Nonetheless, there ARE police with guns, and the legal situation is that they may use lethal force if they think it's necessary, and that decision is basically unquestionable. You can't go to court and argue the question of whether the force was necessary, only the question of whether the officer thought that it was necessary.
This is why there have been repeated screw-ups with armed police shooting innocent, unarmed people (or threatening to do same) and, in my living memory, a sum total of 0 prosecutions over it.
Deterrence is a secondary effect. The primary business of courts is (/should be) justice. You don't deliberately make a hash of your primary function just to try and make a secondary effect more potent, that's just moronic. Not least because this is a CIVIL court, it is not supposed to be handing out punishments AT ALL, all it is there to do is to right to the wrong which has been proved.
What regulations are there regarding putting a tail on someone to follow them everywhere and record their movements, and what restrictions are there on the use of data gathered in that way?
Whatever they are, they should be considered the minimum amount of regulation required.
Sadly OSS is, by its very nature, never going to be 'too big to fail', largely because if it fails, the damage is minimal. The servers still have the software on them, the internet still has mirrors. If all OSS development was stopped tomorrow, the world would continue to work and eventually, when it all became too obsolete to be serviceable, it would be gradually replaced with closed-source stuff paid for with oodles of taxpayers boodle.
Part of the point of OSS is that it prevents the original developer from having the users over a barrel, and that means it can't twist anybody's arm for anything - even its own survival. It's where pacifism always ends up.
then perhaps they should leave gootube on and just shut off search, gmail, maps, earth, blogger, picasa uploads, documents etc. Extra points for shredding the personal accounts of anyone involved in prosecuting the case.
once (if) you join the group known as 'countries with universal healthcare' you can set up some sort of reciprocal system like the EHIC which covers most of Europe, first with Canada, and then transatlantic.
Well, frankly, I don't want socialized medicine..I don't want [thing which doesn't happen], or [other thing which virtually never happens] (possibly based on my age, etc).
That wasn't the defence that I proposed, what I proposed was "But it was already online (or already being distributed by the rights-holder in such a way as made it trivial for it be put online), so when I distributed it I caused some additional harm, but not all the harm. I should only be responsible for the harm that I caused, not the harm caused by third parties where the harm they caused was not by necessity dependent on my actions."
Yeah, but it's not a fine - fines go to the state. This is compensatory damages for the distribution right.
It looks the same from the defendant's point of view, its still $30k out of his wallet.
And why is this distribution right worth $30k? Say he distributes it to 1 person, and they distribute it to 1000 people, what sense does it make for him to be responsible for 1001 redistributions? The music is readily available through traditional distribution methods, the second person could just as easily have distributed his 1000 copies from a CD bought in a shop, the ONLY copy made which didn't generate a sale and is directly attributable to the first uploader is that from the first uploader to the second uploader.
To put it in terms of your exclusive distribution right view: If I upload a copy of your music to someone else, I've deprived you of 1 sale, but I've done no more damage to your ability to further distribute your track than you're doing to yourself by selling it to anyone who'll buy. They could then infringe your distribution right for themselves. If you're selling a track freely, then nobody who distributes a single copy to someone else is creating any sort of a cascade effect leading to massive distribution infringing on your rights which would otherwise not have occured.
If it were some sort of unreleased track then I would be denying you your exclusivity in being able to distribute the track, and if I were to be the source of that getting onto X filesharing network then I would be doing you a lot of damage, but once you start selling it to all and sundry, I'm only costing you the lost sale for the people I distribute it to. Unless you want to get into some really messy argument about the second person not having had the opportunity to distribute it if they hadn't got it for free. In any case the standard argument from the labels is that every copy = a lost sale, on the basis that everyone who gets it wanted it and only got it for free because they could and otherwise would have paid. If you want to hold me strictly responsible on a 1:1 basis for every person I upload it to being someone who would otherwise have bought it, then you also have to accept that if I hadn't uploaded it to them, they would have bought it anyway and would, presumably, have felt equally free to distribute it themselves. Thus rendering me not at fault for any subsequent copies distributed by them.
Depressingly, you'll probably turn out to be right though, because courts aren't really interested in either reason or justice, and because the law is horribly broken.
