One could argue that if the gold sellers are motivated enough/have enough accounts to elect representatives, then they SHOULD get to be represented as they're a large part of the playerbase.
It's EVE- just because it isn't very nice doesn't mean it isn't legal.
You just told a member of Goonswarm (a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the trolls on the Something Awful forums) not to bring teh drama. Goonswarm's battlecry isn't For the Lulz!, but it should be.
But under english law, are financiers of the company itself really involved in champerty or maintenance? Isn't there a big difference between funding a third party's lawsuit and actually buying an interest in the third party in question even if the effect is to give the third party the funds to pursue thte lawsuit?
At some point, leaving a company isn't a choice, it's an IQ test.
As a board member of a new company, would you rather hire the guy who knew enough about his own business to quit at the right time and made millions or the guy that failed to see the signs of impending doom and rode his stock all the way to $0.01 a share?
While this is undoubtedly true for the overwhelming majority of comics, there are bright spots where someone is thinking outside the box.
The Ellis run of Stormwatch and its transformation into The Authority was revolutionary. Jenny Sparks said "There has to be someone left to save the world. And someone left to change it." As the opening panel of one ish asked, why don't superheroes ever go after the REAL villains - and what followed was the Authority invading Indonesia, deposing Suharto and leaving him to be killed by his own victims.
For that matter, in WildCATS 3.0 the hero decides to save/change the world by making a corporation, using his supertech to create an unbeatable product and use the leverage it gives him to reshape the entire global economic and political system.
Of course, the requirements of publishing meant that the entire run was reset and the point lost and these became more violent and not particularly innovative or interesting titles.
If your intention in asking to use my phone was to take pictures inside my house, I could indeed sue you for trespassing, also fraud, invasion of privacy and probably more if I took an hour to think of some more torts.
Yes but... the way our legal system works, the legal framework regarding player piano music roll manufacturing gets adapted, updated and modified to cover this newfangled marconi device all the kids are talking about. The radio precedents then become the ones considered when analyzing whether the VCR is akin to the Boston Strangler, and those precedents are the ones that get used to consider Napster and so on and so forth.
I haven't seen a carbolic smoke ball on a store shelf in a long time, but unilateral contracts are still valid. Donaghue and Stevenson are long dead, but the tort of negligence lives on, etc. etc. The RIAA may die, but whether making available is copyright infringement will probably be relevant long after the RIAA's last member label goes into Chapter 7.
You do realize this is a civil suit and not a criminal case? Victim impact statements are used in criminal cases and the laws that create them are intended to give the victim a chance to speak and be heard - which is important because they're not a party to the litigation and wouldn't otherwise have any right to be heard. It is not, after all, The Victim vs. The Accused in a criminal case, it's The People, or the State, or The Queen(depending on the jurisdiction) vs. The accused. Prosecutors fight cases and seek justice on behalf of the sovereign for a breach of the sovereign's laws - that breach may have injured someone, but that's beside the point, really. Even in the area of criminal law, there are many types of crime where you have to prove damage/injury- theft (show deprivation), agg assault/assault causing bodily harm (show the victim was wounded/maimed/caused serious bodily harm, as the case may be), or more obviously, murder and manslaughter (prove the victim is dead - no dead body, no prosecution).
There are, broadly speaking, two issues in every civil suit: quantum/remedy and liability. Quantum means, what is the appropriate remedy (usually money) to right the alleged wrong; liability is, is the defendant actually responsible, legally speaking, for the loss? Generally, in civil suits, you do the quantum and liability issues together in one trial unless the parties have already settled that issue, which isn't uncommon. In many car accidents the insurance company will admit their insured driver screwed up but denies to the bitter end that the plaintiff suffered whiplash thereby; in other cases, the parties agree that the deal falling through resulted in a certain value of loss to the plaintiff but don't agree that it was the fault of defendant's breach of contract. When nobody admits anything, you have a full blown, knock down drag out trial.
So, the place for telling the court about the damages you've suffered in a civil case is very much before the court enters judgment, not afterward. You can't succeed in negligence without damages. You can't win in misrepresentation/fraud without showing you actually relied upon the misrepresentations of the defendant, and moreover, that you relied on them to your detriment. There are a great many types of suit where if you don't prove you were damaged, you can't win your case. Here, damages doesn't just go to quantum, it's a key issue in liability too.
To digress further, there are also some claims that require no proof of damage - these usually involve intentional torts (assault/trespass) and the court considers the affront to your personal integrity/property rights to be worthy of remedy regardless of any damages... though the remedy they give you may not cover a venti starbucks if the court thinks you're being a litigious prick and wasting everyone's time over a trivial affront. De minimis non curat lex, after all. In some suits, like copyright infringement cases, there may be statutory damages set out in the law - usually because it is almost impossible to quantify the loss but the state believes there is a loss and that despite the difficulties of proof society would be better off by the creation/enforcement of that type of lawsuit and encourages it by creating statutory damages without the plaintiff having to actually prove they were injured.
Yeah, that's not how it works. Your basic argument is the same as that if you only tap a guy on the nose, you shouldn't have to pay if his rare medical condition causes his head to explode as a result, killing him stone dead. That's not how it works, though - the thin skull principle says you ARE liable for the full amount if you caused the damage. Moreover, the law hardly wants to create a disincentive to owning expensive automobiles nor to incentivize bad driving based on a maximum payout that is based on average car value.
Why should Bill G's insurance company take the hit for YOUR wrongdoing? They won't. They'll pay Bill, then they'll sue you on a subrogated claim in Bill's name for the amount that they had to pay him to fix his auto. In turn, YOUR insurance company will pay the damages, because that's what YOU paid them for. They're out for your wrongdoing because they agreed that if you screwed up they'd cover it, and charged you a premium every month/quarter/year for the service.
Did you actually spend the same amount as Bill? Then why would you get reimbursed for expenses you didn't incur? That's why costs awards are usually based on tariffs and not on actual dollar amounts paid - hire the best lawyer you can, but if you hire OJ's dream team for a contract dispute with your newspaperboy over the saturday edition landing on your roof, you shouldn't get that back if you win, and the newspaperboy shouldn't get a multimillion donation for his defence.
Moreover, why should I have to pay YOU to defend yourself? I haven't done anything wrong, I claim that YOU'RE the one in the wrong - and until the court decides, who can say otherwise? Should the government pay to bring you up to my level? Maybe they will, to an extent - but is matching Bill G dollar for dollar REQUIRED to achieve justice? I doubt it.
