I actually realized this about 2 days after the DVD showed up. So in that sense, I'm really not out the movie. The part that got me a little upset was that I probably won't be able to trade the movie to someone else, as I'd get blamed for sharing an unplayable disc.
I've been using Peerflix for a couple months and have been relatively satisfied with it. It's proven to be a good way to get rid of all those old DVDs that would have either gathered dust for years or fetched me 3 bucks at a pawn shop. I've gotten plenty of movies as gifts or free throw-ins with things that I never wanted in the first place, or others that I bought but later realized I never watched. Frankly, the $1 it costs to upgrade a crappy movie to something else is well worth it.
I've only had 1 problem so far. I got a copy of Night of the Living Dead that was scrathed to hell. When it arrived, it played, so I confirmed it. Of course, when I played it, I found that a couple minutes would not play. But because I had let a week or so pass between receipt and claim, I was out of luck. I wrote about 5 emails to their CS about this, and got 1 response, which really had nothing to do with my complaint. But otherwise nearly all the movies I've gotten are in very good condition.
The bad part is that a lot of movies are technically "available", but might only be in the hands of 1 or 2 other users, neither of which actually intends to share their copy, but has it listed for one reason or another. So it sometimes takes a few weeks (or more) to get some movies. Also, maybe half the movies I listed have been requested by others. But then again, I didn't expect the demand to be extremely high for that copy of The Mask someone gave me. Generally, good movies get requested fairly quickly.
If you have a specific movie in mind that you want right away, Peerflix isn't the best solution. But if you have a list of 20 or so movies you would like to get eventually, it's a nice service.
My only other complaint would be that when your "Peerbux" goes to zero, it automatically charges another $5 worth to you, rather than waiting until you actually want to buy something. This is obviously a nice way for the company to get a few bucks extra from everyone in the end, but it strikes me as shadey.
As far a Piracy goes, well, it's really no different than renting movies or using Netflix, so I think it's a non-issue as it pertains to Peerflix specifically.
I keep hearing about the battery problems, but I haven't seen any first hand...yet. Perhaps I'm biased because my best friend's iPod has gone with her jogging every day for 3 years and still plays for over 10 hours on a single charge.
Sure, theKarma was great....when it worked. I went through 4 of them before I gave up when the last one finally died about 2 weeks after the warranty was up. Whatever argument someone makes for the Karma, the iPod trumps all of them for one simple reason...it just works. All the time. No lockups. No having to find a paperclip to stick into the player to reset it because if I don't it will click and click and hum until the battery finally dies. No worrying that if I drop it from 12 inches above the ground the scroll wheel will break. The Karma was crap, pure and simple.
I am also a Christian who agrees that religion should not necessarily be taught in schools. But I don't see a problem with telling students facts, such as: "An extremely large segment of the population, perhaps a major, believes that God created humans as they currently are, and we are not a product of evolution from simple organisms overs billions of years." To deny that people think that there is an alternative to evolution is far more closed-minded than what Christians are accused of.
Then there's the problem of not even telling the truth about evolution. It's hasn't "proved" that human life was formed by this process. Evidence of changes within a species have been seen, but we have zero proof of one form of complex life develop into a completely different one. However, it is believed that the same principles seen in micro-evolution can be applied to human life as well. I don't see this being taught. Instead, it's just "Humans evolved, agree or you are ignorant. Next question."
My last problem is that while religion may not need to be taught in schools, I refuse to accept that we should teach scientific theories that directly conflict with biblical teachings. Doesn't this violate our own Constitution by instituting a state-sanctioned endorsement of paganism? What's the point in calling kids who are Christians stupid for having their beliefs? The majority of Christian beliefs, if investigated, are as scientifically verifiable as the alternative theories for them. Sure, those theories require the belief of some type of supreme being. But is that really more unlikely than the 1 in a billion * billion * billion chance that it would randomly evolve as it did?
So, someone tell me what the harm in teaching students that people believe in multiple ways of humans coming to life?
It's been a while since my U.S. Patent Law course, so maybe I should know this already. Why is it a given that they would have to pay the other party's fees if they lost? My impression was that (outside of the Civil Rights context) at the trial level, only frivolous claims were subject to fee awards. Someone with a little move experience as a lawyer than me want to clarify this?
I guess I'll assume this entire story is true, and offer my comments as such....
Wow, as much as I am a rabid supporter of harsher penalties for DUI, this certainly isn't what I have in mind.
