What can really come though from him keeping them in court after they drop it?
Everything. If he wins, it sets precedent. Remember that everyone so far has simply paid the MPAA a settlement rather than go to court. If Hogan can get a judge to say "ip addresses and a bittorrent log is not enough evidence to prove your claim," everyone else who gets a letter can get a cheap lawyer to easily argue that point.
IF he can keep the case alive. That's a pretty big IF right there.
The IP address and the BT logs are perfectly sensible reasons to be looking at the defendant as the likely culprit. The judge is unlikely to see malice, abuse of process here.
The plaintiff can withdraw any time he wants and for any reason he wants and that will be the end of it.
The usual burden of proof in a civil case is simply "more likely than not." I wouldn't bet the farm on the judge saying that as a matter of law an IP address and a BT log are insufficient proof of infringement. Which is what Hogan must have if he is to get his precedent.
In the more typical case it is not a single file that gets you into trouble.
It is traffic in the tens or hundreds of gigabytes of copyrighted files that you can't so easily explain away.
So he countersue them and win several million dollars as punitive damage
No. He countersues and his case is dismissed. He would have to prove extraordinary recklessness or malice on the part of the plaintiff.
It is not easy to get to the point where you will be allowed to present the case for punitive damages. Harder still to frame the argument in a way that will stand up on appeal.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.U.S. Constitution: Article I
The proper function of an interstate compact is to resolve fundamentally local problems, not to restructure the federal government. I would thinking long and hard before giving support to a cause that is intended to disenfranchise a minority.
The US certainly started with small governments, especially the Federal government
The U.S. started with a population of four million and and effective control of a very narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast.
But government never seemed small to the slave, the tenant farmer , the indentured servant. To the many whose rights were defined by their property, their race, sex or religion.
Minors cannot enter into contracts. Seems like a rather stunning flaw in thier business model
Minors can make contracts. What minors do not have is an unconditional escape claue: Lecture Notes - Contracts - Capacity A minor cannot, for example, pick and chose which part of a contract he wants to renounce. It is all or nothing.
We would talk to each other using video phones(first designed in 1969? AT&T
You could make videophone calls from AT&T booths at the New York World's Fair in 1964. But you can trace demonstrations of the idea back at least to the 1920s. Mechanical scanning, the Nipkow Disk.
When security is hidden from the user (and therefore they don't understand it at all), they have no way to tell when they've been 0wned. For further info, see almost every incident of phishing ever.
True, but meaningless.
How many users need translation to understand elementary Geek-speak?
How many posters have found themselves out over their head whenever they have tried to get past the ideology of Freenet (for example) and make an independent assessment of the network?
There is no point in exposing technologies to the user unless you can present the issues in a way that he can comprehend
Otherwise:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
However, so far every story I've heard about the RIAA sueing someone has been that the person was either a child/teenager or a family that doesn't much cash. It would be interesting to get demographic information about who the RIAA has gone after so far.
The sob stories, reality or urban legend, are certain to make it to Slashdot.
But I'm cynical enough to believe that the vast majority of settlements with the rights agencies procced without such melodrama. You weigh your chances and the costs. There is no red meat on which the EFF can feed.
$14,000 per incident is nothing compared to the scale of a major video game publisher. Shouldn't they be liable for closer to $1.4 million the next time they release M rating content hidden within a lower-rated game?
The fine is trivial.
Keeping your product on the shelves of the big box retailers is not.
In an election year, social conservatives and Republicans in particular won't be happy to see video game violence and sex back in the news again. The FTC should be least of Rockstar's worries.
Why does it always seem that Mircrosoft will come out with the same features as everyone else, and then make it look clean pretty wrap it with a windows bow and say "look what we can do now"
I like the way IE7 handles tabs and news feeds.
Zooming test and images with a mouse click sure beats Firefox's default Ctrl + and -.
IE7 and Windows are mostly about choosing sensible defaults for the non-technical end-user.
The fun in Firefox is playing with extensions. But I discovered rather quickly that I was reaching the point of diminishing returns.
whether it's the inability to put purchased music on the iPod they received for Christmas
or the inability to rip a DVD, or the automatic deletion of a movie on their DVR, or a DVD recording of a HD show being downcast to low def without their knowledge, or...
These scenarios may not play out as you expect:
Assuming the ICT is invoked, a "degraded" recording will still output the original digital sound track and significantly higher resolution video than an american standard DVD.
