Ok, jsut a little trivia for you, dont read into this in any way:)
hat it does prevent is perfectly legal uses of DVDs such as playing them in countries other than that in which they were sold
Actually, in many countries this is illegal anyway. In the UK, it is illegal for you to sell, buy or view any motion film that has not been passed and rated by the board of classification (those nice people who decides what age you have to be to watch a film)
It doesnt matter if the region 1 dvd that you are playing in the UK is exactly the same as the region 2 dvd you can purchase here, the region 1 dvd doesnt have a classification in the UK, and therefor is illegal to watch!!
And the crux of the matter is that this isnt just the UK, many countries have this limitation although few if any prosecutions have come about because of it:)
CSS does not prevent people from copying CDs illegally
No, but it does allow all those DVD rip SVCDs floating around on the net, downloadable by all. Now tell me how that can be classed as fair use. Yes, decss may have quasi legitimate uses, but still.
and playing them on operating systems for which CSS decoders might not exist.
You know, this might jsut be a good time for an enforced boycott of the movie industry until they allow us proper access!!
perhaps one of the clearest examples of how the 1st Amendment is being corrodeded...
The problem with free speech laws is that how do you determine where to stop, what line is enough, or do you jsut allow all free speech? Threats? Allegations about your sex life with sheep? yes, dubious stuff like that is covered under other laws, and will be stopped, but then do you not have protection under the 1st amendment for saying these things?! Its very similar to the Decss case here, one party wants to claim free speech, the other says it isnt. Personally, my view is how the hell is a bit of code speech at all? It isnt, in exactly the same way as a car engine isnt as well. They come under freedom of expression, potentially, and im not an american so i do not know where you guys stand on that.
There is one thing ive been wanting to ask about this Dr Kelly issue.
Dr Kelly was quoted (at the time, he was still undisclosed as the source) as saying the 45 minutes claim was disputed as it was single sourced, ie the intelligence community only had one source for it, but alistair campbell insisted on using that in the report.
Now, the media has gone on and said that the whole report was "sexed up" and repeated the 45 minute claim as the main item, tho that was suggested by the intelligence community but they didnt want it to be used as they could not finda second source for the claims.
The issue i want to raise is that the BBC and the media are baying for blood over the issue of the 45 minutes, and yet the BBC seemed fit to use a single source for all of its reporting on the subject - Dr Kelly! Isnt this slightly hypocritical? The BBC has not brought forward at anytime a corroborating statement from a second person!
Now, please dont get me wrong, I hate what the government has turned this into, and they even claimed that the BBC was acting anti-government, even tho its plain that the BBC was trying to act independantly as well it should. If the BBC isnt allowed to raise issues like these about the government, then who the hell is?!
One more thing - in the UK, when ever a story hits the headlines, its either a story unearthed by a newspaper (ie the Sun, Daily Mail, Guardian etc) or the BBC. No other news station seems to do investiagtive journalism! ITN seems to report news as it happens, it doesnt look into things that seem out of place etc, and it looks like it gets the vast majority of stories it reports from agencies.
The BBC is a great benefit to the UK, and if they are penalised by the government in anyway over this, then you can guarentee Labour will not get another term for a long long time.
I'm not disputing that he didn't. But he has done so now, which is sort of the point of the whole article, and his business is doing better for it. Fair play to him. He didn't have to follow your slightly bizarre suggestion of licensing yet more software just to keep track of what software he had licensed, because he no longer needs to waste time and money on tracking what he's supposed to use and what he isn't.
Im not saying he needs to do it now, what im saying is that if he had done it before, he wouldnt have had to go to these lengths and loose that amount of money. He could have still made the switch, but at his own discretion rather than seeming to have been pushed.
Dont get me wrong, this is a good thing. Yes he made a mistake, but guess what, people get penalised for making mistakes, which is a good reason to try and be as vigilant so as not to make those mistakes in the first place.
Hardly sounds lazy taking the trouble to convert his entire business to Linux.
