You have to admit that it's easier to predict the future when you're the one making it...:]
That said, the places where he was wrong are more interesting to me. I wonder what Microsoft's business plan was had IBM taken over with OS/2 instead of them?
> The little "(IANAL)" basically translates as "I am unqualified to tell you that 'You really screwed up when you wrote the letter to their lawyers.'" You don't know what the letter said. If the letter said, "This was an accident, not the client's intention, nor mine, wires got crossed somewhere, terribly sorry, and I took the offending material down and am taking steps to make sure this never happens again," then he and his client are a lot better off than if the letter said "I stole those images on purpose and the client didn't seem to care. It's obvious that we're in the wrong, have violated numerous laws, and owe your client at least $25,000. Please tell me your legal fees so I can cover those, too. Attached is a full accounting of my company's assets and revenue streams."
Umm, if you haven't watched SCO vs. IBM, just look at how Darl's statements are sinking SCO. This is why you don't write crazy things like that in a letter, but you get a lawyer. I know it's expensive, but lawyers don't generally respect people representing themselves and that's a sure way to get screwed.
> I can tell you're not an attorney because of all the things you didn't notice in the article. The client, not the Asker, is the one who received the shakedown notice. The client is the one with legal trouble and they are the ones in need of an attorney. The Asker may need one too, later, if the client (or anyone else) sends him an invoice, but the Asker hasn't received any threatening letters.
Right, which is why he shouldn't have gotten involved directly like that. Now who knows what sort of liability he's created, admitting to the infringement on their behalf. That's the kind of crap you pay a lawyer to handle.
Anyhow, GP is right--at least in the US, it's normal to send a C&D letter without monetary demands. Neither of us knows exactly why they're sending $25k demands, but it's probably not a good thing and not an indication that they'll settle this quietly. Which means you need the damn lawyer, not Slashdot. Besides, unless NewYorkCityLawyer comments, pretty much all of us are going to end up saying IANAL, but...
> Your gloating suggestion that Asker has "bent over, dropped your pants and decided to forgo any lube" is a fine example of why people should be asking lawyers, not Slashdotters, what to do when they need legal advice.
Agreed, but I don't read that as "gloating" I read that as "Ugh! That was a terrible idea, haven't you read _any_ of the other Ask Slashdot requests for legal advice where there were 800 threads saying GET A LAWYER NOW?"
As someone in his position, you don't want to hurt your client, which is why you shouldn't take legal matters into your own hands. About the *only* time it might be okay is if they'd sent a polite C&D with no extra demands, then you could say "oops!" let them know you removed the content and go on with life.
How do I know? I had to do that once upon a time, back in the days of Netscape Navigator 3.2 Gold, when search engines were novel and our stupid little "look at us! we just learned HTML!" personal page hit the top of the rankings.
> the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.
No, they're not "just" trying to do that. They've manipulated the law to their own ends and complain whenever people decry that as unfair. They sue innocent people, attempting to ruin their lives. And if they do find out that someone's innocent, they use discovery to invade the innocent person's life, looking to find the real infringer. Which might well be them, after they have MediaSentry flood the P2P networks with bogus files and bogus search data (including the very searches they use to find "infringers"!) And if you insist upon corruption, just what do you call payola? Are bribes not considered corruption these days, or what?
Now, don't get me wrong--Halliburton isn't exactly some nice company, either. But this is "most hated" not "most evil" and the RIAA has gotten a lot more press lately.
But please, don't say they're "just" trying to protect their "property" because there's no way in hell I'll buy that lame excuse.
- place application needs ahead of platform decisions
Make sure their applications are exclusive to Windows. Even if you have to buy the company that makes them, or enter that market for no reason other than to destroy them.
- will support whatever platform best fits the application
Get developers to tie their products to Windows in such a way that porting them is more difficult. Think DirectX vs. OpenGL.
- application needs driven by business needs
Make sure that Microsoft interoperability is one-way. In other words, keep format lock-ins like they do with MS Office and OOXML vs. ODF.
- very satisfied with current Linux installations
Find ways to sow discord, like the Novell / Microsoft patent deal.
> So, remind me again how these bullet points help win AGAINST Linux?
They're not, but they can be used by Microsoft to find ways to undermine their critics. Oh, and for the people questioning whether the site is legitimate or not, I googled some of the information from the whois to find stacymunn.com like everyone else has, and noticed this on the resume:
Employment Learning and Media Specialist March 2005 - current Contractor at Microsoft, Redmond, WA
Design and produce user interfaces for multimedia training materials.
