The catch is, if the street date was broke it was violating an agreement between retailers and Atari. To prove that they bought it would reveal which store they bought it from.
With "they" being Atari.
Either the store unknowingly sold the copy early (it has happened many times before), or the reviewer cut some sort of deal with them.
Or Atari messed up and their "don't sell before x" was invalid in some way.
38 years in jail is way too steep, any jailtime would probably be. But this is no where near "just a mistake". It is not a one-time break-in to prove that security is insufficient. He was deliberately and continously (34 times alledgedly) "altering public records", for his own personal benefit.
Sounds like he should be instead offered 38 years employment with the US Government...
The issue is standards of proof. To be caught doing something illegal on the net three times may seem to justify disconnection. However, simply to be accused of it cannot. The fundamental problem here is economic. The rights owners cannot justify prosecution, because that demands a standard of proof of misconduct which is very expensive. You have to get the evidence, display it, allow it to be subject it to public questioning. Witnesses have to testify to how it was obtained.
Maybe it is also the case that the French civil court system is less easy to pervert into the form of protection racket which appears to happen frequently in the US.
This is an attempt to bypass all that. It is far cheaper to simply disconnect on three accusations. However, the problem is going to be EC human rights legislation and the first suit for false accusation. Human rights legislation is going to be a problem because the EC Charter explicitly guarantees access to information. You are only going to be able to ban someone from Internet access with the same sort of evidentiary justification that you would need to ban them from a public library or from reading the newspapers.
It would more be a case banning someone from all public libraries, especially given that public libraries often provide Internet access to.
The first suit for false denial of access to information is, for the same reason, going to be explosive. The ISPs will be acting as a cartel, so where one, acting alone, could throw anyone off for any reason, all acting together are in effect conspiring to deny the person access to information.
It's also perfectly possible for people living in some parts of France to get Internet connectivity from outside of France.
And the decision is not up to judges, as we can think, but to a new and "independent" (read leaded by the majors) entity. So very little to no possibility to contest the punition, since it's not french court that rule over it.
Though sooner or later this thing is likely to end up in a court, even if the court it ends up in is not technically a "French Court".
And if the media would accept to talk about it, maybe people could try and fight against this project, but you hardly hear a word about it out of computer oriented websites.
That'll be because "The Media" is likely to be closely connected to the people advocating this. In some even owned by the same entities.
this law is pretty even handed. 3 strikes and you lose internet access for UP TO a year, so you know it's going to be less.
What mechanism protects you against false, let alone malicious, accusations.
this is much better than being sued and having the RIAA france eating up court time filing john doe suits.
They are limited in how many such suits they can file, if they abuse this they can be indefinitly barred from using the courts. Also if you are sued you can always counter sue. This whole "3 strikes thing" appears to involve claims which wouldn't pass the standards of any civil court. The French appear to have set up something equivalent to a "kangaroo court"...
At least they're debating it in parliament. In the UK Virgin Media's behind-closed-doors deal with the media industry has already been covered here.
Of the other hand Virgin Media's deal has no force of law behind it. Especially since it has recently been shown that the methods used to identify "illegal" file sharers are highly inaccurate, it's only a matter of time before Virgin Media wind up in court, against LIPs who suddenly have lots of extra time on their hands.
Or rather it will just be selectively enforced and used to persecute people the authorities don't like, similar to what's happened with so many other laws.
Most likely it won't be enforced against record companies, movie studios, broadcasters, etc.
What this company should be doing now is firing their IT staff for a) not checking the fucking machine out after the previous employee returned it and b) not having the thing properly secured. I'll wager some dumb-ass tech at the company gave the previous employee administrative or "power user" privileges.
Assuming that this machine actually went through the IT staff when it was transfered between employees. If this did not happen that could easily explain a lot. There's also the issue that the "dumb-ass tech" may actually be a "dumb-ass manager" who insisted that this be done...
zero tolerance laws produce an extreme disincentive to properly and discretely investigate such things before slinging around an accusation which will ruin somebody's life.
