I made it clear that the access to mail servers is zip. Port 80 is all they have.
I also mentioned the bandwidth issue. I monitor system usage and will choke - or kill - all access when the free riders approach 50% saturation.
I have a wifi access point that is available to a few folks in a small town near a big city. The access is limited (by range) and aside from somebody putting a clandestine antenna and cable on my building - I should be able to actually SEE the person who accesses my wifi site.
You are missing the point: I am not just another "share" person... I want the advantage that open access provides me against the RIAA and their ilk. They cannot point to my net's IP and say that I am responsible for all traffic from that address. I clearly am not.
Obtaining a search warrant for a law firm's computers is not a trivial process and attempting to use a civil subpoena to "audit" a law firm is just not going to fly with any judge around due to the fact that an audit would involve breach of attorney-client confidences stored on those systems.
I've been litigating Title 18 for a decade now (ECPA & the tampering with computers fraud and abuse act) and I believe that the positives of having an open wifi point outweigh the negatives.
This lawyer runs a WIFI hotspot for his office. All boxes have decent firewalls and the CPUs are all off-line after hours (e.g. whenever we are not working late).
I don't care about free riders. I want a few. Let the RIAA claim I have downloaded anything. . . I haven't and neither have my staff. BUT I would love the accusation.
The client data and the electronic filings are all all encrypted (PGP on office systems or SSL in submission to the federal courts where most become a public record) and so is all email.
Other than that Canadian idiot who was found with his pants off and kiddie crap on his laptop, I have no worries.
I also have an office in a small town near a big city in the midwest. I know my town's mayor, elected officers and police. I also have my fly rods, shotguns and a single handgun in the 114 year old building.
The first idiot that runs into the building nekked with kiddie pr0n on his laptop can elect the 9mm or the Parker exit. There will be no alternative. The time frame will be a few milliseconds (police are a two clicks away, fire station 50 M).
Either way, he is history (strange that there are no women who act this dumb). I doubt that the inquest would go beyond the coroner. He needed killing.
If we were lucky enough to wack a "sting", so much the better! There is no defense to downloading kiddie pr0n and killing that sick f**k too quickly may be the only liability.
The endodontist in town has the same view, though he favors frangible.40 cal in is Sig Sauer over 9mm.
Meanwhile, let the RIAA accuse me of downloading anything. I'd love it! I'd sue them up, down and each attorney individually and I'd prefer ethics charges as well. I can only hope that we draw one or the other to our little trap. Meanwhile, any student or local who needs a quick link to the Internet can enjoy our on-ramp.
I see nothing (aside from the pr0n free riders) negative about an open wifi access point.
FOIA simply does not apply to this argument. FOIA is at root, nothing more than a law that permits a demand be made that the US Federal Government provide certain classes of information to the people whose taxes paid to amass that information.
Many types of personal information collected by the Federal Govt. are not available under the FOIA, i.e.: income tax returns, data and arguments presented to a grand jury where no indictment is returned, medical records of government employees, service records of retired / discharged military, voting records of citizens (e.g. the specific vote cast), and so on.
Privacy, or the right to be left alone, is the single most important right of a citizen. It is not a construct of the modern world. Try looking up "Writ of Assistance" in Great Britain. It was illegal in Britain 300 years ago and it was the doctrinal basis for the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the US Constitution.
Privacy is a right. It has never been up for grabs till GWB / Ashcroft & a very foolish legislative branch allowed the issue to come into contention. We did not respond to the bombing of Pearl Harbor (an act that killed far more than 9/11) with this kind of inchoate fear and foolish legislation.
In 1971 Pete Townsend came up with these lyrics (copyright the The Who, Pete Townsend and their assignees) and they are right on point with the state of the state East & West.
Who, The Who's Next (1971) Won't Get Fooled Again
We'll be fighting in the streets With our children at our feet And the morals that they worship will be gone And the men who spurred us on Sit in judgement of all wrong They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again
The change, it had to come We knew it all along We were liberated from the fold, that's all And the world looks just the same And history ain't changed 'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside If we happen to be left half alive I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky Though I know that the hypnotized never lie Do ya?
There's nothing in the streets Looks any different to me And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye And the parting on the left Are now parting on the right And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again No, no!
Loss of reference links is worse than having no data.
In law a citation may be relied upon for a judicial ruling. If the citation is valid at the time of the original ruling, but no longer in existance when the case is reviewed on appeal (typically 2-5 years later) then the question of the validity of the precedent cited becomes the issue rather than the authority of the citation. The whole legal construct is built upon stare decisis and if what goes before vanishes into cyber-haze then the usefulness of web citations is nil.
Of course, Westlaw (tm) and Lexis/Nexis (tm) will have redirectors for their pages - but the cost of those services is very, very high. Infrastructure is costly even when the content is copyright free.
