The ultimate solution is to forbid wireless carriers from selling phones. Does Comcast/Time Warner sell televisions? Do they sell laptops? No, that would probably violate antitrust law. Yet we allow wireless carriers to sell phones.
We don't need new laws to make locking/unlocking legal. We need to remove the monopoly incentive that makes the practice profitable.
Failing to see a white dot is not negligence. Doctors are human and they miss things. This is essence of why we keep hearing calls for tort reform - because people find any little mistake a doctor made and use it as an excuse to sue them. Negligence would be if the doctor saw the white dot, but forgot to give mention it. Negligence would be if the doctor spilled coffee on the images and didn't bother to order new copies and re-review them. Negligence is failing to follow standards of care. But lack of perfection != negligence.
Also: sneaking medical records out is a felony. So it sounds like your wife's friend is a felon who extorted a doctor into reaching a settlement.
All the items you cited are problems with out legal system, not problems with medical records. It is frustrating when an industry has to follow bad practices to avoid lawyers. But the law is the hardest thing to fix because the only people who can do it are lawyers.
Despite the fact that zero-day vulnerabilities still exist, we should note that software has gotten harder to exploit over the years. For example:
Firefox was popped with a use-after-free vulnerability and a new technique that bypasses Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in Windows, Vupen said...Windows 8 also fell to the security consultancy which cracked Microsoft's Surface Pro using two Internet Explorer zero day vulnerabilities and a sandbox bypass.
So in each case they had to chain 3 vulnerabilities together to make this work. That means that we are at least improving security, albeit not enough. Fixing any 1 of those vulnerabilities makes the exploit no longer work.
the proof of concept attack code will remain in the hands of organisers only
I find it ironic that after telling us that nearly every major operating system was hacked, they conclude by assuring us that the exploit code is kept secure.
The focus should not be on the fact that the statute lists 35 years, or that Ortiz offered him a plea bargain of 3 months. The question is more fundamental: Why did anyone even think to prosecute this guy at all, when J-STOR dropped the charges?
The difference is that in the.NET world, people avoid third party tools in general. If its built in, its ok. If its not built in and it doesn't come from Telerik, forget it.
Well put. That makes me thing about the Entity-Framework versus NHibernate:
..but very very very small minority wil use nhibernate over Entity Framework, even though nhibernate is vastly superior (part of it is its harder to use, but the main thing is, its not built in...)
And you conveniently mentioned that same thing. Here's our story on this:
It is the quintessential example of the Microsoft open-source ecosystem. My team evaluated NHibernate but some team members were concerned about using open source. So years later, I then evaluated the EF and sold the team on using it specifically because it came with Visual Studio. It turned out to be a mistake. While the EF is a great product, it has basically been redesigned twice since we started to use it. The add-ons we chose are no longer supported and the source was never released. We chose model-first mode and self-tracking entities which are both deprecated now. And when we contacted Microsoft for support their first response was to suggest that we post it to the CodePlex group. Even though the product came with VS2010 and we paid for it, they wanted to pretend that it was a 3rd-party open-source product and they weren't responsible. Fortunately, they picked-up on our annoyance and actually did help us. So I can't ding them too hard for it. But overall, the experience has been disappointing for reasons that have nothing to do with the product itself.
Ironically, the entire reason we disregarded NHibernate and went for the EF was for support. Whoops!
I see no evidence that.NET developers have an avoidance of open source. The linked article actually seems to present evidence to the contrary. Paraphrasing here:
Q: Why have.NET developers been slow to adopt open source?? PH: The open source movement is not incompatible with the Microsoft development world...commercial software developers represent a big constituency among the.NET Framework community and based on my experience these shops are very cautious about incorporating open source libraries because the licensing...
So what they are really saying is that *commercial software developers* are hesitant to use open source because of licensing issues. That is probably true. That problem is not specific to Microsoft.NET developers, but spans languages and operating systems. That is very different from saying that.NET developers have not been averse to using open source. They use open source far more than their VB and C++/Windows API wielding predecessors. Here is a short list of open source projects I have used at commercial software companies off the top of my head:
log4net, sharpdevelop, nhibernate, nunit, nant, cruise control.net, all the Microsoft Patterns & Practices stuff, ninject,...
