A sock puppet for TPB just because you disagree with me ? Riiiight. No, I have nothing to do with their site nor their operation. My opinions are my own.
I have to admit, I do not use TPB search often, but when I used it, it usually found what I was looking for. That's enough for me. Sure, there are better ones, but then again, one doesn't have to use the TPB one as you already stated. You don't even have to get your torrents from there.
If you regard tpb as simply a tracker and use sites such as mininova for your indexing purposes (and they do index tpb torrents), your point is moot.
There is a reason for 10 million peers on TPB, and it's not that it contains ONLY shitty stuff, ONLY viruses, and ONLY "fakes". They are fairly liberal in what they accept, and hell, it's their site to do with as they please. If you want to track a torrent, fast, it works. Plain and simple. That same ease of operation works for blackhats just the same. The h3q tracker is even "worse" in that it doesn't even have.torrent files... But that's ok, a tracker doesn't need em:-) Nothing is stopping you from making your own indexing site indexing TPBs content in a way you like with filtering the way you like and attracting the community you like. It's a nontrivial problem, though:)
I'm not advocating that the world be modeled after German governance, nor adopt all its laws. To suggest so is ridiculous. Nevertheless, to dismiss an analysis by Mr. Schaar out of hand just because he is from Germany, well-versed in the intricacies of data protection (it's his job), and an expert in the field (it's his job and he's well-recognized in that capacity), is equally patently ridiculous. The rights afforded to German citizens w.r.t. data protection are of a higher base level than those afforded to US citizens by law, as per right now. That is still beside the point, however, since it does not affect intellectual discourse about the issue, and neither can one seriously claim that Mr. Schaar has no idea what he is talking about and thus his testimony or advice not be heard. I'm also not advocating the German system of government to be the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It may not be the best in the world, it is definitely not the worst, but you brought up comparing it to other, "freer" (sic) systems, so that's what we arrived at.
Certainly, the German government screws up. Politicians have a knack for screwing up. Things get fixed, and hopefully the result will be better than what was before. I don't believe the US has a monopoly on that particular front (nor has that particular mechanism been working over there, recently, IMHO).
Yes, I have lived in the US for a while, though as you probably have guessed, I am native to Germany (and currently live there). As for where I get those numbers from... Voter participation is a matter of public record. A quick google-search gives us http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html for the US, http://www.bpb.de/wissen/C11SZM,,0,Wahlbeteiligung_nach_Altersgruppen_1953_%96_2002.html for Germany (on the federal level). Personally I consider it a duty of any citizen of my country to vote come election day, even if that means going out of your way to accomplish such; that's been my upbringing. I'm sad to say that over the past few decades the trend is declining a bit, but a 50% participation is unheard of. As for participation in the political process in everday life... I wouldn't compare vigorousness in general, since I can base it only on my surroundings, and that's, by definition, anecdotal. I know politics comes up a lot in conversation here and rarely have I seen talking-point conversations I've been privy to in the US (i.e. Democratic talking point vs. Republican talking point ad infinitum without any discussion taking place); not all of them were that way, of course, but a lot of political discourse was structured in that manner. In any case, political discourse is not dead here, and I assume it's not dead in the US, either (even in the College crowd, though more often than not, Steward and Colbert are cited rather than newspapers; I love those two guys for their satire is exquisite, though:)
Politics lives from controversy. The current US system during the primaries is a great theatralical production, but the often-touted "let's talk issues" is a talking point, nothing more. It's telling that politicians have to preface their statements about issues with a statement that they are about to talk about issues and not personal shortcomings of their opponents, rather than present a political platform they stand on and let that speak for them.
I find it interesting that you seem to consider low voter turnout a good thing, and the reason given for it. By the time that ballot would be cast, sure, a lot of "controversial" choices are weeded out (namely anybody not openly touting their Christianity, anybody without either huge coffers or the backing of one of the two (TWO!) parties, anybody the common Joe would not want to drink a beer with some time, etc). In any case, the turnouts for the primaries are not looking parti
Wait, you are seriously proposing that 2000-10000 users pose a "very little chance of getting sued for downloading the latest film from them" ? Are you somehow under the impression that your opponents have no savvy at all, have never heard about "private" trackers, and can't join them just the same as any other of those 2000-10000 people ? Do you know all those 2000-10000 people and their agendas personally ? Couldn't it be that those specific communities will be targeted SPECIFICALLY because they "consistently" get the newest releases first ?
If you consider "small" "private" trackers secure, I have a bridge to sell you.
This is a prime example of how FUD exists absent Microsoft in the picture:-)
A "private" tracker (a misnomer, most of those people would refer to as private trackers are not, in fact, private. It's easy to join -- especially if you have an account on another such "private" tracker with a decent "share ratio" you can point to. Virus-laden files can easily crop up there, anybody simply trusting downloads because it is on a "private" tracker is asking for trouble. While it may take a bit more work, poisoning such torrents would be incredibly more rewarding to a would-be attacker. Mistagging ? Well, I suppose tpb could increase its tagging capabilities, certainly. Then again, its torrents are not just indexed on their own site, but also on other, independent sites such as mininova and others -- all with their own tagging, popularity, and filtering systems.
Anonymity is not lost. It's usually an easy thing to cycle through multiple usernames, or even to build a network of sock puppet accounts -- contrary to what some administrators on such sites say, it is easy to evade detection with some care. I wouldn't liken TPB or the h3q tracker to a back alley, but rather the more mainstream all-purpose (including sinister) trackers by virtue of them being open. Combined with proper indexing and filtering systems, you can not only get high-quality long-lived torrents, but also a considerable number of peers (and more peers is virtually always better; given the choice between a torrent of a given file with 5 seeding peers and 5 "leechers" on a private tracker and a torrent of that same file with 500 seeding peers and 1500 leechers, I'd choose the latter and will usually get a better torrent-experience out of it (due to locality of peers, longevity of seeding, and total available bandwidth).
There is this inexplicable focus on "giving back what you take", which completely sidesteps the built-in mechanisms of BitTorrent to achieve a somewhat fair distribution of resources based on that exact metric -- sharing. Generally and given a higher-than-2 number of peers, those peers with more upstream bandwidth dedicated to a particular torrent swarm will also get a faster ingress speed (on the protocol level due to tit-for-tat and its associated choking/unchoking, on a higher level when initially seeding due to "superseeding" (i.e. tracking the proliferation of uploaded pieces to one peer through to other connected peers and giving that one peer a higher priority if successful, etc.). This looks only at single-torrent viability, of course, and does not track progress over multiple torrents, but given less-than-infinite upstream bandwidth of your peers, if you upload fast, you will get a fast download. True leechers never reinjecting any pieces into the swarm will still get the file, sure, but at a much slower speed due to constant choking. A certain number of sharing clients is required, of course, but generally the majority DOES have uploading enabled, the question is just whether they go up to a share ratio of > 1.0 after having downloaded the entire file. The seeding base usually increases over time until the death of the swarm approaches (which it does on private trackers, just the same).
You generally don't have a closed userbase. Even those invite-only trackers have a lot of churn. Sure, there are TRULY private trackers, but those do not have invitations either. A "private" tracker without churn will loose members due to attrition and eventually die due to not enough bandwidth or diskspace left to sustain itself. As for weeding out those who don't contribute... How ? Were I to want to join a private tracker and enjoy privileges beyond the "common" user, I could just download a torrent announce simulator (yes, they do exist). Set it to "seed" on a popular torrent on that tracker for a day or two and your ratio will be through the roof -- just from sending announces with faked up= and down= fields (trackers have no other way of tracking ratio, and this is EASILY fak
True enough, the first proper democracy would be considered the Weimar Republic (which ultimately buckled under the depression).
The state of a society is influenced by its history, but you cannot derive its state thereof; That would require a mighty crystal ball (i.e. in how history is interpreted and used in that society). There are of course some ways do gauge the general trends in a society (pollsters make their living doing that, and some even have a scientific foundation). I couldn't paint a picture of any society with just history alone; it sets the surroundings, it doesn't force an outcome.
Questions of war and defense, I can see your point there. The ingenuity of it is the war on terror, which is a war on its own populace as well as defense therefrom. That's where stuff is going awry, IMHO. If that is how DEMOCRACY should work, then it is not democracy we are talking about; freedom of speech, of the press, and a rule of law (not martial law) are prerequisites -- eroding any of those three reduces the resulting form of democracy. While civil rights may have sprung from such controversies (which you describe as reigning them in), the reverse suddenly is forgotten ? In any case, democratic tradition and values these are not.
One final point on your last sentence. Apathy is not distrust. You distrust your government. Many are just apathetic towards it, or have lost trust in the entire system of governance (which is not distrust of the current government, but of governance in general); Declining voter participation is a sign of this (and 50% is abysmal by any standard already), and the ease with which many Americans give up their civil liberties because their neighbour COULD, after all, be a TERRORIST trying to KILL THEM DEAD is astounding. I'm not going to quote Franklin, but he did have a point.
