The people meter detects a unique signature encoded into the audio and video that is then sent back to Nielsen's HQ, where it is compared with known signatures for shows. AFAIK, this should work whether it is being watched on a TV or on a computer after DL'ing the torrent the next day, so long as the people meter is set up properly.
i.e. connected to the computer used to watch the video file.
So that means even if you ARE a Nielsen household, downloading a torrent should be indistinguishable from recording the show on your VCR and watching it later as far as ratings go; within a reasonable time period, both are counted..
But it certainly isn't going to work where the torrent is of a programme which won't be broadcast locally for a while (in some cases a few years).
As for the legal issues, -if- commercials are included in the Torrent, then IMHO, it is completely and without question legal for someone who gets the channel in question to download the torrent.
Most often including commercials would be adding "noise" to a torrent. Commercials advertising products only available thousands of miles away, priced in a foreign currency arn't much use to anyone. Nor are trailers for what else the original broadcast channel might be showing.
It's also important to point out that Firefly, like Joss's better work, was a "serial," in that later episodes depended upon previous episodes to make any sense. Unfortunately, and dumfoundingly, Fox decided to air the series out-of-order, which led to the complaints that Firefly was "confusing" and "impossible to follow."
Are US networks actually geared up to show serials. The paradigm of "show some episodes, repeat some episodes, show some more episodes" appears to be the norm.
In other words, Fox blew their own series because they didn't know what they were doing.
Not exactly news.
It's also a space western, which is a pretty tough theme to like, but somehow managed to capture the essence of what worked with the episodes of Star Trek that worked. Even though pretty much none of the characters are good guys (the captain kills people who he thinks deserves it, the crew members betray eachother for money, the pilot keeps wearing Hawaiian shirts), they're somehow likable in a bad guy way... Sort of like Han before Lucas bastardized him into a saturday morning cartoon.
Ya know, it seems that this situation should be impossible if a PC were designed correctly. After all, the Space Shuttle originally had 6 identical computers working simultaneously and independently; results of computations were compared constantly. If a computer went bonkers, the other five would instantly lobotomize it, put it into a mode in which it could not hurt anything, and sound lots o' alarms.
Once NASA got the bugs out of the system. Remember they had to scrub a launch attempt of Columbia due to timing issues between the computers.
There have been similar suggestions for the Linux Kernel; write information somewhere when the kernel panics, but they are usually shot down for the same reason.
When a machine is in the 'panic' state writing to the local disks, or sending stuff across the network isn't usually feasible.
Effectivly you'd need quite a bit of code to be duplicated. Writing disk is potentially dangerous since the state of any filesystem is inconsistent. Sending over the network is only possible if configuration via RARP/BOOTP/DHCP is available.
I have seen (completely unsuspecting) home users' machines infected with no less than 200 different (!) "manifestations" of malware on them at once, several times this year already
200 is not unusual, in some case you can multiply it by 10.
The technological capability of universal surveillance may be inevitable, however socially and politically it is most certainly not an inevitability.
One of the most important social factors is the issue of who is doing the watching. At one extreme you "Big Brother", where a minority (who are themselves unwatched) watching the majority. At the other extreme you have David Brin's "Transparent Society", where everyone can watch everyone. In practice the latter would mean that the average person would have a high degree of privacy. Since the majority would be too busy watching celebrities, politicans, police, etc.
While this may also be justified if you want to meassure noise levels (and if there is a concrete issue),
In which case you'd need a sound level meter. Most likely one using the A scale. Whilst such a device contains a microphone it does not act as a sound recorder. If the idea is to monitor "noise" then it might as well ignore anything under 65 dB.
The intent was to allow those not in control of the actions of a company to be able to invest money in it without danger of losing more than they willingly invested. It was never intended to shield those who *DO* have control over the actions of the corporation. When it is used that way, as has been done more and more frequently of late (not only because there are more corporations, but because the laws have been increasingly changed to favor those with sufficient money to make large investments) then the system is corrupt.
