9. A remote display system, comprising:
a first primary station including a data transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit data and a power transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit power;
a second primary station including a data transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit data and a power transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit power; and
a portable display including a power receiving element and a data receiving element;
wherein the portable display is operable to wirelessly receive the power from the power transmitting element of the first primary station in response to a detection that the portable display is within power transmitting range of the first primary station; and
wherein the portable display is operable to wirelessly receive the power from the power transmitting element of the second primary station in response to a detection that the portable display is within power transmitting range of the second primary station.
Not that these claims are patentable as is, but it seems to be more about smooth handoff between the first base station and second base station.
There's also a second invention mentioned in the application that's only slightly related (which is not unusual, it'll probably be in a divisional application sometime). It relates to automatic cable tensioning:
For example, when a user holding a portable display connected to a primary station pulls the portable display away from the primary station, the tension sensor 1004 in the cable management system 1002 detects an increased tension on the transmission cable. When the tension level exceeds an upper threshold tension level, the cable management system 1002 activates the cable release 1008 to allow an additional amount of transmission cable 908 to extend out of the primary station 912 until at least the tension level in the cable drops below the high threshold tension level. By activating the cable release 1008, the portable display does not tug on the transmission cable and possibly disconnect the transmission cable from the portable display.
The Supreme Court reversed or vacated 19 of the 26 decisions it looked at from the 9th Circuit this judicial term,
73%? Gracious...
But later in the article:
The Supreme Court typically reverses about 75% of the cases it reviews each year, having selected them because they raise important questions of law or to resolve the internal contradictions created when circuits come to different conclusions about the same legal question.
They were having a private conversation and neither of them was offended.
Regardless of whether her response was an overreaction or whether they would've stopped with a direct request, they weren't having a private conversation - they were in the middle of a hall of hundreds of people. If they wanted privacy, they could've left the room.
Except that it's not $24 worth of music... It's the distribution rights for $24 songs, and that's a lot more expensive. With established music stores, like iTunes, it can be a percentage of gross sales with a predetermined lower limit, like $5,000. With new music stores, that lower limit can be much, much higher. Michael Jackson purchased distributions rights to a bunch of Beatles' songs for $11,875 each... which works out to be awfully close to the $220,000 for 24 songs here.
Why would she need the distribution rights to songs she isn't distributing?
Because she was caught distributing, and because she admitted distributing in court?
Unless you can prove that this person was selling these song (note: selling, i.e. profiting from the distribution of) the court doesn't have a leg to stand on, beyond the $24 she owes them for ownership... at best.
Consider that she stated under oath that she was distributing, then I think the court is allowed to take her at her word... Unless you're saying they don't have a leg to stand on and she committed criminal perjury? Frankly, I think the former works out better for her.
If anything, can they prove that she didn't own the CD, copy them from the CD to her computer... then lose the disk? These things happen all the time. CDs get lost, scratched, stepped on. In this case, she might have admitted her wrong doing, but what about the next case, and the one after that. Onus is on the accuser (or "innocent until proven guilty" if you prefer.) If the RIAA wants to file suit against people for simply having music/movies/etc on their computer, they'd better have an airtight case.
They also caught her. Specifically, their agent downloaded a full copy of each of those songs from her. And before you do the "but an IP isn't linked to an individual," this was back in the day of Gnutella and account names, and they tied it to a specific user account which she created, with an identical name to other user accounts of hers.
And furthermore, once she was sued, Thomas destroyed her hard drive and then lied about it in court. She was pretty quickly found out. Destroying evidence is, itself, evidence that the jury or judge can use to determine guilt.
But if she made millions of copies of a CD and gave them out for free outside of that Walmart, destroying their ability to sell it, then it starts looking more reasonable.
Sure, except she didn't do that. She didn't make millions of copies. And the impact she had on the global marketplace for those songs is relatively trivial.
Except that the burden of proof is on her, since she destroyed her hard drives and lied to the court about it. If she has logs showing that she didn't distribute lots of copies, then she could use those to mitigate the statutory damage award... but she doesn't. So, we presume that yes, she did distribute millions of copies and had a huge impact on the global marketplace.
Particularly if someone is standing next to her helping her distribute those CDs while showing advertising and making money off of all the visitors.
So charge that person. Which they did. And nobody really batted an eye when the companies that were clearly doing more than releasing innocuous software that "could" be used to share songs were sued into oblivion.
I remember much gnashing of teeth over the Napster and Grokster decisions. But nonetheless, she's a willing participant - why not charge her too? There's nothing that says you can only charge one person in any joint venture.
