Also, how many emergency responders *aren't* on drugs? Seriously, how many responders out there do you know that don't drink, don't take stress meds, don't indulge in excessive behaviors, and otherwise are all-around well adjusted people? The people I've met all seemed to find unhealthy ways of dealing with the constant stress.
Some twitter viewing applications slide ads into people's twitter streams. Now that Twitter is introducing an official paid advertising service that slides ads into people's twitter streams, they want control over that revenue stream.
All of the incomprehensible corporate speak is smoke-and-mirrors. Sadly, it will be smoke and mirrors that lots of people will fall for. I've shown junk like this to rather intelligent friends, who then nodded and said "that makes sense." The fact that they actually agreed with it was only slightly less shocking than the fact that they survived the experience without their BS detectors exploding.
BP is doing everything possible to fix the problem, while we sit on the sidelines and debate their ineffectiveness.
To be fair, their ineffectiveness isn't up for debate. They were granted the rights to drill with their assurance that accidents like this could never happen. And while other engineers didn't think this could happen, the oil companies are the ones that are ultimately responsible for understanding and ensuring the safety of their operations. Proving ignorance, and not having a contingency plan, is no excuse.
Car accidents happen all of the time, and is an accepted risk of driving a car. This is more like the melamine-in-milk scandal, where something that was supposed to be assuradely safe was, in fact, quite not.
BP has been quite a bit more responsible about dealing with the problem than a lot of companies have been, and they deserve a degree of respect for that. We need more companies like that. But the fact still remains that their platform blew up which shouldn't have happened, caught fire which they should have been able to put out, broke off which it shouldn't have done, and then the failsafe failed. Thanks to their interactions here you can't add "failed to take responsibility for the accident," but they're still responsible for the rest of the stuff.
True, though why did we allow them a month of spilling millions of gallons of oil into the bay while attempting to save the well in a way that it could be re-used? Maybe I'm just old and jaded, but rescuing the bay should have been priority 1 over rescuing the financial investment.
Also, shrimp has been terrible for the past month. Thanks, BP!
I had meant better integrated TCP/IP and the new driver model. It also had system support for USB, DVD drives, and some other basic upgrade tricks. I can't remember if that was the first windows support for FAT 32.
Either way, it seemed much easier to me to get Win 98 machines online compared to Win 95 ones.
You need permission to tape a conversation over the phone, even though the other party is sending that information to you. Certainly you'd need permission to tap that phone line, even if you did so remotely somewhere else. Why should the principle be different, just because the medium is wireless?
I'm kind of surprised that they don't announce this at the beginning of every class, log all interactions, and present that data back to the student when deciding upon grades. When people know they're being watched, they tend to behave differently.
When you're not taking class in a room full of computers. All of my grad classes have involved desktops in front of us. Add to that students who have both laptops and iphones / androids out in front of them, and you have a pretty wired group. iPads are just starting to filter in, but look perfect for keeping up with information.
They're great for taking notes on. You can take some detailed notes, then send them around to absent students after class, or search your notes for snippets. Eight months later when you're wondering how you wrote that code to do a bubble sort, or what that cute anecdote about the October revolution was, you can just search. You can also search for clarification online, or bring up an example of something you'd be curious about.
Of course, lots of students drift off with them. It's a shame, really.
Touting Aero was a clear sign that the developers didn't understand usability. You don't get an easier-to-use system by making it prettier. You restructure your information in a way that is clear and intuitive to make an easier-to-use system. If the user still has to go to a control panel to set a preference for their e-mail client, it isn't an easy-to-use system.
Vista broke compatibility with a lot of applications and hardware drivers, and ran slower. In exchange, the user got... another layer of confusing dialogs plastered over everything, and a security model that trained users to automatically click "ok" whenever a pop-up came up. It didn't provide the resolution-independent user interface that would have justified the graphics card requirement. It didn't have the badly-needed filesystem upgrade. All networking additions were just one more layer of kruft to go wrong, and broke compatibility with lots of XP servers for no appreciable benefit (partly because the file system upgrade didn't happen).
Win 98 provided much needed stability and internet integration over Win 95. Win Me was a stopgap Win 98, and failed in the market. Windows XP was a huge security and stability step up from Windows 98. Windows Vista was another stopgap, and failed. Windows 7 was an attempt to atone for Vista, providing a more coherent user experience and some nice UI upgrades, and has done well.
It's not like they're inventing anything.
Remember when innovating actually meant "taking something good, and make it a little bit better?" Not massively better, just a little bit. Now the term innovation gets thrown around to mean everything from re-releasing old software to creating entire new forms of human endeavors.
"Our new human teleporter is an innovation like the world has never seen before."
"What is it innovating on?"
"...Paradigms!"
Clearly, innovating on multimedia superhighways will empower your manpower to leverage crowdsourced intellectual property into killer app development process upgrades. All of the previous words technically have meaning, but you insult the intelligence of your audience by using them.
I'm really curious about the emotional state of people who seem to find illicit material everywhere they go. What exactly is going on at the state house in Australia?
