He was unlocking phones for resale overseas, making a profit by violating the terms of a subsidy.
There were no terms - it's a prepaid phone, no contract was signed. The worst that could happen is they declare him in violation of their terms of service (and thus stop providing said service), but I really don't think that'd be an issue to him...
The exemption doesn't cover this, and you probably don't want it to cover this, assuming you still want to be able to buy phones at less than full market price.
It makes little difference if the end user can still legally unlock their phone - the carriers can't rely on the law to back up their technical measures, and that's the way it should be. If you want to enforce terms after the initial sale, do so with a contract (as the pay monthly services already do).
While I don't entirely agree with Assange's style of doing things, it's worth remembering that there is a significant difference between just making information available, and actually making sure it's heard.
Of course, you could easily argue that any effort to publicise the data puts some spin on it, but I'd rather they take that route than have the information sitting on some server where nobody bothers to look at it.
No, I'm pointing out the fact that the upside of anonymity, with the obvious benefit that they (whoever 'they' may be) can't catch you because they don't know who you are, is destroyed by cultivating a public persona - that persona in itself may serve as better protection than anonymity, certainly, but trying to rely on both will destroy the advantages of either.
I was making a logical statement, not relying on a rhetorical device.
If he really was innocent why wouldn't he talk to the authorities?
I'm not saying he is innocent - I don't think we have enough information to decide in either direction, although the manner in which the initial warrant was produced, then voided, then reproduced does seem a little sketchy - but he has perfectly good reason to be wary of hopping on a plane and putting himself in the hands of the police. It's by no means unreasonable for him to believe he'd find himself thrown in a cell somewhere in the custody of someone he's pissed off. The US, for instance, want him on espionage charges - apparently they're unlikely to stick, but for someone who's caused as much embarrassment as Assange I can quite easily see this resulting in two or three years in a cell while they come to a conclusion one way or another.
All that said, though, he's courted publicity and then gone into hiding, which I'd say is a bad move. Either rely on anonymity or on your high profile - you can't have it both ways. As the Guardian article mentions, there are many (myself included) who think that on balance he'd be better off facing his accusation in as public a forum as he can make.
You're right, I guess they are still selling a whole lot of iPhones, so it can't be damaging their credibility that much, but it's been enough to put me off buying one. For a company known for their good marketing this does seem like somewhat strange behaviour - it's pissing off some potential buyers and I honestly can't believe that it's doing that much good for Apple. I see their desire to exert some control (although I disagree with it), but they seem to be going about it in a rather unpleasant manner.
Then again, Android is only faring a little better - not only is it fragmented, it's also fairly locked down thanks to the asshats selling the devices. I think now that it's gained some traction, it's time for Google to put their foot down a little - exert control not in the manner that Apple does, but more the manner that the GPL does. License the new versions in such a manner that certain user rights must be respected.
If it's said in a private communication between diplomats, the chances are they believe it to be true themselves. Not to say that makes it unquestionably true, of course, but it does make it an awful lot more credible than the PR they dish out to the public. I give these documents a lot more credit than I would to public statements made by the US government, and I see no hypocrisy in that; I'd be interested to hear if you think otherwise.
Completely subjective view here, but the new iPod nano was impressive enough to elicit a 'holy crap' reaction when I first saw one, and it's been a while since any piece of tech has made an impact like that.
Sure, it is just another touchscreen music player, but what they've managed to cram into that case does seem to me to be a good distance beyond the rest of the market.
Don't let Faux News and other television channels with their ORLY commentators trick you into think that they're doing anything close to resembling reporting.
I'll be very interested to see how the BBC and Channel 4 handle this one, actually. Despite what many seem to think, the BBC are not 'state run' in the sense that the state has any say in their editorial process, and they are perfectly happy being pretty brutally critical of the government. They even make quite admirably even-handed (IMO) coverage of issues that portray the BBC themselves in a bad light.
