While I agree with you that DDoSes are somewhat childish, pointless and rather stupid, Anonymous did manage to achieve quite a lot of publicity and did (however briefly) make a difference.
Barratry was abolished as an on offence in the UK in 1967 (along with a range of other "out-dated" crimes). There are remedies against vexatious litigation, though, involving a Court placing a "civil restraint order" the repeated claimant (there's even an official list of them) and one of the possible remedies suggested by the judge in this case was something similar; effectively preventing MediaCAT taking any further action (including just sending letters) without the court's permission.
It's not just that they are going to lose (which they are - actually, they've already lost every case that they let go before a judge, even the undefended ones), but that they don't want their methods or claims to be examined.
It seems that there are barely any stages of this business that they haven't (or possibly "he hasn't") screwed up. Just off the top of my head:
The claimed to be a "copyright protection society" which they are definitely not, and which the judge described as "misleading"
They claimed to have an exclusive licence in the UK, which it seems they didn't
They weren't entitled to make copyright proceedings without being joined with the copyright owner, which they weren't
They (may have) used "materially inaccurate" stuff in their threats to people (over previous cases that are completely irrelevant)...
The judge was definitely "not happy" (and stated that several times); words like "inept", "incompetent" kept coming up (even from claimant's barrister...) - and at one point it was noted that "no sane lawyer" would have done what was done. There's not just a risk of losing, there's also a risk of getting into serious trouble for abuse of process.
It seems that those involved have been really lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) that this new judge (HHJ Birss QC) has taken over the Patents County Court; he certainly seemed to be on top of things, knew what was going on and wasn't letting the claimants get away with anything. He was asking the right questions (nearly all the time) and seemed to have a pretty good idea about the technologies involved.
Legally, this court can't set a precedent (it is only county-level), but it is likely that if they lost a real case, it would seriously weaken their threats at a later date; particularly the publicity that merely announcing their intention to stop (in a witness statement read out in court) has raised. In terms of the actual statement, I'm not sure if it received quite the reaction in court as it has in the press... it was mostly received with scepticism and a certain degree of disbelief (particularly that it had to be read out by the barrister after the solicitor had not returned to the court after lunch). That said, the part about backing out may lead the judge to make a completely ineffective ruling that won't help anyone. Still, whatever happens I think the defendants will all get their costs awarded, although without an effective ruling, it is unlikely they will be paid.
As a mathematician/physicist who is gradually turning into a lawyer/politician (in the UK) the lack of scientists in high political places doesn't surprise me at all - the two groups have some fundamentally different ways of thinking about things.
In science, in general, everyone is working towards the same goal. While we all want funding and there is only a certain amount to go around, we're all trying to find some sort of "truth" about the little area of reality we study. If someone comes along and disproves one of our theories, we might feel a little upset, but we can keep going somewhere else. Furthermore, individually, we aren't important - what matters is the theory. A theory should (in theory...) be equally valid whoever suggests it, should be able to stand on its own merits and a scientific attack on a theory (which should be encouraged, of course) is only an attack on the theory, not the theorist.
In law, everything is very adversarial (in the UK and US, and similar common law countries) - there is a prosecution (or claimant/plaintiff) and a defendant and each side is trying to discredit the other. Neither side is really interested in the facts, but is interested in proving their case. Everything is personalised (even if it shouldn't be) and cases can easily come down to the advocates, not the facts. Politics is fairly similar (due to involving lawyers); it doesn't matter what a policy is, what matters is who is pushing it and how - a terrible, unscientific policy (banking regulation, tax breaks for the rich, ID cards, spending cuts, student tuition fees etc.) can be forced through by being well-marketed. Most of the population has little idea what the person they're voting for's policies are, and even less what they are likely to actually do - they vote for the person or the party. If a policy becomes particularly unpopular, it can end up bringing down the politician attached to it.
