Absolutely. Everyone's going to believe SCO's official version. Oh yes.
Seeing as Groklaw has already proven that no one does and that they're generally lying to boot, I suspect the site itself will try to hide its ties to SCO. Given SCO's past actions, Astroturfing wouldn't be much of a stretch.
Personally I think it's a natural progression, and I'm sure a lot of the/. folks will agree. The RIAA (or fill in the acronym of the one for your country) will of course believe it's definitive proof that the evil downloaders (tm) are the cause. The truth? Who knows.
I mean that seriously too. Pretty much all the studies that have shown that downloaders don't buy more music were sponsored by the RIAA or the companies doing them had it in their best interest to get results that would make the RIAA member companies happy. Whether the results are accurate or not is irrelevant, when there's potential for bias you have to look at them as possibly incorrect. On the other side many of the folks who have found the opposite are sometimes motivated to want that result, or at least the RIAA will claim so. In some cases they're right, in others they're not but it's hard to always know which are which so you have to treat most of those as possibly incorrect.
What's that leave us? I bunch of wasted time to produce studies that we have to be skeptical of. Frankly we'll never really know the answer, we'd need alternate universes/timelines to experiment in to really come anywhere near proving it either way. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if we could prove both camps right, but it'd only apply in those alternate universes/timelines.
What IS definite is that music sales are down, downloading is at least steady if not growing and lawsuits flying right and left have had no real effect on those download numbers. Frankly it should be obvious to everyone that something is going to have to change to fix this. Perhaps compulsury licensing is the answer, perhaps something new we've not heard of is (DRM isn't going to stop it though), but whatever the answer is pointing fingers and trying to place blame (on both sides) will not help find it. Granted the RIAA seems to be the worst offender here, but/. alone has its share of "information wants to be free, no one should pay for music" supporters.
It'd be nice to see everyone to just sit down and find a solution, unfortunately the RIAA is probably the least likely to take part so a solution is likely still far away.
Yes but all the takedown letters that have shown up (I'm sure there are plenty of errorenous ones we don't hear about) claimed the site was hosting the movie, not the movie's script.
Which was quite common in his time period, many (if not most) of the great scientists from that period did so as well, so it's not something that people should think poorly of him for. At the time most people believed alchemy was quite possible, just that they hadn't figured out exactly how yet.
but weren't Newton's ideas debunked by Einstein's theory of relativity? Shouldn't we be focusing on the physicists who got it right, not the ones who were wrong.
Don't know much indeed, apparently you should add Math to that as well.
While some of Newtons ideas were later proven to be incorrect by Einstein, most of his work on Calculus (which he pretty much invented) are still perfectly valid today. Most of Newton's calculus stuff that isn't used nowadays is simply because quicker/better methods have been developed since, not because he was wrong. As pretty much anyone who's taken Calculus can tell you, inventing it was quite a feat, it's not always easy to understand when you're learning it from someone who already knows it, developing it from scratch is quite amazing!
It's said that he died a virgin... so in at least one respect Newton was not, and did not get, "lucky".
Which just goes to prove that even back then the science types didn't impress the girls. He'd have been right at home on/., judging by many of the comments.:)
I'm enduring college level calculus right now, and to think that one man, more or less invented a major area of mathematics that we use in a vast array of situations, is simply, incredible.
Boy is that ever true, I remember when going through all my calc classes that I found it hard to conceive that someone could ever figure out all this stuff on their own. It's hard enough to remember/learn even now (unless you're really talened at math) after hundreds of years and countless refinement.
It's not just Newton though. I had to take a math history class as part of my "capstone" courses to get my CS degree. It was a fascinating course and we learned of so many people who developed different areas of math. One thing I remember well because it was funny is that pretty much everyone who's done significant work on set theory has spent time in mental hospitals, most after they did the work.:)
These ISPs were European. The whole point was that there wasn't a DMCA in the first place. If there had been, the ISPs would have ignored the non-DMCA compliant emails, and almost surely wouldn't have given the account details without a subpoena or counterclaim being filed.
Ouch, that makes the whole thing even worse. I can't think of any defense in that case (not that I agreed with what they did even if they were in the US). I'm just glad they're not my ISP.:)
Living in Texas, I'm not sure what constitutes `Texan-style private ISP justice'. Perhaps Sjoera Nas could explain?
Isn't that where the ISP comes to your house to shoot you when they receive a DMCA take-down notice?:) "Oh, you meant ths site, not the customer, oops..."