The lazyness caused him to get into a situation needing such a drastic switch in the first place. If he hadnt been lazy then he could have switched the company over anyway, and had extra money to play with as well.
The point of the story is he went from one OS where its easy to end up with armed police on your doorstep to one that not only is free but means you don't have to worry about being intimidated for making mistakes.
To me it looks very much like he took that route very much out of spite "I dont like what they did to me, so ill go and do this", which is fair enough. Now if he had switched out of his own initiative, then this would never have happened, and this would be more of a triumph for OSS rather than it being seen as a company being essentially forced down the road.
No, but id like to see people start taking notice of laws that already exist. My example above would be illegal under copyright law, but noone has mentioned that. In the same vein you cannot duplicate a book unless you have permission from the copyright holder, fair use only allows you to make copies of a small amount of the content, not wholesale copies.
Economics is fine, but until we have esatblished a utopian existance with money being abolished, we need laws to limit the stuff people can copy. If this isnt the case then businesses give up rather rapidly. No more new products enter the arena, and the only place you will see development is the hobbyist arena. But no businesses means no money being circluated, and then the economy rapidly collapses.
Someone once said, and forgive me but i cannot remember who, "The greater the technological advances of a civilisation, the easier it is to bring it to its knees."
Why the hell should you need to implement "a system which installs and uninstalls applications as needed depending on the person logged into the pc"? The answer: you don't. It's just that most people (including you, apparently) don't understand that.
If he is going to use software that requires a careful eye on its usage to ensure you do not infringe, then they need to implement some sort of system, rather than praying to some sort of diety that the software will magically stay infringment free. My suggestion was along the lines of Zenworks or similar, which exist and do the job i was suggesting. If you do not want to implement even a paper-and-pen system, then simply stay away from that software, simple as that (and that is what he has done in this case)
I think its people like you that dont understand that license violation is real, and can be avoided. Either go use a product under a less constricted license, or implement a system which ensures you dont fall into the trap that this guy did.
Accounting and stock control are necessary parts of running a business. Paying money to a company whose software you don't actually need (and spending resources making sure said software is always in the right place at the right time) is not necessary.
Accounting and stock control are parts of running a business, but so is software license control unless you specifically take action to the contrary. This guy didnt, and so have many millions of other businesses. Therefor their business should have some control in it for software, if not ugly things like this happen.
Thats fair enough, but note that he only switched to alternative software when he got caught. No, companies do not have a duty to use MS products, but they do have a duty to ensure they are using the licenses correctly. In this case he didnt, and it was out of pure lazyness of not uninstalling software when it was no longer needed on that PC.
Show me proof of ownership for your toilet. Bet you can't!
That is a totally different case, because a toilet is a physical item, and can only be installed and utilised in one location at a time. Software can be used in multiple locations at the same time because there is both a physical "use once" item and a non physical "use many times" item.
Now think about this: if matter replicators were invented and could be bought cheaply, is it really OK to buy one item of something and replicate it endlessly? Say I buy a car, and my neighbour wants one, would it be ok if i gave him a copy? If this happened, pretty soon car manufacturers would be going out of business, and this is what software manufacturers are trying to prevent. And before you reply saying "they should find a new business model, not have these things artificially prevented by laws", let me point out that all laws are artificial.
Ive been meaning to say this for a long time, and now seems like a good time:
Manufacturers DO NOT WANT to spend money on implementing anti copying measures. This is money diverted from their profits (which as a business they are entitled to if they can produce any).
They would dearly love to let you copy stuff for your own use, in your own manner. Its the people that copy and distribute that they hate, as its those that make them spend money on copy protection, and product activation schemes.
Its always the minority that spoil it for the majority, and this is what has happened. (And please dont reply saying that the record companies business models do not suit, fine if they dont suit then dont buy, but thats no justification to "steal" from them).
He got caught because in the process of running a business, he decided not to devote absolutely ridiculuous amounts of time to wiping the harddrives of unused PCs.