That said, both organisations pretty much always obey voluntary blackouts. The difference is, those are usually temporary and for a well defined reason related to the direct safety of individuals (modern examples include the military deployments prince Harry while he was on active duty, and the movements of two civilians recently released by Somali pirates). This seems more like nebulous and indeterminate censorship for political reasons - the BBC are already quite publicly discussing the existence of the leak, and it will be interesting to see how far they go in discussing its specifics.
To put it bluntly: if that's enough to cause an incident then people on both sides need to grow the fuck up.
These are mature adults, world leaders no less, so if (to take your example) it turns out that the US ambassador thinks the UK prime minister is an ass, the prime minister should be more than capable of realising the difference between personal feelings and an appraisal of one's technical ability, not to mention understanding that interactions that affect millions are not to be decided on the say of one official.
It's actually a bit of a shame that the laws did change in the mean time; if they hadn't, we would've had a more direct comparison to point out the disparity between the "single 'important' person" and "thousands of normal people" sentencing multipliers.
I might not have been clear, but I wasn't suggesting abolishing punitive damages, I was just saying that they should be spent on public services rather than given to the plaintiff.
The greedy defendant still has their bad behaviour disincentiveised, but the motivation for greedy plaintiff to file lawsuits in the hope of a big payoff goes away.
You don't even need to be up at the front - as I've said many times, until they stop allowing glass on planes (and even the lowly economy customers are trusted with that) I won't believe for a second that they're particularly concerned about blades.
Not that I'm saying they should be concerned about blades; the threat from terrorism of any kind (in the US, at least) is minimal, and any hijacker nowadays would be taken out by 150 pissed off passengers before they could get anywhere near commandeering the aircraft anyway.
What I object to is the classic security theatre, pretending there's a threat and then pretending to fix it. At least if they were honest and actually did prevent any possible attack vector, it would be so onerous that it might finally provoke some kind of sizeable backlash against the whole pointless process.
I always thought that paying punitive damages to the plaintiff was just asking for the system to be abused. I'm not saying that's the case here, but in general surely we'd see a fraction of the number of frivolous claims if they weren't a potential ticket to lifelong financial security.
Sure, the guy should be compensated for travel, lost earnings, and general disruption to his life, but those are all direct (although not necessarily tangible) consequences of the claim. Equally, it makes sense to fine the company an amount that discourages them from repeating the action. Problem is, for an amount to have any effect at all on a company, it'll be large enough to be life changing for a normal person. Give the actual damages to the plaintiff, and use the punitive damages to pay for public services.
And yet they haven't done so, which is further evidence that either the pool of competent potential terrorists is vanishingly small or the intelligence agencies are doing their jobs well and preventing plots from getting off the ground (so to speak). In either case, it would appear that the TSA are unnecessary.
As usual it's a very simple matter of economics - were it cheaper to use sailing ships (after balancing their dependence on weather conditions and need for trained sailors against the cost of fuel and need for trained engineers) the companies would be commissioning them so fast it'd make your head spin.
The real trick would be pinning the (rather hard to quantify) 'environmental clean-up costs' back onto the guys doing the polluting. If it's cheaper to pollute and clean up the mess, no harm done - if it's cheaper not to pollute in the first place then that's what they'll do. Unfortunately this would require immediate global consensus on the costs incurred in counteracting the pollution, not to mention on what actually constitutes 'pollution' and what constitutes a valid clean up.
Similar to my initial line of thinking, which was along the lines of "what the hell can banning DSLRs achieve when point-and-shoots (or micro four thirds) are still legal", but the opinion of the author is that they're going for a chilling effect:
In my opinion, the only reason the Kuwaiti authorities didn’t issue a full scale ban on all digital photography apparatus is because every self-respecting smart-phone these days comes with a couple megapixels strong built-in camera that would basically make the ban useless.
The ban will not affect small ‘standard’ digital cameras, in theory. But in all honesty, who would be willing to go in public taking shots with a digital camera and risk having to explain the differences between DSLR and non-DSLR cameras to angry Kuwaiti authorities? I for one certainly would not.