I represented a criminal defendant once in a similiar situation financially. He had to pay restitution, and if he didn't he went to jail, and of course, you can't earn money in jail. The cycle repeats.
I agree with the other reply about declaring bankruptcy. However, if you ARE considering the military, you might want to check to see if bankruptcy would affect eligibility.
I've never done anything bankruptcy related myself, but I do know that you will probably need to scrap together $100 or so for a filing fee. As far as the representation goes, start writing to legal aid associations in the area. Start with the law schools. Put your story on paper and send a copy to the supervising attorneys are each place you can find. This is definetly not the equivelent of some city attorney / public defender situation. I did it for 2 years, and for the most part, the people involved work their asses off. It's not a guarantee that someone will help you, but it's certainly worth a shot, particularily for the cost of a couple postage stamps. Having representation speak with your P.O. and others about the situation should also help the situation.
Another source of quick money....medical research. Hear me out. I haven't done it myself, but I've got at least a dozen friends who have each earned a few grant by chilling out for a week at a research facility. (Actually, a lot of them did it to pay for engagement rings. Where else is a 20-25 year old guy going to come up with a few grand on short notice, right?) I know it sounds bad, but in all honestly, none have ever complained about the experience. Basically, they eat, sleep, give blood a couple times, and watch TV for a few days, and then leave with a big check.
Have you tried private construction work? The work is hard, but the pay is amazing.
Other than that, I'm not sure what else to recommend. Find a church, pray, and wait for something good. Stranger things have happened.
Unfortunately, I've seen this same story, or at least one similiar, play out at least a dozen times. I spent two years working with my former law school's legal aid clinic, which did quite a bit of family law work.
For starters, we always took female clinics in divorce matters. Always. I don't remember a single male clinic in a divorce. What is the impact of this? Basically, legal aid clinics might not have a lot of real attorneys or money, but what they do have is time. LOTS of time. Clinics can file endless amounts of motions and briefs, and basically allow a case to play out as long as it wants, because it doesn't need to worry about getting paid for all the hours worked. The men, on the other hand, nearly always had private attorneys. More than once, the men would simply run out of money and settle for far less than they desearved, simply to avoid losing every cent they had. Of course, this only meant they were going to remain broke, because the child support terms would usually vary harsh, do to the pressured settlement.
Another point I noticed was that nearly all the women and maybe half the men eventually, for lack of a better term, lose all trace of rationale thought and behavior. What begins as fighting to keep your children soon turns into trying to hurt the ex as much as possible. For example, asking for the other persons family heirlooms, simply so that they can destory them.
This behavior nearly always lead to accusations of abuse. I'm not sure I remember a case in which the man was not accused of being abusive in some way. It's pretty much a negotiating tool that parties know about, and lawyers don't have the balls to challenge their own clients on. Law students are taught to believe their clients, so we've got loads of attorneys accusing men of being abusive because most statutes create a presumption of non-custody against an abuser. And basically, that presumption doesn't get met.
Thankfully, I only did one of these bizarre cases myself, and mostly witnesses and consulted on the others. My client was a mid-20's woman in a custody battle. I was taking over for another student, who had basically given her the impression that she would win. Now, keep in mind that this was her third child with a third guy. One child she abandoned, the second stays with her mom, and child in question was with the dad. See, she was in prison at the time. That's right, prison. I think this was her fifth conviction, or something like that, by about age 23. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and had to tell her, "look, you are not getting your kids, stop trying, you are in jail, OK." I felt satisfied when I had worked out a settlement with the husband within a few days allowing him to move his kid to California, which he needed to do for his military committments. Prior to working the case, the attorneys actually argued that his military service should be used against him.
I wish there was a lesson in all of this. I guess if anything, it's that we need to make sure qualified judges are on the bench, to ensure that bogus claims and motions don't corrupt the process.
When I saw the title "Beginner's Guide to Linux Distros", my first thought was "I wonder if they'll find a way to explain how to use Linux without looking at any kind of code/text. So comments like this don't really surprise me. And it's exactly why Linux is still Linux, and Windows is king, like it or not.
I know computers pretty well. I thought the CS program I went through was an utter joke, and I've used computers for about 20 years. That said, I absolutely hate the fact that I can't install and use LInux without having to edit text files. Seriously, even MS realized that people didn't want to edit autoexec and config files. They ditched them in 1995!! That's 10 years ago. You'd think that someone could come up with a way to find a way to use Linux easily in that time. I guess not.