And what if in the course of running his business, he decided not to devote absolutly rediculous amounts of time and money to accounting, or stock control, or quality assurance, or...... well you get my point. He should have devoted the small amount of time it takes to fdisk the hard disk, or implemented a system which installs and uninstalls applications as needed depending on the person logged into the pc. They exist. Use them.
He is objecting to the manner in which he was treated as a customer. He objected to the very heavy-handed way they treated it, and to the way they decided to hang him out publicly as an example
So if a shoplifter is caught stealing a bottle of whiskey, or a multipack of cigarettes, or a pack of nappies after shopping there without incident for a period, should he/she be treated leniantly?
In my view, no. It doesnt matter one bloody bit about your past transactions with the person you are ripping off, if you want it, then it is your position to cough up the money. In this case, it seems it was lazyness on his behalf that caused the majority of nonconformity, but that means nothing. He should have ensured that his staff had a policy in place to make sure that he was complaint.
Now, you can bitch all you want about the quality of the software he was infringing on (quite a few slashdotters do, "Oh it isnt worth the amount they ask for it" - not the point.), but it falls to the basic fact that if it wasnt being used, then it shouldnt have been installed. If it was being used, or had been installed, then it should have a unique license.
Please note im not intending to flame you in any way, your post jsut seemed like a good one to reply to to encompass all the other posts in the discussion along the same lines.
Works fine here, go to "Tools > Windows Update" and I get a v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/blah/blah page which allows me to scan for updates, going nowhere near a windowsupdate.com site.
For the answer to your question, if you read this OpenBSD faq entry, it details fairly well why you should not have a / larger than 8gb.
The following two sentances basically say it all:
The OpenBSD i386 boot loaders (biosboot(8) and boot(8)) also have their own internal 8G limitation, from an older BIOS limit.
For this reason, the entire/bsd file (the kernel) must be located on the disk within the boot ROM addressable area, or within the first 8G of the disk,
Its just a "stupid" limitation that noone has seen a need to fix or work around in this case. But the results of violating this limit can be disasterous, as once the/bsd kernel file gets written outside this 8gb area, say after you have jsut rebuilt it, then the boot sequence dies with a bad magic error.
Another good reason for partitioning your disks is so that a runaway process writing tonnes of log entries into/var/log/.log over night, while you are asleep and unaware of the issue, wont take down the system by filling up all your diskspace, jsut/var.
The US and its Citizens have funded many an Illegitimate or illegal fighting force which makes threats against other nations ruling bodies (Iran, Panama, Lybia, Cuba need i go on?). The US only agreed to outlaw funding to the IRA from US citizens after 9/11. Did they really need that wakeup call?
popularizing him with your people through state-controller religion
The US beams "The Voice Of America" into several nations, which populizes the minority or fringe groups, where the US wants regime change (Again, Lybia, Cuba, Iran.....). And then it has the gall to complain when the signals are blocked.
allowing him to host large training camps
Again, the US leads training camps in US controlled territories, and on foreign soil. The US has also supplied training teams of CIA agents or special forces to rebel groups fighting against those regimes it doesnt agree with.
all of which contributed very greatly to his ability to launch attacks against a US naval ship, two embassies, and the world trade center twice
All of this has lead to the US invasions of Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, and where next? The US seems to think that not only is it the worlds police force, but the worlds mafia enforcers as well.
"Use of the iTrip in the UK therefore constitutes an offence and can lead to prosecution of the User". Guess that makes me an outlaw, because you'll have to pry my iTrip from my cold, dead hands."
This view seems to becoming more prevalent. An illegal action or device is banned or otherwise action taken against, and people just ignore it because it doesnt suit them. This device is illegal, and it hasnt even just been made illegal, its been illegal for a good number of decades, so under what premise do you think you should be allowed to continue using it? I bet you will be crying foul if you get caught!
Yes this device is low powered, but that doesnt matter. Under the aformentioned act, it is illegal, and if you want to use one, then please speak to your local MP! Do not start ignoring laws that inconvienince you, as this is where anarchy starts to creep in.
