Love to see that sum over here! In the uk, under £5000 is small claims court. So they sue me, I say ok, wait until it goes to court, don't turn up,
If you contest it the first thing which will happen is that the case will be transfered to the court nearest to you. If you do turn up to the hearing you represent yourself and have a perfectly good chance of winning. Even if you lose there is no way you will be expected to pay for the plaintiff's lawyers.
If the vast majority of Americans think downloading music is ok, and only a minority of Americans think it is wrong, should we allow corporations to direct public policy concerning it? IOW, should something be criminalized when only a minority of Americans consider it wrong, morally or ethically?
The most obvious historical parallel is that of "piano rolls". One of the earliest forms of recorded music.
By stopping illegal downloading, people will have to PAY for the music they want to listen to.
It could just as easily result in people listening to less music...
So by the RIAA sueing downloaders, they are trying to discourage people from downloading. Thats why they aren't taking everyone to court for the $100,000 per song, or whatever the max is. They just want to scare everyone, make them pay a little. That way they will goto the store and buy music, and everyone gets their normal cut.
They can also only buy the music the store is selling. Which excludes "out of print" CDs, independent musicians, etc.
For the small minority of people that are downloading instead of buying it is more accurate to say that they are stealing from the RIAA*, which is OK in my book;)
There are 3 general catagories of downloaders A) Those who would never buy it (or cannot buy it). B) Those who would (and could) otherwise buy CDs, DVDs, tapes, etc. C) Those who buy because they have had access through downloading.
The RIAA, MPAA, etc. claim that B is the vast majority (and that C dosn't exist at all). What actually matters to their profits is the relative size of B & C. If C is larger P2P is actually a benefit to their business. The size of A (which quite likely is the majority) is utterly irrelevent here.
If the RIAA was suing kids to get settlements from parents and doing it at a high profit, then they have effectively established a business. It's predatory and extortionist, but it's a business.
Wonder if anyone has taken out a patent on this "business method".
It only takes 5 seconds of lawyer's time to sign the initial letter.
It dosn't take a lawyer to sign a letter or to take a pile of mailmerged summons forms to the local court.
If the client bites, then as someone else commented above, maybe an hour or two on the phone to explain to him why settling is good. This is not too expensive.
Where it starts getting expensive is if the defendent contests, even if they later settle out of court.
How right you are! Imagine, 10k lawsuits. Let's assume that each one of them settles for an average of $5k (a pittance compared to what they could get by copyright law, and I believe many of these settlements are much higher).
How much does it cost them to get that $5k? They are probably looking at a huge "profit margin". Whereas if they actually took the cases to court it would cost a lot of money to put together a case which had a chance of winning. If they won the case they might get more (assuming the defendent could actually afford the judgement) but that would have to be offset against their legal fees. As well as the legal fees for cases they lost and sucessful counter suits. With the big risk that if they didn't win substantially more cases than they lost every one they accused (including those who had originally settled "out of court") would want their "day in court".
1) Prove it was me. I don't mean showing some "IP logs". Any idiot can make up "logs". What real proof do they have?? (Hint: no proof, no case!)
Nor is a file name regex matched by machine. It isn't hard to fine examples where machines appear to be sending out lawyer's letters without any human oversight. Even if the filename and size was consitent with it containing something infringing without looking at it there is no way of knowing. If the RIAA were to download it there are 3 possibilities, that it is an infringing work, that it isn't (e.g. white noise) or that the RIAA themselves have infringed copyright.
For the RIAA to falsify evidence, however, is highly risky for them, their lawyers, etc. And given how many people really do pirate music, why the need to do so? These suits are fish in a barrel easy.
Then how is it possible for them to accuse people who cannot possibly be guilty? It's more likely that they are fundermentally incompetent at gathering evidence that actually trying to make it up. "Shooting fish in a barrel" still requires the gun to be pointed in the right direction.
Just out of curiosity, why would it be worthwhile to fight? If, as you say, a plaintiff only needs to set up a 51% chance of being right, and considering the difficulty of convincing a judge or jury that the RIAA's simply wrong, then why would the simple fact of innocence change anything?