It's an interesting conundrum. The product that you're buying is the physical disc, but the value that it has to you is in the data stored on the disc. However, you can't really estimate that value without inspecting it, and you can't inspect it until you've completed the transaction.
Most other people who build a business model around getting people to buy a pig in a poke get called scam artists.
because then the people who were harmed won't be properly compensated - they'll probably get $0.50 each per month for the rest of their lives. Taxpayers should front the money to compensate them, and then recover what they can from the guilty parties by garnishment etc.
I understand that there are problems with diesel tanks left standing for a long time too - some sort of biological stuff can get into them whch turns diesel into sludge - if you're burning through the diesel pretty fast anyway, it doesn't matter, but if the diesel is left standing for months at a time it'll break the engine when it tries to use the fuel.
(this is my broad recollection of a conversation that I had 3 1/2 years ago with an elderly man who owned a small boat which he used infrequently and got stuck in the English Channel once because of the problem. Perhaps someone could firm the facts up.)
and where wil they get those blacklists? The law sets the bar to be what 12 people feel is a reasonable standard in their community - how can anyone set up any sort of blacklisting system which can judge individual works against 'feeling' where all they have is one data point for when something was over the line before for one particular location. How would you set up such a system for other areas wherre you have no data points?
This would probably get chucked in Europe because it's impossible to know before hand whether what you're about to do will be illegal or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonetheless, there ARE police with guns, and the legal situation is that they may use lethal force if they think it's necessary, and that decision is basically unquestionable. You can't go to court and argue the question of whether the force was necessary, only the question of whether the officer thought that it was necessary.
This is why there have been repeated screw-ups with armed police shooting innocent, unarmed people (or threatening to do same) and, in my living memory, a sum total of 0 prosecutions over it.
Do you mean actual Atari? Or Infogrames after they bought up the trademark?
Deterrence is a secondary effect. The primary business of courts is (/should be) justice. You don't deliberately make a hash of your primary function just to try and make a secondary effect more potent, that's just moronic.
Not least because this is a CIVIL court, it is not supposed to be handing out punishments AT ALL, all it is there to do is to right to the wrong which has been proved.
What regulations are there regarding putting a tail on someone to follow them everywhere and record their movements, and what restrictions are there on the use of data gathered in that way?
Whatever they are, they should be considered the minimum amount of regulation required.
possibly as a result of too much beer, ironically.
Sadly OSS is, by its very nature, never going to be 'too big to fail', largely because if it fails, the damage is minimal. The servers still have the software on them, the internet still has mirrors. If all OSS development was stopped tomorrow, the world would continue to work and eventually, when it all became too obsolete to be serviceable, it would be gradually replaced with closed-source stuff paid for with oodles of taxpayers boodle.
Part of the point of OSS is that it prevents the original developer from having the users over a barrel, and that means it can't twist anybody's arm for anything - even its own survival. It's where pacifism always ends up.
then perhaps they should leave gootube on and just shut off search, gmail, maps, earth, blogger, picasa uploads, documents etc.
Extra points for shredding the personal accounts of anyone involved in prosecuting the case.
total mother-stabbing new-age-witchcraft-practicing father-raping puppy-shredding nun-strangling terrorist hippie racist moronic flat-earther sexist heretic robber-baron asshole Republican innocent-attacking bastard litigious prostitute kitten-poisoning jerk gay Scientologist thieving SCO homophobic Democrat shit-eating Nazi stupid criminal cocksucking evil Communist odious pig-fucking Christian pedophile nu-metal-wigger Romulan poo-head
remind me to use that more often in coversation...
for the newspapers it's called 'filling the pages with guff about reality TV', for The Eye, it's 'having good lawyers yourself'.
Also, most of us aren't sailors.
the fact that on first glance, the former means what you expanded it to, whereas the latter is more commonly used as a generic insult.
private healthcare also has +adminstrative-costs-trying-to-pry-money-from-insurance-companies.
0.0001% of the population
vis. EDS
I suspect that he was countering the GGP's anecdote with his own about a similarly shoddy experience in the US where he had to pay for the privilege.
re: tourists,
once (if) you join the group known as 'countries with universal healthcare' you can set up some sort of reciprocal system like the EHIC which covers most of Europe, first with Canada, and then transatlantic.