Design and develop interactive assessments with scoring and tracking capabilities.
> Does what we can teach through gaming actually matter in real life? What does, and what doesn't? Therefore: what should we continue to teach with books and discussion, and where can gaming be used positively?
There are only a handful of games I believe I learned anything from:
1) Number Munchers -- You have to solve simple math problems quickly during the game (e.g. "eat all multiples of 5"). I got plenty of practice figuring out multiples and such while playing that game as a kid.
2) Binary Blitz -- You have to convert numbers from 1-255 to binary within a time limit (I suddenly wonder if never asking me to convert 0 to binary should be considered a bug?). It helped me with my assembly language class because our teacher liked giving out binary (and hex) math problems. And I don't mean a few, I mean whole pages of them like they used to give out in 1st grade when you were learning addition. Did I mention that all the tests had time limits? It's very helpful to see 254 and be able to convert it to 1111 1110b when you have to do crap like that on the final.
3) Katakana & Hiragana. I don't know if it qualifies as a "game" per se, but it makes practicing them a lot easier.
Most anything else, I learned incidentally. For example, I had no memory of being able to talk to anyone in Oregon Trail like another poster mentioned. And I've forgotten pretty much anything I learned from Carmen Sandiego. I guess I might have learned a few odd historical names from other games (e.g. Liu Bei has shown up in quite a few), but I've probably learned more from watching anime than I ever did by playing games for that sort of thing *shrug*
> you think we should discriminate so that disabled people are presumed more innocent than fit people?
No, I just think it's a bit dishonorable to sue people who can't defend themselves when you know or should know that your evidence isn't very good. Instead, they use that as an excuse to subpoena the people and find out if any of their neighbors or relatives happen to be copyright infringers.
> defending copyright theft again
No less than the Supreme Court has said that, while both are illegal, copyright infringement isn't "stealing." So it's a bit hypocritical to use loaded and legally wrong language while complaining about "justification" isn't it?
Disclaimer: IANAL. Get a CPR card if you want to practice CPR. Mine is out of date; work gave maintenance the CPR training, while I got the mandatory "confined spaces" training instead--it consisted entirely of looking at pictures of every last manhole around the plant, while being told "don't go in them." I wish I was making that up.
Back on topic, many places have "Good Samaritan" laws which protect people who try to help you from malpractice suits in situations like that. Might be worth looking up what, if any, such laws your state has if you're worried about that.
> If you think it's okay for our justice system to oppress helpless people, I beg to differ.
I'm not sure that many people think it's "okay" so much as they think it's within the rules. And by "within the rules" I mean that they think that the RIAA can get away with it, at least for the most part.
Which is why I'm glad that you're helping people fight back. I sincerely hope you manage to turn the tide against them, but I have to wonder. Did you this discussion about how file sharing is "harmful to children" because, of all things, "peer-to-peer networks could manipulate sites so children violate copyright laws more frequently than adults, exposing those children to copyright lawsuits and, in turn, make those who protect their copyrighted material appear antagonistic"? This is really getting out of hand...:/
> I wonder if, in a few years' time, we won't look back at the "liberal" information exchange of today's Internet and realise that we went too far. There is not automatically value in preserving everything that was ever published; people make mistakes, and a great many people have avoided suffering unreasonably from an innocent mistake or moment of madness in their youth because memories fade. Unless, of course, your personal details and intimate memories are preserved by archives of today's social networking sites, personal blogs, and so on.
Well, in this case, at least, you can get things removed--even retroactively. However, it requires you to notify their computers (i.e. robots.txt / submit your site for rescanning) because you absolutely cannot run an operation of that scale manually. It doesn't even make sense.
> I would rather we gave up on robots.txt as an obscure and backwards approach, and instead saw Internet standards bodies pushing for a widely-known opt-in convention that could make it clear to search engines, archives, caches and the like what content was intended to be available for these uses. I suspect many legitimate, informative sites would quickly adopt such a convention, and it would remove all risk from organisations like libraries and searching/caching services who are on shaky legal ground right now. At the same time, it wouldn't inadvertently preserve information that could be all too damaging later on, yet has little if any real value to society.
