Babelfish did this one entirely for me:
Original: "Did you say you wanted to have your kidney removed?"
Translated to Chinese (and back): "You said you thought the edible your kidney is removen?"
Just to clear up confusion, it will not be the RIAA that would sue Google. The RIAA is responsible for protecting copyrights on recordings, not published music (sheet music, lyrics, etc...). The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), or more specifically, their legal arm, the Harry Fox Association, is responsible for enforcing these copyrights, so that is most likely from whom Google will be hearing shortly.
The problem is that eBay is so slow to act on the problem. They aren't being held responsible for the fraud; law enforcement is charged with the task of finding and punishing the perpetrators, not eBay. The problem is that eBay/Paypal possess all of the information necessary to track these people down, and, as the article mentions, they are very slow in "finding" this information.
So then the question becomes: Are they understaffed, or do they not care? If they're understaffed, that's an easily fixable problem, and they certainly have the resources to do so. It makes more sense that they would not care, as they are profiting from the fraud, they have no serious competition to which they risk losing business, and the government has taken little if any action to place even part of the burden of fraud prevention on eBay.
Law enforcement cannot be effective in this arena without eBay's cooperation, and eBay has no incentive to cooperate. So, there either needs to be serious competition in the auction and payment processing markets (ahem, Google), or government needs to place regulations on eBay requiring them to either proactively prevent fraud and cooperate in subsequent investigations, or take on the financial responsibility of repaying damages resulting from fraud (or both).
With the fees eBay charges, and with little or no crack down by government, why should eBay care? Between their listing fees, closing fees, and the unprecedented fees they collect on the resulting financial transactions through Paypal, it's in their best interest to continue allowing frauds to operate. eBay doesn't care about abuse until the frauds stop paying them; only then do accounts get cancelled and investigations are launched.
I'm sure there will be a ton of stories posted here about individual instances of fraud. Personally, I have never been seriously ripped off, but I have definitely purchased from some shady sellers who have clearly misrepresented their products. I don't buy from eBay anymore, but I am a seller, and an honest seller, so I feel I'm at least doing my part.
Something makes me think the American Dental Association might have a different idea of a brushing "replacement" than the military. They aren't exactly renowned for their health and safety records.
While this may apply to police, I'm not entirely sure that it would apply in a private setting. While I totally disagree with the lawsuit being brought, I think it's possible that it may hold up. A proper comparison, as opposed to prostitutes asking johns if they're undercover cops, would be a business posting a sign on their door stating that no reporters were allowed inside for the purpose of reporting on their business. A reporter enters, collects information, and uses it to write a potentially damaging article about the company.
Does the company have a right to sue the reporter (or even have him arrested for trespassing)? I think that, since this does not involve a police officer "protecting and serving", that the case just may hold up as a private, civil matter.
From the WoW ToS, which you are bound to agree to in the EULA...
Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale, gift or trade in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft.
Whether they need to or not, it's there. My understanding of that would be that if you sell items in real life, they can, at the very least, terminate your account. You would also most likely be in breach of contract. They own the intellectual property behind the items, and have not licensed you to sell them.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to charge for their time. Just that the game manufacturers probably won't want them to be allowed to, except possibly if they're taking a commission. Fair or not, I think it would probably be very easy for them to put a clause in the EULA saying you can't use their service for monetary gain of any sort, and then selling your time itself would become a violation and cause for termination of the agreement, and possible civil recourse.
Most MMORPG makers include a clause in their EULA prohibiting the sale of in-game items or coin for real-world money, since they own the IP. Thus far, smaller scale operations have gotten around this by claiming that they're just selling their time, but it wouldn't be very hard at all for the software makers to adjust their agreements to specifically prohibit even that, and begin cracking down on the sellers. Not that this would stop the smaller time operations, but it would be hard to build a large and successful business on this model without being shut down. Out-of-game markets are bad for the in-game economy, so it would make sense for the software makers to want to crack down. Or at least take a piece of the action.
The prototype cell phone correctly identified when it was being carried by someone other than its owner 98% of the time.
