> NEVER let the defendant testify, especially in first trial! Or is this a civil case where you have no 5th amendment rights? Anyway...
This was a civil case.
>> Thomas said that she ripped no more than six or seven CDs per day, but on the stand today, she said she could have ripped over 2,000 songs in a little over two days.
> Wow. Then,
Presumably, that was when she originally ripped them, then copied them back over. The mention of the timestamps was more interesting: it seems that the albums were bunched together with a few minutes between them. You don't usually get that pattern with downloads. And you certainly don't download so many songs that fast, either, generally.
>> "I was a year off on everything in my deposition," she said. > Lying on the stand isn't good either.
There's a difference between "lying" and being mistaken about something that happened years ago. I couldn't tell you when I put together my computer, or when I bought my monitor and I could easily find myself a year or more off.
The worst they got her on was the 'making available' bit. That's going to cause problems down the road if they just accept that without question.
I don't remember where NYCL's comment was in the prior story, but here's some corroboration from his website, and here is the comment on his own blog where he points people to that information.
I don't blame you for wanting proof; I think it's smart to double-check things like that.
As far as I can tell, they think it's working if you can win big money in the lawsuit lottery.
As for me, I think I'll follow NYCL's advice from the previous story and send a little something to help her appeal this. NYCL said to make out checks to Chestnut & Cambronne PA, Esqs. with a note that they're for Jammie Thomas's case and to mail them to:
Brian N. Toder, Esq. Chestnut & Cambronne, P.A. 204 North Star Bank 4661 Highway 61 White Bear Lake, MN 55110
And that their phone number is (651) 653-0990 if you need it for FedEx.
Tivoization only comes into play when you DISTRIBUTE your computer en masse as a "consumer product." How you intend to do THAT is beyond me. It doesn't even make sense to suppose that you'd somehow get ensnared by that.
Anyhow, as I quoted above, they most certainly DO still claim that it doesn't cover use. It covers, as it always has covered, distribution. It does NOT cover mere use.
The Tivo company, after all, is NOT the user of Tivo devices. The people who buy Tivo devices are, and Tivo is the distributor of those devices.
Please, can we dispense with the "oh noes! the big bad FSF is going to sue me for using GPL'd software if I disagree with them!" nonsense? Because you'd have to do something other than merely use the software to run afoul of the GPL.
Well, here's the original strategy. The following is from the Comes v. Microsoft discovery, and in Bill Gates' own words:
One thing we have got to change is our strategy -- allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.
We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.
Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows.
Groklaw has an archive with all this as well if you want to check up on me. I couldn't remember where this exact memo was, so I had to Google it and I found my copy here. It's pretty widely available on the Internet now, though.
Perhaps, but exactly what relevance does that have to this discussion?
I mean, you know it's not at all the type of use I was talking about, and like you point out, even the FSF makes sure that it's not an actual problem in practice by using the LGPL for libraries.
It's only natural for people to want to protect what's important to them. But why must we begrudge each other for protecting those rights most important to them? The GPL protects the end users, the BSD license protects the people using the code itself. There's no need to attribute evil motives to either side or to avoid running code simply because it's under the "wrong" license.
> Even just as a user, I prefer the freedom and certainty that those licenses bring. Frankly, I don't need the hassle of unintentionally running afoul of the GPL.
Did you totally miss the part of the GPL that says it doesn't cover use? You can't run afoul of the GPL merely by using software.
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance.
> When it comes to the open source software that I develop and release, I always use the MIT license.
And I thank you for that. I don't care what your motives, I appreciate those who share code.
But please don't spread FUD about the GPL. Is that too much to ask?
Well, I haven't tested Excel vs. OO Calc, I have tested Word vs. OO Writer.
I sat someone down who was familiar with Word, but not very comfortable with computers in general. With no training and absolutely no help from me, they were able to bang out and print a resume.
> But perhaps is is more aimed at net nuisances such as spammers and botnets
Well, if you read the ToS, they already have that covered a thousand times over.
> They ought to have developed less-inflammatory wording.
Not to mention terms that haven't been ruled unconscionable before!