This case was never about downloading a single copy of a song, which is why that comparison has never been successful. This case was about uploading to others, and distribution rights are a lot more expensive than $1.
That comparison is about *severity of the crime* and *damage done*; it's not an attempt to directly equate shoplifting with music sharing. I could, as easily, compare it to jay-walking, letting your parking meter expire, or having more than X people gathered in a park without a permit. $200,000 fines for stuff like that is wrong.
Why not compare it to borrowing a bunch of CDs from friends and ripping them, and then setting up a music store where people can visit with their iPods or Zunes or whathaveyou and plug in to make copies of your record catalog, and you never pay royalties to the record distributors?
Other than the brick and mortar aspect, what she did was exactly the same.
Now if you really want to make it about the value of "distribution rights" then you should need to show that other legitimate distribution channels didn't purchase distribution rights as a result. Did Apple/itunes or Amazon or the Cable music channel decide not to acquire distribution rights because of Jammie? Was Jammie even a factor? Did Jammie's actions, by themselves, impact the rights owners ability to negotatiate? Did they have to accept less money due to Jammie? Don't be ridiculous.
Actually, none of those seem ridiculous. Why should Apple pay high royalties if anyone can freely download the song via Gnutella? Maybe it's a factor in them declining a specific royalty proposal. It certainly makes economic sense.
Maybe in some small part yes, as Jammie was part of much larger aggregate file sharing phenomena. So go ahead and calculate how much damage filesharing did to the industry, and then divide it by about 100 million to put it in the ballpark of Jammie's portion.
Otherwise all it amounts to is units of lost sales. How many lost sales did Jammie cause? Only a halfwit would argue that Jammie is personally responsible for a quarter million in lost sales. If every Kazaa user did 200k+ in damages, then the recording industry lost 12 trillion dollars.
That doesn't pass the smell test. It doesn't matter whether you look at is as "distribution rights" or not, Jammie and people like her simply did not do that much damage.
Again, the burden of proof here falls on Jammie: she can mitigate the statutory damage award by showing that actual damages were much lower. She failed to even attempt to do that, beyond the mere $24 claim, which was unpersuasive for reasons which you seem to agree with, even if you're disagreeing over whether $222,000 is sane or not.
According to Ars, the average settlement offered by the RIAA is $3000 plus a written statement by the accused saying that they will not do it again (and probably a confession). That sounds reasonable next to the fines that Thomas-Rasset has been saddled with, but $3000 for $24 worth of music is still outrageous.
Except that it's not $24 worth of music... It's the distribution rights for $24 songs, and that's a lot more expensive. With established music stores, like iTunes, it can be a percentage of gross sales with a predetermined lower limit, like $5,000. With new music stores, that lower limit can be much, much higher. Michael Jackson purchased distributions rights to a bunch of Beatles' songs for $11,875 each... which works out to be awfully close to the $220,000 for 24 songs here.
And even if she was able to swallow that, the written statement that they demand would put you at the RIAA's mercy if they decided to come after you again.
No, settlements are agreements that the dispute is waived. They couldn't come after her again... unless she did it again.
It's no wonder that she fought this.
She fought this because her attorney, Kiwi Camera, was handling her case and all costs for free because he's trying to make a name for himself in this field. He's a former student of Charles Neeson, who's the Harvard professor who is defending Tenenbaum in the other RIAA case.
You can't tell me that the latest boy band single that comes out is your birthright.
The right to take culture, modify it, and release it back to the world, enriching our common cultural heritage... that certainly can be argued to be our birthright, in which case the current copyright regime is manifestly unjust. There's a reasonable compromise in which we say that modifying and releasing previous works is a human right, but getting paid for it isn't: in which case copyright should be enforced for commercial infringement only.
Important distinction. What you're arguing for is a change in the law around derivative works, and there are very good arguments for that. But that's not what Thomas did. She wasn't remixing or sampling or creating a new creative work off of bones of the older work. She just copied and distributed, and that argument doesn't apply to her. Girl Talk? Sure. Deadmau5? Sure. RunDMC? Absolutely. But Thomas? Nope.
And so what? So for a minor civil infraction that caused virtually no measured or measurable damage to anyone we should take away her house?
People break the law all the time. Breaking the law isn't carte blanche for the anyone to take everything you have, and then some.
For her situation, with 24 songs shared, first offense. Anything over $500 is WAY out of line relative to what she did. This sort of thing belongs in small claims court.
If she had shoplifted a CD (24 songs) from a Walmart and it was a first offense a $200,000+ fine would be utterly outrageous.