The author and I are thinking of non-SLR digital devices, you're thinking of non-digital SLRs, but the argument is the same - do you want to take the risk?
Here's the paper that I'm basing that part of my argument on.
It's well worth a read in its entirety, but to quote some of the relevant segments:
By default, BitTorrent trackers record the source IP address from the request as the actual address of the peer to be delivered to others. But, some BitTorrent tracker implementations support an optional extension to the peer request message that allows requesting clients to specify a different IP address that the tracker should record in its list of peers instead. This is intended to provide support for proxy servers and peers/trackers behind the same NAT. But, when combined with the lack of verification of tracker responses by monitoring agents, this extension also allows malicious clients to frame arbitrary IPs for infringement via a simple HTTP request.
The current monitoring approach for BitTorrent, simply issuing a tracker request, requires only a single HTTP request and response, generating at most a few kilobytes of network traffic, a single connection, and minimal processing.
Because BitTorrent tracker responses are not encrypted, man-in-the-middle attacks at the network level are straightforward. Anyone on the path between tracker and a monitoring agent can alter the tracker’s response, implicating arbitrary IPs.
A tracker need not be malicious to falsely implicate users. Consider the following scenario. Bob participates in an infringing BitTorrent swarm from a laptop via WiFi with an IP address assigned via DHCP, e.g., at a university or coffee shop. Bob then closes his laptop to leave, suspending his BitTorrent client without an orderly notification to the tracker that he has left. Some time later, Alice joins the same WiFi network and, due to the DHCP timeout of Bob’s IP, Alice receives Bob’s former address. Simultaneously, a monitoring agent queries the tracker for the swarm Bob was downloading and the tracker reports Bob’s former IP. The monitoring agent then dispatches a DMCA notice to the ISP running the WiFi network naming Bob’s IP but with a timestamp that would attribute that IP to Alice, a false positive. Whether this is a problem in practice depends on the relative timeouts of BitTorrent trackers and DHCP leases, neither of which is fixed.
I know that, in general, my personal views are tempered by the fact that current copyright law (and associated odds and ends - the DMCA, ACTA, etc.) as pushed through by the big media companies does significant harm to the very works and artists that they claim to be protecting, as well as to our ability to communicate freely in general (attacking net neutrality, attacking fair use, attempting to mandate pervasive network surveillance).
Not that this justifies infringement, of course, but I think it may explain why the immediate reaction of many is to side against 'big media' even if they may be technically in the right with any given lawsuit. I will note that this doesn't seem apply to this particular case, and I am therefore waiting with interest to see how it pans out.
Even what I've just said, however, is based on the assumption that the lawsuits are valid. Since we've seen several times that the methods of data gathering are technically inadequate, the law firms are willing to push a case with minimal evidence, and the potential cost for even an innocent person to fight could be life-destroying, it's perhaps less than surprising that many people feel quite strongly against cases of this nature.
One could even argue (although this is certainly a little more tenuous) the logic that it would benefit us all for organisations like the *AA, who have repeatedly attempted (and often succeeded) to pass legislation that harms us all, to be destroyed. From this comes the argument that giving them funding, even through means that could be argued as allowable in another context, is harmful in this one.
I've made quite a few posts in this thread already, and I guess you could (and perhaps would) categorise them all under point 3 of your list, but I'd say that I've made reasonable arguments for why I consider suing people (especially the innocent ones...) objectionable in most minor copyright cases. I've also said a few times that I would feel very differently if it were like getting a parking ticket, rather than fighting off the very real likelihood of seizure of your house, car and all other assets.
One could argue that they are increasing the supply, and thus for a more or less fixed demand they are reducing the market value. The reasoning behind copyright law in general runs along the same lines: supply of digital 'items' is essentially infinite, meaning that cost will drop to more or less zero. Since artistic works are considered a benefit to society, the artist is granted a period in which they can artificially limit the supply in order to keep the value up, thus giving them a chance to recoup their expenses and potentially make a profit. It's based not only on the tangible value but the perception of value, as I mentioned in my post just below. Whether you consider that reasonable is another matter, I admit, but I'd say denying the effect is illogical.