Just to prove my point, per the ToS, you agree to their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) (it's item 13 or something, it's pretty far down the list and the AUP has all the good stuff), which states, among other things:
Abuse of Email/Spamming
The Service(s) you have purchased from AT&T may include the ability to send and receive electronic mail ("Email").
Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to, the following:
* Mass electronic messages and "mail bombings" (sending mass Email or deliberately sending very large attachments to one recipient);
* Spamming, or sending unsolicited commercial Email (UCE), sending unsolicited Email soliciting charitable donations, or sending chain Email;
* Forging Email headers (transmission information);
* Using another computer, without authorization, to send multiple Email messages or to retransmit Email messages for the purpose of misleading recipients as to the origin;
* Use of electronic mail to harass or intimidate other users;
* Use of redirect links in unsolicited commercial Email (UCE) to advertise a website or service;
* Use of an AT&T-provided Email address, Service or website to spam advertise, or collect responses from unsolicited Email
(Emphasis added.) Not to mention this:
Network Security
It is your responsibility to ensure the security of your network and the machines that connect to the Service(s). You are responsible for ensuring that your customers and users use the Service(s) in an appropriate manner. You are required to take all necessary steps to manage the use of the Service(s) obtained from AT&T in such a way that network abuse is minimized. Violations of system or network security are prohibited, and may result in criminal and/or civil liability.
Examples of system or network security violations include, but are not limited to the following:
* Failing to secure your system against abuse. You are responsible for configuring and securing your services to prevent damage to the AT&T network and/or the disruption of Service(s) to other customers. You will be held liable if unknown third parties utilize your services at any time for the purpose of illegally distributing licensed software. It is your responsibility to ensure that your network and/or computer are configured in a secure manner, and to take corrective actions on vulnerable or exploited systems to prevent continued abuse. You may not, through action or inaction, allow others to use your network for illegal or inappropriate uses, and/or any other disruptive, provoking, or abusive behavior that is in violation of these guidelines or the agreement for the Service(s) you have purchased;
* With respect to Dial-up accounts, using any software or device designed to defeat system time-out limits or to allow your account to stay logged on while you are not actively using the AT&T Service(s) or using your account for the purpose of operating a server of any type;
* Uploading or distributing files that contain viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancel bots, corrupted files, or any other similar software or programs that may damage the operation of another's computer or property of another;
I misread the newsgroup and thought that the message saying "2003 too" was saying that it had the bug, not seeing that it was a response to a message saying that Excel 2000 *did* work.
I'd say it's more like the treaties *shouldn't* allow the US government to apply US laws to non-US nationals.
I seem to recall some "extraordinary rendition" gone awry in Italy a while back, although I do realize that that's not the same as extradition. Then there's Dmitry who was unfortunate enough to visit the USA when his company was on Adobe's hit list...
And believe me, given the MAFIAA's influence, I don't put it past them...:/
> By saying it is worse to bring a suit like this against an MS sufferer, we feel you are implicitly stating that it is not so bad to bring it against someone who is not an MS sufferer, and that is something we find objectionable.
Well, it is. Now hear me out.
As has been reported many times, stress is a factor in MS. By bringing this lawsuit, they can worsen her condition. In other words, it's like the RIAA is helping kill her. Add to that the fact that the disease is very expensive and that means that MS sufferers have limited means to defend themselves. So now they'll have a hard time affording medicine AND a hard time affording legal representation. Thus, the circumstances make it worse. After all, you KNOW they're not going to make any money off this case, even if they win.
Honestly, I do think it more objectionable to pick on the weak and the sick who have a hard time fighting back. Not because they have or should have more legal rights than anyone else, but because it is so dastardly of the RIAA to do this to begin with. There's absolutely nothing stopping the RIAA from dropping cases. They can be as discriminatory in bringing them as they want to be, so far as I know, without giving up any legal rights.
In other words, the heartless bastards just don't care. And they wonder why people cheer when MediaDefender got owned. At least that was a company that should've been able to defend itself against one lousy torrent with all their dirty secrets in it. I mean, that was their job, and they couldn't do it to save their own skin.