I can hear the cries for compensation for these now useless devices already, either from the UK government or the company that sold them. I dont think you should get a refund or compensation from either source, as they are covered under an already existing law, and you should have checked the legality of these items before you purchased.
Your best course of action now, to recover your costs? Ebay the suckers i think.
The RIAA went through the courts to get details on people who they already had evidence on, in order to prosecute them (see my reply to someone else in this thread). What the fuck do you want to do, hide when you do something wrong, because that is exactly what you are insinuating.
The RIAA had evidence, but in order to prosecute or to bring a court case against the infringers, they needed the details that the ISPs have. How else do you expect them to get these details apart from using the legal system, as they are the ones that need to bring the case as infringement is civil law.
Ok, in reply to you and the other replies to my comment, i have this quote:
"The following user names were culled from subpoenas filed with the US District Court in Washington, DC." (taken from here which was reference in this slashdot story)
As you can see, the subpoenas were files WITH A COURT. Therefor the RIAA was asking the court to enforce the subpaenos, as happens whenever someone wants to issue a subpoena!
So, lets see, in this case the RIAA hasnt done anything extra legal, non legal, or unlegal. They went through the courts. Hence, they ARE USING THE LEGAL SYSTEM AS ITS MEANT TO BE USED.
"Given the right to harrass private citizens at will"? Uhm, they are using the legal system IN THE WAY THE LEGAL SYSTEM WAS MEANT TO BE USED.
They are supoenaing (sp?) the details of those people who they have identified as being infringing, which is EXACTLY what people on this forum have been saying they should do.
Back when the RIAA was going after the networks themselves, the big shout on here was "They shouldnt go after the networks, they have potentially legitimate uses, they should go after the infringers", and now they are going after the infringers, the new cry on here is one of "privacy" and "harrassment".
So come on guys, why wont you jsut admit it, you wont give up until Copyright infringement as a crime no longer exists.
Slashdot Mirror
If you dont mind me asking, what channel is that? I tried plan 9 a year or so ago, and loved it but found it very hard to ask questions around it!
hat it does prevent is perfectly legal uses of DVDs such as playing them in countries other than that in which they were sold
Actually, in many countries this is illegal anyway. In the UK, it is illegal for you to sell, buy or view any motion film that has not been passed and rated by the board of classification (those nice people who decides what age you have to be to watch a film)
It doesnt matter if the region 1 dvd that you are playing in the UK is exactly the same as the region 2 dvd you can purchase here, the region 1 dvd doesnt have a classification in the UK, and therefor is illegal to watch!!
And the crux of the matter is that this isnt just the UK, many countries have this limitation although few if any prosecutions have come about because of it :)
CSS does not prevent people from copying CDs illegally
No, but it does allow all those DVD rip SVCDs floating around on the net, downloadable by all. Now tell me how that can be classed as fair use. Yes, decss may have quasi legitimate uses, but still.
and playing them on operating systems for which CSS decoders might not exist.
You know, this might jsut be a good time for an enforced boycott of the movie industry until they allow us proper access!!
perhaps one of the clearest examples of how the 1st Amendment is being corrodeded...
The problem with free speech laws is that how do you determine where to stop, what line is enough, or do you jsut allow all free speech? Threats? Allegations about your sex life with sheep? yes, dubious stuff like that is covered under other laws, and will be stopped, but then do you not have protection under the 1st amendment for saying these things?! Its very similar to the Decss case here, one party wants to claim free speech, the other says it isnt. Personally, my view is how the hell is a bit of code speech at all? It isnt, in exactly the same way as a car engine isnt as well. They come under freedom of expression, potentially, and im not an american so i do not know where you guys stand on that.
There is one thing ive been wanting to ask about this Dr Kelly issue.
Dr Kelly was quoted (at the time, he was still undisclosed as the source) as saying the 45 minutes claim was disputed as it was single sourced, ie the intelligence community only had one source for it, but alistair campbell insisted on using that in the report.
Now, the media has gone on and said that the whole report was "sexed up" and repeated the 45 minute claim as the main item, tho that was suggested by the intelligence community but they didnt want it to be used as they could not finda second source for the claims.