IIRC the term was originally applied to corrupt law enforcement. Where it actually makes sense... Maybe what's actually needed is "zero tolerance" towards poor investigation.
"Megan's law"s punish people after the official debt to society has been paid.
In the same way that barring people from voting, after they have served their sentence, is also morally questionable.
If you are so sure pedophilia is an incurable, life-long disease, than imprison them for life or develop a house arrest program, but you can't simply toss these sex offenders out, put a big neon "child molester" sign over their head, and pretend they have the same rights, or are not in danger of vigilantism.
Thing is that the term "sex offender" does not equate to "child molester". It's even possible for people to wind up on these lists for reasons which do not even involve any sort of sex act at all. There have even been cases of unconnected people being assaulted due to similar names and/or address. Of course child rapists who havn't been caught won't be on any such lists. It's even possible that there are people who have been caught and convicted will not be listed due to some technicality (such as being a woman or having plea bargined to some other charge).
Sounds awefully complicated. I'd just rent a server in Malaysia or other countries with more pressing issues than shutting down servers, where someone like this already has a server collecting information for ID theft. I doubt they're more interested in shutting down CP servers than ID theft servers.
A single server would be vulnerable to DDOS. A rival criminal gang would have such an ability as does the likes of "Media Defender". No doubt various governments can also do similar things. A distributed "server" is resistant to such attacks. Also it probably makes more sense politically for law enforcement to go after CP.
Unfortunatley the PCI guys kept sending it down for cleaning but they failed to understand we could only do so much remothely. No one ever heard of safe mode with them and proper disposal of viruses. Hell, all they had to do was reimage the machine.
Assuming they could create a clean image in the first place.
Good to know they researched heavily before firing him. At my company when re-deploying hardware like a laptop it is standard to wipe it completely and load a ghosted image. Who WOULDN'T do at least as much?
The aptly named "Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents" by the sound of things. I suspect the problem in many places is that the whole idea of supplying company laptops has never been fully though through. Is doing a reimage actually company policy or is it more a case of IT people doing the "right thing"? In the latter case do laptops always pass through the IT department to be reassigned?
The answer is very, very arguably yes. The Busybox developers hold the complete copyrights. Therefore they are able to sell you their library under any license terms that you and they agree on. If you find the GPL terms not acceptable for you, you can write down any license terms you like and negotiate with them; it is just a matter of money.
You do have to have permission from the copyright holders to distribute copies. If you don't and distribute copies anyway then they can sue you for a large amount of money per copy.
There is a good chance that you could put the complete Busybox code into say a router that you build without having to publish the source code if you pay these guys a million dollars. The money that Busybox could have charged for use of their library under a non-GPL license but which they didn't get, that is the financial damage.
1 million USD might actually be a bit low. Considering that willful infringement can have up to 150,000 USD statutory damages per instance. Presumably they hope to sell more than 7 routers:)
Nope, you can't just point to someone else's sources. When you distribute GPL'd software, you are responsible for being able to provide the sources upon request.
If you distribute binaries you are responsible for making the source for those binaries available, but only to those people you have distributed the binaries to.
It's a problem which, amongst downloadable software, is somewhat unique to the GPL. Most software which is downloaded or purchased off the shelf has a EULA which, while typically overly-verbose, makes sense.
Actually EULAs typically do not make much sense at all. Especially in the case of "corporate people".
Don't copy the software to more than one computer. Don't give people a copy of the software. Don't disassemble the software. Don't expect us to cover your losses if the software fails.
Only some of which may have any meaning at all.
Most software licenses don't cover redistribution at all, except inasmuch as they say that it is forbidden. If redistribution is allowed somehow, it's almost always a part of a negotiated license rather than a boilerplate EULA. The GPL, a boilerplate license, does. It's unusual. Its provisions are unusual.