Another key difference comes from the "burden of proof". In science (in general), if someone makes a claim of sorts, it is up to them to prove it; challenging is expected and encouraged and it is up to the theorist to bring evidence. In theory, a theory is never proven (outside mathematics), merely accepted as likely based on the evidence. Contrast this with law or politics - here, if someone makes a claim, and another challenges it, it is expected in politics, or required in law, that the challenger make the case and present evidence; thus a politician can get away with all sorts of ridiculous claims, ("ID cards will stop terrorism", "copyright infringement is killing kittens" etc.) provided disproving them is problematic, or any challengers aren't given a platform to speak.
[This leads to all sorts of problems; consider the classic (if hypothetical) case where a homoeopath comes along and makes the claim "my homoeopathic treatment can cure the cold according to studies". The scientist says "that's complete rubbish, prove it." The homoeopath then cries defamation and says "Aha, no - you have to disprove it!". Suddenly the scientist is in a libel lawsuit, costing several years and millions of £s. The area of global warming is a similar story; the science is mostly done, but politicians will still argue, spreading FUD.]
FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is also an interesting difference. To a scientist, actively creating fear, uncertainty and doubt should be considered abhorrent (while doubt is good, it should be lessened with time, not increased). To a lawyer or politician, it is one of the fundamental tools; in fact it is the primary weapon of a defence lawyer, whose job is to create as much doubt as possible.
This has turned into slightly more of an essay than planned, but I shall carry on anyway...
The legal and scientific approaches are so different that it can obviously be troubling for either side to deal with the other (I am treating legal and political together - while they aren't that closely aligned in the UK, from what I understand in the US the gap is smaller due to some
Easier than searching newsgroups or torrents right after the show and downloading without commercials at all?
Easier for someone to quickly get access to a nice, clean version of the broadcast in a convenient format, strip the commercials and stick it on a file-sharing website. This still counts as "making it easier for the pirates" - but either way, the regional aspect of commercials still applies - very few companies will be in a position to push the same commercials in more than a couple of countries.
The TV networks are operating under a logical fallacy, although sadly I'm not sure of the name. It's where you compare options against the way the world 'should be' in your head, and not the actual way the world is.
Wikipedia suggests the Nirvana or Perfect Solution fallacy, or at least, that seems similar. And yes, much of the anti-pirate lobby seem to argue along these lines; forgetting that they are doing better financially now than they ever have. A common mistake is to look at the "number of downloads" rather than the "number of sales that didn't occur due to piracy - the number that occurred because of piracy". The first number is meaningless, but sounds scary and justifies the anti-pirates' salaries.
That is over. Copyright law cannot function in a society with digital copies. This isn't a moral judgment, I'm not asserting that 'information wants to be free', it's not any sort of 'stance'...it's a fact. It's like trying to operate automobiles in a world without friction.
I disagree - I think that copyright law can function perfectly well in our society - it is merely enforcing it that is problematic. The same can be said for speeding (and there are many parallels between the two) - many people speed, and very few are ever caught and punished as it is difficult to identify infringers without invasive surveillance. But the mere existence of the law (and the few who are punished) combined with the logical arguments for the law are enough to keep many people driving - if not legally - at least sensibly and safely.
Luckily, their business model is selling ads,
Speaking as an avid watcher of BBC programs, I must dispute this; most TV networks are in the business of selling advertising space (aside from subscription services), but I would argue that the TV production companies are in the business of selling/distributing content, so if they can find alternate ways of distributing material for a fee, they no longer need the networks.
Not literally at that moment, obviously, but someone would say 'I will pay 50 cents each to stick commercials in an 1000 episodes of BtVS' and someone...... who pay subscription fees and a small extra fee and get episodes without commercials, etc, etc.
The Google Ads-style idea does sound interesting, but once again we run into the problem of taking power (and potentially revenue) away from the networks. While the networks remain the gatekeepers for TV, it will be very hard to wrestle any control from them (same with record labels and music, and film production companies and film).