I don't know about this class action specifically, but I'm not surprised it didn't go anywhere. I worked under essentially one of the top attorneys in this area, and she mentioned that something like 95% of ADA claims never get to court, and the majority of those that do, still lose. The odds of a successful ADA suit are long, and class status just makes it worse.
And if I was on the opposing side in this case, I think I'd have a field day with the "undue burden" exception. (assuming it even got that far) Lets see, $100,000 in improvements multiplied by 1000 theaters...that's getting pretty steep.
I'm totally down with the cause, but I've also seen first-hand how hard it is to get anything done with the ADA. And I've had good luck, managing to at least settle both my big ADA cases.
OK, I know this is more of a joke than anything, but seriously, 1400 Watts? Umm, for a fan? The big-ass box fans only use like 60 Watts. The shear physical size is funny, no doubt. But claiming 1400W is just silly, really.
Yeah, I remember when I used to think the rules of civil procedure were actually enforced as worded. Yep, those were the days...
I think everyone's first year-long case officially jades them towards the principles of a "speedy" court system.
I'm not sure if "most" of their data is freely available elsewhere, but I can say that a LOT of what I actually would use Lexis for IS available someone for free. The most obvious is state and federal laws/codes/regs/etc... which are quite easy to find without much looking. I could go on, but the fact is, if you want, you can find tons of good info on the web (or at least from www.law.cornell.edu).
That said Lexis is a huge timesaver when doing complex searches. Until Google lets me use regular expressions (err..."terms and connectors" in lawyer-speak), it's simply be too hard to effectively search for certain obscure things.
1. Put in movie, wait until it queues up
2. Press Stop
3. Wait 3 seconds
4. Press Stop again
5. Press Play
6. Movie will begin at 00:00:00
Problem solved. Seriously, try it.
Even if you have a point, the bottom line is that our current government system will never decide to stop providing at least some type of protection for software. So, which would you choose, a 20 year patent, or indefinete copyright? And regardless, if I HAD to choose a better method, I'd say that software fits better into patent than copyright anyways.
You might be surprised how many people order that much stuff on Amazon. I used to work there, unfortunately. There are accounts that have new orders EVERY DAY. Some people order many 3 to 5 times a day, sometimes more. There are customers that have incremental accounts (firstlast01, firstlast02, etc...) because it takes too long to load up their account history once it gets past a thousand orders or so. There are even some customers who order so much they have employees assigned directly to them for support.
I'll say this, there are people that would save thousands a year on this. However, most people won't use it enough and it will be free money for Amazon.
PS....Just for the fun of it, did you know that you cna order a 1000 pound table saw and have it shipped for about 10 bucks? They love it when those get returned and they've got to eat $400 in shipping costs.
Didn't DirecTV do this about 4 years ago? If I remember right, they basically convinced the top guys to teach them how to "break" the current hacking methods, leading to what is know known as "Black Sunday", due to everyone's H Cards getting toasted during the main event of a WWF Pay Per View. I can't remember if it was money, get out of jail free cards, or both, but what you are suggesting HAS happened before.
Hmmm, so a massive climate change took place a about 5000 years ago? And the biblical flood occured some time around 3000BC, give or take? Anyone body else want to connect the two events? Seems like a reasonable hunch, wouldn't it?
I've actually been writing a law review article on this very topic, so in a way, I'm disappointed, because the court will make anything I say fairly irrelevant. Anyways, my hunch is that the court will most likely side with the software creator on this.
As always, Posner wrote a masterful opinion in the Aimster case, deciding against Aimster. What sunk them is the fact that Aimster was way too involved in helping people download copyrighted music, regardless of any legitimate uses. The nail in the coffin was the fact that their website actually posted links to download the most popular songs. It's kind of hard to argue you aren't responsible for your users actions when you're actually helping them do it.
Grokster can be distinguished from both Napster and Aimster for this reason. The connection isn't there. The others could say in good faith that they were just providing the software and could stop people from using it illegally. Grokster can.
Unless the court decides to make up a new test for looking at this, I don't see how Grokster loses.
Did anyone else reading this have a flashback to the "shit" episode of South Park, when Mr. Garrison was trying to explain the acceptable uses of the word?
I just had my third one die in the past 6 months. One broke falling off a chair on to a carpeted floor. It's flimsy. The damn scroll wheel tends to get pushed in, and it breaks.
My friend's OLD iPod has been dropped onto concrete dozens of times, and goes along on jogs all the time. Zero complaints on it.