Effectivly you are arguing that the majority of judges and jurists would believe the RIAA regardless of the evidence.
I would think that evidence would be the deciding factor, and that in the vast majority of cases, innocence or guilt would play only a small role in whether a defendant settled.
Thing is that the evidence is not in the RIAA's favour at all. They have accused people without computers, people who are dead, people who's computers do not run the software they allege was used.
In other words, as things stand the RIAA can do pretty much whatever it wants, up to and including falsifying evidence, with little chance of getting caught.
2) I have several computers. How the heck would they know if I send them my (clean) backup computer instead of my primary??
Or a router. That being the only "computer" which ever used the IP address the complaint relates to.
Besides, do you know I run a business off that computer, and I have my own and other's personal email on it? I'm sure there are some laws that protect my (and other's) privacy, as well as my livelihood.
Another poster specifically mentioned that "discovery" has specific protections against being used for espionage. No doubt there are also protections against it being used to disrupt your business. Otherwise it would be routine for companies to sue their competitors on questionable grounds.
And, how are they going to get my computer? Ask me to send it to them? Or call the cops and have them bust my door down at 4am to retreive it?
The cops are not going to bust down your door unless it is a criminal matter. If this happened the RIAA would lose control over the case and you would get a free lawyer.
Oh- and I'd want to 'inspect' the computer that supposedly logged me. Plus all other computers that had access to that computer. For signs of tampering.
As well as exactly what the computer in question actually was doing and how likely it would be to generate a false positive.
Too bad no judge got pissed of by RIAA sending threatenign letters to little girls and dead grandmothers.
There isn't much any judge can do, until a child or (the estate of) a dead grandmother turns up in his or her courtroom.
But discovery doesn't extend to everything -- it's only really for things relevant to the case at hand.
How and why the plaintiff is accusing the defendent is very relevent.
So... how are you going to use their books to prove that you didn't do it?
Isn't it for the plaintiff to prove that the defendent "did it". If the plaintiff's "books" were to show things like random accusations their case(s) would collapse.
It's often used to require parties to give copies of all relevant documents to the other side. But it can also be used to inspect things, such as your computer.
If this mechanism can be used to allow plaintiff to examine computers belonging to the defendent it can just easily be used by the defendent to examine computers belonging to or used by the plaintiff.
Plus, they're a big industry association with a good reputation.
A good reputation on what planet?
On the whole, much as I dislike them, I'd generally be inclined to believe that RIAA's evidence was accurate, if the matter had progressed that far, unless some significant hole in it could be found.
The fact that they accused someone who didn't have a computer and was dead dosn't say a lot for the quality of their evidence. On the other hand plenty of people in the US appear to accept complete fiction if it comes from the right people.
Doesn't your corner only throw in the towel if you're getting your ass kicked? From what I understand, the RIAA is settling nearly each of these cases out of court for a substantial profit. If that's the case, why would they ever throw in the towel?
In the vast majority of cases the RIAA have sucessfully bullied people into handing over money. If the RIAA are going to get their "ass kicked" it would most probably be by a judge with a case actually making it to court.
...And how many businesses have ethernet jacks out in their parking lots, or in the businesses next door, across the hall, or on adjacent floors?
With a socket the signal only goes to that socket. Once you start dealing with radio waves the signal goes all over the place, as well as possibly not going where you actually want it to go. Then to add to the fun moving objects, including people, can affect where the signal winds up.
Actually transmission line losses are dependent on voltage. The power lost is inversely proportional to the square of the voltage. It is much easier to change the voltage with AC than DC. Even if you could easily step up DC electrolysis effects would rapidly corrode every connection.
All current starts out as DC, gets converted to AC for transmission, then in almost all devices gets converted back to DC
No it starts off as AC. From a generator running at either 3,000 or 3,600 RPM. An AC generator is simpler to build than a DC generator. It's also considerably easier to turn AC into DC than to turn DC into AC. Especially if you want AF AC.
If you put AC in PoE, you'll lose your data - as a data line, it will then be worthless.
Only if your AC is at a frequency which interferes with that being used to send the data. It's perfectly possible send multiple frequencies down the same cable.