For example, if the public library was responsible and liable for all material that was copied on it's self service photocopy machine, then most libraries would probably ban use of the copier or manage and log its use very closely and be willing to share this information with anyone that threatens to sue the library. This would be done to protect the legally liable library. The library would be attempting to shield itself from liability by cooperating with those that were alledgedly infringed and by pointing the finger at the person that actually made the copies. Of course libraries are not liable, the person that uses the copier is liable. This is why photocopy machines are normally self service. This prevents the library from being legally liable.
Bad example, and most copiers are self service because libraries can't afford to hire staff to do a job most people are capable of doing themselves. In this case the equivalent would be if someone reported to a library employee that some guy was copying an entire book on the copy machine and had been at it for hours. At this point the library would be responsible to check out the situation and stop the person if the allegation is true. However, if they get to the copier and the guy's actually copying notes from a friend instead of a copyrighted book the library should not unplug the copier and demand the guy leave. At that point it's clear the original report was bogus and the guy at the copier is not breaking any laws. Incidentally the library would be liable for the copyright violations if the failed to even investigate a reported abuse, just making the copiers self-service doesn't exempt them from that responsibility.
Unfortunately the same doesn't seem to be true for ISP's. ISP's can be legally liable if they don't provide information about an alleged copyright violator or if they don't remove the allegedly copyrighted material from their servers in a timely fashion. It is unfortunate that even though the ISP may not knowingly endorse infringement or actively participate in the infringement, they could still be held liable (or at least named as an infringing party in an expensive lawsuit).
Actually the law requires them to pass along the takedown notice to their customer who's allegedly infringing, then to take the site down if the customer doesn't respond defending themselves. The ISP is most certainly not required to forward along personal details to the complaintant without a warrant, the RIAA has kindly established this for us by abusing the DMCA, that's why all their suits are now filed as John Doe suits. Secondly the ISP does have some responsibility to check the validity of the claim. Receiving an E-mail from a hotmail account should be a warning sign that something's not right in this case. When the site in question plainly lists the original copyright date (and why it's in the public domain now) the ISP opens itself up to a breach of contract lawsuit from their customer. Just because the DMCA says ISPs have to respond in a timely manner does not release them from other legal obligations!
Unfortunately ISP's have not been afforded legal protection similar to that granted to libraries with respect to photocopiers. It is the system that attempts to hold ISP's liable that is the problem. ISP's are merely reacting to this and trying to protect themselves.
Actually it does, ISPs must respond to complaints filed properly (ISPs are allowed to list a DMCA contact address that MUST be used to file all complaints, the law allows them to ignore any complaints not sent to that address), must pass the info to the subscriber and must take down the site if the subscriber doesn't respond. If they do that they're fine, but in this case they seemed to do only the last part, after failing to do even the most basic of fact checks. ISPs aren't merely "trying to protect themselves", they're failing to uphold their subscriber agreements. Acting in this manner will not absolve them of their other legal obligations and can, especially in this case, open them up to lawsuits from the subscriber. That's not protecting yourself, that's just stupid.
This is just sad, ISPs are probably overwhelmed with takedown notices but failing to even check the page in question before disconnecting a customer is a bad move. Why? No matter how restrictive the TOS for an ISP may be, shutting down a customer's site without checking the validity of the complaint, or even the validity of rhe complainer (i.e. is this a real company/person/rights holder) is likely to leave them wide open to a breach of contract lawsuit. While the courts have their problems, I doubt a court would look kindly to this type of action in light of a contract for service. If this happened to a business it could really be bad for the ISP.
Tie this in with the RIAA/MPAA's apparent automatic search and send bots (that are programmed moronically to boot, a 30kb file's supposedly a movie?) and you also get the potential to take down large chunks of the web illegally. Just wait till the lowlifes out there start doing DoS's using bogus takedown letters instead of packets. Things will probably get mighty ugly.
Not a simple computer, a server (as stated in the article). Furthermore, he ran a CPU (energy) intensive (and useless, in my opinion) program on a computer he didn't own, consuming power. Imagine all state employees start doing the same thing. A simple warning would have been enough; he served as an example. Sad in a way...
State employees are not immune to spyware/malware/trojans so in fact quite a bit of them are running worse things on their machines due to ignorance and/or stupidity. It's not exactly the same as willfully installing the SETI software on a server but those other employees machines waste much more money and resources every day than this guy did. Surely you don't think they should all be treated the same as he was? After all their crimes are worse in the grand scheme of things.
If I worked for the state and used say a government car for personal use they wouldn't just fire me. They would arrest me for misuse of public funds and materials. This theft just the same.
Well, but this is a bit murkier. It's arguable that the SETI project is for the public good, so in this case it would be comparable to you driving an accident victim to the hospital in the government vehicle, something I really doubt you'd be fired for. (And yes I know it's not exactly the same but it's hard to get something closer using the car analogy.)