See the difference? It's the difference between only picking on those who cannot fight back and standing up to a bully. People boo one and cheer the other, even though all people are equal under law.
Maybe they think this because we've been doing all the laughing behind their backs?
Clearly, we need to laugh in their face more often. You know, perhaps we could have a good laugh over the Windows Media Player/IE vulnerabilities that still affect people whose default browser is Firefox?
Or we could laugh at them over playing the blame game when those URL handler vulnerabilities were found. Mozilla fixed their end of it, I don't remember that Microsoft ever did...
Someone got pissed during the recent license flap when taunted with "yeah, if BSD is so great, why do you all use gcc?" or something like that. So they're trying to send the message to the GPL types that "we don't need you any more."
At least, that's my take on it.
Honestly, BSD vs. GPL has always struck me as one of the stupidest flame wars. It's like that phony debate between "great taste" and "more filling" only people take it seriously.
Personally, I'll license my own software under whichever I feel more appropriate for the task (and that could be either) and tell anyone who complains about it that they can go screw themselves with a rusty chainsaw.
> Actually, its not so hard either. Neither is elliptical curve encryption. Don't overestimate the difficulty of these things. They might have been hard 15 years ago, but today such things are well documented and a plethora of libraries are available to make it even easier.
Using ECC, you're right, isn't that hard. Using ECC correctly is harder, but not that hard.
Mostly, it's rare. That's the part that gets me.
Given that I haven't seen too many using ECC, even though it has some cool properties like not being affected by advances in factorization, so I have to give them some credit on that one. It makes me feel like the person who designed it had a clue.
This isn't international diplomacy and you're the one dragging controvertial figures like Kim Jong-Il into this. I haven't seen Eben (or even Theo) dragging him into the mix.
Eben has a very good reason for advising them against such talks: Theo & co. are tossing around legal threats. It would be malpractice for him to recommend anything that might get his clients in legal trouble. It may not be very polite, but it is the law. It's ironic, because last I knew, the code was remove, and the guy with the dual-license said he was okay with it, though another guy wasn't. Now all we have left is people shooting their mouths off and opining about what should or ought to be the case, even when those hypothetical situations have nothing to do with what actually happened.
If Theo wants to make legal arguments, he can make them in court. If Theo wants to do diplomacy, he can drop the legal threats.
Frankly, I almost wish Theo'd sue. Then we'd find out whether the non-lawyer or the lawyer was actually right about what the law said. And maybe, just maybe, the one who was wrong about the law would shut the hell up already.
Yeah, I know. It's not like that will ever happen.
The IP lists are FAR more fun, though. I don't know about you, but I have NO intention of doing anything worse than copyright infringement. As a bonus, they list their method for spotting Macrovision trackers: they apparently all use dyndns. All the Macrovision trackers pointed to the same IP, but I figured it's better to list the whole class C. They may change it tomorrow, though.
Here are the IPs I found from some of the better lists I've seen posted (thanks to the Internet, I never even had to download the stupid torrent):
Clearly, the people who make our video games are far more competent than those protecting those other things like votes, money, identity, etc.
Actually, it makes a sort of perverse sense. It's pretty easy to write bog-standard business applications that do CRUD (in both the database & other sense), but it's not so easy to program a game that has to run at acceptable frame rates.
Interdiction means that they're screwing up your download or otherwise hosing the torrent.
I don't have a copy of the emails, but were they very specific about when it allows them to interdict the torrent? It'd be interesting to know, because uTorrent is closed-source and it's now merged with BitTorrent, Inc.
I wonder if Ray Beckerman (NYCL) would be able to use this? He's been trying to get discovery about what MediaDefender is up to from the RIAA for ages, last I heard, and hasn't gotten jack. Considering they're now open to all, I wonder if they could be used in court?
After all, you may remember how MediaDefender paid someone to hack into TorrentSpy's email. I'd call this turn-about...
Those "settled issues" ARE the observations. You might rewrite the laws of gravity tomorrow, but things sure as hell aren't going to fall up instead of down if you do.
