I have Qwest DSL. I have never got more than 75% of the advertised speed, down or up. I have spent hours on the phone with their support. Their only answer is that "anything above 75% is not actionable". I'm thinking about paying them only 75% of my bill.
Sure it is. When I moved to Italy, the government officials wrote down my name on all official documentation as "Luciano Julio" even though my passport says "Lucian Jules".
What you're describing (the "Shavaune" effect) is an American peculiarity. Doesn't happen elsewhere.
Sure you do. Someone called "William/Bill" in English is called "Guillaume" in French. Someone called "Lucian" in English is called "Lucien" in France and "Luciano" in Italy. And so on.
No they're not. The Alcatel v. DGI case wasn't P2P at all. The copyright argument goes that downloading means "making a copy in your computer's memory or hard disk", and this act of copying is what's subject to copyright.
Page 6, "Harper did not appeal the finding that she had infringed copyrights by DOWNLOADING the songs."
Page 6, "Because [RIAA] only seek minimum damages [$750/song], the question before the court is WHETHER Harper violated the copyright act, not TO WHAT EXTENT she violated it."
Page 7 cites several legal precedents where downloading alone constitutes reproduction, and hence is subject to copyright restrictions.
In this case the RIAA didn't bother pursuing the "uploading" angle. Instead it asked for $750 per song, the minimum damages for non-innocent DOWNLOADING.
(Harper said it should just be $200 per song, the minimum damages for INNOCENT downloading, on the grounds that she was too young and naive to know that her downloads were illegal. But the court ruled that ignorance of copyright law is not a defense in this case.)
NewYorkLawyer characterized this decision as one about "access" (i.e. the argument that the defendant would have had *access* to other CDs with their copyright notices and so should have known that the same notices would have applied to downloaded music).
But the decision clearly states [page 9], "Rather than contest the fact of "access", Harper contended only that she was too young and naive to understand that the copyrights on published music applied to downloaded music."
Thus, the issue of "access" was NOT AT STAKE. It was not contested. The decision was made purely on whether Harper's ignorance of copyright law counts as a valid defense. And the court ruled clearly that ignorance of copyright law is not a valid defense. (If it were, then someone would be able to violate e.g. GPL merely by persuading the court that they didn't know how copyright worked.)
Something's wrong when we think that DOWNLOADING is the problem. All the RIAA cases (and their massive financial demands) have arisen from UPLOADING not downloading.
1. I write some nice software and sell it (without researching patents) 2a. I make a little money, not enough to quit my day job, remain below the horizon of any patent-holders, and so nothing arises. The end. 2b. I make a lot of money; a patent-holder notices and orders me to cease distribution, so I do. The end. 2c. I make a lot of money; a patent-holder notices and asks for a licensing fee, so I pay it and continue to make not quite as much money. The end.
No barriers.
You DO NOT have a duty to research whether your work infringes on prior patents. Lawyers will specifically instruct you NOT to do this research. Moreover, the fact that you came up with the idea yourself is good-faith evidence that there is no patent. (Why? Because patents are notionally only granted for non-obvious inventions, and if you invented it independently then it must be obvious, and therefore a patent on it shouldn't have been granted).
The brief specifically agrees that Tannenbaum DISTRIBUTED the works (contrary to NewYorkLaywer's claim that he didn't; NewYorkLaywer says that distribution only takes place when there has been a transfer of ownership). Page 1, "whatever damage was caused by the distributionand sharing the thirty songs". [It also says that no damage was caused by Tannenbaum's sharing of the songs (page 1, "whatever damage was caused, was caused by the initial seeders") using the dodgy argument that an act isn't a crime if things would have turned out the same anyway.]
Nowhere does the brief talk about existing case law that pertains to whether sharing contributes to damages, rather than just downloading.
Nowhere does the brief talk about what the text of the law says on this point either.
I agree. That's the interesting discussion that we SHOULD be having. In particular,
(1) The courts say "We don't know how many people downloaded it so we'll pick an arbitrary number in the THOUSANDS when we calculate damages". That reasoning needs to be challenged.
(2) The courts say "Distributing just a part of the song counts just as bad as distributing the whole of it". That reasoning needs to be challenged.
I'd really like to have a legal advocate on the technie's side who can make these arguments. These are BAD precedents that the courts are setting and which need to fought.
(NewYorkCountryLawyer's fight that "Tannenbaum didn't even distribute" is counter-productive.)