Are you saying that all of the Mexican restaurants around Los Angeles aren't just there to steal the secrets of the movie making industry? Do you think Robert Rodriguez could have developed El Mariachi without Hollywood secrets of formulaic plot and prosaic dialog?
Sure, there is good reason to defend against state-run hacking. And I'm sure a degree of industrial espionage goes on. But does James Bond set up a chip shop wherever he goes? Do US spies die of hunger if they don't eat at McDonalds every day?
And you can get black / thousand year old eggs in Asian supermarkets here in Boston. I've seen them on menus under various names.
Because the best place for a secure critical infrastructure is on windows platforms. How else are you going to protect against Word Macro viruses?
According to TFA, the researchers used theoretical juries of undergrads, and merely swapped the photo associated with them. I haven't seen the photos myself, but researchers usually use a distribution of attractive or unattractive photos that don't include "disfigured in a bar fight" and "barely cognizant heroin addict."
Of course, being a theoretical study on paper does mean that real-world influences could be much lower... or higher. For example, any signs of remorse in the courtroom, performance on the stand, etc might be much more significant to the overall judgement process. Or maybe the juries take real courtroom activity more seriously. Or maybe undergrads all just need to get laid.
Good luck "supervising destruction" in a modern sense. Other than attempting to verify that the data has been deleted, what are you going to do? If this is stored anywhere in Google's cloud, chances are they'd have to copy it to a hard drive first, before being able to hand it all over. Then what, destroy that hard drive?
Except that this sets precedent for indefinite incarceration without due process. Whether or not you're limiting it to a particular group that society doesn't like, the underlying logic can be applied to anyone that might re-commit a crime. By the same logic, Guantanamo was legal, indefinite incarceration of hackers would be legal, etc. It's like reverse parole: You've paid your debt to society, but society doesn't think you're ready yet.
Something has to be done about re-offending sexual offenders. But indefinite incarceration of someone past their sentence, without appeal, who never actually assaulted anyone? At that point it's not about re-offending, it's about fear of first-time offending. And taking away years of someone's life because of fear that they might offend at some point rings as counter to founding principles.
Think of the PC in the 90's. If you want the best games, applications, etc, you need a PC. If you're making something, chances are your platform is a PC. Microsoft's control of the platform extended out into control over the world. Sure, Apple hadn't completely failed. Amiga devotees were eagerly expecting the second coming. But Microsoft's monopoly was unassailable, and was weilded like a sledgehammer against its enemies.
Now, communications and daily use are switching over to phones. PC gaming is a second-rung platform behind consoles. The bookseller, Amazon, is a platform. The educational company Apple has a music and movie platform. Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PSN are platforms. Custom business applications are built for Flash, Java, Web technologies, and other platform agnostic development environments. Steam is a platform. The PC is just there. The biggest update lately has been Direct X 10, and who actually remembers Direct X 10?
There was a time when PC was king. Microsoft could hide an API or tweak an interface, and their competition would just disappear. System updates could save thousands of hours of effort or destroy millions of dollars of software. Now, it's just a platform. It's not irrelevant as a piece of hardware. It's irrelevant as a player.
6) Incompability. I just bought a blu-ray copy of The Watchmen. It comes with a "digital copy." Ok, that seems fine. However: A: there is some sort of nonstandard DRM on the disk itself, preventing it from working on my PC, and B: the digital copy "offer" expires at the end of the month,
So to get the digital copy that was legally purchased, I'd have to illegally download it. And, of course, the digital copy was intended to reduce piracy by providing protected copies for people to watch on their laptops. Now, of course, it has to be pirated.
That may work for major corporations. But I'm publishing a tiny little board game here in the US. Should people in the UK be able to copy it and re-sell it simply because I don't have distribution tools in that area?
I've worked on video games in the US, whose music publishers didn't have overseas rights. Should I be punished because of auxiliary copyright restrictions of 3rd parties?
I have friends whose bands were screwed by music publishers for political reasons. Should anyone now be free to cover their songs without royalty, as they aren't currently being distributed?
Sometimes the goal of music publishers is not to make the most money possible with a piece of music. The goal is to keep it enough in the public eye that people remember the song, but not so much that they get burnt out on it. 4x the exposure for 2x the money might not be worth it in their calculations, as it de-values other exposure opportunities.
Also, copyright holders are desperate to maintain the perception of value. They'd rather make 25% less on this particular product if it means not degrading their entire product line values by 10%. Setting the precedent of selling blockbuster games at $40 rather than the normal 60 would erode margins across the board. Better adjust the price-reduction scale than lower player's expected prices.
Of course, this console generation we had the revolutionary idea of scaling hardware royalties based upon base system cost and a percentage of total system income. But system publishers want individual title prices to remain high as well, in order to maximize overall revenues.
Reasons to pirate movies. Listed here as a series of things to address.