Thar's not the end of the world if you happen to own an aging first generation HDTV.
Another case of supply and demand in action. There is a huge market for DRM on the producer side where deployment in or on all future mass-media is desired, while at the same time consumers will do anything to fight its implementation.
---or nothing.
Seriously. How many people do you suppose have evver given a second thought to DRM? Compared to say the number that buy or rent home videos? Subscribe to cable or satteliite TV, XM or Sirius radio?
The Geek tends to forget that personal media collections --- libraries --- of any size and significance are historically quite rare and the province of the comfortably well-off.
Sales of sheet music and records shrunk to almost nothing in the Depression years. People discovered quite quickly they didn't need to own the music that was being played on the radio.
The entry level for media for the Internet is broadband service, a mid-line PC or better, with greatly expanded internal and external storage, a quality monitor and sound system. With Wi-Fi and the iPod as the next step up.
The phrase "middle class entitlement" seems to fit rather well here.
The ugly truth of a monopoly, yes. Specifically requiring OpenOffice knowledge would eliminate that problem
There isn't a high school, inner city public library, community college, university, labor union, or social services program within one hundred miles that doesn't offer courses in MS Office. Local employers continue to ssek out and hire workers trained in Office and with a huge, experienced, labor pool on which to draw, they have little incentive to switch.
the average US consumer IS too damned stupid. Give them a DVD recorder remote with 52 buttons and a LCD status screen and they freak out. Give them full control menus on their TV for adjustment and they freak out. How many people went through the 80's with a blinking 12:00 clock on the VCR because it was "too hard to set"?
or maybe buyers in the US are smart enough to demand a recorder that can set its own damn clock.
The result is I have to reformat their PC every couple of months because of Spyware
Soon I will instruct them how to reformat and re-install the OS and software themselves and later on administer their own PCs. I figure this is the new way to make kids "online smart"... let them experience pain and then they wil learn.
What your kids should be learning is how to setup and live with parental controls, a limited user account, how to install and use anti-virus, Ad-Aware, Windows Defender, McAfee SiteAdvisor, etc.
Between the onslaught of AJAX apps, the preponderance of Flash web apps, and the attempt by Microsoft to convert web apps to an extension of Windows with Sparkle and Avalon, we wholeheartedly need strong standards.
To do what, encourage innovation or suppress it? To say that apps are coming thick and fast from those working outside the standards suggests that is where the Web 2.0 developer needs to be.
I used to get a fat paycheck and great bonuses. Now I make less money and no longer touch Microsoft software. I'm much much happier. Money isn't everything.
Slashdot Mirror
Everything. If he wins, it sets precedent. Remember that everyone so far has simply paid the MPAA a settlement rather than go to court. If Hogan can get a judge to say "ip addresses and a bittorrent log is not enough evidence to prove your claim," everyone else who gets a letter can get a cheap lawyer to easily argue that point.
IF he can keep the case alive. That's a pretty big IF right there.
The IP address and the BT logs are perfectly sensible reasons to be looking at the defendant as the likely culprit. The judge is unlikely to see malice, abuse of process here.
The plaintiff can withdraw any time he wants and for any reason he wants and that will be the end of it.
The usual burden of proof in a civil case is simply "more likely than not." I wouldn't bet the farm on the judge saying that as a matter of law an IP address and a BT log are insufficient proof of infringement. Which is what Hogan must have if he is to get his precedent.
In the more typical case it is not a single file that gets you into trouble.
It is traffic in the tens or hundreds of gigabytes of copyrighted files that you can't so easily explain away.
No. He countersues and his case is dismissed. He would have to prove extraordinary recklessness or malice on the part of the plaintiff.
It is not easy to get to the point where you will be allowed to present the case for punitive damages. Harder still to frame the argument in a way that will stand up on appeal.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. U.S. Constitution: Article I
The proper function of an interstate compact is to resolve fundamentally local problems, not to restructure the federal government. I would thinking long and hard before giving support to a cause that is intended to disenfranchise a minority.
The U.S. started with a population of four million and and effective control of a very narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast.
But government never seemed small to the slave, the tenant farmer , the indentured servant. To the many whose rights were defined by their property, their race, sex or religion.
Minors can make contracts. What minors do not have is an unconditional escape claue: Lecture Notes - Contracts - Capacity A minor cannot, for example, pick and chose which part of a contract he wants to renounce. It is all or nothing.
