Yes, but the evidence does not bear out discrimination against white males. What's the first argument that minorities or women make when they sue for discrimination? They point at the numbers and show that all the employees and/or all the high level employees and/or everyone who got promoted are mostly not women minorities. What's this guy going to do when the numbers show that, yeah, most of these folks are white males just like him?
Most are uninteresting, useless, or easier to do some other way. Its great to be able to come home and talk to it and have my lights go on, or tell it what song to play from Spotify, or ask it about the weather - when it actually understands. Having tried to develop an Alexa skill for my own use, its clear how the only way to get it to react to natural sentences is for the skill developer to come up with pretty much every combination and ordering of words for which the user might convey what it is that they want. And even then, with context provided, it has almost no ability to deal with words where homynyms exist. Tell it that the user will speak a number in between two other words, and when the user says "two" or "four" in between those two words, it doesn't care that a number is supposed to go there and instead insists the user meant "to", "too", "for" or "fore". My favorite is when I tried to have it recognize the word "main" it insisted I was saying "Maine". Bottom line, its no better than other voice recognition technologies which can usually form words pretty well from the sounds that are spoken, but really struggles to chose the one that makes sense when alternatives exist.
Too big to fail = too big to jail. Its worse than this. Too big to fail = too big to punish in any meaningful way - the only thing that will get their attention is a fine or restriction on their business practices so extensive that it threatens to put them out of business or permanently cripple them - which can't ever be done because they're supposedly too big to fail. By their sheer size they have us over a barrel, and they know it, and there's nothing we can do to stop them from growing even larger - well, except for breaking them apart, but we lack the political will.
a) was Wells Fargo losing money? No. So terrible analogy. This was institutional greed, not do this or go out of business.
b) if you know that your employees are breaking the law, or reasonably should know, and you turn the other cheek, then yes, you are responsible.
c) personally, I received an unwanted credit card from Wells Fargo - I went to one branch, found out a teller at another branch submitted the application. I went to that branch to confront the teller, who was supposedly not working that day. The manager at that branch, who I also spoke to, played dumb, did nothing, refused to tell me what would happen to this teller, citing privacy, and somehow succeeded in acting completely unsuprised by my story while also claiming no knowledge. I also went back a week later to find out what she learned about the situation, since she promised to follow up. She seemed annoyed to see me, to say the least. So, no, I can't prove that she knew, or that anyone above her didn't know, but I'd be shocked if she didn't know.
"destroying the relationship" between advertisers and consumers"
This is like saying "destroying the relationship between rapists and their victims".
There's freedom of speech, but we should also have a right to 'freedom from speech' - it shouldn't be allowed to yell "fire! fire!" in a crowded movie theater just as someone advertising their business by shouting through a bullhorn outside someone's house at 3AM should also not be allowed. If someone wants to speak, there's a reasonable level of unobtrusiveness that they should not be able to exceed but many ads on the web do just that. Inventions have come and gone (VCR's, TiVO, anyone?) that could have just as conceivably "[destroyed] the relationship between advertises and consumers" (and were subjected to exactly these arguments when they started to become popular) and yet both advertisers, consumers and the relationship between them (for better or worse) is very much alive and kicking.
Interesting to know that, I've never seen it do that - in fact I'm surprised that it is aware of the difference in traffic congestion between two parallel lanes on the same freeway - usually people's cell phones can't determine their location with such precision as to differentiate between different lanes on the same road.
Using Waze to navigate in LA is terribly unsafe - I live here, I've used it and what typically happens is it diverts you on to side streets, and then from those side streets has you try to make a left hand turn onto a major, busy 8-lane boulevard where there is no traffic signal to help you. In LA, that's legal, but most of us think its dangerous, if not outright suicidal. Worse, instead of left turns, sometimes it tells you to proceed on a side street across such a wide, busy boulevard, again where there's no traffic signal to help you. Nearly everyone who lives here whom I've talked to in person or online and has used Waze has similar experiences to my own and also thinks its dangerous.
Our mayor ought to be working with Waze so that their navigation algorithm stops offering such 'advice', for the safety of everyone. Barring that, the city ought to send Waze data on traffic accidents they've caused, and Waze, in turn, can send the city a warning every time it suggests such an unsafe move to a driver so that ambulances can be dispatched preemptively.
