Using common sense, it's hard to see how a person with a hard drive full of ripped material subject to copyright, who is offering to share it over a P2P network where large amounts of copyright infringement take place, is innocent of all wrong-doing. If you don't accept the argument about making available, what is a fair and reasonable way for copyright holders whose material is being illegally shared to enforce their legal rights in this situation?
It's called actually downloading said copyrighted material for evidence. As soon as you have the whole file (or at least a significant portion of it) you have a case of actual infringement. The argument goes like this...
No infringement has occurred unless the material has actually changed hands. Simply seeing a listing of names (which is the argument of making available is) doesn't constitute infringement.
You can't partially invoke the 5th. It is either all or none. To invoke the fifth, he would have to take his attorney's advice and NOT take the stand at all. Once you take the stand in your defense, the prosecution has a right to challenge that defense. You can't just say, "This is my side" then "I plead the 5th" on the prosecutions questions. You will be compelled to answer. Trust me on this. Both you guys who replied state the truth that the 5th is a right in the Constitution but it isn't partial right. You can't invoke it for questions you don't like.
My biggest beef with KDE4 is typified in your post. It is littered with promises of what is to come without delivering any of it to make a usable desktop. They are working on toys ignoring core functionality. This *IS* the release of 4.1 the long promised "it is scheduled for 4.1" the KDE devs kept posting to every bitch to the last release. This release is still crap IMO. More, I'll wrap up all their problems with it in one word...PLASMA! That POS is being forced down users throats and any attempt to add functionality to disable it has met a brick wall. Worse, almost all development on 3.5.* has stopped to concentrate on getting the limping KDE4 up to some sort of scratch.
Look, I'm in favor of cleaning the code up which is a big motivating factor in doing KDE4. When you add hours to my day because you screwed up my workflow, I take that personally. Most users do. And when you make it impossible for that user to set up a reasonable likeness to what they have been using for years, don't bitch when users treat KDE4 the same as Vista and refuse to adopt it.
The problem is, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Once you take the stand in your own defense, the prosecution has a right to cross examine you. You can't just be examined by your defense attorney in a positive light and not give the prosecution the chance to dim that light. You can't start claiming the fifth once you are up there and said your side.
In this case, his attorney was right in advising Hans not to take the stand. Better to have people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!
Pensions are paid into as agreed upon by the employer and the employee with the lion's share being footed by the employee. All the while, corporations are playing financial games with those pensions declaring bankruptcy to get out of them.
Oh yes - creative artists don't get those...
And neither do McDonald's employees. What's your point?
Unfortunately the music industry comes across as one industry that has grown fat on not only screwing its own customers; but on screwing over many of its own artists to. And they has used some of the vast quantities of money that has passed through their accounts to "inform" (influence) political decisions, in relation to the music industry, for decades.
It isn't just the media industry that has a choke hold on Congress. Yes, it is our fault but not for the reason you give. It is our fault because we give corporations, an immortal entity, the rights of a mortal man. Worse, because those corporations have no motivation beyond greed, they wield their power to feed that greed even to the detriment of real people.
For the specific case of copyright, it is the only business model on the face of the planet where employees (read: distributors+"Artists") are expecting to be paid decades or even centuries after they are finished the job. Where this idea that a person can make a one-hit-wonder and be paid perpetually for it is so wrong it is laughable. In no other industry do you find employees being paid beyond what they actually worked much less having that paycheck go to their heirs well after their death. Imagine if every business had to continue to pay all their employees+heirs for 90+ years after they quit. Business would come to a screeching halt then. But yet we are OK with it when it comes to copyright....Go figure.
Basically it seems like its going to hurt the little guy that doesn't know much about copyright law. The big corporations are still going to have their pack of lawyers constantly on this - they'll still get their $ while the little guy will lose.
This argument is pure horse shit and frankly I'm getting sick of the "Think Of The Little Guy" defense. Registration of copyright can be done online for little or no cost IF Congress mandated it with this legislation. All registration is is a big database. No reason it can't be online.
