n the very case we are discussing it was never proved by the RIAA conclusively that the defendant was the one who actually downloaded any music. All they had were an IP address and the MAC address of her cable modem, and it was enough to nail her.
Actually they had a little bit more then that. The screen name that she was using on Kazaa was the same screen name that she was using for her Hotmail account and MySpace (or some other such site?) as well.
I don't think a mere IP match would fly even in civil court with the lowered burden of proof. It certainly wouldn't fly in criminal court. Forget the unsecured wi-fi. Just start naming off the various worms, botnets and root kits for Windows. Instant made-to-order reasonable doubt. Unless of course you are stupid enough to use the same screen name to pirate music as you use on your live journal/myspace/slashdot/g-mail/blah/blah account.....
A company that size doesn't have an acceptable use policy for its computer resources, one that's part of the employee handbook?
Sure, we have a AUP. That doesn't mean that we log every single packet that passes through our router though.
what about hate speech - have any bigots working there that post their opinions on the Web from work
Last time I checked, hate speech, as disgusting as I find it to be, is still protected speech in the United States. If I use my company resources to post a GNAA troll on Slashdot, I fail to see how that could get the company sued. Now if I used to them to broadcast an e-mail to the whole agency, along the lines of "I hate that nigger in accounting!" then that's a whole other animal.....
Suck my cock, you fucking troll. Mighty big of you to pass judgment on me when you have no idea what forced me into bankruptcy to begin with. Ever stop to think that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt? Yes, I learned my lesson -- next time I won't get cancer while between jobs with no medical insurance.
Two years ago I was hopelessly in debt. Debt that would take me 20 years to repay. Now I have almost $4,000 in my 401k, $3,000 in savings/short term investments. The car that you are passing judgment on me for is a fucking Suzuki Reno. Yeah, I'm living the high life with my $10,000 hatchback.
Bankruptcy is supposed to be a fresh start for the honest debtor that is so deeply in debt that it will take a literal lifetime to pay it off. My BK attorney had a general rule of thumb: If you owe 75% of your annual income in debt (not counting your mortgage) then you'll be paying interest for the rest of your life. By the time my medical bills were done with, I owed roughly 300% of my income in debts.
So, I'll say it again. Suck my cock you fucking judgemental troll. I deserve to get modded down to oblivion for snapping like this -- but you deserve to have the shit beat out of you by the Narn Bat Squad.
You'll get no disagreement from me. And she basically has no choice other then bankruptcy.
I was just going offtopic and pointing out a basic fact: Retirement accounts are protected assets. RIAA will be lucky if they ever see a dime of this judgment, because the debts this woman incurred to her own lawyers are going to rank ahead of the RIAA judgment in any bankruptcy that she may choose to file.
Your comparisons are absurd. This woman is not Rosa Parks or a runaway slave or even a school teacher trying to uphold good science.
Excuse me, Mr. AC, but where did I compare this woman to Rosa Parks?
I was responding to this post, wherein the poster railed against the concept of Jury Nullification. I pointed out several cases where any sane person would have voted for an acquittal, even though the people in question "broke the law". I also pointed out my belief that the jury box is our second to last line of defense against an abusive Government. The last line of defense being the ammo box.
If you do it and you get caught, you pay the consequences. Just like anything else that's illegal.
So, setting aside whatever you or I think about copyrighted music (and I'd agree that file sharers are not in the same category as Rosa Parks), you think that breaking any law means you need to "pay the consequences", even if that law is unjust?
I'm not so sure that I would have voted for an acquittal in this case, had I been on the jury, but there is no way in hell that I would have voted for that massive of a fine. This woman is now facing a judgment higher then what I would receive if I was convicted of a DWI. You tell me which is the bigger threat to our fellow citizens.
Also because, for sure, their wireless range extends beyond the fences around their homes inside their gated communities.
There's a fancy technology that can get around that. It's called a high-gain antenna.
Back when I worked for a WISP I managed to associate, entirely by accident (it was in my saved networks) to my wussy little Linksys WAP11 from over a mile away using a directional antenna. I'm guessing that if I meant to do it on purpose and got a more powerful antenna I could probably manage it from a few miles. And all of this with the Linksys using the stock di-pole antennas.
