"...Complicating matters for the RIAA and company, US citizens can use a Usenet server outside of the country, and that server's admins can tell the RIAA to go fuck itself..."
With the RIAA suits, people are sued after someone allows pirated music to be downloaded from their computer.
With the DirecTV lawsuits, people are sued for merely possessing equipment that can be used for pirating DirecTV. Regardless of the spin DirecTV's lawyers like to put on it, the equipment people are being sued for truly has multiple purposes, some of which are legit. Rather than DirecTV being forced to prove you used it for piracy purposes, they drag you into court and you have to prove you didn't use it for piracy purposes.
The RIAA equivalent would be them sueing people who purchased DVD or CD burners stating the reason their lawsuit targets used them for piracy purposes. But with CD/DVD burners people, in general, understand them and know they have multiple purposes, many of which are legit. Judges/juries, in general, do not understand smartcard technology and DirecTV brings in dozens of "paid expert witnesses" who testify that the stuff is only good for pirating DirecTV. Sure, you can bring in your own expert witnesses who could show how full of crap DirecTV is, but it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars, at a minimum to get to that point. No wonder that people, even the few innocent ones (e.g., they bought it but never ended up using it for piracy purposes for whatever reason [e.g., changed their mind, too hard to figure out how to use, etc.]), settle for $5K instead of fighting it; it's a matter of simple economics.
Are most people who get sued by the RIAA guilty? I'd definitely say "Yes".
Are most people who get sued by DirecTV guilty? Again, I'd definitely say "Yes".
Have most people who have purchased DVD or CD burners used them to pirate a DVD-Video or a CD? I'd unquestionably say "Yes". So would it be fair for the MPAA or RIAA to just "carpet bomb" or "blanket sue" everyone who has purchased a CD or DVD burner because, in their opinion, 50, 60, or 90% of people who own them have used them at some point in the past to pirate music or a movie???
However, in the first case (RIAA), their is direct evidence you did it; they can download a song from you and verify it is actually copyrighted -- they actually "observe" you committing the illegal act. In the second case (DirecTV), there is normally no direct evidence you did it. And that's what makes what DirecTV does, de facto, illegal, but in civil court, the person with the biggest pockets always wins. And until DirecTV sues someone with big pockets, they'll continue to illegally sue people and there's not much anyone can do about it.
So what would I do? If I was going to buy a smartcard reader or a CD/DVD burner in 2004, I'd go down to the local store and pay cash for it. I wouldn't use anything like a credit card or my real name when I bought it. If I couldn't buy it local, I'd go to a WiFi hot-spot, sign up with a Hotmail account, use a fake name and have the stuff sent to a rented PO Box (signed up for using a fake name) and pay for the stuff with cash or a money order.
And if you are wondering why I'd do the above with a CD/DVD burner. It's because people, in general, aren't going ballistic at the methods DirecTV is using. People, in general, just sit their with their thumbs up their ass when they hear about this, shake their head at the bad satellite TV pirate, while they listen/watch to their pirate music/movie that's playing that they burned with their CD/DVD burner.
"GnuPG, PGP, and the like are only useful for communication between nerds. Mere mortals have no idea what public key encryption is, never mind how to use it. Nor do they want to bother."
So let the nerds have relatively secure communications and let the mere mortals get listened on and their communications ran thru Echelon/Carnivore. Once the mortals get busted, they'll want to bother -- only then it will be too late.
>>Businesses like BestBuy take returns in the first place as a courtesy
>>to customers, because it's something people expect from large stores.
>
>Well, close. It's because of competition.
Which is exactly why I avoid places like CompUSA and their stupid restocking fee return policy. I'll gladly pay extra elsewhere (e.g., Fry's, Circuit City) than put up with a 15% restocking fee because the item purchased is incompatible, poor quality or doesn't work well.
About three weeks ago, I went into Best Buy and bought four 50-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-R blanksON SALE for $172.36 out the door, which was a very good price (non-sale price would have been $301.66).
I noticed a couple days ago that they had an even better deal: 25-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-Rs for $14.99 each. So I took back the 3 unopened packs I bought three weeks ago and got a refund of $129.27. I then went and bought EIGHT 25-packs for $129.21 for a net gain of 50 more DVD-R blanks and $0.06. And you bet if I wouldn't have opened the first 50-pack I would have taken that back too. 30-day refund policy is certainly helpful here.
So I ask: Am I a "demon customer" or just "smart"?
"Just like money in bank accounts, it isn't physical. I can transfer it around between my accounts or to others directly or via credit cards, etc.
When I am low on cash... I like to ask around until I find someone with money and then I hunt around for copies of their bank account statements. Then I steal their identity so I can drain the cash out of their back accounts.
Yeah, yeah, I know it is not right, but that is the way it is, and these guys should embrace it instead of fighting it."