Not to say he was right, but it's not as clear cut because of the nature of the software. If it had been a game or something it'd be much clearer, but this is grey area.
Remember: Those servers, routers, switches, and workstations aren't yours, they belong to your employer. You're paid to do what your employer wants to them, and not do what said employer doesn't want. Nothing more, nothing less.
In general this is true, but this guy was working for state government. So all that stuff was paid for by taxpayers from the state, of which he was one. So it's a lot harder to make this argument. Legally he is a part owner of those systems, and still is even though he's been fired.
Not to say what he did was right, but the issue's not as clear-cut in this case.
While iTunes is the most succesful online music store out there, and the iPod is a huge success, with the studios joining together to insist on a standard DRM Apple could end up the big loser here. The studios are likely to not give a damn about how big iTunes and the iPod are, they certainly haven't given one about killing off CD singles, moving to an online music market (it took Apple to really change their stance) or even to consider alternatives (such as compulsary licensing) to solve the file-sharing problem. If Apple refuses to budge, or even license, their DRM to competitors, the studios may just standardize on something else, forcing Apple to change to it if they want iTunes to still have licenses to sell music from those studios.
This should be interesing, Apple is very good at being independent and wanting to be different, but this looks like that strategy won't work out. They must keep the studios happy or the studios will happily take away the music.
Personally I wonder how this would affect older devices (like iPods) that might not be able to play the standardized DRM. The article makes no mention of this, and while I can't see Apple in particular (and other digital music player makers) wanting to make their older products incompatible, I really would not be surprised if the studios could care less if that were to occur. If it does there will be quite a few incredibly angry folks out there!
... that the company whose identity is misused is seen as being responsible for the losses. It is the merchant service providers and banks that should be held fully responsible -- they are the gatekeepers who failed to mind the gate, never checking the imposters' identies or association with the company....
Any suggestions on how to keep the losses on the banks and service providers, instead of the businesses?
Ultimately they are responsible for it, but it's easier on them to harass the company (or person) who's identity was used and try to make them pay. This ends up making them have to pay for attorneys to get the situation worked out and they end up losing as much, or more, money personally to pay for them. They may not ever have to pay a cent of the fraudulent charges, but the system makes them pay their own legal fees.
What we need is a way to force the merchant service providers and banks to cover legal fees in cases where they failed to properly verify the identity of those they issued accounts to. That would provide a nice incentive to them to start actually doing some due-diligance. Personally I'd be fine with needing to wait an extra week or two to get an account than it be so easy for crooks to obtain one in my name easily (and quickly).
If you contact the reporting agencies (Transunion, Experion etc.) you can ask them to place a fraud alert on your credit record. This discourages companies from providing you or an imposter with credit without a more thourough background check.
If you read through the earlier posts in the main thread you'll see one (it's been modded up high enough to show readily) from a person who tried to do this. First you have to request it in writing, then only one of the three added it without hassle. A second added it after much argument and harrassment (to the individual) and the third just never bothered, even though he complied with their regulations and requested it properly. After that he's only had the alert kick in one time, he even bought a car without the fraud alert being triggered. It's very much a YMMV situation, but I doubt they'll help much.
Additionally companies refuse to work with you when identity theft comes up. I have a friend who just found out someone's stolen her identity. The companies the crook applied to refuse to work with her to cancel them, even though she can prove she's the real owner of her identity. So right now there are credit cards issued in her name/social security number out there and she can't get the issuing companies to cancel them. So far they apparently haven't been used, so the companies are in effect refusing to stop them from being used fraudulently even though they've been notified that the cards were obtained illegally.
And I can throw in that I'm dealing with getting a fraudulent charge off my checking account made by a BANK. The bank in question decided to run an E-check through my account to make a payment on my Dad's credit card. I'm not on his credit card account, and he's not on my checking account. The E-check's "authorized by" line is smudged, the copy my bank received has the name after that unreadable. The bank who ran it refuses to even investigate the fraudulent charge unless they receive "a copy of the check clearly showing the name of the person who authorized it". Of course what they want doesn't exist, as they didn't provide a copy like that to my bank. So I'm out the money right now while I work on getting charges filed against the bank who did it. It's not exactly easy to do either, the sheriff's department isn't interested, yet I have to get a police report from them (I live in the county, not city). I'm going to have to take part of a day off work to get the report filed as they won't call me back to do one over the phone. I am quite seriously thinking of finding a good lawyer and suing this bank for interest lost and time lost from work plus damages. This simply should have never happened, and the fact that they claim they called my Dad at work and he both authorized the charge plus provided the account and routing numbers makes it worse. He doesn't have that info, and while at the house he could conceivably have hunted down my box of extra checkes to get it, at work he simply couldn't have done what they claim he did. Additionally, as a person at my bank pointed out, even if you accept their version of events, they have admitted to a federal crime, they are responsible for making sure the person actually has the authority to authorize the charge before proceeding with it, something they didn't do. (As for how they got the info, I've written checks for him to send in the past so he can save money by not buying money orders. Apparently someone saved that info in their system, quite possibly also illegal.)