I am concerned that these potential laws will run afoul of freedom of the press. Today, news and traffic helicopters regularly take pictures of public areas. Drones will replace that function very soon. It would be short-sighted to make it illegal to take pictures of public areas using drones. If we do that, the only pictures we will get of flood areas or weather will be from government sanctioned drones. In 10 years the idea that your drone can't take pictures in public will seem as foolish as the failed laws trying to make it illegal to take pictures with your camera phone in public.
I would think an IP address would be exactly what you would need to invoke discovery. Suppose someone threw a baseball through my window, then ran into a house. I want to sue, but I don't know the individual. Would it be reasonable for a judge to say "Well, if you don't know the name of the individual, you can't sue." That would be silly. It would make more sense to search the house for a baseball glove to help identify the individual.
In another thread, someone suggested that perhaps only the police can do this. Maybe that's the key thing: discovery requires already knowing the individual. But in a criminal case, the police don't have to know the individual in order to get a warrant.
Courts limit discovery regarding Doe defendants in BitTorrent cases to ensure that potentially innocent subscribers are not needlessly humiliated and coerced into unfair settlements...
I took this to mean the judge won't allow discovery.
I understand limiting discovery so that everyone on the planet doesn't get their computers scanned just because some jerky copyright holder wants to track down a few downloads. But they already know the IP address, and since they named someone that means they must have already contacted the ISP and found the subscriber. At that point, it is pretty much down to someone in the house, or someone who used their wifi. That's not a fishing expedition, that's a pretty targeted accusation. If someone broke my window with a baseball then ran into a house I don't think anyone would have a problem with searching the house for a baseball glove.
I'm unclear how this is different. I suspect that the key difference is that geeks want to be able to download everything they can for free, and I've chosen the wrong forum for a reasoned discussion on the topic. Just remember: if we forbid discovery in these cases, then we force copyright holders to start lobbying for potentially invasive laws. We should be using the legal framework we already have in place, where applicable.
Yes, this is precisely what I am trying to understand. I thought you could go to the judge, file for discovery, then get the information you need to prove your case.
However, I believe "no illegal search and seizure" is still an important principle, and remains a fundamental right,
100% agreed! This is very true. But it also has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. There was no illegal search and seizure. There is no copyright troll involved here either. Save your rant for the next RIAA/MPAA story.
The question I posed in this discussion is: why did the judge dismiss a request for legal discovery from a legitimate copyright holder who presented seemingly valid evidence? If this is the standard, how can a copyright holder prove a download was illegal?
So I got beat up here at Slashdot for suggesting that the judge should have granted discovery. Can you clarify here for me? Based on my reading of the ruling, the judge said that they could refile if they had additional evidence pointing to an individual. But it also seemed to deny any possibility for discovery. How could they tie it to an individual if they can't file for discovery? They could have looked at network logs, or hard drive contents, etc. and possibly proved who downloaded the file. I'm not saying it would be worth it to do so, but it doesn't seem just to set a precedent that you must identify the individual, but you may not access any of the evidence that would help you to do so.
Ex: Suppose someone wearing red gloves broke my window then ran into 100 Mockingbird lane. I don't think I could sue an address. But it does seem sensible that I could bring a case and request discovery to find the red gloves within the house, if I believed that the gloves could help me identify which individual in the house. Perhaps the gloves were in the 12-year old son's bedroom? Or perhaps in the dad's closet? That seems pertitent. In this case, their dismissal seemed to forbid the equivalent action.
While simply being the subscriber is no longer (we hope) proof of infringement it would almost certainly be probable cause for a search warrant.
My entire complaint is that the judge denied the search warrant!
This is a civil case. So there is no such thing as a warrant. Instead, it is called a motion for discovery. But the judge denied he motion for discovery when he granted the dismissal. That was my entire complaint.