The "tracker" is not searchable at all. It's also not crappy at all -- it supports 10 million peers almost effortlessly, is build on OpenTracker (http://erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/ -- there are also some tpb tracker graphs over yonder if you look around a bit : http://opentracker.blog.h3q.com/mrtg/).
The SEARCHING part would be part of the PirateBay website, the one you get the.torrent files from. That's not a tracker (although some crappy PHP projects proclaim this to be so). It's searchable just fine, and most of it is not "shit". Of course, some elitist folks prefer "private" trackers (haha) with "enforced" ratios (bwahaha, especially if you know how BitTorrent works) and consider any file posted on such pure gold. Have fun with that.
Well, 10 million peers. One USER can constitute many peers in the BitTorrent world -- in fact, every torrent they download is counted as one peer. So if I download 10 files from PirateBay (or seed 10 thereof), suddenly I am 10 peers. (It's still impressive, but it's NOT 10 million users).
"suprnova" never did account for "40% of traffic online". BitTorrent did. Suprnova was just a popular BitTorrent site (among many), and its traffic was measurable in hundreds of megabits/s, not hundreds of gigabits/s
It is true that the allied forces shaped Germany post-1945. It has to be recognized that the leadership of the allied forces at that time did some brave and brilliant things in order to not just end the war, but also help (re)build a society integratable into the day-to-day workings of the world. However, please don't paint it with a broad-brushed Americanization; The system is sufficiently different from what the US is modeled on, and the US is not the only allied force. It's also folly to assume that guiding the installation of a new form of government will suddenly eradicate anything and everything that was before. Yes, Nazi Germany was bad, yes, a major economic crisis made that possible, but no, democracy existed in these parts before it, with tradition. It was subverted and used to topple those very traditions -- and one also has to recognize the skill and execution of the NSDAP in taking over the country -- not by force, but with participation. It's a lesson many would do good to learn.
As for your assumed assimilation of values not being gaugable -- bullshit. There have been two generations since that time -- I can talk to my grandmother about it, but my children will not have that luxury anymore. These are not the same people. You can gauge the current state of this society with the same tools you'd gauge other societies with (and the same caveats).
As for East Germany "accomodating" a totalitarian regime... Well, as you well noted, this is a product of the allied forces divying up the country. East Germany had no choice BUT to accomodate a totalitarian regime -- It was under the control of Russia, as agreed by the Allies. If you want to attribute the democratic values in Germany to the US, you have to attribute the totalitarian regime there to the exact same people -- there is not one without the other.
Anti-semitism still exists, and not "just" in evil Germany (if anything, the populace is a lot more sensitivized to that issue than it was 100 years ago). This, however, is not a German problem per se. Yes, 6 million jewish people were killed in the KZs, and that happened nowhere else. However, antisemitism was alive and "well" in the US just the same (and is, to this day -- as it is in Germany, in parts of the populace). And yes, especially in the years after the war, denial was a coping mechanism for many. Some still use it to this day. It is impossible for many people who lived at that time to admit and submit to the fact that they did let it happen or even actively supported the atrocities committed. And yes, there are nazi-supporters still, or rather neonazis -- even radical ones -- not that this is unique either (looking at white supremacist groups elsehwere). Yet again, Germans, in general, are sensitivized to this issue.
No. Even with the post-9/11 changes, the ability of the US government to track and spy on Americans is much more limited than that of the German government, and many of those powers expire or are being overturned.
Oh please. National Security Letters ? "Secret" NSA wiretaps ? Nixon ? CIA operations inside the US ? Patriot I and II ? Sure, there are countercurrents to these efforts (as they do in the EU and Germany as well -- the Vorratsdatenspeicherung is being challenged before the supreme court, as is the requirement of mobile phone providers to record personal data when selling phone cards), but we are still talking about the status quo, not some rosy future state where all that crap has been abolished. Expiring powers ? All it takes is another big scary explosion or another school massacre, or maybe a nice new Feindbild like Iran and suitcase nukes.
The past is past, the future is uncertain. You can't claim we'll be able to have this same conversation in 90 years with the same relative historic references. One should even consider the possibility that a repeated severe economic depression could propel the US into similar tactics and the EU having to bail them out (though nowadays we'd probably just nuke the pla
14 implicitly covers collected data, as it talks about storage. Though yes, 13 is about the collection thereof, while 14 goes to the meat of the matter when we talk about access by law enforcement.
I claimed police could ge the data under lawful order from a judge, not that it was impossible for them to get it. In retrospect (while this does apply to private entity data collection), that was too strong a statement. There are, however, restrictions and usage-bound rules. It has been a while since I studied the BDSG in more detail; the point still remains that 24'esque huge centralized government databases accessible by any police officer is just not happening and unlawful.
As for my statements not being about freedom -- some of them were, some of them weren't. You brought up democratic values & tradition. Those do not equate to freedom, and never did I claim that. You brought it up as a point of comparison, and I submitted that these values and traditions exist more in Germany currently than they do in the US; don't throw with stones when sitting in a glass house, as they say.
There is always a tradeoff between the values the stated, in any society. In the US that scale has long since tipped in favor of curtailed or eradicated freedoms for some semblance of security (though even that, objectively speaking, cannot be achieved through the measures taken thus far or even in that direction).
In your mind, should somebody bring up a valid point, do you dismiss it out of hand because he comes from somewhere you do not like ? That's foolishness -- especially when we're talking about the EU. You mentioned the Vorratsdatenspeicherung earlier in this thread; you do know, of course, that that law is simply the transformation of an EG-Richtlinie into local law, that is, the mandatory collection and storage of that information is mandated by EU law, not originated from local law; in light of that, the EU telling Schaar to take a hike would be somewhat counterproductive, seeing as how your suggestion of cleaning up its own house would render it in conflict with the EG-Richtlinien requiring Germany's local legislative to do exactly the opposite.
As for the US telling the EU to take a hike, yupp, they do. Likewise, the EU can tell the US to take a hike when it comes to passenger data or SWIFT transaction data. It doesn't often, but it can. Furthermore, the EU is not telling the US how to handle its internal affairs. The US is free to curtail the individual liberties afforded to its citizens however they damn well like, and to treat privacy as a token gesture devoid of any actual protection afforded to it. It doesn't need to tell Germany to take a hike, though it might do well to think about it every once in a while. (and no, the US is not telling the EU to take a hike but rather recognizes the difference in mandatory protection levels afforded, working on things like the US Safe Harbor Framework to facilitate business across its border).
A split Germany and a reunification thereof is no real challenge, eh ? Playing cards is fun, but really, the cards for the US hold some pretty horrid scenarios as well; one might argue some of them have already played out, and cynics might argue that only lip-service is being paid to democracy, anyway. Proclaiming a certain outcome as all-but-certain due to historic events of a region is foolishness, and hardly constructive; if you truly believe that history is doomed to repeat itself ad infinitum, what's the point in going forward ? Ah dammit, one of those philosophic questions without answers. Let's see what happens, and act when appropriate. That's all anybody can do (but most people don't).
Neither 14(2)(6) nor 14(2)(7) apply without cause ("Präventive Strafverfolgung" in and of itself is not allowed as per PolG, "Straftatprävention" has to meet a proportionality-test as it affects article 2 GG). If your privacy is eroded without cause (i.e. Verdachtsmoment), you always have the option to seek recourse under Art. 2 GG. "Verdachtsunabhängige Datenerhebung" (i.e. data collection without existing suspicion) is not covered by these 14(1) exceptions -- this limits the scope further. 14(2)(7) does not apply to highly personal information at all (and to other data in criminal cases, subject to the note outlined above). 14(2)(6) does, and is indeed the loophole so-called anti-terrorism laws can exploit -- but even this exception has to meet the burden of proportionality as it directly affects Grundrechte; violations thereof can lead to "Nichtverwertbarkeit", i.e. unusability for prosecutory purposes. Then again, the damage has possibly already been done at that point.
Whether other people trust Germans on issues of democracy, privacy, and freedom is not for Germans to decide, it's something Germans need to convince other people of. You aren't doing a good job, and I'm not convinced.
My point is that it does not really matter whether/you/ trust or agree with Germany's rule of law or society -- Germans do not have to convince you -- much like US Americans do not need to convince others that theirs is the best system. The people AFFECTED by it are the ones that need to be convinced of it, or annoyed enough to do something about it.
You make that exact point in reply to my riffing on the many faults of the US (and there is an equally long list of praises). You made the point that Germany is much worse than other, more free deomcracies. I took the liberty of assuming that you'd consider the US to be one of those, for it's an unfair comparison for the current state of a society and government to be measured against some lofty, unattainable ideal -- it's much more earthbound to use a specific instance thereof. Since you mentioned democratic tradition and democratic values, it seemed only fair to bring up the current state thereof in that particular country.