Beyond that, most of Waze's detours on to side streets are in to neighborhoods that used to see only minimal vehicular traffic before Waze came along. They've got noticably more traffic now, and the folks that in these areas are upset. A lot more dangerous for their kids to play on the street, for one thing, and of course their neighborhoods aren't as quiet any more. Personally I think we all pay taxes for all these streets, so we ought to be able to use them as we please, but these people do have some valid points and there's no denying Waze's impact on traffic patterns where they live.
I suppose that it probably depends upon Comcast's agreements with the various cities / communities that its contracted with to offer services, but generally cable companies, and thus cable internet providers, have some sort of agreement to exclusively offer cable services in specific geographic areas - in effect legalized monopolies - but I'd be very surprised if, having such monopolies, they'd be allowed to pick and choose who in those geographic areas they will sell to, and to refuse to sell to anyone else. Of course, this is probably going to turn out against the way it probably ought to work, because companies and governments are not too isolated from one another these days, I'm sure these agreements are grossly favorable to the companies and not the consumers.
"Skipping over the finer details of how this probably isn't a "false accusation of criminal conduct",..."
Well, its a given that an accusation of copyright infringement is an accusation of criminal conduct, being that copyright infringement is against the law.
As for the accusation being or not being false, its very possible that it is false, especially if the criteria is that the party making the accusation must have a good faith and reasonable belief that the accusation is true. Under this system, if my ISP accuses me of copyright infringement, all they are basing it on is the copyright holder providing them with an IP address that they don't like, that happens to be mine. The ISP itself has no other basis for believing me to have engaged in copyright infringement except the word of the copyright holder. The copyright holder isn't providing them with evidence - it isn't even outlining what the evidence is. Its just the copyright holder saying "hey, the guy with this IP address is infringing! Trust us!". That's not exactly proof, or evidence, is it?
As for it being libelous or slanderous - (I forget which, but one of those is written / published word, the other is just spoken word), it depends again. Nominally the warning would be private. After all, they're just displaying a warning to me when I try to use my internet connection, right? Ok, now suppose someone is at my house using my computer or watching me use my computer when this warning pops up. Now, in their eyes, I'm a criminal. Now my reputation is damaged with that person. They may even spread the word. So the accusation is not private and for purposes of a person's reputation, might as well be public. There simply should not be a reasonable expectation that everything that appears on my computer screen is private and will only be viewed by me.
Its rather absurd, I think, but the idea that agreements entered in to while under duress should be invalid got lost somewhere along the way. A good example of this is when employees are laid off by a corporation - usually the layoff is accompanied by a termination agreement, which is basically you agreeing to take some money from the company in exchange for you not suing them for laying you off, or for anything else. The idea that for most people, the layoff is going to proceed whether they like it or not, and that they'll soon find themselves out on the street without the money being offered long before they could ever get to court, and the fact that one party of the "agreement" (the company) has placed the other party (the employee) in the position where they basically have no choice to agree, doesn't seem to carry any legal weight, which is beyond unfair.
I'm no lawyer but from what I've read, with certain types of accusations (aka de facto libel) you only need to prove that the libel was incurred - you do not need to prove specific damages to collect. And yes, false accusations of criminal conduct qualifies as de facto libel in most US states.
I don't think downloading itself really constitutes a reproduction. If user A has an MP3 file of a copyrighted song, and the contents of that file are transmitted from user A to user B, but user B never actually records the contents of the file, not even to memory, but simply discards the contents of the file bit by bit (or byte by byte) as they arrive, then no copy has ever been created and user B has done nothing wrong.
Moreover, a 3rd party monitoring the communication between user A and user B might be able to tell that the contents of the MP3 file were transmitted from user A to user B, but without having access to user B's computer, has no way to determine if user B recorded the contents, or discarded them as they arrived.
So a 3rd Party monitoring internet communications can prove distribution, but cannot prove reproduction.
Granted, if user B tried this defense, they might be forced to turn over their computer for analysis, or it might not pass the smell test with the judge or the jury (after all, why else would user B initiate a transfer of the file to their computer if not to record it?), but technically, its true.