Now if you made the argument that this is a copyright grab by corporations to extend a given work's copyright by re-registering it under a different author, then I would agree with you.
Are you willing to pay property taxes on your car? Your clothes? Your furniture? Property tax is based on land and structures and always has been. Expand it like you wish and everything becomes taxable.
I don't know about where you live but in my state of WV it already is. It is called personal property tax. Cars, luxury items, even pet dogs are taxed. Don't pay your PP Tax and don't expect to get your license or registration renewed until you do.
Plus the smart buggy whip maker/blacksmith went into automotive repair as well. They adjusted to the market and for a while benefited from both markets. The stupid ones who refused to adjust to market demands went out of business. The analogy still holds.
The whole idea of copyright supplying perpetual profits is the true entitlement program. The idea that the public domain is worthless as spread by the industry is absurd. Again I ask, who is looking out for the real intent of copyright....The public domain!
Marshall University requires logins to connect both in the dorms and in the computer labs (5 that I remember). The only place where you can IIRC is the new library. The computer labs in Corbly Hall are especially locked down since that was the home of the CS department.
According to the local paper, The Harald-Dispatch (Harald-Disgrace to us locals) the subpoena was issued because Marshall had already turned some names in then stopped when other universities started challenging. The argument made was then if they could turn some in why couldn't they turn others in? Also, there is the fact that they publically announced that they forwarded the "you are being sued! Have a nice day!" letters to the students involved.
a $60,000,000,000 hole in public company's bottom lines is definitely a something, not a nothing.
It is nothing. Here are the many reasons why:
1. It assumes those companies would sell $60B worth in a void. 2. It assumes the "losses" are related to FOSS competition and not other factors such as the "WalMart Effect" (not to say anyting about piracy). 3. It assumes a constant market where one doesn't exist. Unlike food, software isn't a necessity of life or business for that matter, much to the chagrin of most/.ers. Not everyone is going to upgrade as soon as a new product is released. Vista should have taught them that. 4. It is trying to prove a negative and worse trying to assign blame for that negative.
I'm sure many other reasons can be thought of but those are the ones I get off the top of my head...
Get just about any aircraft parts directly from the government. Everything from engines to rotary blades for helicopters to complete aircraft shells. Nothing new here...
The excuse given is that their contracts impose financial penalties on the contractors if the work doesn't meet set standards, whereas if it was done in-house (at 1/5 the cost) there wouldn't be anyone to blame for failures. No doubt this makes sense if you have an MBA instead of a brain.
That's the whole premise of privatization in government. The idea that an outside company can do the required job cheaper than in-house is a fallacy. And then they wonder where their budgets went at the end of the year. Most government services are services that the private sector can't or won't provide either because of legal requirements or profitability. To somehow assume that the private sector can do better for less when they have already shown they can't is astounding.
So the cure would be to bar sales to New York residents letting them know why. A few years of New York residents not being able to buy things online should make them wake up and smell the coffee.
I don't think so considering how the majority of sexual child abuse cases are perpetrated by someone the child knows closely. Hell, most are done by someone in the same family. The sensational stories you hear about like the DateLine stings are the exception. Most of the pedo busts they do involve those trading media around which is also illegal to possess.
The money-into-a-private-account thing is a serious issue, but there doesn't seem to be an accusation of theft. If that's the case, the firm she's working for should sue her into the dirt and file a complaint -- and then she should be disbarred. If they don't feel any money is missing, well, then let's give that second chance again. If she does anything like this in the future, send her packing.
There is no way for those punishing her to know if any money was stolen. She isn't cooperating. From TFS above:
In addition, the lawyer also violated the code by cashing payments into a private account, not the usual dedicated litigation account, known as a 'Carpa'. Martin also refused to reveal how many payments had been received from file-sharers.
She violated code. That's law to the lay person. There is no way to know if she "stole" because there is no way to know how much she put into the account.