At this point, however, I'm still not taking sides. I agree with copyright in principle, but not its current insane implementation. I'm of the general opinion that suing for minor infringements is a bad idea, but that's within the framework of life-altering fines and court cases, rather than a more reasonable (IMO) parking ticket style system. I despise the things that the *AA have forced through the courts in the name of copyright protection, but I see no evidence linking this company to them. Basically, I think this is an unusual case but we (quite rightly) can't help seeing it through the filter of those we've read about previously.
I more or less agree with you, but I'll add that calling something "wrong" without further qualification severely undermines your argument.
A more convincing point to make would be that the ability to enter a movie for free works to degrade the perceived value of the paid tickets. Basically, consider all the customers who did pay turning around and questioning why they parted with $x while those guys in the front didn't, and subsequently concluding that they shouldn't have to pay either next time. Perception of value drops like a stone.
Sure, it's all based on a more or less imaginary value to start with, but that's how a lot of our economy works - those who want to argue about the validity of that have a much longer debate on their hands.
Two major reasons: firstly, IP addresses don't map directly to people and (depending on the gathering method used by the companies) can be trivial to spoof, secondly (and more importantly) defending a civil suit can easily bankrupt even an innocent person - offering a pre-set 'settlement' in this situation is very close to blackmail.
As I mentioned further down, though, I'm withholding judgement here until I see a bit more information. I still feel it to be a poor choice, mainly for the reasons above, but I can see why they're doing it and I don't feel any real sympathy for a person getting something akin to a parking ticket if they have in fact been illegally downloading games.
This sympathy for the copyright holder is normally somewhat tempered by the fact that I would like to see the bunch of mindless jerks in charge of the companies under the *AA umbrella first against the wall when the revolution comes[1] as penance for the harm they've done us all in infinitely extending copyright, attacking net neutrality, pushing fines and penalties far beyond the reasonable, attacking fair use, attempting to mandate pervasive network surveillance, and kicking puppies[2].
In this case, though, the copyright holder seems to be more or less reasonable, so I'll be interested to see how it plays out.
Can't they just call it a 'settlement', like the big guys do?
While I wouldn't go so far as saying I support this (too much room for abuse, poor mapping of IPs to people, very dubious reference to "torrent sneaking companies", etc.), I also won't (yet) condemn it in the same way that I do when the *AA do this. Many of my arguments revolve around DRM, the insanely disproportionate punishments, the draconian laws that are forced upon us (I'm looking at you ACTA & DMCA) and so forth - since it would appear that CD Projekt aren't complicit in any of this, I'll give them the benefit of just a smidgen of doubt for now.
Which would be a step in the right direction, but is also probably only used by a small subset of technologically inclined people.
Fact is, rightly or wrongly, most people just don't care that much. Much as I'd like to be browsing everything via SSL and stringently choosing when to release any trackable data, even I wonder whether it really matters.
The idea of government tracking chills me to the bone - they have a vested interest in suppressing certain ideas and the power to do so somewhat effectively - and it's absolutely true that corporations can be similarly dangerous if they grow out of control. When the only practical upshot I see, however, is that doing a search to check the dimensions of a shipping container has immediately convinced the ads on a multitude of sites that I want to buy one of the damn things, the worry eases a bit. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we're heading towards some corporate dystopia complete with RFID implants (far trendier than those outdated barcode tattoos). Maybe people's natural greed & incompetence will bring it all crashing down and save us all. Maybe, by some miracle, it'll even be their general better nature that does it.
For the moment, though, I can see why people don't really care that they're being tracked.
Slashdot Mirror
He was unlocking phones for resale overseas, making a profit by violating the terms of a subsidy.
