I think you're missing the point. The point is that they asked *her* to give them access to information held by Facebook, not her. This is information that *she* was granted access to by Facebook and by her friends. They were asking her to betray the trust extended to her by Facebook and her friends.
There's no need to ban the practice, it's already illegal. 18 USC 1030 (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) already makes it a Federal crime to access computers using someone else's credentials. The response to give if someone asks you for your password is, "If you want access to someone's computers, you have to ask the owner of that computer. I cannot grant you legal access to computers I do not own." If you want access to data held by Facebook, you have to ask Facebook. If you want access to Facebook's computers, you need permission from Facebook -- under Federal law.
I don't know what drugs you're smoking, but 300ms for satellite is not just good, it's impossibly good. LEO Internet doesn't exist yet, all home Internet access is by satellites in geosynchronous orbit. That's 26,200 miles to the satellite, 26,200 miles back to Earth, then 26,200 miles for the reply to get to the satellite, then 26,200 miles for the reply to get down to you. That's best case, assuming both you and the Earth station are directly under the satellite. That's 105,000 miles at 186,000 miles per second. 300ms is not happening.
"If there is prior art the patent is invalid anyway, isn't it?"
Then every patent would be invalid because every article is prior art. The patent would only be invalid if the prior art discloses the claimed invention. The point of disclosing prior art is to show that it does not disclose the claimed invention and to show that the benefits of the claimed invention are capable of being achieved.
Actually, it's not just fair use, the content is not copyrightable in this context, under the merger doctrine.
Copyright only applies to protect one way out of millions of equally-good ways. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, but there are millions of other ways to write a story about star-crossed lovers. He is entitled to copyright (well, was entitled) in cases where any of those other ways would work just as well. His copyright doesn't prevent anyone else from performing any function, they just have to express their ideas a different way.
However, in this case, nothing but the actual article will work. Nothing else will make it possible for the copyright office to reliably determine how and whether the prior art relates to the invention that is the subject of the application. A copyright gives you no power to prevent others from accomplishing any useful function. If your work is the only way to perform that function, copyright yields. (You need a patent to own a function rather than a particular expression.)
When only one work will serve a functional purpose, merger doctrine applies and copyright protection is unavailable.
The same is true of a bitcoin wallet. The wallet just holds the credentials necessary to transfer the bitcoins, just like a checkbook. The bitcoins themselves aren't in the wallet at all.
People like best effort services because they're cheap and the vast majority of the time, they're sufficient. They're just not suitable for applications where a very large amount of money is at stake. I think it's safe to say that's a very small minority of linode's customers. (And frankly, probably customers Linode would prefer not to have.)
They're not a bank or credit system. I'll bet their user agreement makes it clear that they're not liable for incidental or consequential damages.
If you want a service provider that's going to cover these kinds of losses, they'll have to charge more. That's really not fair to the majority of users who don't store Bitcoin wallets on their servers.
Sharia arbitration courts issue rulings that are legally binding on those who have agreed to be bound by them. So, for example, if you and I both wanted to, we could enter into a contract that stipulates that any disputes that arise over the terms of the contract would be settled by a Sharia arbitration court. The rulings would be legally enforceable, provided:
1) The only parties were those who had agreed by contract to be bound by the arbitration prior to the dispute arising.
2) The case is purely civil, not criminal.
3) The court doesn't violate public policy. (For example, if the court refused to allow women to testify, the ruling would likely be unenforceable.)
Orthodox Jews and several other groups have their own "courts" that arbitrate disputes among those who consent by contract to their jurisdiction. Generally, their rulings are enforceable in ordinary civil courts.
Occam's Razor doesn't weigh one way or the other. In fact, Occam's Razor weighs in favor of it being fake, since if it's genuine, there's no explanation for why one document in the stack is so different in character from the others.
"But it being in a bundle with genuine documents does put the balance of probabilities on it also being genuine."
No, not at all. That's only true if the source of the documents is unbiased. If the source of the documents is biased, it's quite plausible that they would slip an especially damning fake document into a stack of real documents precisely to take advantage of people who erroneously think that makes it more likely to be genuine.
I am sick of being forced to buy the stump part of the muffin just to get the delicious, crusty top. I look forward to suing my baker for a refund of the cost of the unwanted base.
I'm going to talk to my grocer about a refund for banana peels as well. Why am I paying for those?
Say the government executes a lawful wiretap, but finds the conversation to be encrypted. The Defendant talks about a “package” and about a “mark”, or even “the stuff”.
Say it’s a foregone conclusion that these words were chosen deliberately to obfuscate the real nature of the items being discussed. And say it’s obvious that the Defendant knew what he meant by those terms. And there’s no question the recording is of the Defendant.
