Ten years later...
"And this was shown in the judicial findings of "SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum" [Civ. Act. No. 07-cv-11446-NG] [909] : "You move WHAT??ROFLMAO"
I heard someone say once "If you have a case, pound on the evidence. If you have a weak case, pound on the witnesses. If you have no case, pound on the table". Or something like that.
No one forces you to stop using Windows XP. If you owned XP, you can continue to own XP forever.
You can't own XP unless you're Microsoft. You can only buy a license to run it. Terms of license are in the shrink wrap, and you agree to them in order to run XP. Microsoft sets the conditions. People click past them, and generally ignore them* until they have to hit the courts. Isn't this fun?
*Does not apply to unhappy sysadmin or responsible CIO. They tend to worry about licenses. A lot.
but blaming MSFT for Velma is like blaming Winnebago for you having a wreck because you put on the cruise at 70 and went back to make a sandwich.
Oh dear gods what an image. I will forever think of a Happy Puppy Sandwich whenever I see a Winnebago from now on, and it's entirely your fault. Fortunately we don't see a lot of Winnebagos in Melbourne, but I wouldn't swear to the Happy Puppy Sandwiches.
Is there a meme in here to match Natalie Portman + Grits?
SET THE WINNEBAGO ON CRUSE, I'M HAVING A HAPPY PUPPY SANDWICH!
By the way, I clicked on your homepage. I see you're in the music industry, which explains your passionate response.
But the reason I'm responding here is that I love your response to unsolicited email. Good one. I'd ask to use it but I'm about 12,000 miles away from where those laws apply so not much point. But +5 funny, mate.
Branding is important, especially when the brand name is written into contracts. There might be fewer hoops to jump through if you can single-source a solution where a single vendor is named. This lives in a place I call "procurement space".
Exactly--a lot of people go on about Constitutional protections, but forget that they actually (mostly) only apply to government actions
I'm a little confused here -- aren't the US courts considered part of the government? Judicial branch? That would make any US court action a government action. There's more to US Government than the Executive branch & that bunch of elected metalegals over on Capitol Hill.
and certainly not sites like linkedin, useless and lame
I don't use it to find work (I'm fortunately employed as of this moment); I use Linkedin as a social site for the reasonably clued. It's a contacts tree, not a HR blog. And some of the questions are fun to answer.
If you don't know what to include, why not have a bit of fun with it? Download and run xampp and poke a Joomla! instance into your htdocs. Fun and educational, and you start out by simply installing, configuring and running software, not writing it. That can come later (Muahahahaha!). Set it up on your local machine (laptop will work) and dump your htdocs folder tree into the one your ISP will provide for you, if they're even marginally competent. Joomla! comes with a nice FTP utility, FileZilla.
if what Media Century did is illegal, then it's illegal to use TCP on the Internet PERIOD, because there is no significant technical difference between formatting the downloaded traffic into an ASCII dump and formatting the downloaded data into a music file.
I normally don't feed bridge-dwellers, but for a person espousing a technical background that is a remarkably incoherent statement. And I'm a TCP-IP specialist, with certs. Did a wookie give you that one?
Oh, and in case you didn't notice, they are also arguing that the RIAA should be legally bound by ZaZaA's shrinkwrap notice!
No, no, no, no, no. Mama Mia. They are arguing only that by violating the terms of service they weren't invited into the conversation. This made the difference between conversations in the public domain and conversations in the private domain. It's the difference between public investigation and private investigation. The latter needed a license.
And all of this to protect some shlub who believes musicians should starve to death rather than get paid for the fruits of their labor.
Tell that to Roger McGuinn, Chuck Berry, John Fogerty and others. They're starving because the RIAA didn't pay them any royalties. Personally I think that rather sucks.
Illegally-obtained evidence is inadmissible, only when police do it
Nope. Illegally-obtained evidence is inadmissable, period. Not just when police do it. It's one of the reasons private investigators have to be licensed in the first place; the opportunities for abuse otherwise are so high the exclusion is required as a deterrent. "Your honour, I'd like to present Exhibit B, the signed transcript of the confession obtained on our behalf by the firm Thumbscrew, Stocks and Waterboard Inc. Please ignore the poor handwriting, he had to hold the pen in his teeth."
I'm honestly not sure, since I've never really looked in to becoming a PI, since this isn't a 1920s pulp novel.