I don't much care what the current buzzwords are. If we don't cut to the heart of the beast and show that the entire business is nothing but gross invasion of privacy EVERY TIME a new hack / bug / feature is created we will eventually accept these invasions as the standard.
If a law required you to take a spoon full of cod liver oil before each and every DVD purchase (and one for each DVD), sooner or later we would either revolt or be up to our ears in S**T.
I don't like the private sector engaging in this market and I certainly want the public sector carefully reviewed by the judicial branch for every use - wiretap / spyware whatever.
If we don't fight now, we won't be able to fight later. As it is the technology fairly well precludes anonymous surfing (my IP address can, under many circumstances, be traced to the ethernet card in any computer I'm using) and where my ethernet card is built in (laptops) I can't hide that hardware address.
The Pentium may have had the serial number shut off - but it and other CPUs have hardware serials. As the operating systems and applications become much more complex and create layer upon layer of hardware and code, the ease of exploiting the complexity of these machines will increase as well.
Anything connected becomes a spy device. Orwell didn't miss it by many years.
The quick way out (assuming that nobody has used the credit card - use would serve as "ratification" of the contract for the card) is to demand a copy of the signed credit aplication from the card issuer. If the application for the card had a signature that was not that of the woman reported here then all this arises from a forged signature on an application for credit.
The forgery might well require the testimony of a questioned documents examiner, but the forger is liable for damages.
The legal matter is fairly easy to understand: the woman decided not to accept or agree to the terms of the contract and no contract was made. Thereafther the actor or actors who made use of the incomplete contract started violating the law.
We don't know where this happened, but California has a state constitution that includes a right to privacy. If the jurisdiction where this happened has a similar statutory right (there are unfair trade practice statutes as well as identity theft statutes) there may me other forms of relief available.
1. Copyright of all material on the site remains with the author. 2. No Electronic Theft Act and DMCA both could apply. 3. Attack "boilerplate" contract terms as non-bargained for contracts of adheasion. 4. Quantum Meruit (for what it's worth); a method of retaining your work product. 5. Promissory Estoppel: We HOST YOUR DOMAIN does not mean we host our domain that YOU BUILT.
Three of these actions can be brought in courts of limited jurisdiction (NOT SMALL CLAIMS), and they can be very quickly decided - but you will have limited the value you assign to the domain by selecting the limited jurisdiction court.
Spam is a non-violent a crime that has no effect on a huge portion of the population (people who are too young to be on-line, those who have no interest and those who can't afford to be on-line).
Jails cost a fortune. I have no desire to see one penny of my tax dollars spent jailing a spammer.
The libertarian view is that we should wack the stupid consumer.... that fraction of a percent that actually buys something from spam.
There is no way you can change a stupid fool into a less stupid fool. Legislation, education and simply calling them names won't make Bob a brighter boy.
There is a way to stop clever spammers: wack them with civil lawsuits. While we are at it, we ought to take ANY business that uses SPAM (yes, there are a number of legit businesses that pay for their spam) and wack them, too. I'd say 1000% sales tax on SPAM profits would be a nice start.
This is clearly the proper case for civil causes of action that simply destroys the finances of spammers. Take 200x what they make from spam and make it stick. Deny them bankruptcy relief and put them out on the streets. Take their children away as they are clearly unfit to raise civil citizens.
Refuse to give them any social benefits - just toast them. If we grind up a dozen or so we will get the message across. Most of these people are US citizens and are easily within the reach of US civil jurisdiction.
Just look at what major civil judgments did to the KKK - thanks to Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Finally, as the election season starts again, remember that the political SPAM is protected 1st Amendment speech...so don't vote for the SPAM candidate - whoever goes SPAM first should be buried in old AOL floppies! But beware the political dirty tricks...we will see SPAM that comes from the opposing side masquerading as the candidate's ad --
There is no effective deffense. Any technology (short of smoke signals) will be beaten.
What have we done in the US with the "no call list" but to have made the US government the distributor (free of charge) of a totally "clean" DB of all names and numbers of citizens who are perfect targets of telephone solicitations.
The very idea that the FTC will step in and act where the FCC won't (in the face of two STATUTES struck down by fed ct judges) is absurd.
We just gave the industry a nice clean list.
There are two ways to avoid this problem: eliminate all technology (defaulting to bearskin rugs and stone knives); or, ELIMINATE the PROBLEM.
I favor the second option. SUE THE BASTARDS over and over and over and over. Maybe we could tell the "Right-to-lifer's" that they are good target practice?
The world is nuts: email is way over 50% garbage and the ramp-up has been only a year or so in the making. Hurt these fools now.
I don't advise harming anybody, physically, but the effect of posting these bastards pictures in every grocery store and coffee shop could expose them to a "public shunning" unlike anything since the Puritans.
We could also pass a law barring all medical care for spammers, their family and friends. How about no police response to their calls? No power to their homes? No telco connections? No wood in the winter? How about not taking their checks or cash? Revoking their driving rights? Barring them from holding office or making political donations?