Well, the problem is getting everyone to do that. The internet is, after all, a public place--like it or not. Most people don't care, so there's value in assuming yes and letting those people who do care say no later. It's not that onerous, and the information HAS to come from them either way--they're the only ones who know whether they want it included or not!
Anyhow, if you actually look into the motivations for most of the people who have sued the Internet Archive, you'll find a very interesting trend. Most of them had their own writings used against them in court. That's right, they're mad because it frustrated their ability to conceal or destroy evidence! If anything, I think that it's pretty clear that the courts should operate on as much information as possible, so if anything, the cases ought to favor the Internet Archive.
After all, just because it's not very interesting today doesn't mean it won't be, down the road. In other words, I think that if anything, we'll lament that we had to delete what we did to comply with the law. Yes, in the case of stalkers and the like, it may certainly make sense to have archive.org remove the material--they can and will do so quickly if you follow their simple procedures. And anyone who says "why should _I_ have to do it?" should be slapped upside the head--you're the only one who _can_ do it, because only you know that it needs doing.
So no, I don't think we'll look back and think that. And I all but know that _I_ won't look back and think that. Ever.
> What is it about the Geek that he can never quite grasp the most elemental distinctions between civil and criminal law? > The RIAA doesn't have to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. > The RIAA only has to persuade a judge and jury that, on balance, its explanation is the more plausible. > More to the point - since the odds are a bare 1% that a civil case ever will go to trial - much less to a verdict - > it only has to make a credible argument for a pre-trial settlement.
Well, I think the point was that they haven't done that. They haven't shown *any* reason to think that they have credible evidence save a highly tenuous link given by letters from ISPs which have proven to be far less than accurate in the past. Believe me, were I on a jury, I'd demand more clear-cut evidence than "we have a letter from their ISP saying it was done from their account."
Also, vulturing people too poor to defend themselves in the courts on the theory that your shoddy evidence can force them into a settlement isn't exactly endearing. It may, from a purely tactical point of view, be all that they have to do, but...
> They could try, but when the artists they claim to be protecting start to scream for the heads of the lawyers, things would change.
As I understand it, they screw the artists at least as much as the public. The artists make the bulk of their money on touring and get almost nothing unless they have some really high sales. About the only thing that's worse is Hollywood's accounting for movies (net points are worth exactly $0, even for highly profitable movies, I've yet to hear of a case where they were worth *anything*, gross points, however, have actual value, but ask Peter Jackson how they work...)
If it's any consolation, I don't buy any of their crap.
You DID read the part about how the RIAA has flimsy evidence and these people most certainly don't admit to being copyright infringers of any kind, right? The ad misercordiam, as you call it, is to call attention to the fact that, even when the RIAA is on notice that it's case is poor, they refuse to drop the lawsuit. Even though they're putting some poor, innocent person through hell.
I mean, if you were shown how little of a case you had, wouldn't you drop it? It's not like they don't have plenty of people to sue, some of whom might have even infringed upon their copyrights (although I'm suspecting that any such people identified are all but accidentally found, given what we've seen in their prior cases).
Great, someone vandalizes Wikipedia, Rick Romero will give us news at 11.
So just how long until Slashdot troll postings make the news!? Seriously, I dread the day they start reporting things like "Are YOUR children in danger? Malicious internet 'trolls' may be posting links to goatse! We'll tell you how to protect your children via the SCO chairman's new Clean Port 80 anti-porn act... after a word from our sponsor, KY Inc."
By reading this post or having it copied into your browser's cache, you agree to give me a permanent, irrevocable, fully paid-up license, at my option, to revoke, amend, terminate, or waive any breach of any contract of adhesion, EULA, click-through license, or any other such license or contract which does not bear my physical (i.e. the non-electronic kind made with a pen) signature or the physical signature of a designated agent you have entered with me, or to take that action on your behalf. In the event of any disagreement pertaining to, arising under, or relating to this license, you give me the choice of law and venue and agree not to oppose any changes of venue, motions for removal to or from federal court, or objections to standing that I request and that you give me the right to waive any objections on your behalf. In the event of any breech, you agree to pay all of my court costs and attorney's fees.
If you do not agree to this, you must get my signature in pen and ink stating that whatever license or contract you propose is not subject to this agreement. After all, if you don't think this is valid, just why the HELL do you think some stupid thing you put on your web page is!?