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I actually realized this about 2 days after the DVD showed up. So in that sense, I'm really not out the movie. The part that got me a little upset was that I probably won't be able to trade the movie to someone else, as I'd get blamed for sharing an unplayable disc.
I've only had 1 problem so far. I got a copy of Night of the Living Dead that was scrathed to hell. When it arrived, it played, so I confirmed it. Of course, when I played it, I found that a couple minutes would not play. But because I had let a week or so pass between receipt and claim, I was out of luck. I wrote about 5 emails to their CS about this, and got 1 response, which really had nothing to do with my complaint. But otherwise nearly all the movies I've gotten are in very good condition.
The bad part is that a lot of movies are technically "available", but might only be in the hands of 1 or 2 other users, neither of which actually intends to share their copy, but has it listed for one reason or another. So it sometimes takes a few weeks (or more) to get some movies. Also, maybe half the movies I listed have been requested by others. But then again, I didn't expect the demand to be extremely high for that copy of The Mask someone gave me. Generally, good movies get requested fairly quickly.
If you have a specific movie in mind that you want right away, Peerflix isn't the best solution. But if you have a list of 20 or so movies you would like to get eventually, it's a nice service.
My only other complaint would be that when your "Peerbux" goes to zero, it automatically charges another $5 worth to you, rather than waiting until you actually want to buy something. This is obviously a nice way for the company to get a few bucks extra from everyone in the end, but it strikes me as shadey.
As far a Piracy goes, well, it's really no different than renting movies or using Netflix, so I think it's a non-issue as it pertains to Peerflix specifically.
I keep hearing about the battery problems, but I haven't seen any first hand...yet. Perhaps I'm biased because my best friend's iPod has gone with her jogging every day for 3 years and still plays for over 10 hours on a single charge.
Sure, theKarma was great....when it worked. I went through 4 of them before I gave up when the last one finally died about 2 weeks after the warranty was up. Whatever argument someone makes for the Karma, the iPod trumps all of them for one simple reason...it just works. All the time. No lockups. No having to find a paperclip to stick into the player to reset it because if I don't it will click and click and hum until the battery finally dies. No worrying that if I drop it from 12 inches above the ground the scroll wheel will break. The Karma was crap, pure and simple.
I am also a Christian who agrees that religion should not necessarily be taught in schools. But I don't see a problem with telling students facts, such as: "An extremely large segment of the population, perhaps a major, believes that God created humans as they currently are, and we are not a product of evolution from simple organisms overs billions of years." To deny that people think that there is an alternative to evolution is far more closed-minded than what Christians are accused of.
Then there's the problem of not even telling the truth about evolution. It's hasn't "proved" that human life was formed by this process. Evidence of changes within a species have been seen, but we have zero proof of one form of complex life develop into a completely different one. However, it is believed that the same principles seen in micro-evolution can be applied to human life as well. I don't see this being taught. Instead, it's just "Humans evolved, agree or you are ignorant. Next question."
My last problem is that while religion may not need to be taught in schools, I refuse to accept that we should teach scientific theories that directly conflict with biblical teachings. Doesn't this violate our own Constitution by instituting a state-sanctioned endorsement of paganism? What's the point in calling kids who are Christians stupid for having their beliefs? The majority of Christian beliefs, if investigated, are as scientifically verifiable as the alternative theories for them. Sure, those theories require the belief of some type of supreme being. But is that really more unlikely than the 1 in a billion * billion * billion chance that it would randomly evolve as it did?
So, someone tell me what the harm in teaching students that people believe in multiple ways of humans coming to life?
It's been a while since my U.S. Patent Law course, so maybe I should know this already. Why is it a given that they would have to pay the other party's fees if they lost? My impression was that (outside of the Civil Rights context) at the trial level, only frivolous claims were subject to fee awards. Someone with a little move experience as a lawyer than me want to clarify this?
I guess I'll assume this entire story is true, and offer my comments as such....
Wow, as much as I am a rabid supporter of harsher penalties for DUI, this certainly isn't what I have in mind.
I represented a criminal defendant once in a similiar situation financially. He had to pay restitution, and if he didn't he went to jail, and of course, you can't earn money in jail. The cycle repeats.
I agree with the other reply about declaring bankruptcy. However, if you ARE considering the military, you might want to check to see if bankruptcy would affect eligibility.