There were no terms - it's a prepaid phone, no contract was signed. The worst that could happen is they declare him in violation of their terms of service (and thus stop providing said service), but I really don't think that'd be an issue to him...
The exemption doesn't cover this, and you probably don't want it to cover this, assuming you still want to be able to buy phones at less than full market price.
It makes little difference if the end user can still legally unlock their phone - the carriers can't rely on the law to back up their technical measures, and that's the way it should be. If you want to enforce terms after the initial sale, do so with a contract (as the pay monthly services already do).
Great. Why?
While I don't entirely agree with Assange's style of doing things, it's worth remembering that there is a significant difference between just making information available, and actually making sure it's heard.
Of course, you could easily argue that any effort to publicise the data puts some spin on it, but I'd rather they take that route than have the information sitting on some server where nobody bothers to look at it.
No, I'm pointing out the fact that the upside of anonymity, with the obvious benefit that they (whoever 'they' may be) can't catch you because they don't know who you are, is destroyed by cultivating a public persona - that persona in itself may serve as better protection than anonymity, certainly, but trying to rely on both will destroy the advantages of either.
I was making a logical statement, not relying on a rhetorical device.
If he really was innocent why wouldn't he talk to the authorities?
I'm not saying he is innocent - I don't think we have enough information to decide in either direction, although the manner in which the initial warrant was produced, then voided, then reproduced does seem a little sketchy - but he has perfectly good reason to be wary of hopping on a plane and putting himself in the hands of the police. It's by no means unreasonable for him to believe he'd find himself thrown in a cell somewhere in the custody of someone he's pissed off. The US, for instance, want him on espionage charges - apparently they're unlikely to stick, but for someone who's caused as much embarrassment as Assange I can quite easily see this resulting in two or three years in a cell while they come to a conclusion one way or another.
All that said, though, he's courted publicity and then gone into hiding, which I'd say is a bad move. Either rely on anonymity or on your high profile - you can't have it both ways. As the Guardian article mentions, there are many (myself included) who think that on balance he'd be better off facing his accusation in as public a forum as he can make.
You're right, I guess they are still selling a whole lot of iPhones, so it can't be damaging their credibility that much, but it's been enough to put me off buying one. For a company known for their good marketing this does seem like somewhat strange behaviour - it's pissing off some potential buyers and I honestly can't believe that it's doing that much good for Apple. I see their desire to exert some control (although I disagree with it), but they seem to be going about it in a rather unpleasant manner.
Then again, Android is only faring a little better - not only is it fragmented, it's also fairly locked down thanks to the asshats selling the devices. I think now that it's gained some traction, it's time for Google to put their foot down a little - exert control not in the manner that Apple does, but more the manner that the GPL does. License the new versions in such a manner that certain user rights must be respected.
If it's said in a private communication between diplomats, the chances are they believe it to be true themselves. Not to say that makes it unquestionably true, of course, but it does make it an awful lot more credible than the PR they dish out to the public. I give these documents a lot more credit than I would to public statements made by the US government, and I see no hypocrisy in that; I'd be interested to hear if you think otherwise.
Completely subjective view here, but the new iPod nano was impressive enough to elicit a 'holy crap' reaction when I first saw one, and it's been a while since any piece of tech has made an impact like that.
Sure, it is just another touchscreen music player, but what they've managed to cram into that case does seem to me to be a good distance beyond the rest of the market.
Don't let Faux News and other television channels with their ORLY commentators trick you into think that they're doing anything close to resembling reporting.
I'll be very interested to see how the BBC and Channel 4 handle this one, actually. Despite what many seem to think, the BBC are not 'state run' in the sense that the state has any say in their editorial process, and they are perfectly happy being pretty brutally critical of the government. They even make quite admirably even-handed (IMO) coverage of issues that portray the BBC themselves in a bad light.