But if she made millions of copies of a CD and gave them out for free outside of that Walmart, destroying their ability to sell it, then it starts looking more reasonable. Particularly if someone is standing next to her helping her distribute those CDs while showing advertising and making money off of all the visitors.
This case was never about downloading a single copy of a song, which is why that comparison has never been successful. This case was about uploading to others, and distribution rights are a lot more expensive than $1.
She was probably offered to settle for $2-3 per song, as long as she pled guilty and covered all court costs, or even just her own court costs, which could easily be $100,000 or more, assuming lawyer was pro bono. Factor in travel costs, time lost from work (probably fired from her job), and the inability to coutersue or force the plaintiff to pay her court costs if they're found guilty... suddenly settling for $2-3 per song doesn't seem all that appealing
/speculation
>
The total settlement offer was $3000. There wouldn't have been a court case, nor would she have needed even a pro bono lawyer.
Jammie Thomas didn't face any punitive damages. Bear in mind that that's a legal term. You may believe that the award was punishing, but that's not the definition of "punitive damages". In her case, the award was 100% compensatory damages, and 0% punitive damages.
Try again. If I send you a letter asking for you to send me your key and you send it that is either your own fault or the house keeper's fault (AT&T in this case). You/AT&T have the ability to not send the key. If this was a buffer overflow or some injection attack you might have a point but that is not the case in this instance.
They did spoof an identity in each request. So, this would be like you sending me a letter asking me to send you my key while pretending you're the neighbor I paid to housesit while I'm away. And then you send a million of those letters, knowing that odds are that someone has a neighbor housesitting for them who will panic and send the key. Sending the letter or the GET request isn't the crime, it's the fraudulent misrepresentation of your identity to gain confidential information that's the crime.
If you find my key under a rock in my backyard, it is still theft if you break into my house with it and steal things.
The analogy is not really applicable. This is more like writing all your secrets into a notebook and putting it into a library (in a section accessible to everyone). Then you sue the person who found the notebook.
That's not an applicable analogy either. They had to spoof the ICC identifiers in order to get the data, so this would be like going to the post office and saying "Hello, my name is Mr. Burns. I believe you have some mail for me?" You're not asking for publicly accessible information - you're explicitly asking for confidential information using a fraudulent identity. Now, sure, their security system sucks, but it's still breaking and entering regardless of whether someone's house has a screen door or a solid metal door.
If a bank didn't have a door on it's vault, or any forms of security whatsoever, would you walk in and take out all the money? Even if you proceeded directly to the local police department to report the security flaw and deliver the unguarded money, you'd find yourself in quite a bit of trouble.
Here's a better analogy: you send the bank self-addressed stamped envelopes, and they willingly send private information about their clients back to you in those envelopes.
If those envelopes were in any way a misrepresentation of your legal desire to communicate with your bank (such as an incorrect identity, overstated request, etc) then you, the sender, are guilty of mail fraud. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The legal system seems to be pretty mysterious to a large part of slashdot...
'I felt like I was watching a witch trial as Slashdotters admitted they didn't understand the law.'
... except that no true Slashdotter would ever admit to that.;)
If a bank didn't have a door on it's vault, or any forms of security whatsoever, would you walk in and take out all the money? Even if you proceeded directly to the local police department to report the security flaw and deliver the unguarded money, you'd find yourself in quite a bit of trouble.
Here's a better analogy: you send the bank self-addressed stamped envelopes, and they willingly send private information about their clients back to you in those envelopes.
Even better analogy: you send the bank self-addressed stamped envelopes, along with a copy of spoofed identification that purports to be one of their account holders, with a random name, but matching signature, address, etc. Most of them, they discard as not corresponding to a real account, but every once in a while, one of them hits, and they respond with the private info you requested. In other words, you're not just asking for information, but committing fraud.
Isn't a key element of the legal case that he also retransmitted the private information? He did not merely receive it.
From the court filing, it appears both charges are predicated on the notion that sending GET requests to an unprotected, publicly-accessible web server constitute unauthorized access under Title 18, Section 1030(a)(2)(C).
Actually, from your own link, the charges were predicated on the notion that spoofing an identity in order to fool someone into giving you confidential information is a crime. These weren't just GET URL requests like your browser is sending to read Slashdot, but requests with spoofed IDs - closer to sending GET requests to Slashdot with spoofed cookie IDs in an attempt to get emails of other Slashdot users.