Second, by putting it into a separate account that shows willfulness to this IANAL. It shows she knew she was wrong. Couple that with the previous violation and it sure sounds like she got off way too easy.
You just got to love the Mac OS X fans trying to blunt the fact that OS X is just as bad as Microsoft at being closed source and that Apple will sue out of existence anyone distributing it just like Microsoft. You see, that is the main "linux like" item you totally ignore. The fact that the license allows re-distribution in Linux is one of its strongest points. The fact that I can modify it to suit my needs instead of at the whim of some corporation is another.
But I still think it is a stupid decision. They are limiting the market share of their product, in an area where a popular free alternative exists with Firefox. This is not like using MacOS to push hardware sales.
I don't think so. They are saving time, trouble and money by not supporting the problems of non-apple hardware. They are a hardware vendor after all. By not supporting competing hardware they automatically rule out 100s of different configuration problems. All one has to do is look at the fight Mozilla is having keeping up on security / bug issues in FireFox since it was first released for Windows to see that elimination of a subset of problems saves trouble for the developers.
One hard drive contained some 40 movies for burning to disc and several thousand MP3s. The investigation has found that approximately $88,000 worth of computer equipment had been improperly purchased by the state, much of it ending up in that basement studio. However some equipment is still unaccounted for.
To the best of my knowledge, nothing so far has come of this except for the resignation of the Capitol Complex Administrator.
I certainly support a more liberal approach to what employees are allowed to use on their machines, but restrictions certainly need to be in place.
While I agree with this the alternative that is prevalent today is to lock everything down and forbid any non-company owned resources be used or let out of company sight. This means keystroke / mouse click monitoring / logging, no admin rights what-so-ever, password protected everything, proxy servers restricting access, etc...
Everything can be taken to extremes including security. Things can get so tight that it becomes a challenge just to do the job the computer is required for. That's the point that I call it quits and start looking for another job.
Is there any federal level politician that can be considered "middle" or "lower" income when they ran for office (we know they aren't once they gain office)? That answer would be a big resounding NO! It takes huge amounts of money to even begin running for a national office these days. So just how does the vast majority of Americans (lower to middle income earners) get fair representation against the high earners big spenders? Again, they don't. The wealthy have always had more representation than the poor. Even in the Founding Father's day you had to be a white male land owner over 35 to hold a public office. If you fit that category, you were wealthy indeed.
That is where the real difference lies. The haves vs. the have-nots. Those that have the gold retain the gold. The whole idea that wealth begets wealth is a fallacy. They got wealthy, and more importantly, they stay wealthy by holding onto their wealth.
Governments are mandating "open standards" for document formats which is why Microsoft needs this or governments are going to switch to OOo. Many have already mandated it. For Microsoft to remain in that market, they need something to point to and say "look, we have a standard" to governments.
The point is this. ODF exists as a standard now. OOXML doesn't. Governments and large enterprise orgs can demand ODF now. That pressure will go by the wayside if OOXML is approved.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called actually downloading said copyrighted material for evidence. As soon as you have the whole file (or at least a significant portion of it) you have a case of actual infringement. The argument goes like this...
No infringement has occurred unless the material has actually changed hands. Simply seeing a listing of names (which is the argument of making available is) doesn't constitute infringement.
You can't partially invoke the 5th. It is either all or none. To invoke the fifth, he would have to take his attorney's advice and NOT take the stand at all. Once you take the stand in your defense, the prosecution has a right to challenge that defense. You can't just say, "This is my side" then "I plead the 5th" on the prosecutions questions. You will be compelled to answer. Trust me on this. Both you guys who replied state the truth that the 5th is a right in the Constitution but it isn't partial right. You can't invoke it for questions you don't like.
My biggest beef with KDE4 is typified in your post. It is littered with promises of what is to come without delivering any of it to make a usable desktop. They are working on toys ignoring core functionality. This *IS* the release of 4.1 the long promised "it is scheduled for 4.1" the KDE devs kept posting to every bitch to the last release. This release is still crap IMO. More, I'll wrap up all their problems with it in one word...PLASMA! That POS is being forced down users throats and any attempt to add functionality to disable it has met a brick wall. Worse, almost all development on 3.5.* has stopped to concentrate on getting the limping KDE4 up to some sort of scratch.
