Are Linden Dollars even lawful currency? Once only silver and gold were considered lawful. Now days Federal Reserve Notes qualify, since people tried to avoid paying taxes on "non-lawful" earnings.
Also, are these earnings "overseas" earnings that might avoid taxation. After all, show me just where in the USA my SL property is located.
Most of all, will Linden Research turn over records to the IRS that they would need in order to track users down. And can you hide yourself through foreign proxies? After all, try as they might, they've not shutdown Internet gambling yet.
With Illegal Immigration on the table, and a war in Iraq, along with their ratings being the lowest ever, how do they have time to even consider messing in our lives otherwise? Or do they plan to ship all the illegals to Second Life as a solution that both sides will buy?
I'd like to see a breakdown of just who do they sue, based on number of files shared, newness of files shared, and P2P system in use.
Do they go after people with lots of files shared as they once said they did? Seems to me that number of shared files, once said to be >1000, is now <600, and maybe much lower still.
Are certain songs, artists, and/or new hot sellers more likely to draw lawsuits? The supposition is that the are telling the truth when they say they log into P2P systems like any other user, search out specified files, and then list out entire shared directories. When they pick a target, they download one or two dozen files as "evidence", copying down the apparent IP address and time. What files seem to attract their attention? And what if you just didn't let any single user d/l more than 2 files from you. Might they stop by not being able to collect enough "evidence"?
What P2P systems are they searching? KaZaA? Yeah! Limewire? Apparently on occasion. What other systems have they sued people for using, and how often?
There are now reportedly 30,000 cases they've pursued far enough to identify users and attempt to extort settlements from. An analysis of all that data, which must be available in the John Doe ex parte lawsuits used to identify these users, ought to prove interesting enough to someone writing a paper about it and sharing their findings by now.
Which is worse? Pulling all eBay ads from Google, or the GDP (Google Death Penalty) of making you effectively disappear from the Internet. There's no Must Carry rule for Google, although they need do this sparingly, lest they become irrelevant in the search market. But eBay is only one company, and an arrogant one at that based on the number of legal items they ban from being sold, and the way they can suspend your seller account based on unverified complaints. eBay can hardly bring down Google.
Come to think of it, both eBay and Google are a lot alike. Both pull your sites/listings based on often unverified complaints, then make it d@mn near impossible to actually talk to somebody who can rectify the situation and have you reinstated. They deserve each other!
I live in the UK, and was going to import it as a protest against censorship.
If you live in UK, why don't you attack the BBFC directly. Normally it's the USA that runs the whole d@mn world, but here Britain seems to be wagging the dog. I don't have standing over there to be heard, but you must.
Re:loss - MOD CHIPS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
on
Take Two Shelves Manhunt 2
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Unfortunately both Sony and Nintendo have declined to licence it, so they can't do that.
If there was ever an argument for Mod Chips, this is it! Once I purchase a console it's mine, d@mn it! I should be able to play whatever games I purchase for it, and shouldn't need Sony's or Nintendo's blessing first. That's like buying a Mustang, and then finding that only Ford Brand Gasoline service station nozzles will fit the weird shape of my fuel filler tube.
I wonder if you could win an anti-trust suit over this? Imagine if your Dell PC would only run software resold through Dell stores. Where does it say on the outside of the PS3 box -- This unit only runs software licensed by Sony. Any other use of this equipment violates the Sony Playstation 3 License Agreement.
If the British classification board doesn't like the game, just don't sell it in Britain. They're not a make-or-break market for worldwide sales. And if British players want the game anyway, I'm sure they'll find a way to import it. Shelving the whole project when 90%+ of the money and effort required has already been expended sounds beyond foolish in a world economy.
If it were anybody other than the ACLU doing this, I'd be more in favor of it. I simply don't trust the ACLU to have my interests best in mind, nor have implemented it in an even, fair, or unbiased manner.
This might even be an attempt to antagonize and create incidents with the police over the whole video taping issue, rather than a valid method of checks and balances. It wouldn't be the first time the ACLU has done such things.
Nor was the incident cited in TFA the first time a citizen has gotten in trouble for video taping police against their wishes. Just a couple of years ago a man, in his home, on his property, using installed surveillance cameras covering his property, got arrested when he taped officers coming to his door. That's simply wrong!
Of course, if you can manage to get away with the actual taping at the time, anyone with a video camera and YouTube can make their case without the ACLU at all.