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
Well, frankly, I don't want socialized medicine..I don't want [thing which doesn't happen], or [other thing which virtually never happens] (possibly based on my age, etc).
Fixed that for you.
That wasn't the defence that I proposed, what I proposed was "But it was already online (or already being distributed by the rights-holder in such a way as made it trivial for it be put online), so when I distributed it I caused some additional harm, but not all the harm. I should only be responsible for the harm that I caused, not the harm caused by third parties where the harm they caused was not by necessity dependent on my actions."
I meant that if the person responsible earns $36,000 per year, and there were 1500 victims, and garnishment is at 25%;
$36k is $3k per month
25% of that is $750
Shared between 1500 people is $0.50 each.
Obviously, this won't every accumlate to anything like the full compensation amount over the rest of the person responsible's remaining working life.
Yeah, but it's not a fine - fines go to the state. This is compensatory damages for the distribution right.
It looks the same from the defendant's point of view, its still $30k out of his wallet.
And why is this distribution right worth $30k?
Say he distributes it to 1 person, and they distribute it to 1000 people, what sense does it make for him to be responsible for 1001 redistributions? The music is readily available through traditional distribution methods, the second person could just as easily have distributed his 1000 copies from a CD bought in a shop, the ONLY copy made which didn't generate a sale and is directly attributable to the first uploader is that from the first uploader to the second uploader.
To put it in terms of your exclusive distribution right view:
If I upload a copy of your music to someone else, I've deprived you of 1 sale, but I've done no more damage to your ability to further distribute your track than you're doing to yourself by selling it to anyone who'll buy. They could then infringe your distribution right for themselves.
If you're selling a track freely, then nobody who distributes a single copy to someone else is creating any sort of a cascade effect leading to massive distribution infringing on your rights which would otherwise not have occured.
If it were some sort of unreleased track then I would be denying you your exclusivity in being able to distribute the track, and if I were to be the source of that getting onto X filesharing network then I would be doing you a lot of damage, but once you start selling it to all and sundry, I'm only costing you the lost sale for the people I distribute it to. Unless you want to get into some really messy argument about the second person not having had the opportunity to distribute it if they hadn't got it for free. In any case the standard argument from the labels is that every copy = a lost sale, on the basis that everyone who gets it wanted it and only got it for free because they could and otherwise would have paid. If you want to hold me strictly responsible on a 1:1 basis for every person I upload it to being someone who would otherwise have bought it, then you also have to accept that if I hadn't uploaded it to them, they would have bought it anyway and would, presumably, have felt equally free to distribute it themselves. Thus rendering me not at fault for any subsequent copies distributed by them.
Depressingly, you'll probably turn out to be right though, because courts aren't really interested in either reason or justice, and because the law is horribly broken.
It's an interesting conundrum. The product that you're buying is the physical disc, but the value that it has to you is in the data stored on the disc. However, you can't really estimate that value without inspecting it, and you can't inspect it until you've completed the transaction.
Most other people who build a business model around getting people to buy a pig in a poke get called scam artists.
because then the people who were harmed won't be properly compensated - they'll probably get $0.50 each per month for the rest of their lives. Taxpayers should front the money to compensate them, and then recover what they can from the guilty parties by garnishment etc.
how do you back up a blogger blog in a way which is restorable in any practicable fashion?
I understand that there are problems with diesel tanks left standing for a long time too - some sort of biological stuff can get into them whch turns diesel into sludge - if you're burning through the diesel pretty fast anyway, it doesn't matter, but if the diesel is left standing for months at a time it'll break the engine when it tries to use the fuel.
(this is my broad recollection of a conversation that I had 3 1/2 years ago with an elderly man who owned a small boat which he used infrequently and got stuck in the English Channel once because of the problem. Perhaps someone could firm the facts up.)
you forgot to threaten to strangle them with all 3 of your hands...
and where wil they get those blacklists? The law sets the bar to be what 12 people feel is a reasonable standard in their community - how can anyone set up any sort of blacklisting system which can judge individual works against 'feeling' where all they have is one data point for when something was over the line before for one particular location. How would you set up such a system for other areas wherre you have no data points?
This would probably get chucked in Europe because it's impossible to know before hand whether what you're about to do will be illegal or not.