What about we simply deny them the right to BUY food? If they're out hunting for food they can't spam....
In a generation we could select for no spammers.....
Reference librarians are one of the finest research resources available in the US.
My degrees are in hard science (chemistry, physiology) and law and I could never have completed my undergrad or grad degrees without the assistance of these professionals.
When I'm faced with difficult legal issues I'll ask the reference librarian BEFORE I start to avoid wasting time. I know that I talk wth librarians more than just about any other professional and they are invaluable.
As I said in the subject line: librarians are the original database managers. Dewey is dead and the OCLC / Library of Congress rule - but it takes a professional only a few minutes to narrow my searches where I might well have spent hours getting to the same place.
Quick: find me authority for the legal proposition that an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the material stored on a computer used in the workplace - and, while you're at it find me authority for the rights to the data where the original computer used in the workplace was purchased by the employee but the data from the first machine has been transferred through three upgrades to the employer-owned computer. Let's add a dollop of employer policy that they recognize certain rights in the employee's work - and add that the employee is a public-sector employee with tenure.
And also imposes delays of years for potentially life-saving drugs. There are always tradeoffs.
One drug: Thalidomide.
The FDA did not approve its use in the US. Our testing regimen saved tens of thousands of children from that teratogen.
FWIW, Coke cans aren't that much of a problem - you can't go anywhere without seeing them as a part of the litter . ..
What is a problem is the constant dumbing-down of everything and when you take a 40 min program and shove "product placement" into it - well, sooner rather than later you have no program and all placement.
Full of it? I have a 22 year old son who was a Reagan administration victim: He-Man
He-Man was NOTHING but a showcase for the product.
I can't wait for the first 100% FDS/TAMPAX/PAMPRIN (all TM's held by their respective owners) TV Show.
It would still be better than "The Man Show"; if the Government was doing its job that show would have lasted about 10 seconds. Talk about offensive as well as aggressively stupid! I can't think of an innocent person involved - EVERYBODY who aproved or took part in that show should be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
Au contraire. I said NOTHING about the government being good for everything. You have engaged in the age-old logical flaw of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965) Says that the Government may have a right to protect the lives of future citizens of Connecticut, but that our right to privacy trumps the Government's right to stop us from using contraceptives.
Generally speaking, the government has a pretty poor record when it comes to consensual sex laws - but the public health folks have done a good job of keeping most STD's in check.
Your big mistake is assuming that you could accuse me of something I didn't say.
Yeah, the govment is just a mess and we don't want the govment messing wit our bizness.
I am very happy that the Government has:
Passed a pure food and drug act so I don't have to eat food that has been treated / raised/ slaughtered in an unhealthy manner.
Set standards for roads and cars and aircraft.
Agreed upon standards for the use of the RF spectrum.
Review and approve medicines.
but. . . we don't need no stinking govment
Quite frankly, I'm tired of the marketers and I'm certain that the writers, producers, directors, and actors are getting pretty fed up with "product placement".
As I write this on a 12" powerbook, I note for the record that I see way too many Apple's on Fox's "24"
I'd like an abacus or almost anything else that advances the story rather than catches the eye.
I'm a lawyer. I represented a number of IT individuals in a case against their employer (a very big bank) for age discrimination.
Several headhunters had recruited my clients. The bank wanted people who could deal with "black box" COBOL 77 applications - in other words the bank had acquired a number of smaller banks with legacy COBOL systems in place.
The bank had a year to bring their acquisitions on-line with Fed reporting services. They told the headhunters that the people they were recruiting were to become VP's or higher (because programmers who know COBOL 77 are already senior programmers or senior system's analysts and not ready to leave the banks they were working with - especially if they found out that the bank only needed them for a single project!).
The year passed, the folks recruited away from their old jobs (some with 20+ years at their former employer) were never given an evaluation, never given a VP position and were, as a group, fired with a nice release that paid them an extra 2 weeks pay if they promised not to sue.
The top headhunter in the group that recruited 20+ IT professionals was there with an affidavit on the federal complaint and went on to testify that his firm had been mislead by the bank.
This firm, and the top guy, walked the walk and told the truth in deposition and would have testified on the stand but for the (substantial) settlement on the Saturday before trial.
His own words, "If my reputation is lost I will never be able to work this town again." I can't say more, but that the city was the greater Kansas City (MO/KS) area and a national association bank was the defendant.
His firm never had business from the NA bank. But I have great respect for his willingness to put his company on the line for one ugly job.
Short answer: new method of using physical properties of electrons to reduce the travel time lag imposed by c and faster data state identification with less power could result.
Actually, it isn't that difficult. Our present systems use electrons (maximum speed is "c", or 186k/mi/sec) to carry or set data states (0,1). The electron has a few other properties that could be explored as a mechanism for data storage. This piece suggests that the "spin" state of an electron could become a viable mechanism (the system could work in less than super cold environments) for creating, reading and writing data states.