Sure it does. What interests of the artists are the record companies protecting? Artists are generally making money off of concerts, not record sales. Yes, they're making (probably) more money off of concerts than they otherwise would due to the record companies promoting their albums. But record companies are not the only ones who can promote albums effectively. Keeping the record companies in business does not serve the artists.
That's one way to look at it. Yes, the copyright holders still only have a person's IP. The difference now is that they are using a third party agent (your ISP), who has a lot more than your IP, to harass you, disrupt your internet service, and potentially even slander you (imagine you're using your PC in front of other people, or they're using your PC, and suddenly up pops a message accusing you of copyright infringement - now your reputation is damaged with those people). What's more, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that the copyright holder really has a good faith belief that you've done anything wrong - all they need to do is name your IP address to the ISP and now they've sic'd the ISP on your like a guard dog.
Suppose it wasn't the copyright holder and the ISP getting together to do this. Suppose it was just two divisions of the same company. That makes it seem a lot more nefarious, huh? Well, just start by thinking of how many movies Time Warner owns the copyright to, and how many internet subscribers Time Warner Cable has.
Its a legitimate counter-argument to the argument made by the large record companies that they're protecting the artists interests. It doesn't make piracy "right", but it utterly invalidates recording-industry argument #1.
Exactly. If someone told the movie industry even at its height that they could collect $50 / month from most every family in America, they'd be doing triple back flips. The fact that they could, but they won't make it happen, and instead chose to alienate their customers / potential customers, is mind-boggling.
That assumes that there are any costs to the ISP or the copyright holder associated with an appeal. So far the appeals process sounds like a complete farce that would consist of nothing more than a 5 minute "hearing" in front of someone being paid minimum wage - and that's assuming the hearing isn't conducted via telephone with someone off-shore making $0.15 / hr.
That assumes that this is the end of the story, and not just the tip of the iceberg. Do you really think the fact that you received those six strikes is not getting recorded in preparation to be used as evidence against you in a future lawsuit? And correct me if I'm wrong, but are they really even right now supposedly stopping after the 6th strike? Or do you get the "6th strike" penalty for strike 7, 8, 9 and so on?
What we really have here is a huge anti-trust lawsuit waiting to happen - a situation where the large record & movie companies have banded together to collectively negotiate away our privacy with all of the large ISP's, who themselves have banded together and negotiated it away. Its completely anti-competitive in that, if I had any sort of option to get high speed Internet Access where I live from a company who wouldn't wave the white flag and offer up my information based on an IP address at the first hint of displeasure from the copyright industry, and I'd dump Time Warner immediately, almost entirely without regard for the cost or other aspects of whatever the alternative company might be offering.
Any argument about supporting the artists crumbles in the face of studio accounting practices where no movie is ever profitable if the studios must share the profits, and where music artists basically never see a dime from the music that they record.
The ISP's and the copyright holders are setting themselves up for slander and libel lawsuits. If they accuse me, and its false, they've slandered me. They may think that their notice to me is private, but what if I have a friend or family member over at my house, surfing the internet, and they try to go to a web site but instead up pops a page accusing me of pirating and copyright infringement? Now other people know they've accused me and they've harmed my reputation among those closest to me.
The only "evidence" that the copyright holder has is that they identified a torrent that they don't like (apparently with no evidence necessary that the torrent actually contains something they own the copyright for), and then claim my IP address was part of the swarm for this torrent. Only there's no real evidence of this. Its easy to take a log file and edit it and change the IP addresses. And its not like the people gathering this data for the copyright holders are in any way obligated to due so faithfully - its not like their sworn to tell the truth, to uphold the law, or anything of the sort (and, really, even if they were...) In any real trial in court, this would be torn to shreds if for no other reason that chain of custody issues alone, and for the simple fact that any "evidence" is trivial to tamper with.
So this hardly represents the copyright holders having a good faith belief to accuse anyone of anything.
And then we come to the ISP, who has even less basis to have a good-faith belief that I've done anything wrong. The ISP is not gathering its own evidence, it is relying entirely on the word of the copyright holder, which in legal terms is hearsay, and is even worse when the party they hear it from has no real evidence.
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Yes, but the evidence does not bear out discrimination against white males. What's the first argument that minorities or women make when they sue for discrimination? They point at the numbers and show that all the employees and/or all the high level employees and/or everyone who got promoted are mostly not women minorities. What's this guy going to do when the numbers show that, yeah, most of these folks are white males just like him?