Which is also ironic. Given that one of the ideas behind the original Limited Liability Corporation was the encouragement of small investors.
The ability to measure potential is a difficult, even if 1% of the people who download a song or movie would have purchased it, it is still a large amount of money lost.
Only if you ignore the catagory of people who purchase the CD/DVD (as well as going to see the movie/watch the TV/etc) because they were able to download something they found they liked.
Ah, but it's not stealing, is it. The thief has still got all the music, even after you've taken it.
Theft is a concept which has been around for a long time. The concept of copyright and hence copyright infringement has only existed for a few hundred years.
This is the first time in history that we've ever had any valuable goods that could be duplicated for free like this.
"Content" is not a good. Whilst it was tightly bound to a media the kluge of "intellectual property" made some sense.
Are they *really* saying that a CPU is going to pump enough heat to maintain a molten state inside the cooling device? If yes, that's kind of scary.
Depends what metal you use, Gallium melts at 30C (yet dosn't boil until over 2,200C). Alternativly there is Mercury which is liquid between -38.88 and 356.73.
In California, you can be put on the list just because someone accused you of abuse.
Is this an "equal opportunity" risk? At a wild guess not. Most likely easiest to happen if you are a man accused by a woman and hardest to happen if you are a woman accused by a men. With men accused by men and women accused by women being in between. What about police, airport security, etc?
How would you like to be on a list of sex offenders for the rest of your life because some wingnut got upset with you and filed a false accusation?
A situation where all sorts of false accusations are fairly common is divorce. Especially when lawyers are involved.
I bet you statistically, 95% to 99% of sex offenders are male. On a side note, I would love to be molested by a female sex offender.
This was modded as funny. But there is a very serious side to it. There are an awful lot of double standards which distort perceptions. e.g. could anyone imagine a man being treated the same way as Mary Kay Letourneau? It's even been known for victims to have to lie that they were molested by a man, because no-one will believe they were molested by a woman or even that they are making false accusations... There's also the problem that many laws here are implicitally (even explicitally ) sexist. Sometimes even the victim is male or female can make a difference as to what the perpetrator can be changed with. Finally there's the senario of a woman raping a man and telling him "do anything about it and I'll tell the police you raped me. Who do you think they'll believe?"
I'm wondering if this will be struck down by some court? Punishment after a sentence is done...that doesn't sound like it goes along with the constitution.
There's already precident in denying people the ability to vote after they have served their sentence. It could effectivly be argued that this is a kind of "life sentence".
Just like Iraq and other countries, right? The only bits of Canada, or any other country that are sovereign are those outside cruise missile range.
Cruise missiles are most effective against a country without an airforce. The US's cruise missiles have never faced fighters... Not even those using WWII tactics against such missiles.
It is also fully supported by the Bush administration. It passed by voice vote in the Senate and House. It has extremely broad support from both Democratic and Republican legislators.
Too bad the US is going to make you adopt it. I don't really see why all you people fail to see the balance of power here. The United States is the staple of the entire world's economy.
The EU is rather larger, both in terms of money and population. Things such as oil being traded in US Dollers have the effect of overinflating the apparent size of the US economy. Things would be bad for the US were OPEC to decide to use Euros instead...
Is canada willing to give up a huge amount of its exports (86.6%) in order to give the US a big 'fuck you'?
No doubt Canada is fed up with taking the US to the WTO everytime the US gets upset with Canadian products out competing US ones. It might even be good for the Canadian economy to export to somewhere else.
Ironic that those are the last words that Sadaam said to Bush just 10 days before the US invaded.
Next thing you will hear of "reports" of weapons of mass destruction are suspected to be in canada.
Canada is rather more likely to actually have WMDs than Iraq. How many soldiers does the US have in North America currently, as opposed to in Asia.
I would watch what you do up there in the 51'st state.
The whole reason that the US is kicking up this fuss is that Canada is behaving as an independent nation state. Rather than part of the US...
As for being the 51st state they'd have to stand in line behind Blair, Howard and Sharon.