This isn't "barratry", the term means that the litigant's offense is one of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones. Thus far this matter arises from a single issue and it remains to be seen if it is groundless.
Barratry is the guy who sues: the dry cleaner for failing to remove the spot from his suit, sues the restaurant for making staining soup, sues the judge for throwing out the case(s), sues attorney(s) who won't represent him, sues the neighbor for their dog looking at his house too often, sues the newspaper reporter and the newspaper for their failure to report his cases properly and then sues every person who writes a letter to the editor critical of his lawsuits. (Every one of these cases has been brought - many, many times throughout the US.)
SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits fall into the same category where the litigant is a corporation or organization of one sort or another. SLAPP suits are, per se, abusive and many states have made them illegal.
I agree. The analogy was intended for a non-legally trained audience regarding a very widespread application of the IP law remedies available at the time.
I still have my paperweight(s) - both KODAK and Polaroid vintage. Damn shame about the Land failure...
If the end-user suits are filed then SCO has taken the fairly obscure legal issue of marginal infringement (never marginal with the expansions in copyright, No Electronic Theft, and the Sonny Bono Acts - innocent infringers simply do not exist) and found a way to snatch total defeat from a nuisance settlement.
When Polaroid (The Land Corporation) sued Kodak for instant camera/photo patent infringement and enjoined Kodak from further production of the infringing products - Land never targeted the jobbers, distributors, end-unit-sales operators or individual owners of the infringing product. They were aware that they would poison the market for their products and create a vast public backlash from such tactics.
(Yes, the analogy is flawed: the laws were different then - but the option to sue a larger group and Land's decision not to do so was a valid option that they eschewed.)
SCO is far from their progenitor the Santa Cruz Operation and their UNIX for the PC OS.
I'm not certain what SCO brings to the market today, save chaos.
Has Ken Starr signed on as chief counsel? What good result can SCO possibly expect from this tactic?
SCO cannot survive this vast expansion of their litigation without a huge (vast, impossible to predict) infusion of cash to fund the litigation. Even with unlimited funds the secondary costs will eat them alive.
Public backlash over time and costs are two things that SCO clearly has not considered properly in this litigation. So long SCO - you won't be missed any more than a broken abacus.
I know of one instance in which a firm brought several actions in the US District Ct. for the WD MO and when they had the computer assign a judge they liked to one of the cases they moved to consolidate all of the prior actions with the favored judge (you don't have a change of judge as of right under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure).
Bringing 9000 cases isn't new - we call them class actions or complex multi-party litigation. If they have brought the actions in the court where the company is domiciled (as opposed to each jurisdiction where the tort occurred) then there is nothing improper (or unusual) procedurally.
Consider the cost of 9000 new case filings at $150.00 each as opposed to the cost of filing 1 case with 9000 defendants at $150.00.
Costs are a major factor where you have 9000 cases all across the US. A major cost is retaining local counsel and arranging to have your lead counsel admitted pro hac in every jurisdiction. I'd estimate that cost at $10,000.00 to $20,000.00 per jurisdiction as a starting point.
I'd guess that an action could be brought under 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201 et seq., a/k/a the DMCA for violation of the reverse engineering component of the statute. The same issue is presently in litigation in the U.S. District Ct. for the ED Kentucky in Lexmark v. Static Control, Case NO. 02-571-KSF.
The issue in the Lexmark case is the chip in replacement ink cartridges manufactured without a license by Static Control. Of course, Lexmark has been prudent enough to sue the manufacturer rather than the end users...but the issues are different where each user may have unauthorized access to pay-per-view IP.
The history of cable television theft and the mechanisms that the providers have gone to to identify and (usually settle) with pirates is rich, indeed. Manhattan's cablevision detected a variation of their code in the code in firmware in pirate decoders. They arranged to kill service to non-conforming decoders during some big event and the idiots who were infringing called up the company to complain - where they were met with very understanding people at a phone bank who recorded them, their calling number, and obtained from the callers their name, address, phone number and a description of the "problem". Needless to say, almost all of the pirates settled after their little faux pas of complaining that their stolen service stopped working!
If the smart card service has a similar variation, I suspect that the cases will stand.
Finally, Barratry is the fine art of ambulance chasing, i.e. attempting to influence people who are not a party to litigation to sue and hire you. Aside from the TV and print ads about the rights of the injured in general and how the firm won't take money until you recover . ..the prohibited practice is contacting a victim or potential litigant where you have no prior business contact and soliciting them to hire you for legal representation.
Slashdot Mirror
I made it clear that the access to mail servers is zip. Port 80 is all they have.
I also mentioned the bandwidth issue. I monitor system usage and will choke - or kill - all access when the free riders approach 50% saturation.