I do enjoy this back-and-forth with you in any case. While I suppose we'll not be erring on the same side of the coin any time soon (and much of this is a matter of opinion, in any case), it's been refreshing.
Well, for regular landlines it's quite natural that your CARRIER will know where to install your phoneline and where to send the bills -- anywhere in the world. The case you seem to be concerned about is prepaid cellphones requiring address information, though.
As for change of affiliation costing a fee, you seem to be correct for some states. I did not have to pay anything when I did it, since I'm in one of those states where it does not cost anything.
Sources would be the BDSG (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). Personal data of a special nature (religious affiliation is of that kind, specifically mentioned) gets even more protection. The BDSG's structure is akin to a default-deny firewall, i.e. everything is forbidden unless explicitly allowed -- and the handling of such data is limited. As for what's stopping them, you need to be a real cynic to ask that question, and can ask it in any locale, anywhere in the world. If you suspect foul play and can prove it, you have recourse.
As for not knowing about your rights having been violated, well, that is another one of those questions you can ask anywhere in the world. My assumption would be that if your data is (ab)used in an unlawful manner, there is probably a reason behind that. You will, sooner or later, learn that reason (be it due to a letter you get in the mail, a raid on your home, etc). A decent lawyer should then be able to trace back the unlawful action to the unlawful release or abuse of information and have recourse; certainly this is not optimal (since at that point the damage may already be done), though at least you do have recourse. This is quickly deteriorating into a discussion about the nature of right and wrong though, and how modern law enforcement, legistlation, politics, and society works or ought to work. Your original point in this discussion seems lost in the fray.
Well, your Nazi Germany references certainly seem pointed, since you bring it up as a matter of fact. I'm well aware that anything COULD happen, however, in my opinion it is not very likely to -- precisely because of our sordid history as a country. Yes, we do have laws to protect us, and that is the status quo. If you want to discuss fiction, you should say so.
Bringing up Pisa is fun. I won't comment on that particular study -- but I'll comment on your assumption that any score in such a comparative study would indicate knowledge about what happened in Germany in the last century. Every person out of school will have had that topic looked at from various angles, at length. It's a topic in history classes, foreign language classes, projects, politics classes, etc. in virtually every grade 5+. If you manage to miss all of that, you simply have not been in school -- and it's not sugarcoated. At least it wasn't in my region.
You assume that my knowledge of governmental powers is limited simply because you choose to disagree with my assessment of the situation w.r.t. data privacy laws ? Great argument ! Is everybody who disagrees with you less knowledgable than you ?
You might have misunderstood my use of Feindbild or I might have been unclear, but I was referring to your fascist regime reference, not to the current state of affairs. You are correct in that Germany has US troops stationed on US bases here, though quite honestly, if Germany WERE to want to wage war, those US troops would be overmatched by the Bundeswehr, easily (tiny advantage of having a mandatory draft) -- at least until a couple hundred k more troops were deployed stateside. Then again, war here would be madness, and not because of those troops being stationed nearby.
As for having something to prove; nope, Germany doesn't. Though to take the comparison to the US again (and this is really not a good comparison to make, looking at recent years), on the things you stated, it still "wins". Free speech exists, and is not limited to a "free speech zone" at political rallies. Critical remarks about antiterrorism tactics does not yield you visits by the FBI (and I don't
You should specify cellphone when you are talking about phones. Though in that you are correct, you need to leave your home address with your carrier. NOT the government though. The carrier needs to have this information on file, but there is no obligation to turn this information over to any government agency absent a judge-ordered legal subpoeana.
No, I do not need to pay a fee to leave that field blank. It is also quite common NOT to have that field filled out, after all, having it filled out means that your paycheck will miss a couple bucks in "church taxes". I could care less whether the Catholic church or the Protestant church consider me members or not. And no, the police does not have access to this information absent a judge-ordered lawful subpoena for a specific person -- and even that is stretching it, unless you are being investigated for tax fraud.
You found the Vorratsdatenspeicherung stuff; these are EU regulations that are transformed into local law, and yes, it's an abomination. But again, this information is collected by the carriers, cannot be accessed nilly willy by any law enforcement agency (and thus requires a juddg-ordered lawful subpoena), and, by law, is very tightly committed to that one purpose, i.e. it may not lawfully be used for any other purpose than access to law enforcement for subpoenas issued exclusively for high crimes. The RIAA/MPAA is not going to be able to use that information.
You should also know that this law is relatively new (less than a month) and already being challenged before our supreme court (in its starting stages). Furthermore, while phone carriers are already bound to its provisions, ISPs are not until mid-2009.
You are quite correct that data-hungry government databases are a bad idea (even IF you considered the government to be benign, the security implications would be astounding). You also seem to not consider the fact that this data is NOT stored by the government, not accessible by the government, and the data protection and privacy laws have an entire part (of three parts) dedicated to specific protection laws to be used against governmental agencies (which are quite a bit tougher even than those usable against in private relationships such as with corporations).
A new fascist government would indeed have immediate access to religious affiliation (as taxed) and census information (though that's anonymized). A new fascist government could also institute new laws for all data to be sent to them, a new fascist government could kill all its citizens and declare war on Mars, a new fascist government could use the nuke in Berlin to wipe out some drugdealers, and a new fascist government is fiction. It's not real. When you CHANGE the government, any government, it can institute a new rule of law, new provisions, new acts to curb your civil rights (Patriot act is a prime example, though there are many others in many other regions of the world). We have to evaluate the state as it is now and as it would be allowed under current laws enacted, not as it could be in some undefined future where you nudge the parameters into a horror scenario. It makes for good science fiction, but not for a proper comparable and comparative analysis.
As for needing to trust your government to obey its laws : The privacy laws are not useless, and the examples you cited mostly do not give the government direct access to the troves of data to be abused at will. Of course there will be abuse of data the government has. If and once that happens, you have strong legal recourse -- specifically through the German Grundgesetz (akin to the US constitution in scope) protecting primarily against government power, and through specific laws (such as those privacy laws). The system is not perfect, no system can ever be, though there are effective checks and balances -- so long as the populace cares about it enough.
You seem to love to compare current Germany to Nazi Germany. You seem to forget one vital piece of historic fact though -- Germans, generally,
Sorry, but no. Even the German government is bound by its privacy laws -- in fact, they privacy laws are even tougher for governmental data processing since they are backed by the Grundgesetz, i.e. our constitution (which technically is law to protect the individual from governmental action). East Germany doesn't exist as a state or a government anymore. The third reich does not exist anymore (but thanks for Godwin'ing this conversation). Those days did NOT have data protection laws, let alone computers they could be applied to. The Stasi does not exist anymore -- you seem to have missed the unification of Germany in 1990, and the abolition of those communist practices.
You misrepresent the state of data protection in Germany in quite fundamental ways, but then again, misrepresentation seems to be your aim. Phones need to be registered -- sure, with your carrier. The one who bills you. Same as the US and other countries -- and no other registration is necessary. The governmental law enforcement agencies can compel a carrier to give up information on a specific phone line (same as everywhere else) with law-based subpoenaes.
Websites need to provide an Impressum, that is correct (well, technically there are some limitations to that -- not every webpage is legally bound to have an Impressum, but all the ones doing ecommerce or representing companies or business interests do. There is plenty of anonymous free speech, and there is no requirement for free speech to be non-anonymous. Televisions are registered with the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale) for taxation of that unit (we pay for some basic television programming. Whether this is good or not is debatable, but that is not subject of this discussion). The privacy laws affect this governmental agency as well though -- data obtained through the GEZ may not lawfully be shared with other government agencies for any purpose. If the GEZ writes you a letter, you have a right to obtain information on how they got your information, and you can compel them to delete it. The German government cannot get all your connection information. I do not know where you get your facts from. Sure, law enforcement can subpoenae your records from your phone company (same as the US) with a judge's decision -- but they can't do that nilly willy, there needs to be (criminal) cause. As for registering my religion with the government : I can leave that field blank. It is used for taxation; while I abhor this practice, it's nevertheless not something that is problematic -- the US census asks the same question, and, as noted before, privacy laws even affect the taxation arm of the government. You have legal recourse should it be misused for anything other than taxation.
You spread FUD like a master, but back it up with nil. Germany has one of the toughest privacy laws around. You should be so lucky as to have these laws. The envy you display is palpable.
Germany is not perfect, far from it. It has its problems. Privacy laws as they stand now are not one of those problems (though Patriot-act like crap legislation proposals creeping in are).
Your original argument was "personal data" not "private data". There is a difference. It's not about hiding your personal data, it's your right to decide what happens to your personal data -- in particular whether it can be used for stuff other than the purpose you intended, legally.
Your address ISP Webhost IP + Timestamp GET/hot/brunette/doing/funky/stuff/naked/001.jpg --> Your address --> GET/hot/brunette/doing/funky/stuff/naked/001.jpg (and that is personal data since it identifies you as a person doing something.