The GPL has very little in common with an EULA. They do not even operate under the same body of law. The GPL applies specifically to copyright, where as EULAs typically claim to be contracts.
Because 99% of them get away with it. I've seen gpl'd code used all over the place, mostly not entire apps but big sections of cut and pasted code that is then compiled and linked in to some larger, proprietary app. Happens far, far more often than you'd think.
How often does the same thing happen with proprietary code? Where such inclusion would be a lot harder to spot..
I'm paranoid about using any cracks on my purchased software, because who knows what kind of payload might be hidden in them. Virus scanners aren't infallible.
You don't know what might be included within the original product either. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish DRM and malware.
How is this a good thing? Reminds me of the DRM used a few years ago (still is?) where the game was faster cracked since it wasn't constantly scanning the CD drive verifying the disc was still in there.
Also optical drives are very good at converting electrical energy to heat. Especially noticable with a laptop running on batteries. Think of the "greenies"...
I'm not so sure. As I read the bill, there is nothing that requires the intruder to be correct in its belief that someone is using unlicensed proprietary software.
Even if it did would you expect it to be any stronger than with the DMCA.
Depending on the number of people that are actually using usenet on any given network, it could still be less bandwidth to have those people use external servers.
It may also matter exactly when this bandwidth is used. Less total traffic, but more peaks, be an issue.
Have you paid attention to every news story buried in the middle of the paper? Have you looked up your neighborhood on the online crime maps? You will likely be surprised. These incidents don't get too much press unless the victims are unarmed and multiple murders result.
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The catch is, if the street date was broke it was violating an agreement between retailers and Atari. To prove that they bought it would reveal which store they bought it from.
With "they" being Atari.
Either the store unknowingly sold the copy early (it has happened many times before), or the reviewer cut some sort of deal with them.
Or Atari messed up and their "don't sell before x" was invalid in some way.
38 years in jail is way too steep, any jailtime would probably be.
But this is no where near "just a mistake". It is not a one-time break-in to prove that security is insufficient. He was deliberately and continously (34 times alledgedly) "altering public records", for his own personal benefit.
Sounds like he should be instead offered 38 years employment with the US Government...
The issue is standards of proof. To be caught doing something illegal on the net three times may seem to justify disconnection. However, simply to be accused of it cannot. The fundamental problem here is economic. The rights owners cannot justify prosecution, because that demands a standard of proof of misconduct which is very expensive. You have to get the evidence, display it, allow it to be subject it to public questioning. Witnesses have to testify to how it was obtained.
Maybe it is also the case that the French civil court system is less easy to pervert into the form of protection racket which appears to happen frequently in the US.
This is an attempt to bypass all that. It is far cheaper to simply disconnect on three accusations. However, the problem is going to be EC human rights legislation and the first suit for false accusation. Human rights legislation is going to be a problem because the EC Charter explicitly guarantees access to information. You are only going to be able to ban someone from Internet access with the same sort of evidentiary justification that you would need to ban them from a public library or from reading the newspapers.
It would more be a case banning someone from all public libraries, especially given that public libraries often provide Internet access to.
The first suit for false denial of access to information is, for the same reason, going to be explosive. The ISPs will be acting as a cartel, so where one, acting alone, could throw anyone off for any reason, all acting together are in effect conspiring to deny the person access to information.
It's also perfectly possible for people living in some parts of France to get Internet connectivity from outside of France.
According to the lawmakers : "that won't happen, we trust the copyright owners to be adult and not abuse this".
Maybe France needs a minimum mental age qualification for "lawmakers" or at least some test to exclude the extremly gullible.
And the decision is not up to judges, as we can think, but to a new and "independent" (read leaded by the majors) entity. So very little to no possibility to contest the punition, since it's not french court that rule over it.
Though sooner or later this thing is likely to end up in a court, even if the court it ends up in is not technically a "French Court".