-----
There, put that bugger on your website, and let them weasel out of that:] Honestly, I hope this'll get thrown out soon, the judge just might not be able to do that at this stage in the litigation. I mean, hell, how long as SCO vs. IBM been going on now?
Well, people evaluate the likelihood of things based on their experience, and you haven't seen this happen. I, for one, haven't seen a *working* Vista computer yet, so I naturally have a different take on things.
Also, if I were to guess, laptops are more likely to have trouble with hibernate than desktops, although one of the Vista PCs I helped repair (as much as possible, at least) was certainly having some odd issue with shutting down. In fact, it seemed like the system didn't want to do a proper shutdown (i.e. full power off) at all, for some reason. Go figure?
A little reducto ad absurdum here... Suppose I release the following program under GPL:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
Does that now mean that any Perl script that "includes" mine is now subject to the GPL? How big does an "inclusion" have to be to trigger the GPL? One line of code? Ten? One hundred?
Impossible, because your example is not copyrightable and the GPL can only attach to copyrighted material (if you don't have a copyright on it, you have no right to make someone agree to the GPL).
Without being exhaustive, your example is not copyrightable under US law because it is both unoriginal and dictated by externalities (i.e. the Perl syntax). If you read the SCO vs. IBM legal papers on Groklaw and find where they discuss how copyrights work, you can learn more than you probably ever wanted to know about such things:]
The real problems come because every one of them wants a TV tuner card:/ I know enough to know that those never seem to work properly, but under Vista, it's even worse. We're getting degraded audio especially, and sometimes degraded video, even though at least some of the files work just fine on other systems (that is, with some videos from other sources).
I'm not sure if Media Player is just broken, if we've somehow triggered Vista's DRM to intentionally degrade things, or what...
All I know is that it's a pain in the ass to support; even trivial stuff like helping them search for where options have moved to is confusing. It took us way too long to figure out that that Word logo thing in Office was the new File menu, so we couldn't directly open files very easily for a while. That one is especially stupid because we were all used to having a non-functional program logo up there, but now it's a menu. Just what usability "expert" made up that stupid thing!? I guess the tabbed part with all the other menu options was okay, but there's no way in hell I want to "upgrade" to it, ever.
It's funny they talk about support, because on a *brand new* Dell box a friend bought, their support has been total crap.
Not only did they slag him with Vista (he wanted XP, per my advice), they wouldn't downgrade it and it doesn't work right. He installed drivers and crap based on Dell's tech support and eventually got the system so hosed it restarted explorer (the desktop, not the whole computer) every few seconds. I was finally able to get to a system restore point (after many, many tries--it's hard to get to when you don't have time to click anything) and undo that at least. When I checked the Event Viewer, there were almost 20,000 messages in there (not all errors, but the system is only a week old, so there can't be many normal ones unless it logs every damn time you click [ Allow ] or [ Cancel ]...).
Anyhow, I think I'm going to tag this story with what I feel is the real answer to the question posed in the headline: Microsoft
Maybe they're not to blame, but I have a hard time seeing why Dell would want to avoid selling something its customers want...
Not to mention *cough* that other place videos get posted that every savvy internet user knows about, but which everyone else seems to have forgotten...
Atheists and agnostics (and various theists) spend a lot of time arguing over what atheism/agnosticism is or is not:] Ironically, the one thing I'm sure of from all the arguments is that none of them are unsure about what they (don't) believe, but not all of them (dis)believe the same things, either.
> Being a "legal pro" is not a required part of being an "expert". To be an expert, one must be an expert in a particular field. Sadly, there are some "experts" whose sole job is testifying for money, but this is extremely fertile area for cross examination and those experts are easily painted as whores.
If I remember what Ray said of him accurately, he's been the expert witness for all of the RIAA's cases, though he hasn't been deposed until now. So he probably should be a legal expert by now.
Good point. If he's really any good at teaching about "information warfare" he damn well ought to know trivial things like how to change a MAC. I suppose then he answered the way he did because he sees it as his duty to help his client present their case, or something like that, and doesn't think this did happen (even though he was being asked if he could think of anything that *could*).
Honestly, with a question like "can you think of anything that *could* cast doubt upon x?" ANY no answer had better either come with ironclad proof (i.e. I'm pretty sure I exist and I can't think of anything to cast doubt upon that) or else it's a good sign that you don't know how reliable your methods are. Which is a pretty good indication that they're unreliable given that they've obviously been developed without the benefit of any sort of testing...