The issue i want to raise is that the BBC and the media are baying for blood over the issue of the 45 minutes, and yet the BBC seemed fit to use a single source for all of its reporting on the subject - Dr Kelly! Isnt this slightly hypocritical? The BBC has not brought forward at anytime a corroborating statement from a second person!
Now, please dont get me wrong, I hate what the government has turned this into, and they even claimed that the BBC was acting anti-government, even tho its plain that the BBC was trying to act independantly as well it should. If the BBC isnt allowed to raise issues like these about the government, then who the hell is?!
One more thing - in the UK, when ever a story hits the headlines, its either a story unearthed by a newspaper (ie the Sun, Daily Mail, Guardian etc) or the BBC. No other news station seems to do investiagtive journalism! ITN seems to report news as it happens, it doesnt look into things that seem out of place etc, and it looks like it gets the vast majority of stories it reports from agencies.
The BBC is a great benefit to the UK, and if they are penalised by the government in anyway over this, then you can guarentee Labour will not get another term for a long long time.
Fair point, i concede. You jsut made a fan :)
I'm not disputing that he didn't. But he has done so now, which is sort of the point of the whole article, and his business is doing better for it. Fair play to him. He didn't have to follow your slightly bizarre suggestion of licensing yet more software just to keep track of what software he had licensed, because he no longer needs to waste time and money on tracking what he's supposed to use and what he isn't.
Im not saying he needs to do it now, what im saying is that if he had done it before, he wouldnt have had to go to these lengths and loose that amount of money. He could have still made the switch, but at his own discretion rather than seeming to have been pushed.
Dont get me wrong, this is a good thing. Yes he made a mistake, but guess what, people get penalised for making mistakes, which is a good reason to try and be as vigilant so as not to make those mistakes in the first place.
Hardly sounds lazy taking the trouble to convert his entire business to Linux.
The lazyness caused him to get into a situation needing such a drastic switch in the first place. If he hadnt been lazy then he could have switched the company over anyway, and had extra money to play with as well.
The point of the story is he went from one OS where its easy to end up with armed police on your doorstep to one that not only is free but means you don't have to worry about being intimidated for making mistakes.
To me it looks very much like he took that route very much out of spite "I dont like what they did to me, so ill go and do this", which is fair enough. Now if he had switched out of his own initiative, then this would never have happened, and this would be more of a triumph for OSS rather than it being seen as a company being essentially forced down the road.
No, but id like to see people start taking notice of laws that already exist. My example above would be illegal under copyright law, but noone has mentioned that. In the same vein you cannot duplicate a book unless you have permission from the copyright holder, fair use only allows you to make copies of a small amount of the content, not wholesale copies.
Economics is fine, but until we have esatblished a utopian existance with money being abolished, we need laws to limit the stuff people can copy. If this isnt the case then businesses give up rather rapidly. No more new products enter the arena, and the only place you will see development is the hobbyist arena. But no businesses means no money being circluated, and then the economy rapidly collapses.
Someone once said, and forgive me but i cannot remember who, "The greater the technological advances of a civilisation, the easier it is to bring it to its knees."
Why the hell should you need to implement "a system which installs and uninstalls applications as needed depending on the person logged into the pc"? The answer: you don't. It's just that most people (including you, apparently) don't understand that.
If he is going to use software that requires a careful eye on its usage to ensure you do not infringe, then they need to implement some sort of system, rather than praying to some sort of diety that the software will magically stay infringment free. My suggestion was along the lines of Zenworks or similar, which exist and do the job i was suggesting. If you do not want to implement even a paper-and-pen system, then simply stay away from that software, simple as that (and that is what he has done in this case)
I think its people like you that dont understand that license violation is real, and can be avoided. Either go use a product under a less constricted license, or implement a system which ensures you dont fall into the trap that this guy did.
Accounting and stock control are necessary parts of running a business. Paying money to a company whose software you don't actually need (and spending resources making sure said software is always in the right place at the right time) is not necessary.