The attention-whore Florida attorney seems to have made the assumption that the songs were from RIAA labels,
Keep in mind that the money-whoring, RIAA affiliated, Sound Exchange collects royalties on all songs broadcast by all artists -- even the ones who don't want royalties collected, and don't want to pay the high fees demanded by Sound Exchange just to get their money back. For a small artist it costs more than you'd recover, but then SE just keeps the money for itself. Talk about ripping off artists!!
Maybe they'll be let off, like that record exec's son, with a stern talking to by their daddy. Any other person sued by the RIAA that wants to take that option too?
Since the phones will only work on Cingular, and AT&T is the only seller, so they know where they all should be, would it be that easy to actually use the phone given that you managed to steal it? Truth is, if the phones can be reprogrammed that easily, then no iPhone will be safe. You'll be in more danger using one than wearing white ear buds.
More likely, a stolen phone will be programmed to automatically take a picture of the person holding it, read their fingerprints on the touch screen, silently send out its GPS-derived position, and then use a Sony battery to burst into flames in the thief's hands and pockets!
Seriously, if this thing doesn't have the latest security protection against theft and misuse, it's a waste of money.
but transcoding a DVD to another format that could be played on another device like a media center, iPod, PSP, Nintendo DS, etc.
And by requiring the original physical disc to be presented and mounted by all licensed software (e.g. iPod et al), this would stop that practice in all licensed players (same list). Apple, Sony, etc. wouldn't dare try to sell unlicensed players. They're too big targets for lawsuits.
My current DVD player, a 4 year old Samsung is shortly to be retired, replaced by a Phillips all region PAL/NTSC player.
And that Phillips player is illegal, under their licensing agreement. All region players have been subject to more than one crackdown, with the threat of pulling their license to manufacture in the balance.
Sometimes I think that if they could devise a way to charge for every single time a DVD (other recorded medium) is *played*, they would try to do so. I'm not talking PPV by cable, but PPV by the recorded media that is the consumer's own possession.
This was already tried. The original DIVX (not the free software media encoder and player) system allowed the studio to authorize just how many times a given disc could be played in a given player. Pay more and you could unlock playback for an unlimited number of plays BUT ONLY IN THAT PLAYER.
If you were foolish to buy into this system, you now have movies you paid full price for, that will only last as long as your DIVX hardware, with no possibility of ever buying replacement hardware when your's breaks. You were ripped off good, if you were among the few stupid purchasers of this crippled idea.
They would enforce it by requiring all playback software to only playback from a physical DVD drive that contained a DVD with a media descriptor block of a type you cannot purchase on blank, writable DVD discs. The media descriptor information is one thing you CANNOT write to on your writable DVD discs. It's set by the manufacturer, and what you buy is what you get.
And if you believe this has never happened before, you're wrong. The so-called "music blank CD's", which are the only sort your audio component CD recorder would ever accept use exactly this same trick! A music writable CD-R is identical to a computer CD-R, except that it has a special media code that the audio component CD-R recorder recognized, and this indicated that a tax (up to $0.30/CD-R) was charged for this otherwise identical recordable media. It worked there, and would be hard to defeat here if the content industries can force through legislation mandating its use in all equipment and players sold in this country.
If you can't cope with not being allowed to copy the DVD, don't buy it.
And when you can't copy DVD's, how long before the quality of originals degrade such that they need to be replaced -- at full prices -- after only a few playings? Movie companies would love that. They make no guarantee that the DVD will last forever, which is why people copy them in the first place. Leave the kids alone with their favorite disc and you'll be sending Disney a check every month for a new copy of Finding Nemo.
To think that a corporation will be good if we just give them what they want is living in Fantasyland[tm] (used without permission).
If the drive is physically able to read each bit, then no matter what you tell the vendors making the drives, it's pointless.
Sorry, but this is not true. It's not what you drive can read, but what it can write afterwards. For example, your drive can read the media descriptor block on your DVD, but it can't write the block of your choice onto your writable disc. To demand that a DVD must be in a drive, enforced by the drive hardware itself, with a media descriptor that you can't buy on blank discs, or write with any consumer writer, would require the original physical disc to be present for playback. The way around this is to rip the content with an unauthorized player, for which the will then try and sue you. Lawyers will make lots of money over this, notoriously insecure movie studio execs will sleep soundly over this, and the average person's life will become incrementally more difficult than before in a constantly ratcheting spiral.
DRM needs to be banned at the federal level, as an impediment to Fair Use and other consumer rights. Until the public at large is willing to make this a top priority, this garbage will continue.