NewYorkCountryLawyer insists that "damages" don't include the money lost through OTHER people downloading that the plaintiff offered up for sharing. He thinks that damages should only count the original download. Unfortunately
* This contradicts existing case law * It contradicts what the text of the law actually says * It contradicts how judges have interpreted the law
I think he's doing us all a disservice by sticking his hands in his ears and shouting "la la la". There are interesting arguments to be made, and he's not making them.
Firms with advertising budgets? Their advertising budgets come from us the consumers.
In the US about $400b was spent on advertising in 2008 [cite]. That works out at about $1500 per person per year.
Of that $1500 extra that I'm paying each year (in higher prices for goods), some of it goes to inflict advertising on my eyeballs that I really don't want; some of it goes to line the pockets of Google and advertising agencies; a tiny trickle goes down to subsidize the websites that you want to look at; and only the tiniest portion goes on to subsidize the websites that I want to look at.
It's wrong to think that advertising is a free way to fund websites.
At least it's good that you count the damages due to distributing, rather than just the initial downloading (as NewYorkLawyer insists on doing!)
Your 1:1 ratio is talking about number of bytes transferred. Your calculation then presupposes that the penalty for copying half a work be half as much as the penalty for copying a full work. I don't believe that's right. So I'd take the average number of peers that you upload to, which from what I've seen is usually closer to 50. So, $11,000.
Then the interesting question is: "How did the courts find her guilty of downloading and distributing, given that the copyright act thinks that distribution means "disseminating to the public by..."
What do you think the answer is?
(The proof of disseminating copies to the public was that she admitted to both. And I think you're completely wrong on the "sale or other transfer of ownership", as per the definition $506.a.1.C, and as per every single precedent without exception of the courts interpreting copyright law as regards file-sharing.)
It doesn't require proof. From page 11: Thomas-Rasset asserts that, at most, she downloaded and shared music. So "disseminate" and "to the public" are accepted.
You're using a definition of distributing which involves "sale or transfer of ownership". That's not a definition that the courts have EVER used, nor is it one that the DMCA uses. I can't find any support anywhere for your narrow notion of distribution.
NewYorkCountryLawyer, why do you insist on ignoring the DISTRIBUTING side of things?
The DOJ brief only ever talked about "downloading and distributing" (or on page 15, "distributing" alone). It never once even hinted at a penalty for downloading alone. And yet you spun it as a brief about downloading.
In this Jammie Thomas-Rasset brief again, the judge repeatedly talks about "downloading and distributing" or about "downloading and sharing" or about "sharing" alone. It spends a good half of its pages talking about how many other users Jammie might have distributed the work to. It is clear that the infringement count is about this distribution, not about the original downloading.
You seem to be systematically mischaracterizing the briefs and the legal issues. I think there are interesting things to be said about distributing (as the judge here did, and as the DOJ brief did). You know about the field, so please spend your energies on this more interesting and relevant legal question.
The DOJ brief only ever talks about "downloading and distribute", or (page 15) just "distributing" on its own.
The brief said that when you offer a song for distribution, it's hard to know how many people you've distributed it to. The number might be enormous. And so you're penalized between $750 and $30,000 for distributing it to this unknown number of people.
As to the penalty for downloading on its own, without distribution? -- NO ONE KNOWS. I don't think this issue has ever come to court. I can't imagine that it ever could come to court. The DOJ has not touched upon it.
I don't see any reason why Google would try to harm Firefox... what Google really wants is for people to use Google as their search engine.
What Google wants is to show you ads, and to collect your personal data to show you more profitable ads. Firefox's Adblock strikes directly at their ONLY real revenue source.
I'm also wondering why they're so worried about airports. There are way more much easier ways to execute acts of terror than in such a limited environment. But maybe it's just that we want to protect people rich enough to actually fly.
I think that misses the point. Governments aren't disproportionately obsessed with defending airplanes; it's the *terrorists* who are disproportionately obsessed with bombing/hijacking airplanes (rather than other targets which might cause more public fear or kill more people).
Why are terrorists so obsessed with airplanes? It might just be a failure of imagination. But I think it's because it's all about symbolism. The jet plane symbolises the "jet age"; images of jet planes taking off or touching down used to be the defining iconic images of our civilization from the 60s, especially in movies. It's only recently and for a small (non-terrorist) minority of the world that flying on a jet plane has switched from "defining icon of our civilization" to "boring tedious humdrum routine nuisance".
Slashdot Mirror
I have Qwest DSL. I have never got more than 75% of the advertised speed, down or up. I have spent hours on the phone with their support. Their only answer is that "anything above 75% is not actionable". I'm thinking about paying them only 75% of my bill.
Sure it is. When I moved to Italy, the government officials wrote down my name on all official documentation as "Luciano Julio" even though my passport says "Lucian Jules".