In the absence of a high-powered transmitter it all comes down to the gain on the receiving antenna. How do you think that base station manages to pick up your one watt cell phone from 18 miles away? Yes, 18 miles is an extreme example, but I've managed it before with a stock GSM phone, on T-Mobile's 1900mhz band (hence, no more then 1 watt of power on my end), from a hilltop with a clear line of sight to the cell tower. Hell, how do you think we can communicate with the Voyager probes that are billions of miles away?
The total, close to $300k, is more than most under-40 people have in their retirement accounts
And even if she had it, those accounts are exempt from garnishment or seizure. She could have ten million dollars in her 401k and file bankruptcy and RIAA wouldn't be able to touch a penny of that money.
The prosecution was able to prove that in an attempt to evade prosecution, she had replaced her hard drive shortly after receiving a warning notice from the RIAA, not before as she claimed.
So, the lesson we should take away from this is to be a little bit smarter when we "get rid of" our hard drive?
Personally, I probably would have/dev/urandom'ed the thing a few times, dropped it on the ground a few times and sent it off to Seagate for warranty replacement. Hard Drives die all the time, and sending one in for warranty service probably looks a lot less suspicious then just "replacing" it after you get a legal notice.
Yes. Copyright is a strict liability offense, like speeding, or statutory rape. If you don't realize you infringe, didn't mean to infringe, and could not have possibly done anything reasonable that would have prevented you from infringing or resulted in your knowing you'd infringe, it doesn't matter -- you still infringed.
Actually, the statutory rape law in my state has an affirmative defense if the defendant had a good faith reason to believe that the person was legal.
That is, if you fuck a 16 year old (17 is age of consent in NY) after you witnessed her at the bar ordering drinks, you have an affirmative defense to any prosecution of statutory rape. Any halfway reasonable person would assume she is 21 in that scenario.
And even though the photo was registered with the copyright office, not a single lawyer was willing to speak with him. He has contacted literally dozens of lawyers, none of whom are willing to take the case on without him putting a heck of a lot of money up front.
File pro se. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass and you'll spend hours on the internet or in the law library doing the required research, but I'll bet your ass that they come back with a higher offer then $500 the minute that summons arrives on their front door step. It's going to cost them more then $500 to have one of their lawyers even LOOK at the summons, let alone respond to it, file the required motions and show up in court. They'll drag it out for awhile trying to get your friend to cave, but you can bet your ass they will come back with a better offer before it even gets close to a courtroom.
And once he does all the legwork and has a pretty decent case it will be a lot easier to get a lawyer to take it on contingency if he decides to reject their settlement offers and stick it to them.
I know I'm feeling like grabbing a couple of tunes just for spite.
I'm feeling like sharing a bunch of them from the office. When the subpoena arrives, I'll just tell them the truth. All of our PCs are behind NAT and we don't log TCP connections. So good luck proving which one of our 300 employees was sharing them on the personal computers that we allow them to plug into our internet connection. Sorry, wish I could help you more, I really do.
Ch 7, IIRC, the one where you don't have a re-payment plan, because no way is she going to pay TWO-HUNDRED TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS back in 20 years, let alone the ~5 a Ch 13 is for.
You don't have to be able to pay back 100% of the debt in 5 yrs to be forced into a Ch 13. A Ch 13 basically takes most of your disposable income (income after allowed expenses) and gives it to your creditors for 5 years. What they get is what they get. If they get 1% then that's what they get. If they get 100% in 5 yrs or less then that's what they get.
That said, she won't be forced into a Ch 13 unless she makes above the median income for her state AND has over $100 of disposable income per month, and even at that, there are a bunch of priority debts (legal fees, secured loans like mortgages or cars, child support, student loans, etc) that will be first in line. It's likely, that even in a Ch 13 that RIAA never sees a dime.
Of course the point of these suits isn't to collect money. It's to scare people away from file sharing. Is it working? Probably not. Will they stop trying? Doubt it.
The RIAA is owed over 83 TRILLION DOLLARS! Just be glad that they didn't get the full $150,000 per song, or they would be owed 1.35 QUADRILLION DOLLARS!
Yes, but think of the free miles we can get if we put that on plastic.....