However, there is a large and growing field in computer forensics, according to the closing speaker at TechEd 2007 in Australia (a Parliament-level security person iirc, sorry can't recall his name). Not enough geeks with enough law & forensic training to open up other people's computers with aplomb* and I believe there could be an interesting (if occasionally stressful) career there for someone. It's pretty much guaranteed not to become outsourced. I think, in certain carefully-controlled circumstances, they'll even let you switch on the siren.
*A special case-breaking tool for Macintosh I think.
And they violated the KaZaA TOS, of course, for what that's worth (not much, I'd hope).
Actually it's worth rather a lot, but not in the sense you mean I think. Because they violated the KaZaA TOS they were shown to have invaded a private conversation, not a public one. That put them on the wrong side of the law with regard to whether it was a "private investigation" that required a licence. I thought it was rather a cool argument.
I understood the "other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with" to be MediaSentry's computers
Really? I thought they were other PC's to which Jammie's KaZaA instance was allegedly seeding, i.e. others to which she may have been "downloading". Not MediaSentry's computers.
The counter-arguments are that the defendant was engaging in public discourse rather than private, protected speech and that MediaSentry was simply a witness of this event.
They went to some pains to show that it was private speech. They used the fact that you had to log in to KaZaA, and that to do so with permission you had to follow their terms and conditions. Then they showed that they were in violation of those T&C and were thus excluded from the permitted audience. Gate crashers, in effect. Private party.
From my own technical background I think I could make a case that such challenge-response authentication is very similar to a corporate firewall; outside, you have the public Internet. Inside, that is, logged in to a private network, you have excluded the outside world from your private communications unless explicit permission is granted.
There can be little doubt (in fact I think long precedent) that the realm inside a corporate firewall's protections is private space and quite separate from the outside world. Precedent would include those findings that showed eavesdropping on an employee's computer was not in violation of their rights to free speech. Is this correct?
They pursued a campaign of threats of the sort of litigation that we've seen, knowing that people would twig onto that while maybe they weren't guilty of anything or that they didn't have a case, that the settlement was the cheaper way out- mounting a Federal case isn't cheap on either side. Knowing this and pursuing the course the RIAA chose to pursue on this, "to make examples of file sharers" (using their OWN words on the matter) would be considered to be extortion and racketeering by many...
Yep, seems that way doesn't it? Such a fun bunch of guys. I'd love to invite them for dinner.
I wasn't aware that any Private Investigator statutes actually included an explicit provision that evidence obtained in violation of the statute must be excluded from all proceedings...
That's not where you'll find them. Inadmissability of evidence gained illegally is a more general principle I think.
This is held in a U.S district court, district of Minnesota, and the first of such lawsuits tried. I suspect the precedent set in this one may be paid a fair amount of attention in subsequent RIAA suits if this case is blown to matchwood by a positive ruling on this motion.
I'm a little dubious about the wiretap stuff, since MediaSentry was a party to the communication and not an outside snooper.
The brief showed just exactly how MediaSentry was an outside snooper. It pointed out how you needed to be part of a private arrangement in order to access the material - shown by login to KaZaA, violation of KaZaA's terms of service which showed MediaSentry was clearly an outsider, one without permission to view the transmissions.
This meant it wasn't a public performance they were monitoring (a listed exclusion) but a private one. This was the key re: the TOS violation, that it meant the investigations were into a private matter, not a public one. Private ones require a PI license.
MediaSentry was performing information gathering within this context in the pay of others to do so, which required a PI license within the relevant statute.
Gathering information on others while in this context (other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with) was a violation of the Pen Register act (which covers routers etc.).
This all adds up to Private + Investigation, which MediaSentry were not licensed to do. Doing unlicensed PI was a criminal act where the investigation took place. Evidence gathered illegally is by long precedent not admissible in court. If the court grants this motion, Jammie is off the hook and a valuable precedent in this MediaCircus will have been set.
Slashdot Mirror
Ten years later... "And this was shown in the judicial findings of "SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum" [Civ. Act. No. 07-cv-11446-NG] [909] : "You move WHAT??ROFLMAO"
I heard someone say once "If you have a case, pound on the evidence. If you have a weak case, pound on the witnesses. If you have no case, pound on the table". Or something like that.