You misunderstand the issue. If IP addresses are considered personal data, they can still be used during the connection and for tasks immediately related to servicing that connection -- akin to buying something with your credit card (which does not allow the store to store your personal information for purposes other than payment processing).
In Germany's current privacy and data protection laws, everybody has the right to decide what happens to their own personal information if it is being processed by computers. For instance, you can tell Amazon to delete all personally identifiable data they have about you, and they have to comply -- and you can ask any company that has personal data about you (such as your phone number, your address, etc. in telemarketing and plain old snailmail spam) to tell you where they got it from, what basis they have for keeping it, and to delete it from their databases. If they do not comply, you have a strong legal standing to compel them to give out this information (Mr. Sharr, who is quoted here, is the national representative for data protection, though there are more local ones as well -- if they suspect foul play, they/can/ raid businesses, and do so if warranted.
The legislators know very well what they are talking about. The scope of "personal data" is narrowly confined (anything that can be used to identify you or is saved in relation to data that can personally identify you or anything that could automatically be tied to you by a third party; IP addresses fall into the latter category; while a webhost will not be able to do the IP -> Name&Address resolution, the user's ISP could -- therefore the IP address is personally identifiable to a specific party through a third party and thus personal data protected under stringent data protection laws. This has been tested in court (the German DoJ, for instance, is no longer allowed to log IP addresses on their web servers by court order).
These laws don't "just" exist to combat the ad industry, but rather are an extension of one of our constitutions human rights, that is, the right to free self expression; this includes, under German law, the right to decide what happens to your data. There are, of course, certain restrictions (for instance, the DMV can process this data, as can other governmental bodies -- IF SPECIFICALLY AFFORDED THAT RIGHT BY LAW -- for their (narrow) purposes. You can waive this right (i.e. you can give your address to Reader's Digest for them to spam you with as they see fit -- if you give the permission (which is always revocable), they can do with your data whatever you allowed them to; Sweepstakes, for instance, are often designed to gather this data and get permission).
As for implementation thereof : I don't see a problem. The ip address can still be used to commmunicate same as before; it just can't be logged indefinitely nor used for purposes other than the intended one (i.e. connection establishment, communication, teardown vs. ad tracking) UNLESS the person in question has given permission. What this boils down to in Apache is adding mod_removeip. If no other information personally identifies your visitors (even through a third party), you can now log this data and do with it as you wish. Another possibility would be pseudonymizing the IP addresses with one-way hashes (though some care will have to be taken that this is not reversible easily, which may become a problem since there are only 32 bits in an IP address and thus bruteforcing is a viable tactic).
Nothing needs to be implemented to "check" whether the IP is stored. If you have a reasonable assumption that your contract partner is screwing you over, you can lodge a complaint with the Landesdatenschutzbeauftragter or Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragter (Mr. Scharr in this case), who will investigate -- same as when you suspect they are selling your address information illegally or engage in other illegal activites.
I for one am glad that there are some privacy advocates who thing about this s
... they could just stop blogging if they are not getting paid for it and really want to be. Nobody would miss them, especially not those bloggers already making money. This self-important blabbering is great blog-content, but entirely uninteresting -- much like most blogs. What did your dog do today ?
If only it were news. This "limit" has been hit before repeatedly, even on live realms, though probably earlier on public test realms (manual : 1.) get 55k gold 2.) transfer your character to the public test realm 4 times 3.) confirmation ! (alternatively, take 8 characters with 25k, or 16 with 12k, etc.). However, even on live realms this limit is regularly hit by raiding guilds' guild banks. The premier guild on my server has around 450k gold on 3 banking characters and the guildbank. Another raiding guild there has 150k in pure gold assets. Some players have been "playing" the auction house for years and have repeatedly hit this limit.
This might have been news 2 years ago, it sure isn't, now. It ain't the limit either, since you can have 10 characters per realm (so 2.14 million gold is the cap per realm) and 50 characters total (so 10.5 million gold is the limit per player). Good luck with that.
No, that is not the only reason. It is the only reason you might conceive of, but hey, the world is bigger than that.
The issue isn't really whether the big bad MPAA gets its content copied (in that case the site might be named piratempaabay.org or some such), but rather the nature of copyright and its relation to filesharing itself. There is a difference.
I suggest you don't look at it as a lost sale, but rather free advertisement. Of course it's not in line with what you would want ideally (folks buying it from the get-go), but you have to (and probably do) realize that folks WILL pirate your stuff, no matter what you do or what you think you are entitled to. It's been happening for 25 years. People with disposable income will still support you, people who download but never support exist, and nothing is ever going to change that. Once you accept that this is the cost of doing business in the "IP" world and integrate it into your plans (either as losses (though that would be folly, as any reasonable-minded person would be able to see -- not even close to every copy made would equal a sale if that copy had not been made), as free (but possibly unwanted) advertisement, or as an indicator of popularity), you will be less bitter and have a more solid understanding of your business model. (You don't need to support this piracy, you can even try to trip the pirates up, but you damn well better not make your paying customers suffer with those measures; I have never bought a Steam game, will never buy a Steam game, and will in all likelihood never play a Steam game for the simple fact that it treats me like crap as a paying customer and the gaming experience is much improved in a cracked version. Serial numbers on software that has no legitimate use for GUIDs (for instance, MS Windows, MS Office, lots of Shareware apps, as opposed to, say, Unreal Tournament, World of Warcraft, etc (which use this for online play player disambiguation) just make me irate and give me the mindset of "hey, this box is probably gonna accept something different than is on this "certificate", let's try a keygen instead"; I'll be damned if they get to track me personally or what shops I like to frequent through opaque serials). There is also no good reason to require a CD in the drive when I play a game that is installed on the harddrive. None whatsoever (and if need be, daemontools drives that point home succinctly, but I REALLY should not have to do that).
Just focus on the user experience, try to "protect" your content in ways that do NOT inconvenience your paying customers in any way, and if this does not get you customer support, well, not every company is meant to thrive, not every piece of content has a right to success. For some reason all those bigwig companies still rake in gazillions even though the evil, evil pirates take it ALL away from them. Indie artists still sell CDs and make a living at it.
PirateBay has a very different understanding of IP than you do. IMHO it's a valid one, even though that may be unpopular in certain circles. (and do not forget -- if there were no PirateBay, other filesharing networks would gladly and easily fill that void; if there was no filesharing (fat chance), sneakernet sharing would have a comeback. People will still do it, and not feel bad about it. This is not going to change, and it has never changed. Adapt to that, or, as they say, die (in the marketplace).
Pay me to do it and I'll stop working on stuff I care about (rotatint xterms on a cube) and start caring about what you care about (Quickbooks on Wine). Don't want to ? Then don't knock my pastime. It's not to impress the suits, it's to impress myself and possibly some of my peers. I could care less about what a random Stef thought about it.
It doesn't cost them a thing. The terms you might want to google for are Domain Tasting and Domain Kiting. It's sad that there are terms for this practice, and that it happens enough for me to know them.
[quote]No credit card information was stolen. It's impossible.[/quote]
Interesting that you note something entirely possible to be impossible. CC information can be stolen. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you come to believe that your system is so secure that it's impossible, you probably haven't understood exactly what security, in the context of electronic commerce, means.
[quote]read: is illegal to keep[/quote]
Interesting legal analysis. Patently false, but hey, who's counting. All you might possibly do is to breach a contract with your payment processor or some other private entity, but it's certainly not illegal to store 16 digit numbers on servers of "sites". It's not too bright and certainly not recommended (nor standard practice), but it won't land you in jail.
Even payment processors have lousy security at times, and credit cards in general do. That's just a nitpick though:)
As for the OP, he truly does seem to embellish the truth a little; then again, you seem to want to play it down a little too much, as well. Contact information alone is already a valuable privacy asset, especially considering the nature of the services you are offering. Not everybody wants their name and contact info be associated with that kind of thing; Sure they'll be more careful about being burned/next time/ (possibly by switching to usenet), but really, these privacy issues are something you really should have an interest in; it's good for business, and ethical to boot. Then again, we/are/ talking about the porn industry here.
112 is one of the Emergency numbers in Germany (specifically the Fire Brigade and Emergency Medical Services). 110 could also work, it's the Emergency number for the police.
Hrrm. I rather enjoyed Buffy Seasons 4 and 6, though 5 and 7 were not as good as 2 and 3 (still better than 1, IMO). In any case, it was always better than its competition at the time. Angel is a different show, and it kept fresh enough for me to enjoy it through to its end. Personally I'd love this show to be another 7-season piece. It would be something to look forward to every week -- best in the time when Doctor Who is not on, so one gets year-round coverage of great stuff:)
While Serenity was a tad different than Firefly, I wouldn't dismiss it as bad by any means... but it is probably best viewed as a separate thing from the TV show...
