It's only illegal if you don't jump through the hoops set up by the FTC. That's part of the problem. If the government's going to even touch unsoliscited e-mail, they should BAN it, not just say if you're going to send it you have to follow these rules.
Anyway (nothing to do with the parent comment), regarding this latest rule, how is this going to help ensure that it doesn't get sent to minors, even if they can enforce the rule? Yes, I know, parents are supposed to watch their kids every second they're on the Internet, even if they're using it at the public library or elsewhere without their parents' knowledge. Even if they don't ban other kinds of SPAM, they definitely need to ban unsolicited porn.
Wow!!! I never would have imagined that so many Slashdot readers were morons with such very poor senses of humor!!! (No offense meant for the intelligent readers with good senses of humor.) I can't believe so many people rated asj318's post interesting, which works, but funny would have fit better. And thankyou mabinogi for explaining half of the joke you didn't understand. And thankyou Anarke for explaining the other half of the joke (which you clearly didn't understand either), but you made one mistake: there was no "(+X)" in the original post.
I was thinking the same thing, but who DO we buy from? I was just thinking about buying a new printer recently. I didn't want to buy from HP or Lexmark anyway because of the poor quality, and this gives me one more reason. But who can I buy from? Cannon and Epson do the same thing it sounds like. So who is there that doesn't do this, and that makes good printers?
Actually, opt-outs that are used as opt-ins are fraudulent, and not too long ago there was even a/. post that said the Feds were prosecuting a few of those cases. Also, many states have laws against forged headers. And I think intentionally misleading people to get business (as in the disguised opt-ins) may be illegal too. The problem is, these things are rarely prosecuted.
When I read the first article posted on Slashdot, I thought the same thing everyone else does: prices aren't copyrightable, so Walmart's and the others' claims were baseless. However, at the bottom of this new article, there is a link to Walmart's letters to Fatwallet and Fatwallet's replies to those letters. In their letters Walmart claims that the Circular was posted.
The Circular definitely is copyrighted, because it's more than just prices. It's a way of presenting those prices, along with pictures and other things. If the actual circular was posted, as Walmart claims, that's copyright infringement. However, Walmart didn't make a claim of copyright infringement. They made a claim of violating the DMCA.
If the person who posted the prices bypassed some "technology" that controlled access to the actual circular (not just a list of prices) in order to get the prices, then the DMCA applies. If they didn't, then it doesn't. In that case, it doesn't matter what was actually published, and Fatwallet would not itself be guilty of violating the DMCA.
Personally, I think it's unlikely that the DMCA was violated in any way, but it is possible based on what I know about what happened.
You mean when you only want to eat a piece of the cake and not the whole thing? He just wants to give his customers a few extra rights without giving up ALL of his. It's just like all of those documents you see that say you can distribute them but not modify them. Except in his case it's the other way around.
Ah, don't worry about the costs. I'm sure Chile's paying for it. I was there for two years, and they made sure to inform me every chance they got that they owned the moon. They probably paid the Europeans that run the telescope (which is in Chile) to survey their property for them. Taking pictures of the lunar lander is just an added bonus.
Supposing you were talking to an android, how would you expect it to know you were talking to it? I think you would probably look at it. You could just say its name every time, but that would get annoying. Also, there could be instances when the android needed to pay attention to more than one person. Eye contact could be used to let you know who its paying attention to at any given instant.
Say copyright is free for 10 years, then you can pay a fee to have it renewed on 10-year intervals.
Based on the Constitution, all copyright have to expire sometime, and for good reason. Under your plan, anything made by big companies with lots of money, or anything that's profitable, would stay locked away forever and never become public domain. And by forever, I mean even your 5*great grandkids couldn't use it. Anything in the public domain would then be mostly junk, with a few exceptions of course.
Actually, the view of copyrights being property is way off and causes a lot of problems. A copyright is just that, a right, not a possesion. A right can't be stolen, like property can. People can infringe on others rights, but they can't steal them.
People often compare copyright infringement to stealing, but it isn't the same. If something is stolen, the rightful owner is left without it. If something is copied illegally, the rightful owner still has it. People often argue about lost revenues, but those are often insignificant or non-existent, as in the case of VCRs being used to tape off of the TV.
Also many people compare bypassing access control to breaking into someone's house and stealing, when many times, such as with DVD encryption, you're only breaking into something you already own and have a right to access.
If we could just track down a small percentage of the e-mails this guy sends, it would be enough to put him out of business and make him hate his job. Many states have laws that allow recipients as well as companies who's servers were used in ANY way in the transport to sue for a fixed amount per e-mail. He has 250 million valid e-mail addresses, so we ought to be able to track down at least that many spam messages just in states that have the laws I described. Assuming we averaged $5 per e-mail for 250 million e-mails, that would cost him $1.25 billion. That's sure to hurt him. If only people would work together and report all their spam, we could find all those e-mails and put every spammer there is out of business just with existing state laws.
Slashdot Mirror
The stuff's [SPAM's] already illegal . . .
It's only illegal if you don't jump through the hoops set up by the FTC. That's part of the problem. If the government's going to even touch unsoliscited e-mail, they should BAN it, not just say if you're going to send it you have to follow these rules.