I think a saner way to do that is to require a mandatory level of sales to renew copyright. You get it for seven years. At the end of seven years, you must demonstrate that X people have purchased a copy, and/or Y people have viewed a copy, to keep your copyright.
This sounds a little to... obligatory or mandatory for my tastes. Mandatory licensing or "public domaining" is a very dodgy place to go to, as it transfers powers not to the public (as copyright expiration should) but to the relevant authority. The better way (imho) of achieving the same effect is to allow renewals of copyright after n years, but charge a fixed fee (or possibly increasing for e
If patents are needed to "protect" your "invention", something is seriously wrong with your patent law. Patents are there to give an inventor the first chance to profit from his invention - they are about protecting financial interests of the inventor.
If you are going to have an invention (does Android count as an invention?) then you need to make sure that it does not infringe on any patents; if it does, you need licenses for them - it is that simple. If you find you can't make a simple OS *without* infringing someone's patent, that suggests either you're granting too many patents, too broad patents or patents for too long (OSes have been around for some time now).
The same applies to copyright; copyright does not "protect" content, if anything it puts it at risk of being lost for ever (both thought experiments and real-world examples support this), all the copyright does is increase the opportunity for the author to make money (although it is neither necessary nor sufficient).
Distributing with commercials won't be enough, as commercials tend to be region-specific and can be stripped from the files quite easily.
My other thought concerning TV shows is that the production companies should stop bothering with the whole "getting networks to bid" thing, and instead just sell licences for a flat rate to anyone who wants it (i.e. "for $n you can show each episode once", "for $m you can show them as many times as you like", "for $p you can distribute them" and so on).
This way the power reverts from the Network to the production company - although it doesn't cover the issue of initial costs, which I understand the networks tend to pay for.
But then, I'm all for reworking licensing laws - something like the original copyright law, whereby if someone was charging too high a price you could take them to the authorities who could force them to charge less...
Legally you can rent out movies you own, so long as you have the physical media, aren't copying that media, and aren't renting them for public viewing.
This is, imho, one of the few things US copyright law "got right". It also seems fairly unique to the US (which is rather surprising).
This is also why there is no Netflix-type thing anywhere else (iirc Canada only has the streaming side); getting the rental licences would be far too problematic.
This. Getting TV (and films) to people using the huge advantages the Internet provides for distribution of content.
Personally, I envisage some sort of "Steam for video" (minus the DRM) - software that you install on your computer and has a store, community and library of TV series and films (although with better library organisation/customisation):
You browse for stuff you want (older stuff there as well), fork over your 40p per episode (1p/minute, for normal stuff, more for new stuff, less for old stuff) and have it download to your computer in an "open"ish format, so you can watch it on any platform (although I imagine that last part will never work).
To that you add Steam-style pricing; special offers all the time (e.g. "buy this entire season/series for quarter-price", "pre-order this season and get a special TF2 hat"). You would be able to pre-order a season, (maybe free pilot episodes?) and then be able to download the episodes in advance encrypted, and have them decrypted on the release date (probably just after the "on air" broadcast; need to give the cable companies their first go).
Then throw in a recovery system (Steam-style, where you can redownload anything you've paid for at any time from anywhere - my main gripe with AmazonMP3), a p2p-distribution network (might as well get users to help distribute - and encourage them to keep the files in the default folder), and a streaming service for "on the go" viewing, or those without vast hard drives.
There - a whole plan, for free.
Of course, it will never happen; licensing laws are far too complex, the cable companies will never go for it as they like their exclusive licenses and don't trust the Internet, and apparently "restricted access streaming" (i.e. AppleTV/GoogleTV/Hulu/Canvas) is the way forward...
It goes even deeper than that - from what I recall the episodes were destroyed (rather than lost) by the BBC as the TV production unions were charging huge royalties simply for storing the episodes, during the "home taping is killing the television industry" craze of the 70s. It is excessive copyrights "protection" that caused the destruction in the first place - and being so popular, DW is one of the few shows from that time that survived in any form (mainly thanks to piracy and actual theft as all official copies were ordered to be destroyed). Fortunately it seems that none of the new DW episodes will ever be lost (or possibly unfortunately in the case of Midnight).