What you're describing (the "Shavaune" effect) is an American peculiarity. Doesn't happen elsewhere.
Sure you do. Someone called "William/Bill" in English is called "Guillaume" in French. Someone called "Lucian" in English is called "Lucien" in France and "Luciano" in Italy. And so on.
No they're not. The Alcatel v. DGI case wasn't P2P at all. The copyright argument goes that downloading means "making a copy in your computer's memory or hard disk", and this act of copying is what's subject to copyright.
Which law is the downloader breaking when downloading from AllOfMP3 ?
(There haven't been any court cases about downloaders from AllofMP3 to set precedent, of course...)
NO.
Page 6, "Harper did not appeal the finding that she had infringed copyrights by DOWNLOADING the songs."
Page 6, "Because [RIAA] only seek minimum damages [$750/song], the question before the court is WHETHER Harper violated the copyright act, not TO WHAT EXTENT she violated it."
Page 7 cites several legal precedents where downloading alone constitutes reproduction, and hence is subject to copyright restrictions.
In this case the RIAA didn't bother pursuing the "uploading" angle. Instead it asked for $750 per song, the minimum damages for non-innocent DOWNLOADING.
(Harper said it should just be $200 per song, the minimum damages for INNOCENT downloading, on the grounds that she was too young and naive to know that her downloads were illegal. But the court ruled that ignorance of copyright law is not a defense in this case.)
NewYorkLawyer characterized this decision as one about "access" (i.e. the argument that the defendant would have had *access* to other CDs with their copyright notices and so should have known that the same notices would have applied to downloaded music).
But the decision clearly states [page 9], "Rather than contest the fact of "access", Harper contended only that she was too young and naive to understand that the copyrights on published music applied to downloaded music."
Thus, the issue of "access" was NOT AT STAKE. It was not contested. The decision was made purely on whether Harper's ignorance of copyright law counts as a valid defense. And the court ruled clearly that ignorance of copyright law is not a valid defense. (If it were, then someone would be able to violate e.g. GPL merely by persuading the court that they didn't know how copyright worked.)
Something's wrong when we think that DOWNLOADING is the problem. All the RIAA cases (and their massive financial demands) have arisen from UPLOADING not downloading.
With patents:
1. I write some nice software and sell it (without researching patents)
2a. I make a little money, not enough to quit my day job, remain below the horizon of any patent-holders, and so nothing arises. The end.
2b. I make a lot of money; a patent-holder notices and orders me to cease distribution, so I do. The end.
2c. I make a lot of money; a patent-holder notices and asks for a licensing fee, so I pay it and continue to make not quite as much money. The end.
No barriers.
You DO NOT have a duty to research whether your work infringes on prior patents. Lawyers will specifically instruct you NOT to do this research. Moreover, the fact that you came up with the idea yourself is good-faith evidence that there is no patent. (Why? Because patents are notionally only granted for non-obvious inventions, and if you invented it independently then it must be obvious, and therefore a patent on it shouldn't have been granted).
??
The brief specifically agrees that Tannenbaum DISTRIBUTED the works (contrary to NewYorkLaywer's claim that he didn't; NewYorkLaywer says that distribution only takes place when there has been a transfer of ownership). Page 1, "whatever damage was caused by the distributionand sharing the thirty songs". [It also says that no damage was caused by Tannenbaum's sharing of the songs (page 1, "whatever damage was caused, was caused by the initial seeders") using the dodgy argument that an act isn't a crime if things would have turned out the same anyway.]
Nowhere does the brief talk about existing case law that pertains to whether sharing contributes to damages, rather than just downloading.
Nowhere does the brief talk about what the text of the law says on this point either.
I agree. That's the interesting discussion that we SHOULD be having. In particular,
(1) The courts say "We don't know how many people downloaded it so we'll pick an arbitrary number in the THOUSANDS when we calculate damages". That reasoning needs to be challenged.
(2) The courts say "Distributing just a part of the song counts just as bad as distributing the whole of it". That reasoning needs to be challenged.
I'd really like to have a legal advocate on the technie's side who can make these arguments. These are BAD precedents that the courts are setting and which need to fought.
(NewYorkCountryLawyer's fight that "Tannenbaum didn't even distribute" is counter-productive.)
NewYorkCountryLawyer insists that "damages" don't include the money lost through OTHER people downloading that the plaintiff offered up for sharing. He thinks that damages should only count the original download. Unfortunately
* This contradicts existing case law
* It contradicts what the text of the law actually says
* It contradicts how judges have interpreted the law
I think he's doing us all a disservice by sticking his hands in his ears and shouting "la la la". There are interesting arguments to be made, and he's not making them.