Economically, I will pay as much to pursue a claim or defend one as I think it is worth to me. If I value NOT having to pay you at $X, then there is no one better than me to say whether that is right or wrong. Here's the thing - you may not value your claim the same way. Almost by definition, as a plaintiff it will be worth the cost of your injury plus aggravation. If it's going to cost three times more to bring a case to trial than it's worth to you, that should be a signal your claim isn't worth pursuing. It is not in society's best interests to encourage people to behave economically irrationally when contemplating litigation or worse, to publicly subsidize litigation that is economically irrational UNLESS there is a broader societal interest. IOW, if society has an economic interest in the dispute, it may make sense to assist the private litigant - but this isnt' always the case.
As someone above pointed out, corporations will gladly pollute if the cost of fines is less than they make. This is because we don't have a proper system for valuing the environment. As a society, and a justice system, we don't put a price tag on clean air and water, on global warming NOT happening. Instead, we look at lost jobs and products not made and the price of oil... oil has another price, which we're not factoring in.
Getting back to the TFA, a system where litigants paid more of the other party's costs if they lose would restrain some of the RIAA's worst abuses, and those of nuisance litigants generally. The present costs award is a step in the right direction, but a full and broad loser pays system would go IMHO be preferable. As noted above, yes, it would discourage marginal cases. I'm not convinced that's bad.
Should there be an award of costs if you sue someone and lose? Damn straight, that's how the British and the Canadians have always done it and it really cuts down on frivolous litigation. Costs in those systems aren't anything near actual solicitor-client costs, but they're high enough to make people think twice about wasting the court's time and the defendant's money.
As to damages based on respective income level, dear god no. That change would completely and utterly overwhelm your first point - if McDonalds injures me to the tune of an actual loss of $1 out of my pocket, I shouldn't be able to claim $1000 just because they're a big company. That creates an enrichment in me and a huge incentive to sue big companies over frivolities. Conversely, if someone backs into Bill Gates' car, he should get less than the cost of fixing it why, exactly? If I have a $1 loss, it is perfectly reasonable to say megacorp defendant who caused the loss need to pay me $1, my filing fees and a reasonable amount on top of the real loss for my discomfort/trouble/pain/annoyance, but as a matter of legal and economic theory, I should *never* come out ahead by suing. A lawsuit is not a jackpot and god help us all if it ever becomes such (though many would argue the US is already there). Now, having said that punitive damage awards do happen- those enrich the plaintiff and are economically questionable, especially on the scale sometimes seen in US courts. But the theory is, megacorp can afford to lose $3 to cause a $1 injury if they actually make $3.25 by doing it or if they only get caught at this one time in ten, so sometimes you need to put a thumb on the scale, as it were. Punitive damages are intended to send the clear message not to do the complained of act again and avoid hundreds or thousands of other people having to sue to make the same point. They are also meant to be rare and in Canada, actually are.
Another definition of 'contract of adhesion' is 'unilateral contract'. I don't recall my contracts prof or my contracts texts calling them one-sided in terms of fairness, just one-sided in terms of it being one person's contract *with the world*. It's not bargained at all, it's a take it or leave it offer to the world at large, that is accepted by carrying out the terms. Instead of being a contract between known persons A and B, negotiated between them, it's an offer by A to whoever does what A wants. The ubiquitous example is the reward poster - "LOST DOG! REWARD $100" - this is a binding and enforceable contract of adhesion with *any person* to pay $100 if they return the lost dog to the creator of the poster. It's called adhesion because if you adhere to the terms, you are a party to the contract. For example, by entering onto the parking lot with the big sign posted about 'park at own risk', you accept the terms of the contract allowing the public to park but excluding liability of the lot owner for contents of vehicles.
I would love to see someone try to set aside a EULA for a product with monthly fees and an upfront purchase price on the basis that it's one sided or unfair or merely for being a contract of adhesion. Your chances of showing a EULA, particularly on a *game*, is so unfair as to be unenforceable are zip - you have the option to not buy it or cancel, and its a wholly discretionary entertainment purchase. You're going to get NO sympathy from the bench, since if you didn't find it $X/month entertaining, you'd have cancelled already. Trying to argue that an online game service is unreasonable for inserting a term allowing them to cancel service to those using cheating programs isn't going to look good either.
And as to claiming damages for lost in game wealth, that's EXPLICITLY prohibited by the EULA, without which license you have no right to access WOW's servers in the first place. No class action lawyer would touch that with a ten foot pole.
It would be pretty sad if judges DIDN'T have the power to take immediate action against parties to litigation they're hearing and their counsel. Most every system of justice recognizes that courts have the inherent power to control their own processes.
There are plenty of checks and balances, most notably that the normal citizen going about his business is never in a position to be bound by the order so he can't be in contempt of it. If you're subject to the court's order, you're either a party, or one of the parties' lawyers, or a third party that has been dragged in to this mess. Third parties generally don't get orders made against them without the right to appear and argue why the order should or shouldn't go. Usually, people get added to these things when it's a question of implementation of orders made against/between parties - the court orders A to do X for B, but C actually holds the money and isn't doing jack squat without an order requiring them to.
You do occasionally get John Doe orders against any and all people currently illegally occupying a property, or whatever, but they're not especially common outside the labour context and environmental protests.
In Canada, in the famous case of R. v. Butler (well, famous amongst tax attorneys and law students at any rate), the Court held that the only reason a madam couldn't deduct the cost of bribing police officers to let her brothel operate as legitimate business expenses was that she hadn't gotten a receipt. Since she had no evidence of the payments, the Court wasn't prepared to assume that the police were corrupt so they said no. In principle, there was nothing to prevent claiming that as a deduction.
Similarly, in Canada (and the US for that matter - Al Capone, anyone) you're required to report ALL your income, whether gathered from legal or illegal sources. I don't really care if Blizzard says I can't deal with RMTs, if a real cash market for a product exists and profits are being made, they're taxable.
The prospect of every officer walking beats doing fingerprint collection scares me, not so much for wrongful convictions (most likely is just a lot of smudged partials that can't be matched to anything) but that crimes that could have been prosecuted can't be because the evidence is screwed up. Identification specialists were trained up as specialists FOR A REASON - there's skill and learning involved. Doing it again and again develops skill and technique, which if you're just doing it occasionally you don't get.