Slashdot Mirror
> But why stop there? Why not go all the way and ask for a license to kill?
...
My only guess would be that they don't think there's enough money in it.
And even if I was wrong about that, I sure wouldn't want to correct them,
You have to admit that it's easier to predict the future when you're the one making it... :]
That said, the places where he was wrong are more interesting to me. I wonder what Microsoft's business plan was had IBM taken over with OS/2 instead of them?
> The little "(IANAL)" basically translates as "I am unqualified to tell you that 'You really screwed up when you wrote the letter to their lawyers.'" You don't know what the letter said. If the letter said, "This was an accident, not the client's intention, nor mine, wires got crossed somewhere, terribly sorry, and I took the offending material down and am taking steps to make sure this never happens again," then he and his client are a lot better off than if the letter said "I stole those images on purpose and the client didn't seem to care. It's obvious that we're in the wrong, have violated numerous laws, and owe your client at least $25,000. Please tell me your legal fees so I can cover those, too. Attached is a full accounting of my company's assets and revenue streams."
Umm, if you haven't watched SCO vs. IBM, just look at how Darl's statements are sinking SCO. This is why you don't write crazy things like that in a letter, but you get a lawyer. I know it's expensive, but lawyers don't generally respect people representing themselves and that's a sure way to get screwed.
> I can tell you're not an attorney because of all the things you didn't notice in the article. The client, not the Asker, is the one who received the shakedown notice. The client is the one with legal trouble and they are the ones in need of an attorney. The Asker may need one too, later, if the client (or anyone else) sends him an invoice, but the Asker hasn't received any threatening letters.
Right, which is why he shouldn't have gotten involved directly like that. Now who knows what sort of liability he's created, admitting to the infringement on their behalf. That's the kind of crap you pay a lawyer to handle.
Anyhow, GP is right--at least in the US, it's normal to send a C&D letter without monetary demands. Neither of us knows exactly why they're sending $25k demands, but it's probably not a good thing and not an indication that they'll settle this quietly. Which means you need the damn lawyer, not Slashdot. Besides, unless NewYorkCityLawyer comments, pretty much all of us are going to end up saying IANAL, but...
> Your gloating suggestion that Asker has "bent over, dropped your pants and decided to forgo any lube" is a fine example of why people should be asking lawyers, not Slashdotters, what to do when they need legal advice.
Agreed, but I don't read that as "gloating" I read that as "Ugh! That was a terrible idea, haven't you read _any_ of the other Ask Slashdot requests for legal advice where there were 800 threads saying GET A LAWYER NOW?"
As someone in his position, you don't want to hurt your client, which is why you shouldn't take legal matters into your own hands. About the *only* time it might be okay is if they'd sent a polite C&D with no extra demands, then you could say "oops!" let them know you removed the content and go on with life.
How do I know? I had to do that once upon a time, back in the days of Netscape Navigator 3.2 Gold, when search engines were novel and our stupid little "look at us! we just learned HTML!" personal page hit the top of the rankings.
> the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.
No, they're not "just" trying to do that. They've manipulated the law to their own ends and complain whenever people decry that as unfair. They sue innocent people, attempting to ruin their lives. And if they do find out that someone's innocent, they use discovery to invade the innocent person's life, looking to find the real infringer. Which might well be them, after they have MediaSentry flood the P2P networks with bogus files and bogus search data (including the very searches they use to find "infringers"!) And if you insist upon corruption, just what do you call payola? Are bribes not considered corruption these days, or what?
Now, don't get me wrong--Halliburton isn't exactly some nice company, either. But this is "most hated" not "most evil" and the RIAA has gotten a lot more press lately.
But please, don't say they're "just" trying to protect their "property" because there's no way in hell I'll buy that lame excuse.
- place application needs ahead of platform decisions
Make sure their applications are exclusive to Windows. Even if you have to buy the company that makes them, or enter that market for no reason other than to destroy them.
- will support whatever platform best fits the application
Get developers to tie their products to Windows in such a way that porting them is more difficult. Think DirectX vs. OpenGL.
- application needs driven by business needs
Make sure that Microsoft interoperability is one-way. In other words, keep format lock-ins like they do with MS Office and OOXML vs. ODF.
- very satisfied with current Linux installations
Find ways to sow discord, like the Novell / Microsoft patent deal.
> So, remind me again how these bullet points help win AGAINST Linux?
