They're allowed to, as long as they claim it's for "quality control checks". Seriously, if the telco says it's for quality control checks, you cannot prove them wrong. Thus, they effectively have free license to listen to calls.
The second snippet only says they can't give the contents of the communication to anyone except the parties involved. The telecommunication company is implicitly an involved party (by actually transmitting the communication).
Dude, your grasping at straws. That statute he quoted seems pretty straightforward.
Anything you do on anyone else's property loses the expectation of privacy
I think you are completely mistaken. Hotels don't have the right to put cameras in their rooms and videotape the guests in the shower. My landlord doesn't have the right to come into my apartment whenever he wants without notice. And I'd still maintain that the phone company can't monitor my phone calls or packets just for the hell of it.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I like to pretend I am;)
Are there any real lawyers that would care to comment?
I hate:
1. DVD's that lock you out of fast forwarding through the crap (long intros, FBI warnings, previews, etc).
2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place).
3. Anti-competitive prices on CD's, and music in general. There have been findings of fact showing anti-competivie behavior, but nothing done to stop it.
4. CD's that try to install crap on my machine (yes, you Sony).
5. DVD's that all prevent me from being able to make fair use of their content (using short clips for example) without becoming a criminal.
6. Retarded EULA's.
Easy solution: Don't buy any of that stuff.
I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights.
Then we'll just get all of our clothing from Sweden like we currently do with all of our media;)
Let's see which spider does a better job at grepping through a thousand logfiles at 10 in the morning! If it's still the one on THC, I've got a big lifestyle change ahead of me...
The smart spider would write a script to automate that process and reward himself with some THC afterwards;)
It doesn't, strictly, cost them. However, they do need to buy more and more hardware to manage the bandwidth, and aren't able to oversell their network as much.
I'm confused. The comment that I replied to seemed to suggest that most of the other providers have their own back haul and are only using Bell's lines for the last mile. If I'm leasing a port on your DSLAM and my traffic heads from your DSLAM to my own connection/infrastructure then how does that cost you any extra money?
That doesn't make right their shaping, but I do see, having worked at an ISP, that it does cost money to provide service, in one way or another. When you're talking multi-gig speeds, you're not talking cheap hardware anymore. Go price out a 6500 with 10 gig conections (backbone/carrier class) and see what it costs to provide a big fat pipe in the backbone to move all that traffic coming in.
I worked at an ISP too and I know that hardware isn't cheap. But the extra costs of traffic going from the DSLAM to someone else's backhaul would seem to be minor. In any case, if cost was the only issue then why didn't Bell give the third-party providers the option of paying for upgrades? Why cripple their service instead of looking at it as an extra revenue stream -- unless you are worried about it stealing away your own customers?
Phone companies monitor their networks, and may monitor calls carried on their network - it is their network
They may incidentally monitor phone calls as a part of normal operations (the lineman plugs into your pair while troubleshooting a problem somewhere) but they don't have the right to just monitor your line for the hell of it.
and you give up your right to privacy (at least privacy from the phone company)
Says who?
I hate to side with telecoms on anything, but in this case I think I need to - as long as people sign up to use a service on company X's network, company X can do whatever they want with the packets that find their way on to the network
I disagree. We've given the telecom industry billions of dollars in tax breaks and preferential treatment (codified monopolies, rights of way, etc) to assist them in building their networks. We have the right to have some say in how they manage those networks. If they want a true free market system then let's bring it on -- I'd love to be able to negotiate with the telephone company for royalties on that pole they put on my property.
That's a misleading statement. Bell resells access to its DSLAM- the "last mile" of copper to users. Generally Bell does not provide a backbone internet connection to independent ISPs. Bell is, in essence, altering the traffic of users and ISPs because Bell is the middle-man, and they want to reduce the differentiation between their internet service (Sympatico) and competitors. As I understand it, Bell has not produced any evidence as to what it costs to have traffic crossing their DSLAM.
How would it cost them anything to have traffic crossing their DSLAM if they aren't responsible for the backhaul after that? Wouldn't that be akin to me charging money for people using my switched ethernet to reach an outside internet provider that they've paid money for?
Also, the traffic getting shaped is almost always pirating of some form (and yes, it has happened to me and it was while downloading fansubs, which are technically illegal)
Even if that's accurate, what business is it of Bell's what kind of data is contained within my packets? Do they also listen to my phone calls so they can degrade the quality of those that talk about activities that may be illegal?