Accounting and stock control are parts of running a business, but so is software license control unless you specifically take action to the contrary. This guy didnt, and so have many millions of other businesses. Therefor their business should have some control in it for software, if not ugly things like this happen.
Thats fair enough, but note that he only switched to alternative software when he got caught. No, companies do not have a duty to use MS products, but they do have a duty to ensure they are using the licenses correctly. In this case he didnt, and it was out of pure lazyness of not uninstalling software when it was no longer needed on that PC.
I want to buy and run a 1940s roadster car, I think id have difficulty buying one new (and event used), and getting the parts to maintain it.
Valid analogy? I have no idea, but it works for me.
Show me proof of ownership for your toilet. Bet you can't!
That is a totally different case, because a toilet is a physical item, and can only be installed and utilised in one location at a time. Software can be used in multiple locations at the same time because there is both a physical "use once" item and a non physical "use many times" item.
Now think about this: if matter replicators were invented and could be bought cheaply, is it really OK to buy one item of something and replicate it endlessly? Say I buy a car, and my neighbour wants one, would it be ok if i gave him a copy? If this happened, pretty soon car manufacturers would be going out of business, and this is what software manufacturers are trying to prevent. And before you reply saying "they should find a new business model, not have these things artificially prevented by laws", let me point out that all laws are artificial.
Ive been meaning to say this for a long time, and now seems like a good time:
Manufacturers DO NOT WANT to spend money on implementing anti copying measures. This is money diverted from their profits (which as a business they are entitled to if they can produce any).
They would dearly love to let you copy stuff for your own use, in your own manner. Its the people that copy and distribute that they hate, as its those that make them spend money on copy protection, and product activation schemes.
Its always the minority that spoil it for the majority, and this is what has happened. (And please dont reply saying that the record companies business models do not suit, fine if they dont suit then dont buy, but thats no justification to "steal" from them).
He got caught because in the process of running a business, he decided not to devote absolutely ridiculuous amounts of time to wiping the harddrives of unused PCs.
And what if in the course of running his business, he decided not to devote absolutly rediculous amounts of time and money to accounting, or stock control, or quality assurance, or ...... well you get my point. He should have devoted the small amount of time it takes to fdisk the hard disk, or implemented a system which installs and uninstalls applications as needed depending on the person logged into the pc. They exist. Use them.
He is objecting to the manner in which he was treated as a customer. He objected to the very heavy-handed way they treated it, and to the way they decided to hang him out publicly as an example
So if a shoplifter is caught stealing a bottle of whiskey, or a multipack of cigarettes, or a pack of nappies after shopping there without incident for a period, should he/she be treated leniantly?
In my view, no. It doesnt matter one bloody bit about your past transactions with the person you are ripping off, if you want it, then it is your position to cough up the money. In this case, it seems it was lazyness on his behalf that caused the majority of nonconformity, but that means nothing. He should have ensured that his staff had a policy in place to make sure that he was complaint.
Now, you can bitch all you want about the quality of the software he was infringing on (quite a few slashdotters do, "Oh it isnt worth the amount they ask for it" - not the point.), but it falls to the basic fact that if it wasnt being used, then it shouldnt have been installed. If it was being used, or had been installed, then it should have a unique license.
Please note im not intending to flame you in any way, your post jsut seemed like a good one to reply to to encompass all the other posts in the discussion along the same lines.
Works fine here, go to "Tools > Windows Update" and I get a v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/blah/blah page which allows me to scan for updates, going nowhere near a windowsupdate.com site.
The following two sentances basically say it all:
The OpenBSD i386 boot loaders (biosboot(8) and boot(8)) also have their own internal 8G limitation, from an older BIOS limit.