So I'd say the real problems are within the financial industry. There's no real incentive for them to fix the holes, or solve the problems. You can't even get them to stop a crime when you notify them of it, and in some cases (hopefully limited) banks appear to be actively breaking federal laws and gaming the system. (My bank is also a victim, the bank who did this to me made sure that everything the automated systems would need to process the E-check was there, but that what was needed to get it undone (by their rules) wasn't.)
You wouldn't by any chance happen to have any way of contacting Wallace would you? I'm sure many of us here at Slashdot would love the chance to call him or email him to find out about his "amazing" products, or just annoy the hell out of him, take your pick.
Personally I have about 10 years worth of AOL floppies/CDs/DVDs I'd really love to send him, I know how much he values a great deal.
Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Really, I'm appalled when stories like this come up and the great majority of/. posters cry foul.
Simple, most people decide one way or the other well ahead of time anyway. How many people do you know that still think OJ's guilty even though he was found innocent by the court?
Secondly this is Spamford Wallace we're talking about. Most of the people here have been around long enough to remember him, and he's not the type of person to get the benefit of the doubt. He's pretty much proven himself to be unscrupulous many times over, so those familiar with his past have more trouble believing he's innocent than guilty.
If you seriously think Firefox is bug free, well you are sticking your head in the sand. The question isn't if Friefox has exploitable bugs, it does, everything does, the question is when one is found, what happens? The OSS community argues that this is where the strength is, it'll be fixed in a big hurry, so consumers don't have to worry.
This would be a good place to point out that the responses on/. are consistently "Firefox/Mozilla solves all your problems, switch now!" when a new IE exploit is announced and "Well Firefox is still in Beta, what do you expect? Don't switch till it's at version 1.x if you don't want bugs." when a Mozilla/Firefox exploit is announced. I find it pretty amazing, you just can't have it both ways. If you're going to claim Firefox/Mozilla solves all security problems, you need to give up the "it's in Beta" argument. Nothing's perfect and as Firefox/Mozilla (and even the Netscape version) grow in popularity more and more vulnerabilities will show up. Even if they're all patched quickly it won't help as most of the folks responsibile for trojaned computers don't even bother with Windows Update, updating their browser isn't going to even occur to them as something needing to be done.
spammers are criminals who will stop at nothing to try to make a buck.
I think the links between spammers and viruses that are now pretty clear-cut have proven this beyond any shadow of a doubt for us already. Spamford's case just proves they're stupid too.
they prey upon the ignorance of the general public who gets a pc for home use, joke emails, and maybe for some simple pc games and companionship.
Actually they do some of of that (social engineering) but you have to have trouble feeling sorry for folks stupid enough to open an attachment from someone they don't know in an E-mail message with the subject "I Love You" (for one example) or similar. That's just fucking stupid, common sense should be screaming at you that something's wrong with this situation, even if you've never heard of a virus or worm!
this behavior must be punished more severely or else it will continue to grow.
Well while I agree that the folks who are responsible for viruses, worms, spam, spyware, malware and fraud should be punished heavily that won't stop it. Just look at any other crime out there: murder, rape, robbery, etc. all continue along at way too high rates each year in spite of serious punishments. Most of those crimes have more convictions too, as it's easier to find the culprits than in most cases of spamming, virii and spyware. What we need to really stop the problems online are better security (it'll never be perfect but some of the stupid tie-ins Microsoft has made between products are moronic, like someone said on/. last week "why does Outlook Express need the power to format your hard drive?"), much better education (I guess common sense isn't terribly common, so we'll have to teach it) and proactive responses.
That's like being pulled over by a cop for speeding, claiming you weren't, then pointing out that the cop wasn't even supposed to be there, since he was off duty...
No, you should RTFA, it's more like being pulled over for doing 60mph in a 30mph zone, while smoking a joint and drinking booze, getting nailed for speeding, drug posession, DUI and thrown in jail but then claiming the speed limit was going to change in 2006 to 60mph when they finished the new four lane highway so you shouldn't have been pulled over in the first place.