Tastes like despair.
Most are uninteresting, useless, or easier to do some other way. Its great to be able to come home and talk to it and have my lights go on, or tell it what song to play from Spotify, or ask it about the weather - when it actually understands. Having tried to develop an Alexa skill for my own use, its clear how the only way to get it to react to natural sentences is for the skill developer to come up with pretty much every combination and ordering of words for which the user might convey what it is that they want. And even then, with context provided, it has almost no ability to deal with words where homynyms exist. Tell it that the user will speak a number in between two other words, and when the user says "two" or "four" in between those two words, it doesn't care that a number is supposed to go there and instead insists the user meant "to", "too", "for" or "fore". My favorite is when I tried to have it recognize the word "main" it insisted I was saying "Maine". Bottom line, its no better than other voice recognition technologies which can usually form words pretty well from the sounds that are spoken, but really struggles to chose the one that makes sense when alternatives exist.
Too big to fail = too big to jail. Its worse than this. Too big to fail = too big to punish in any meaningful way - the only thing that will get their attention is a fine or restriction on their business practices so extensive that it threatens to put them out of business or permanently cripple them - which can't ever be done because they're supposedly too big to fail. By their sheer size they have us over a barrel, and they know it, and there's nothing we can do to stop them from growing even larger - well, except for breaking them apart, but we lack the political will.
a) was Wells Fargo losing money? No. So terrible analogy. This was institutional greed, not do this or go out of business.
b) if you know that your employees are breaking the law, or reasonably should know, and you turn the other cheek, then yes, you are responsible.
c) personally, I received an unwanted credit card from Wells Fargo - I went to one branch, found out a teller at another branch submitted the application. I went to that branch to confront the teller, who was supposedly not working that day. The manager at that branch, who I also spoke to, played dumb, did nothing, refused to tell me what would happen to this teller, citing privacy, and somehow succeeded in acting completely unsuprised by my story while also claiming no knowledge. I also went back a week later to find out what she learned about the situation, since she promised to follow up. She seemed annoyed to see me, to say the least. So, no, I can't prove that she knew, or that anyone above her didn't know, but I'd be shocked if she didn't know.
"destroying the relationship" between advertisers and consumers"
This is like saying "destroying the relationship between rapists and their victims".
There's freedom of speech, but we should also have a right to 'freedom from speech' - it shouldn't be allowed to yell "fire! fire!" in a crowded movie theater just as someone advertising their business by shouting through a bullhorn outside someone's house at 3AM should also not be allowed. If someone wants to speak, there's a reasonable level of unobtrusiveness that they should not be able to exceed but many ads on the web do just that. Inventions have come and gone (VCR's, TiVO, anyone?) that could have just as conceivably "[destroyed] the relationship between advertises and consumers" (and were subjected to exactly these arguments when they started to become popular) and yet both advertisers, consumers and the relationship between them (for better or worse) is very much alive and kicking.
Interesting to know that, I've never seen it do that - in fact I'm surprised that it is aware of the difference in traffic congestion between two parallel lanes on the same freeway - usually people's cell phones can't determine their location with such precision as to differentiate between different lanes on the same road.
Using Waze to navigate in LA is terribly unsafe - I live here, I've used it and what typically happens is it diverts you on to side streets, and then from those side streets has you try to make a left hand turn onto a major, busy 8-lane boulevard where there is no traffic signal to help you. In LA, that's legal, but most of us think its dangerous, if not outright suicidal. Worse, instead of left turns, sometimes it tells you to proceed on a side street across such a wide, busy boulevard, again where there's no traffic signal to help you. Nearly everyone who lives here whom I've talked to in person or online and has used Waze has similar experiences to my own and also thinks its dangerous.
Our mayor ought to be working with Waze so that their navigation algorithm stops offering such 'advice', for the safety of everyone. Barring that, the city ought to send Waze data on traffic accidents they've caused, and Waze, in turn, can send the city a warning every time it suggests such an unsafe move to a driver so that ambulances can be dispatched preemptively.