But, the original purpose for corporations were usually community project type situations where they wanted to build a bridge or something and no one wanted the liability if it failed...far from what it is today.
Limited liability ment that the liability of an investor was limited to the amount they had invested. If the venture failed they'd be left with a worthless piece of paper, but no liability for any debts. The idea being to encourage investment from people who would not otherwise invest in such projects. The idea was never to protect the corporation or it's executive (even if composed entirely of shareholders) from the consequences of it's own actions. But this is what appears to have ended up happening.
>Assuming the file is what they think it is.
They had better document this carefully...
How convenient: lawyers happen to be very meticulous about documentation. How convenient: lawyers happen to be very meticulous about documentation.
If the case is actually likely to come to court. Even then, since the job of a lawyer is to represent their client, they are likely to add plenty of "spin" and be as selective as possible. I take it you have never actually employed one... The thing is that the RIAA isn't intending to actually take cases to court. So much as play "chicken"...
>...If for no other reason than being able to claim "honest mistake" as a defence something they are not authorised to. e.g. it would be perfectly possible for someone to put up a "honeypot" files which the RIAA is forbidden from accessing.
Juvenile fantasies for juvenile morons. The honeypot owner(s) would have to have deep enough pockets to pay a lawyer enough to make the suit stick. (That is, assuming they could find a lawyer willing to assoicate themselves with what is essentially obstruction of justice.) Then they'd have to do it again and again. Fat chance.
Even in the US, AFAIK, you don't actually need a lawyer to sue someone. Effectivly the honeypot owner would simply turn the RIAA's technique against them. They have a simple choice a) accept a settlement which includes keeping quiet about the whole thing or b) spend lots of money fighting an "open and shut" case of copyright infringement against a LIP.
>Just how exactly would they have these IPs?
Trivial. Hack the client to upload bad data only and connect to the network. Whoever shows up as having your target data gets a nasty surprise in the mail.
In other words a "honeypot". Previously described as "Juvenile fantasies for juvenile morons". Thus meaning that you accept that the RIAA are composed of "juvenile morons", QED.
Man, I can't believe this tripe got modded up. Are you guys under some mistaken belief that the RIAA's goons are juvenile morons like yourselves?
Have you any evidence that they are not. Moaning about alleged losses whilst showing large profits is certainly sufficent to put them in the "moron", if not the "juvenile" catagory.
1) The RIAA's goons can do the download in parallel and verify the contents. They're authorized to do so by the copyright holders, after all.
Assuming the file is what they think it is. They had better document this carefully. If for no other reason than being able to claim "honest mistake" as a defence something they are not authorised to. e.g. it would be perfectly possible for someone to put up a "honeypot" files which the RIAA is forbidden from accessing.
2) Depends on who they bring the suit against. They may not need the seed's IP, they just need the IP of the person downloading.
Just how exactly would they have these IPs? If they uploaded the file there would have been no copyright violation on the part of the downloader. If the had hacked into machines there's the little problem of breaking criminal law as part of a "fishing trip" to try and find violations of civil law.
4) ISPs keep very accurate records of who logs in and what IP they get, and a bunch of session statistics. It's part of the RADIUS protocol, RFC 2865-2866, IIRC.
There's also the GIGO principle. e.g. the RIAA failing to realise that their time data must be accurate and in UTC.
Short of a major flub on the RIAA's part
e.g. accusing someone who dosn't have a computer, accusing someone who is dead, accusing someone of running a program incompatable with their computer's OS, etc. They really should be expected to do a lot of explaining why any of their accusations are valid. They've had their "three strikes".
Slashdot Mirror
The people meter detects a unique signature encoded into the audio and video that is then sent back to Nielsen's HQ, where it is compared with known signatures for shows. AFAIK, this should work whether it is being watched on a TV or on a computer after DL'ing the torrent the next day, so long as the people meter is set up properly.
i.e. connected to the computer used to watch the video file.
So that means even if you ARE a Nielsen household, downloading a torrent should be indistinguishable from recording the show on your VCR and watching it later as far as ratings go; within a reasonable time period, both are counted..