Share the songs with your friends (Complaining that it's hard to share songs with your friends is the whole purpose of DRM. If you'd respect copyright and let your friends buy their own MP3's, we wouldn't need DRM. You're not legally allowed to redistribute copyrighted songs without authorization from the copyright holder - that goes way beyond fair use imho)
Define sharing. Because if you read the license agreements, it's probably a violation for me to charge admission to a party at my house and play RIAA music at the same time. Taken to the extreme, if some of the DRM advocates had their way, it would be illegal to buy a movie or a song and then allow a friend who hadn't paid for it to be in the room and watching it at the same time as you.
I wonder if Da Vinci worried about the copyrights when he was painting the Mona Lisa? Anybody remember the theory that the works that artists create belong to all of us as a shared part of our culture? Yes, they should be able to make a living, but this theory that the Government needs to step in and ensure continued royalty payments to some company that didn't even come up with the work in the first place (the most they did was market it) long after the artist has died is absolutely disgusting.
Maybe this is why in Star Trek all you ever see people listen to is classical music or jazz. The RIAA is probably still around, "protecting" their copyrights for any song composed after 1960;)
In case you didn't know, if she uploaded the song to 3 people, and they each uploaded it to 3 people, blah blah blah you get the picture. Most of the time
So if I shoplift a pack of gum from Wally World and later give a friend of mine a piece, should I be charged with "distributing stolen property" or some such and tossed in prison for a decade or so?
Yeah, it's probably a crappy analogy, but you get the idea.....
Except this case was not ill-handled. The law was interpreted correctly, applied correctly, and created apparently correctly. The case was judged in a fair and equitable manner. Just because you don't like it is irrelevant. THIS is why courts and good lawyers hate juries.
Somebody else in this discussion had a valid point. You are sitting on the jury for Rosa Parks. Technically she broke the law. Do you find her guilty? Go back further. You are sitting on the jury for a runaway slave. Technically he also broke the law. What if you were on the jury for the Scopes Trial?
Hmm, jury nullification is starting to sound better now, isn't it?
There is a good reason why the court system tosses our jurors who know about and are likely to practice jury nullification- because they're loose cannons that pervert the mechanisms of the courts.
There is also a good reason why our constitution requires a trial by a jury of your peers. If the law you are accused of breaking is fundamentally unjust then do you really deserve to be punished for breaking it? Are you telling me that if you were sitting on the jury for any of the above examples you'd allow a conviction to happen? Or how about some modern examples? Would you send a terminally ill person with cancer to prison for possessing medical marijuana?
Short of armed insurrection, the jury system is our last line of defense against Government abuses of power. No wonder the courts and "good lawyers" (to quote you) hate it.
I only wish I hadn't already posted here and could mod you up.
I will probably never get on a jury. Because I would be all to willing to advocate jury nullification if the person was accused of a victimless crime (marijuana possession?) or something as stupid as copyright infringement.
Too bad, our fellow citizens are too disillusioned to even bother to vote and most of them look at jury duty as something to be avoided. I'm pretty fucking disillusioned with my Government lately, but I'm still voting and I still answer my jury questioners. Never gotten called though:(
Has there been a single case against somebody that merely downloaded something? How would they even prove you did, unless they were the ones sharing the files in the first place?
I get all of my pirated music off IRC Fserves. Yeah, it's not as sexy or as easy as eMule/Kazaa/etc, but I can join a channel with my IP address information hidden (most networks let you do this) and download songs. Unless RIAA is running the fserves, I think I'm pretty safe. And if they are the ones running them, then they are going to have to prove that it was me that downloaded the songs. Open wi-fi networks are your friend.
Don't automatically assume that a civil judgment will be discharged in bankruptcy
Actually, it will be automatically discharged, unless RIAA contests it in adversarial proceeding. If they wanted to be real pricks they could probably drag it out for some time. This is nothing new, Scientology has done it to a bunch of their critics.
That said, bankruptcy judges typically take a rather dim view of creditors that try to do this -- the whole point to bankruptcy is to give the honest person a fresh start (there aren't supposed to be debtor's prisons in the US). Besides which, the whole point of the RIAA suits isn't to collect money. It's to get the headline of "Jury awards $220,000 to RIAA for file sharing". There is exactly zero chance that they will ever collect any sizable sum of this money, bankruptcy or not. Take a look at OJ Simpson. How long has he dodged that judgment?