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A sock puppet for TPB just because you disagree with me ? Riiiight. No, I have nothing to do with their site nor their operation. My opinions are my own.
.torrent files ... But that's ok, a tracker doesn't need em :-) :)
I have to admit, I do not use TPB search often, but when I used it, it usually found what I was looking for. That's enough for me. Sure, there are better ones, but then again, one doesn't have to use the TPB one as you already stated. You don't even have to get your torrents from there.
If you regard tpb as simply a tracker and use sites such as mininova for your indexing purposes (and they do index tpb torrents), your point is moot.
There is a reason for 10 million peers on TPB, and it's not that it contains ONLY shitty stuff, ONLY viruses, and ONLY "fakes". They are fairly liberal in what they accept, and hell, it's their site to do with as they please. If you want to track a torrent, fast, it works. Plain and simple. That same ease of operation works for blackhats just the same. The h3q tracker is even "worse" in that it doesn't even have
Nothing is stopping you from making your own indexing site indexing TPBs content in a way you like with filtering the way you like and attracting the community you like. It's a nontrivial problem, though
I'm not advocating that the world be modeled after German governance, nor adopt all its laws. To suggest so is ridiculous. Nevertheless, to dismiss an analysis by Mr. Schaar out of hand just because he is from Germany, well-versed in the intricacies of data protection (it's his job), and an expert in the field (it's his job and he's well-recognized in that capacity), is equally patently ridiculous. The rights afforded to German citizens w.r.t. data protection are of a higher base level than those afforded to US citizens by law, as per right now. That is still beside the point, however, since it does not affect intellectual discourse about the issue, and neither can one seriously claim that Mr. Schaar has no idea what he is talking about and thus his testimony or advice not be heard.
... Voter participation is a matter of public record. A quick google-search gives us http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html for the US, http://www.bpb.de/wissen/C11SZM,,0,Wahlbeteiligung_nach_Altersgruppen_1953_%96_2002.html for Germany (on the federal level). Personally I consider it a duty of any citizen of my country to vote come election day, even if that means going out of your way to accomplish such; that's been my upbringing. I'm sad to say that over the past few decades the trend is declining a bit, but a 50% participation is unheard of. ... I wouldn't compare vigorousness in general, since I can base it only on my surroundings, and that's, by definition, anecdotal. I know politics comes up a lot in conversation here and rarely have I seen talking-point conversations I've been privy to in the US (i.e. Democratic talking point vs. Republican talking point ad infinitum without any discussion taking place); not all of them were that way, of course, but a lot of political discourse was structured in that manner. In any case, political discourse is not dead here, and I assume it's not dead in the US, either (even in the College crowd, though more often than not, Steward and Colbert are cited rather than newspapers; I love those two guys for their satire is exquisite, though :)
I'm also not advocating the German system of government to be the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It may not be the best in the world, it is definitely not the worst, but you brought up comparing it to other, "freer" (sic) systems, so that's what we arrived at.
Certainly, the German government screws up. Politicians have a knack for screwing up. Things get fixed, and hopefully the result will be better than what was before. I don't believe the US has a monopoly on that particular front (nor has that particular mechanism been working over there, recently, IMHO).
Yes, I have lived in the US for a while, though as you probably have guessed, I am native to Germany (and currently live there). As for where I get those numbers from
As for participation in the political process in everday life
Politics lives from controversy. The current US system during the primaries is a great theatralical production, but the often-touted "let's talk issues" is a talking point, nothing more. It's telling that politicians have to preface their statements about issues with a statement that they are about to talk about issues and not personal shortcomings of their opponents, rather than present a political platform they stand on and let that speak for them.
I find it interesting that you seem to consider low voter turnout a good thing, and the reason given for it. By the time that ballot would be cast, sure, a lot of "controversial" choices are weeded out (namely anybody not openly touting their Christianity, anybody without either huge coffers or the backing of one of the two (TWO!) parties, anybody the common Joe would not want to drink a beer with some time, etc).
In any case, the turnouts for the primaries are not looking parti
Wait, you are seriously proposing that 2000-10000 users pose a "very little chance of getting sued for downloading the latest film from them" ? Are you somehow under the impression that your opponents have no savvy at all, have never heard about "private" trackers, and can't join them just the same as any other of those 2000-10000 people ? Do you know all those 2000-10000 people and their agendas personally ? Couldn't it be that those specific communities will be targeted SPECIFICALLY because they "consistently" get the newest releases first ?
If you consider "small" "private" trackers secure, I have a bridge to sell you.
This is a prime example of how FUD exists absent Microsoft in the picture :-)
... How ? Were I to want to join a private tracker and enjoy privileges beyond the "common" user, I could just download a torrent announce simulator (yes, they do exist). Set it to "seed" on a popular torrent on that tracker for a day or two and your ratio will be through the roof -- just from sending announces with faked up= and down= fields (trackers have no other way of tracking ratio, and this is EASILY fak
A "private" tracker (a misnomer, most of those people would refer to as private trackers are not, in fact, private. It's easy to join -- especially if you have an account on another such "private" tracker with a decent "share ratio" you can point to.
Virus-laden files can easily crop up there, anybody simply trusting downloads because it is on a "private" tracker is asking for trouble. While it may take a bit more work, poisoning such torrents would be incredibly more rewarding to a would-be attacker.
Mistagging ? Well, I suppose tpb could increase its tagging capabilities, certainly. Then again, its torrents are not just indexed on their own site, but also on other, independent sites such as mininova and others -- all with their own tagging, popularity, and filtering systems.
Anonymity is not lost. It's usually an easy thing to cycle through multiple usernames, or even to build a network of sock puppet accounts -- contrary to what some administrators on such sites say, it is easy to evade detection with some care. I wouldn't liken TPB or the h3q tracker to a back alley, but rather the more mainstream all-purpose (including sinister) trackers by virtue of them being open. Combined with proper indexing and filtering systems, you can not only get high-quality long-lived torrents, but also a considerable number of peers (and more peers is virtually always better; given the choice between a torrent of a given file with 5 seeding peers and 5 "leechers" on a private tracker and a torrent of that same file with 500 seeding peers and 1500 leechers, I'd choose the latter and will usually get a better torrent-experience out of it (due to locality of peers, longevity of seeding, and total available bandwidth).
There is this inexplicable focus on "giving back what you take", which completely sidesteps the built-in mechanisms of BitTorrent to achieve a somewhat fair distribution of resources based on that exact metric -- sharing. Generally and given a higher-than-2 number of peers, those peers with more upstream bandwidth dedicated to a particular torrent swarm will also get a faster ingress speed (on the protocol level due to tit-for-tat and its associated choking/unchoking, on a higher level when initially seeding due to "superseeding" (i.e. tracking the proliferation of uploaded pieces to one peer through to other connected peers and giving that one peer a higher priority if successful, etc.). This looks only at single-torrent viability, of course, and does not track progress over multiple torrents, but given less-than-infinite upstream bandwidth of your peers, if you upload fast, you will get a fast download. True leechers never reinjecting any pieces into the swarm will still get the file, sure, but at a much slower speed due to constant choking. A certain number of sharing clients is required, of course, but generally the majority DOES have uploading enabled, the question is just whether they go up to a share ratio of > 1.0 after having downloaded the entire file. The seeding base usually increases over time until the death of the swarm approaches (which it does on private trackers, just the same).
You generally don't have a closed userbase. Even those invite-only trackers have a lot of churn. Sure, there are TRULY private trackers, but those do not have invitations either. A "private" tracker without churn will loose members due to attrition and eventually die due to not enough bandwidth or diskspace left to sustain itself.
As for weeding out those who don't contribute
True enough, the first proper democracy would be considered the Weimar Republic (which ultimately buckled under the depression).
The state of a society is influenced by its history, but you cannot derive its state thereof; That would require a mighty crystal ball (i.e. in how history is interpreted and used in that society). There are of course some ways do gauge the general trends in a society (pollsters make their living doing that, and some even have a scientific foundation). I couldn't paint a picture of any society with just history alone; it sets the surroundings, it doesn't force an outcome.
Questions of war and defense, I can see your point there. The ingenuity of it is the war on terror, which is a war on its own populace as well as defense therefrom. That's where stuff is going awry, IMHO. If that is how DEMOCRACY should work, then it is not democracy we are talking about; freedom of speech, of the press, and a rule of law (not martial law) are prerequisites -- eroding any of those three reduces the resulting form of democracy. While civil rights may have sprung from such controversies (which you describe as reigning them in), the reverse suddenly is forgotten ? In any case, democratic tradition and values these are not.
One final point on your last sentence. Apathy is not distrust. You distrust your government. Many are just apathetic towards it, or have lost trust in the entire system of governance (which is not distrust of the current government, but of governance in general); Declining voter participation is a sign of this (and 50% is abysmal by any standard already), and the ease with which many Americans give up their civil liberties because their neighbour COULD, after all, be a TERRORIST trying to KILL THEM DEAD is astounding. I'm not going to quote Franklin, but he did have a point.