I like how the spider on THC did better than the one on caffeine. We should outlaw caffeine and legalize pot.... clearly the caffeine is more dangerous;)
You are like the perfect example of more rhetoric than fact. Get some classes in basic economics, you can't just take away a gallon of gas and give someone $100 in fake money and say problem solved.
Where did I suggest giving people fake money?
God Damn, how many fucking times does central planning have to be proven to be completely wrong before you get it.
Where the hell did I advocate for central planning? I was talking about the Pickens plan. It calls for using natural gas (an American resource) to power the transportation sector (automobiles and trucks). The natural gas comes from existing supplies that are currently being used to produce electricity -- wind could take that role.
No where did I suggest that the Government should impose this as some sort of central planning. But we need to be making these investments now before oil becomes so expensive that it breaks the back of our economy. In the long term we need energy independence.
Probably not. Not much chance of getting energy at a lower price per unit out of any of this 'alterantive energy' stuff anytime soon. Otherise it wouldn't be 'alternative.'
It'll be cheaper than oil is once the financial crisis ends and China/India go back on their binge. Do you remember oil at $140/bbl? Do you really think it's not going back up to that (and more) in the near future?
It stands to reason that we need to reduce the amount of oil we use as much as possible for economic reasons -- never mind environmental ones. It's going to be too fucking expensive. The biggest consumer of oil is the transportation sector. You've got to replace it with something. That might as well be something from America.
Besides, the second something looks like it might get practical the usual suspects align against it. Hyrdo? NO! Geothermal? Already got protesters firing up over that. Wind? NIMBY! Kills birds, and so on.
Fuck them. And make that attitude a bi-partisan sentiment. Democrats can say fuck them because the NIMBY crowd will be preventing progress on carbon reduction. Republicans can say fuck them because we'll be improving our national security and creating a new market here at home. We have too much to lose to allow progress to be stopped by NIMBY and BANANA assholes.
Step One: DRILL EVERYTHING that looks like it has a reasonable chance of profitable production. We have to have energy in the short term and handing money to our enemies is insane. Short term we need petro fuels. Ten years from now cars being sold today are going to be on our roads and they will need fuel.
I agree, although I think you are dreaming if you think this is going to make a meaningful impact on the oil markets. We'll need to exploit other resources besides oil to get through this. Do you have a better option besides natural gas for the transportation sector?
Step Two: Execute the enviromentalists for treason if it takes it but blow out the obstacles to safe nuke plants. Build hundreds of pebble bed and other safe designs. Not in twenty to fifty years, in ten. Build like we were going to war. Or better analogy, build like we did when we were trying to beat the Russians to the moon. Ramp up the transmission system to handle the extra load. Do recycle the spent fuel, again shoot the bastards if they won't stop protesting. This IS a national security crisis and we need to start acting like it.
I totally agree. Any rational person should be supporting nuclear power. Even if we adopt wind to free up natural gas that's not going to solve the portion of our electricity that comes from coal. If we are serious about reducing carbon emissions you've got to replace that with something. Nuclear is safe and carbon neutral. We ought to be building the damn things everywhere.
Step Three: Now that electricity is cheap and falling in price the government must DO NOTHING. Don't attempt to pick the winners and losers, let the market figure out whether using the cheap power to make hydrogen is the right path or whether better batteries for plug in electrics are the way to go. Perhaps it is something we haven't thought of yet that will be the most practical in the end. Make electricity cheap enough and the invisible hand will point the way.
Well, if you want to see nuclear energy adopted the Government is going to have to do something to encourage a bigger investment in it. Right now it's a nightmare that scares away capital. That needs to be addressed. We need to bring carbon emissions down and long term that's only gonna happen with the atom.
Step Four: Now that we have at least a couple of hundred years before the Uranium supplies start running low we can move on to solving the problem once and for all by dumping R&D into fusion. When that runs out, hell that will just have to be somebody else's probem.
Yeah, that's what we need, more nationalization. Hey we are running the bad companies now.... might as well seize the successful ones while we're at it.
I reckon you could produce a truck with acceptable performance (but less range) very easily with this technology - especially if you only need short-haul capability.