I have a wifi access point that is available to a few folks in a small town near a big city. The access is limited (by range) and aside from somebody putting a clandestine antenna and cable on my building - I should be able to actually SEE the person who accesses my wifi site.
You are missing the point: I am not just another "share" person... I want the advantage that open access provides me against the RIAA and their ilk. They cannot point to my net's IP and say that I am responsible for all traffic from that address. I clearly am not.
Obtaining a search warrant for a law firm's computers is not a trivial process and attempting to use a civil subpoena to "audit" a law firm is just not going to fly with any judge around due to the fact that an audit would involve breach of attorney-client confidences stored on those systems.
I've been litigating Title 18 for a decade now (ECPA & the tampering with computers fraud and abuse act) and I believe that the positives of having an open wifi point outweigh the negatives.
This lawyer runs a WIFI hotspot for his office. All boxes have decent firewalls and the CPUs are all off-line after hours (e.g. whenever we are not working late).
.40 cal in is Sig Sauer over 9mm.
I don't care about free riders. I want a few. Let the RIAA claim I have downloaded anything. . . I haven't and neither have my staff. BUT I would love the accusation.
The client data and the electronic filings are all all encrypted (PGP on office systems or SSL in submission to the federal courts where most become a public record) and so is all email.
Other than that Canadian idiot who was found with his pants off and kiddie crap on his laptop, I have no worries.
I also have an office in a small town near a big city in the midwest. I know my town's mayor, elected officers and police. I also have my fly rods, shotguns and a single handgun in the 114 year old building.
The first idiot that runs into the building nekked with kiddie pr0n on his laptop can elect the 9mm or the Parker exit. There will be no alternative. The time frame will be a few milliseconds (police are a two clicks away, fire station 50 M).
Either way, he is history (strange that there are no women who act this dumb). I doubt that the inquest would go beyond the coroner. He needed killing.
If we were lucky enough to wack a "sting", so much the better! There is no defense to downloading kiddie pr0n and killing that sick f**k too quickly may be the only liability.
The endodontist in town has the same view, though he favors frangible
Meanwhile, let the RIAA accuse me of downloading anything. I'd love it! I'd sue them up, down and each attorney individually and I'd prefer ethics charges as well. I can only hope that we draw one or the other to our little trap. Meanwhile, any student or local who needs a quick link to the Internet can enjoy our on-ramp.
I see nothing (aside from the pr0n free riders) negative about an open wifi access point.
FOIA simply does not apply to this argument. FOIA is at root, nothing more than a law that permits a demand be made that the US Federal Government provide certain classes of information to the people whose taxes paid to amass that information.
Many types of personal information collected by the Federal Govt. are not available under the FOIA, i.e.: income tax returns, data and arguments presented to a grand jury where no indictment is returned, medical records of government employees, service records of retired / discharged military, voting records of citizens (e.g. the specific vote cast), and so on.
Privacy, or the right to be left alone, is the single most important right of a citizen. It is not a construct of the modern world. Try looking up "Writ of Assistance" in Great Britain. It was illegal in Britain 300 years ago and it was the doctrinal basis for the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the US Constitution.
Privacy is a right. It has never been up for grabs till GWB / Ashcroft & a very foolish legislative branch allowed the issue to come into contention. We did not respond to the bombing of Pearl Harbor (an act that killed far more than 9/11) with this kind of inchoate fear and foolish legislation.
In 1971 Pete Townsend came up with these lyrics (copyright the The Who, Pete Townsend and their assignees) and they are right on point with the state of the state East & West.
Who, The
Who's Next (1971)
Won't Get Fooled Again
We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Loss of reference links is worse than having no data.
In law a citation may be relied upon for a judicial ruling. If the citation is valid at the time of the original ruling, but no longer in existance when the case is reviewed on appeal (typically 2-5 years later) then the question of the validity of the precedent cited becomes the issue rather than the authority of the citation. The whole legal construct is built upon stare decisis and if what goes before vanishes into cyber-haze then the usefulness of web citations is nil.
Of course, Westlaw (tm) and Lexis/Nexis (tm) will have redirectors for their pages - but the cost of those services is very, very high. Infrastructure is costly even when the content is copyright free.
As for the "flamebait" issues, consider:
http://www.byu.edu/about/factfile/mission.html
Not if my computer is in the hands of the police. . .
The point is that hardware-specific identifiers are a very dangerous physical method of proving a specific machine was involved.
Nah,
You didn't have your Mormon-tithe cookie set. You have to pay to play at the BYU website.
_grin_
I don't much care what the current buzzwords are. If we don't cut to the heart of the beast and show that the entire business is nothing but gross invasion of privacy EVERY TIME a new hack / bug / feature is created we will eventually accept these invasions as the standard.
If a law required you to take a spoon full of cod liver oil before each and every DVD purchase (and one for each DVD), sooner or later we would either revolt or be up to our ears in S**T.