The distinction is quite important - while Steam does restrict what can be done with legally downloaded stuff, it does so in a manner that also offers a very good service to the legitimate customer. The best kind of DRM is that which rewards the legitimate user, rather than punishes the unlawful one.
Steam is far from perfect, and DRM is still bad, whatever form it takes, but I would much prefer that Steam-style DRM (i.e. link the game with an account which enables you to download the game wherever you like, whenever you like while the service operates, adds Cloud support, updates, a store and community stuff) become the standard than the generally less pleasant type that most other major publishers are using.
Perhaps the Thomas-Rasset case show more how ridiculous your copyright law is over there, when you can get fined a minimum of $750 for sharing one track (although I understand a judge later suggested that one album could count as a single work, rather than each track).
Compare this with a recent case in Germany where a judge ruled on €15 per song (assuming each was uploaded 100 times - personally I'm not sure how many seeders get *that* high a ratio, but anyway). If that isn't low enough, there's also the advice offered to a lawyer who was "mass-threatening" people for file-sharing in the UK, in which the advisor (an expert on these matters) suggested that in trial the claimant might be able to prove a single upload per song (so that works out as €0.15 per track) if they were lucky enough to be awarded any damages at all.
Finally, even if settling leads to a lesser punishment than a full trial, that does not mean one should automatically settle. Far too many cases are settled (or in these file-sharing cases, too many people just pay up as soon as they are threatened) when - in most jurisdictions at least - there is barely any case against them.
... unless, of course, you count the Gmail servers as a "computer program, computer, computer system or computer network", which I am fairly certain a court would.
At that point, by accessing her account on the servers he is "exceeding valid authorization" (i.e. he is only authorised to access his accounts and the public areas), so the first bit is satisfied.
He has accessed the servers, so that gets the second criteria...
and he used the service (which you can read as "theft of service", but that isn't actually what it says) so the final criteria is met.
So based solely on the snippets of law you have provided (and noting I'm not a *US* lawyer) it would seem he did break the law. If this is the wrong "result", then the law is badly written (or perhaps common law needs to provide that marriage gives implicit authorisation), but the law being silly doesn't mean you can't break it - just that you shouldn't be punished for doing so.
I quite like the UK common law system; if a judge makes a stupid ruling it can be corrected by a senior judge and the junior judge ends up looking silly. If some "made up law" makes it all the way past the High Court, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court and both European Courts it can't be all *that* bad. Plus, via lawyers if needed (as expensive and useless as they can be), the individual citizen can directly influence the judicial process.
If a politician makes a stupid law, it ends up stuck on the statute books until another politician can be bothered to remove it. And the law has to be really, really stupid for it to bring down governments/politicians; most people don't know what the law is anyway so don't care if a stupid one is passed (and even if some do, they are rarely localised enough to influence elections - kept a safe distance of 4-5 years apart to help us all forget).
I much prefer a system whereby politicians decide on the general policy and put in place a wide range of non-specific laws, leaving the judiciary to fill in the gaps and apply it - after all, parliamentary draftspeople can't cover ever situation when they write the laws, but the judge should have the specific details before them. Sadly politicians hate anything that might take some or all of their power away so seem intent on limiting the ability of judges to actually make decisions and instead leave them to just applying their increasingly convoluted laws and guidelines.
For the record, this is not about child abuse images (which in the UK includes drawings - including, potentially, stick figures) but about any pornographic material - the story initially started because some backbench politician asked for a filter due to her children "accidentally" stumbling across porn while online and unsupervised, or something similar. The UK already has a near-compulsory child porn filter (controlled by the unaccountable IWF) that was introduced against the wishes of the ISPs and even the IWF after pressure from the government and media.