I would question if it would scale that well, but regardless, what makes you think that you only need short-haul trucking fright? Do you think the logistical system of this country could deliver our goods if you restricted every truck on the road to short-haul service only? Which brings us back to the whole matter of powering the things.
Would you rather run them on a resource controlled by people who hate us or a resource produced right here at home?
Wind and natural gas are considered alternative energy sources
Natural gas is an 'alternative energy source'? Really? It's been alternatively providing energy for decades. The Wind market isn't clearly as mature either but there's no rocket science to wind technology. We know how to build it. We know it works. Building it out is going to create a whole new growth industry.
And we all know Putin will take over the world. Why fight it?
That's the thing about trains, see, that they tend to run along predetermined paths in a predictable manner. If only we could possibly think of a way to deliver power to a predefined location.
And that relates to a discussion about trucks, how exactly? I've been through Europe where they have those types of trains. Yet I still saw trucks (err, loories) on the roads. Should it just be that no matter efficient your rail system is that you'll still need some trucks for some transport and logistics?
Then it comes back to how are you going to power them? Do you have a feasible electric source that could displace diesel? Natural gas could. And we don't have to buy that from countries that hate us. Added bonus: It's cleaner.
You don't think being dependent upon foreign countries that don't like us for a critical resource without which our economy shuts down is a national security issue? What is a national security issue then?
And how will the USA redirecting $700B per year make a difference?
Well, right now that money is leaving our country. Keeping it within our country and using it to exploit American resources as opposed to foreign resources would create jobs and economic growth here at home as opposed to in Saudi Arabia.
Slashdot Mirror
you'd think it would be drop-easy for the prison to find and confiscate a cell phone
You've never been in prison have you? ;)
Imagine having nothing to do for 24 hours a day other than think of ways to smuggle shit past the guards. Think you might come up with a few ideas?
Yeah but does it have a shiny cover and is Steve Jobs going to tell me how badly I need one?
They're allowed to, as long as they claim it's for "quality control checks". Seriously, if the telco says it's for quality control checks, you cannot prove them wrong. Thus, they effectively have free license to listen to calls.
The second snippet only says they can't give the contents of the communication to anyone except the parties involved. The telecommunication company is implicitly an involved party (by actually transmitting the communication).
Dude, your grasping at straws. That statute he quoted seems pretty straightforward.
To which publisher of DRM-free feature films are you suggesting the grandparent switch?
Feature films aren't food or clothing. You can live a contented life without them.
If you really can't go without them then I guess you don't really care about DRM that much.
Anything you do on anyone else's property loses the expectation of privacy
I think you are completely mistaken. Hotels don't have the right to put cameras in their rooms and videotape the guests in the shower. My landlord doesn't have the right to come into my apartment whenever he wants without notice. And I'd still maintain that the phone company can't monitor my phone calls or packets just for the hell of it.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I like to pretend I am ;)
Are there any real lawyers that would care to comment?
I hate: 1. DVD's that lock you out of fast forwarding through the crap (long intros, FBI warnings, previews, etc). 2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place). 3. Anti-competitive prices on CD's, and music in general. There have been findings of fact showing anti-competivie behavior, but nothing done to stop it. 4. CD's that try to install crap on my machine (yes, you Sony). 5. DVD's that all prevent me from being able to make fair use of their content (using short clips for example) without becoming a criminal. 6. Retarded EULA's.
Easy solution: Don't buy any of that stuff.
I can't wait until my clothing starts coming with FBI warnings that the design is trademarked, pateneted and that I may only wear the shirt before Labor Day, and before 8 PM on weeknights.
Then we'll just get all of our clothing from Sweden like we currently do with all of our media ;)
Let's see which spider does a better job at grepping through a thousand logfiles at 10 in the morning! If it's still the one on THC, I've got a big lifestyle change ahead of me...
The smart spider would write a script to automate that process and reward himself with some THC afterwards ;)
It doesn't, strictly, cost them. However, they do need to buy more and more hardware to manage the bandwidth, and aren't able to oversell their network as much.
I'm confused. The comment that I replied to seemed to suggest that most of the other providers have their own back haul and are only using Bell's lines for the last mile. If I'm leasing a port on your DSLAM and my traffic heads from your DSLAM to my own connection/infrastructure then how does that cost you any extra money?