And if the media would accept to talk about it, maybe people could try and fight against this project, but you hardly hear a word about it out of computer oriented websites.
That'll be because "The Media" is likely to be closely connected to the people advocating this. In some even owned by the same entities.
this law is pretty even handed. 3 strikes and you lose internet access for UP TO a year, so you know it's going to be less.
What mechanism protects you against false, let alone malicious, accusations.
this is much better than being sued and having the RIAA france eating up court time filing john doe suits.
They are limited in how many such suits they can file, if they abuse this they can be indefinitly barred from using the courts. Also if you are sued you can always counter sue.
This whole "3 strikes thing" appears to involve claims which wouldn't pass the standards of any civil court. The French appear to have set up something equivalent to a "kangaroo court"...
At least they're debating it in parliament. In the UK Virgin Media's behind-closed-doors deal with the media industry has already been covered here.
Of the other hand Virgin Media's deal has no force of law behind it. Especially since it has recently been shown that the methods used to identify "illegal" file sharers are highly inaccurate, it's only a matter of time before Virgin Media wind up in court, against LIPs who suddenly have lots of extra time on their hands.
Or rather it will just be selectively enforced and used to persecute people the authorities don't like, similar to what's happened with so many other laws.
Most likely it won't be enforced against record companies, movie studios, broadcasters, etc.
What this company should be doing now is firing their IT staff for a) not checking the fucking machine out after the previous employee returned it and b) not having the thing properly secured. I'll wager some dumb-ass tech at the company gave the previous employee administrative or "power user" privileges.
Assuming that this machine actually went through the IT staff when it was transfered between employees. If this did not happen that could easily explain a lot.
There's also the issue that the "dumb-ass tech" may actually be a "dumb-ass manager" who insisted that this be done...
zero tolerance laws produce an extreme disincentive to properly and discretely investigate such things before slinging around an accusation which will ruin somebody's life.
IIRC the term was originally applied to corrupt law enforcement. Where it actually makes sense... Maybe what's actually needed is "zero tolerance" towards poor investigation.
"Megan's law"s punish people after the official debt to society has been paid.
In the same way that barring people from voting, after they have served their sentence, is also morally questionable.
If you are so sure pedophilia is an incurable, life-long disease, than imprison them for life or develop a house arrest program, but you can't simply toss these sex offenders out, put a big neon "child molester" sign over their head, and pretend they have the same rights, or are not in danger of vigilantism.
Thing is that the term "sex offender" does not equate to "child molester". It's even possible for people to wind up on these lists for reasons which do not even involve any sort of sex act at all. There have even been cases of unconnected people being assaulted due to similar names and/or address.
Of course child rapists who havn't been caught won't be on any such lists. It's even possible that there are people who have been caught and convicted will not be listed due to some technicality (such as being a woman or having plea bargined to some other charge).
Sounds awefully complicated. I'd just rent a server in Malaysia or other countries with more pressing issues than shutting down servers, where someone like this already has a server collecting information for ID theft. I doubt they're more interested in shutting down CP servers than ID theft servers.
A single server would be vulnerable to DDOS. A rival criminal gang would have such an ability as does the likes of "Media Defender". No doubt various governments can also do similar things. A distributed "server" is resistant to such attacks.
Also it probably makes more sense politically for law enforcement to go after CP.
Unfortunatley the PCI guys kept sending it down for cleaning but they failed to understand we could only do so much remothely. No one ever heard of safe mode with them and proper disposal of viruses. Hell, all they had to do was reimage the machine.
Assuming they could create a clean image in the first place.
Good to know they researched heavily before firing him. At my company when re-deploying hardware like a laptop it is standard to wipe it completely and load a ghosted image. Who WOULDN'T do at least as much?
The aptly named "Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents" by the sound of things. I suspect the problem in many places is that the whole idea of supplying company laptops has never been fully though through. Is doing a reimage actually company policy or is it more a case of IT people doing the "right thing"? In the latter case do laptops always pass through the IT department to be reassigned?