They're not, but they can be used by Microsoft to find ways to undermine their critics. Oh, and for the people questioning whether the site is legitimate or not, I googled some of the information from the whois to find stacymunn.com like everyone else has, and noticed this on the resume:
It's hardly conclusive, but...
> Does what we can teach through gaming actually matter in real life? What does, and what doesn't? Therefore: what should we continue to teach with books and discussion, and where can gaming be used positively?
There are only a handful of games I believe I learned anything from:
1) Number Munchers -- You have to solve simple math problems quickly during the game (e.g. "eat all multiples of 5"). I got plenty of practice figuring out multiples and such while playing that game as a kid.
2) Binary Blitz -- You have to convert numbers from 1-255 to binary within a time limit (I suddenly wonder if never asking me to convert 0 to binary should be considered a bug?). It helped me with my assembly language class because our teacher liked giving out binary (and hex) math problems. And I don't mean a few, I mean whole pages of them like they used to give out in 1st grade when you were learning addition. Did I mention that all the tests had time limits? It's very helpful to see 254 and be able to convert it to 1111 1110b when you have to do crap like that on the final.
3) Katakana & Hiragana. I don't know if it qualifies as a "game" per se, but it makes practicing them a lot easier.
Most anything else, I learned incidentally. For example, I had no memory of being able to talk to anyone in Oregon Trail like another poster mentioned. And I've forgotten pretty much anything I learned from Carmen Sandiego. I guess I might have learned a few odd historical names from other games (e.g. Liu Bei has shown up in quite a few), but I've probably learned more from watching anime than I ever did by playing games for that sort of thing *shrug*
> you think we should discriminate so that disabled people are presumed more innocent than fit people?
No, I just think it's a bit dishonorable to sue people who can't defend themselves when you know or should know that your evidence isn't very good. Instead, they use that as an excuse to subpoena the people and find out if any of their neighbors or relatives happen to be copyright infringers.
> defending copyright theft again
No less than the Supreme Court has said that, while both are illegal, copyright infringement isn't "stealing." So it's a bit hypocritical to use loaded and legally wrong language while complaining about "justification" isn't it?
Disclaimer: IANAL. Get a CPR card if you want to practice CPR. Mine is out of date; work gave maintenance the CPR training, while I got the mandatory "confined spaces" training instead--it consisted entirely of looking at pictures of every last manhole around the plant, while being told "don't go in them." I wish I was making that up.
Back on topic, many places have "Good Samaritan" laws which protect people who try to help you from malpractice suits in situations like that. Might be worth looking up what, if any, such laws your state has if you're worried about that.
> If you think it's okay for our justice system to oppress helpless people, I beg to differ.
:/
I'm not sure that many people think it's "okay" so much as they think it's within the rules. And by "within the rules" I mean that they think that the RIAA can get away with it, at least for the most part.
Which is why I'm glad that you're helping people fight back. I sincerely hope you manage to turn the tide against them, but I have to wonder. Did you this discussion about how file sharing is "harmful to children" because, of all things, "peer-to-peer networks could manipulate sites so children violate copyright laws more frequently than adults, exposing those children to copyright lawsuits and, in turn, make those who protect their copyrighted material appear antagonistic"? This is really getting out of hand...
> I wonder if, in a few years' time, we won't look back at the "liberal" information exchange of today's Internet and realise that we went too far. There is not automatically value in preserving everything that was ever published; people make mistakes, and a great many people have avoided suffering unreasonably from an innocent mistake or moment of madness in their youth because memories fade. Unless, of course, your personal details and intimate memories are preserved by archives of today's social networking sites, personal blogs, and so on.
Well, in this case, at least, you can get things removed--even retroactively. However, it requires you to notify their computers (i.e. robots.txt / submit your site for rescanning) because you absolutely cannot run an operation of that scale manually. It doesn't even make sense.
> I would rather we gave up on robots.txt as an obscure and backwards approach, and instead saw Internet standards bodies pushing for a widely-known opt-in convention that could make it clear to search engines, archives, caches and the like what content was intended to be available for these uses. I suspect many legitimate, informative sites would quickly adopt such a convention, and it would remove all risk from organisations like libraries and searching/caching services who are on shaky legal ground right now. At the same time, it wouldn't inadvertently preserve information that could be all too damaging later on, yet has little if any real value to society.