...instead you're siding with the government that allows the rip-off of music artists by letting companies sell MP3s for 10 cents each...
It doesn't matter, if they were like the RIAA they wouldn't give the royalties to the music artists anyway.
No one forces you to stop using Windows XP. If you owned XP, you can continue to own XP forever.
You can't own XP unless you're Microsoft. You can only buy a license to run it. Terms of license are in the shrink wrap, and you agree to them in order to run XP. Microsoft sets the conditions. People click past them, and generally ignore them* until they have to hit the courts. Isn't this fun?
*Does not apply to unhappy sysadmin or responsible CIO. They tend to worry about licenses. A lot.
I've seen NYCL post a few intercontinental ballistic missives though.
but blaming MSFT for Velma is like blaming Winnebago for you having a wreck because you put on the cruise at 70 and went back to make a sandwich.
Oh dear gods what an image. I will forever think of a Happy Puppy Sandwich whenever I see a Winnebago from now on, and it's entirely your fault. Fortunately we don't see a lot of Winnebagos in Melbourne, but I wouldn't swear to the Happy Puppy Sandwiches.
Is there a meme in here to match Natalie Portman + Grits?
SET THE WINNEBAGO ON CRUSE, I'M HAVING A HAPPY PUPPY SANDWICH!
Nice post, though.
Arthur Anderson. Enron.
But the reason I'm responding here is that I love your response to unsolicited email. Good one. I'd ask to use it but I'm about 12,000 miles away from where those laws apply so not much point. But +5 funny, mate.
Branding is important, especially when the brand name is written into contracts. There might be fewer hoops to jump through if you can single-source a solution where a single vendor is named. This lives in a place I call "procurement space".
Exactly--a lot of people go on about Constitutional protections, but forget that they actually (mostly) only apply to government actions
I'm a little confused here -- aren't the US courts considered part of the government? Judicial branch? That would make any US court action a government action. There's more to US Government than the Executive branch & that bunch of elected metalegals over on Capitol Hill.
I'll see your 30 years and raise you ten + NASA DSN. And I suggest you re-read the brief.
I had no idea example.com was reserved. +e insightful.
You're being irrational.
and certainly not sites like linkedin, useless and lame
I don't use it to find work (I'm fortunately employed as of this moment); I use Linkedin as a social site for the reasonably clued. It's a contacts tree, not a HR blog. And some of the questions are fun to answer.
If you don't know what to include, why not have a bit of fun with it? Download and run xampp and poke a Joomla! instance into your htdocs. Fun and educational, and you start out by simply installing, configuring and running software, not writing it. That can come later (Muahahahaha!). Set it up on your local machine (laptop will work) and dump your htdocs folder tree into the one your ISP will provide for you, if they're even marginally competent. Joomla! comes with a nice FTP utility, FileZilla.
???
Profit!
I like Joomla.
if what Media Century did is illegal, then it's illegal to use TCP on the Internet PERIOD, because there is no significant technical difference between formatting the downloaded traffic into an ASCII dump and formatting the downloaded data into a music file.
I normally don't feed bridge-dwellers, but for a person espousing a technical background that is a remarkably incoherent statement. And I'm a TCP-IP specialist, with certs. Did a wookie give you that one?
Oh, and in case you didn't notice, they are also arguing that the RIAA should be legally bound by ZaZaA's shrinkwrap notice!
No, no, no, no, no. Mama Mia. They are arguing only that by violating the terms of service they weren't invited into the conversation. This made the difference between conversations in the public domain and conversations in the private domain. It's the difference between public investigation and private investigation. The latter needed a license.
And all of this to protect some shlub who believes musicians should starve to death rather than get paid for the fruits of their labor.
Tell that to Roger McGuinn, Chuck Berry, John Fogerty and others. They're starving because the RIAA didn't pay them any royalties. Personally I think that rather sucks.
Illegally-obtained evidence is inadmissible, only when police do it
Nope. Illegally-obtained evidence is inadmissable, period. Not just when police do it. It's one of the reasons private investigators have to be licensed in the first place; the opportunities for abuse otherwise are so high the exclusion is required as a deterrent. "Your honour, I'd like to present Exhibit B, the signed transcript of the confession obtained on our behalf by the firm Thumbscrew, Stocks and Waterboard Inc. Please ignore the poor handwriting, he had to hold the pen in his teeth."