The FTC's charging him with fraud, he's both infecting computers and then selling a $30 "removal" tool, yet that removal tool's also spyware and makes the problem worse. It's a pretty clear-cut case, the FTC doesn't need anti-spyware legislation to go after Spamford for this, there are plenty of laws on the books to prevent fraud of this sort.
Think about it this way, it's like a protection racket ("pay us $200 a month and we won't rob your place") except in addition to paying the protection money they rob your place anyway.
I could understand if you owned the books but you don't.
So if I'm searching within a book I own a copy of is it then OK with you? Just because someone's searching within a book on Print Google does not mean they don't own that book, so your argument's pretty flawed.
Not to mention you completely overlooked the fair use parts of copyright.
With the Mac OS now a layer on top of Unix, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually gives up reserving its software for its own hardware and begins to sell Mac OS as a GUI and software bundle on top of Linux, essentially a commercial counterpart to Gnome or KDE.
It's a nice idea but I doubt it'd happen unless Jobs drops dead suddenly. Even then it's iffy, Apple likes being in control of the hardware as well as the software so they're not going to be keen on giving that up.
Slashdot Mirror
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Absolutely. Everyone's going to believe SCO's official version. Oh yes.
Seeing as Groklaw has already proven that no one does and that they're generally lying to boot, I suspect the site itself will try to hide its ties to SCO. Given SCO's past actions, Astroturfing wouldn't be much of a stretch.I mean that seriously too. Pretty much all the studies that have shown that downloaders don't buy more music were sponsored by the RIAA or the companies doing them had it in their best interest to get results that would make the RIAA member companies happy. Whether the results are accurate or not is irrelevant, when there's potential for bias you have to look at them as possibly incorrect. On the other side many of the folks who have found the opposite are sometimes motivated to want that result, or at least the RIAA will claim so. In some cases they're right, in others they're not but it's hard to always know which are which so you have to treat most of those as possibly incorrect.
What's that leave us? I bunch of wasted time to produce studies that we have to be skeptical of. Frankly we'll never really know the answer, we'd need alternate universes/timelines to experiment in to really come anywhere near proving it either way. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if we could prove both camps right, but it'd only apply in those alternate universes/timelines.
What IS definite is that music sales are down, downloading is at least steady if not growing and lawsuits flying right and left have had no real effect on those download numbers. Frankly it should be obvious to everyone that something is going to have to change to fix this. Perhaps compulsury licensing is the answer, perhaps something new we've not heard of is (DRM isn't going to stop it though), but whatever the answer is pointing fingers and trying to place blame (on both sides) will not help find it. Granted the RIAA seems to be the worst offender here, but /. alone has its share of "information wants to be free, no one should pay for music" supporters.
It'd be nice to see everyone to just sit down and find a solution, unfortunately the RIAA is probably the least likely to take part so a solution is likely still far away.
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Movie scripts are copyrighted too.
Yes but all the takedown letters that have shown up (I'm sure there are plenty of errorenous ones we don't hear about) claimed the site was hosting the movie, not the movie's script.-
and studied alchemy.
Which was quite common in his time period, many (if not most) of the great scientists from that period did so as well, so it's not something that people should think poorly of him for. At the time most people believed alchemy was quite possible, just that they hadn't figured out exactly how yet.-
but weren't Newton's ideas debunked by Einstein's theory of relativity? Shouldn't we be focusing on the physicists who got it right, not the ones who were wrong.
Don't know much indeed, apparently you should add Math to that as well.While some of Newtons ideas were later proven to be incorrect by Einstein, most of his work on Calculus (which he pretty much invented) are still perfectly valid today. Most of Newton's calculus stuff that isn't used nowadays is simply because quicker/better methods have been developed since, not because he was wrong. As pretty much anyone who's taken Calculus can tell you, inventing it was quite a feat, it's not always easy to understand when you're learning it from someone who already knows it, developing it from scratch is quite amazing!
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It's said that he died a virgin... so in at least one respect Newton was not, and did not get, "lucky".
Which just goes to prove that even back then the science types didn't impress the girls. He'd have been right at home on-
I'm enduring college level calculus right now, and to think that one man, more or less invented a major area of mathematics that we use in a vast array of situations, is simply, incredible.
Boy is that ever true, I remember when going through all my calc classes that I found it hard to conceive that someone could ever figure out all this stuff on their own. It's hard enough to remember/learn even now (unless you're really talened at math) after hundreds of years and countless refinement.It's not just Newton though. I had to take a math history class as part of my "capstone" courses to get my CS degree. It was a fascinating course and we learned of so many people who developed different areas of math. One thing I remember well because it was funny is that pretty much everyone who's done significant work on set theory has spent time in mental hospitals, most after they did the work. :)
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These ISPs were European. The whole point was that there wasn't a DMCA in the first place. If there had been, the ISPs would have ignored the non-DMCA compliant emails, and almost surely wouldn't have given the account details without a subpoena or counterclaim being filed.