I don't like the private sector engaging in this market and I certainly want the public sector carefully reviewed by the judicial branch for every use - wiretap / spyware whatever.
If we don't fight now, we won't be able to fight later. As it is the technology fairly well precludes anonymous surfing (my IP address can, under many circumstances, be traced to the ethernet card in any computer I'm using) and where my ethernet card is built in (laptops) I can't hide that hardware address.
The Pentium may have had the serial number shut off - but it and other CPUs have hardware serials. As the operating systems and applications become much more complex and create layer upon layer of hardware and code, the ease of exploiting the complexity of these machines will increase as well.
Anything connected becomes a spy device. Orwell didn't miss it by many years.
The quick way out (assuming that nobody has used the credit card - use would serve as "ratification" of the contract for the card) is to demand a copy of the signed credit aplication from the card issuer. If the application for the card had a signature that was not that of the woman reported here then all this arises from a forged signature on an application for credit.
The forgery might well require the testimony of a questioned documents examiner, but the forger is liable for damages.
The legal matter is fairly easy to understand: the woman decided not to accept or agree to the terms of the contract and no contract was made. Thereafther the actor or actors who made use of the incomplete contract started violating the law.
We don't know where this happened, but California has a state constitution that includes a right to privacy. If the jurisdiction where this happened has a similar statutory right (there are unfair trade practice statutes as well as identity theft statutes) there may me other forms of relief available.
1. Copyright of all material on the site remains with the author.
2. No Electronic Theft Act and DMCA both could apply.
3. Attack "boilerplate" contract terms as non-bargained for contracts of adheasion.
4. Quantum Meruit (for what it's worth); a method of retaining your work product.
5. Promissory Estoppel: We HOST YOUR DOMAIN does not mean we host our domain that YOU BUILT.
Three of these actions can be brought in courts of limited jurisdiction (NOT SMALL CLAIMS), and they can be very quickly decided - but you will have limited the value you assign to the domain by selecting the limited jurisdiction court.
Spam is a non-violent a crime that has no effect on a huge portion of the population (people who are too young to be on-line, those who have no interest and those who can't afford to be on-line).
Jails cost a fortune. I have no desire to see one penny of my tax dollars spent jailing a spammer.
The libertarian view is that we should wack the stupid consumer.... that fraction of a percent that actually buys something from spam.
There is no way you can change a stupid fool into a less stupid fool. Legislation, education and simply calling them names won't make Bob a brighter boy.
There is a way to stop clever spammers: wack them with civil lawsuits. While we are at it, we ought to take ANY business that uses SPAM (yes, there are a number of legit businesses that pay for their spam) and wack them, too. I'd say 1000% sales tax on SPAM profits would be a nice start.
This is clearly the proper case for civil causes of action that simply destroys the finances of spammers. Take 200x what they make from spam and make it stick. Deny them bankruptcy relief and put them out on the streets. Take their children away as they are clearly unfit to raise civil citizens.
Refuse to give them any social benefits - just toast them. If we grind up a dozen or so we will get the message across. Most of these people are US citizens and are easily within the reach of US civil jurisdiction.
Just look at what major civil judgments did to the KKK - thanks to Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Finally, as the election season starts again, remember that the political SPAM is protected 1st Amendment speech...so don't vote for the SPAM candidate - whoever goes SPAM first should be buried in old AOL floppies! But beware the political dirty tricks...we will see SPAM that comes from the opposing side masquerading as the candidate's ad --
This may be the 1st US presidential SPAM season.
There is no effective deffense. Any technology (short of smoke signals) will be beaten.
What have we done in the US with the "no call list" but to have made the US government the distributor (free of charge) of a totally "clean" DB of all names and numbers of citizens who are perfect targets of telephone solicitations.
The very idea that the FTC will step in and act where the FCC won't (in the face of two STATUTES struck down by fed ct judges) is absurd.
We just gave the industry a nice clean list.
There are two ways to avoid this problem: eliminate all technology (defaulting to bearskin rugs and stone knives); or, ELIMINATE the PROBLEM.
I favor the second option. SUE THE BASTARDS over and over and over and over. Maybe we could tell the "Right-to-lifer's" that they are good target practice?
The world is nuts: email is way over 50% garbage and the ramp-up has been only a year or so in the making. Hurt these fools now.
I don't advise harming anybody, physically, but the effect of posting these bastards pictures in every grocery store and coffee shop could expose them to a "public shunning" unlike anything since the Puritans.
We could also pass a law barring all medical care for spammers, their family and friends. How about no police response to their calls? No power to their homes? No telco connections? No wood in the winter? How about not taking their checks or cash? Revoking their driving rights? Barring them from holding office or making political donations?
What about we simply deny them the right to BUY food? If they're out hunting for food they can't spam....
In a generation we could select for no spammers.....
Not a civil case...nor a civil answer.