But it certainly isn't going to work where the torrent is of a programme which won't be broadcast locally for a while (in some cases a few years).
As for the legal issues, -if- commercials are included in the Torrent, then IMHO, it is completely and without question legal for someone who gets the channel in question to download the torrent.
Most often including commercials would be adding "noise" to a torrent. Commercials advertising products only available thousands of miles away, priced in a foreign currency arn't much use to anyone. Nor are trailers for what else the original broadcast channel might be showing.
It's also important to point out that Firefly, like Joss's better work, was a "serial," in that later episodes depended upon previous episodes to make any sense. Unfortunately, and dumfoundingly, Fox decided to air the series out-of-order, which led to the complaints that Firefly was "confusing" and "impossible to follow."
Are US networks actually geared up to show serials. The paradigm of "show some episodes, repeat some episodes, show some more episodes" appears to be the norm.
In other words, Fox blew their own series because they didn't know what they were doing.
Not exactly news.
It's also a space western, which is a pretty tough theme to like, but somehow managed to capture the essence of what worked with the episodes of Star Trek that worked. Even though pretty much none of the characters are good guys (the captain kills people who he thinks deserves it, the crew members betray eachother for money, the pilot keeps wearing Hawaiian shirts), they're somehow likable in a bad guy way... Sort of like Han before Lucas bastardized him into a saturday morning cartoon.
Another influence would probably "Blake's 7".
Ya know, it seems that this situation should be impossible if a PC were designed correctly. After all, the Space Shuttle originally had 6 identical computers working simultaneously and independently; results of computations were compared constantly. If a computer went bonkers, the other five would instantly lobotomize it, put it into a mode in which it could not hurt anything, and sound lots o' alarms.
Once NASA got the bugs out of the system. Remember they had to scrub a launch attempt of Columbia due to timing issues between the computers.
There have been similar suggestions for the Linux Kernel; write information somewhere when the kernel panics, but they are usually shot down for the same reason.
When a machine is in the 'panic' state writing to the local disks, or sending stuff across the network isn't usually feasible.
Effectivly you'd need quite a bit of code to be duplicated. Writing disk is potentially dangerous since the state of any filesystem is inconsistent. Sending over the network is only possible if configuration via RARP/BOOTP/DHCP is available.
How is that any different than the blogs of today masquerading as journalistic outlets? Nothing evil has come out of blogging.
But quite a bit of evil has come out of the "Mainstream Media". Including uncritically repeating properganda and even passing off fiction as fact.
I have seen (completely unsuspecting) home users' machines infected with no less than 200 different (!) "manifestations" of malware on them at once, several times this year already
200 is not unusual, in some case you can multiply it by 10.
The technological capability of universal surveillance may be inevitable, however socially and politically it is most certainly not an inevitability.
One of the most important social factors is the issue of who is doing the watching. At one extreme you "Big Brother", where a minority (who are themselves unwatched) watching the majority. At the other extreme you have David Brin's "Transparent Society", where everyone can watch everyone.
In practice the latter would mean that the average person would have a high degree of privacy. Since the majority would be too busy watching celebrities, politicans, police, etc.
While this may also be justified if you want to meassure noise levels (and if there is a concrete issue),
In which case you'd need a sound level meter. Most likely one using the A scale. Whilst such a device contains a microphone it does not act as a sound recorder. If the idea is to monitor "noise" then it might as well ignore anything under 65 dB.
The intent was to allow those not in control of the actions of a company to be able to invest money in it without danger of losing more than they willingly invested. It was never intended to shield those who *DO* have control over the actions of the corporation. When it is used that way, as has been done more and more frequently of late (not only because there are more corporations, but because the laws have been increasingly changed to favor those with sufficient money to make large investments) then the system is corrupt.
Which is also ironic. Given that one of the ideas behind the original Limited Liability Corporation was the encouragement of small investors.
Seriously, watch the armchair lawyers come out in droves with the "IANAL, but" posts.