Anyway (nothing to do with the parent comment), regarding this latest rule, how is this going to help ensure that it doesn't get sent to minors, even if they can enforce the rule? Yes, I know, parents are supposed to watch their kids every second they're on the Internet, even if they're using it at the public library or elsewhere without their parents' knowledge. Even if they don't ban other kinds of SPAM, they definitely need to ban unsolicited porn.
I assure you, MSN has done this to BOTH Netscape AND Opera countless times. I don't know about Mozilla, because I don't ever use it.
Wow!!! I never would have imagined that so many Slashdot readers were morons with such very poor senses of humor!!! (No offense meant for the intelligent readers with good senses of humor.) I can't believe so many people rated asj318's post interesting, which works, but funny would have fit better. And thankyou mabinogi for explaining half of the joke you didn't understand. And thankyou Anarke for explaining the other half of the joke (which you clearly didn't understand either), but you made one mistake: there was no "(+X)" in the original post.
I was thinking the same thing, but who DO we buy from? I was just thinking about buying a new printer recently. I didn't want to buy from HP or Lexmark anyway because of the poor quality, and this gives me one more reason. But who can I buy from? Cannon and Epson do the same thing it sounds like. So who is there that doesn't do this, and that makes good printers?
Actually, opt-outs that are used as opt-ins are fraudulent, and not too long ago there was even a /. post that said the Feds were prosecuting a few of those cases. Also, many states have laws against forged headers. And I think intentionally misleading people to get business (as in the disguised opt-ins) may be illegal too. The problem is, these things are rarely prosecuted.
When I read the first article posted on Slashdot, I thought the same thing everyone else does: prices aren't copyrightable, so Walmart's and the others' claims were baseless. However, at the bottom of this new article, there is a link to Walmart's letters to Fatwallet and Fatwallet's replies to those letters. In their letters Walmart claims that the Circular was posted.
The Circular definitely is copyrighted, because it's more than just prices. It's a way of presenting those prices, along with pictures and other things. If the actual circular was posted, as Walmart claims, that's copyright infringement. However, Walmart didn't make a claim of copyright infringement. They made a claim of violating the DMCA.
If the person who posted the prices bypassed some "technology" that controlled access to the actual circular (not just a list of prices) in order to get the prices, then the DMCA applies. If they didn't, then it doesn't. In that case, it doesn't matter what was actually published, and Fatwallet would not itself be guilty of violating the DMCA.
Personally, I think it's unlikely that the DMCA was violated in any way, but it is possible based on what I know about what happened.
You mean when you only want to eat a piece of the cake and not the whole thing? He just wants to give his customers a few extra rights without giving up ALL of his. It's just like all of those documents you see that say you can distribute them but not modify them. Except in his case it's the other way around.
Ah, don't worry about the costs. I'm sure Chile's paying for it. I was there for two years, and they made sure to inform me every chance they got that they owned the moon. They probably paid the Europeans that run the telescope (which is in Chile) to survey their property for them. Taking pictures of the lunar lander is just an added bonus.
Ah, but you're forgetting. They had robots up there, remember? It was R2D2 and C3PO that put the mirrors on the moon surface.
Supposing you were talking to an android, how would you expect it to know you were talking to it? I think you would probably look at it. You could just say its name every time, but that would get annoying. Also, there could be instances when the android needed to pay attention to more than one person. Eye contact could be used to let you know who its paying attention to at any given instant.
Say copyright is free for 10 years, then you can pay a fee to have it renewed on 10-year intervals.
Based on the Constitution, all copyright have to expire sometime, and for good reason. Under your plan, anything made by big companies with lots of money, or anything that's profitable, would stay locked away forever and never become public domain. And by forever, I mean even your 5*great grandkids couldn't use it. Anything in the public domain would then be mostly junk, with a few exceptions of course.
Actually, the view of copyrights being property is way off and causes a lot of problems. A copyright is just that, a right, not a possesion. A right can't be stolen, like property can. People can infringe on others rights, but they can't steal them.
People often compare copyright infringement to stealing, but it isn't the same. If something is stolen, the rightful owner is left without it. If something is copied illegally, the rightful owner still has it. People often argue about lost revenues, but those are often insignificant or non-existent, as in the case of VCRs being used to tape off of the TV.
Also many people compare bypassing access control to breaking into someone's house and stealing, when many times, such as with DVD encryption, you're only breaking into something you already own and have a right to access.
Then don't use Mozilla, use Opera. With it you can disable all popups. Then, in the rare cases when you need them, they're really easy to re-enable.
If we could just track down a small percentage of the e-mails this guy sends, it would be enough to put him out of business and make him hate his job. Many states have laws that allow recipients as well as companies who's servers were used in ANY way in the transport to sue for a fixed amount per e-mail. He has 250 million valid e-mail addresses, so we ought to be able to track down at least that many spam messages just in states that have the laws I described. Assuming we averaged $5 per e-mail for 250 million e-mails, that would cost him $1.25 billion. That's sure to hurt him. If only people would work together and report all their spam, we could find all those e-mails and put every spammer there is out of business just with existing state laws.