The answer is very, very arguably yes. The Busybox developers hold the complete copyrights. Therefore they are able to sell you their library under any license terms that you and they agree on. If you find the GPL terms not acceptable for you, you can write down any license terms you like and negotiate with them; it is just a matter of money.
:)
You do have to have permission from the copyright holders to distribute copies. If you don't and distribute copies anyway then they can sue you for a large amount of money per copy.
There is a good chance that you could put the complete Busybox code into say a router that you build without having to publish the source code if you pay these guys a million dollars. The money that Busybox could have charged for use of their library under a non-GPL license but which they didn't get, that is the financial damage.
1 million USD might actually be a bit low. Considering that willful infringement can have up to 150,000 USD statutory damages per instance. Presumably they hope to sell more than 7 routers
Nope, you can't just point to someone else's sources. When you distribute GPL'd software, you are responsible for being able to provide the sources upon request.
If you distribute binaries you are responsible for making the source for those binaries available, but only to those people you have distributed the binaries to.
It's a problem which, amongst downloadable software, is somewhat unique to the GPL. Most software which is downloaded or purchased off the shelf has a EULA which, while typically overly-verbose, makes sense.
Actually EULAs typically do not make much sense at all. Especially in the case of "corporate people".
Don't copy the software to more than one computer. Don't give people a copy of the software. Don't disassemble the software. Don't expect us to cover your losses if the software fails.
Only some of which may have any meaning at all.
Most software licenses don't cover redistribution at all, except inasmuch as they say that it is forbidden. If redistribution is allowed somehow, it's almost always a part of a negotiated license rather than a boilerplate EULA. The GPL, a boilerplate license, does. It's unusual. Its provisions are unusual.
The GPL has very little in common with an EULA.
They do not even operate under the same body of law. The GPL applies specifically to copyright, where as EULAs typically claim to be contracts.
Because 99% of them get away with it. I've seen gpl'd code used all over the place, mostly not entire apps but big sections of cut and pasted code that is then compiled and linked in to some larger, proprietary app. Happens far, far more often than you'd think.
How often does the same thing happen with proprietary code? Where such inclusion would be a lot harder to spot..
I'm paranoid about using any cracks on my purchased software, because who knows what kind of payload might be hidden in them. Virus scanners aren't infallible.
You don't know what might be included within the original product either. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish DRM and malware.
How is this a good thing? Reminds me of the DRM used a few years ago (still is?) where the game was faster cracked since it wasn't constantly scanning the CD drive verifying the disc was still in there.
Also optical drives are very good at converting electrical energy to heat. Especially noticable with a laptop running on batteries. Think of the "greenies"...
Especially if you send money to random people who ask for it without checking who they are first.
Especially given that sending out bogus invoices is a very old scam. But apparently one which still gets enough money to make doing it worthwhile.
When the judge orders you to do something, you do it, or you go to jail until such time as you agree to do it.
Unless you are a "corporate person", in which case nothing much will happen to you...
I'm not so sure. As I read the bill, there is nothing that requires the intruder to be correct in its belief that someone is using unlicensed proprietary software.
Even if it did would you expect it to be any stronger than with the DMCA.
Depending on the number of people that are actually using usenet on any given network, it could still be less bandwidth to have those people use external servers.
It may also matter exactly when this bandwidth is used. Less total traffic, but more peaks, be an issue.
Have you paid attention to every news story buried in the middle of the paper? Have you looked up your neighborhood on the online crime maps? You will likely be surprised. These incidents don't get too much press unless the victims are unarmed and multiple murders result.
Or the intruder is a police officer...
The RIAA and MPAA admitted publicly a couple of months ago that these lawsuits represent a money loss of millions per year.
Probably as calculated by the same accountants who work out that no movie ever makes a profit...