Beyond that, most of Waze's detours on to side streets are in to neighborhoods that used to see only minimal vehicular traffic before Waze came along. They've got noticably more traffic now, and the folks that in these areas are upset. A lot more dangerous for their kids to play on the street, for one thing, and of course their neighborhoods aren't as quiet any more. Personally I think we all pay taxes for all these streets, so we ought to be able to use them as we please, but these people do have some valid points and there's no denying Waze's impact on traffic patterns where they live.
Will the web site feature a seemingly-friendly, but obnoxious-as-hell talking paper clip that pops up whenever its unwanted?
So is six strikes actually stopping anyone, or are people continuing to torrent?
I suppose that it probably depends upon Comcast's agreements with the various cities / communities that its contracted with to offer services, but generally cable companies, and thus cable internet providers, have some sort of agreement to exclusively offer cable services in specific geographic areas - in effect legalized monopolies - but I'd be very surprised if, having such monopolies, they'd be allowed to pick and choose who in those geographic areas they will sell to, and to refuse to sell to anyone else. Of course, this is probably going to turn out against the way it probably ought to work, because companies and governments are not too isolated from one another these days, I'm sure these agreements are grossly favorable to the companies and not the consumers.
"Skipping over the finer details of how this probably isn't a "false accusation of criminal conduct",..."
Well, its a given that an accusation of copyright infringement is an accusation of criminal conduct, being that copyright infringement is against the law.
As for the accusation being or not being false, its very possible that it is false, especially if the criteria is that the party making the accusation must have a good faith and reasonable belief that the accusation is true. Under this system, if my ISP accuses me of copyright infringement, all they are basing it on is the copyright holder providing them with an IP address that they don't like, that happens to be mine. The ISP itself has no other basis for believing me to have engaged in copyright infringement except the word of the copyright holder. The copyright holder isn't providing them with evidence - it isn't even outlining what the evidence is. Its just the copyright holder saying "hey, the guy with this IP address is infringing! Trust us!". That's not exactly proof, or evidence, is it?
As for it being libelous or slanderous - (I forget which, but one of those is written / published word, the other is just spoken word), it depends again. Nominally the warning would be private. After all, they're just displaying a warning to me when I try to use my internet connection, right? Ok, now suppose someone is at my house using my computer or watching me use my computer when this warning pops up. Now, in their eyes, I'm a criminal. Now my reputation is damaged with that person. They may even spread the word. So the accusation is not private and for purposes of a person's reputation, might as well be public. There simply should not be a reasonable expectation that everything that appears on my computer screen is private and will only be viewed by me.
Its rather absurd, I think, but the idea that agreements entered in to while under duress should be invalid got lost somewhere along the way. A good example of this is when employees are laid off by a corporation - usually the layoff is accompanied by a termination agreement, which is basically you agreeing to take some money from the company in exchange for you not suing them for laying you off, or for anything else. The idea that for most people, the layoff is going to proceed whether they like it or not, and that they'll soon find themselves out on the street without the money being offered long before they could ever get to court, and the fact that one party of the "agreement" (the company) has placed the other party (the employee) in the position where they basically have no choice to agree, doesn't seem to carry any legal weight, which is beyond unfair.
I'm no lawyer but from what I've read, with certain types of accusations (aka de facto libel) you only need to prove that the libel was incurred - you do not need to prove specific damages to collect. And yes, false accusations of criminal conduct qualifies as de facto libel in most US states.
I don't think downloading itself really constitutes a reproduction. If user A has an MP3 file of a copyrighted song, and the contents of that file are transmitted from user A to user B, but user B never actually records the contents of the file, not even to memory, but simply discards the contents of the file bit by bit (or byte by byte) as they arrive, then no copy has ever been created and user B has done nothing wrong.
Moreover, a 3rd party monitoring the communication between user A and user B might be able to tell that the contents of the MP3 file were transmitted from user A to user B, but without having access to user B's computer, has no way to determine if user B recorded the contents, or discarded them as they arrived.
So a 3rd Party monitoring internet communications can prove distribution, but cannot prove reproduction.
Granted, if user B tried this defense, they might be forced to turn over their computer for analysis, or it might not pass the smell test with the judge or the jury (after all, why else would user B initiate a transfer of the file to their computer if not to record it?), but technically, its true.