Ouch, that makes the whole thing even worse. I can't think of any defense in that case (not that I agreed with what they did even if they were in the US). I'm just glad they're not my ISP.-
Living in Texas, I'm not sure what constitutes `Texan-style private ISP justice'. Perhaps Sjoera Nas could explain?
Isn't that where the ISP comes to your house to shoot you when they receive a DMCA take-down notice?-
For example, if the public library was responsible and liable for all material that was copied on it's self service photocopy machine, then most libraries would probably ban use of the copier or manage and log its use very closely and be willing to share this information with anyone that threatens to sue the library. This would be done to protect the legally liable library. The library would be attempting to shield itself from liability by cooperating with those that were alledgedly infringed and by pointing the finger at the person that actually made the copies. Of course libraries are not liable, the person that uses the copier is liable. This is why photocopy machines are normally self service. This prevents the library from being legally liable.
Bad example, and most copiers are self service because libraries can't afford to hire staff to do a job most people are capable of doing themselves. In this case the equivalent would be if someone reported to a library employee that some guy was copying an entire book on the copy machine and had been at it for hours. At this point the library would be responsible to check out the situation and stop the person if the allegation is true. However, if they get to the copier and the guy's actually copying notes from a friend instead of a copyrighted book the library should not unplug the copier and demand the guy leave. At that point it's clear the original report was bogus and the guy at the copier is not breaking any laws. Incidentally the library would be liable for the copyright violations if the failed to even investigate a reported abuse, just making the copiers self-service doesn't exempt them from that responsibility.-
Unfortunately the same doesn't seem to be true for ISP's. ISP's can be legally liable if they don't provide information about an alleged copyright violator or if they don't remove the allegedly copyrighted material from their servers in a timely fashion. It is unfortunate that even though the ISP may not knowingly endorse infringement or actively participate in the infringement, they could still be held liable (or at least named as an infringing party in an expensive lawsuit).
Actually the law requires them to pass along the takedown notice to their customer who's allegedly infringing, then to take the site down if the customer doesn't respond defending themselves. The ISP is most certainly not required to forward along personal details to the complaintant without a warrant, the RIAA has kindly established this for us by abusing the DMCA, that's why all their suits are now filed as John Doe suits. Secondly the ISP does have some responsibility to check the validity of the claim. Receiving an E-mail from a hotmail account should be a warning sign that something's not right in this case. When the site in question plainly lists the original copyright date (and why it's in the public domain now) the ISP opens itself up to a breach of contract lawsuit from their customer. Just because the DMCA says ISPs have to respond in a timely manner does not release them from other legal obligations!-
Unfortunately ISP's have not been afforded legal protection similar to that granted to libraries with respect to photocopiers. It is the system that attempts to hold ISP's liable that is the problem. ISP's are merely reacting to this and trying to protect themselves.
Actually it does, ISPs must respond to complaints filed properly (ISPs are allowed to list a DMCA contact address that MUST be used to file all complaints, the law allows them to ignore any complaints not sent to that address), must pass the info to the subscriber and must take down the site if the subscriber doesn't respond. If they do that they're fine, but in this case they seemed to do only the last part, after failing to do even the most basic of fact checks. ISPs aren't merely "trying to protect themselves", they're failing to uphold their subscriber agreements. Acting in this manner will not absolve them of their other legal obligations and can, especially in this case, open them up to lawsuits from the subscriber. That's not protecting yourself, that's just stupid.Tie this in with the RIAA/MPAA's apparent automatic search and send bots (that are programmed moronically to boot, a 30kb file's supposedly a movie?) and you also get the potential to take down large chunks of the web illegally. Just wait till the lowlifes out there start doing DoS's using bogus takedown letters instead of packets. Things will probably get mighty ugly.
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Not a simple computer, a server (as stated in the article). Furthermore, he ran a CPU (energy) intensive (and useless, in my opinion) program on a computer he didn't own, consuming power. Imagine all state employees start doing the same thing. A simple warning would have been enough; he served as an example. Sad in a way...
State employees are not immune to spyware/malware/trojans so in fact quite a bit of them are running worse things on their machines due to ignorance and/or stupidity. It's not exactly the same as willfully installing the SETI software on a server but those other employees machines waste much more money and resources every day than this guy did. Surely you don't think they should all be treated the same as he was? After all their crimes are worse in the grand scheme of things.-
If I worked for the state and used say a government car for personal use they wouldn't just fire me. They would arrest me for misuse of public funds and materials. This theft just the same.