Fairness happens through a strict audit chain of deductive evidence. An IP address is not a way of identifying criminal liability.
1) There is no criminal liability involved here. This is a civil case.
This is a fact, no matter how unfair it may seem. It can identify a person, yes; the account holder. But it does not then follow that the account holder is culpable.
2) yes, I agree. I said as much in my post. You missed the my point entirely.
The problem is that the judge forbids discovery. Apparently no one on Slashdot knows what that means. It means that they are forbidden from obtaining any more evidence or doing any more research. They can't look at the network, or the hard drives, or anything. They can't contact the ISP. Nada. So even if they could prove it was an individual, they are not legally allowed to! The problem with this ruling isn't that the judge said IP addresses are not enough evidence. Everyone agrees with that. The issue is that he dismissed the case so they can't do discovery.
The fact that the parent's snarky comment was modded to 4, while I bothered to read the judge's report, and point out the pros and cons of the ruling -- that gets modded up, then down, up, then down. Slashdot needs to grow up.
Slashdot mentality: Copyright on TV and movies is evil! And games! I can watch or play whatever I want for free! And with no ads! Copyright on indie games? Or open source applications? That's good however.
If it was a shared computer, such as at a library or school, then they would probably need to see who was logged-in at the time it was downloaded. They could also look at the date stamp on the file on the computer, or see whose user directory it was in. But at the moment, the ruling forbids any of that since it forbids discovery.
My complaint with the ruling is that it forbids them from doing the investigation that would help them determine this!
Slashdot Mirror
The ultimate solution is to forbid wireless carriers from selling phones. Does Comcast/Time Warner sell televisions? Do they sell laptops? No, that would probably violate antitrust law. Yet we allow wireless carriers to sell phones.
We don't need new laws to make locking/unlocking legal. We need to remove the monopoly incentive that makes the practice profitable.
True, but first you would need to confirm that the people with larger eyes have larger visual cortexes.
"We called at 9 a.m. and there was no response," a government official from South Korea said. The line is tested each day.
With their assets now frozen, they weren't able to pay the phone bill.
ICANN simply needs to rollback this new TLD system and refund the money. It doesn't work.
Failing to see a white dot is not negligence. Doctors are human and they miss things. This is essence of why we keep hearing calls for tort reform - because people find any little mistake a doctor made and use it as an excuse to sue them. Negligence would be if the doctor saw the white dot, but forgot to give mention it. Negligence would be if the doctor spilled coffee on the images and didn't bother to order new copies and re-review them. Negligence is failing to follow standards of care. But lack of perfection != negligence.
Also: sneaking medical records out is a felony. So it sounds like your wife's friend is a felon who extorted a doctor into reaching a settlement.
All the items you cited are problems with out legal system, not problems with medical records. It is frustrating when an industry has to follow bad practices to avoid lawyers. But the law is the hardest thing to fix because the only people who can do it are lawyers.
Despite the fact that zero-day vulnerabilities still exist, we should note that software has gotten harder to exploit over the years. For example:
Firefox was popped with a use-after-free vulnerability and a new technique that bypasses Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in Windows, Vupen said...Windows 8 also fell to the security consultancy which cracked Microsoft's Surface Pro using two Internet Explorer zero day vulnerabilities and a sandbox bypass.
So in each case they had to chain 3 vulnerabilities together to make this work. That means that we are at least improving security, albeit not enough. Fixing any 1 of those vulnerabilities makes the exploit no longer work.
the proof of concept attack code will remain in the hands of organisers only
I find it ironic that after telling us that nearly every major operating system was hacked, they conclude by assuring us that the exploit code is kept secure.
The focus should not be on the fact that the statute lists 35 years, or that Ortiz offered him a plea bargain of 3 months. The question is more fundamental: Why did anyone even think to prosecute this guy at all, when J-STOR dropped the charges?
