I've had paychecks stolen out of my mailbox when I worked for a temp agency. I complained to the post office, who sent my to the police, who sent me to the post office, who had me fill out a whole bunch of forms, and said they'd get back to me within 6 months!@!! It's been over 2 years now, and I've stopped caring, which is what I'm sure all involved usually hopes for.
Complaining to the temp agency to reissue the check basically got me black-listed (no more assignments from them), and the checks had been cashed so I had to take it up with the bank. The bank won't release info since it isn't my account.
As I'm sure a lot of engineers discovered this year, the Alternative Minimum Tax wipes out any tax cuts at the middle and high end of the spectrum. The AMT is pretty much the reason the tax cut package went through, Dems can bash Dubya for the tax break without actually giving the tax break.
Back to the original point, the public doesn't care about privacy. They will gladly give up everything about themselves for $.10 off a Pepsi.
Ignorance can be used as a defense in certain cases, such as the case the OP mentioned. You cannot claim ignorance of something that is considered common knowledge (like speed limits, where a "reasonable person" would be expected to check for signs before traveling at an excessive rate of speed).
To go back to the OP's case, if his girlfriend downloaded a file from a cooking site named "cookingrecipes.zip" and it contained illegal data, her argument of ignorance would stand up in court (other things like her level of epertise with computers, which could be demonstrated by her education level, e.g. she has a culinary arts degree, rather than a CS degree).
However, if she downloaded said file from Lotso-warez.ru, the ignorance thing probably would not work.
This whole thing is MOOT however, since they don't care if your argument will stand up in court or not, they just care whether or not you can afford to defend yourself. See DirecTV and the RIAA extorting their customers to pay thousands or else be sued.
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I've had paychecks stolen out of my mailbox when I worked for a temp agency. I complained to the post office, who sent my to the police, who sent me to the post office, who had me fill out a whole bunch of forms, and said they'd get back to me within 6 months!@!! It's been over 2 years now, and I've stopped caring, which is what I'm sure all involved usually hopes for.
Complaining to the temp agency to reissue the check basically got me black-listed (no more assignments from them), and the checks had been cashed so I had to take it up with the bank. The bank won't release info since it isn't my account.
Good times to be a thief.
As I'm sure a lot of engineers discovered this year, the Alternative Minimum Tax wipes out any tax cuts at the middle and high end of the spectrum. The AMT is pretty much the reason the tax cut package went through, Dems can bash Dubya for the tax break without actually giving the tax break.
Back to the original point, the public doesn't care about privacy. They will gladly give up everything about themselves for $.10 off a Pepsi.
Ignorance can be used as a defense in certain cases, such as the case the OP mentioned. You cannot claim ignorance of something that is considered common knowledge (like speed limits, where a "reasonable person" would be expected to check for signs before traveling at an excessive rate of speed). To go back to the OP's case, if his girlfriend downloaded a file from a cooking site named "cookingrecipes.zip" and it contained illegal data, her argument of ignorance would stand up in court (other things like her level of epertise with computers, which could be demonstrated by her education level, e.g. she has a culinary arts degree, rather than a CS degree). However, if she downloaded said file from Lotso-warez.ru, the ignorance thing probably would not work. This whole thing is MOOT however, since they don't care if your argument will stand up in court or not, they just care whether or not you can afford to defend yourself. See DirecTV and the RIAA extorting their customers to pay thousands or else be sued.