Can a Court compel the Defendant to provide the “key”? Say that “package” means “shipment of illegal drugs” or that “mark” means “person who needs to be killed”? Say they offer production immunity — they won’t say they got this information from the Defendant, they’ll just read the “key” to the jury and admit it into evidence. They’ll have their expert witnesses say that’s what the conversation means.
In this case, control and access was already established by other means. So that wasn't relevant in this case. But it doesn't matter, all they have to do is give you production immunity. This means they can't use the fact that you produced the password against you, but can use the decrypted data. (They always offer production immunity in these cases. Though in this particular case, it didn't matter since it was a "foregone conclusion".)
"For your examples above, in general, you can't be forced to reveal the contents of your own mind, i.e. testify against yourself. If you were to, to use your example, lead the police to the body or the murder weapon, or whatever, then the act of doing this could simultaneously betray your involvement in the crime. This is why you have the right to remain silent."
I think you're missing the point of the hypothetical. They want the body itself and the weapon itself for evidence. Say they promise not to mention in court that you led them to the body or the weapon. Or say you admitted to killing the person, but may raise all kinds of defenses (justification, extreme emotional disturbance, and so on). Can they compel you to tell them where the body and weapon are so they can collect them to use as evidence?
If it was permissible to compel people to give information that would lead to evidence that would be used against them, but where the specific information wouldn't be used (just the evidence), don't you think there'd be dozens of cases where this was used? And yet, all you can find is case law that suggests that the contents of the accused's own mind is off limits.
In each of these cases, they arranged to set up a system where the Defendant enters the password into a machine that decrypts the hard drive. The Defendant never has to reveal the password to any human being. They just want the decrypted contents.
No. The long list of cases that make it clear that you can't just say you forgot include: In Re Weiss, In re Schulman, 167 F. 237 (S.D.N.Y.1909), aff’d, 177 F. 191 (2d Cir.1910); United States v. Appel, 211 F. 495 (S.D.N.Y.1913); United States v. McGovern, 60 F.2d 880, 889 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 287 U.S. 650, 53 S.Ct. 96, 77 L.Ed. 561 (1932); Schleier v. United States, 72 F.2d 414 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 293 U.S. 607, 55 S.Ct. 123, 79 L.Ed. 697 (1934); In re Eskay, 122 F.2d 819 (3d Cir.1941); Howard v. United States, 182 F.2d 908 (8th Cir.), vacated and remanded as moot, 340 U.S. 898, 71 S.Ct. 278, 95 L.Ed. 651 (1950); Richardson v. United States, 273 F.2d 144 (8th Cir.1959); Martin-Trigona v. Gouletas, 634 F.2d 354, 357–59 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1025, 101 S.Ct. 593, 66 L.Ed.2d 486 (1980); In re Battaglia, supra, 653 F.2d at 422; In re Bongiorno, supra.
In this case, they already know the defendant had control and access to the contents. Part of the judge's ruling was that this was a "foregone conclusion".
Sure, but the hole is indistinguishable from unused space on the drive. The first thing TrueCrypt does is fill the entire partition with random data. The hidden partition is indistinguishable from unused space on the visible partition. There is no way, other than with the key, to tell whether a hard drive contains a 200GB visible partition and an 800GB hidden partition or a 1,000GB visible partition with 800GB of empty space.
"The actual answer is (as always) to have backups of anything you feel is important. If the data is important enough, you make multiple backups to different kinds of media and store them in different places."
So, do you keep backups of Wikipedia in multiple places? Or do you not think Wikipedia is important?
And that won't help when you can't know what's important in advance. Consider, for example, a question you find on a web page that has a link to the code that implements the answer on megaupload. How could I have made a backup of that information before megaupload went down when I had no idea until now that I'd need it?
"Keep backups" is simple advice that just doesn't solve the problem.
The *SATELLITE* latency is 1 second. There's no TCP connection over the satellite link.
Browser TCP user's modem satellite ground station modem TCP web server
There's TCP between the browser and the user's modem, which has sub-millisecond latency. And there's TCP between the ground station modem and the web server, which has a few milliseconds latency (for server's in the United States). But the link between the two modems isn't TCP, it's a satellite-specific protocol optimized for the negotiated bandwidth and the known latency. A TCP ACK never passes over the satellite.
The modem-satellite-modem link acts like a transparent TCP proxy. TCP ACKs aren't sent over the satellite.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're missing the point. The point is that they asked *her* to give them access to information held by Facebook, not her. This is information that *she* was granted access to by Facebook and by her friends. They were asking her to betray the trust extended to her by Facebook and her friends.