Petition to remove Eric Holder from office:
http://wh.gov/GGrN
Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz
http://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
Remove Attorney General Eric Holder from office
http://wh.gov/GGrN
The difference is that in the .NET world, people avoid third party tools in general. If its built in, its ok. If its not built in and it doesn't come from Telerik, forget it.
Well put. That makes me thing about the Entity-Framework versus NHibernate:
..but very very very small minority wil use nhibernate over Entity Framework, even though nhibernate is vastly superior (part of it is its harder to use, but the main thing is, its not built in...)
And you conveniently mentioned that same thing. Here's our story on this:
It is the quintessential example of the Microsoft open-source ecosystem. My team evaluated NHibernate but some team members were concerned about using open source. So years later, I then evaluated the EF and sold the team on using it specifically because it came with Visual Studio. It turned out to be a mistake. While the EF is a great product, it has basically been redesigned twice since we started to use it. The add-ons we chose are no longer supported and the source was never released. We chose model-first mode and self-tracking entities which are both deprecated now. And when we contacted Microsoft for support their first response was to suggest that we post it to the CodePlex group. Even though the product came with VS2010 and we paid for it, they wanted to pretend that it was a 3rd-party open-source product and they weren't responsible. Fortunately, they picked-up on our annoyance and actually did help us. So I can't ding them too hard for it. But overall, the experience has been disappointing for reasons that have nothing to do with the product itself.
Ironically, the entire reason we disregarded NHibernate and went for the EF was for support. Whoops!
I see no evidence that .NET developers have an avoidance of open source. The linked article actually seems to present evidence to the contrary. Paraphrasing here:
Q: Why have .NET developers been slow to adopt open source?? .NET Framework community and based on my experience these shops are very cautious about incorporating open source libraries because the licensing...
PH: The open source movement is not incompatible with the Microsoft development world...commercial software developers represent a big constituency among the
So what they are really saying is that *commercial software developers* are hesitant to use open source because of licensing issues. That is probably true. That problem is not specific to Microsoft .NET developers, but spans languages and operating systems. That is very different from saying that .NET developers have not been averse to using open source. They use open source far more than their VB and C++/Windows API wielding predecessors. Here is a short list of open source projects I have used at commercial software companies off the top of my head:
log4net, sharpdevelop, nhibernate, nunit, nant, cruise control.net, all the Microsoft Patterns & Practices stuff, ninject, ...
I am concerned that these potential laws will run afoul of freedom of the press. Today, news and traffic helicopters regularly take pictures of public areas. Drones will replace that function very soon. It would be short-sighted to make it illegal to take pictures of public areas using drones. If we do that, the only pictures we will get of flood areas or weather will be from government sanctioned drones. In 10 years the idea that your drone can't take pictures in public will seem as foolish as the failed laws trying to make it illegal to take pictures with your camera phone in public.
I would think an IP address would be exactly what you would need to invoke discovery. Suppose someone threw a baseball through my window, then ran into a house. I want to sue, but I don't know the individual. Would it be reasonable for a judge to say "Well, if you don't know the name of the individual, you can't sue." That would be silly. It would make more sense to search the house for a baseball glove to help identify the individual.
In another thread, someone suggested that perhaps only the police can do this. Maybe that's the key thing: discovery requires already knowing the individual. But in a criminal case, the police don't have to know the individual in order to get a warrant.
From the ruling:
Courts limit discovery regarding Doe defendants in BitTorrent cases to ensure that potentially innocent subscribers are not needlessly humiliated and coerced into unfair settlements...
I took this to mean the judge won't allow discovery.
I understand limiting discovery so that everyone on the planet doesn't get their computers scanned just because some jerky copyright holder wants to track down a few downloads. But they already know the IP address, and since they named someone that means they must have already contacted the ISP and found the subscriber. At that point, it is pretty much down to someone in the house, or someone who used their wifi. That's not a fishing expedition, that's a pretty targeted accusation. If someone broke my window with a baseball then ran into a house I don't think anyone would have a problem with searching the house for a baseball glove.