The problem isn't that it upsets settled issues, it's that it ignores them. It ignores what we do know from observation. So it's like writing a theory in which things fall up without bothering to explain why we never see things fall upwards.
That's exactly what we see in homeopathy, where tinctures are diluted with pure(?) water until they retain only a "memory" of what was in them beforehand. Where on earth do you get "pure" water if the memories remain forever? Why do they only retain the memories they're supposed to? What IS the "memory" and just what makes you think it actually exists?
Anyhow, the claims HAVE been properly tested, by the journal Nature no less, and found wanting. That's why it's being dismissed.
Slashdot Mirror
> In order to have any service, you have to be in a gSpot.
And just where am I supposed to find one of those??
> NEVER let the defendant testify, especially in first trial! Or is this a civil case where you have no 5th amendment rights? Anyway...
This was a civil case.
>> Thomas said that she ripped no more than six or seven CDs per day, but on the stand today, she said she could have ripped over 2,000 songs in a little over two days.
> Wow. Then,
Presumably, that was when she originally ripped them, then copied them back over. The mention of the timestamps was more interesting: it seems that the albums were bunched together with a few minutes between them. You don't usually get that pattern with downloads. And you certainly don't download so many songs that fast, either, generally.
>> "I was a year off on everything in my deposition," she said.
> Lying on the stand isn't good either.
There's a difference between "lying" and being mistaken about something that happened years ago. I couldn't tell you when I put together my computer, or when I bought my monitor and I could easily find myself a year or more off.
The worst they got her on was the 'making available' bit. That's going to cause problems down the road if they just accept that without question.
I don't remember where NYCL's comment was in the prior story, but here's some corroboration from his website, and here is the comment on his own blog where he points people to that information.
I don't blame you for wanting proof; I think it's smart to double-check things like that.
As far as I can tell, they think it's working if you can win big money in the lawsuit lottery.
As for me, I think I'll follow NYCL's advice from the previous story and send a little something to help her appeal this. NYCL said to make out checks to Chestnut & Cambronne PA, Esqs. with a note that they're for Jammie Thomas's case and to mail them to:
Brian N. Toder, Esq.
Chestnut & Cambronne, P.A.
204 North Star Bank
4661 Highway 61
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
And that their phone number is (651) 653-0990 if you need it for FedEx.
Tivoization only comes into play when you DISTRIBUTE your computer en masse as a "consumer product." How you intend to do THAT is beyond me. It doesn't even make sense to suppose that you'd somehow get ensnared by that.
Anyhow, as I quoted above, they most certainly DO still claim that it doesn't cover use. It covers, as it always has covered, distribution. It does NOT cover mere use.
The Tivo company, after all, is NOT the user of Tivo devices. The people who buy Tivo devices are, and Tivo is the distributor of those devices.
Please, can we dispense with the "oh noes! the big bad FSF is going to sue me for using GPL'd software if I disagree with them!" nonsense? Because you'd have to do something other than merely use the software to run afoul of the GPL.
Groklaw has an archive with all this as well if you want to check up on me. I couldn't remember where this exact memo was, so I had to Google it and I found my copy here. It's pretty widely available on the Internet now, though.
Perhaps, but exactly what relevance does that have to this discussion?
I mean, you know it's not at all the type of use I was talking about, and like you point out, even the FSF makes sure that it's not an actual problem in practice by using the LGPL for libraries.
It's only natural for people to want to protect what's important to them. But why must we begrudge each other for protecting those rights most important to them? The GPL protects the end users, the BSD license protects the people using the code itself. There's no need to attribute evil motives to either side or to avoid running code simply because it's under the "wrong" license.
Frankly, I find that just a bit silly.
Did you totally miss the part of the GPL that says it doesn't cover use? You can't run afoul of the GPL merely by using software.
As the GPL puts it:
> When it comes to the open source software that I develop and release, I always use the MIT license.
And I thank you for that. I don't care what your motives, I appreciate those who share code.
But please don't spread FUD about the GPL. Is that too much to ask?