That said, both organisations pretty much always obey voluntary blackouts. The difference is, those are usually temporary and for a well defined reason related to the direct safety of individuals (modern examples include the military deployments prince Harry while he was on active duty, and the movements of two civilians recently released by Somali pirates). This seems more like nebulous and indeterminate censorship for political reasons - the BBC are already quite publicly discussing the existence of the leak, and it will be interesting to see how far they go in discussing its specifics.
To put it bluntly: if that's enough to cause an incident then people on both sides need to grow the fuck up.
These are mature adults, world leaders no less, so if (to take your example) it turns out that the US ambassador thinks the UK prime minister is an ass, the prime minister should be more than capable of realising the difference between personal feelings and an appraisal of one's technical ability, not to mention understanding that interactions that affect millions are not to be decided on the say of one official.
Not quite what you asked for, but I imagine you'll like this.
It's actually a bit of a shame that the laws did change in the mean time; if they hadn't, we would've had a more direct comparison to point out the disparity between the "single 'important' person" and "thousands of normal people" sentencing multipliers.
I might not have been clear, but I wasn't suggesting abolishing punitive damages, I was just saying that they should be spent on public services rather than given to the plaintiff.
The greedy defendant still has their bad behaviour disincentiveised, but the motivation for greedy plaintiff to file lawsuits in the hope of a big payoff goes away.
You don't even need to be up at the front - as I've said many times, until they stop allowing glass on planes (and even the lowly economy customers are trusted with that) I won't believe for a second that they're particularly concerned about blades.
Not that I'm saying they should be concerned about blades; the threat from terrorism of any kind (in the US, at least) is minimal, and any hijacker nowadays would be taken out by 150 pissed off passengers before they could get anywhere near commandeering the aircraft anyway.
What I object to is the classic security theatre, pretending there's a threat and then pretending to fix it. At least if they were honest and actually did prevent any possible attack vector, it would be so onerous that it might finally provoke some kind of sizeable backlash against the whole pointless process.
I always thought that paying punitive damages to the plaintiff was just asking for the system to be abused. I'm not saying that's the case here, but in general surely we'd see a fraction of the number of frivolous claims if they weren't a potential ticket to lifelong financial security.
Sure, the guy should be compensated for travel, lost earnings, and general disruption to his life, but those are all direct (although not necessarily tangible) consequences of the claim. Equally, it makes sense to fine the company an amount that discourages them from repeating the action. Problem is, for an amount to have any effect at all on a company, it'll be large enough to be life changing for a normal person. Give the actual damages to the plaintiff, and use the punitive damages to pay for public services.
And yet they haven't done so, which is further evidence that either the pool of competent potential terrorists is vanishingly small or the intelligence agencies are doing their jobs well and preventing plots from getting off the ground (so to speak). In either case, it would appear that the TSA are unnecessary.
As usual it's a very simple matter of economics - were it cheaper to use sailing ships (after balancing their dependence on weather conditions and need for trained sailors against the cost of fuel and need for trained engineers) the companies would be commissioning them so fast it'd make your head spin.
The real trick would be pinning the (rather hard to quantify) 'environmental clean-up costs' back onto the guys doing the polluting. If it's cheaper to pollute and clean up the mess, no harm done - if it's cheaper not to pollute in the first place then that's what they'll do. Unfortunately this would require immediate global consensus on the costs incurred in counteracting the pollution, not to mention on what actually constitutes 'pollution' and what constitutes a valid clean up.
Similar to my initial line of thinking, which was along the lines of "what the hell can banning DSLRs achieve when point-and-shoots (or micro four thirds) are still legal", but the opinion of the author is that they're going for a chilling effect:
In my opinion, the only reason the Kuwaiti authorities didn’t issue a full scale ban on all digital photography apparatus is because every self-respecting smart-phone these days comes with a couple megapixels strong built-in camera that would basically make the ban useless.
The ban will not affect small ‘standard’ digital cameras, in theory. But in all honesty, who would be willing to go in public taking shots with a digital camera and risk having to explain the differences between DSLR and non-DSLR cameras to angry Kuwaiti authorities? I for one certainly would not.