Well, but this is a bit murkier. It's arguable that the SETI project is for the public good, so in this case it would be comparable to you driving an accident victim to the hospital in the government vehicle, something I really doubt you'd be fired for. (And yes I know it's not exactly the same but it's hard to get something closer using the car analogy.)Not to say he was right, but it's not as clear cut because of the nature of the software. If it had been a game or something it'd be much clearer, but this is grey area.
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Remember: Those servers, routers, switches, and workstations aren't yours, they belong to your employer. You're paid to do what your employer wants to them, and not do what said employer doesn't want. Nothing more, nothing less.
In general this is true, but this guy was working for state government. So all that stuff was paid for by taxpayers from the state, of which he was one. So it's a lot harder to make this argument. Legally he is a part owner of those systems, and still is even though he's been fired.Not to say what he did was right, but the issue's not as clear-cut in this case.
This should be interesing, Apple is very good at being independent and wanting to be different, but this looks like that strategy won't work out. They must keep the studios happy or the studios will happily take away the music.
Personally I wonder how this would affect older devices (like iPods) that might not be able to play the standardized DRM. The article makes no mention of this, and while I can't see Apple in particular (and other digital music player makers) wanting to make their older products incompatible, I really would not be surprised if the studios could care less if that were to occur. If it does there will be quite a few incredibly angry folks out there!
... that the company whose identity is misused is seen as being responsible for the losses. It is the merchant service providers and banks that should be held fully responsible -- they are the gatekeepers who failed to mind the gate, never checking the imposters' identies or association with the company. ...
Any suggestions on how to keep the losses on the banks and service providers, instead of the businesses?
Ultimately they are responsible for it, but it's easier on them to harass the company (or person) who's identity was used and try to make them pay. This ends up making them have to pay for attorneys to get the situation worked out and they end up losing as much, or more, money personally to pay for them. They may not ever have to pay a cent of the fraudulent charges, but the system makes them pay their own legal fees.What we need is a way to force the merchant service providers and banks to cover legal fees in cases where they failed to properly verify the identity of those they issued accounts to. That would provide a nice incentive to them to start actually doing some due-diligance. Personally I'd be fine with needing to wait an extra week or two to get an account than it be so easy for crooks to obtain one in my name easily (and quickly).
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If you contact the reporting agencies (Transunion, Experion etc.) you can ask them to place a fraud alert on your credit record. This discourages companies from providing you or an imposter with credit without a more thourough background check.
If you read through the earlier posts in the main thread you'll see one (it's been modded up high enough to show readily) from a person who tried to do this. First you have to request it in writing, then only one of the three added it without hassle. A second added it after much argument and harrassment (to the individual) and the third just never bothered, even though he complied with their regulations and requested it properly. After that he's only had the alert kick in one time, he even bought a car without the fraud alert being triggered. It's very much a YMMV situation, but I doubt they'll help much.Additionally companies refuse to work with you when identity theft comes up. I have a friend who just found out someone's stolen her identity. The companies the crook applied to refuse to work with her to cancel them, even though she can prove she's the real owner of her identity. So right now there are credit cards issued in her name/social security number out there and she can't get the issuing companies to cancel them. So far they apparently haven't been used, so the companies are in effect refusing to stop them from being used fraudulently even though they've been notified that the cards were obtained illegally.
And I can throw in that I'm dealing with getting a fraudulent charge off my checking account made by a BANK. The bank in question decided to run an E-check through my account to make a payment on my Dad's credit card. I'm not on his credit card account, and he's not on my checking account. The E-check's "authorized by" line is smudged, the copy my bank received has the name after that unreadable. The bank who ran it refuses to even investigate the fraudulent charge unless they receive "a copy of the check clearly showing the name of the person who authorized it". Of course what they want doesn't exist, as they didn't provide a copy like that to my bank. So I'm out the money right now while I work on getting charges filed against the bank who did it. It's not exactly easy to do either, the sheriff's department isn't interested, yet I have to get a police report from them (I live in the county, not city). I'm going to have to take part of a day off work to get the report filed as they won't call me back to do one over the phone. I am quite seriously thinking of finding a good lawyer and suing this bank for interest lost and time lost from work plus damages. This simply should have never happened, and the fact that they claim they called my Dad at work and he both authorized the charge plus provided the account and routing numbers makes it worse. He doesn't have that info, and while at the house he could conceivably have hunted down my box of extra checkes to get it, at work he simply couldn't have done what they claim he did. Additionally, as a person at my bank pointed out, even if you accept their version of events, they have admitted to a federal crime, they are responsible for making sure the person actually has the authority to authorize the charge before proceeding with it, something they didn't do. (As for how they got the info, I've written checks for him to send in the past so he can save money by not buying money orders. Apparently someone saved that info in their system, quite possibly also illegal.)