Moreover, the biggest part of police training on evidence gathering often isn't in techniques but in testimony. When defence counsel asks you why you use the red bottle instead of the green bottle when raising prints off a porous surface, the correct answer is not 'that's what I was told at training but I don't actually know why', it's a long diatribe about oils, natural ridgelines, materials science, basic and not so basic chemistry, etc etc etc. If defence knows the person who took the prints is an expert, THEY WONT ASK because you don't want the CSI science demo convincing the jury. If the cop ISNT an expert, damn straight they'll go after him on training hard and you'd better hope he studied his manuals.
When defence asks how many times you've lifted prints, the answer the prosecution wants to hear is 'thousands, on a daily basis' as opposed to 'a few times month' or 'twice'. When you ask if they've ever been qualified on an expert in fingerprint identification, again, "yes, dozens of times" is good, "No." is bad.
The whole situation is pretty silly though. You're basically handing the police a solution on a plate. They won't have to do too much detective work to get a result
Are you on CRACK? This is a total nightmare for the police. Here's how the trial goes:
OP:
1. Qualify the OP as an expert witness in the area of computer programming and computer networking. Have him testify as to ownership of the missing laptop, when it was last seen.
2. Produce hardcopy of the source code of the VBS program that was allegedly placed on the hard drive of the missing equipment
3. Get OP to testify that that is indeed what he placed on the computer
4. Get OP to identify the recovered laptop (assuming they find it) as the one that went missing, presumably by serial number since one laptop looks much like another of the same make.
5. Watch defence counsel rip him a new one.
A. Watch OP admit that the laptop was out of his possession for some time. It was stolen, after all.
B. Yes, another programmer knowledgeable in VB could have changed, added or altered the script.
C. Yes, it IS possible to spoof internet messages. But I really don't thi...
D. Hackers? Well sure, they're out there. But why would a hac...
E. No, we have firewall and antivirus software on our computers to prevent someone from inst...
F. Yes, I suppose the thief could have turned them off, if he's a moro...
G. No, if the original thief never turned the computer on, it never would have sent the signal we got. I suppose, if he was stealing it for resale, that he might NOT turn it on, bu...
No further questions.
Police Officer One
Yes I took the report, but no, I didn't act immediately. This guy was chattering about scripts and networks, I thought he was an out of work actor or something.
Yeah, eventually he kept bugging me so I turned it over to our technology crime department. His name's Larry, by the way. Nice guy, not cut out for street duty. Anyway, he talked to the ISP and gave me an address and I went there and found a guy and the laptop. He wouldn't say how he got the laptop. Yeah, I suppose he could have bought it from some guy without knowing it was hot.
Fingerprints? Are you SERIOUS? FOR A FRICKIN LAPTOP? Ident's a bit backed up, what with the murders, rapes, armed robberies and the like, when I asked about it and was told they'd get around to the laptop in 2007 or early 2008, unless we found out the laptop had been used to bludgeon someone to death.
No, even if it had fingerprints, I agree it wouldn't show whether the person who sat at the keyboard knew it was stolen.
Yes, the apartment looked like a flophouse when I arrested the accused. There were personal belongings everywhere, it didn't look like they were all the accused's. No, there were no personal effects like bills or his wallet or clothing right next to the laptop. Yes, it is possible, I suppose, that someone else in the house had stolen or used the laptop.
TECHNOLOGY CRIMES OFFICER:
Qualify him as an expert.
Explain how he got the info from the phone company.
Explain why he had probable cause to do that, which requires explaining how the VBS worked in the first place.
Explain in excruciating detail how he examined the computer recovered without changing the contents in any way.
Explain in excruciating detail where and how he found the VBS.
PHONE CO GUY #1
Got request from police. passed it on to right department. Got response back, provided it to cops.
PHONE CO GUY #2
Explain how he got the subscriber data for the address in question and provided it to guy #1.
No, there's no way for our computers to say who was actually using the computer or the phone/network connection at the time. All we do is show where it was being used from. Yes, anyone could have used that laptop and we would have gotten the same information.
It's essentially the same thing as a federal regulation - these are things defined not in statute, but rather by the Executive Branch of the government. Some things in the CFR are there because the legislature specifically requires them, while others are regulations crafted under the broad discretion that Congress sometimes gives.
The first paragraph of your post is right, but I'm not sure you can compare executive orders to regulations. A regulation is binding on everyone and has the force of law because the legislative arm has authorized the regulation to be made. If you break it, you've broken a law. Regulations are laws, they're just laws made by the executive instead of the legislature, but this is okay because the legislature says "we really don't give a damn HOW you do this, we just want to make sure it gets done. We also don't want to be called back to washington every damn time you change the serial number on the forms or the name of the machinery you're planning to use, so please, just take care of the details by regulations you make up yourself in the following enumerated areas: [etc]".
An executive order by contrast has no statutory or constitutional power behind it and therefore is not a law, except where a previous statute has said the president can do some things by executive order, for much the same reason they allow regulations to be made. Otherwise, an executive order is s basically an overblown memo/press release from the chief telling his various employees and agencies how he wants them to do their job. If I don't work for the government, an executive order isn't binding on my behaviour.
In other words, since Quebec already had equivalent legislation on the books for MORE THAN A DECADE, Quebec's laws apply.
(hint - guess which province's laws the feds copied when they created PIPEDA:-)
Not Quebec's, not really. The whole making-provincial-legislation-supercede thing is a bit of a constitutional dodge to keep anyone from pointing out that PIPEDA is probably unconstitutional.
PIPEDA was developed in response to the EU's DPD, to prevent that directive when it took effect from barring the transfer of personal information to and from canadian businesses with european operations/parents. The basic framework was the canadian direct marketing association's (!) privacy code, which is actually incorporated by reference into the legislation (which is fairly odd).
PIPEDA was an initiative of Industry Canada and theoretically draws constitutional authority from the federal power to regulate trade and commerce per s.91(2). While the US supreme court has interpreted the "commerce clause" of their constitution in such a way as to give congress a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, Canada's courts have given this clause a narrow scope. Property and civil rights is a provincial area of exclusive authority under s.92(13) of the Constitution Act 1867, so it was a bit of a stretch for the feds to legislate in the area at all. Banks and telcos are federally regulated, so that wasn't a problem. The problem was all the little mom and pop stores and companies with separate corporate offshoots in various provinces.
The feds made PIPEDA applicable in phases, eventually to cover every business of any size anywhere, coast to coast, with an exemption where the province already had "substantially similar" legislation, with the GGinC (cabinet) to determine what "substantially similar" means, and in practice this meant whether they thought the law would past muster with the Eurocrats interpreting the Data Protection Directive.