The last circuit I'd find any reasonable expectation of privacy in is the 5th.
http://www.google.de/search?num=20&hl=en&ie=UTF-8& oe=UTF-8&q=expectation.of.privacy+employee+compute r+data+purchase+workplace+public-sector&btnG=Googl e+Search
1. returns no results.
2. does not limit the search to United States
Reference librarians are one of the finest research resources available in the US.
My degrees are in hard science (chemistry, physiology) and law and I could never have completed my undergrad or grad degrees without the assistance of these professionals.
When I'm faced with difficult legal issues I'll ask the reference librarian BEFORE I start to avoid wasting time. I know that I talk wth librarians more than just about any other professional and they are invaluable.
As I said in the subject line: librarians are the original database managers. Dewey is dead and the OCLC / Library of Congress rule - but it takes a professional only a few minutes to narrow my searches where I might well have spent hours getting to the same place.
Quick: find me authority for the legal proposition that an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the material stored on a computer used in the workplace - and, while you're at it find me authority for the rights to the data where the original computer used in the workplace was purchased by the employee but the data from the first machine has been transferred through three upgrades to the employer-owned computer. Let's add a dollop of employer policy that they recognize certain rights in the employee's work - and add that the employee is a public-sector employee with tenure.
Find that --- good luck on the web.
And also imposes delays of years for potentially life-saving drugs. There are always tradeoffs.
.
One drug: Thalidomide.
The FDA did not approve its use in the US. Our testing regimen saved tens of thousands of children from that teratogen.
FWIW, Coke cans aren't that much of a problem - you can't go anywhere without seeing them as a part of the litter . .
What is a problem is the constant dumbing-down of everything and when you take a 40 min program and shove "product placement" into it - well, sooner rather than later you have no program and all placement.
Full of it? I have a 22 year old son who was a Reagan administration victim: He-Man
He-Man was NOTHING but a showcase for the product.
I can't wait for the first 100% FDS/TAMPAX/PAMPRIN (all TM's held by their respective owners) TV Show.
It would still be better than "The Man Show"; if the Government was doing its job that show would have lasted about 10 seconds. Talk about offensive as well as aggressively stupid! I can't think of an innocent person involved - EVERYBODY who aproved or took part in that show should be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
AND, all they were selling was stupid sex
Au contraire. I said NOTHING about the government being good for everything. You have engaged in the age-old logical flaw of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965) Says that the Government may have a right to protect the lives of future citizens of Connecticut, but that our right to privacy trumps the Government's right to stop us from using contraceptives.
Generally speaking, the government has a pretty poor record when it comes to consensual sex laws - but the public health folks have done a good job of keeping most STD's in check.
Your big mistake is assuming that you could accuse me of something I didn't say.
RTFC Anonymous Coward!
Yeah, the govment is just a mess and we don't want the govment messing wit our bizness.
I am very happy that the Government has:
Passed a pure food and drug act so I don't have to eat food that has been treated / raised/ slaughtered in an unhealthy manner.
Set standards for roads and cars and aircraft.
Agreed upon standards for the use of the RF spectrum.
Review and approve medicines.
but. . . we don't need no stinking govment
Quite frankly, I'm tired of the marketers and I'm certain that the writers, producers, directors, and actors are getting pretty fed up with "product placement".
As I write this on a 12" powerbook, I note for the record that I see way too many Apple's on Fox's "24"
I'd like an abacus or almost anything else that advances the story rather than catches the eye.
I'm a lawyer. I represented a number of IT individuals in a case against their employer (a very big bank) for age discrimination.
Several headhunters had recruited my clients. The bank wanted people who could deal with "black box" COBOL 77 applications - in other words the bank had acquired a number of smaller banks with legacy COBOL systems in place.
The bank had a year to bring their acquisitions on-line with Fed reporting services. They told the headhunters that the people they were recruiting were to become VP's or higher (because programmers who know COBOL 77 are already senior programmers or senior system's analysts and not ready to leave the banks they were working with - especially if they found out that the bank only needed them for a single project!).
The year passed, the folks recruited away from their old jobs (some with 20+ years at their former employer) were never given an evaluation, never given a VP position and were, as a group, fired with a nice release that paid them an extra 2 weeks pay if they promised not to sue.
The top headhunter in the group that recruited 20+ IT professionals was there with an affidavit on the federal complaint and went on to testify that his firm had been mislead by the bank.
This firm, and the top guy, walked the walk and told the truth in deposition and would have testified on the stand but for the (substantial) settlement on the Saturday before trial.
His own words, "If my reputation is lost I will never be able to work this town again." I can't say more, but that the city was the greater Kansas City (MO/KS) area and a national association bank was the defendant.
His firm never had business from the NA bank. But I have great respect for his willingness to put his company on the line for one ugly job.
Short answer: new method of using physical properties of electrons to reduce the travel time lag imposed by c and faster data state identification with less power could result.