So I'd say the real problems are within the financial industry. There's no real incentive for them to fix the holes, or solve the problems. You can't even get them to stop a crime when you notify them of it, and in some cases (hopefully limited) banks appear to be actively breaking federal laws and gaming the system. (My bank is also a victim, the bank who did this to me made sure that everything the automated systems would need to process the E-check was there, but that what was needed to get it undone (by their rules) wasn't.)
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No, really, he's addicted to this crap. It's like he enjoys getting people upset at him. Makes me wonder what the cause was though.
I'm guessing a complete and total lack of any form of ethics along with absolutely no consideration for others.-
You wouldn't by any chance happen to have any way of contacting Wallace would you? I'm sure many of us here at Slashdot would love the chance to call him or email him to find out about his "amazing" products, or just annoy the hell out of him, take your pick.
Personally I have about 10 years worth of AOL floppies/CDs/DVDs I'd really love to send him, I know how much he values a great deal.-
Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Really, I'm appalled when stories like this come up and the great majority of
/. posters cry foul.
Simple, most people decide one way or the other well ahead of time anyway. How many people do you know that still think OJ's guilty even though he was found innocent by the court?Secondly this is Spamford Wallace we're talking about. Most of the people here have been around long enough to remember him, and he's not the type of person to get the benefit of the doubt. He's pretty much proven himself to be unscrupulous many times over, so those familiar with his past have more trouble believing he's innocent than guilty.
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If you seriously think Firefox is bug free, well you are sticking your head in the sand. The question isn't if Friefox has exploitable bugs, it does, everything does, the question is when one is found, what happens? The OSS community argues that this is where the strength is, it'll be fixed in a big hurry, so consumers don't have to worry.
This would be a good place to point out that the responses on-
spammers are criminals who will stop at nothing to try to make a buck.
I think the links between spammers and viruses that are now pretty clear-cut have proven this beyond any shadow of a doubt for us already. Spamford's case just proves they're stupid too.-
they prey upon the ignorance of the general public who gets a pc for home use, joke emails, and maybe for some simple pc games and companionship.
Actually they do some of of that (social engineering) but you have to have trouble feeling sorry for folks stupid enough to open an attachment from someone they don't know in an E-mail message with the subject "I Love You" (for one example) or similar. That's just fucking stupid, common sense should be screaming at you that something's wrong with this situation, even if you've never heard of a virus or worm!-
this behavior must be punished more severely or else it will continue to grow.
Well while I agree that the folks who are responsible for viruses, worms, spam, spyware, malware and fraud should be punished heavily that won't stop it. Just look at any other crime out there: murder, rape, robbery, etc. all continue along at way too high rates each year in spite of serious punishments. Most of those crimes have more convictions too, as it's easier to find the culprits than in most cases of spamming, virii and spyware. What we need to really stop the problems online are better security (it'll never be perfect but some of the stupid tie-ins Microsoft has made between products are moronic, like someone said on-
That's like being pulled over by a cop for speeding, claiming you weren't, then pointing out that the cop wasn't even supposed to be there, since he was off duty...
No, you should RTFA, it's more like being pulled over for doing 60mph in a 30mph zone, while smoking a joint and drinking booze, getting nailed for speeding, drug posession, DUI and thrown in jail but then claiming the speed limit was going to change in 2006 to 60mph when they finished the new four lane highway so you shouldn't have been pulled over in the first place.The FTC's charging him with fraud, he's both infecting computers and then selling a $30 "removal" tool, yet that removal tool's also spyware and makes the problem worse. It's a pretty clear-cut case, the FTC doesn't need anti-spyware legislation to go after Spamford for this, there are plenty of laws on the books to prevent fraud of this sort.
Think about it this way, it's like a protection racket ("pay us $200 a month and we won't rob your place") except in addition to paying the protection money they rob your place anyway.
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I could understand if you owned the books but you don't.
So if I'm searching within a book I own a copy of is it then OK with you? Just because someone's searching within a book on Print Google does not mean they don't own that book, so your argument's pretty flawed.Not to mention you completely overlooked the fair use parts of copyright.
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With the Mac OS now a layer on top of Unix, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually gives up reserving its software for its own hardware and begins to sell Mac OS as a GUI and software bundle on top of Linux, essentially a commercial counterpart to Gnome or KDE.
It's a nice idea but I doubt it'd happen unless Jobs drops dead suddenly. Even then it's iffy, Apple likes being in control of the hardware as well as the software so they're not going to be keen on giving that up.