So technically, PIPEDA, like any piece of federal legislation, is paramount over any provincial law and the provincial law is of no force or effect to the extent that it is inconsistent with PIPEDA. To avoid double regulation, PIPEDA says that if you comply with the provincial statute, if you're not federally regulated, not doing business or transferring data across provincial borders and the province's law is on an approved list, you only have to follow the provincial statute.
In any event, my point was that negative option has nothing to do with PIPEDA per se - its a consumer protection issue. The only point is whether the privacy legislation in question specifically requires opt-in or whether opt-out is permissible. While opt-in is a best practice, I don't believe anyone actually requires it as it was completely impracticable in the context of PIPEDA's coming into force, and in terms of ongoing business relationships.
No money in it. There are fewer public interest litigation firms and groups than you might think, and fewer still prepared to go toe to toe with an 800 lb regulatory gorilla like Bell, and major class action firms aren't going to sue on this clause because there's no real damages so there's no big pot of cash to pay for the litigation. If you were wrongfully collecting money from the customer, then a buck a customer per month times Bell's user base is a whopping big pile of cash. But damages for invasion of privacy are something you would have a hell of a time getting certified as a class action .
And every banking institution and phone company in Canada did the same thing with respect to PIPEDA when it first came into force and no one has said boo about it. We all got little colour slips of paper saying the bank/phone co was following the privacy policy set out on {insert url here} and if we didn't like it, contact {someone who has no power to change it}. The only alternative would have been for them to shut off the banking and phone service to every single canadian until they came into the nearest branch/phone centre and signed a privacy compliance form. Needless to say, the privacy commissioner wasn't keen on causing this kind of disruption. This didn't and won't happen.
There is a HUGE difference between doing things on an unsolicited basis and then demanding compensaion and giving advance notice that you will be changing the way you provide services BEFORE you provide them.
As to getting sued, I don't recall whether any of those lawsuits ever went to trial. There are some serious problems with such litigation due to federal regulation of the telecoms industry.
Unless Bell is proposing to *charge* the customer for the provision of their data to third parties, the negative-option billing statutes of various provinces do not apply (e.g. Alberta's Fair Trading Act; BC's Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act,; Ontario's 2002 Consumer Protection Act).
Further, you get into interesting issues because telephone service, for instance, is federally regulated and all phone charges are authorized by subordinate federal legislation (i.e. the various fee tariffs set by the CRTC). For that reason, I don't think the provincial legislation respecting billing would apply to phone service per se even if it did, on its face, apply. I'm not familiar enough with the current state fo CRTC regulation of internet service to comment further.
Yeah, ummmm, no. All Bell is doing is giving you knowledge of when they intend to use and disclose your personal information. If you continue to use their service after notice, you're giving them consent and PIPEDA is completely satisfied - the collection/use/disclosure was upon notice and consent, given at or before the time the information was collected. It may be a bad idea for a host of reasons, but PIPEDA aint' one of them. Good luck getting the TOS declared unconscionable in any canadian court.
And by the by, have you by chance looked up s.7(3) of PIPEDA? Bell is clearing the decks before the Modernisation of Investigative Techniques Act comes into force some time in the future. PIPEDA already states that an organization may disclose your personal information without your knowledge or consent in the following situations, among others; when the disclosure is:
# (c) required to comply with a subpoena or warrant issued or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with rules of court relating to the production of records;
# (c.1) made to a government institution or part of a government institution that has made a request for the information, identified its lawful authority to obtain the information and indicated that
* (i) it suspects that the information relates to national security, the defence of Canada or the conduct of international affairs,
* (ii) the disclosure is requested for the purpose of enforcing any law of Canada, a province or a foreign jurisdiction, carrying out an investigation relating to the enforcement of any such law or gathering intelligence for the purpose of enforcing any such law, or
* (iii) the disclosure is requested for the purpose of administering any law of Canada or a province;
# (d) made on the initiative of the organization to an investigative body, a government institution or a part of a government institution and the organization
* (i) has reasonable grounds to believe that the information relates to a breach of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada, a province or a foreign jurisdiction that has been, is being or is about to be committed, or
* (ii) suspects that the information relates to national security, the defence of Canada or the conduct of international affairs;
Note the last one- Bell already has the right under PIPEDA to narc you out for not just criminal acts but violations of other laws (e.g. copyright), or even for a breach of an agreement, such as, for instance, a EULA or NDA.
Dead on - stare decisis is the heart of the law and absolutely necessary to the rule of law.
As a matter of practice, it is virtually impossible to overturn ANY decision that is a century old and has been cited and applied regularly. It is very difficult even to overturn decisions that have been sitting on the shelf, so to speak, since they were handed down a couple hundred years ago. Usually when decisions ARE overturned, it is by virtue of changed social conditions, economics, research etc. so that they no longer are appropriate. I would question whether the way things have shaken out don't reinforce rather than cast doubt on corporations as persons.
The prevailing view is that even if the law is bad, at least we know what it is and can plan our affairs accordingly. If you could overturn decisions just because they were silly, you couldn't predict what would happen and it would discourage commerce and interfere with people's freedoms. Imagine if the ability of corporations to defend themselves were suddenly at issue - what would THAT do to the economy?
Now I'm not a US lawyer, but if corporations didn't have constitutional rights then I wonder, for example, if newspapers could assert first amendment issues in defending libel suits. If corporations didn't have constitutional rights, there's not much to precluding takings without compensation - in effect, all private property held by corporations is subject to instant seizure . Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't strike me as a good idea.
Where its a tech advantage, my guess is that the courts would be more likely to enforce it - a great many of the cases deal with sales and customer lists and the fear a principal or sales person will leave and poach all the clients. In those cases, courts often say you can work for a competitor, just do it in a different area (and hence client pool). For tech, though, it doesn't matter how far away you move, the players all do business globally. I'm not sure how they'll deal with a tech knowledge issue, though I'm almost positive they'll enforce an NDA - and the new employer can potentially be liable if they induce him to breach it. Makes it a bit hard on the poor sap switching jobs, though - he'll "poison" any reverse engineering effort he touches and he can't use anything covered by the NDA - hope the new employer has some VERY different technology ideas.
I.e., you can imagine that an 800 pound ape, pure muscle, and with razor sharp claws and tiger-like teeth, would have been _perfect_ for that environment. However, evolving into that was not an option. Why? Because it involves going through steps like a _slightly_ more musculare ape, and maybe with _slightly_ bigger fingernails.