Filing for bankruptcy has become more difficult
That's a myth. It's become more expensive for those filers that retain an attorney, because of the new requirements imposed under BAPCPA. There's also the added cost of the required credit courses and consoling, but this is typically not a huge expense.
and the consequences more far-reaching
Another myth. The consequences of filing BK didn't change at all under the new laws. The only 'consequence' that changed is that you have to wait 8 years before you can file again, vs 6 years under the old laws. The biggest consequence of filing bankruptcy is that it goes on your credit report for 10 years. It's a myth that you won't be able to obtain credit after a BK. I'm two years from my Ch 7 and I have a car loan at 5.5% and $5,900 worth of credit limits. I could probably obtain more if I wanted to (why bother?)
It is not an easy way out.
It is what it always has been -- a last ditch safety net for those with no hope of ever repaying their debts. Unless this woman makes a huge amount of income and can realistically pay this debt back in the next five years, this sounds like the perfect reason to file bankruptcy to me. With few exceptions (student loans, taxes, child support) we don't allow debtors prisons/debt slavery in the United States.
And yes, I've been through all of this. I filed Chapter 7 under the old laws. I still maintain a relationship with the attorney that did my case. I wound up becoming his computer consultant. He would be the first to tell you that not too much changed under the new laws. 95% of his clients are so deeply in debt that they qualify for a Ch 7 even after the "means test" imposed by BAPCPA. The image of scores of deadbeat debtors with the money to repay their debts abusing the bankruptcy system was nothing more then propaganda put out by the credit industry.
Unfortunately, all major-party politicians (read: the only ones who are ever going to win until we do away with this damned two-party system) are the corporations' bitches.
Explain to me how we have a "damned two-party system" and what exactly is stopping a third-party from winning an election? There is no law that I'm aware of that states the United States has a two party system. The people bitching about our "two-party system" are missing the point.
The "two-party system" isn't the problem. The problem is that we as a people have allowed ourselves to be overly influenced by the media to such an extent that we buy it hook-line and sinker when they say that somebody can't win an election. We have allowed ourselves to invest so much of our voting decision in the opinions of the media that nobody has a realistic shot of winning a Federal election without massive amounts of capital to use on advertising. That's our fault -- not the fault of the Democrats or Republicans.
I'd make the argument that Ross Perot (a third-party candidate) in 1992 had a legitimate shot. Certainly a bigger shot then Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, both of whom happen to be members of the "two-party system". What did Perot have that they lack? Money and the willingness to spend it. Plain and simple.
Start convincing people to vote for your favorite third-party candidates in local and state elections. Build the infrastructure from the ground up instead of sitting on/. and bemoaning the "two-party system" as the source of our problems. If you don't build the third-parties from the ground up then short of a rich billionaire willing to spend his or her own money to get elected they will never have a shot. And that's not the fault of the Democrats or the Republicans.
I also hope they are sending you a webcam when you buy a copy/license of the game
Dude, they didn't say it had to be YOUR webcam. They want a webcam of some chicks? That should be easy enough to find.... just lemme do a Google search here and throw some stuff on my credit card. I wonder if they will reimburse me for all the iBill charges?;)
I just moved to a smaller town and have had problems with my T-mobile cellphone not getting reception in certain places. "Just switch to Cingular" people tell me, and I smile and keep it to myself, knowing I'll never willingly put my communication in the hands of such a company.
I love T-Mobile. It works in about 75-80% of the places that I go. My old Verizon phone worked in about 95% of them. Not a huge loss. Plus, with the wi-fi calling service they have now, you really have no reason to be out of coverage at any place you go to on a regular basis. I put my phone on the network at the office (no signal) and at a bunch of my friends houses with no coverage.
I also loved how T-Mobile was the first to come out and say they declined to take part in the NSA call database. A lot of the big carriers (I'm looking at you Verizon) came back with "no comment", and then later denied taking part in it -- after the Executive issued a finding saying they were engaged in national security activities (which allows them to lie legally under SEC regulations). Fucking bastards.