If I didn't know better, I'd maybe think you were a frustrated, uptight, crabby, and vexed software developer who likes to blame his low sales on everything but his software being crappy. But this is Slashdot, where everyone runs "free software", so I must be mistaken.
"Most ISP's SMTP servers work regardless of what you put in the From: line..."
Not in my experience. Most of the ISP's mailservers I have dealt with, both incoming and outgoing, are unreliable and slow.
"...meaning you gain nothing by running your own server..."
By running my own mailserver (my UUNet ADSL explicitly permits them), I gain a mailserver that works all the time instead of some of the time. And one that will email any size attachment, I have logs that verify the email got to the destination addresses' MX, and a mailserver that sends mail much faster than my ISPs would, when my ISP's one does work.
IANAL, but the Fifth Ammendment can be pled in a civil case, if there is a risk of that testimony being used to file criminal charges against you. You can't just plead the 5th because your testimony will be giving them evidence for them to win their civil case. There must be something in your testimony that could incriminate you criminally.
However, in the civil case, that pleading of the Fifth Ammendment can result in a negative inference against you in a civil case(i.e., why would you plead the 5th unless you were guilty?") that isn't there in a criminal trial. IN other words, pleading the 5th in a civil case is not without repercussions.
Bottom line is that pleading the 5th in a civil case is a risky proposition that may cause you to lose your civil case but may help protect you against future crimimal charges.
There are "better ways" than pleading the 5th. Use your imagination.
>"I'm a bit suprised that the KCEasy authors have complied with the cease-and-desist this easily"
Why? Big money eats up little money all the time. Sharman Networks could file a lawsuit that would cost thousands of dollars to defend, even if the suit had no merit. It was probably far cheaper to just comply than risk legal action.
>"since the above statement is not really true."
It doesn't matter. If you do anything to tick off big money, they can file a civil lawsuit against you. A few thousand dollars later, you may or may not win. You gotta ask yourself: Is it worth it? This is nothing new.
>That's just silly. You can make that argument about any minor law.
>
>"Why are my tax dollars being spent giving me a speeding ticket when
>there are real crime organizations out there killing people?"
>
>Because ALL laws should be enforced.
The point is they are using the FBI, USDOJ and the US Attorney General to enforce this law. It's like having the FBI, USDOJ and the Attorney General spending a massive amount of money and using a massive amount of manpower to catch people who double-park or spit on the sidewalk.
All laws should be enforced, but not every law needs the full attention of the federal government!
With AlQueda, the War in Iraq, drugs, what a stupid waste of law enforcement effort going after stupid crap like this and that.
The only reason this is getting any attention at all is places like the RIAA, MPAA, DirecTV, and other big businesses tossing mountains of money in the appropriate Senator and Representative's direction.
If Intel would just price the Itaniums in the same ballpark as the AMD-64s, they wouldn't need to do this crap.
If they want Itanium to have widespread acceptance, do what they did with x86 to ensure widespread acceptance -- make it CHEAP!!!
That is the biggest myth being propogated by the bandwidth barons. Bandwidth is stinking cheap and getting cheaper with each passing day.
What the powers that be want to do is keep increasing their profit percentage even though their volume of sales keeps going up. Corporate greed at its finest.
That T1 you may pay several hundreds a month for costs the phone companies a couple bucks a month for just the bandwidth. Don't believe the NSPs bullshit and all the ISPs' shills out posting here!
"Actually, when I had @Home for a couple of years they provided 4 Mbits/sec, and more to the point, it was a symmetric four megabits."
Same here when I got Comcast@HOME back in 1998. 4Mb/s uploads truly rocked, and for a year or so their AUP didn't outlaw servers, so I was living in "hog heaven" so to speak.
People abused it and we got kicked down to 3000/128 and then to 2000/256. Reports are it has been kicked up today to 3000/256, but that still ain't 4Mb/s up and down.
"What the article fails to mention is that is the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy. "
That was years ago. Bandwidth has gotten a hell of a lot cheaper, dirt cheap. In fact, pumping photons around the Internet has never been cheaper. Pesos on the dollar to what it used to be.
DSL is kicking cable's butt, and this is what cable had to do to be competitive. No big surprise here.
Slashdot Mirror
"... You don't know how much broadband costs down here, do you?"
No I don't. But I do know you wouldn't kill for it, or you would move (to a different part of Australia, South Korea, Sweden, US) whatever the cost.
You were just blowing smoke earlier.
"...I'd kill people to get a 512k ADSL line, but I'm just not able to..."
Not true. If that were true, you'd simply move (to where high-speed internet connections are offered).
The truth of the matter is is that you are unwilling to move.
"...Complicating matters for the RIAA and company, US citizens can use a Usenet server outside of the country, and that server's admins can tell the RIAA to go fuck itself..."
Thank goodness.