True, but as I understand it, the real question is if there is some minor advantage to those intermediate steps - you know, the old slightly photosensitive cells -> barely being able to sense a shadow falling on you -> millions of years -> stereo colour vision thing.
It doesn't have to be useful in the same way as in the ultimate form (not that there's really any such thing) for it to be selected for along the way. I should thing tougher fingernails and more powerful muscles could be of use in digging, cracking things open/scraping meat from bones, climbing trees, etc. Eventually they'd enable you to be a nasty predator, in the interim they might make you a better scavenger.
18 USC 2252A does have a mens rea requirement, though - the offence is "knowingly" possessing, using, copying etc. There may well be other federal statutes (not to mention state laws), but that's just the first that came up and sadly "slashdot" isn't an accepted client code for LEXIS round here. I would question how you make someone criminally liable for possession if they had no knowledge that they did in fact possess the thing in question - how can there be any voluntariness?
As always, IAAL (but probably not in your jurisdiction), my practice isn't related to the matters I usually post on, this isn't legal advice, and if you rely on legal information from internet postings not only do I disclaim any liability but I think you're an idiot.
1. They screwed up their key affidavit, which was sworn on information and belief but failed to state the source of the belief. You can use hearsay in a proceeding like this, but you have to state your source and why you belief that what you're repeating is true. The Court found that there were other employees of CRIA's antipiracy contractor who would have been in a better position to give evidence, and they should have done so.
2. The affidavit didn't say how they had linked IP addresses to kazaa pseudonyms, and the Court wasn't prepared to infringe the privacy of the IP address holder without evidence on this point.
3. They didn't show that Kazaa itself wouldn't be able to provide the information more easily than the ISPs.4. It looked like it was going to be a real nightmare for the ISPs to comply with an order, based on their own affidavits, and might not even be possible. Even on the best case, the ISP can't say who was actually using the computer, only who owns the account.
These mistakes could be fixed (although the second part of point 4 is a killer for the CRIA). The next points are the important ones:
5. The Court held that the CRIA hadn't shown that the John Does had authorized any copyright infringement or that they had themselves distributed files. Copying music to their own computer was legal (held, without discussion, to be private use under s.80 of the Canadian Copyright Act), so any infringement had to be in the sharing. The Court wrote:
Thus, downloading a song for personal use does not amount to infringement. See Copyright
Board of Canada, Private Copying 2003-2004 decision, 12 December 2003 at page 20.
No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the
reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer user via a P2P service.
As far as authorization is concerned, the case of CCH Canada Ltd v. Law Society of Canada, 2004 SCC 13, established that setting up the facilities that allow copying does not amount to authorizing infringement. I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy
machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service. In either case the preconditions to copying and infringement are set up but the element of authorization is missing.
The Supreme Court of Canada earlier this month held, in the context of photocopiers in libraries that "Courts should presume that a person who authorizes an activity does so only so
far as it is in accordance with the law." So, since canadians could download the music legally, the Court would presume that the sharers had authorized downloading of their files only to the extent permitted under Canadian law.
6. The Court held that sharing was NOT distribution without some further positive act like advertising the files were there, and without distribution or authorization of infringement, the CRIA had no prima facie case and no right to an order for the names.
7. Based on point 4-6 above, the public interest in disclosing the information didn't outweigh privacy interests, especially because the records might not even be accurate and could identify the wrong person.
This ain't legal advice and if you rely on it (or anything you see posted in an internet forum), you're a moron and you deserve what you get.
Slashdot Mirror
One could argue that if the gold sellers are motivated enough/have enough accounts to elect representatives, then they SHOULD get to be represented as they're a large part of the playerbase. It's EVE- just because it isn't very nice doesn't mean it isn't legal.
You just told a member of Goonswarm (a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the trolls on the Something Awful forums) not to bring teh drama. Goonswarm's battlecry isn't For the Lulz!, but it should be.
But under english law, are financiers of the company itself really involved in champerty or maintenance? Isn't there a big difference between funding a third party's lawsuit and actually buying an interest in the third party in question even if the effect is to give the third party the funds to pursue thte lawsuit?
At some point, leaving a company isn't a choice, it's an IQ test. As a board member of a new company, would you rather hire the guy who knew enough about his own business to quit at the right time and made millions or the guy that failed to see the signs of impending doom and rode his stock all the way to $0.01 a share?
While this is undoubtedly true for the overwhelming majority of comics, there are bright spots where someone is thinking outside the box. The Ellis run of Stormwatch and its transformation into The Authority was revolutionary. Jenny Sparks said "There has to be someone left to save the world. And someone left to change it." As the opening panel of one ish asked, why don't superheroes ever go after the REAL villains - and what followed was the Authority invading Indonesia, deposing Suharto and leaving him to be killed by his own victims. For that matter, in WildCATS 3.0 the hero decides to save/change the world by making a corporation, using his supertech to create an unbeatable product and use the leverage it gives him to reshape the entire global economic and political system. Of course, the requirements of publishing meant that the entire run was reset and the point lost and these became more violent and not particularly innovative or interesting titles.
If your intention in asking to use my phone was to take pictures inside my house, I could indeed sue you for trespassing, also fraud, invasion of privacy and probably more if I took an hour to think of some more torts.
Yes but... the way our legal system works, the legal framework regarding player piano music roll manufacturing gets adapted, updated and modified to cover this newfangled marconi device all the kids are talking about. The radio precedents then become the ones considered when analyzing whether the VCR is akin to the Boston Strangler, and those precedents are the ones that get used to consider Napster and so on and so forth. I haven't seen a carbolic smoke ball on a store shelf in a long time, but unilateral contracts are still valid. Donaghue and Stevenson are long dead, but the tort of negligence lives on, etc. etc. The RIAA may die, but whether making available is copyright infringement will probably be relevant long after the RIAA's last member label goes into Chapter 7.
You do realize this is a civil suit and not a criminal case? Victim impact statements are used in criminal cases and the laws that create them are intended to give the victim a chance to speak and be heard - which is important because they're not a party to the litigation and wouldn't otherwise have any right to be heard. It is not, after all, The Victim vs. The Accused in a criminal case, it's The People, or the State, or The Queen(depending on the jurisdiction) vs. The accused. Prosecutors fight cases and seek justice on behalf of the sovereign for a breach of the sovereign's laws - that breach may have injured someone, but that's beside the point, really. Even in the area of criminal law, there are many types of crime where you have to prove damage/injury- theft (show deprivation), agg assault/assault causing bodily harm (show the victim was wounded/maimed/caused serious bodily harm, as the case may be), or more obviously, murder and manslaughter (prove the victim is dead - no dead body, no prosecution).