Look, I'm in favor of cleaning the code up which is a big motivating factor in doing KDE4. When you add hours to my day because you screwed up my workflow, I take that personally. Most users do. And when you make it impossible for that user to set up a reasonable likeness to what they have been using for years, don't bitch when users treat KDE4 the same as Vista and refuse to adopt it.
The problem is, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Once you take the stand in your own defense, the prosecution has a right to cross examine you. You can't just be examined by your defense attorney in a positive light and not give the prosecution the chance to dim that light. You can't start claiming the fifth once you are up there and said your side.
In this case, his attorney was right in advising Hans not to take the stand. Better to have people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!
Interesting link. Too bad I commented here or you would have gotten the points...
Pensions are paid into as agreed upon by the employer and the employee with the lion's share being footed by the employee. All the while, corporations are playing financial games with those pensions declaring bankruptcy to get out of them.
And neither do McDonald's employees. What's your point?
This is just one of the counties where you can read up on it.
http://www.hardysheriff.com/Personal_Property.htm
No, I don't live in Hardy County but this is identical throughout the state.
It isn't just the media industry that has a choke hold on Congress. Yes, it is our fault but not for the reason you give. It is our fault because we give corporations, an immortal entity, the rights of a mortal man. Worse, because those corporations have no motivation beyond greed, they wield their power to feed that greed even to the detriment of real people.
For the specific case of copyright, it is the only business model on the face of the planet where employees (read: distributors+"Artists") are expecting to be paid decades or even centuries after they are finished the job. Where this idea that a person can make a one-hit-wonder and be paid perpetually for it is so wrong it is laughable. In no other industry do you find employees being paid beyond what they actually worked much less having that paycheck go to their heirs well after their death. Imagine if every business had to continue to pay all their employees+heirs for 90+ years after they quit. Business would come to a screeching halt then. But yet we are OK with it when it comes to copyright....Go figure.
This argument is pure horse shit and frankly I'm getting sick of the "Think Of The Little Guy" defense. Registration of copyright can be done online for little or no cost IF Congress mandated it with this legislation. All registration is is a big database. No reason it can't be online.
Now if you made the argument that this is a copyright grab by corporations to extend a given work's copyright by re-registering it under a different author, then I would agree with you.
I don't know about where you live but in my state of WV it already is. It is called personal property tax. Cars, luxury items, even pet dogs are taxed. Don't pay your PP Tax and don't expect to get your license or registration renewed until you do.
Plus the smart buggy whip maker/blacksmith went into automotive repair as well. They adjusted to the market and for a while benefited from both markets. The stupid ones who refused to adjust to market demands went out of business. The analogy still holds.
The whole idea of copyright supplying perpetual profits is the true entitlement program. The idea that the public domain is worthless as spread by the industry is absurd. Again I ask, who is looking out for the real intent of copyright....The public domain!
Marshall University requires logins to connect both in the dorms and in the computer labs (5 that I remember). The only place where you can IIRC is the new library. The computer labs in Corbly Hall are especially locked down since that was the home of the CS department.
According to the local paper, The Harald-Dispatch (Harald-Disgrace to us locals) the subpoena was issued because Marshall had already turned some names in then stopped when other universities started challenging. The argument made was then if they could turn some in why couldn't they turn others in? Also, there is the fact that they publically announced that they forwarded the "you are being sued! Have a nice day!" letters to the students involved.
DISCLAIMER: I am a Marshall Alumni.
It is nothing. Here are the many reasons why:
1. It assumes those companies would sell $60B worth in a void.
2. It assumes the "losses" are related to FOSS competition and not other factors such as the "WalMart Effect" (not to say anyting about piracy).