"I was reading a review of this drive, but was scared off by a slow CD rip time and also an inability to overburn, can you comment on those please?"
If those are important to you, get a Liteon 52X CDRW (in addition to the DVR-108); they can be found for around $40.00.
Google for the term "warez", and you will see how easy it is to generate 1.8GB/week.
NoMoreCoasters.
The very best media are, in this order:
I avoid everything else as much as possible. Ritek's have gone to total crap as of late.
With the RIAA suits, people are sued after someone allows pirated music to be downloaded from their computer.
With the DirecTV lawsuits, people are sued for merely possessing equipment that can be used for pirating DirecTV. Regardless of the spin DirecTV's lawyers like to put on it, the equipment people are being sued for truly has multiple purposes, some of which are legit. Rather than DirecTV being forced to prove you used it for piracy purposes, they drag you into court and you have to prove you didn't use it for piracy purposes.
The RIAA equivalent would be them sueing people who purchased DVD or CD burners stating the reason their lawsuit targets used them for piracy purposes. But with CD/DVD burners people, in general, understand them and know they have multiple purposes, many of which are legit. Judges/juries, in general, do not understand smartcard technology and DirecTV brings in dozens of "paid expert witnesses" who testify that the stuff is only good for pirating DirecTV. Sure, you can bring in your own expert witnesses who could show how full of crap DirecTV is, but it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars, at a minimum to get to that point. No wonder that people, even the few innocent ones (e.g., they bought it but never ended up using it for piracy purposes for whatever reason [e.g., changed their mind, too hard to figure out how to use, etc.]), settle for $5K instead of fighting it; it's a matter of simple economics.
Are most people who get sued by the RIAA guilty? I'd definitely say "Yes".
Are most people who get sued by DirecTV guilty? Again, I'd definitely say "Yes".
Have most people who have purchased DVD or CD burners used them to pirate a DVD-Video or a CD? I'd unquestionably say "Yes". So would it be fair for the MPAA or RIAA to just "carpet bomb" or "blanket sue" everyone who has purchased a CD or DVD burner because, in their opinion, 50, 60, or 90% of people who own them have used them at some point in the past to pirate music or a movie???
However, in the first case (RIAA), their is direct evidence you did it; they can download a song from you and verify it is actually copyrighted -- they actually "observe" you committing the illegal act. In the second case (DirecTV), there is normally no direct evidence you did it. And that's what makes what DirecTV does, de facto, illegal, but in civil court, the person with the biggest pockets always wins. And until DirecTV sues someone with big pockets, they'll continue to illegally sue people and there's not much anyone can do about it.
So what would I do? If I was going to buy a smartcard reader or a CD/DVD burner in 2004, I'd go down to the local store and pay cash for it. I wouldn't use anything like a credit card or my real name when I bought it. If I couldn't buy it local, I'd go to a WiFi hot-spot, sign up with a Hotmail account, use a fake name and have the stuff sent to a rented PO Box (signed up for using a fake name) and pay for the stuff with cash or a money order.
And if you are wondering why I'd do the above with a CD/DVD burner. It's because people, in general, aren't going ballistic at the methods DirecTV is using. People, in general, just sit their with their thumbs up their ass when they hear about this, shake their head at the bad satellite TV pirate, while they listen/watch to their pirate music/movie that's playing that they burned with their CD/DVD burner.
"GnuPG, PGP, and the like are only useful for communication between nerds. Mere mortals have no idea what public key encryption is, never mind how to use it. Nor do they want to bother."
So let the nerds have relatively secure communications and let the mere mortals get listened on and their communications ran thru Echelon/Carnivore. Once the mortals get busted, they'll want to bother -- only then it will be too late.
>>Businesses like BestBuy take returns in the first place as a courtesy
>>to customers, because it's something people expect from large stores.
>
>Well, close. It's because of competition.
Which is exactly why I avoid places like CompUSA and their stupid restocking fee return policy. I'll gladly pay extra elsewhere (e.g., Fry's, Circuit City) than put up with a 15% restocking fee because the item purchased is incompatible, poor quality or doesn't work well.
" I was actually assaulted at a Best Buy for refusing to purchase a PSP (pushed)..."
You should have given the guy one of these.
About three weeks ago, I went into Best Buy and bought four 50-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-R blanks ON SALE for $172.36 out the door, which was a very good price (non-sale price would have been $301.66).
I noticed a couple days ago that they had an even better deal: 25-packs of 4X Verbatim DVD-Rs for $14.99 each. So I took back the 3 unopened packs I bought three weeks ago and got a refund of $129.27. I then went and bought EIGHT 25-packs for $129.21 for a net gain of 50 more DVD-R blanks and $0.06. And you bet if I wouldn't have opened the first 50-pack I would have taken that back too. 30-day refund policy is certainly helpful here.