That doesn't make right their shaping, but I do see, having worked at an ISP, that it does cost money to provide service, in one way or another. When you're talking multi-gig speeds, you're not talking cheap hardware anymore. Go price out a 6500 with 10 gig conections (backbone/carrier class) and see what it costs to provide a big fat pipe in the backbone to move all that traffic coming in.
I worked at an ISP too and I know that hardware isn't cheap. But the extra costs of traffic going from the DSLAM to someone else's backhaul would seem to be minor. In any case, if cost was the only issue then why didn't Bell give the third-party providers the option of paying for upgrades? Why cripple their service instead of looking at it as an extra revenue stream -- unless you are worried about it stealing away your own customers?
Phone companies monitor their networks, and may monitor calls carried on their network - it is their network
They may incidentally monitor phone calls as a part of normal operations (the lineman plugs into your pair while troubleshooting a problem somewhere) but they don't have the right to just monitor your line for the hell of it.
and you give up your right to privacy (at least privacy from the phone company)
Says who?
I hate to side with telecoms on anything, but in this case I think I need to - as long as people sign up to use a service on company X's network, company X can do whatever they want with the packets that find their way on to the network
I disagree. We've given the telecom industry billions of dollars in tax breaks and preferential treatment (codified monopolies, rights of way, etc) to assist them in building their networks. We have the right to have some say in how they manage those networks. If they want a true free market system then let's bring it on -- I'd love to be able to negotiate with the telephone company for royalties on that pole they put on my property.
That's a misleading statement. Bell resells access to its DSLAM- the "last mile" of copper to users. Generally Bell does not provide a backbone internet connection to independent ISPs. Bell is, in essence, altering the traffic of users and ISPs because Bell is the middle-man, and they want to reduce the differentiation between their internet service (Sympatico) and competitors. As I understand it, Bell has not produced any evidence as to what it costs to have traffic crossing their DSLAM.
How would it cost them anything to have traffic crossing their DSLAM if they aren't responsible for the backhaul after that? Wouldn't that be akin to me charging money for people using my switched ethernet to reach an outside internet provider that they've paid money for?
Also, the traffic getting shaped is almost always pirating of some form (and yes, it has happened to me and it was while downloading fansubs, which are technically illegal)
Even if that's accurate, what business is it of Bell's what kind of data is contained within my packets? Do they also listen to my phone calls so they can degrade the quality of those that talk about activities that may be illegal?
Hahahahaha, nice :)
I wasn't old enough to vote for him.
Think about that before your next Jolt Cola.
I like how the spider on THC did better than the one on caffeine. We should outlaw caffeine and legalize pot.... clearly the caffeine is more dangerous ;)
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Nope. I'm not gonna hire some pansy who was too afraid to inhale ;)
most spiders simply inject the prey with enzymes that liquefy its innards, then suck the resulting liquid lunch
Ya know, it's images like that that remind me why I'm happy to be on the top of the food chain ;)
This is the most obscene thing I've ever read here.
Then I'm guessing you haven't been here very long ;)
To paraphrase: You must be new here ;)
Yeah. I actually have mod points today, but I can't find the option for "-1, pathetic bigotry".
Sexism != bigotry
You are like the perfect example of more rhetoric than fact. Get some classes in basic economics, you can't just take away a gallon of gas and give someone $100 in fake money and say problem solved.
Where did I suggest giving people fake money?
God Damn, how many fucking times does central planning have to be proven to be completely wrong before you get it.
Where the hell did I advocate for central planning? I was talking about the Pickens plan. It calls for using natural gas (an American resource) to power the transportation sector (automobiles and trucks). The natural gas comes from existing supplies that are currently being used to produce electricity -- wind could take that role.
No where did I suggest that the Government should impose this as some sort of central planning. But we need to be making these investments now before oil becomes so expensive that it breaks the back of our economy. In the long term we need energy independence.
Probably not. Not much chance of getting energy at a lower price per unit out of any of this 'alterantive energy' stuff anytime soon. Otherise it wouldn't be 'alternative.'
It'll be cheaper than oil is once the financial crisis ends and China/India go back on their binge. Do you remember oil at $140/bbl? Do you really think it's not going back up to that (and more) in the near future?
It stands to reason that we need to reduce the amount of oil we use as much as possible for economic reasons -- never mind environmental ones. It's going to be too fucking expensive. The biggest consumer of oil is the transportation sector. You've got to replace it with something. That might as well be something from America.