Is there actually a good reason why laws should be so complex they cannot be understood.
Slashdot should leave the legal questions to real lawyers.
As if "real lawyers" never get it wrong...
I certainly hope you aren't under the illusion that the US Government has anywhere near the influence and power of large corporations.
Both corporations and patents are creations of government in the first place. There's also the magic words "national security".
The ability to measure potential is a difficult, even if 1% of the people who download a song or movie would have purchased it, it is still a large amount of money lost.
Only if you ignore the catagory of people who purchase the CD/DVD (as well as going to see the movie/watch the TV/etc) because they were able to download something they found they liked.
Ah, but it's not stealing, is it. The thief has still got all the music, even after you've taken it.
Theft is a concept which has been around for a long time. The concept of copyright and hence copyright infringement has only existed for a few hundred years.
This is the first time in history that we've ever had any valuable goods that could be duplicated for free like this.
"Content" is not a good. Whilst it was tightly bound to a media the kluge of "intellectual property" made some sense.
Are they *really* saying that a CPU is going to pump enough heat to maintain a molten state inside the cooling device? If yes, that's kind of scary.
Depends what metal you use, Gallium melts at 30C (yet dosn't boil until over 2,200C). Alternativly there is Mercury which is liquid between -38.88 and 356.73.
In California, you can be put on the list just because someone accused you of abuse.
Is this an "equal opportunity" risk? At a wild guess not. Most likely easiest to happen if you are a man accused by a woman and hardest to happen if you are a woman accused by a men. With men accused by men and women accused by women being in between. What about police, airport security, etc?
How would you like to be on a list of sex offenders for the rest of your life because some wingnut got upset with you and filed a false accusation?
A situation where all sorts of false accusations are fairly common is divorce. Especially when lawyers are involved.
I bet you statistically, 95% to 99% of sex offenders are male. On a side note, I would love to be molested by a female sex offender.
This was modded as funny. But there is a very serious side to it. There are an awful lot of double standards which distort perceptions. e.g. could anyone imagine a man being treated the same way as Mary Kay Letourneau?
It's even been known for victims to have to lie that they were molested by a man, because no-one will believe they were molested by a woman or even that they are making false accusations...
There's also the problem that many laws here are implicitally (even explicitally ) sexist. Sometimes even the victim is male or female can make a difference as to what the perpetrator can be changed with.
Finally there's the senario of a woman raping a man and telling him "do anything about it and I'll tell the police you raped me. Who do you think they'll believe?"
I'm wondering if this will be struck down by some court? Punishment after a sentence is done...that doesn't sound like it goes along with the constitution.
There's already precident in denying people the ability to vote after they have served their sentence. It could effectivly be argued that this is a kind of "life sentence".
Just like Iraq and other countries, right? The only bits of Canada, or any other country that are sovereign are those outside cruise missile range.
Cruise missiles are most effective against a country without an airforce. The US's cruise missiles have never faced fighters... Not even those using WWII tactics against such missiles.
It is also fully supported by the Bush administration. It passed by voice vote in the Senate and House. It has extremely broad support from both Democratic and Republican legislators.
:)
Don't you mean "Republocratic" and "Democlican"
Too bad the US is going to make you adopt it. I don't really see why all you people fail to see the balance of power here. The United States is the staple of the entire world's economy.
The EU is rather larger, both in terms of money and population. Things such as oil being traded in US Dollers have the effect of overinflating the apparent size of the US economy. Things would be bad for the US were OPEC to decide to use Euros instead...
Is canada willing to give up a huge amount of its exports (86.6%) in order to give the US a big 'fuck you'?
No doubt Canada is fed up with taking the US to the WTO everytime the US gets upset with Canadian products out competing US ones. It might even be good for the Canadian economy to export to somewhere else.
Ironic that those are the last words that Sadaam said to Bush just 10 days before the US invaded.
Next thing you will hear of "reports" of weapons of mass destruction are suspected to be in canada.