Sure it does. What interests of the artists are the record companies protecting? Artists are generally making money off of concerts, not record sales. Yes, they're making (probably) more money off of concerts than they otherwise would due to the record companies promoting their albums. But record companies are not the only ones who can promote albums effectively. Keeping the record companies in business does not serve the artists.
What law? The ISP's and the copyright holders set up this system entirely on their own.
That's one way to look at it. Yes, the copyright holders still only have a person's IP. The difference now is that they are using a third party agent (your ISP), who has a lot more than your IP, to harass you, disrupt your internet service, and potentially even slander you (imagine you're using your PC in front of other people, or they're using your PC, and suddenly up pops a message accusing you of copyright infringement - now your reputation is damaged with those people). What's more, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that the copyright holder really has a good faith belief that you've done anything wrong - all they need to do is name your IP address to the ISP and now they've sic'd the ISP on your like a guard dog.
Suppose it wasn't the copyright holder and the ISP getting together to do this. Suppose it was just two divisions of the same company. That makes it seem a lot more nefarious, huh? Well, just start by thinking of how many movies Time Warner owns the copyright to, and how many internet subscribers Time Warner Cable has.
On this you are preaching to the choir. Fortunately, we don't need the Republicans, we just need a fair-minded judge.
Its a legitimate counter-argument to the argument made by the large record companies that they're protecting the artists interests. It doesn't make piracy "right", but it utterly invalidates recording-industry argument #1.
Exactly. If someone told the movie industry even at its height that they could collect $50 / month from most every family in America, they'd be doing triple back flips. The fact that they could, but they won't make it happen, and instead chose to alienate their customers / potential customers, is mind-boggling.
That assumes that there are any costs to the ISP or the copyright holder associated with an appeal. So far the appeals process sounds like a complete farce that would consist of nothing more than a 5 minute "hearing" in front of someone being paid minimum wage - and that's assuming the hearing isn't conducted via telephone with someone off-shore making $0.15 / hr.
That assumes that this is the end of the story, and not just the tip of the iceberg. Do you really think the fact that you received those six strikes is not getting recorded in preparation to be used as evidence against you in a future lawsuit? And correct me if I'm wrong, but are they really even right now supposedly stopping after the 6th strike? Or do you get the "6th strike" penalty for strike 7, 8, 9 and so on?
What we really have here is a huge anti-trust lawsuit waiting to happen - a situation where the large record & movie companies have banded together to collectively negotiate away our privacy with all of the large ISP's, who themselves have banded together and negotiated it away. Its completely anti-competitive in that, if I had any sort of option to get high speed Internet Access where I live from a company who wouldn't wave the white flag and offer up my information based on an IP address at the first hint of displeasure from the copyright industry, and I'd dump Time Warner immediately, almost entirely without regard for the cost or other aspects of whatever the alternative company might be offering.
Any argument about supporting the artists crumbles in the face of studio accounting practices where no movie is ever profitable if the studios must share the profits, and where music artists basically never see a dime from the music that they record.
The ISP's and the copyright holders are setting themselves up for slander and libel lawsuits. If they accuse me, and its false, they've slandered me. They may think that their notice to me is private, but what if I have a friend or family member over at my house, surfing the internet, and they try to go to a web site but instead up pops a page accusing me of pirating and copyright infringement? Now other people know they've accused me and they've harmed my reputation among those closest to me.
The only "evidence" that the copyright holder has is that they identified a torrent that they don't like (apparently with no evidence necessary that the torrent actually contains something they own the copyright for), and then claim my IP address was part of the swarm for this torrent. Only there's no real evidence of this. Its easy to take a log file and edit it and change the IP addresses. And its not like the people gathering this data for the copyright holders are in any way obligated to due so faithfully - its not like their sworn to tell the truth, to uphold the law, or anything of the sort (and, really, even if they were...) In any real trial in court, this would be torn to shreds if for no other reason that chain of custody issues alone, and for the simple fact that any "evidence" is trivial to tamper with.
So this hardly represents the copyright holders having a good faith belief to accuse anyone of anything.
And then we come to the ISP, who has even less basis to have a good-faith belief that I've done anything wrong. The ISP is not gathering its own evidence, it is relying entirely on the word of the copyright holder, which in legal terms is hearsay, and is even worse when the party they hear it from has no real evidence.