Well, I haven't tested Excel vs. OO Calc, I have tested Word vs. OO Writer.
I sat someone down who was familiar with Word, but not very comfortable with computers in general. With no training and absolutely no help from me, they were able to bang out and print a resume.
Well, if you read the ToS, they already have that covered a thousand times over.
> They ought to have developed less-inflammatory wording.
Not to mention terms that haven't been ruled unconscionable before!
Just to prove my point, per the ToS, you agree to their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) (it's item 13 or something, it's pretty far down the list and the AUP has all the good stuff), which states, among other things:
(Emphasis added.) Not to mention this:
I misread the newsgroup and thought that the message saying "2003 too" was saying that it had the bug, not seeing that it was a response to a message saying that Excel 2000 *did* work.
FWIW, it may be related to this old bug.
Weird. I can't get it to appear in my work copy of Excel 2003. Nor can I get it to appear in any of the apps on any of my systems.
Maybe some patch caused/fixed it? Or else it could be another CPU bug.
I'd say it's more like the treaties *shouldn't* allow the US government to apply US laws to non-US nationals.
... :/
I seem to recall some "extraordinary rendition" gone awry in Italy a while back, although I do realize that that's not the same as extradition. Then there's Dmitry who was unfortunate enough to visit the USA when his company was on Adobe's hit list...
And believe me, given the MAFIAA's influence, I don't put it past them
> By saying it is worse to bring a suit like this against an MS sufferer, we feel you are implicitly stating that it is not so bad to bring it against someone who is not an MS sufferer, and that is something we find objectionable.
Well, it is. Now hear me out.
As has been reported many times, stress is a factor in MS. By bringing this lawsuit, they can worsen her condition. In other words, it's like the RIAA is helping kill her. Add to that the fact that the disease is very expensive and that means that MS sufferers have limited means to defend themselves. So now they'll have a hard time affording medicine AND a hard time affording legal representation. Thus, the circumstances make it worse. After all, you KNOW they're not going to make any money off this case, even if they win.
Honestly, I do think it more objectionable to pick on the weak and the sick who have a hard time fighting back. Not because they have or should have more legal rights than anyone else, but because it is so dastardly of the RIAA to do this to begin with. There's absolutely nothing stopping the RIAA from dropping cases. They can be as discriminatory in bringing them as they want to be, so far as I know, without giving up any legal rights.
In other words, the heartless bastards just don't care. And they wonder why people cheer when MediaDefender got owned. At least that was a company that should've been able to defend itself against one lousy torrent with all their dirty secrets in it. I mean, that was their job, and they couldn't do it to save their own skin.
See the difference? It's the difference between only picking on those who cannot fight back and standing up to a bully. People boo one and cheer the other, even though all people are equal under law.
Maybe they think this because we've been doing all the laughing behind their backs?
Clearly, we need to laugh in their face more often. You know, perhaps we could have a good laugh over the Windows Media Player/IE vulnerabilities that still affect people whose default browser is Firefox?
Or we could laugh at them over playing the blame game when those URL handler vulnerabilities were found. Mozilla fixed their end of it, I don't remember that Microsoft ever did...
Someone got pissed during the recent license flap when taunted with "yeah, if BSD is so great, why do you all use gcc?" or something like that. So they're trying to send the message to the GPL types that "we don't need you any more."
At least, that's my take on it.
Honestly, BSD vs. GPL has always struck me as one of the stupidest flame wars. It's like that phony debate between "great taste" and "more filling" only people take it seriously.
Personally, I'll license my own software under whichever I feel more appropriate for the task (and that could be either) and tell anyone who complains about it that they can go screw themselves with a rusty chainsaw.
> Actually, its not so hard either. Neither is elliptical curve encryption. Don't overestimate the difficulty of these things. They might have been hard 15 years ago, but today such things are well documented and a plethora of libraries are available to make it even easier.
Using ECC, you're right, isn't that hard. Using ECC correctly is harder, but not that hard.
Mostly, it's rare. That's the part that gets me.