My parents have been using AT&T and SBC (not like the distinction matters now) for phone and internet for years. I've been trying to get them to switch to FIOS and a VoIP solution
Careful there. Verizon isn't much better then AT&T, IMHO. On the wireless side I would argue that they are actually worse. At least with AT&T you have GSM and can use unbranded and uncrippled phones. I will never do business with Verizon ever again after being screwed over by Verizon Wireless, having them jack my price for DSL and nickel-and-diming me to death with fees and rate hikes on my POTS service. I've completely cut the cord to them and I don't regret it for one second.
maybe Verizon's customer service is a little shittier (I doubt it compared to AT&T) but at this point I'm willing to sacrifice a little quality and support of a service in order to deal with a company that won't sell and filter my information at the whim of whoever wants to pay for (MPAA) or incentivise (Baby bell merger, NSA).
Again, be careful there. Verizon probably went right along with the whole NSA calls database. They didn't initially deny taking part in it. I have zero respect and zero trust for Verizon. And I can live quite nicely without dealing with their arrogant sales people and CSRs, whose attitude when you have a problem basically boils down to "What are you gonna do, leave? It's the network!"
You seriously think you can do better ( worse) than the PRC and still make a profit? Good fucking luck.
I'm sure the grunts at AT&T realize this. Hell, the executives might even realize it. But there's nothing to stop them from trying and they probably figure that they can make a shitload of money off RIAA/MPAA by trying.
Look at MediaDefender and similar outfits? Have they stopped piracy? Have they even slowed it down? But they are still making hobgobs of money.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually they had a little bit more then that. The screen name that she was using on Kazaa was the same screen name that she was using for her Hotmail account and MySpace (or some other such site?) as well.
I don't think a mere IP match would fly even in civil court with the lowered burden of proof. It certainly wouldn't fly in criminal court. Forget the unsecured wi-fi. Just start naming off the various worms, botnets and root kits for Windows. Instant made-to-order reasonable doubt. Unless of course you are stupid enough to use the same screen name to pirate music as you use on your live journal/myspace/slashdot/g-mail/blah/blah account.....
Sure, we have a AUP. That doesn't mean that we log every single packet that passes through our router though.
what about hate speech - have any bigots working there that post their opinions on the Web from workLast time I checked, hate speech, as disgusting as I find it to be, is still protected speech in the United States. If I use my company resources to post a GNAA troll on Slashdot, I fail to see how that could get the company sued. Now if I used to them to broadcast an e-mail to the whole agency, along the lines of "I hate that nigger in accounting!" then that's a whole other animal.....
Suck my cock, you fucking troll. Mighty big of you to pass judgment on me when you have no idea what forced me into bankruptcy to begin with. Ever stop to think that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt? Yes, I learned my lesson -- next time I won't get cancer while between jobs with no medical insurance.
Two years ago I was hopelessly in debt. Debt that would take me 20 years to repay. Now I have almost $4,000 in my 401k, $3,000 in savings/short term investments. The car that you are passing judgment on me for is a fucking Suzuki Reno. Yeah, I'm living the high life with my $10,000 hatchback.
Bankruptcy is supposed to be a fresh start for the honest debtor that is so deeply in debt that it will take a literal lifetime to pay it off. My BK attorney had a general rule of thumb: If you owe 75% of your annual income in debt (not counting your mortgage) then you'll be paying interest for the rest of your life. By the time my medical bills were done with, I owed roughly 300% of my income in debts.
So, I'll say it again. Suck my cock you fucking judgemental troll. I deserve to get modded down to oblivion for snapping like this -- but you deserve to have the shit beat out of you by the Narn Bat Squad.
You'll get no disagreement from me. And she basically has no choice other then bankruptcy.
I was just going offtopic and pointing out a basic fact: Retirement accounts are protected assets. RIAA will be lucky if they ever see a dime of this judgment, because the debts this woman incurred to her own lawyers are going to rank ahead of the RIAA judgment in any bankruptcy that she may choose to file.
Excuse me, Mr. AC, but where did I compare this woman to Rosa Parks?
I was responding to this post, wherein the poster railed against the concept of Jury Nullification. I pointed out several cases where any sane person would have voted for an acquittal, even though the people in question "broke the law". I also pointed out my belief that the jury box is our second to last line of defense against an abusive Government. The last line of defense being the ammo box.