The author and I are thinking of non-SLR digital devices, you're thinking of non-digital SLRs, but the argument is the same - do you want to take the risk?
Here's the paper that I'm basing that part of my argument on.
It's well worth a read in its entirety, but to quote some of the relevant segments:
By default, BitTorrent trackers record the source IP address from the request as the actual address of the peer to be delivered to others. But, some BitTorrent tracker implementations support an optional extension to the peer request message that allows requesting clients to specify a different IP address that the tracker should record in its list of peers instead. This is intended to provide support for proxy servers and peers/trackers behind the same NAT. But, when combined with the lack of verification of tracker responses by monitoring agents, this extension also allows malicious clients to frame arbitrary IPs for infringement via a simple HTTP request.
The current monitoring approach for BitTorrent, simply issuing a tracker request, requires only a single HTTP request and response, generating at most a few kilobytes of network traffic, a single connection, and minimal processing.
Because BitTorrent tracker responses are not encrypted, man-in-the-middle attacks at the network level are straightforward. Anyone on the path between tracker and a monitoring agent can alter the tracker’s response, implicating arbitrary IPs.
A tracker need not be malicious to falsely implicate users. Consider the following scenario. Bob participates in an infringing BitTorrent swarm from a laptop via WiFi with an IP address assigned via DHCP, e.g., at a university or coffee shop. Bob then closes his laptop to leave, suspending his BitTorrent client without an orderly notification to the tracker that he has left. Some time later, Alice joins the same WiFi network and, due to the DHCP timeout of Bob’s IP, Alice receives Bob’s former address. Simultaneously, a monitoring agent queries the tracker for the swarm Bob was downloading and the tracker reports Bob’s former IP. The monitoring agent then dispatches a DMCA notice to the ISP running the WiFi network naming Bob’s IP but with a timestamp that would attribute that IP to Alice, a false positive. Whether this is a problem in practice depends on the relative timeouts of BitTorrent trackers and DHCP leases, neither of which is fixed.
I know that, in general, my personal views are tempered by the fact that current copyright law (and associated odds and ends - the DMCA, ACTA, etc.) as pushed through by the big media companies does significant harm to the very works and artists that they claim to be protecting, as well as to our ability to communicate freely in general (attacking net neutrality, attacking fair use, attempting to mandate pervasive network surveillance).
Not that this justifies infringement, of course, but I think it may explain why the immediate reaction of many is to side against 'big media' even if they may be technically in the right with any given lawsuit. I will note that this doesn't seem apply to this particular case, and I am therefore waiting with interest to see how it pans out.
Even what I've just said, however, is based on the assumption that the lawsuits are valid. Since we've seen several times that the methods of data gathering are technically inadequate, the law firms are willing to push a case with minimal evidence, and the potential cost for even an innocent person to fight could be life-destroying, it's perhaps less than surprising that many people feel quite strongly against cases of this nature.
One could even argue (although this is certainly a little more tenuous) the logic that it would benefit us all for organisations like the *AA, who have repeatedly attempted (and often succeeded) to pass legislation that harms us all, to be destroyed. From this comes the argument that giving them funding, even through means that could be argued as allowable in another context, is harmful in this one.
I've made quite a few posts in this thread already, and I guess you could (and perhaps would) categorise them all under point 3 of your list, but I'd say that I've made reasonable arguments for why I consider suing people (especially the innocent ones...) objectionable in most minor copyright cases. I've also said a few times that I would feel very differently if it were like getting a parking ticket, rather than fighting off the very real likelihood of seizure of your house, car and all other assets.
One could argue that they are increasing the supply, and thus for a more or less fixed demand they are reducing the market value. The reasoning behind copyright law in general runs along the same lines: supply of digital 'items' is essentially infinite, meaning that cost will drop to more or less zero. Since artistic works are considered a benefit to society, the artist is granted a period in which they can artificially limit the supply in order to keep the value up, thus giving them a chance to recoup their expenses and potentially make a profit. It's based not only on the tangible value but the perception of value, as I mentioned in my post just below. Whether you consider that reasonable is another matter, I admit, but I'd say denying the effect is illogical.