The "tracker" is not searchable at all. It's also not crappy at all -- it supports 10 million peers almost effortlessly, is build on OpenTracker (http://erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/ -- there are also some tpb tracker graphs over yonder if you look around a bit : http://opentracker.blog.h3q.com/mrtg/).
.torrent files from. That's not a tracker (although some crappy PHP projects proclaim this to be so). It's searchable just fine, and most of it is not "shit". Of course, some elitist folks prefer "private" trackers (haha) with "enforced" ratios (bwahaha, especially if you know how BitTorrent works) and consider any file posted on such pure gold. Have fun with that.
The SEARCHING part would be part of the PirateBay website, the one you get the
Well, 10 million peers. One USER can constitute many peers in the BitTorrent world -- in fact, every torrent they download is counted as one peer. So if I download 10 files from PirateBay (or seed 10 thereof), suddenly I am 10 peers.
(It's still impressive, but it's NOT 10 million users).
"suprnova" never did account for "40% of traffic online". BitTorrent did. Suprnova was just a popular BitTorrent site (among many), and its traffic was measurable in hundreds of megabits/s, not hundreds of gigabits/s
It is true that the allied forces shaped Germany post-1945. It has to be recognized that the leadership of the allied forces at that time did some brave and brilliant things in order to not just end the war, but also help (re)build a society integratable into the day-to-day workings of the world. However, please don't paint it with a broad-brushed Americanization; The system is sufficiently different from what the US is modeled on, and the US is not the only allied force. It's also folly to assume that guiding the installation of a new form of government will suddenly eradicate anything and everything that was before. Yes, Nazi Germany was bad, yes, a major economic crisis made that possible, but no, democracy existed in these parts before it, with tradition. It was subverted and used to topple those very traditions -- and one also has to recognize the skill and execution of the NSDAP in taking over the country -- not by force, but with participation. It's a lesson many would do good to learn.
... Well, as you well noted, this is a product of the allied forces divying up the country. East Germany had no choice BUT to accomodate a totalitarian regime -- It was under the control of Russia, as agreed by the Allies. If you want to attribute the democratic values in Germany to the US, you have to attribute the totalitarian regime there to the exact same people -- there is not one without the other.
As for your assumed assimilation of values not being gaugable -- bullshit. There have been two generations since that time -- I can talk to my grandmother about it, but my children will not have that luxury anymore. These are not the same people. You can gauge the current state of this society with the same tools you'd gauge other societies with (and the same caveats).
As for East Germany "accomodating" a totalitarian regime
Anti-semitism still exists, and not "just" in evil Germany (if anything, the populace is a lot more sensitivized to that issue than it was 100 years ago). This, however, is not a German problem per se. Yes, 6 million jewish people were killed in the KZs, and that happened nowhere else. However, antisemitism was alive and "well" in the US just the same (and is, to this day -- as it is in Germany, in parts of the populace).
And yes, especially in the years after the war, denial was a coping mechanism for many. Some still use it to this day. It is impossible for many people who lived at that time to admit and submit to the fact that they did let it happen or even actively supported the atrocities committed. And yes, there are nazi-supporters still, or rather neonazis -- even radical ones -- not that this is unique either (looking at white supremacist groups elsehwere). Yet again, Germans, in general, are sensitivized to this issue.
No. Even with the post-9/11 changes, the ability of the US government to track and spy on Americans is much more limited than that of the German government, and many of those powers expire or are being overturned.
Oh please. National Security Letters ? "Secret" NSA wiretaps ? Nixon ? CIA operations inside the US ? Patriot I and II ? Sure, there are countercurrents to these efforts (as they do in the EU and Germany as well -- the Vorratsdatenspeicherung is being challenged before the supreme court, as is the requirement of mobile phone providers to record personal data when selling phone cards), but we are still talking about the status quo, not some rosy future state where all that crap has been abolished.
Expiring powers ? All it takes is another big scary explosion or another school massacre, or maybe a nice new Feindbild like Iran and suitcase nukes.
The past is past, the future is uncertain. You can't claim we'll be able to have this same conversation in 90 years with the same relative historic references. One should even consider the possibility that a repeated severe economic depression could propel the US into similar tactics and the EU having to bail them out (though nowadays we'd probably just nuke the pla
14 implicitly covers collected data, as it talks about storage. Though yes, 13 is about the collection thereof, while 14 goes to the meat of the matter when we talk about access by law enforcement.
I claimed police could ge the data under lawful order from a judge, not that it was impossible for them to get it. In retrospect (while this does apply to private entity data collection), that was too strong a statement. There are, however, restrictions and usage-bound rules. It has been a while since I studied the BDSG in more detail; the point still remains that 24'esque huge centralized government databases accessible by any police officer is just not happening and unlawful.
As for my statements not being about freedom -- some of them were, some of them weren't. You brought up democratic values & tradition. Those do not equate to freedom, and never did I claim that. You brought it up as a point of comparison, and I submitted that these values and traditions exist more in Germany currently than they do in the US; don't throw with stones when sitting in a glass house, as they say.
There is always a tradeoff between the values the stated, in any society. In the US that scale has long since tipped in favor of curtailed or eradicated freedoms for some semblance of security (though even that, objectively speaking, cannot be achieved through the measures taken thus far or even in that direction).
In your mind, should somebody bring up a valid point, do you dismiss it out of hand because he comes from somewhere you do not like ? That's foolishness -- especially when we're talking about the EU. You mentioned the Vorratsdatenspeicherung earlier in this thread; you do know, of course, that that law is simply the transformation of an EG-Richtlinie into local law, that is, the mandatory collection and storage of that information is mandated by EU law, not originated from local law; in light of that, the EU telling Schaar to take a hike would be somewhat counterproductive, seeing as how your suggestion of cleaning up its own house would render it in conflict with the EG-Richtlinien requiring Germany's local legislative to do exactly the opposite.
As for the US telling the EU to take a hike, yupp, they do. Likewise, the EU can tell the US to take a hike when it comes to passenger data or SWIFT transaction data. It doesn't often, but it can.
Furthermore, the EU is not telling the US how to handle its internal affairs. The US is free to curtail the individual liberties afforded to its citizens however they damn well like, and to treat privacy as a token gesture devoid of any actual protection afforded to it. It doesn't need to tell Germany to take a hike, though it might do well to think about it every once in a while. (and no, the US is not telling the EU to take a hike but rather recognizes the difference in mandatory protection levels afforded, working on things like the US Safe Harbor Framework to facilitate business across its border).
A split Germany and a reunification thereof is no real challenge, eh ? Playing cards is fun, but really, the cards for the US hold some pretty horrid scenarios as well; one might argue some of them have already played out, and cynics might argue that only lip-service is being paid to democracy, anyway. Proclaiming a certain outcome as all-but-certain due to historic events of a region is foolishness, and hardly constructive; if you truly believe that history is doomed to repeat itself ad infinitum, what's the point in going forward ? Ah dammit, one of those philosophic questions without answers.
Let's see what happens, and act when appropriate. That's all anybody can do (but most people don't).
Neither 14(2)(6) nor 14(2)(7) apply without cause ("Präventive Strafverfolgung" in and of itself is not allowed as per PolG, "Straftatprävention" has to meet a proportionality-test as it affects article 2 GG). If your privacy is eroded without cause (i.e. Verdachtsmoment), you always have the option to seek recourse under Art. 2 GG. "Verdachtsunabhängige Datenerhebung" (i.e. data collection without existing suspicion) is not covered by these 14(1) exceptions -- this limits the scope further. 14(2)(7) does not apply to highly personal information at all (and to other data in criminal cases, subject to the note outlined above). 14(2)(6) does, and is indeed the loophole so-called anti-terrorism laws can exploit -- but even this exception has to meet the burden of proportionality as it directly affects Grundrechte; violations thereof can lead to "Nichtverwertbarkeit", i.e. unusability for prosecutory purposes. Then again, the damage has possibly already been done at that point.
/you/ trust or agree with Germany's rule of law or society -- Germans do not have to convince you -- much like US Americans do not need to convince others that theirs is the best system. The people AFFECTED by it are the ones that need to be convinced of it, or annoyed enough to do something about it.
Whether other people trust Germans on issues of democracy, privacy, and freedom is not for Germans to decide, it's something Germans need to convince other people of. You aren't doing a good job, and I'm not convinced.
My point is that it does not really matter whether
You make that exact point in reply to my riffing on the many faults of the US (and there is an equally long list of praises). You made the point that Germany is much worse than other, more free deomcracies. I took the liberty of assuming that you'd consider the US to be one of those, for it's an unfair comparison for the current state of a society and government to be measured against some lofty, unattainable ideal -- it's much more earthbound to use a specific instance thereof. Since you mentioned democratic tradition and democratic values, it seemed only fair to bring up the current state thereof in that particular country.