If you do it and you get caught, you pay the consequences. Just like anything else that's illegal.So, setting aside whatever you or I think about copyrighted music (and I'd agree that file sharers are not in the same category as Rosa Parks), you think that breaking any law means you need to "pay the consequences", even if that law is unjust?
I'm not so sure that I would have voted for an acquittal in this case, had I been on the jury, but there is no way in hell that I would have voted for that massive of a fine. This woman is now facing a judgment higher then what I would receive if I was convicted of a DWI. You tell me which is the bigger threat to our fellow citizens.
There's a fancy technology that can get around that. It's called a high-gain antenna.
Back when I worked for a WISP I managed to associate, entirely by accident (it was in my saved networks) to my wussy little Linksys WAP11 from over a mile away using a directional antenna. I'm guessing that if I meant to do it on purpose and got a more powerful antenna I could probably manage it from a few miles. And all of this with the Linksys using the stock di-pole antennas.
In the absence of a high-powered transmitter it all comes down to the gain on the receiving antenna. How do you think that base station manages to pick up your one watt cell phone from 18 miles away? Yes, 18 miles is an extreme example, but I've managed it before with a stock GSM phone, on T-Mobile's 1900mhz band (hence, no more then 1 watt of power on my end), from a hilltop with a clear line of sight to the cell tower. Hell, how do you think we can communicate with the Voyager probes that are billions of miles away?
And even if she had it, those accounts are exempt from garnishment or seizure. She could have ten million dollars in her 401k and file bankruptcy and RIAA wouldn't be able to touch a penny of that money.
IRAs and 401ks are your friend people.
So, the lesson we should take away from this is to be a little bit smarter when we "get rid of" our hard drive?
Personally, I probably would have /dev/urandom'ed the thing a few times, dropped it on the ground a few times and sent it off to Seagate for warranty replacement. Hard Drives die all the time, and sending one in for warranty service probably looks a lot less suspicious then just "replacing" it after you get a legal notice.
Actually, the statutory rape law in my state has an affirmative defense if the defendant had a good faith reason to believe that the person was legal.
That is, if you fuck a 16 year old (17 is age of consent in NY) after you witnessed her at the bar ordering drinks, you have an affirmative defense to any prosecution of statutory rape. Any halfway reasonable person would assume she is 21 in that scenario.
File pro se. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass and you'll spend hours on the internet or in the law library doing the required research, but I'll bet your ass that they come back with a higher offer then $500 the minute that summons arrives on their front door step. It's going to cost them more then $500 to have one of their lawyers even LOOK at the summons, let alone respond to it, file the required motions and show up in court. They'll drag it out for awhile trying to get your friend to cave, but you can bet your ass they will come back with a better offer before it even gets close to a courtroom.
And once he does all the legwork and has a pretty decent case it will be a lot easier to get a lawyer to take it on contingency if he decides to reject their settlement offers and stick it to them.
I'm feeling like sharing a bunch of them from the office. When the subpoena arrives, I'll just tell them the truth. All of our PCs are behind NAT and we don't log TCP connections. So good luck proving which one of our 300 employees was sharing them on the personal computers that we allow them to plug into our internet connection. Sorry, wish I could help you more, I really do.
You don't have to be able to pay back 100% of the debt in 5 yrs to be forced into a Ch 13. A Ch 13 basically takes most of your disposable income (income after allowed expenses) and gives it to your creditors for 5 years. What they get is what they get. If they get 1% then that's what they get. If they get 100% in 5 yrs or less then that's what they get.
That said, she won't be forced into a Ch 13 unless she makes above the median income for her state AND has over $100 of disposable income per month, and even at that, there are a bunch of priority debts (legal fees, secured loans like mortgages or cars, child support, student loans, etc) that will be first in line. It's likely, that even in a Ch 13 that RIAA never sees a dime.
Of course the point of these suits isn't to collect money. It's to scare people away from file sharing. Is it working? Probably not. Will they stop trying? Doubt it.
Yes, but think of the free miles we can get if we put that on plastic.....
Define sharing. Because if you read the license agreements, it's probably a violation for me to charge admission to a party at my house and play RIAA music at the same time. Taken to the extreme, if some of the DRM advocates had their way, it would be illegal to buy a movie or a song and then allow a friend who hadn't paid for it to be in the room and watching it at the same time as you.