Or, as an analogy, this would be like calling a phone number and saying "Hi, this is Bill at [Bank of America/Sovereign Bank/Citizens Bank/DCU/etc], and there's been a fraud report on your account. So that we can unlock your account, can you verify your full name, address, date of birth, and social security number," and trying it with different bank names each time until the person stops saying "but I don't have an account with your bank" and responds "oh, gracious, that's my account. Here's my info." Except that you do that thousands of times a second.
The point is that you wouldn't be arrested for "making a phone call" or "sending GET requests," but obtaining confidential information through fraud.
... note that the jury also found that the patents were valid over the prior art. Cisco doesn't practice the invention in the patents, but that doesn't mean that the patents don't cover a valid invention.
When Aaron Swartz tapped into MIT's network and scooped up data from one non-profit company, the U.S. Attorney threatened him with 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. So what kind of jail time did 38 Attorneys General threaten Google with for using its Street View cars to scoop up passwords, e-mail and other personal information by tapping into the networks of their states' unsuspecting citizens? None.
Not withstanding the fact that you can't actually put a noncorporeal being in jail, the various AG offices threatened Google with significantly way more than $1 million in fines - and in fact were ready to get court orders to force Google to turn over all of their data.
Legal insanity is a very narrowly defined state. There are all kinds of things the lay person would consider insane that don't automatically qualify as legal insanity.
Yep. Specifically, you need insanity that negates the intentional aspect of your act. As was explained to me by my criminal law professor, if your dog tells you to kill the mailman and you do, you're insane and believing in a talking dog, but you intended to commit murder. If, however, you go to offer your mailman a banana and it goes off and shoots him, you're insane and think a gun is a banana, but you never intended to commit murder.
Demographics was a bad choice of word. I mainly meant the fact that Texas is super poor(5th poorest in the nation by poverty rate), and there's a pretty well documented correlation between poverty and educational results.
I get that it's a joke, but I'm really tired of hearing people demean Texas' education system.
While the state might not do so well in math and science test comparisons compared to other states, the state excels at making many things available to students that are rare if non-existent elsewhere. The right to a good education is in the state constitution (which also asks for the foundation of "first-class" state universities: University of Texas and Texas A&M), and implements a very broad wealth redistribution scheme (Robin hood plan), which makes sure that even very poor school districts can pay for AP classes, music electives, sports facilities, the works.
Children who show potential are given chances from a very early age to enter advanced-placement courses, and many efforts are made by teachers to identify children who can enter these.
I honestly think that the low rankings of Texas in Math and Science comparisons is more due to demographics than the school system, and in more general rankings the school fares much better. In any case, it goes to great lengths to let children broaden their horizons with their peers, independent of social class.
Straight from good points headlong into the racism we tend to expect from Texans.
And Card is allowed to believe and say what he wants.
Similarly, Sprouse is allowed to refuse to work with Card. Retailers are allowed to refuse to stock Card's work. DC is allowed to refuse Card's story. And comic book buyers are allowed to refuse to buy stuff by him. Boycotts are not an attack on your freedom - they're someone else getting to also exercise their freedom.
Company X is our patent troll, decides to sue someone.
Company X's owners establish Company Y with just enough money to litigate their side of the case
Company X sells the rights to a patent to Company Y for a pittance
Company Y Sues and
wins... Company Z, the infringer, points to the pittance as being Company Y's valuation of the patent, and offers to pay a reasonable royalty of 5% of said pittance. The judge, finding this unbelievably clever, agrees. Company X's owners sob in the corner.:)
DoJ Admits Aaron Swartz's prosecution was political! The DOJ has told Congressional investigators that Aaron's prosecution was motivated by his political views on copyright!
... but then you go to the article and see the quote and it's:
A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.
Doesn't sound quite the same as "admitting it's political". In fact, let's see what the HuffPo said:
The "Manifesto," Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz's malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale.
... yeah. Sorry, Submitter, but we mock that kind of Gotcha Journalism when Fox News or Breitbart twists someone's words to make a splashy headline, or when James O'Keefe does one of his out-of-context videos to smear Planned Parenthood.
I've had Nintendo consoles since the original. I've also had XBoxes and the PS3. The Wii U actually confused me when it came out because it seemed more like it was a new handheld/portable. Not the new console and Wii replacement. I don't know if it was my complete lack of caring towards it, or their poor marketing.
Likewise... I'm still half convinced that the WiiU is an accessory for your existing Wii.
Slashdot Mirror
9. A remote display system, comprising:
a first primary station including a data transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit data and a power transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit power;
a second primary station including a data transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit data and a power transmitting element operable to wirelessly transmit power; and
a portable display including a power receiving element and a data receiving element;
wherein the portable display is operable to wirelessly receive the power from the power transmitting element of the first primary station in response to a detection that the portable display is within power transmitting range of the first primary station; and
wherein the portable display is operable to wirelessly receive the power from the power transmitting element of the second primary station in response to a detection that the portable display is within power transmitting range of the second primary station.