Of course, everyone involved knows that filters - particularly on child abuse images - are completely pointless for protecting children or making the world safer in any way, but they make good campaign pieces for politicians.
Doctor Who first aired in 1963, 3 years before Star Trek (and aired continuously until 1987 when TNG started), so it is quite easy to imagine a time when it was the only scifi show on the air.
As for where the market went - I assume it is partly that "real" scifi is no longer exciting; a combination of having seen it all before (with 700+ episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek each, 300+ Stargates etc. it's quite hard to find an original scifi plot), becoming too nerdy/geeky rather than mainstream (the early shows were family-orientated, so had large market shares) and the rise in other media for the young, intelligent and inquisitive viewers (such as computer games). Plus there is the general shifts in public attitudes away from the "bright, exciting future" (TNG being a classic example) to the dark, grimy present (Dollhouse, Fringe, Heroes) and from science, fact and reason to superstition, pseudo-science and the supernatural.
Then you have expense to consider; a reality show must be significantly cheaper to produce than sci-fi and all that money on CGI (which we've all seen before) means less to go on writing (Doctor Who is a great example of this - while the new series have impressive CGI that the original couldn't have dreamt of, the writing and acting seem much more solid), and then with more channels and more shows, there is less money to go around in general.
Of course, that's just my depressing side, looking at the list of stuff I've watched over the last few years, there have been plenty of... at least average sci-fi-esque shows; BSG/Caprica, Bionic Woman, Doctor Who*/Torchwood*, Dollhouse, Firefly, Fringe*, Heroes, Sanctuary*, Stargate, Terminator - tSSC, The 4400, V*... and they haven't all been cancelled (the * ones are still going - the others have all been airing in the last 4ish years aside from Firefly). There is plenty of stuff to watch, perhaps the problem is dilution rather than a lack of market - too much stuff, only so many good writers/producers/viewers, whereas when TNG was on it was so big that there were few strong competitors.
Copyright also applies to buying, selling, renting, hiring and loaning in many countries (including, iirc, the US). It is my understanding (ianal) that all of these count as copyright infringement in the US unless there is a licence. However, the "First-sale doctrine" is a way to get around this by saying that if the original copyright owner sold the copyrighted material initially (i.e. there is a first sale), this is all ok and the material can be treated like real property (rather than intellectual property).
This means that if you download an unlicensed copy of a DVD, burn it and sell it, that sale, and all subsequent ones are still infringements of copyright (as is your downloading and burning), but if you buy a DVD from a (legal) shop and sell it on, that is fine.
I haven't read the judgment in this case, but it makes sense to me - the "first sale" is part of US law. It doesn't exist everywhere (in fact, the opposite happens in the EU with the artist's resale right, which means that in some cases, if you sell real property you have to pay a royalty to anyone who owns the copyright in materials included in it). If the original sale was in a foreign country, it seems logical that the sale is governed by the laws of that country, not any country you move to (this works both ways).
Of course, this whole issue has arisen due to the stupid copyright laws we have and how they aren't harmonised - in some cases (as here) working in opposite ways across different countries.
Incidentally, this is probably why Netflix and RedBox exist in the US only (as far as DVD rental goes) - in the EU, renting or loaning requires a licence (which libraries etc. hate). On the plus side, selling is perfectly legal (provided what is being sold wasn't created via infringement). Not sure what the situation is in Switzerland.
How do you differentiate a DDoS attack from the usual slashdotting of a web site?
From a legal perspective you would consider intent and authorisation - at least, you would under English/Welsh law, specifically the Computer Misuse Act 1990. For this law to apply, the action must be unauthorised (or the accused unaware whether or not it is authorised) and the accused must intend to prevent or hinder access to some computer system.