3. It assumes a constant market where one doesn't exist. Unlike food, software isn't a necessity of life or business for that matter, much to the chagrin of most
4. It is trying to prove a negative and worse trying to assign blame for that negative.
I'm sure many other reasons can be thought of but those are the ones I get off the top of my head...
Just one line for you...
http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/
And this is something new?!?! Government surplus has been with us as long as government procurement has.
http://www.govliquidation.com/list/c7007/lna/1.html
Get just about any aircraft parts directly from the government. Everything from engines to rotary blades for helicopters to complete aircraft shells. Nothing new here...
That's the whole premise of privatization in government. The idea that an outside company can do the required job cheaper than in-house is a fallacy. And then they wonder where their budgets went at the end of the year. Most government services are services that the private sector can't or won't provide either because of legal requirements or profitability. To somehow assume that the private sector can do better for less when they have already shown they can't is astounding.
So the cure would be to bar sales to New York residents letting them know why. A few years of New York residents not being able to buy things online should make them wake up and smell the coffee.
I don't think so considering how the majority of sexual child abuse cases are perpetrated by someone the child knows closely. Hell, most are done by someone in the same family. The sensational stories you hear about like the DateLine stings are the exception. Most of the pedo busts they do involve those trading media around which is also illegal to possess.
There is no way for those punishing her to know if any money was stolen. She isn't cooperating. From TFS above:
She violated code. That's law to the lay person. There is no way to know if she "stole" because there is no way to know how much she put into the account.
Second, by putting it into a separate account that shows willfulness to this IANAL. It shows she knew she was wrong. Couple that with the previous violation and it sure sounds like she got off way too easy.
You just got to love the Mac OS X fans trying to blunt the fact that OS X is just as bad as Microsoft at being closed source and that Apple will sue out of existence anyone distributing it just like Microsoft. You see, that is the main "linux like" item you totally ignore. The fact that the license allows re-distribution in Linux is one of its strongest points. The fact that I can modify it to suit my needs instead of at the whim of some corporation is another.
I don't think so. They are saving time, trouble and money by not supporting the problems of non-apple hardware. They are a hardware vendor after all. By not supporting competing hardware they automatically rule out 100s of different configuration problems. All one has to do is look at the fight Mozilla is having keeping up on security / bug issues in FireFox since it was first released for Windows to see that elimination of a subset of problems saves trouble for the developers.
Second story down...
To the best of my knowledge, nothing so far has come of this except for the resignation of the Capitol Complex Administrator.
While I agree with this the alternative that is prevalent today is to lock everything down and forbid any non-company owned resources be used or let out of company sight. This means keystroke / mouse click monitoring / logging, no admin rights what-so-ever, password protected everything, proxy servers restricting access, etc...
Everything can be taken to extremes including security. Things can get so tight that it becomes a challenge just to do the job the computer is required for. That's the point that I call it quits and start looking for another job.
Ask yourself this:
Is there any federal level politician that can be considered "middle" or "lower" income when they ran for office (we know they aren't once they gain office)? That answer would be a big resounding NO! It takes huge amounts of money to even begin running for a national office these days. So just how does the vast majority of Americans (lower to middle income earners) get fair representation against the high earners big spenders? Again, they don't. The wealthy have always had more representation than the poor. Even in the Founding Father's day you had to be a white male land owner over 35 to hold a public office. If you fit that category, you were wealthy indeed.
That is where the real difference lies. The haves vs. the have-nots. Those that have the gold retain the gold. The whole idea that wealth begets wealth is a fallacy. They got wealthy, and more importantly, they stay wealthy by holding onto their wealth.
Thank you for missing my point...
Governments are mandating "open standards" for document formats which is why Microsoft needs this or governments are going to switch to OOo. Many have already mandated it. For Microsoft to remain in that market, they need something to point to and say "look, we have a standard" to governments.
The point is this. ODF exists as a standard now. OOXML doesn't. Governments and large enterprise orgs can demand ODF now. That pressure will go by the wayside if OOXML is approved.