I've never done anything bankruptcy related myself, but I do know that you will probably need to scrap together $100 or so for a filing fee. As far as the representation goes, start writing to legal aid associations in the area. Start with the law schools. Put your story on paper and send a copy to the supervising attorneys are each place you can find. This is definetly not the equivelent of some city attorney / public defender situation. I did it for 2 years, and for the most part, the people involved work their asses off. It's not a guarantee that someone will help you, but it's certainly worth a shot, particularily for the cost of a couple postage stamps. Having representation speak with your P.O. and others about the situation should also help the situation.
Another source of quick money....medical research. Hear me out. I haven't done it myself, but I've got at least a dozen friends who have each earned a few grant by chilling out for a week at a research facility. (Actually, a lot of them did it to pay for engagement rings. Where else is a 20-25 year old guy going to come up with a few grand on short notice, right?) I know it sounds bad, but in all honestly, none have ever complained about the experience. Basically, they eat, sleep, give blood a couple times, and watch TV for a few days, and then leave with a big check.
Have you tried private construction work? The work is hard, but the pay is amazing.
Other than that, I'm not sure what else to recommend. Find a church, pray, and wait for something good. Stranger things have happened.
Unfortunately, I've seen this same story, or at least one similiar, play out at least a dozen times. I spent two years working with my former law school's legal aid clinic, which did quite a bit of family law work.
For starters, we always took female clinics in divorce matters. Always. I don't remember a single male clinic in a divorce. What is the impact of this? Basically, legal aid clinics might not have a lot of real attorneys or money, but what they do have is time. LOTS of time. Clinics can file endless amounts of motions and briefs, and basically allow a case to play out as long as it wants, because it doesn't need to worry about getting paid for all the hours worked. The men, on the other hand, nearly always had private attorneys. More than once, the men would simply run out of money and settle for far less than they desearved, simply to avoid losing every cent they had. Of course, this only meant they were going to remain broke, because the child support terms would usually vary harsh, do to the pressured settlement.
Another point I noticed was that nearly all the women and maybe half the men eventually, for lack of a better term, lose all trace of rationale thought and behavior. What begins as fighting to keep your children soon turns into trying to hurt the ex as much as possible. For example, asking for the other persons family heirlooms, simply so that they can destory them.
This behavior nearly always lead to accusations of abuse. I'm not sure I remember a case in which the man was not accused of being abusive in some way. It's pretty much a negotiating tool that parties know about, and lawyers don't have the balls to challenge their own clients on. Law students are taught to believe their clients, so we've got loads of attorneys accusing men of being abusive because most statutes create a presumption of non-custody against an abuser. And basically, that presumption doesn't get met.
Thankfully, I only did one of these bizarre cases myself, and mostly witnesses and consulted on the others. My client was a mid-20's woman in a custody battle. I was taking over for another student, who had basically given her the impression that she would win. Now, keep in mind that this was her third child with a third guy. One child she abandoned, the second stays with her mom, and child in question was with the dad. See, she was in prison at the time. That's right, prison. I think this was her fifth conviction, or something like that, by about age 23. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and had to tell her, "look, you are not getting your kids, stop trying, you are in jail, OK." I felt satisfied when I had worked out a settlement with the husband within a few days allowing him to move his kid to California, which he needed to do for his military committments. Prior to working the case, the attorneys actually argued that his military service should be used against him.
I wish there was a lesson in all of this. I guess if anything, it's that we need to make sure qualified judges are on the bench, to ensure that bogus claims and motions don't corrupt the process.
When I saw the title "Beginner's Guide to Linux Distros", my first thought was "I wonder if they'll find a way to explain how to use Linux without looking at any kind of code/text. So comments like this don't really surprise me. And it's exactly why Linux is still Linux, and Windows is king, like it or not. I know computers pretty well. I thought the CS program I went through was an utter joke, and I've used computers for about 20 years. That said, I absolutely hate the fact that I can't install and use LInux without having to edit text files. Seriously, even MS realized that people didn't want to edit autoexec and config files. They ditched them in 1995!! That's 10 years ago. You'd think that someone could come up with a way to find a way to use Linux easily in that time. I guess not.
I don't know about this class action specifically, but I'm not surprised it didn't go anywhere. I worked under essentially one of the top attorneys in this area, and she mentioned that something like 95% of ADA claims never get to court, and the majority of those that do, still lose. The odds of a successful ADA suit are long, and class status just makes it worse. And if I was on the opposing side in this case, I think I'd have a field day with the "undue burden" exception. (assuming it even got that far) Lets see, $100,000 in improvements multiplied by 1000 theaters...that's getting pretty steep. I'm totally down with the cause, but I've also seen first-hand how hard it is to get anything done with the ADA. And I've had good luck, managing to at least settle both my big ADA cases.