The authorisation thing is a little tricky as general website use is a murky legal area (due to the web growing up without lawyers pawing all over it) - in a recent High Court case here, it was held that merely visiting a website could count as copyright infringement if the person browsing wasn't following the Terms and Conditions (even though they required visiting the site to see... yes, that doesn't make any sense to me either). In this case, the T&Cs of a website were found to be legally binding and the idea of an "implicit licence" was rejected by the court. As such, to not fall afoul of the Computer Misuse Act in terms of authorisation, there would need to be T&Cs on the site that specifically authorise/. ing, but not DDoSing.
Interestingly,/.'s Terms of Service (well, GeekNet's) - by which we are all bound - prohibits unlawful use (in section 2), but in this case, this would mean you couldn't know if/.ing or DDoSing was unlawful unless it was unlawful, which could lead to much fun for lawyers...
Having re-read your post, it occurs to me that you were probably asking from a technical perspective, in which case my answer is completely irrelevant. Damnit, I'm turning into a lawyer...
While there was some interesting thoughts here (although nothing particularly new), I think he still makes one of the funamental mistakes the copyright industry pushes for;
For the leechers, pretty obviously, the major motivation was financial. They wanted to acquire music or films without paying for it because it was cheaper than going out to buy it.
He is willing to accept that seeders might not be only interested in financial gain, but fails to consider that this might also be the case for some leechers (as other studies and real-world situations have suggested). The greater convenience of pirated media over a licensed version can be enormous. For example, there have been cases where material has been offered on a "pay-what-you-want-but-pay-something" basis and yes people still pirated the content; showing that there is a disproportionate difference between paying $0.01 (or £0.01) and not paying. For some this might be some principle of not paying and being cheap, but for others this may well be an issue of convenience.
As for the "pretty obviously" part, whenever someone states that something is obvious I recall something my analysis tutor said; "if someone is obvious, prove it; either it is obvious, in which case it won't take long, or it may turn out to be obvious, but untrue." Obviously this was in maths, which has much higher levels of proof, but it does seem that calling something "obvious" is a way of dismissing the converse without proper consideration.
The survey data suggested there was a deep-seated belief that this type of activity shouldn’t be illegal, that there was no criminal act involved.
Also, it is worth noting that in the UK there isn't necessarily any criminal act involved with unlawful file-sharing. Our copyright law is based on civil lawsuits and "actual damages", provided one avoids infringing in the course of business. Of course, this hasn't stopped the copyright industry from twisting our fraud laws to prosecute (unsuccessfully, in general) and persecute those allegedly involved in copyright infringement.
So, the IFPI's site got shut down... and how many people noticed and cared? I know I've visited it a few times (in a "know your enemy" context) but I would imagine this isn't going to affect any of the major players in the copyright troubles or the general public. I guess it is kind of like picketing somewhere that no one really wants or needs to visit.
While I would not wish to recommend or encourage illegal action, it is possible that targeting (lawful) content distributors would be more appropriate and have a greater impact (although might be harder to achieve). After all, shouldn't this be aimed at raising awareness in the general public as much as showing that "the Internet" is just as good (if not better) than the US government at taking down sites?
Mathematics isn't information. The expressions of it are information, and it is those that may be confined to this universe (i.e. the [open or closed] set of timespace in which we exist). The abstracts themselves are... abstract, not information.
There is something of a blur between applied maths and theoretical physics (although, in my opinion, it comes down to approach), so yes, there is a blur between what was invented/discovered by mathematicians or physicists. Sometimes infinities can be dealt with using a change of reference frame, which is perfectly valid (Zeno's dichotomy paradox is kind of an example of this) in the "real world" but yes, there are other, more abstract, ways of dealing with singular points, not all of which work all the time.
What I was trying to say is that in all the cases I can think of where a 1/0 might appear in physics, either it can be "dealt with" using some sort of mathematical trickery (as with the event horizon of a black hole where there is a removable singularity) or the model is imperfect (with water splashes etc.) and not detailed enough, or the physicist complaining about the 1/0 hasn't read the instructions carefully (as at the centre of a black hole, where there is a 1/0 [which is really a 0/0] - but where the mathematical model is not valid).