There's no need to ban the practice, it's already illegal. 18 USC 1030 (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) already makes it a Federal crime to access computers using someone else's credentials. The response to give if someone asks you for your password is, "If you want access to someone's computers, you have to ask the owner of that computer. I cannot grant you legal access to computers I do not own." If you want access to data held by Facebook, you have to ask Facebook. If you want access to Facebook's computers, you need permission from Facebook -- under Federal law.
I don't know what drugs you're smoking, but 300ms for satellite is not just good, it's impossibly good. LEO Internet doesn't exist yet, all home Internet access is by satellites in geosynchronous orbit. That's 26,200 miles to the satellite, 26,200 miles back to Earth, then 26,200 miles for the reply to get to the satellite, then 26,200 miles for the reply to get down to you. That's best case, assuming both you and the Earth station are directly under the satellite. That's 105,000 miles at 186,000 miles per second. 300ms is not happening.
"If there is prior art the patent is invalid anyway, isn't it?"
Then every patent would be invalid because every article is prior art. The patent would only be invalid if the prior art discloses the claimed invention. The point of disclosing prior art is to show that it does not disclose the claimed invention and to show that the benefits of the claimed invention are capable of being achieved.
Actually, it's not just fair use, the content is not copyrightable in this context, under the merger doctrine.
Copyright only applies to protect one way out of millions of equally-good ways. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, but there are millions of other ways to write a story about star-crossed lovers. He is entitled to copyright (well, was entitled) in cases where any of those other ways would work just as well. His copyright doesn't prevent anyone else from performing any function, they just have to express their ideas a different way.
However, in this case, nothing but the actual article will work. Nothing else will make it possible for the copyright office to reliably determine how and whether the prior art relates to the invention that is the subject of the application. A copyright gives you no power to prevent others from accomplishing any useful function. If your work is the only way to perform that function, copyright yields. (You need a patent to own a function rather than a particular expression.)
When only one work will serve a functional purpose, merger doctrine applies and copyright protection is unavailable.
The same is true of a bitcoin wallet. The wallet just holds the credentials necessary to transfer the bitcoins, just like a checkbook. The bitcoins themselves aren't in the wallet at all.
People like best effort services because they're cheap and the vast majority of the time, they're sufficient. They're just not suitable for applications where a very large amount of money is at stake. I think it's safe to say that's a very small minority of linode's customers. (And frankly, probably customers Linode would prefer not to have.)
It doesn't say they're not responsible for their own negligence, it says their liability is limited to the cost of the service.
They're not a bank or credit system. I'll bet their user agreement makes it clear that they're not liable for incidental or consequential damages.
If you want a service provider that's going to cover these kinds of losses, they'll have to charge more. That's really not fair to the majority of users who don't store Bitcoin wallets on their servers.
But they do buy it from everyone.
Sharia arbitration courts issue rulings that are legally binding on those who have agreed to be bound by them. So, for example, if you and I both wanted to, we could enter into a contract that stipulates that any disputes that arise over the terms of the contract would be settled by a Sharia arbitration court. The rulings would be legally enforceable, provided:
1) The only parties were those who had agreed by contract to be bound by the arbitration prior to the dispute arising.
2) The case is purely civil, not criminal.
3) The court doesn't violate public policy. (For example, if the court refused to allow women to testify, the ruling would likely be unenforceable.)
Orthodox Jews and several other groups have their own "courts" that arbitrate disputes among those who consent by contract to their jurisdiction. Generally, their rulings are enforceable in ordinary civil courts.
Occam's Razor doesn't weigh one way or the other. In fact, Occam's Razor weighs in favor of it being fake, since if it's genuine, there's no explanation for why one document in the stack is so different in character from the others.
"But it being in a bundle with genuine documents does put the balance of probabilities on it also being genuine."
No, not at all. That's only true if the source of the documents is unbiased. If the source of the documents is biased, it's quite plausible that they would slip an especially damning fake document into a stack of real documents precisely to take advantage of people who erroneously think that makes it more likely to be genuine.
I'm responding to "No-one should be forced to buy something they don't want.".
Hear, hear!
I am sick of being forced to buy the stump part of the muffin just to get the delicious, crusty top. I look forward to suing my baker for a refund of the cost of the unwanted base.
I'm going to talk to my grocer about a refund for banana peels as well. Why am I paying for those?
Say the government executes a lawful wiretap, but finds the conversation to be encrypted. The Defendant talks about a “package” and about a “mark”, or even “the stuff”.