For this reason, the entire /bsd file (the kernel) must be located on the disk within the boot ROM addressable area, or within the first 8G of the disk,
Its just a "stupid" limitation that noone has seen a need to fix or work around in this case. But the results of violating this limit can be disasterous, as once the
Another good reason for partitioning your disks is so that a runaway process writing tonnes of log entries into
Can anyone tell me what type the chase plane is in this pic?</trainee geek>
Just some stuff to let you think about.
funding him
The US and its Citizens have funded many an Illegitimate or illegal fighting force which makes threats against other nations ruling bodies (Iran, Panama, Lybia, Cuba need i go on?). The US only agreed to outlaw funding to the IRA from US citizens after 9/11. Did they really need that wakeup call?
popularizing him with your people through state-controller religion
The US beams "The Voice Of America" into several nations, which populizes the minority or fringe groups, where the US wants regime change (Again, Lybia, Cuba, Iran.....). And then it has the gall to complain when the signals are blocked.
allowing him to host large training camps
Again, the US leads training camps in US controlled territories, and on foreign soil. The US has also supplied training teams of CIA agents or special forces to rebel groups fighting against those regimes it doesnt agree with.
all of which contributed very greatly to his ability to launch attacks against a US naval ship, two embassies, and the world trade center twice
All of this has lead to the US invasions of Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, and where next? The US seems to think that not only is it the worlds police force, but the worlds mafia enforcers as well.
No it isnt. It is the responsability of every citizen to elect officials that will deal with dumb laws.
"Use of the iTrip in the UK therefore constitutes an offence and can lead to prosecution of the User". Guess that makes me an outlaw, because you'll have to pry my iTrip from my cold, dead hands."
This view seems to becoming more prevalent. An illegal action or device is banned or otherwise action taken against, and people just ignore it because it doesnt suit them. This device is illegal, and it hasnt even just been made illegal, its been illegal for a good number of decades, so under what premise do you think you should be allowed to continue using it? I bet you will be crying foul if you get caught!
Yes this device is low powered, but that doesnt matter. Under the aformentioned act, it is illegal, and if you want to use one, then please speak to your local MP! Do not start ignoring laws that inconvienince you, as this is where anarchy starts to creep in.
I can hear the cries for compensation for these now useless devices already, either from the UK government or the company that sold them. I dont think you should get a refund or compensation from either source, as they are covered under an already existing law, and you should have checked the legality of these items before you purchased.
Your best course of action now, to recover your costs? Ebay the suckers i think.
Not internet enabled clocks, but there are radio controlled, taking time signals from the atomic clocks.
Please see my other comment here
The RIAA went through the courts to get details on people who they already had evidence on, in order to prosecute them (see my reply to someone else in this thread). What the fuck do you want to do, hide when you do something wrong, because that is exactly what you are insinuating.
The RIAA had evidence, but in order to prosecute or to bring a court case against the infringers, they needed the details that the ISPs have. How else do you expect them to get these details apart from using the legal system, as they are the ones that need to bring the case as infringement is civil law.
Ok, in reply to you and the other replies to my comment, i have this quote:
"The following user names were culled from subpoenas filed with the US District Court in Washington, DC." (taken from here which was reference in this slashdot story)
As you can see, the subpoenas were files WITH A COURT. Therefor the RIAA was asking the court to enforce the subpaenos, as happens whenever someone wants to issue a subpoena!
So, lets see, in this case the RIAA hasnt done anything extra legal, non legal, or unlegal. They went through the courts. Hence, they ARE USING THE LEGAL SYSTEM AS ITS MEANT TO BE USED.
"Given the right to harrass private citizens at will"? Uhm, they are using the legal system IN THE WAY THE LEGAL SYSTEM WAS MEANT TO BE USED.
They are supoenaing (sp?) the details of those people who they have identified as being infringing, which is EXACTLY what people on this forum have been saying they should do.
Back when the RIAA was going after the networks themselves, the big shout on here was "They shouldnt go after the networks, they have potentially legitimate uses, they should go after the infringers", and now they are going after the infringers, the new cry on here is one of "privacy" and "harrassment".
So come on guys, why wont you jsut admit it, you wont give up until Copyright infringement as a crime no longer exists.
Genwartrexol
What made me think this would be the name of a walmart own brand item?