Actually, it isn't that difficult. Our present systems use electrons (maximum speed is "c", or 186k/mi/sec) to carry or set data states (0,1). The electron has a few other properties that could be explored as a mechanism for data storage. This piece suggests that the "spin" state of an electron could become a viable mechanism (the system could work in less than super cold environments) for creating, reading and writing data states.
This isn't "barratry", the term means that the litigant's offense is one of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones. Thus far this matter arises from a single issue and it remains to be seen if it is groundless.
Barratry is the guy who sues: the dry cleaner for failing to remove the spot from his suit, sues the restaurant for making staining soup, sues the judge for throwing out the case(s), sues attorney(s) who won't represent him, sues the neighbor for their dog looking at his house too often, sues the newspaper reporter and the newspaper for their failure to report his cases properly and then sues every person who writes a letter to the editor critical of his lawsuits. (Every one of these cases has been brought - many, many times throughout the US.)
SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits fall into the same category where the litigant is a corporation or organization of one sort or another. SLAPP suits are, per se, abusive and many states have made them illegal.
I agree. The analogy was intended for a non-legally trained audience regarding a very widespread application of the IP law remedies available at the time.
I still have my paperweight(s) - both KODAK and Polaroid vintage. Damn shame about the Land failure...
GRO
If the end-user suits are filed then SCO has taken the fairly obscure legal issue of marginal infringement (never marginal with the expansions in copyright, No Electronic Theft, and the Sonny Bono Acts - innocent infringers simply do not exist) and found a way to snatch total defeat from a nuisance settlement.
When Polaroid (The Land Corporation) sued Kodak for instant camera/photo patent infringement and enjoined Kodak from further production of the infringing products - Land never targeted the jobbers, distributors, end-unit-sales operators or individual owners of the infringing product. They were aware that they would poison the market for their products and create a vast public backlash from such tactics.
(Yes, the analogy is flawed: the laws were different then - but the option to sue a larger group and Land's decision not to do so was a valid option that they eschewed.)
SCO is far from their progenitor the Santa Cruz Operation and their UNIX for the PC OS.
I'm not certain what SCO brings to the market today, save chaos.
Has Ken Starr signed on as chief counsel? What good result can SCO possibly expect from this tactic?
SCO cannot survive this vast expansion of their litigation without a huge (vast, impossible to predict) infusion of cash to fund the litigation. Even with unlimited funds the secondary costs will eat them alive.
Public backlash over time and costs are two things that SCO clearly has not considered properly in this litigation. So long SCO - you won't be missed any more than a broken abacus.
I'd like to see the suits before attacking them.
.the prohibited practice is contacting a victim or potential litigant where you have no prior business contact and soliciting them to hire you for legal representation.
I know of one instance in which a firm brought several actions in the US District Ct. for the WD MO and when they had the computer assign a judge they liked to one of the cases they moved to consolidate all of the prior actions with the favored judge (you don't have a change of judge as of right under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure).
Bringing 9000 cases isn't new - we call them class actions or complex multi-party litigation. If they have brought the actions in the court where the company is domiciled (as opposed to each jurisdiction where the tort occurred) then there is nothing improper (or unusual) procedurally.
Consider the cost of 9000 new case filings at $150.00 each as opposed to the cost of filing 1 case with 9000 defendants at $150.00.
Costs are a major factor where you have 9000 cases all across the US. A major cost is retaining local counsel and arranging to have your lead counsel admitted pro hac in every jurisdiction. I'd estimate that cost at $10,000.00 to $20,000.00 per jurisdiction as a starting point.
I'd guess that an action could be brought under 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201 et seq., a/k/a the DMCA for violation of the reverse engineering component of the statute. The same issue is presently in litigation in the U.S. District Ct. for the ED Kentucky in Lexmark v. Static Control, Case NO. 02-571-KSF.
The issue in the Lexmark case is the chip in replacement ink cartridges manufactured without a license by Static Control. Of course, Lexmark has been prudent enough to sue the manufacturer rather than the end users...but the issues are different where each user may have unauthorized access to pay-per-view IP.
The history of cable television theft and the mechanisms that the providers have gone to to identify and (usually settle) with pirates is rich, indeed. Manhattan's cablevision detected a variation of their code in the code in firmware in pirate decoders. They arranged to kill service to non-conforming decoders during some big event and the idiots who were infringing called up the company to complain - where they were met with very understanding people at a phone bank who recorded them, their calling number, and obtained from the callers their name, address, phone number and a description of the "problem". Needless to say, almost all of the pirates settled after their little faux pas of complaining that their stolen service stopped working!
If the smart card service has a similar variation, I suspect that the cases will stand.
Finally, Barratry is the fine art of ambulance chasing, i.e. attempting to influence people who are not a party to litigation to sue and hire you. Aside from the TV and print ads about the rights of the injured in general and how the firm won't take money until you recover . .
That's not the issue here.