I'm honestly not sure, since I've never really looked in to becoming a PI, since this isn't a 1920s pulp novel.
However, there is a large and growing field in computer forensics, according to the closing speaker at TechEd 2007 in Australia (a Parliament-level security person iirc, sorry can't recall his name). Not enough geeks with enough law & forensic training to open up other people's computers with aplomb* and I believe there could be an interesting (if occasionally stressful) career there for someone. It's pretty much guaranteed not to become outsourced. I think, in certain carefully-controlled circumstances, they'll even let you switch on the siren.
*A special case-breaking tool for Macintosh I think.
And they violated the KaZaA TOS, of course, for what that's worth (not much, I'd hope).
Actually it's worth rather a lot, but not in the sense you mean I think. Because they violated the KaZaA TOS they were shown to have invaded a private conversation, not a public one. That put them on the wrong side of the law with regard to whether it was a "private investigation" that required a licence. I thought it was rather a cool argument.
I understood the "other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with" to be MediaSentry's computers
Really? I thought they were other PC's to which Jammie's KaZaA instance was allegedly seeding, i.e. others to which she may have been "downloading". Not MediaSentry's computers.
I live in Minnesota and have yet to hear about this story on local news outlets.
Solution: Talk to your local news outlets. They may simply not have heard.
The counter-arguments are that the defendant was engaging in public discourse rather than private, protected speech and that MediaSentry was simply a witness of this event.
They went to some pains to show that it was private speech. They used the fact that you had to log in to KaZaA, and that to do so with permission you had to follow their terms and conditions. Then they showed that they were in violation of those T&C and were thus excluded from the permitted audience. Gate crashers, in effect. Private party.
From my own technical background I think I could make a case that such challenge-response authentication is very similar to a corporate firewall; outside, you have the public Internet. Inside, that is, logged in to a private network, you have excluded the outside world from your private communications unless explicit permission is granted.
There can be little doubt (in fact I think long precedent) that the realm inside a corporate firewall's protections is private space and quite separate from the outside world. Precedent would include those findings that showed eavesdropping on an employee's computer was not in violation of their rights to free speech. Is this correct?
They pursued a campaign of threats of the sort of litigation that we've seen, knowing that people would twig onto that while maybe they weren't guilty of anything or that they didn't have a case, that the settlement was the cheaper way out- mounting a Federal case isn't cheap on either side. Knowing this and pursuing the course the RIAA chose to pursue on this, "to make examples of file sharers" (using their OWN words on the matter) would be considered to be extortion and racketeering by many ...
Yep, seems that way doesn't it? Such a fun bunch of guys. I'd love to invite them for dinner.
I'll be serving the salmon mousse.
I wasn't aware that any Private Investigator statutes actually included an explicit provision that evidence obtained in violation of the statute must be excluded from all proceedings...
That's not where you'll find them. Inadmissability of evidence gained illegally is a more general principle I think.
And it'll all be pointless.
This is held in a U.S district court, district of Minnesota, and the first of such lawsuits tried. I suspect the precedent set in this one may be paid a fair amount of attention in subsequent RIAA suits if this case is blown to matchwood by a positive ruling on this motion.
I'm a little dubious about the wiretap stuff, since MediaSentry was a party to the communication and not an outside snooper.
The brief showed just exactly how MediaSentry was an outside snooper. It pointed out how you needed to be part of a private arrangement in order to access the material - shown by login to KaZaA, violation of KaZaA's terms of service which showed MediaSentry was clearly an outsider, one without permission to view the transmissions.
This meant it wasn't a public performance they were monitoring (a listed exclusion) but a private one. This was the key re: the TOS violation, that it meant the investigations were into a private matter, not a public one. Private ones require a PI license.
MediaSentry was performing information gathering within this context in the pay of others to do so, which required a PI license within the relevant statute.
Gathering information on others while in this context (other machines to which Jammie's computer allegedly communicated with) was a violation of the Pen Register act (which covers routers etc.).
This all adds up to Private + Investigation, which MediaSentry were not licensed to do. Doing unlicensed PI was a criminal act where the investigation took place. Evidence gathered illegally is by long precedent not admissible in court. If the court grants this motion, Jammie is off the hook and a valuable precedent in this MediaCircus will have been set.