I'm unclear how this is different. I suspect that the key difference is that geeks want to be able to download everything they can for free, and I've chosen the wrong forum for a reasoned discussion on the topic. Just remember: if we forbid discovery in these cases, then we force copyright holders to start lobbying for potentially invasive laws. We should be using the legal framework we already have in place, where applicable.
Yes, this is precisely what I am trying to understand. I thought you could go to the judge, file for discovery, then get the information you need to prove your case.
So where does discovery come in?
However, I believe "no illegal search and seizure" is still an important principle, and remains a fundamental right,
100% agreed! This is very true. But it also has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. There was no illegal search and seizure. There is no copyright troll involved here either. Save your rant for the next RIAA/MPAA story.
The question I posed in this discussion is: why did the judge dismiss a request for legal discovery from a legitimate copyright holder who presented seemingly valid evidence? If this is the standard, how can a copyright holder prove a download was illegal?
Hey NYCL,
So I got beat up here at Slashdot for suggesting that the judge should have granted discovery. Can you clarify here for me? Based on my reading of the ruling, the judge said that they could refile if they had additional evidence pointing to an individual. But it also seemed to deny any possibility for discovery. How could they tie it to an individual if they can't file for discovery? They could have looked at network logs, or hard drive contents, etc. and possibly proved who downloaded the file. I'm not saying it would be worth it to do so, but it doesn't seem just to set a precedent that you must identify the individual, but you may not access any of the evidence that would help you to do so.
Ex: Suppose someone wearing red gloves broke my window then ran into 100 Mockingbird lane. I don't think I could sue an address. But it does seem sensible that I could bring a case and request discovery to find the red gloves within the house, if I believed that the gloves could help me identify which individual in the house. Perhaps the gloves were in the 12-year old son's bedroom? Or perhaps in the dad's closet? That seems pertitent. In this case, their dismissal seemed to forbid the equivalent action.
Good. They have no reason to go after downloaders anyway.
How about... copyright?
There's no reason that anyone should have their doors busted down just so a copyright infringer can be found.
No one said anything about busting down doors. What should have happened was a motion for discovery be granted before the case was dismissed.
While simply being the subscriber is no longer (we hope) proof of infringement it would almost certainly be probable cause for a search warrant.
My entire complaint is that the judge denied the search warrant!
This is a civil case. So there is no such thing as a warrant. Instead, it is called a motion for discovery. But the judge denied he motion for discovery when he granted the dismissal. That was my entire complaint.
Fairness happens through a strict audit chain of deductive evidence. An IP address is not a way of identifying criminal liability.
1) There is no criminal liability involved here. This is a civil case.
This is a fact, no matter how unfair it may seem. It can identify a person, yes; the account holder. But it does not then follow that the account holder is culpable.
2) yes, I agree. I said as much in my post. You missed the my point entirely.
The problem is that the judge forbids discovery. Apparently no one on Slashdot knows what that means. It means that they are forbidden from obtaining any more evidence or doing any more research. They can't look at the network, or the hard drives, or anything. They can't contact the ISP. Nada. So even if they could prove it was an individual, they are not legally allowed to! The problem with this ruling isn't that the judge said IP addresses are not enough evidence. Everyone agrees with that. The issue is that he dismissed the case so they can't do discovery.
And why is that good?
The fact that the parent's snarky comment was modded to 4, while I bothered to read the judge's report, and point out the pros and cons of the ruling -- that gets modded up, then down, up, then down. Slashdot needs to grow up.
Slashdot mentality:
Copyright on TV and movies is evil! And games! I can watch or play whatever I want for free! And with no ads!
Copyright on indie games? Or open source applications? That's good however.
If it was a shared computer, such as at a library or school, then they would probably need to see who was logged-in at the time it was downloaded. They could also look at the date stamp on the file on the computer, or see whose user directory it was in. But at the moment, the ruling forbids any of that since it forbids discovery.
My complaint with the ruling is that it forbids them from doing the investigation that would help them determine this!