I do enjoy this back-and-forth with you in any case. While I suppose we'll not be erring on the same side of the coin any time soon (and much of this is a matter of opinion, in any case), it's been refreshing.
Well, for regular landlines it's quite natural that your CARRIER will know where to install your phoneline and where to send the bills -- anywhere in the world. The case you seem to be concerned about is prepaid cellphones requiring address information, though.
As for change of affiliation costing a fee, you seem to be correct for some states. I did not have to pay anything when I did it, since I'm in one of those states where it does not cost anything.
Sources would be the BDSG (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). Personal data of a special nature (religious affiliation is of that kind, specifically mentioned) gets even more protection. The BDSG's structure is akin to a default-deny firewall, i.e. everything is forbidden unless explicitly allowed -- and the handling of such data is limited.
As for what's stopping them, you need to be a real cynic to ask that question, and can ask it in any locale, anywhere in the world. If you suspect foul play and can prove it, you have recourse.
As for not knowing about your rights having been violated, well, that is another one of those questions you can ask anywhere in the world. My assumption would be that if your data is (ab)used in an unlawful manner, there is probably a reason behind that. You will, sooner or later, learn that reason (be it due to a letter you get in the mail, a raid on your home, etc). A decent lawyer should then be able to trace back the unlawful action to the unlawful release or abuse of information and have recourse; certainly this is not optimal (since at that point the damage may already be done), though at least you do have recourse. This is quickly deteriorating into a discussion about the nature of right and wrong though, and how modern law enforcement, legistlation, politics, and society works or ought to work. Your original point in this discussion seems lost in the fray.
Well, your Nazi Germany references certainly seem pointed, since you bring it up as a matter of fact. I'm well aware that anything COULD happen, however, in my opinion it is not very likely to -- precisely because of our sordid history as a country. Yes, we do have laws to protect us, and that is the status quo. If you want to discuss fiction, you should say so.
Bringing up Pisa is fun. I won't comment on that particular study -- but I'll comment on your assumption that any score in such a comparative study would indicate knowledge about what happened in Germany in the last century. Every person out of school will have had that topic looked at from various angles, at length. It's a topic in history classes, foreign language classes, projects, politics classes, etc. in virtually every grade 5+. If you manage to miss all of that, you simply have not been in school -- and it's not sugarcoated. At least it wasn't in my region.
You assume that my knowledge of governmental powers is limited simply because you choose to disagree with my assessment of the situation w.r.t. data privacy laws ? Great argument ! Is everybody who disagrees with you less knowledgable than you ?
You might have misunderstood my use of Feindbild or I might have been unclear, but I was referring to your fascist regime reference, not to the current state of affairs. You are correct
in that Germany has US troops stationed on US bases here, though quite honestly, if Germany WERE
to want to wage war, those US troops would be overmatched by the Bundeswehr, easily (tiny advantage of having a mandatory draft) -- at least until a couple hundred k more troops were deployed stateside. Then again, war here would be madness, and not because of those troops being stationed nearby.
As for having something to prove; nope, Germany doesn't. Though to take the comparison to the US again (and this is really not a good comparison to make, looking at recent years), on the things you stated, it still "wins". Free speech exists, and is not limited to a "free speech zone" at political rallies. Critical remarks about antiterrorism tactics does not yield you visits by the FBI (and I don't
You should specify cellphone when you are talking about phones. Though in that you are correct, you need to leave your home address with your carrier. NOT the government though. The carrier needs to have this information on file, but there is no obligation to turn this information over to any government agency absent a judge-ordered legal subpoeana.
No, I do not need to pay a fee to leave that field blank. It is also quite common NOT to have that field filled out, after all, having it filled out means that your paycheck will miss a couple bucks in "church taxes". I could care less whether the Catholic church or the Protestant church consider me members or not. And no, the police does not have access to this information absent a judge-ordered lawful subpoena for a specific person -- and even that is stretching it, unless you are being investigated for tax fraud.
You found the Vorratsdatenspeicherung stuff; these are EU regulations that are transformed into local law, and yes, it's an abomination. But again, this information is collected by the carriers, cannot be accessed nilly willy by any law enforcement agency (and thus requires a juddg-ordered lawful subpoena), and, by law, is very tightly committed to that one purpose, i.e. it may not lawfully be used for any other purpose than access to law enforcement for subpoenas issued exclusively for high crimes. The RIAA/MPAA is not going to be able to use that information.
You should also know that this law is relatively new (less than a month) and already being challenged before our supreme court (in its starting stages). Furthermore, while phone carriers are already bound to its provisions, ISPs are not until mid-2009.
You are quite correct that data-hungry government databases are a bad idea (even IF you considered the government to be benign, the security implications would be astounding). You also seem to not consider the fact that this data is NOT stored by the government, not accessible by the government, and the data protection and privacy laws have an entire part (of three parts) dedicated to specific protection laws to be used against governmental agencies (which are quite a bit tougher even than those usable against in private relationships such as with corporations).
A new fascist government would indeed have immediate access to religious affiliation (as taxed) and census information (though that's anonymized). A new fascist government could also institute new laws for all data to be sent to them, a new fascist government could kill all its citizens and declare war on Mars, a new fascist government could use the nuke in Berlin to wipe out some drugdealers, and a new fascist government is fiction. It's not real. When you CHANGE the government, any government, it can institute a new rule of law, new provisions, new acts to curb your civil rights (Patriot act is a prime example, though there are many others in many other regions of the world). We have to evaluate the state as it is now and as it would be allowed under current laws enacted, not as it could be in some undefined future where you nudge the parameters into a horror scenario. It makes for good science fiction, but not for a proper comparable and comparative analysis.
As for needing to trust your government to obey its laws : The privacy laws are not useless, and the examples you cited mostly do not give the government direct access to the troves of data to be abused at will. Of course there will be abuse of data the government has. If and once that happens, you have strong legal recourse -- specifically through the German Grundgesetz (akin to the US constitution in scope) protecting primarily against government power, and through specific laws (such as those privacy laws). The system is not perfect, no system can ever be, though there are effective checks and balances -- so long as the populace cares about it enough.
You seem to love to compare current Germany to Nazi Germany. You seem to forget one vital piece of historic fact though -- Germans, generally,
Sorry, but no. Even the German government is bound by its privacy laws -- in fact, they privacy laws are even tougher for governmental data processing since they are backed by the Grundgesetz, i.e. our constitution (which technically is law to protect the individual from governmental action). East Germany doesn't exist as a state or a government anymore. The third reich does not exist anymore (but thanks for Godwin'ing this conversation). Those days did NOT have data protection laws, let alone computers they could be applied to. The Stasi does not exist anymore -- you seem to have missed the unification of Germany in 1990, and the abolition of those communist practices.
You misrepresent the state of data protection in Germany in quite fundamental ways, but then again, misrepresentation seems to be your aim. Phones need to be registered -- sure, with your carrier. The one who bills you. Same as the US and other countries -- and no other registration is necessary. The governmental law enforcement agencies can compel a carrier to give up information on a specific phone line (same as everywhere else) with law-based subpoenaes.
Websites need to provide an Impressum, that is correct (well, technically there are some limitations to that -- not every webpage is legally bound to have an Impressum, but all the ones doing ecommerce or representing companies or business interests do. There is plenty of anonymous free speech, and there is no requirement for free speech to be non-anonymous. Televisions are registered with the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale) for taxation of that unit (we pay for some basic television programming. Whether this is good or not is debatable, but that is not subject of this discussion). The privacy laws affect this governmental agency as well though -- data obtained through the GEZ may not lawfully be shared with other government agencies for any purpose. If the GEZ writes you a letter, you have a right to obtain information on how they got your information, and you can compel them to delete it.
The German government cannot get all your connection information. I do not know where you get your facts from. Sure, law enforcement can subpoenae your records from your phone company (same as the US) with a judge's decision -- but they can't do that nilly willy, there needs to be (criminal) cause. As for registering my religion with the government : I can leave that field blank. It is used for taxation; while I abhor this practice, it's nevertheless not something that is problematic -- the US census asks the same question, and, as noted before, privacy laws even affect the taxation arm of the government. You have legal recourse should it be misused for anything other than taxation.
You spread FUD like a master, but back it up with nil. Germany has one of the toughest privacy laws around. You should be so lucky as to have these laws. The envy you display is palpable.
Germany is not perfect, far from it. It has its problems. Privacy laws as they stand now are not one of those problems (though Patriot-act like crap legislation proposals creeping in are).
Your original argument was "personal data" not "private data". There is a difference. It's not about hiding your personal data, it's your right to decide what happens to your personal data -- in particular whether it can be used for stuff other than the purpose you intended, legally.
How about IP address + timestamp ?
/hot/brunette/doing/funky/stuff/naked/001.jpg --> Your address --> GET /hot/brunette/doing/funky/stuff/naked/001.jpg (and that is personal data since it identifies you as a person doing something.