Wait till you live in a local that doesn't offer broadband.
That's a pretty weak argument. Broadband is available widely, and being offered even more widely every day. You are getting to the point where you have to intentionally pick a location without broadband (and why would you?) to avoid it now, and it's still coming. Find a better argument than this!
...a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD CCA this past March.
Did he win in court because he pointed out the license agreement didn't prohibit this usage, or did he win on other grounds? If they're changing the license agreement to close up some holes (think GPL 3), he may have a case of unfair and tortorus interference in his business. If he won on other grounds, this might not affect him -- or us, under the same decision -- at all.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm ready to support removing ALL rights from the movie industries. They'd still find a way to survive, and even prosper, but not in the insane taking of public rights they now enjoy.
Remember, everyone who initially came to Hollywood to found the western movie industry did it because they were stealing the use of Edison's patents, and were trying to avoid his enforcers. They were all a bunch of thieves to start with, and that hasn't changed all that much since!
Slashdot Mirror
Also, are these earnings "overseas" earnings that might avoid taxation. After all, show me just where in the USA my SL property is located.
Most of all, will Linden Research turn over records to the IRS that they would need in order to track users down. And can you hide yourself through foreign proxies? After all, try as they might, they've not shutdown Internet gambling yet.
With Illegal Immigration on the table, and a war in Iraq, along with their ratings being the lowest ever, how do they have time to even consider messing in our lives otherwise? Or do they plan to ship all the illegals to Second Life as a solution that both sides will buy?
Do they go after people with lots of files shared as they once said they did? Seems to me that number of shared files, once said to be >1000, is now <600, and maybe much lower still.
Are certain songs, artists, and/or new hot sellers more likely to draw lawsuits? The supposition is that the are telling the truth when they say they log into P2P systems like any other user, search out specified files, and then list out entire shared directories. When they pick a target, they download one or two dozen files as "evidence", copying down the apparent IP address and time. What files seem to attract their attention? And what if you just didn't let any single user d/l more than 2 files from you. Might they stop by not being able to collect enough "evidence"?
What P2P systems are they searching? KaZaA? Yeah! Limewire? Apparently on occasion. What other systems have they sued people for using, and how often?
There are now reportedly 30,000 cases they've pursued far enough to identify users and attempt to extort settlements from. An analysis of all that data, which must be available in the John Doe ex parte lawsuits used to identify these users, ought to prove interesting enough to someone writing a paper about it and sharing their findings by now.
Come to think of it, both eBay and Google are a lot alike. Both pull your sites/listings based on often unverified complaints, then make it d@mn near impossible to actually talk to somebody who can rectify the situation and have you reinstated. They deserve each other!
If you live in UK, why don't you attack the BBFC directly. Normally it's the USA that runs the whole d@mn world, but here Britain seems to be wagging the dog. I don't have standing over there to be heard, but you must.
If there was ever an argument for Mod Chips, this is it! Once I purchase a console it's mine, d@mn it! I should be able to play whatever games I purchase for it, and shouldn't need Sony's or Nintendo's blessing first. That's like buying a Mustang, and then finding that only Ford Brand Gasoline service station nozzles will fit the weird shape of my fuel filler tube.
I wonder if you could win an anti-trust suit over this? Imagine if your Dell PC would only run software resold through Dell stores. Where does it say on the outside of the PS3 box -- This unit only runs software licensed by Sony. Any other use of this equipment violates the Sony Playstation 3 License Agreement.
If the British classification board doesn't like the game, just don't sell it in Britain. They're not a make-or-break market for worldwide sales. And if British players want the game anyway, I'm sure they'll find a way to import it. Shelving the whole project when 90%+ of the money and effort required has already been expended sounds beyond foolish in a world economy.
According to the Reality Distortion Field, Paris absolutely loved it!
This might even be an attempt to antagonize and create incidents with the police over the whole video taping issue, rather than a valid method of checks and balances. It wouldn't be the first time the ACLU has done such things.
Nor was the incident cited in TFA the first time a citizen has gotten in trouble for video taping police against their wishes. Just a couple of years ago a man, in his home, on his property, using installed surveillance cameras covering his property, got arrested when he taped officers coming to his door. That's simply wrong!
Of course, if you can manage to get away with the actual taping at the time, anyone with a video camera and YouTube can make their case without the ACLU at all.
I have found the following links still working at the moment for aspects of this story:
Link.
Link.
Link.
Link.
Link.
Link.