Given that I haven't seen too many using ECC, even though it has some cool properties like not being affected by advances in factorization, so I have to give them some credit on that one. It makes me feel like the person who designed it had a clue.
This isn't international diplomacy and you're the one dragging controvertial figures like Kim Jong-Il into this. I haven't seen Eben (or even Theo) dragging him into the mix.
Eben has a very good reason for advising them against such talks: Theo & co. are tossing around legal threats. It would be malpractice for him to recommend anything that might get his clients in legal trouble. It may not be very polite, but it is the law. It's ironic, because last I knew, the code was remove, and the guy with the dual-license said he was okay with it, though another guy wasn't. Now all we have left is people shooting their mouths off and opining about what should or ought to be the case, even when those hypothetical situations have nothing to do with what actually happened.
If Theo wants to make legal arguments, he can make them in court.
If Theo wants to do diplomacy, he can drop the legal threats.
Frankly, I almost wish Theo'd sue. Then we'd find out whether the non-lawyer or the lawyer was actually right about what the law said. And maybe, just maybe, the one who was wrong about the law would shut the hell up already.
Yeah, I know. It's not like that will ever happen.
The IP lists are FAR more fun, though. I don't know about you, but I have NO intention of doing anything worse than copyright infringement. As a bonus, they list their method for spotting Macrovision trackers: they apparently all use dyndns. All the Macrovision trackers pointed to the same IP, but I figured it's better to list the whole class C. They may change it tomorrow, though.
Here are the IPs I found from some of the better lists I've seen posted (thanks to the Internet, I never even had to download the stupid torrent):
38.99.252.0 - 38.99.255.255 MediaDefender
63.208.196.0 - 63.208.196.255 Macrovision
64.86.230.0 - 64.86.230.255 MediaDefender
64.93.88.0 - 64.93.91.255 MediaDefender
65.120.42.0 - 65.120.42.255 MediaDefender
66.110.61.0 - 66.110.61.255 MediaDefender
66.198.35.0 - 66.198.35.255 MediaDefender
129.47.9.0 - 129.47.9.255 MediaDefender
205.177.78.0 - 205.177.78.255 MediaDefender
207.45.196.0 - 207.45.196.255 MediaDefender
209.133.104.0 - 209.133.104.255 MediaDefender
209.151.247.0 - 209.151.247.255 MediaDefender
Clearly, the people who make our video games are far more competent than those protecting those other things like votes, money, identity, etc.
Actually, it makes a sort of perverse sense. It's pretty easy to write bog-standard business applications that do CRUD (in both the database & other sense), but it's not so easy to program a game that has to run at acceptable frame rates.
But I can't, so instead I just mailed her $50, and you $5, so you can have a beer on me.
Good luck!
And here I was worried that they might use something like Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF).
Good to know we only have Canadians to worry about, eh?
Interdiction means that they're screwing up your download or otherwise hosing the torrent.
I don't have a copy of the emails, but were they very specific about when it allows them to interdict the torrent? It'd be interesting to know, because uTorrent is closed-source and it's now merged with BitTorrent, Inc.
I wonder if Ray Beckerman (NYCL) would be able to use this? He's been trying to get discovery about what MediaDefender is up to from the RIAA for ages, last I heard, and hasn't gotten jack. Considering they're now open to all, I wonder if they could be used in court?
After all, you may remember how MediaDefender paid someone to hack into TorrentSpy's email. I'd call this turn-about...
Those "settled issues" ARE the observations. You might rewrite the laws of gravity tomorrow, but things sure as hell aren't going to fall up instead of down if you do.
The problem isn't that it upsets settled issues, it's that it ignores them. It ignores what we do know from observation. So it's like writing a theory in which things fall up without bothering to explain why we never see things fall upwards.
That's exactly what we see in homeopathy, where tinctures are diluted with pure(?) water until they retain only a "memory" of what was in them beforehand. Where on earth do you get "pure" water if the memories remain forever? Why do they only retain the memories they're supposed to? What IS the "memory" and just what makes you think it actually exists?
Anyhow, the claims HAVE been properly tested, by the journal Nature no less, and found wanting. That's why it's being dismissed.