Mathematics studies Platonic abstract thingamies that do not require a universe to exist (in fact, some don't exist in our universe; non-metric stuff, complex numbers, abstract set theory etc.) - it is merely the tools we use that are bound to our reality (i.e. the symbols used). Without this universe, maths still exists, it is merely our expression of it that would not. Although, sadly, I cannot prove this.
As for the expression; if it is a common figure of speech, it is a misleading one. Maths can quite often deal with singular points and a good mathematician should not be afraid of an infinity. When singularities (i.e. 1/0s) crop up in physics, it is usually because the physicists didn't follow the instructions (given to them by the mathematicians) carefully enough, or are using the wrong / an over-simplified model.
Before that, the math completely falls apart, and we have no idea what was happening.
I may not be an expert (just have a degree in applied maths/theoretical physics), but don't you mean that the "physics" completely falls apart? Maths doesn't require a universe to function.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree with you that DDoSes are somewhat childish, pointless and rather stupid, Anonymous did manage to achieve quite a lot of publicity and did (however briefly) make a difference.
Barratry was abolished as an on offence in the UK in 1967 (along with a range of other "out-dated" crimes). There are remedies against vexatious litigation, though, involving a Court placing a "civil restraint order" the repeated claimant (there's even an official list of them) and one of the possible remedies suggested by the judge in this case was something similar; effectively preventing MediaCAT taking any further action (including just sending letters) without the court's permission.
It's not just that they are going to lose (which they are - actually, they've already lost every case that they let go before a judge, even the undefended ones), but that they don't want their methods or claims to be examined.
It seems that there are barely any stages of this business that they haven't (or possibly "he hasn't") screwed up. Just off the top of my head:
The judge was definitely "not happy" (and stated that several times); words like "inept", "incompetent" kept coming up (even from claimant's barrister...) - and at one point it was noted that "no sane lawyer" would have done what was done. There's not just a risk of losing, there's also a risk of getting into serious trouble for abuse of process.
It seems that those involved have been really lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) that this new judge (HHJ Birss QC) has taken over the Patents County Court; he certainly seemed to be on top of things, knew what was going on and wasn't letting the claimants get away with anything. He was asking the right questions (nearly all the time) and seemed to have a pretty good idea about the technologies involved.
Legally, this court can't set a precedent (it is only county-level), but it is likely that if they lost a real case, it would seriously weaken their threats at a later date; particularly the publicity that merely announcing their intention to stop (in a witness statement read out in court) has raised. In terms of the actual statement, I'm not sure if it received quite the reaction in court as it has in the press... it was mostly received with scepticism and a certain degree of disbelief (particularly that it had to be read out by the barrister after the solicitor had not returned to the court after lunch). That said, the part about backing out may lead the judge to make a completely ineffective ruling that won't help anyone. Still, whatever happens I think the defendants will all get their costs awarded, although without an effective ruling, it is unlikely they will be paid.
A rank 3 tensor?
As a mathematician/physicist who is gradually turning into a lawyer/politician (in the UK) the lack of scientists in high political places doesn't surprise me at all - the two groups have some fundamentally different ways of thinking about things.
In science, in general, everyone is working towards the same goal. While we all want funding and there is only a certain amount to go around, we're all trying to find some sort of "truth" about the little area of reality we study. If someone comes along and disproves one of our theories, we might feel a little upset, but we can keep going somewhere else. Furthermore, individually, we aren't important - what matters is the theory. A theory should (in theory...) be equally valid whoever suggests it, should be able to stand on its own merits and a scientific attack on a theory (which should be encouraged, of course) is only an attack on the theory, not the theorist.