98% of the time? That would be like having a password that people could guess 2% of the time. I'd rather have a password that people could guess 0% of the time. It's a neat idea, but especially if you're going to have sensitive information on the device, or the device can be used to make phone calls that you pay for, I would want something a little harder to duplicate than my gait. Just me though.
Prosecuted as a crime? Can we please keep in mind that NO ONE has actually been -prosecuted- for P2P file sharing? In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no one has even actually been sued for -downloading- from P2P networks. In the vast majority of cases, what has actually happened is that the people with files being offered for -upload- have been -threatened- with lawsuits (most have not actually been sued and have just settled out of court).
While the RIAA and MPAA would just love to be able to portray themselves as an actual government organization with law enforcement abilities, they are not. Though they certainly get a lot more help from authorities than you or I would get if we claimed our things were being stolen, they do not have the ability to "arrest", "bust" or "prosecute" anyone for anything, and have actually spent a lot more time, money and energy making it -look- like they can, rather than actually taking any substantial legal action against anyone. Think back to the iTunes commercial (the one with Green Day in the background singing "I fought the law and the law won"), where they had teenagers who had been threatened with lawsuits claiming they had been "busted" and "prosecuted" for "downloading" music. Not one of them had. They had all received written threats of lawsuits for -uploading- music; none of them were actually sued, and were lying in the commercial as part of their settlement.
The success of the music industry in combating piracy has not been in shutting down actual services, or even in spreading the word that file sharing is illegal. I think the actual attitudes of people about whether or not downloading a song is morally "okay" has not really changed all that much, and if anything, more people know how to do it now. Where they've succeeded is in impersonating a law enforcement agency and convincing a lot of people that if you download a single song, you can expect the RIAA to show up at your door to slap handcuffs on you and take you to jail.
Actually, I believe that while it may not be statutory, precedent has at least established that if they have the ability to monitor content, then they are responsible for monitoring content. This is why IRC networks, Usenet services, and ISPs in general are wise not to implement any mechanism for monitoring the content of the traffic over their networks. If it can be shown later that they had the ability to intercept a message and didn't, and damage resulted, they're potentially liable.
However, I would assume that AOL's argument would be that, even though they're technically able to monitor conversations, and do, it's impossible for them to monitor -all- conversations. They have a lot of money, so I'd probably place my bet on them if it went to court, but you never know. Definitely a grey area.
Slashdot Mirror
Not until they add another mouse button.
Let me be the first to ask: Why the hell is the military storing sensitive data on USB drives, which are prone to both theft and failure?
Babelfish did this one entirely for me: Original: "Did you say you wanted to have your kidney removed?" Translated to Chinese (and back): "You said you thought the edible your kidney is removen?"
Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else like they might be doing this just to combat scalping of tickets?
Just to clear up confusion, it will not be the RIAA that would sue Google. The RIAA is responsible for protecting copyrights on recordings, not published music (sheet music, lyrics, etc...). The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), or more specifically, their legal arm, the Harry Fox Association, is responsible for enforcing these copyrights, so that is most likely from whom Google will be hearing shortly.
The problem is that eBay is so slow to act on the problem. They aren't being held responsible for the fraud; law enforcement is charged with the task of finding and punishing the perpetrators, not eBay. The problem is that eBay/Paypal possess all of the information necessary to track these people down, and, as the article mentions, they are very slow in "finding" this information.
So then the question becomes: Are they understaffed, or do they not care? If they're understaffed, that's an easily fixable problem, and they certainly have the resources to do so. It makes more sense that they would not care, as they are profiting from the fraud, they have no serious competition to which they risk losing business, and the government has taken little if any action to place even part of the burden of fraud prevention on eBay.
Law enforcement cannot be effective in this arena without eBay's cooperation, and eBay has no incentive to cooperate. So, there either needs to be serious competition in the auction and payment processing markets (ahem, Google), or government needs to place regulations on eBay requiring them to either proactively prevent fraud and cooperate in subsequent investigations, or take on the financial responsibility of repaying damages resulting from fraud (or both).
With the fees eBay charges, and with little or no crack down by government, why should eBay care? Between their listing fees, closing fees, and the unprecedented fees they collect on the resulting financial transactions through Paypal, it's in their best interest to continue allowing frauds to operate. eBay doesn't care about abuse until the frauds stop paying them; only then do accounts get cancelled and investigations are launched.