This works using the "unused" lines of CAT5. Sure, they're unused for 10/100 ethernet, but this will be much less useful once everyone is using Gigabit ethernet (which uses all 4 pairs).
That is one way of doing it. The other way is to use "phantom" power between the data pairs. The latter will work fine with gigabit.
...is that the current equipment out there is probably not actually delivering all of the wattage that the specification calls for. For example, a cable modem draws about 20 watts from the wall;
It uses 20 watts of 230VAC. Quite a bit of that will be heat generated by the power supply. Which is probably the simplist, cheapest circuit to convert the 230VAC into whatever voltage(s) the electronics run on.
even if it's delivering all of that to computers on the network with no losses... then it can only support one of these machines without drawing power from somewhere else.
A single cable can deliver 15.4w. If the PSU is feeding 16 cables then it needs to be capable of supplying around 250w...
One late night when I was closing down, I thought to myself how silly it was to keep the CRT monitors powered on. This was before things automatically shut-off. So I went around to about 200 computers and shut-off the monitors. The next day I got in trouble by my manager...they didn't like my idea at all and didn't care about the heat or electricity savings. Apparently going around to turn them back on in the morning was too much work! I figure for about 6 years (before the advent of auto-shutoff CRTs and LCDs), this university ran > 1000 CRTs 24/7. Anybody care to guestimate how much electricity they could have saved over this time period?
Things arn't that simple. If the building needs heating it could cost you more money... There's also the risk that the frequent power cycling could reduce the life of the monitors. It might cost you more in maintainance and staff time than you save in electricity.
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Love to see that sum over here! In the uk, under £5000 is small claims court. So they sue me, I say ok, wait until it goes to court, don't turn up,
If you contest it the first thing which will happen is that the case will be transfered to the court nearest to you. If you do turn up to the hearing you represent yourself and have a perfectly good chance of winning. Even if you lose there is no way you will be expected to pay for the plaintiff's lawyers.
Holland is very small. Why can't someone just bicycle over to Prance, Belgium or Germany to get their royalty-free hard drives?
No doubt they already do. With the advantage of not having to change their money...
If the vast majority of Americans think downloading music is ok, and only a minority of Americans think it is wrong, should we allow corporations to direct public policy concerning it? IOW, should something be criminalized when only a minority of Americans consider it wrong, morally or ethically?
The most obvious historical parallel is that of "piano rolls". One of the earliest forms of recorded music.
By stopping illegal downloading, people will have to PAY for the music they want to listen to.
It could just as easily result in people listening to less music...
So by the RIAA sueing downloaders, they are trying to discourage people from downloading. Thats why they aren't taking everyone to court for the $100,000 per song, or whatever the max is. They just want to scare everyone, make them pay a little. That way they will goto the store and buy music, and everyone gets their normal cut.
They can also only buy the music the store is selling. Which excludes "out of print" CDs, independent musicians, etc.
For the small minority of people that are downloading instead of buying it is more accurate to say that they are stealing from the RIAA*, which is OK in my book ;)
There are 3 general catagories of downloaders
A) Those who would never buy it (or cannot buy it).
B) Those who would (and could) otherwise buy CDs, DVDs, tapes, etc.
C) Those who buy because they have had access through downloading.
The RIAA, MPAA, etc. claim that B is the vast majority (and that C dosn't exist at all). What actually matters to their profits is the relative size of B & C. If C is larger P2P is actually a benefit to their business. The size of A (which quite likely is the majority) is utterly irrelevent here.
If the RIAA was suing kids to get settlements from parents and doing it at a high profit, then they have effectively established a business. It's predatory and extortionist, but it's a business.
Wonder if anyone has taken out a patent on this "business method".
It only takes 5 seconds of lawyer's time to sign the initial letter.
It dosn't take a lawyer to sign a letter or to take a pile of mailmerged summons forms to the local court.
If the client bites, then as someone else commented above, maybe an hour or two on the phone to explain to him why settling is good. This is not too expensive.
Where it starts getting expensive is if the defendent contests, even if they later settle out of court.