So I ask: Am I a "demon customer" or just "smart"?
This is what Apple should have put in their G5 PowerMac's instead of a "crippled" PowerPC.
"Just like money in bank accounts, it isn't physical. I can transfer it around between my accounts or to others directly or via credit cards, etc.
When I am low on cash... I like to ask around until I find someone with money and then I hunt around for copies of their bank account statements. Then I steal their identity so I can drain the cash out of their back accounts.
Yeah, yeah, I know it is not right, but that is the way it is, and these guys should embrace it instead of fighting it."
If I didn't know better, I'd maybe think you were a frustrated, uptight, crabby, and vexed software developer who likes to blame his low sales on everything but his software being crappy. But this is Slashdot, where everyone runs "free software", so I must be mistaken.
HAND. Ciao.
Sun Blade 2500??
It would look good next to a free Sun Fire E25K server.
"Most ISP's SMTP servers work regardless of what you put in the From: line..."
Not in my experience. Most of the ISP's mailservers I have dealt with, both incoming and outgoing, are unreliable and slow.
"...meaning you gain nothing by running your own server..."
By running my own mailserver (my UUNet ADSL explicitly permits them), I gain a mailserver that works all the time instead of some of the time. And one that will email any size attachment, I have logs that verify the email got to the destination addresses' MX, and a mailserver that sends mail much faster than my ISPs would, when my ISP's one does work.
"Does the Fifth Amendment apply in civil cases?"
IANAL, but the Fifth Ammendment can be pled in a civil case, if there is a risk of that testimony being used to file criminal charges against you. You can't just plead the 5th because your testimony will be giving them evidence for them to win their civil case. There must be something in your testimony that could incriminate you criminally.
However, in the civil case, that pleading of the Fifth Ammendment can result in a negative inference against you in a civil case(i.e., why would you plead the 5th unless you were guilty?") that isn't there in a criminal trial. IN other words, pleading the 5th in a civil case is not without repercussions.
Bottom line is that pleading the 5th in a civil case is a risky proposition that may cause you to lose your civil case but may help protect you against future crimimal charges.
There are "better ways" than pleading the 5th. Use your imagination.
>"I'm a bit suprised that the KCEasy authors have complied with the cease-and-desist this easily"
Why? Big money eats up little money all the time. Sharman Networks could file a lawsuit that would cost thousands of dollars to defend, even if the suit had no merit. It was probably far cheaper to just comply than risk legal action.
>"since the above statement is not really true."
It doesn't matter. If you do anything to tick off big money, they can file a civil lawsuit against you. A few thousand dollars later, you may or may not win. You gotta ask yourself: Is it worth it? This is nothing new.
All laws should be enforced, but not every law needs the full attention of the federal government!
With AlQueda, the War in Iraq, drugs, what a stupid waste of law enforcement effort going after stupid crap like this and that.
The only reason this is getting any attention at all is places like the RIAA, MPAA, DirecTV, and other big businesses tossing mountains of money in the appropriate Senator and Representative's direction.
If Intel would just price the Itaniums in the same ballpark as the AMD-64s, they wouldn't need to do this crap. If they want Itanium to have widespread acceptance, do what they did with x86 to ensure widespread acceptance -- make it CHEAP!!!
"However bandwidth is a scarce commodity"
That is the biggest myth being propogated by the bandwidth barons. Bandwidth is stinking cheap and getting cheaper with each passing day.
What the powers that be want to do is keep increasing their profit percentage even though their volume of sales keeps going up. Corporate greed at its finest.
That T1 you may pay several hundreds a month for costs the phone companies a couple bucks a month for just the bandwidth. Don't believe the NSPs bullshit and all the ISPs' shills out posting here!
Why don't they use IBM's Power5 CPU instead of the G5?
"Actually, when I had @Home for a couple of years they provided 4 Mbits/sec, and more to the point, it was a symmetric four megabits."
Same here when I got Comcast@HOME back in 1998. 4Mb/s uploads truly rocked, and for a year or so their AUP didn't outlaw servers, so I was living in "hog heaven" so to speak.
People abused it and we got kicked down to 3000/128 and then to 2000/256. Reports are it has been kicked up today to 3000/256, but that still ain't 4Mb/s up and down.
"What the article fails to mention is that is the very speed rate @Home offered before going into bankruptcy. "
That was years ago. Bandwidth has gotten a hell of a lot cheaper, dirt cheap. In fact, pumping photons around the Internet has never been cheaper. Pesos on the dollar to what it used to be.
DSL is kicking cable's butt, and this is what cable had to do to be competitive. No big surprise here.
Seems pretty simple to me.
It's not illegal to destroy personal email/notes/etc. before you get subpoenaed.
The Feds made a mistake by letting people know it was going down.
Even better than that, don't destroy the documents, just place them somewhere secret.