At this point, however, I'm still not taking sides. I agree with copyright in principle, but not its current insane implementation. I'm of the general opinion that suing for minor infringements is a bad idea, but that's within the framework of life-altering fines and court cases, rather than a more reasonable (IMO) parking ticket style system. I despise the things that the *AA have forced through the courts in the name of copyright protection, but I see no evidence linking this company to them. Basically, I think this is an unusual case but we (quite rightly) can't help seeing it through the filter of those we've read about previously.
I more or less agree with you, but I'll add that calling something "wrong" without further qualification severely undermines your argument.
A more convincing point to make would be that the ability to enter a movie for free works to degrade the perceived value of the paid tickets. Basically, consider all the customers who did pay turning around and questioning why they parted with $x while those guys in the front didn't, and subsequently concluding that they shouldn't have to pay either next time. Perception of value drops like a stone.
Sure, it's all based on a more or less imaginary value to start with, but that's how a lot of our economy works - those who want to argue about the validity of that have a much longer debate on their hands.
Two major reasons: firstly, IP addresses don't map directly to people and (depending on the gathering method used by the companies) can be trivial to spoof, secondly (and more importantly) defending a civil suit can easily bankrupt even an innocent person - offering a pre-set 'settlement' in this situation is very close to blackmail.
As I mentioned further down, though, I'm withholding judgement here until I see a bit more information. I still feel it to be a poor choice, mainly for the reasons above, but I can see why they're doing it and I don't feel any real sympathy for a person getting something akin to a parking ticket if they have in fact been illegally downloading games.
This sympathy for the copyright holder is normally somewhat tempered by the fact that I would like to see the bunch of mindless jerks in charge of the companies under the *AA umbrella first against the wall when the revolution comes[1] as penance for the harm they've done us all in infinitely extending copyright, attacking net neutrality, pushing fines and penalties far beyond the reasonable, attacking fair use, attempting to mandate pervasive network surveillance, and kicking puppies[2].
In this case, though, the copyright holder seems to be more or less reasonable, so I'll be interested to see how it plays out.
[1]This is exaggeration for humorous effect, alluding to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes also known as a joke. Not to be construed as a threat under the Communications Act.
[2]See above disclaimer.
Can't they just call it a 'settlement', like the big guys do?
While I wouldn't go so far as saying I support this (too much room for abuse, poor mapping of IPs to people, very dubious reference to "torrent sneaking companies", etc.), I also won't (yet) condemn it in the same way that I do when the *AA do this. Many of my arguments revolve around DRM, the insanely disproportionate punishments, the draconian laws that are forced upon us (I'm looking at you ACTA & DMCA) and so forth - since it would appear that CD Projekt aren't complicit in any of this, I'll give them the benefit of just a smidgen of doubt for now.
Which would be a step in the right direction, but is also probably only used by a small subset of technologically inclined people.
Fact is, rightly or wrongly, most people just don't care that much. Much as I'd like to be browsing everything via SSL and stringently choosing when to release any trackable data, even I wonder whether it really matters.
The idea of government tracking chills me to the bone - they have a vested interest in suppressing certain ideas and the power to do so somewhat effectively - and it's absolutely true that corporations can be similarly dangerous if they grow out of control. When the only practical upshot I see, however, is that doing a search to check the dimensions of a shipping container has immediately convinced the ads on a multitude of sites that I want to buy one of the damn things, the worry eases a bit. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we're heading towards some corporate dystopia complete with RFID implants (far trendier than those outdated barcode tattoos). Maybe people's natural greed & incompetence will bring it all crashing down and save us all. Maybe, by some miracle, it'll even be their general better nature that does it.
For the moment, though, I can see why people don't really care that they're being tracked.