You could make videophone calls from AT&T booths at the New York World's Fair in 1964. But you can trace demonstrations of the idea back at least to the 1920s. Mechanical scanning, the Nipkow Disk.
True, but meaningless.
How many users need translation to understand elementary Geek-speak?
How many posters have found themselves out over their head whenever they have tried to get past the ideology of Freenet (for example) and make an independent assessment of the network?
There is no point in exposing technologies to the user unless you can present the issues in a way that he can comprehend
Otherwise:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Very funny. It is to laugh. Ha ha. A joke truely worthy of Slashdot.
Gates btw has been spending his summer vacation in central Africa: Rwanda: Bill Gates to Set Up $900,000 Research Centre
It does: Digital Audio Broadcasting
The sob stories, reality or urban legend, are certain to make it to Slashdot.
But I'm cynical enough to believe that the vast majority of settlements with the rights agencies procced without such melodrama. You weigh your chances and the costs. There is no red meat on which the EFF can feed.
The fine is trivial.
Keeping your product on the shelves of the big box retailers is not.
In an election year, social conservatives and Republicans in particular won't be happy to see video game violence and sex back in the news again. The FTC should be least of Rockstar's worries.
I like the way IE7 handles tabs and news feeds.
Zooming test and images with a mouse click sure beats Firefox's default Ctrl + and -.
IE7 and Windows are mostly about choosing sensible defaults for the non-technical end-user. The fun in Firefox is playing with extensions. But I discovered rather quickly that I was reaching the point of diminishing returns.
These scenarios may not play out as you expect:
Assuming the ICT is invoked, a "degraded" recording will still output the original digital sound track and significantly higher resolution video than an american standard DVD.
Thar's not the end of the world if you happen to own an aging first generation HDTV.
Would you care to look back to see how many open source projects still in alpha get coverage here?
---or nothing.
Seriously. How many people do you suppose have evver given a second thought to DRM? Compared to say the number that buy or rent home videos? Subscribe to cable or satteliite TV, XM or Sirius radio?
The Geek tends to forget that personal media collections --- libraries --- of any size and significance are historically quite rare and the province of the comfortably well-off.
Sales of sheet music and records shrunk to almost nothing in the Depression years. People discovered quite quickly they didn't need to own the music that was being played on the radio.
The entry level for media for the Internet is broadband service, a mid-line PC or better, with greatly expanded internal and external storage, a quality monitor and sound system. With Wi-Fi and the iPod as the next step up.
The phrase "middle class entitlement" seems to fit rather well here.
There isn't a high school, inner city public library, community college, university, labor union, or social services program within one hundred miles that doesn't offer courses in MS Office. Local employers continue to ssek out and hire workers trained in Office and with a huge, experienced, labor pool on which to draw, they have little incentive to switch.
JVC DVD and Mini-DV Video Recorder Combo 250 GB HDD. $1500
the average US consumer IS too damned stupid. Give them a DVD recorder remote with 52 buttons and a LCD status screen and they freak out. Give them full control menus on their TV for adjustment and they freak out. How many people went through the 80's with a blinking 12:00 clock on the VCR because it was "too hard to set"?
or maybe buyers in the US are smart enough to demand a recorder that can set its own damn clock.
The result is I have to reformat their PC every couple of months because of Spyware Soon I will instruct them how to reformat and re-install the OS and software themselves and later on administer their own PCs. I figure this is the new way to make kids "online smart"... let them experience pain and then they wil learn.
Not when the pain is self-inflicted: Langa Letter: XP's No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option
What your kids should be learning is how to setup and live with parental controls, a limited user account, how to install and use anti-virus, Ad-Aware, Windows Defender, McAfee SiteAdvisor, etc.
I won't forget that a touch of libel gets a mod up to +4.
Slashdot. News for Nerds, indeed.
The problem is, the Flash sites tend to reach and hold their target audience. No one gives a damn when you move on to something else.
The boss will take the Shockwave Gizmo if it delivers his target audience. Standards compliance for its own sake is of no interest to him.
The end-user is not the developer. The end-user is the kid in the public library or his Dad at home.
To do what, encourage innovation or suppress it? To say that apps are coming thick and fast from those working outside the standards suggests that is where the Web 2.0 developer needs to be.
Microsoft defines what it takes to be a player. The game is hardball, and it is played by pros.
Welcome to the world as it is lived outside the doem.
Still living the single life, I see.