Not that these claims are patentable as is, but it seems to be more about smooth handoff between the first base station and second base station.
There's also a second invention mentioned in the application that's only slightly related (which is not unusual, it'll probably be in a divisional application sometime). It relates to automatic cable tensioning:
For example, when a user holding a portable display connected to a primary station pulls the portable display away from the primary station, the tension sensor 1004 in the cable management system 1002 detects an increased tension on the transmission cable. When the tension level exceeds an upper threshold tension level, the cable management system 1002 activates the cable release 1008 to allow an additional amount of transmission cable 908 to extend out of the primary station 912 until at least the tension level in the cable drops below the high threshold tension level. By activating the cable release 1008, the portable display does not tug on the transmission cable and possibly disconnect the transmission cable from the portable display.
The 9th Circuit is a joke. It is the most overturned circuit in the country
Citation needed that a significantly larger percentage of the Ninth Circuit's decisions are overturned than those of other circuits.
Wikipedia lent me one of theirs.
From your article:
The Supreme Court reversed or vacated 19 of the 26 decisions it looked at from the 9th Circuit this judicial term,
73%? Gracious...
But later in the article:
The Supreme Court typically reverses about 75% of the cases it reviews each year, having selected them because they raise important questions of law or to resolve the internal contradictions created when circuits come to different conclusions about the same legal question.
... yeah.
They were having a private conversation and neither of them was offended.
Regardless of whether her response was an overreaction or whether they would've stopped with a direct request, they weren't having a private conversation - they were in the middle of a hall of hundreds of people. If they wanted privacy, they could've left the room.
She is a modern feminist. Men are bad, rules don't apply to her, and if anyone dares disagree, they are WRONG!!!
Actually, she explicitly says on her blog that she's not a feminist. So, apparently it's just you who are WRONG!!!
Except that it's not $24 worth of music... It's the distribution rights for $24 songs, and that's a lot more expensive. With established music stores, like iTunes, it can be a percentage of gross sales with a predetermined lower limit, like $5,000. With new music stores, that lower limit can be much, much higher. Michael Jackson purchased distributions rights to a bunch of Beatles' songs for $11,875 each... which works out to be awfully close to the $220,000 for 24 songs here.
Why would she need the distribution rights to songs she isn't distributing?
Because she was caught distributing, and because she admitted distributing in court?
Unless you can prove that this person was selling these song (note: selling, i.e. profiting from the distribution of) the court doesn't have a leg to stand on, beyond the $24 she owes them for ownership ... at best.
Consider that she stated under oath that she was distributing, then I think the court is allowed to take her at her word... Unless you're saying they don't have a leg to stand on and she committed criminal perjury? Frankly, I think the former works out better for her.
If anything, can they prove that she didn't own the CD, copy them from the CD to her computer ... then lose the disk? These things happen all the time. CDs get lost, scratched, stepped on. In this case, she might have admitted her wrong doing, but what about the next case, and the one after that. Onus is on the accuser (or "innocent until proven guilty" if you prefer.) If the RIAA wants to file suit against people for simply having music/movies/etc on their computer, they'd better have an airtight case.
They also caught her. Specifically, their agent downloaded a full copy of each of those songs from her. And before you do the "but an IP isn't linked to an individual," this was back in the day of Gnutella and account names, and they tied it to a specific user account which she created, with an identical name to other user accounts of hers.
And furthermore, once she was sued, Thomas destroyed her hard drive and then lied about it in court. She was pretty quickly found out. Destroying evidence is, itself, evidence that the jury or judge can use to determine guilt.
But if she made millions of copies of a CD and gave them out for free outside of that Walmart, destroying their ability to sell it, then it starts looking more reasonable.
Sure, except she didn't do that. She didn't make millions of copies. And the impact she had on the global marketplace for those songs is relatively trivial.
Except that the burden of proof is on her, since she destroyed her hard drives and lied to the court about it. If she has logs showing that she didn't distribute lots of copies, then she could use those to mitigate the statutory damage award... but she doesn't. So, we presume that yes, she did distribute millions of copies and had a huge impact on the global marketplace.
Particularly if someone is standing next to her helping her distribute those CDs while showing advertising and making money off of all the visitors.
So charge that person. Which they did. And nobody really batted an eye when the companies that were clearly doing more than releasing innocuous software that "could" be used to share songs were sued into oblivion.