How right you are! Imagine, 10k lawsuits. Let's assume that each one of them settles for an average of $5k (a pittance compared to what they could get by copyright law, and I believe many of these settlements are much higher).
How much does it cost them to get that $5k? They are probably looking at a huge "profit margin". Whereas if they actually took the cases to court it would cost a lot of money to put together a case which had a chance of winning. If they won the case they might get more (assuming the defendent could actually afford the judgement) but that would have to be offset against their legal fees. As well as the legal fees for cases they lost and sucessful counter suits. With the big risk that if they didn't win substantially more cases than they lost every one they accused (including those who had originally settled "out of court") would want their "day in court".
1) Prove it was me. I don't mean showing some "IP logs". Any idiot can make up "logs". What real proof do they have?? (Hint: no proof, no case!)
Nor is a file name regex matched by machine. It isn't hard to fine examples where machines appear to be sending out lawyer's letters without any human oversight. Even if the filename and size was consitent with it containing something infringing without looking at it there is no way of knowing. If the RIAA were to download it there are 3 possibilities, that it is an infringing work, that it isn't (e.g. white noise) or that the RIAA themselves have infringed copyright.
For the RIAA to falsify evidence, however, is highly risky for them, their lawyers, etc. And given how many people really do pirate music, why the need to do so? These suits are fish in a barrel easy.
Then how is it possible for them to accuse people who cannot possibly be guilty? It's more likely that they are fundermentally incompetent at gathering evidence that actually trying to make it up. "Shooting fish in a barrel" still requires the gun to be pointed in the right direction.
Just out of curiosity, why would it be worthwhile to fight? If, as you say, a plaintiff only needs to set up a 51% chance of being right, and considering the difficulty of convincing a judge or jury that the RIAA's simply wrong, then why would the simple fact of innocence change anything?
Effectivly you are arguing that the majority of judges and jurists would believe the RIAA regardless of the evidence.
I would think that evidence would be the deciding factor, and that in the vast majority of cases, innocence or guilt would play only a small role in whether a defendant settled.
Thing is that the evidence is not in the RIAA's favour at all. They have accused people without computers, people who are dead, people who's computers do not run the software they allege was used.
In other words, as things stand the RIAA can do pretty much whatever it wants, up to and including falsifying evidence, with little chance of getting caught.
Only so long as they are allowed to.
2) I have several computers. How the heck would they know if I send them my (clean) backup computer instead of my primary??
Or a router. That being the only "computer" which ever used the IP address the complaint relates to.
Besides, do you know I run a business off that computer, and I have my own and other's personal email on it? I'm sure there are some laws that protect my (and other's) privacy, as well as my livelihood.
Another poster specifically mentioned that "discovery" has specific protections against being used for espionage. No doubt there are also protections against it being used to disrupt your business. Otherwise it would be routine for companies to sue their competitors on questionable grounds.
And, how are they going to get my computer? Ask me to send it to them? Or call the cops and have them bust my door down at 4am to retreive it?
The cops are not going to bust down your door unless it is a criminal matter. If this happened the RIAA would lose control over the case and you would get a free lawyer.
Oh- and I'd want to 'inspect' the computer that supposedly logged me. Plus all other computers that had access to that computer. For signs of tampering.
As well as exactly what the computer in question actually was doing and how likely it would be to generate a false positive.
Too bad no judge got pissed of by RIAA sending threatenign letters to little girls and dead grandmothers.
There isn't much any judge can do, until a child or (the estate of) a dead grandmother turns up in his or her courtroom.
But discovery doesn't extend to everything -- it's only really for things relevant to the case at hand.
How and why the plaintiff is accusing the defendent is very relevent.
So... how are you going to use their books to prove that you didn't do it?
Isn't it for the plaintiff to prove that the defendent "did it". If the plaintiff's "books" were to show things like random accusations their case(s) would collapse.
It's often used to require parties to give copies of all relevant documents to the other side. But it can also be used to inspect things, such as your computer.
If this mechanism can be used to allow plaintiff to examine computers belonging to the defendent it can just easily be used by the defendent to examine computers belonging to or used by the plaintiff.