OK, I know this is more of a joke than anything, but seriously, 1400 Watts? Umm, for a fan? The big-ass box fans only use like 60 Watts. The shear physical size is funny, no doubt. But claiming 1400W is just silly, really.
Until it's capable of decoding Ogg Vorbis, I'm not buying it.
You might be the last remaining person on Earth with a working Rio Karma!! I gave up after #4 died and bought an iPod. Techie-loyalty be damned.
Yeah, I remember when I used to think the rules of civil procedure were actually enforced as worded. Yep, those were the days... I think everyone's first year-long case officially jades them towards the principles of a "speedy" court system.
I'm not sure if "most" of their data is freely available elsewhere, but I can say that a LOT of what I actually would use Lexis for IS available someone for free. The most obvious is state and federal laws/codes/regs/etc... which are quite easy to find without much looking. I could go on, but the fact is, if you want, you can find tons of good info on the web (or at least from www.law.cornell.edu). That said Lexis is a huge timesaver when doing complex searches. Until Google lets me use regular expressions (err..."terms and connectors" in lawyer-speak), it's simply be too hard to effectively search for certain obscure things.
1. Put in movie, wait until it queues up 2. Press Stop 3. Wait 3 seconds 4. Press Stop again 5. Press Play 6. Movie will begin at 00:00:00 Problem solved. Seriously, try it.
Even if you have a point, the bottom line is that our current government system will never decide to stop providing at least some type of protection for software. So, which would you choose, a 20 year patent, or indefinete copyright? And regardless, if I HAD to choose a better method, I'd say that software fits better into patent than copyright anyways.
You might be surprised how many people order that much stuff on Amazon. I used to work there, unfortunately. There are accounts that have new orders EVERY DAY. Some people order many 3 to 5 times a day, sometimes more. There are customers that have incremental accounts (firstlast01, firstlast02, etc...) because it takes too long to load up their account history once it gets past a thousand orders or so. There are even some customers who order so much they have employees assigned directly to them for support.
I'll say this, there are people that would save thousands a year on this. However, most people won't use it enough and it will be free money for Amazon.
PS....Just for the fun of it, did you know that you cna order a 1000 pound table saw and have it shipped for about 10 bucks? They love it when those get returned and they've got to eat $400 in shipping costs.
Didn't DirecTV do this about 4 years ago? If I remember right, they basically convinced the top guys to teach them how to "break" the current hacking methods, leading to what is know known as "Black Sunday", due to everyone's H Cards getting toasted during the main event of a WWF Pay Per View. I can't remember if it was money, get out of jail free cards, or both, but what you are suggesting HAS happened before.
Hmmm, so a massive climate change took place a about 5000 years ago? And the biblical flood occured some time around 3000BC, give or take? Anyone body else want to connect the two events? Seems like a reasonable hunch, wouldn't it?
The flaming may now proceed.....
I've actually been writing a law review article on this very topic, so in a way, I'm disappointed, because the court will make anything I say fairly irrelevant. Anyways, my hunch is that the court will most likely side with the software creator on this. As always, Posner wrote a masterful opinion in the Aimster case, deciding against Aimster. What sunk them is the fact that Aimster was way too involved in helping people download copyrighted music, regardless of any legitimate uses. The nail in the coffin was the fact that their website actually posted links to download the most popular songs. It's kind of hard to argue you aren't responsible for your users actions when you're actually helping them do it. Grokster can be distinguished from both Napster and Aimster for this reason. The connection isn't there. The others could say in good faith that they were just providing the software and could stop people from using it illegally. Grokster can. Unless the court decides to make up a new test for looking at this, I don't see how Grokster loses.
This is one of those few posts that would warrant a special 6th BONUS MOD POINT.
Did anyone else reading this have a flashback to the "shit" episode of South Park, when Mr. Garrison was trying to explain the acceptable uses of the word?
"No porn until your homework is finished."
My opinion of the Karma is this....buy an iPod.
I just had my third one die in the past 6 months. One broke falling off a chair on to a carpeted floor. It's flimsy. The damn scroll wheel tends to get pushed in, and it breaks.
My friend's OLD iPod has been dropped onto concrete dozens of times, and goes along on jogs all the time. Zero complaints on it.
Oh yeah, the Karma randomly locks up like crazy.
If you buy one, BUY THE EXTENDED WARRANTY