I remember much gnashing of teeth over the Napster and Grokster decisions. But nonetheless, she's a willing participant - why not charge her too? There's nothing that says you can only charge one person in any joint venture.
This case was never about downloading a single copy of a song, which is why that comparison has never been successful. This case was about uploading to others, and distribution rights are a lot more expensive than $1.
That comparison is about *severity of the crime* and *damage done*; it's not an attempt to directly equate shoplifting with music sharing. I could, as easily, compare it to jay-walking, letting your parking meter expire, or having more than X people gathered in a park without a permit. $200,000 fines for stuff like that is wrong.
Why not compare it to borrowing a bunch of CDs from friends and ripping them, and then setting up a music store where people can visit with their iPods or Zunes or whathaveyou and plug in to make copies of your record catalog, and you never pay royalties to the record distributors? Other than the brick and mortar aspect, what she did was exactly the same.
Now if you really want to make it about the value of "distribution rights" then you should need to show that other legitimate distribution channels didn't purchase distribution rights as a result. Did Apple/itunes or Amazon or the Cable music channel decide not to acquire distribution rights because of Jammie? Was Jammie even a factor? Did Jammie's actions, by themselves, impact the rights owners ability to negotatiate? Did they have to accept less money due to Jammie? Don't be ridiculous.
Actually, none of those seem ridiculous. Why should Apple pay high royalties if anyone can freely download the song via Gnutella? Maybe it's a factor in them declining a specific royalty proposal. It certainly makes economic sense.
Maybe in some small part yes, as Jammie was part of much larger aggregate file sharing phenomena. So go ahead and calculate how much damage filesharing did to the industry, and then divide it by about 100 million to put it in the ballpark of Jammie's portion.
Otherwise all it amounts to is units of lost sales. How many lost sales did Jammie cause? Only a halfwit would argue that Jammie is personally responsible for a quarter million in lost sales. If every Kazaa user did 200k+ in damages, then the recording industry lost 12 trillion dollars.
That doesn't pass the smell test. It doesn't matter whether you look at is as "distribution rights" or not, Jammie and people like her simply did not do that much damage.
Again, the burden of proof here falls on Jammie: she can mitigate the statutory damage award by showing that actual damages were much lower. She failed to even attempt to do that, beyond the mere $24 claim, which was unpersuasive for reasons which you seem to agree with, even if you're disagreeing over whether $222,000 is sane or not.
According to Ars, the average settlement offered by the RIAA is $3000 plus a written statement by the accused saying that they will not do it again (and probably a confession). That sounds reasonable next to the fines that Thomas-Rasset has been saddled with, but $3000 for $24 worth of music is still outrageous.
Except that it's not $24 worth of music... It's the distribution rights for $24 songs, and that's a lot more expensive. With established music stores, like iTunes, it can be a percentage of gross sales with a predetermined lower limit, like $5,000. With new music stores, that lower limit can be much, much higher. Michael Jackson purchased distributions rights to a bunch of Beatles' songs for $11,875 each... which works out to be awfully close to the $220,000 for 24 songs here.
And even if she was able to swallow that, the written statement that they demand would put you at the RIAA's mercy if they decided to come after you again.
No, settlements are agreements that the dispute is waived. They couldn't come after her again... unless she did it again.
It's no wonder that she fought this.
She fought this because her attorney, Kiwi Camera, was handling her case and all costs for free because he's trying to make a name for himself in this field. He's a former student of Charles Neeson, who's the Harvard professor who is defending Tenenbaum in the other RIAA case.
You can't tell me that the latest boy band single that comes out is your birthright.
The right to take culture, modify it, and release it back to the world, enriching our common cultural heritage ... that certainly can be argued to be our birthright, in which case the current copyright regime is manifestly unjust. There's a reasonable compromise in which we say that modifying and releasing previous works is a human right, but getting paid for it isn't: in which case copyright should be enforced for commercial infringement only.
Important distinction. What you're arguing for is a change in the law around derivative works, and there are very good arguments for that. But that's not what Thomas did. She wasn't remixing or sampling or creating a new creative work off of bones of the older work. She just copied and distributed, and that argument doesn't apply to her. Girl Talk? Sure. Deadmau5? Sure. RunDMC? Absolutely. But Thomas? Nope.
She broke the law.
And so what? So for a minor civil infraction that caused virtually no measured or measurable damage to anyone we should take away her house?
People break the law all the time. Breaking the law isn't carte blanche for the anyone to take everything you have, and then some.