Plus, they're a big industry association with a good reputation.
A good reputation on what planet?
On the whole, much as I dislike them, I'd generally be inclined to believe that RIAA's evidence was accurate, if the matter had progressed that far, unless some significant hole in it could be found.
The fact that they accused someone who didn't have a computer and was dead dosn't say a lot for the quality of their evidence.
On the other hand plenty of people in the US appear to accept complete fiction if it comes from the right people.
Doesn't your corner only throw in the towel if you're getting your ass kicked? From what I understand, the RIAA is settling nearly each of these cases out of court for a substantial profit. If that's the case, why would they ever throw in the towel?
In the vast majority of cases the RIAA have sucessfully bullied people into handing over money. If the RIAA are going to get their "ass kicked" it would most probably be by a judge with a case actually making it to court.
They just want to get all the OSS leaders together in one room, then.....
Masked gunmen, with AK47s and saying "God hates OSS" (in very bad Arabic) enter.
Thus helping out Bill's good friend, George, at the same time.
...And how many businesses have ethernet jacks out in their parking lots, or in the businesses next door, across the hall, or on adjacent floors?
With a socket the signal only goes to that socket. Once you start dealing with radio waves the signal goes all over the place, as well as possibly not going where you actually want it to go. Then to add to the fun moving objects, including people, can affect where the signal winds up.
DC is lost *quickly* in transmission.
Actually transmission line losses are dependent on voltage. The power lost is inversely proportional to the square of the voltage.
It is much easier to change the voltage with AC than DC. Even if you could easily step up DC electrolysis effects would rapidly corrode every connection.
All current starts out as DC, gets converted to AC for transmission, then in almost all devices gets converted back to DC
No it starts off as AC. From a generator running at either 3,000 or 3,600 RPM. An AC generator is simpler to build than a DC generator. It's also considerably easier to turn AC into DC than to turn DC into AC. Especially if you want AF AC.
If you put AC in PoE, you'll lose your data - as a data line, it will then be worthless.
Only if your AC is at a frequency which interferes with that being used to send the data. It's perfectly possible send multiple frequencies down the same cable.
PoE uses either the unused or the data pairs.
If you were to put power on all 4 pairs you should be able to take twice the power...
This works using the "unused" lines of CAT5. Sure, they're unused for 10/100 ethernet, but this will be much less useful once everyone is using Gigabit ethernet (which uses all 4 pairs).
That is one way of doing it. The other way is to use "phantom" power between the data pairs. The latter will work fine with gigabit.
...is that the current equipment out there is probably not actually delivering all of the wattage that the specification calls for. For example, a cable modem draws about 20 watts from the wall;
It uses 20 watts of 230VAC. Quite a bit of that will be heat generated by the power supply. Which is probably the simplist, cheapest circuit to convert the 230VAC into whatever voltage(s) the electronics run on.
even if it's delivering all of that to computers on the network with no losses... then it can only support one of these machines without drawing power from somewhere else.
A single cable can deliver 15.4w. If the PSU is feeding 16 cables then it needs to be capable of supplying around 250w...
Using PoE doesn't "magically" reduce the power usage to 12 watts. PoE can only provide 12 watts. You can't do a whole lot with 12 watts.
:)
It depends on your application. In plenty of situations 12 watts is a lot of power.
You'll also be stuck with low power flash memory for data storage, which is slow and expensive.
As opposed to using the fast network connection also available on the cable supplying the power
One late night when I was closing down, I thought to myself how silly it was to keep the CRT monitors powered on. This was before things automatically shut-off. So I went around to about 200 computers and shut-off the monitors. The next day I got in trouble by my manager...they didn't like my idea at all and didn't care about the heat or electricity savings. Apparently going around to turn them back on in the morning was too much work! I figure for about 6 years (before the advent of auto-shutoff CRTs and LCDs), this university ran > 1000 CRTs 24/7. Anybody care to guestimate how much electricity they could have saved over this time period?
Things arn't that simple. If the building needs heating it could cost you more money... There's also the risk that the frequent power cycling could reduce the life of the monitors. It might cost you more in maintainance and staff time than you save in electricity.