1. Movie is only available in other territories.
2. Spinning disks are loud.
3. Physical disks take up a ton of space, especially the more you get.
4. Because it isn't available on Netflix Streaming yet.
5. Unskippable previews.
6. Will just need to get the director's cut / blu-ray / director's cut blu-ray / 3D version later.
We have the technology and know-how to address all of these. We just need to get the content industry to smarten up and treat piracy as a competitor rather than an enemy.
I'm kind of surprised they don't integrate it into the movies themselves. Public service product placements, if you will.
"The terrorists are about to blow up New New York! How will we stop them?"
"Get Frank in Homeland Security to evacuate everyone who hasn't been stealing movies on the Internet. Not that guy: that guy is going to die. Then let's take this thoroughly American designed and built AK-47 to those commie muslim scum."
"Um, the AK-47 was made in Russia. Like those evil bastards at AllOfMp3.com"
"Fine, let's see them terrorize my good friend, Mr. M16. After we clean it a bit. Pull out that jammed casing. Maybe add a heavier barrel. No, it jammed again... Let's just issue a DMCA takedown notice for the trademarked logos they're stealing on their website. That will thwart their communications network and demoralize their comrades."
"And the bomb?"
"Eh. Fertilizer doesn't actually explode if you just throw a match at it."
The founding fathers were largely Christians. They were also carnivores, city-dwellers, people with spectacles, wife-cheaters, and men. Just because the founders were something doesn't mean that the nation is that thing. You'd have to argue quite eloquently that the USA was founded on meat-eating principles, urban principles, or bespectacled principles. Male chauvinism and racism were codified, though later removed.
None of our laws refer to the bible. Only 3 of the ten commandments actually made it into country law. The law doesn't reference pages in the bible, and goes out of its way to outlaw religious persecution (a very un-Christian thing, at the time). You have to stretch out to interpretations of Christianity to get to the point where America becomes a Christian nation: "See, the founding fathers said 'Stop stabbing each other you damned monkeys.' That's clearly a Christian interpretation of love." As you point out, individual rights and self-governance aren't exactly what the Christian Church of europe was known for.
Compare that to other nations where Muslim or Jewish texts are lifted verbatim and inserted into law. Where skipping worship is a punishable offense. Where other religions are at best swept under the rug, instead of given jobs in Hollywood. Sure, there is "in god we trust" on our money, but we don't dunk witches into vats of water in the courtrooms. We refer to "one nation, under god," but we have extensive missile defense shields and nuclear deterrents.
Nobody is arguing what should happen. Only what has been.
Accessory, inducing, and conspiracy have all come up in copyright cases in recent years. I don't recall if they were civil or criminal offhand, which is one reason I'd love a lawyer to chime in here.
Second, the digital age has added so many messed up conditions around copyright law that it seems greatly outmoded. Making a "copy" in RAM for normal playback had to be given an exception in copyright law. Some judges have swallowed the argument that this copy is why click-through agreements are binding: otherwise the user wouldn't have the right to make that RAM copy, or install to hard disk. In other cases, such as kiddie porn, browsing to a site that caches an image on your hard drive, even if it never displays it, is enough to make you legally liable. MPEG-LA has made clear that they believe the end-viewer of a YouTube video that hasn't properly licensed their codec patents is technically also in violation of their codec patents.
As another poster pointed out, you make copies all the time of websites. Your computer puts it in RAM, caches it to hard disk, sends it off to be displayed, the display might have its own RAM, Firefox will cache it somewhere else for offline use and might make a thumbnail, etc. Or you can "save-as," and read it later. This is all technically copying. Sure, we give it all fair-use exemptions because that's how the internet works. But these exemptions exist because the internet breaks the old copyright rules in ways that the system cannot handle. When you take a photograph of someone wearing a t-shirt and put it up on Flickr are you violating the t-shirt creator's copyright? Stupidly, yes, you are. What if your router caches a copy of the photograph as it goes by? There is an exemption for that. But it is an exemption because it otherwise goes against the outdated structure of copyright law.
The system is an outdated mess the needs a major overhaul to bring it in-line with the realities of the digital age. One of those would be what you suggest: the downloader shouldn't be responsible for knowing if something is properly licensed so long as they reasonably believe that it was. But as far as I know, any behaviors like that are currently based around convention and exeptions rather than proper, well-thought-out lawmaking.
In the US, all expressive works are automatically covered under copyright. You can waive those rights, or retain some rights while waiving others. But yes, unless they're straight compendiums of data they're all covered under copyright.
Also, with the exception of a few distros, basically everything you could get an iso for would be a redistribution from said disk-based medium. It's not a far jump to say that if someone wants to distribute a movie online, they put it in MPG. If they want to distribute music, it goes to Monkey, AAC, or MP3. Games distributed online go into exe or equivalent format. Really, the only things that use iso's are a few things you boot up to fix your computer, and a large portion of the world's commercially copyrighted creative output.
Remember, you're not talking about "is there a legal exception to the rule." Sure there is. But if nearly everything that is offered through your site is copyright infringement, and your name implies copyright infringement, you're just asking for legal trouble.