Your address ISP Webhost IP + Timestamp GET
You misunderstand the issue. If IP addresses are considered personal data, they can still be used during the connection and for tasks immediately related to servicing that connection -- akin to buying something with your credit card (which does not allow the store to store your personal information for purposes other than payment processing).
/can/ raid businesses, and do so if warranted.
In Germany's current privacy and data protection laws, everybody has the right to decide what happens to their own personal information if it is being processed by computers. For instance, you can tell Amazon to delete all personally identifiable data they have about you, and they have to comply -- and you can ask any company that has personal data about you (such as your phone number, your address, etc. in telemarketing and plain old snailmail spam) to tell you where they got it from, what basis they have for keeping it, and to delete it from their databases. If they do not comply, you have a strong legal standing to compel them to give out this information (Mr. Sharr, who is quoted here, is the national representative for data protection, though there are more local ones as well -- if they suspect foul play, they
The legislators know very well what they are talking about. The scope of "personal data" is narrowly confined (anything that can be used to identify you or is saved in relation to data that can personally identify you or anything that could automatically be tied to you by a third party; IP addresses fall into the latter category; while a webhost will not be able to do the IP -> Name&Address resolution, the user's ISP could -- therefore the IP address is personally identifiable to a specific party through a third party and thus personal data protected under stringent data protection laws. This has been tested in court (the German DoJ, for instance, is no longer allowed to log IP addresses on their web servers by court order).
These laws don't "just" exist to combat the ad industry, but rather are an extension of one of our constitutions human rights, that is, the right to free self expression; this includes, under German law, the right to decide what happens to your data. There are, of course, certain restrictions (for instance, the DMV can process this data, as can other governmental bodies -- IF SPECIFICALLY AFFORDED THAT RIGHT BY LAW -- for their (narrow) purposes. You can waive this right (i.e. you can give your address to Reader's Digest for them to spam you with as they see fit -- if you give the permission (which is always revocable), they can do with your data whatever you allowed them to; Sweepstakes, for instance, are often designed to gather this data and get permission).
As for implementation thereof : I don't see a problem. The ip address can still be used to commmunicate same as before; it just can't be logged indefinitely nor used for purposes other than the intended one (i.e. connection establishment, communication, teardown vs. ad tracking) UNLESS the person in question has given permission. What this boils down to in Apache is adding mod_removeip. If no other information personally identifies your visitors (even through a third party), you can now log this data and do with it as you wish. Another possibility would be pseudonymizing the IP addresses with one-way hashes (though some care will have to be taken that this is not reversible easily, which may become a problem since there are only 32 bits in an IP address and thus bruteforcing is a viable tactic).
Nothing needs to be implemented to "check" whether the IP is stored. If you have a reasonable assumption that your contract partner is screwing you over, you can lodge a complaint with the Landesdatenschutzbeauftragter or Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragter (Mr. Scharr in this case), who will investigate -- same as when you suspect they are selling your address information illegally or engage in other illegal activites.
I for one am glad that there are some privacy advocates who thing about this s
... they could just stop blogging if they are not getting paid for it and really want to be. Nobody would miss them, especially not those bloggers already making money. This self-important blabbering is great blog-content, but entirely uninteresting -- much like most blogs. What did your dog do today ?
If only it were news. This "limit" has been hit before repeatedly, even on live realms, though probably earlier on public test realms (manual : 1.) get 55k gold 2.) transfer your character to the public test realm 4 times 3.) confirmation ! (alternatively, take 8 characters with 25k, or 16 with 12k, etc.).
However, even on live realms this limit is regularly hit by raiding guilds' guild banks. The premier guild on my server has around 450k gold on 3 banking characters and the guildbank. Another raiding guild there has 150k in pure gold assets. Some players have been "playing" the auction house for years and have repeatedly hit this limit.
This might have been news 2 years ago, it sure isn't, now. It ain't the limit either, since you can have 10 characters per realm (so 2.14 million gold is the cap per realm) and 50 characters total (so 10.5 million gold is the limit per player). Good luck with that.
No, that is not the only reason. It is the only reason you might conceive of, but hey, the world is bigger than that.
The issue isn't really whether the big bad MPAA gets its content copied (in that case the site might be named piratempaabay.org or some such), but rather the nature of copyright and its relation to filesharing itself. There is a difference.
I suggest you don't look at it as a lost sale, but rather free advertisement. Of course it's not in line with what you would want ideally (folks buying it from the get-go), but you have to (and probably do) realize that folks WILL pirate your stuff, no matter what you do or what you think you are entitled to. It's been happening for 25 years. People with disposable income will still support you, people who download but never support exist, and nothing is ever going to change that. Once you accept that this is the cost of doing business in the "IP" world and integrate it into your plans (either as losses (though that would be folly, as any reasonable-minded person would be able to see -- not even close to every copy made would equal a sale if that copy had not been made), as free (but possibly unwanted) advertisement, or as an indicator of popularity), you will be less bitter and have a more solid understanding of your business model. (You don't need to support this piracy, you can even try to trip the pirates up, but you damn well better not make your paying customers suffer with those measures; I have never bought a Steam game, will never buy a Steam game, and will in all likelihood never play a Steam game for the simple fact that it treats me like crap as a paying customer and the gaming experience is much improved in a cracked version. Serial numbers on software that has no legitimate use for GUIDs (for instance, MS Windows, MS Office, lots of Shareware apps, as opposed to, say, Unreal Tournament, World of Warcraft, etc (which use this for online play player disambiguation) just make me irate and give me the mindset of "hey, this box is probably gonna accept something different than is on this "certificate", let's try a keygen instead"; I'll be damned if they get to track me personally or what shops I like to frequent through opaque serials). There is also no good reason to require a CD in the drive when I play a game that is installed on the harddrive. None whatsoever (and if need be, daemontools drives that point home succinctly, but I REALLY should not have to do that).
Just focus on the user experience, try to "protect" your content in ways that do NOT inconvenience your paying customers in any way, and if this does not get you customer support, well, not every company is meant to thrive, not every piece of content has a right to success. For some reason all those bigwig companies still rake in gazillions even though the evil, evil pirates take it ALL away from them. Indie artists still sell CDs and make a living at it.
PirateBay has a very different understanding of IP than you do. IMHO it's a valid one, even though that may be unpopular in certain circles. (and do not forget -- if there were no PirateBay, other filesharing networks would gladly and easily fill that void; if there was no filesharing (fat chance), sneakernet sharing would have a comeback. People will still do it, and not feel bad about it. This is not going to change, and it has never changed. Adapt to that, or, as they say, die (in the marketplace).
Pay me to do it and I'll stop working on stuff I care about (rotatint xterms on a cube) and start caring about what you care about (Quickbooks on Wine). Don't want to ? Then don't knock my pastime. It's not to impress the suits, it's to impress myself and possibly some of my peers. I could care less about what a random Stef thought about it.
It doesn't cost them a thing. The terms you might want to google for are Domain Tasting and Domain Kiting. It's sad that there are terms for this practice, and that it happens enough for me to know them.
[quote]No credit card information was stolen. It's impossible.[/quote]
:)
/next time/ (possibly by switching to usenet), but really, these privacy issues are something you really should have an interest in; it's good for business, and ethical to boot. Then again, we /are/ talking about the porn industry here.
Interesting that you note something entirely possible to be impossible. CC information can be stolen. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you come to believe that your system is so secure that it's impossible, you probably haven't understood exactly what security, in the context of electronic commerce, means.
[quote]read: is illegal to keep[/quote]
Interesting legal analysis. Patently false, but hey, who's counting. All you might possibly do is to breach a contract with your payment processor or some other private entity, but it's certainly not illegal to store 16 digit numbers on servers of "sites". It's not too bright and certainly not recommended (nor standard practice), but it won't land you in jail.
Even payment processors have lousy security at times, and credit cards in general do. That's just a nitpick though
As for the OP, he truly does seem to embellish the truth a little; then again, you seem to want to play it down a little too much, as well. Contact information alone is already a valuable privacy asset, especially considering the nature of the services you are offering. Not everybody wants their name and contact info be associated with that kind of thing; Sure they'll be more careful about being burned
112 is one of the Emergency numbers in Germany (specifically the Fire Brigade and Emergency Medical Services). 110 could also work, it's the Emergency number for the police.
Hrrm. I rather enjoyed Buffy Seasons 4 and 6, though 5 and 7 were not as good as 2 and 3 (still better than 1, IMO). In any case, it was always better than its competition at the time. Angel is a different show, and it kept fresh enough for me to enjoy it through to its end. :)
... but it is probably best viewed as a separate thing from the TV show ...
Personally I'd love this show to be another 7-season piece. It would be something to look forward to every week -- best in the time when Doctor Who is not on, so one gets year-round coverage of great stuff
While Serenity was a tad different than Firefly, I wouldn't dismiss it as bad by any means