Besides, the second something looks like it might get practical the usual suspects align against it. Hyrdo? NO! Geothermal? Already got protesters firing up over that. Wind? NIMBY! Kills birds, and so on.
Fuck them. And make that attitude a bi-partisan sentiment. Democrats can say fuck them because the NIMBY crowd will be preventing progress on carbon reduction. Republicans can say fuck them because we'll be improving our national security and creating a new market here at home. We have too much to lose to allow progress to be stopped by NIMBY and BANANA assholes.
Step One: DRILL EVERYTHING that looks like it has a reasonable chance of profitable production. We have to have energy in the short term and handing money to our enemies is insane. Short term we need petro fuels. Ten years from now cars being sold today are going to be on our roads and they will need fuel.
I agree, although I think you are dreaming if you think this is going to make a meaningful impact on the oil markets. We'll need to exploit other resources besides oil to get through this. Do you have a better option besides natural gas for the transportation sector?
Step Two: Execute the enviromentalists for treason if it takes it but blow out the obstacles to safe nuke plants. Build hundreds of pebble bed and other safe designs. Not in twenty to fifty years, in ten. Build like we were going to war. Or better analogy, build like we did when we were trying to beat the Russians to the moon. Ramp up the transmission system to handle the extra load. Do recycle the spent fuel, again shoot the bastards if they won't stop protesting. This IS a national security crisis and we need to start acting like it.
I totally agree. Any rational person should be supporting nuclear power. Even if we adopt wind to free up natural gas that's not going to solve the portion of our electricity that comes from coal. If we are serious about reducing carbon emissions you've got to replace that with something. Nuclear is safe and carbon neutral. We ought to be building the damn things everywhere.
Step Three: Now that electricity is cheap and falling in price the government must DO NOTHING. Don't attempt to pick the winners and losers, let the market figure out whether using the cheap power to make hydrogen is the right path or whether better batteries for plug in electrics are the way to go. Perhaps it is something we haven't thought of yet that will be the most practical in the end. Make electricity cheap enough and the invisible hand will point the way.
Well, if you want to see nuclear energy adopted the Government is going to have to do something to encourage a bigger investment in it. Right now it's a nightmare that scares away capital. That needs to be addressed. We need to bring carbon emissions down and long term that's only gonna happen with the atom.
Step Four: Now that we have at least a couple of hundred years before the Uranium supplies start running low we can move on to solving the problem once and for all by dumping R&D into fusion. When that runs out, hell that will just have to be somebody else's probem.
Yeah, that's what we need, more nationalization. Hey we are running the bad companies now.... might as well seize the successful ones while we're at it.
What could possibly go wrong.....
I reckon you could produce a truck with acceptable performance (but less range) very easily with this technology - especially if you only need short-haul capability.
I would question if it would scale that well, but regardless, what makes you think that you only need short-haul trucking fright? Do you think the logistical system of this country could deliver our goods if you restricted every truck on the road to short-haul service only? Which brings us back to the whole matter of powering the things.
Would you rather run them on a resource controlled by people who hate us or a resource produced right here at home?
Wind and natural gas are considered alternative energy sources
Natural gas is an 'alternative energy source'? Really? It's been alternatively providing energy for decades. The Wind market isn't clearly as mature either but there's no rocket science to wind technology. We know how to build it. We know it works. Building it out is going to create a whole new growth industry.
And we all know Putin will take over the world. Why fight it?
Now your just being an idiot.
That's the thing about trains, see, that they tend to run along predetermined paths in a predictable manner. If only we could possibly think of a way to deliver power to a predefined location.
And that relates to a discussion about trucks, how exactly? I've been through Europe where they have those types of trains. Yet I still saw trucks (err, loories) on the roads. Should it just be that no matter efficient your rail system is that you'll still need some trucks for some transport and logistics?
Then it comes back to how are you going to power them? Do you have a feasible electric source that could displace diesel? Natural gas could. And we don't have to buy that from countries that hate us. Added bonus: It's cleaner.
How exactly is it a national security issue?
You don't think being dependent upon foreign countries that don't like us for a critical resource without which our economy shuts down is a national security issue? What is a national security issue then?
And how will the USA redirecting $700B per year make a difference?
Well, right now that money is leaving our country. Keeping it within our country and using it to exploit American resources as opposed to foreign resources would create jobs and economic growth here at home as opposed to in Saudi Arabia.