I wonder if Da Vinci worried about the copyrights when he was painting the Mona Lisa? Anybody remember the theory that the works that artists create belong to all of us as a shared part of our culture? Yes, they should be able to make a living, but this theory that the Government needs to step in and ensure continued royalty payments to some company that didn't even come up with the work in the first place (the most they did was market it) long after the artist has died is absolutely disgusting.
Maybe this is why in Star Trek all you ever see people listen to is classical music or jazz. The RIAA is probably still around, "protecting" their copyrights for any song composed after 1960 ;)
How do I send you my mailing address? ;)
So if I shoplift a pack of gum from Wally World and later give a friend of mine a piece, should I be charged with "distributing stolen property" or some such and tossed in prison for a decade or so?
Yeah, it's probably a crappy analogy, but you get the idea.....
Somebody else in this discussion had a valid point. You are sitting on the jury for Rosa Parks. Technically she broke the law. Do you find her guilty? Go back further. You are sitting on the jury for a runaway slave. Technically he also broke the law. What if you were on the jury for the Scopes Trial?
Hmm, jury nullification is starting to sound better now, isn't it?
There is a good reason why the court system tosses our jurors who know about and are likely to practice jury nullification- because they're loose cannons that pervert the mechanisms of the courts.There is also a good reason why our constitution requires a trial by a jury of your peers. If the law you are accused of breaking is fundamentally unjust then do you really deserve to be punished for breaking it? Are you telling me that if you were sitting on the jury for any of the above examples you'd allow a conviction to happen? Or how about some modern examples? Would you send a terminally ill person with cancer to prison for possessing medical marijuana?
Short of armed insurrection, the jury system is our last line of defense against Government abuses of power. No wonder the courts and "good lawyers" (to quote you) hate it.
I only wish I hadn't already posted here and could mod you up.
I will probably never get on a jury. Because I would be all to willing to advocate jury nullification if the person was accused of a victimless crime (marijuana possession?) or something as stupid as copyright infringement.
Too bad, our fellow citizens are too disillusioned to even bother to vote and most of them look at jury duty as something to be avoided. I'm pretty fucking disillusioned with my Government lately, but I'm still voting and I still answer my jury questioners. Never gotten called though :(
Has there been a single case against somebody that merely downloaded something? How would they even prove you did, unless they were the ones sharing the files in the first place?
I get all of my pirated music off IRC Fserves. Yeah, it's not as sexy or as easy as eMule/Kazaa/etc, but I can join a channel with my IP address information hidden (most networks let you do this) and download songs. Unless RIAA is running the fserves, I think I'm pretty safe. And if they are the ones running them, then they are going to have to prove that it was me that downloaded the songs. Open wi-fi networks are your friend.
Actually, it will be automatically discharged, unless RIAA contests it in adversarial proceeding. If they wanted to be real pricks they could probably drag it out for some time. This is nothing new, Scientology has done it to a bunch of their critics.
That said, bankruptcy judges typically take a rather dim view of creditors that try to do this -- the whole point to bankruptcy is to give the honest person a fresh start (there aren't supposed to be debtor's prisons in the US). Besides which, the whole point of the RIAA suits isn't to collect money. It's to get the headline of "Jury awards $220,000 to RIAA for file sharing". There is exactly zero chance that they will ever collect any sizable sum of this money, bankruptcy or not. Take a look at OJ Simpson. How long has he dodged that judgment?
Filing for bankruptcy has become more difficultThat's a myth. It's become more expensive for those filers that retain an attorney, because of the new requirements imposed under BAPCPA. There's also the added cost of the required credit courses and consoling, but this is typically not a huge expense.
and the consequences more far-reachingAnother myth. The consequences of filing BK didn't change at all under the new laws. The only 'consequence' that changed is that you have to wait 8 years before you can file again, vs 6 years under the old laws. The biggest consequence of filing bankruptcy is that it goes on your credit report for 10 years. It's a myth that you won't be able to obtain credit after a BK. I'm two years from my Ch 7 and I have a car loan at 5.5% and $5,900 worth of credit limits. I could probably obtain more if I wanted to (why bother?)