Keep in mind that the money-whoring, RIAA affiliated, Sound Exchange collects royalties on all songs broadcast by all artists -- even the ones who don't want royalties collected, and don't want to pay the high fees demanded by Sound Exchange just to get their money back. For a small artist it costs more than you'd recover, but then SE just keeps the money for itself. Talk about ripping off artists!!
And in January, Steve Jobs demoed the iPhone with Beatle's tracks and a cover image. I haven't seen him sharing a cell with Paris Hilton lately.
Maybe they'll be let off, like that record exec's son, with a stern talking to by their daddy. Any other person sued by the RIAA that wants to take that option too?
More likely, a stolen phone will be programmed to automatically take a picture of the person holding it, read their fingerprints on the touch screen, silently send out its GPS-derived position, and then use a Sony battery to burst into flames in the thief's hands and pockets!
Seriously, if this thing doesn't have the latest security protection against theft and misuse, it's a waste of money.
And by requiring the original physical disc to be presented and mounted by all licensed software (e.g. iPod et al), this would stop that practice in all licensed players (same list). Apple, Sony, etc. wouldn't dare try to sell unlicensed players. They're too big targets for lawsuits.
And that Phillips player is illegal, under their licensing agreement. All region players have been subject to more than one crackdown, with the threat of pulling their license to manufacture in the balance.
When the law made it impossible to enter the market without a license from them spelling out all the terms you had to abide by.
This was already tried. The original DIVX (not the free software media encoder and player) system allowed the studio to authorize just how many times a given disc could be played in a given player. Pay more and you could unlock playback for an unlimited number of plays BUT ONLY IN THAT PLAYER.
If you were foolish to buy into this system, you now have movies you paid full price for, that will only last as long as your DIVX hardware, with no possibility of ever buying replacement hardware when your's breaks. You were ripped off good, if you were among the few stupid purchasers of this crippled idea.
And if you believe this has never happened before, you're wrong. The so-called "music blank CD's", which are the only sort your audio component CD recorder would ever accept use exactly this same trick! A music writable CD-R is identical to a computer CD-R, except that it has a special media code that the audio component CD-R recorder recognized, and this indicated that a tax (up to $0.30/CD-R) was charged for this otherwise identical recordable media. It worked there, and would be hard to defeat here if the content industries can force through legislation mandating its use in all equipment and players sold in this country.
And when you can't copy DVD's, how long before the quality of originals degrade such that they need to be replaced -- at full prices -- after only a few playings? Movie companies would love that. They make no guarantee that the DVD will last forever, which is why people copy them in the first place. Leave the kids alone with their favorite disc and you'll be sending Disney a check every month for a new copy of Finding Nemo.
To think that a corporation will be good if we just give them what they want is living in Fantasyland[tm] (used without permission).
Isn't that what the RIAA is already trying to do, one joined lawsuit at a time?
Sorry, but this is not true. It's not what you drive can read, but what it can write afterwards. For example, your drive can read the media descriptor block on your DVD, but it can't write the block of your choice onto your writable disc. To demand that a DVD must be in a drive, enforced by the drive hardware itself, with a media descriptor that you can't buy on blank discs, or write with any consumer writer, would require the original physical disc to be present for playback. The way around this is to rip the content with an unauthorized player, for which the will then try and sue you. Lawyers will make lots of money over this, notoriously insecure movie studio execs will sleep soundly over this, and the average person's life will become incrementally more difficult than before in a constantly ratcheting spiral.
DRM needs to be banned at the federal level, as an impediment to Fair Use and other consumer rights. Until the public at large is willing to make this a top priority, this garbage will continue.
That's a pretty weak argument. Broadband is available widely, and being offered even more widely every day. You are getting to the point where you have to intentionally pick a location without broadband (and why would you?) to avoid it now, and it's still coming. Find a better argument than this!
Did he win in court because he pointed out the license agreement didn't prohibit this usage, or did he win on other grounds? If they're changing the license agreement to close up some holes (think GPL 3), he may have a case of unfair and tortorus interference in his business. If he won on other grounds, this might not affect him -- or us, under the same decision -- at all.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm ready to support removing ALL rights from the movie industries. They'd still find a way to survive, and even prosper, but not in the insane taking of public rights they now enjoy.
Remember, everyone who initially came to Hollywood to found the western movie industry did it because they were stealing the use of Edison's patents, and were trying to avoid his enforcers. They were all a bunch of thieves to start with, and that hasn't changed all that much since!
W00t!