Well, the problem is getting everyone to do that. The internet is, after all, a public place--like it or not. Most people don't care, so there's value in assuming yes and letting those people who do care say no later. It's not that onerous, and the information HAS to come from them either way--they're the only ones who know whether they want it included or not!
Anyhow, if you actually look into the motivations for most of the people who have sued the Internet Archive, you'll find a very interesting trend. Most of them had their own writings used against them in court. That's right, they're mad because it frustrated their ability to conceal or destroy evidence! If anything, I think that it's pretty clear that the courts should operate on as much information as possible, so if anything, the cases ought to favor the Internet Archive.
After all, just because it's not very interesting today doesn't mean it won't be, down the road. In other words, I think that if anything, we'll lament that we had to delete what we did to comply with the law. Yes, in the case of stalkers and the like, it may certainly make sense to have archive.org remove the material--they can and will do so quickly if you follow their simple procedures. And anyone who says "why should _I_ have to do it?" should be slapped upside the head--you're the only one who _can_ do it, because only you know that it needs doing.
So no, I don't think we'll look back and think that. And I all but know that _I_ won't look back and think that. Ever.
> What is it about the Geek that he can never quite grasp the most elemental distinctions between civil and criminal law?
> The RIAA doesn't have to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
> The RIAA only has to persuade a judge and jury that, on balance, its explanation is the more plausible.
> More to the point - since the odds are a bare 1% that a civil case ever will go to trial - much less to a verdict -
> it only has to make a credible argument for a pre-trial settlement.
Well, I think the point was that they haven't done that. They haven't shown *any* reason to think that they have credible evidence save a highly tenuous link given by letters from ISPs which have proven to be far less than accurate in the past. Believe me, were I on a jury, I'd demand more clear-cut evidence than "we have a letter from their ISP saying it was done from their account."
Also, vulturing people too poor to defend themselves in the courts on the theory that your shoddy evidence can force them into a settlement isn't exactly endearing. It may, from a purely tactical point of view, be all that they have to do, but...
> They could try, but when the artists they claim to be protecting start to scream for the heads of the lawyers, things would change.
As I understand it, they screw the artists at least as much as the public. The artists make the bulk of their money on touring and get almost nothing unless they have some really high sales. About the only thing that's worse is Hollywood's accounting for movies (net points are worth exactly $0, even for highly profitable movies, I've yet to hear of a case where they were worth *anything*, gross points, however, have actual value, but ask Peter Jackson how they work...)
If it's any consolation, I don't buy any of their crap.
You DID read the part about how the RIAA has flimsy evidence and these people most certainly don't admit to being copyright infringers of any kind, right? The ad misercordiam, as you call it, is to call attention to the fact that, even when the RIAA is on notice that it's case is poor, they refuse to drop the lawsuit. Even though they're putting some poor, innocent person through hell.
I mean, if you were shown how little of a case you had, wouldn't you drop it? It's not like they don't have plenty of people to sue, some of whom might have even infringed upon their copyrights (although I'm suspecting that any such people identified are all but accidentally found, given what we've seen in their prior cases).
Great, someone vandalizes Wikipedia, Rick Romero will give us news at 11.
So just how long until Slashdot troll postings make the news!? Seriously, I dread the day they start reporting things like "Are YOUR children in danger? Malicious internet 'trolls' may be posting links to goatse! We'll tell you how to protect your children via the SCO chairman's new Clean Port 80 anti-porn act... after a word from our sponsor, KY Inc."
By reading this post or having it copied into your browser's cache, you agree to give me a permanent, irrevocable, fully paid-up license, at my option, to revoke, amend, terminate, or waive any breach of any contract of adhesion, EULA, click-through license, or any other such license or contract which does not bear my physical (i.e. the non-electronic kind made with a pen) signature or the physical signature of a designated agent you have entered with me, or to take that action on your behalf. In the event of any disagreement pertaining to, arising under, or relating to this license, you give me the choice of law and venue and agree not to oppose any changes of venue, motions for removal to or from federal court, or objections to standing that I request and that you give me the right to waive any objections on your behalf. In the event of any breech, you agree to pay all of my court costs and attorney's fees.
:] Honestly, I hope this'll get thrown out soon, the judge just might not be able to do that at this stage in the litigation. I mean, hell, how long as SCO vs. IBM been going on now?