Firms with advertising budgets? Their advertising budgets come from us the consumers.
In the US about $400b was spent on advertising in 2008 [cite]. That works out at about $1500 per person per year.
Of that $1500 extra that I'm paying each year (in higher prices for goods), some of it goes to inflict advertising on my eyeballs that I really don't want; some of it goes to line the pockets of Google and advertising agencies; a tiny trickle goes down to subsidize the websites that you want to look at; and only the tiniest portion goes on to subsidize the websites that I want to look at.
It's wrong to think that advertising is a free way to fund websites.
At least it's good that you count the damages due to distributing, rather than just the initial downloading (as NewYorkLawyer insists on doing!)
Your 1:1 ratio is talking about number of bytes transferred. Your calculation then presupposes that the penalty for copying half a work be half as much as the penalty for copying a full work. I don't believe that's right. So I'd take the average number of peers that you upload to, which from what I've seen is usually closer to 50. So, $11,000.
If the judge reads it differently from you, and existing case law reads it differently from you, then ... ?
Then the interesting question is: "How did the courts find her guilty of downloading and distributing, given that the copyright act thinks that distribution means "disseminating to the public by ..."
What do you think the answer is?
(The proof of disseminating copies to the public was that she admitted to both. And I think you're completely wrong on the "sale or other transfer of ownership", as per the definition $506.a.1.C, and as per every single precedent without exception of the courts interpreting copyright law as regards file-sharing.)
It doesn't require proof. From page 11: Thomas-Rasset asserts that, at most, she downloaded and shared music. So "disseminate" and "to the public" are accepted.
You're using a definition of distributing which involves "sale or transfer of ownership". That's not a definition that the courts have EVER used, nor is it one that the DMCA uses. I can't find any support anywhere for your narrow notion of distribution.
NewYorkCountryLawyer, why do you insist on ignoring the DISTRIBUTING side of things?
The DOJ brief only ever talked about "downloading and distributing" (or on page 15, "distributing" alone). It never once even hinted at a penalty for downloading alone. And yet you spun it as a brief about downloading.
In this Jammie Thomas-Rasset brief again, the judge repeatedly talks about "downloading and distributing" or about "downloading and sharing" or about "sharing" alone. It spends a good half of its pages talking about how many other users Jammie might have distributed the work to. It is clear that the infringement count is about this distribution, not about the original downloading.
You seem to be systematically mischaracterizing the briefs and the legal issues. I think there are interesting things to be said about distributing (as the judge here did, and as the DOJ brief did). You know about the field, so please spend your energies on this more interesting and relevant legal question.
The DOJ brief only ever talks about "downloading and distribute", or (page 15) just "distributing" on its own.
The brief said that when you offer a song for distribution, it's hard to know how many people you've distributed it to. The number might be enormous. And so you're penalized between $750 and $30,000 for distributing it to this unknown number of people.
As to the penalty for downloading on its own, without distribution? -- NO ONE KNOWS. I don't think this issue has ever come to court. I can't imagine that it ever could come to court. The DOJ has not touched upon it.
I don't see any reason why Google would try to harm Firefox... what Google really wants is for people to use Google as their search engine.
What Google wants is to show you ads, and to collect your personal data to show you more profitable ads. Firefox's Adblock strikes directly at their ONLY real revenue source.
It wasn't always clear to me -- I didn't even realise that Quarritch was CGI until I read it on the internet!
I'm also wondering why they're so worried about airports. There are way more much easier ways to execute acts of terror than in such a limited environment. But maybe it's just that we want to protect people rich enough to actually fly.
I think that misses the point. Governments aren't disproportionately obsessed with defending airplanes; it's the *terrorists* who are disproportionately obsessed with bombing/hijacking airplanes (rather than other targets which might cause more public fear or kill more people).
Why are terrorists so obsessed with airplanes? It might just be a failure of imagination. But I think it's because it's all about symbolism. The jet plane symbolises the "jet age"; images of jet planes taking off or touching down used to be the defining iconic images of our civilization from the 60s, especially in movies. It's only recently and for a small (non-terrorist) minority of the world that flying on a jet plane has switched from "defining icon of our civilization" to "boring tedious humdrum routine nuisance".
From monster.com, searching for the past 7 days:
C# + Visual Basic: 915+556 = 1471
Java: 1565
The difference is that the .NET specification is under the "Community Promise", i.e. a public commitment by Microsoft not to enforce its patents.
http://www.devtopics.com/microsoft-community-promise-for-c-and-cli/