For her situation, with 24 songs shared, first offense. Anything over $500 is WAY out of line relative to what she did. This sort of thing belongs in small claims court.
If she had shoplifted a CD (24 songs) from a Walmart and it was a first offense a $200,000+ fine would be utterly outrageous.
But if she made millions of copies of a CD and gave them out for free outside of that Walmart, destroying their ability to sell it, then it starts looking more reasonable. Particularly if someone is standing next to her helping her distribute those CDs while showing advertising and making money off of all the visitors.
This case was never about downloading a single copy of a song, which is why that comparison has never been successful. This case was about uploading to others, and distribution rights are a lot more expensive than $1.
Complete hypothetical here, but my guess :
She was probably offered to settle for $2-3 per song, as long as she pled guilty and covered all court costs, or even just her own court costs, which could easily be $100,000 or more, assuming lawyer was pro bono. Factor in travel costs, time lost from work (probably fired from her job), and the inability to coutersue or force the plaintiff to pay her court costs if they're found guilty ... suddenly settling for $2-3 per song doesn't seem all that appealing
>
The total settlement offer was $3000. There wouldn't have been a court case, nor would she have needed even a pro bono lawyer.
Yet the Supreme Court happily lower the punitive damages in the Exxon Valdez case. From http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-supreme-court-orders-reduction-in-exxon-valdez-award
Jammie Thomas didn't face any punitive damages. Bear in mind that that's a legal term. You may believe that the award was punishing, but that's not the definition of "punitive damages". In her case, the award was 100% compensatory damages, and 0% punitive damages.
Try again. If I send you a letter asking for you to send me your key and you send it that is either your own fault or the house keeper's fault (AT&T in this case). You/AT&T have the ability to not send the key. If this was a buffer overflow or some injection attack you might have a point but that is not the case in this instance.
They did spoof an identity in each request. So, this would be like you sending me a letter asking me to send you my key while pretending you're the neighbor I paid to housesit while I'm away. And then you send a million of those letters, knowing that odds are that someone has a neighbor housesitting for them who will panic and send the key. Sending the letter or the GET request isn't the crime, it's the fraudulent misrepresentation of your identity to gain confidential information that's the crime.
If you find my key under a rock in my backyard, it is still theft if you break into my house with it and steal things.
The analogy is not really applicable. This is more like writing all your secrets into a notebook and putting it into a library (in a section accessible to everyone). Then you sue the person who found the notebook.
That's not an applicable analogy either. They had to spoof the ICC identifiers in order to get the data, so this would be like going to the post office and saying "Hello, my name is Mr. Burns. I believe you have some mail for me?" You're not asking for publicly accessible information - you're explicitly asking for confidential information using a fraudulent identity. Now, sure, their security system sucks, but it's still breaking and entering regardless of whether someone's house has a screen door or a solid metal door.
Meatspace analogy :
If a bank didn't have a door on it's vault, or any forms of security whatsoever, would you walk in and take out all the money? Even if you proceeded directly to the local police department to report the security flaw and deliver the unguarded money, you'd find yourself in quite a bit of trouble.
Here's a better analogy: you send the bank self-addressed stamped envelopes, and they willingly send private information about their clients back to you in those envelopes.
If those envelopes were in any way a misrepresentation of your legal desire to communicate with your bank (such as an incorrect identity, overstated request, etc) then you, the sender, are guilty of mail fraud. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The legal system seems to be pretty mysterious to a large part of slashdot...
'I felt like I was watching a witch trial as Slashdotters admitted they didn't understand the law.'
Meatspace analogy :
If a bank didn't have a door on it's vault, or any forms of security whatsoever, would you walk in and take out all the money? Even if you proceeded directly to the local police department to report the security flaw and deliver the unguarded money, you'd find yourself in quite a bit of trouble.
Here's a better analogy: you send the bank self-addressed stamped envelopes, and they willingly send private information about their clients back to you in those envelopes.
Even better analogy: you send the bank self-addressed stamped envelopes, along with a copy of spoofed identification that purports to be one of their account holders, with a random name, but matching signature, address, etc. Most of them, they discard as not corresponding to a real account, but every once in a while, one of them hits, and they respond with the private info you requested. In other words, you're not just asking for information, but committing fraud.
Isn't a key element of the legal case that he also retransmitted the private information? He did not merely receive it.
From the court filing, it appears both charges are predicated on the notion that sending GET requests to an unprotected, publicly-accessible web server constitute unauthorized access under Title 18, Section 1030(a)(2)(C).