There are, broadly speaking, two issues in every civil suit: quantum/remedy and liability. Quantum means, what is the appropriate remedy (usually money) to right the alleged wrong; liability is, is the defendant actually responsible, legally speaking, for the loss? Generally, in civil suits, you do the quantum and liability issues together in one trial unless the parties have already settled that issue, which isn't uncommon. In many car accidents the insurance company will admit their insured driver screwed up but denies to the bitter end that the plaintiff suffered whiplash thereby; in other cases, the parties agree that the deal falling through resulted in a certain value of loss to the plaintiff but don't agree that it was the fault of defendant's breach of contract. When nobody admits anything, you have a full blown, knock down drag out trial.
So, the place for telling the court about the damages you've suffered in a civil case is very much before the court enters judgment, not afterward. You can't succeed in negligence without damages. You can't win in misrepresentation/fraud without showing you actually relied upon the misrepresentations of the defendant, and moreover, that you relied on them to your detriment. There are a great many types of suit where if you don't prove you were damaged, you can't win your case. Here, damages doesn't just go to quantum, it's a key issue in liability too.
To digress further, there are also some claims that require no proof of damage - these usually involve intentional torts (assault/trespass) and the court considers the affront to your personal integrity/property rights to be worthy of remedy regardless of any damages... though the remedy they give you may not cover a venti starbucks if the court thinks you're being a litigious prick and wasting everyone's time over a trivial affront. De minimis non curat lex, after all. In some suits, like copyright infringement cases, there may be statutory damages set out in the law - usually because it is almost impossible to quantify the loss but the state believes there is a loss and that despite the difficulties of proof society would be better off by the creation/enforcement of that type of lawsuit and encourages it by creating statutory damages without the plaintiff having to actually prove they were injured.
Why should Bill G's insurance company take the hit for YOUR wrongdoing? They won't. They'll pay Bill, then they'll sue you on a subrogated claim in Bill's name for the amount that they had to pay him to fix his auto. In turn, YOUR insurance company will pay the damages, because that's what YOU paid them for. They're out for your wrongdoing because they agreed that if you screwed up they'd cover it, and charged you a premium every month/quarter/year for the service.
Did you actually spend the same amount as Bill? Then why would you get reimbursed for expenses you didn't incur? That's why costs awards are usually based on tariffs and not on actual dollar amounts paid - hire the best lawyer you can, but if you hire OJ's dream team for a contract dispute with your newspaperboy over the saturday edition landing on your roof, you shouldn't get that back if you win, and the newspaperboy shouldn't get a multimillion donation for his defence.
Moreover, why should I have to pay YOU to defend yourself? I haven't done anything wrong, I claim that YOU'RE the one in the wrong - and until the court decides, who can say otherwise? Should the government pay to bring you up to my level? Maybe they will, to an extent - but is matching Bill G dollar for dollar REQUIRED to achieve justice? I doubt it.
Economically, I will pay as much to pursue a claim or defend one as I think it is worth to me. If I value NOT having to pay you at $X, then there is no one better than me to say whether that is right or wrong. Here's the thing - you may not value your claim the same way. Almost by definition, as a plaintiff it will be worth the cost of your injury plus aggravation. If it's going to cost three times more to bring a case to trial than it's worth to you, that should be a signal your claim isn't worth pursuing. It is not in society's best interests to encourage people to behave economically irrationally when contemplating litigation or worse, to publicly subsidize litigation that is economically irrational UNLESS there is a broader societal interest. IOW, if society has an economic interest in the dispute, it may make sense to assist the private litigant - but this isnt' always the case.
As someone above pointed out, corporations will gladly pollute if the cost of fines is less than they make. This is because we don't have a proper system for valuing the environment. As a society, and a justice system, we don't put a price tag on clean air and water, on global warming NOT happening. Instead, we look at lost jobs and products not made and the price of oil... oil has another price, which we're not factoring in.
Getting back to the TFA, a system where litigants paid more of the other party's costs if they lose would restrain some of the RIAA's worst abuses, and those of nuisance litigants generally. The present costs award is a step in the right direction, but a full and broad loser pays system would go IMHO be preferable. As noted above, yes, it would discourage marginal cases. I'm not convinced that's bad.
As to damages based on respective income level, dear god no. That change would completely and utterly overwhelm your first point - if McDonalds injures me to the tune of an actual loss of $1 out of my pocket, I shouldn't be able to claim $1000 just because they're a big company. That creates an enrichment in me and a huge incentive to sue big companies over frivolities. Conversely, if someone backs into Bill Gates' car, he should get less than the cost of fixing it why, exactly? If I have a $1 loss, it is perfectly reasonable to say megacorp defendant who caused the loss need to pay me $1, my filing fees and a reasonable amount on top of the real loss for my discomfort/trouble/pain/annoyance, but as a matter of legal and economic theory, I should *never* come out ahead by suing. A lawsuit is not a jackpot and god help us all if it ever becomes such (though many would argue the US is already there). Now, having said that punitive damage awards do happen- those enrich the plaintiff and are economically questionable, especially on the scale sometimes seen in US courts. But the theory is, megacorp can afford to lose $3 to cause a $1 injury if they actually make $3.25 by doing it or if they only get caught at this one time in ten, so sometimes you need to put a thumb on the scale, as it were. Punitive damages are intended to send the clear message not to do the complained of act again and avoid hundreds or thousands of other people having to sue to make the same point. They are also meant to be rare and in Canada, actually are.
I would love to see someone try to set aside a EULA for a product with monthly fees and an upfront purchase price on the basis that it's one sided or unfair or merely for being a contract of adhesion. Your chances of showing a EULA, particularly on a *game*, is so unfair as to be unenforceable are zip - you have the option to not buy it or cancel, and its a wholly discretionary entertainment purchase. You're going to get NO sympathy from the bench, since if you didn't find it $X/month entertaining, you'd have cancelled already. Trying to argue that an online game service is unreasonable for inserting a term allowing them to cancel service to those using cheating programs isn't going to look good either.
And as to claiming damages for lost in game wealth, that's EXPLICITLY prohibited by the EULA, without which license you have no right to access WOW's servers in the first place. No class action lawyer would touch that with a ten foot pole.