If you do not agree to this, you must get my signature in pen and ink stating that whatever license or contract you propose is not subject to this agreement. After all, if you don't think this is valid, just why the HELL do you think some stupid thing you put on your web page is!?
-----
There, put that bugger on your website, and let them weasel out of that
Well, people evaluate the likelihood of things based on their experience, and you haven't seen this happen.
I, for one, haven't seen a *working* Vista computer yet, so I naturally have a different take on things.
Also, if I were to guess, laptops are more likely to have trouble with hibernate than desktops, although one of the Vista PCs I helped repair (as much as possible, at least) was certainly having some odd issue with shutting down. In fact, it seemed like the system didn't want to do a proper shutdown (i.e. full power off) at all, for some reason. Go figure?
Impossible, because your example is not copyrightable and the GPL can only attach to copyrighted material (if you don't have a copyright on it, you have no right to make someone agree to the GPL).
Without being exhaustive, your example is not copyrightable under US law because it is both unoriginal and dictated by externalities (i.e. the Perl syntax). If you read the SCO vs. IBM legal papers on Groklaw and find where they discuss how copyrights work, you can learn more than you probably ever wanted to know about such things
The real problems come because every one of them wants a TV tuner card :/ I know enough to know that those never seem to work properly, but under Vista, it's even worse. We're getting degraded audio especially, and sometimes degraded video, even though at least some of the files work just fine on other systems (that is, with some videos from other sources).
I'm not sure if Media Player is just broken, if we've somehow triggered Vista's DRM to intentionally degrade things, or what...
All I know is that it's a pain in the ass to support; even trivial stuff like helping them search for where options have moved to is confusing. It took us way too long to figure out that that Word logo thing in Office was the new File menu, so we couldn't directly open files very easily for a while. That one is especially stupid because we were all used to having a non-functional program logo up there, but now it's a menu. Just what usability "expert" made up that stupid thing!? I guess the tabbed part with all the other menu options was okay, but there's no way in hell I want to "upgrade" to it, ever.
It's funny they talk about support, because on a *brand new* Dell box a friend bought, their support has been total crap.
...).
Not only did they slag him with Vista (he wanted XP, per my advice), they wouldn't downgrade it and it doesn't work right. He installed drivers and crap based on Dell's tech support and eventually got the system so hosed it restarted explorer (the desktop, not the whole computer) every few seconds. I was finally able to get to a system restore point (after many, many tries--it's hard to get to when you don't have time to click anything) and undo that at least. When I checked the Event Viewer, there were almost 20,000 messages in there (not all errors, but the system is only a week old, so there can't be many normal ones unless it logs every damn time you click [ Allow ] or [ Cancel ]
Anyhow, I think I'm going to tag this story with what I feel is the real answer to the question posed in the headline: Microsoft
Maybe they're not to blame, but I have a hard time seeing why Dell would want to avoid selling something its customers want...
Do I have to tell you everything? Just get a bigger drive--a 5 1/4" should do nicely... :]
Then what's this Pirate Bay thingy, then? :]
Not to mention *cough* that other place videos get posted that every savvy internet user knows about, but which everyone else seems to have forgotten...
That's because they *removed* the noise, dummy! :]
Atheists and agnostics (and various theists) spend a lot of time arguing over what atheism/agnosticism is or is not :] Ironically, the one thing I'm sure of from all the arguments is that none of them are unsure about what they (don't) believe, but not all of them (dis)believe the same things, either.
> Being a "legal pro" is not a required part of being an "expert". To be an expert, one must be an expert in a particular field. Sadly, there are some "experts" whose sole job is testifying for money, but this is extremely fertile area for cross examination and those experts are easily painted as whores.
If I remember what Ray said of him accurately, he's been the expert witness for all of the RIAA's cases, though he hasn't been deposed until now. So he probably should be a legal expert by now.
Good point. If he's really any good at teaching about "information warfare" he damn well ought to know trivial things like how to change a MAC. I suppose then he answered the way he did because he sees it as his duty to help his client present their case, or something like that, and doesn't think this did happen (even though he was being asked if he could think of anything that *could*).
Honestly, with a question like "can you think of anything that *could* cast doubt upon x?" ANY no answer had better either come with ironclad proof (i.e. I'm pretty sure I exist and I can't think of anything to cast doubt upon that) or else it's a good sign that you don't know how reliable your methods are. Which is a pretty good indication that they're unreliable given that they've obviously been developed without the benefit of any sort of testing...