Actually, from your own link, the charges were predicated on the notion that spoofing an identity in order to fool someone into giving you confidential information is a crime. These weren't just GET URL requests like your browser is sending to read Slashdot, but requests with spoofed IDs - closer to sending GET requests to Slashdot with spoofed cookie IDs in an attempt to get emails of other Slashdot users.
Or, as an analogy, this would be like calling a phone number and saying "Hi, this is Bill at [Bank of America/Sovereign Bank/Citizens Bank/DCU/etc], and there's been a fraud report on your account. So that we can unlock your account, can you verify your full name, address, date of birth, and social security number," and trying it with different bank names each time until the person stops saying "but I don't have an account with your bank" and responds "oh, gracious, that's my account. Here's my info." Except that you do that thousands of times a second.
The point is that you wouldn't be arrested for "making a phone call" or "sending GET requests," but obtaining confidential information through fraud.
... note that the jury also found that the patents were valid over the prior art. Cisco doesn't practice the invention in the patents, but that doesn't mean that the patents don't cover a valid invention.
When Aaron Swartz tapped into MIT's network and scooped up data from one non-profit company, the U.S. Attorney threatened him with 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. So what kind of jail time did 38 Attorneys General threaten Google with for using its Street View cars to scoop up passwords, e-mail and other personal information by tapping into the networks of their states' unsuspecting citizens? None.
Not withstanding the fact that you can't actually put a noncorporeal being in jail, the various AG offices threatened Google with significantly way more than $1 million in fines - and in fact were ready to get court orders to force Google to turn over all of their data.
> He obviously has to be insane
Legal insanity is a very narrowly defined state. There are all kinds of things the lay person would consider insane that don't automatically qualify as legal insanity.
Yep. Specifically, you need insanity that negates the intentional aspect of your act. As was explained to me by my criminal law professor, if your dog tells you to kill the mailman and you do, you're insane and believing in a talking dog, but you intended to commit murder. If, however, you go to offer your mailman a banana and it goes off and shoots him, you're insane and think a gun is a banana, but you never intended to commit murder.
Demographics was a bad choice of word. I mainly meant the fact that Texas is super poor(5th poorest in the nation by poverty rate), and there's a pretty well documented correlation between poverty and educational results.
Fair enough. Criticism withdrawn.
I get that it's a joke, but I'm really tired of hearing people demean Texas' education system. While the state might not do so well in math and science test comparisons compared to other states, the state excels at making many things available to students that are rare if non-existent elsewhere. The right to a good education is in the state constitution (which also asks for the foundation of "first-class" state universities: University of Texas and Texas A&M), and implements a very broad wealth redistribution scheme (Robin hood plan), which makes sure that even very poor school districts can pay for AP classes, music electives, sports facilities, the works. Children who show potential are given chances from a very early age to enter advanced-placement courses, and many efforts are made by teachers to identify children who can enter these. I honestly think that the low rankings of Texas in Math and Science comparisons is more due to demographics than the school system, and in more general rankings the school fares much better. In any case, it goes to great lengths to let children broaden their horizons with their peers, independent of social class.
Straight from good points headlong into the racism we tend to expect from Texans.
And Card is allowed to believe and say what he wants.
Similarly, Sprouse is allowed to refuse to work with Card. Retailers are allowed to refuse to stock Card's work. DC is allowed to refuse Card's story. And comic book buyers are allowed to refuse to buy stuff by him.
Boycotts are not an attack on your freedom - they're someone else getting to also exercise their freedom.
My question is what prevents this:
Company X is our patent troll, decides to sue someone.
Company X's owners establish Company Y with just enough money to litigate their side of the case
Company X sells the rights to a patent to Company Y for a pittance
Company Y Sues and
wins... Company Z, the infringer, points to the pittance as being Company Y's valuation of the patent, and offers to pay a reasonable royalty of 5% of said pittance. The judge, finding this unbelievably clever, agrees. Company X's owners sob in the corner. :)
A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.
Doesn't sound quite the same as "admitting it's political". In fact, let's see what the HuffPo said:
The "Manifesto," Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz's malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale.
... yeah. Sorry, Submitter, but we mock that kind of Gotcha Journalism when Fox News or Breitbart twists someone's words to make a splashy headline, or when James O'Keefe does one of his out-of-context videos to smear Planned Parenthood.
I've had Nintendo consoles since the original. I've also had XBoxes and the PS3. The Wii U actually confused me when it came out because it seemed more like it was a new handheld/portable. Not the new console and Wii replacement. I don't know if it was my complete lack of caring towards it, or their poor marketing.
Likewise... I'm still half convinced that the WiiU is an accessory for your existing Wii.