Say it’s a foregone conclusion that these words were chosen deliberately to obfuscate the real nature of the items being discussed. And say it’s obvious that the Defendant knew what he meant by those terms. And there’s no question the recording is of the Defendant.
Can a Court compel the Defendant to provide the “key”? Say that “package” means “shipment of illegal drugs” or that “mark” means “person who needs to be killed”? Say they offer production immunity — they won’t say they got this information from the Defendant, they’ll just read the “key” to the jury and admit it into evidence. They’ll have their expert witnesses say that’s what the conversation means.
In this case, control and access was already established by other means. So that wasn't relevant in this case. But it doesn't matter, all they have to do is give you production immunity. This means they can't use the fact that you produced the password against you, but can use the decrypted data. (They always offer production immunity in these cases. Though in this particular case, it didn't matter since it was a "foregone conclusion".)
"For your examples above, in general, you can't be forced to reveal the contents of your own mind, i.e. testify against yourself. If you were to, to use your example, lead the police to the body or the murder weapon, or whatever, then the act of doing this could simultaneously betray your involvement in the crime. This is why you have the right to remain silent."
I think you're missing the point of the hypothetical. They want the body itself and the weapon itself for evidence. Say they promise not to mention in court that you led them to the body or the weapon. Or say you admitted to killing the person, but may raise all kinds of defenses (justification, extreme emotional disturbance, and so on). Can they compel you to tell them where the body and weapon are so they can collect them to use as evidence?
If it was permissible to compel people to give information that would lead to evidence that would be used against them, but where the specific information wouldn't be used (just the evidence), don't you think there'd be dozens of cases where this was used? And yet, all you can find is case law that suggests that the contents of the accused's own mind is off limits.
In each of these cases, they arranged to set up a system where the Defendant enters the password into a machine that decrypts the hard drive. The Defendant never has to reveal the password to any human being. They just want the decrypted contents.
No. The long list of cases that make it clear that you can't just say you forgot include: In Re Weiss, In re Schulman, 167 F. 237 (S.D.N.Y.1909), aff’d, 177 F. 191 (2d Cir.1910); United States v. Appel, 211 F. 495 (S.D.N.Y.1913); United States v. McGovern, 60 F.2d 880, 889 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 287 U.S. 650, 53 S.Ct. 96, 77 L.Ed. 561 (1932); Schleier v. United States, 72 F.2d 414 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 293 U.S. 607, 55 S.Ct. 123, 79 L.Ed. 697 (1934); In re Eskay, 122 F.2d 819 (3d Cir.1941); Howard v. United States, 182 F.2d 908 (8th Cir.), vacated and remanded as moot, 340 U.S. 898, 71 S.Ct. 278, 95 L.Ed. 651 (1950); Richardson v. United States, 273 F.2d 144 (8th Cir.1959); Martin-Trigona v. Gouletas, 634 F.2d 354, 357–59 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1025, 101 S.Ct. 593, 66 L.Ed.2d 486 (1980); In re Battaglia, supra, 653 F.2d at 422; In re Bongiorno, supra.
In this case, they already know the defendant had control and access to the contents. Part of the judge's ruling was that this was a "foregone conclusion".
Sure, but the hole is indistinguishable from unused space on the drive. The first thing TrueCrypt does is fill the entire partition with random data. The hidden partition is indistinguishable from unused space on the visible partition. There is no way, other than with the key, to tell whether a hard drive contains a 200GB visible partition and an 800GB hidden partition or a 1,000GB visible partition with 800GB of empty space.
"The actual answer is (as always) to have backups of anything you feel is important. If the data is important enough, you make multiple backups to different kinds of media and store them in different places."
So, do you keep backups of Wikipedia in multiple places? Or do you not think Wikipedia is important?
And that won't help when you can't know what's important in advance. Consider, for example, a question you find on a web page that has a link to the code that implements the answer on megaupload. How could I have made a backup of that information before megaupload went down when I had no idea until now that I'd need it?
"Keep backups" is simple advice that just doesn't solve the problem.
How playable is WoW with a 600ms ping?
Let's just say you can't be a healer.
The *SATELLITE* latency is 1 second. There's no TCP connection over the satellite link.
Browser TCP user's modem satellite ground station modem TCP web server
There's TCP between the browser and the user's modem, which has sub-millisecond latency. And there's TCP between the ground station modem and the web server, which has a few milliseconds latency (for server's in the United States). But the link between the two modems isn't TCP, it's a satellite-specific protocol optimized for the negotiated bandwidth and the known latency. A TCP ACK never passes over the satellite.
The modem-satellite-modem link acts like a transparent TCP proxy. TCP ACKs aren't sent over the satellite.