There are plenty of checks and balances, most notably that the normal citizen going about his business is never in a position to be bound by the order so he can't be in contempt of it. If you're subject to the court's order, you're either a party, or one of the parties' lawyers, or a third party that has been dragged in to this mess. Third parties generally don't get orders made against them without the right to appear and argue why the order should or shouldn't go. Usually, people get added to these things when it's a question of implementation of orders made against/between parties - the court orders A to do X for B, but C actually holds the money and isn't doing jack squat without an order requiring them to.
You do occasionally get John Doe orders against any and all people currently illegally occupying a property, or whatever, but they're not especially common outside the labour context and environmental protests.
Similarly, in Canada (and the US for that matter - Al Capone, anyone) you're required to report ALL your income, whether gathered from legal or illegal sources. I don't really care if Blizzard says I can't deal with RMTs, if a real cash market for a product exists and profits are being made, they're taxable.
Moreover, the biggest part of police training on evidence gathering often isn't in techniques but in testimony. When defence counsel asks you why you use the red bottle instead of the green bottle when raising prints off a porous surface, the correct answer is not 'that's what I was told at training but I don't actually know why', it's a long diatribe about oils, natural ridgelines, materials science, basic and not so basic chemistry, etc etc etc. If defence knows the person who took the prints is an expert, THEY WONT ASK because you don't want the CSI science demo convincing the jury. If the cop ISNT an expert, damn straight they'll go after him on training hard and you'd better hope he studied his manuals.
When defence asks how many times you've lifted prints, the answer the prosecution wants to hear is 'thousands, on a daily basis' as opposed to 'a few times month' or 'twice'. When you ask if they've ever been qualified on an expert in fingerprint identification, again, "yes, dozens of times" is good, "No." is bad.
Are you on CRACK? This is a total nightmare for the police. Here's how the trial goes:
OP: 1. Qualify the OP as an expert witness in the area of computer programming and computer networking. Have him testify as to ownership of the missing laptop, when it was last seen.
2. Produce hardcopy of the source code of the VBS program that was allegedly placed on the hard drive of the missing equipment
3. Get OP to testify that that is indeed what he placed on the computer
4. Get OP to identify the recovered laptop (assuming they find it) as the one that went missing, presumably by serial number since one laptop looks much like another of the same make.
5. Watch defence counsel rip him a new one.
A. Watch OP admit that the laptop was out of his possession for some time. It was stolen, after all.
B. Yes, another programmer knowledgeable in VB could have changed, added or altered the script.
C. Yes, it IS possible to spoof internet messages. But I really don't thi...
D. Hackers? Well sure, they're out there. But why would a hac...
E. No, we have firewall and antivirus software on our computers to prevent someone from inst...
F. Yes, I suppose the thief could have turned them off, if he's a moro...
G. No, if the original thief never turned the computer on, it never would have sent the signal we got. I suppose, if he was stealing it for resale, that he might NOT turn it on, bu...
No further questions.
Police Officer One
Yes I took the report, but no, I didn't act immediately. This guy was chattering about scripts and networks, I thought he was an out of work actor or something.
Yeah, eventually he kept bugging me so I turned it over to our technology crime department. His name's Larry, by the way. Nice guy, not cut out for street duty. Anyway, he talked to the ISP and gave me an address and I went there and found a guy and the laptop. He wouldn't say how he got the laptop. Yeah, I suppose he could have bought it from some guy without knowing it was hot.
Fingerprints? Are you SERIOUS? FOR A FRICKIN LAPTOP? Ident's a bit backed up, what with the murders, rapes, armed robberies and the like, when I asked about it and was told they'd get around to the laptop in 2007 or early 2008, unless we found out the laptop had been used to bludgeon someone to death.
No, even if it had fingerprints, I agree it wouldn't show whether the person who sat at the keyboard knew it was stolen.
Yes, the apartment looked like a flophouse when I arrested the accused. There were personal belongings everywhere, it didn't look like they were all the accused's. No, there were no personal effects like bills or his wallet or clothing right next to the laptop. Yes, it is possible, I suppose, that someone else in the house had stolen or used the laptop.
TECHNOLOGY CRIMES OFFICER:
Qualify him as an expert.
Explain how he got the info from the phone company.
Explain why he had probable cause to do that, which requires explaining how the VBS worked in the first place.
Explain in excruciating detail how he examined the computer recovered without changing the contents in any way.
Explain in excruciating detail where and how he found the VBS.
PHONE CO GUY #1
Got request from police. passed it on to right department. Got response back, provided it to cops.
PHONE CO GUY #2
Explain how he got the subscriber data for the address in question and provided it to guy #1.
No, there's no way for our computers to say who was actually using the computer or the phone/network connection at the time. All we do is show where it was being used from. Yes, anyone could have used that laptop and we would have gotten the same information.
The first paragraph of your post is right, but I'm not sure you can compare executive orders to regulations. A regulation is binding on everyone and has the force of law because the legislative arm has authorized the regulation to be made. If you break it, you've broken a law. Regulations are laws, they're just laws made by the executive instead of the legislature, but this is okay because the legislature says "we really don't give a damn HOW you do this, we just want to make sure it gets done. We also don't want to be called back to washington every damn time you change the serial number on the forms or the name of the machinery you're planning to use, so please, just take care of the details by regulations you make up yourself in the following enumerated areas: [etc]".
An executive order by contrast has no statutory or constitutional power behind it and therefore is not a law, except where a previous statute has said the president can do some things by executive order, for much the same reason they allow regulations to be made. Otherwise, an executive order is s basically an overblown memo/press release from the chief telling his various employees and agencies how he wants them to do their job. If I don't work for the government, an executive order isn't binding on my behaviour.
PIPEDA was developed in response to the EU's DPD, to prevent that directive when it took effect from barring the transfer of personal information to and from canadian businesses with european operations/parents. The basic framework was the canadian direct marketing association's (!) privacy code, which is actually incorporated by reference into the legislation (which is fairly odd).
PIPEDA was an initiative of Industry Canada and theoretically draws constitutional authority from the federal power to regulate trade and commerce per s.91(2). While the US supreme court has interpreted the "commerce clause" of their constitution in such a way as to give congress a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, Canada's courts have given this clause a narrow scope. Property and civil rights is a provincial area of exclusive authority under s.92(13) of the Constitution Act 1867, so it was a bit of a stretch for the feds to legislate in the area at all. Banks and telcos are federally regulated, so that wasn't a problem. The problem was all the little mom and pop stores and companies with separate corporate offshoots in various provinces.