I'm sure there will be a ton of stories posted here about individual instances of fraud. Personally, I have never been seriously ripped off, but I have definitely purchased from some shady sellers who have clearly misrepresented their products. I don't buy from eBay anymore, but I am a seller, and an honest seller, so I feel I'm at least doing my part.
Something makes me think the American Dental Association might have a different idea of a brushing "replacement" than the military. They aren't exactly renowned for their health and safety records.
While this may apply to police, I'm not entirely sure that it would apply in a private setting. While I totally disagree with the lawsuit being brought, I think it's possible that it may hold up. A proper comparison, as opposed to prostitutes asking johns if they're undercover cops, would be a business posting a sign on their door stating that no reporters were allowed inside for the purpose of reporting on their business. A reporter enters, collects information, and uses it to write a potentially damaging article about the company.
Does the company have a right to sue the reporter (or even have him arrested for trespassing)? I think that, since this does not involve a police officer "protecting and serving", that the case just may hold up as a private, civil matter.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to charge for their time. Just that the game manufacturers probably won't want them to be allowed to, except possibly if they're taking a commission. Fair or not, I think it would probably be very easy for them to put a clause in the EULA saying you can't use their service for monetary gain of any sort, and then selling your time itself would become a violation and cause for termination of the agreement, and possible civil recourse.
It might replace their crack addiction too.
Most MMORPG makers include a clause in their EULA prohibiting the sale of in-game items or coin for real-world money, since they own the IP. Thus far, smaller scale operations have gotten around this by claiming that they're just selling their time, but it wouldn't be very hard at all for the software makers to adjust their agreements to specifically prohibit even that, and begin cracking down on the sellers. Not that this would stop the smaller time operations, but it would be hard to build a large and successful business on this model without being shut down. Out-of-game markets are bad for the in-game economy, so it would make sense for the software makers to want to crack down. Or at least take a piece of the action.
Really? Remember this?
Prosecuted as a crime? Can we please keep in mind that NO ONE has actually been -prosecuted- for P2P file sharing? In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no one has even actually been sued for -downloading- from P2P networks. In the vast majority of cases, what has actually happened is that the people with files being offered for -upload- have been -threatened- with lawsuits (most have not actually been sued and have just settled out of court). While the RIAA and MPAA would just love to be able to portray themselves as an actual government organization with law enforcement abilities, they are not. Though they certainly get a lot more help from authorities than you or I would get if we claimed our things were being stolen, they do not have the ability to "arrest", "bust" or "prosecute" anyone for anything, and have actually spent a lot more time, money and energy making it -look- like they can, rather than actually taking any substantial legal action against anyone. Think back to the iTunes commercial (the one with Green Day in the background singing "I fought the law and the law won"), where they had teenagers who had been threatened with lawsuits claiming they had been "busted" and "prosecuted" for "downloading" music. Not one of them had. They had all received written threats of lawsuits for -uploading- music; none of them were actually sued, and were lying in the commercial as part of their settlement. The success of the music industry in combating piracy has not been in shutting down actual services, or even in spreading the word that file sharing is illegal. I think the actual attitudes of people about whether or not downloading a song is morally "okay" has not really changed all that much, and if anything, more people know how to do it now. Where they've succeeded is in impersonating a law enforcement agency and convincing a lot of people that if you download a single song, you can expect the RIAA to show up at your door to slap handcuffs on you and take you to jail.
Let's duplicate our complaints about the duplicate post! "Same comment, twice on the same page!"
Actually, I believe that while it may not be statutory, precedent has at least established that if they have the ability to monitor content, then they are responsible for monitoring content. This is why IRC networks, Usenet services, and ISPs in general are wise not to implement any mechanism for monitoring the content of the traffic over their networks. If it can be shown later that they had the ability to intercept a message and didn't, and damage resulted, they're potentially liable. However, I would assume that AOL's argument would be that, even though they're technically able to monitor conversations, and do, it's impossible for them to monitor -all- conversations. They have a lot of money, so I'd probably place my bet on them if it went to court, but you never know. Definitely a grey area.