Canada is rather more likely to actually have WMDs than Iraq. How many soldiers does the US have in North America currently, as opposed to in Asia.
I would watch what you do up there in the 51'st state.
The whole reason that the US is kicking up this fuss is that Canada is behaving as an independent nation state. Rather than part of the US...
As for being the 51st state they'd have to stand in line behind Blair, Howard and Sharon.
But, the original purpose for corporations were usually community project type situations where they wanted to build a bridge or something and no one wanted the liability if it failed...far from what it is today.
Limited liability ment that the liability of an investor was limited to the amount they had invested. If the venture failed they'd be left with a worthless piece of paper, but no liability for any debts. The idea being to encourage investment from people who would not otherwise invest in such projects.
The idea was never to protect the corporation or it's executive (even if composed entirely of shareholders) from the consequences of it's own actions. But this is what appears to have ended up happening.
Did you know that corporations are considered "citizens" and have almost all the same rights as a person?
But very few of the same responsibilities.
>Assuming the file is what they think it is. They had better document this carefully... How convenient: lawyers happen to be very meticulous about documentation.
How convenient: lawyers happen to be very meticulous about documentation.
If the case is actually likely to come to court. Even then, since the job of a lawyer is to represent their client, they are likely to add plenty of "spin" and be as selective as possible. I take it you have never actually employed one...
The thing is that the RIAA isn't intending to actually take cases to court. So much as play "chicken"...
>...If for no other reason than being able to claim "honest mistake" as a defence something they are not authorised to. e.g. it would be perfectly possible for someone to put up a "honeypot" files which the RIAA is forbidden from accessing. Juvenile fantasies for juvenile morons. The honeypot owner(s) would have to have deep enough pockets to pay a lawyer enough to make the suit stick. (That is, assuming they could find a lawyer willing to assoicate themselves with what is essentially obstruction of justice.) Then they'd have to do it again and again. Fat chance.
Even in the US, AFAIK, you don't actually need a lawyer to sue someone. Effectivly the honeypot owner would simply turn the RIAA's technique against them. They have a simple choice a) accept a settlement which includes keeping quiet about the whole thing or b) spend lots of money fighting an "open and shut" case of copyright infringement against a LIP.
>Just how exactly would they have these IPs?
Trivial. Hack the client to upload bad data only and connect to the network. Whoever shows up as having your target data gets a nasty surprise in the mail.
In other words a "honeypot". Previously described as "Juvenile fantasies for juvenile morons". Thus meaning that you accept that the RIAA are composed of "juvenile morons", QED.
Man, I can't believe this tripe got modded up. Are you guys under some mistaken belief that the RIAA's goons are juvenile morons like yourselves?
Have you any evidence that they are not. Moaning about alleged losses whilst showing large profits is certainly sufficent to put them in the "moron", if not the "juvenile" catagory.
1) The RIAA's goons can do the download in parallel and verify the contents. They're authorized to do so by the copyright holders, after all.
Assuming the file is what they think it is.
They had better document this carefully. If for no other reason than being able to claim "honest mistake" as a defence something they are not authorised to. e.g. it would be perfectly possible for someone to put up a "honeypot" files which the RIAA is forbidden from accessing.
2) Depends on who they bring the suit against. They may not need the seed's IP, they just need the IP of the person downloading.
Just how exactly would they have these IPs? If they uploaded the file there would have been no copyright violation on the part of the downloader. If the had hacked into machines there's the little problem of breaking criminal law as part of a "fishing trip" to try and find violations of civil law.
4) ISPs keep very accurate records of who logs in and what IP they get, and a bunch of session statistics. It's part of the RADIUS protocol, RFC 2865-2866, IIRC.
There's also the GIGO principle. e.g. the RIAA failing to realise that their time data must be accurate and in UTC.
Short of a major flub on the RIAA's part
e.g. accusing someone who dosn't have a computer, accusing someone who is dead, accusing someone of running a program incompatable with their computer's OS, etc.
They really should be expected to do a lot of explaining why any of their accusations are valid. They've had their "three strikes".