The feds made PIPEDA applicable in phases, eventually to cover every business of any size anywhere, coast to coast, with an exemption where the province already had "substantially similar" legislation, with the GGinC (cabinet) to determine what "substantially similar" means, and in practice this meant whether they thought the law would past muster with the Eurocrats interpreting the Data Protection Directive.
So technically, PIPEDA, like any piece of federal legislation, is paramount over any provincial law and the provincial law is of no force or effect to the extent that it is inconsistent with PIPEDA. To avoid double regulation, PIPEDA says that if you comply with the provincial statute, if you're not federally regulated, not doing business or transferring data across provincial borders and the province's law is on an approved list, you only have to follow the provincial statute. In any event, my point was that negative option has nothing to do with PIPEDA per se - its a consumer protection issue. The only point is whether the privacy legislation in question specifically requires opt-in or whether opt-out is permissible. While opt-in is a best practice, I don't believe anyone actually requires it as it was completely impracticable in the context of PIPEDA's coming into force, and in terms of ongoing business relationships.
No money in it. There are fewer public interest litigation firms and groups than you might think, and fewer still prepared to go toe to toe with an 800 lb regulatory gorilla like Bell, and major class action firms aren't going to sue on this clause because there's no real damages so there's no big pot of cash to pay for the litigation. If you were wrongfully collecting money from the customer, then a buck a customer per month times Bell's user base is a whopping big pile of cash. But damages for invasion of privacy are something you would have a hell of a time getting certified as a class action .
There is a HUGE difference between doing things on an unsolicited basis and then demanding compensaion and giving advance notice that you will be changing the way you provide services BEFORE you provide them.
As to getting sued, I don't recall whether any of those lawsuits ever went to trial. There are some serious problems with such litigation due to federal regulation of the telecoms industry.
Unless Bell is proposing to *charge* the customer for the provision of their data to third parties, the negative-option billing statutes of various provinces do not apply (e.g. Alberta's Fair Trading Act; BC's Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act,; Ontario's 2002 Consumer Protection Act).
Further, you get into interesting issues because telephone service, for instance, is federally regulated and all phone charges are authorized by subordinate federal legislation (i.e. the various fee tariffs set by the CRTC). For that reason, I don't think the provincial legislation respecting billing would apply to phone service per se even if it did, on its face, apply. I'm not familiar enough with the current state fo CRTC regulation of internet service to comment further.
And by the by, have you by chance looked up s.7(3) of PIPEDA? Bell is clearing the decks before the Modernisation of Investigative Techniques Act comes into force some time in the future. PIPEDA already states that an organization may disclose your personal information without your knowledge or consent in the following situations, among others; when the disclosure is :
Note the last one- Bell already has the right under PIPEDA to narc you out for not just criminal acts but violations of other laws (e.g. copyright), or even for a breach of an agreement, such as, for instance, a EULA or NDA.As a matter of practice, it is virtually impossible to overturn ANY decision that is a century old and has been cited and applied regularly. It is very difficult even to overturn decisions that have been sitting on the shelf, so to speak, since they were handed down a couple hundred years ago. Usually when decisions ARE overturned, it is by virtue of changed social conditions, economics, research etc. so that they no longer are appropriate. I would question whether the way things have shaken out don't reinforce rather than cast doubt on corporations as persons.
The prevailing view is that even if the law is bad, at least we know what it is and can plan our affairs accordingly. If you could overturn decisions just because they were silly, you couldn't predict what would happen and it would discourage commerce and interfere with people's freedoms. Imagine if the ability of corporations to defend themselves were suddenly at issue - what would THAT do to the economy?
Now I'm not a US lawyer, but if corporations didn't have constitutional rights then I wonder, for example, if newspapers could assert first amendment issues in defending libel suits. If corporations didn't have constitutional rights, there's not much to precluding takings without compensation - in effect, all private property held by corporations is subject to instant seizure . Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't strike me as a good idea.
Where its a tech advantage, my guess is that the courts would be more likely to enforce it - a great many of the cases deal with sales and customer lists and the fear a principal or sales person will leave and poach all the clients. In those cases, courts often say you can work for a competitor, just do it in a different area (and hence client pool). For tech, though, it doesn't matter how far away you move, the players all do business globally. I'm not sure how they'll deal with a tech knowledge issue, though I'm almost positive they'll enforce an NDA - and the new employer can potentially be liable if they induce him to breach it. Makes it a bit hard on the poor sap switching jobs, though - he'll "poison" any reverse engineering effort he touches and he can't use anything covered by the NDA - hope the new employer has some VERY different technology ideas.
As always, IAAL (but probably not in your jurisdiction), my practice isn't related to the matters I usually post on, this isn't legal advice, and if you rely on legal information from internet postings not only do I disclaim any liability but I think you're an idiot.
The CRIA lost because:
1. They screwed up their key affidavit, which was sworn on information and belief but failed to state the source of the belief. You can use hearsay in a proceeding like this, but you have to state your source and why you belief that what you're repeating is true. The Court found that there were other employees of CRIA's antipiracy contractor who would have been in a better position to give evidence, and they should have done so.
2. The affidavit didn't say how they had linked IP addresses to kazaa pseudonyms, and the Court wasn't prepared to infringe the privacy of the IP address holder without evidence on this point.
3. They didn't show that Kazaa itself wouldn't be able to provide the information more easily than the ISPs. 4. It looked like it was going to be a real nightmare for the ISPs to comply with an order, based on their own affidavits, and might not even be possible. Even on the best case, the ISP can't say who was actually using the computer, only who owns the account. These mistakes could be fixed (although the second part of point 4 is a killer for the CRIA). The next points are the important ones:
5. The Court held that the CRIA hadn't shown that the John Does had authorized any copyright infringement or that they had themselves distributed files. Copying music to their own computer was legal (held, without discussion, to be private use under s.80 of the Canadian Copyright Act), so any infringement had to be in the sharing. The Court wrote:
The Supreme Court of Canada earlier this month held, in the context of photocopiers in libraries that "Courts should presume that a person who authorizes an activity does so only so far as it is in accordance with the law." So, since canadians could download the music legally, the Court would presume that the sharers had authorized downloading of their files only to the extent permitted under Canadian law.
6. The Court held that sharing was NOT distribution without some further positive act like advertising the files were there, and without distribution or authorization of infringement, the CRIA had no prima facie case and no right to an order for the names.
7. Based on point 4-6 above, the public interest in disclosing the information didn't outweigh privacy interests, especially because the records might not even be accurate and could identify the wrong person.
This ain't legal advice and if you rely on it (or anything you see posted in an internet forum), you're a moron and you deserve what you get.