It is not an easy way out.It is what it always has been -- a last ditch safety net for those with no hope of ever repaying their debts. Unless this woman makes a huge amount of income and can realistically pay this debt back in the next five years, this sounds like the perfect reason to file bankruptcy to me. With few exceptions (student loans, taxes, child support) we don't allow debtors prisons/debt slavery in the United States.
And yes, I've been through all of this. I filed Chapter 7 under the old laws. I still maintain a relationship with the attorney that did my case. I wound up becoming his computer consultant. He would be the first to tell you that not too much changed under the new laws. 95% of his clients are so deeply in debt that they qualify for a Ch 7 even after the "means test" imposed by BAPCPA. The image of scores of deadbeat debtors with the money to repay their debts abusing the bankruptcy system was nothing more then propaganda put out by the credit industry.
Explain to me how we have a "damned two-party system" and what exactly is stopping a third-party from winning an election? There is no law that I'm aware of that states the United States has a two party system. The people bitching about our "two-party system" are missing the point.
The "two-party system" isn't the problem. The problem is that we as a people have allowed ourselves to be overly influenced by the media to such an extent that we buy it hook-line and sinker when they say that somebody can't win an election. We have allowed ourselves to invest so much of our voting decision in the opinions of the media that nobody has a realistic shot of winning a Federal election without massive amounts of capital to use on advertising. That's our fault -- not the fault of the Democrats or Republicans.
I'd make the argument that Ross Perot (a third-party candidate) in 1992 had a legitimate shot. Certainly a bigger shot then Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, both of whom happen to be members of the "two-party system". What did Perot have that they lack? Money and the willingness to spend it. Plain and simple.
Start convincing people to vote for your favorite third-party candidates in local and state elections. Build the infrastructure from the ground up instead of sitting on /. and bemoaning the "two-party system" as the source of our problems. If you don't build the third-parties from the ground up then short of a rich billionaire willing to spend his or her own money to get elected they will never have a shot. And that's not the fault of the Democrats or the Republicans.
Dude, they didn't say it had to be YOUR webcam. They want a webcam of some chicks? That should be easy enough to find.... just lemme do a Google search here and throw some stuff on my credit card. I wonder if they will reimburse me for all the iBill charges? ;)
I love T-Mobile. It works in about 75-80% of the places that I go. My old Verizon phone worked in about 95% of them. Not a huge loss. Plus, with the wi-fi calling service they have now, you really have no reason to be out of coverage at any place you go to on a regular basis. I put my phone on the network at the office (no signal) and at a bunch of my friends houses with no coverage.
I also loved how T-Mobile was the first to come out and say they declined to take part in the NSA call database. A lot of the big carriers (I'm looking at you Verizon) came back with "no comment", and then later denied taking part in it -- after the Executive issued a finding saying they were engaged in national security activities (which allows them to lie legally under SEC regulations). Fucking bastards.
My parents have been using AT&T and SBC (not like the distinction matters now) for phone and internet for years. I've been trying to get them to switch to FIOS and a VoIP solutionCareful there. Verizon isn't much better then AT&T, IMHO. On the wireless side I would argue that they are actually worse. At least with AT&T you have GSM and can use unbranded and uncrippled phones. I will never do business with Verizon ever again after being screwed over by Verizon Wireless, having them jack my price for DSL and nickel-and-diming me to death with fees and rate hikes on my POTS service. I've completely cut the cord to them and I don't regret it for one second.
maybe Verizon's customer service is a little shittier (I doubt it compared to AT&T) but at this point I'm willing to sacrifice a little quality and support of a service in order to deal with a company that won't sell and filter my information at the whim of whoever wants to pay for (MPAA) or incentivise (Baby bell merger, NSA).Again, be careful there. Verizon probably went right along with the whole NSA calls database. They didn't initially deny taking part in it. I have zero respect and zero trust for Verizon. And I can live quite nicely without dealing with their arrogant sales people and CSRs, whose attitude when you have a problem basically boils down to "What are you gonna do, leave? It's the network!"
I'm sure the grunts at AT&T realize this. Hell, the executives might even realize it. But there's nothing to stop them from trying and they probably figure that they can make a shitload of money off RIAA/MPAA by trying.
Look at MediaDefender and similar outfits? Have they stopped piracy? Have they even slowed it down? But they are still making hobgobs of money.
Not if you record the phone call. Perfectly legal in most states in the US (google for "one party states").