In law, everything is very adversarial (in the UK and US, and similar common law countries) - there is a prosecution (or claimant/plaintiff) and a defendant and each side is trying to discredit the other. Neither side is really interested in the facts, but is interested in proving their case. Everything is personalised (even if it shouldn't be) and cases can easily come down to the advocates, not the facts. Politics is fairly similar (due to involving lawyers); it doesn't matter what a policy is, what matters is who is pushing it and how - a terrible, unscientific policy (banking regulation, tax breaks for the rich, ID cards, spending cuts, student tuition fees etc.) can be forced through by being well-marketed. Most of the population has little idea what the person they're voting for's policies are, and even less what they are likely to actually do - they vote for the person or the party. If a policy becomes particularly unpopular, it can end up bringing down the politician attached to it.
Another key difference comes from the "burden of proof". In science (in general), if someone makes a claim of sorts, it is up to them to prove it; challenging is expected and encouraged and it is up to the theorist to bring evidence. In theory, a theory is never proven (outside mathematics), merely accepted as likely based on the evidence. Contrast this with law or politics - here, if someone makes a claim, and another challenges it, it is expected in politics, or required in law, that the challenger make the case and present evidence; thus a politician can get away with all sorts of ridiculous claims, ("ID cards will stop terrorism", "copyright infringement is killing kittens" etc.) provided disproving them is problematic, or any challengers aren't given a platform to speak.
[This leads to all sorts of problems; consider the classic (if hypothetical) case where a homoeopath comes along and makes the claim "my homoeopathic treatment can cure the cold according to studies". The scientist says "that's complete rubbish, prove it." The homoeopath then cries defamation and says "Aha, no - you have to disprove it!". Suddenly the scientist is in a libel lawsuit, costing several years and millions of £s. The area of global warming is a similar story; the science is mostly done, but politicians will still argue, spreading FUD.]
FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is also an interesting difference. To a scientist, actively creating fear, uncertainty and doubt should be considered abhorrent (while doubt is good, it should be lessened with time, not increased). To a lawyer or politician, it is one of the fundamental tools; in fact it is the primary weapon of a defence lawyer, whose job is to create as much doubt as possible.
This has turned into slightly more of an essay than planned, but I shall carry on anyway...
The legal and scientific approaches are so different that it can obviously be troubling for either side to deal with the other (I am treating legal and political together - while they aren't that closely aligned in the UK, from what I understand in the US the gap is smaller due to some
Easier than searching newsgroups or torrents right after the show and downloading without commercials at all?
Easier for someone to quickly get access to a nice, clean version of the broadcast in a convenient format, strip the commercials and stick it on a file-sharing website. This still counts as "making it easier for the pirates" - but either way, the regional aspect of commercials still applies - very few companies will be in a position to push the same commercials in more than a couple of countries.
The TV networks are operating under a logical fallacy, although sadly I'm not sure of the name. It's where you compare options against the way the world 'should be' in your head, and not the actual way the world is.
Wikipedia suggests the Nirvana or Perfect Solution fallacy, or at least, that seems similar. And yes, much of the anti-pirate lobby seem to argue along these lines; forgetting that they are doing better financially now than they ever have. A common mistake is to look at the "number of downloads" rather than the "number of sales that didn't occur due to piracy - the number that occurred because of piracy". The first number is meaningless, but sounds scary and justifies the anti-pirates' salaries.
That is over. Copyright law cannot function in a society with digital copies. This isn't a moral judgment, I'm not asserting that 'information wants to be free', it's not any sort of 'stance'...it's a fact. It's like trying to operate automobiles in a world without friction.
I disagree - I think that copyright law can function perfectly well in our society - it is merely enforcing it that is problematic. The same can be said for speeding (and there are many parallels between the two) - many people speed, and very few are ever caught and punished as it is difficult to identify infringers without invasive surveillance. But the mere existence of the law (and the few who are punished) combined with the logical arguments for the law are enough to keep many people driving - if not legally - at least sensibly and safely.
Luckily, their business model is selling ads,
Speaking as an avid watcher of BBC programs, I must dispute this; most TV networks are in the business of selling advertising space (aside from subscription services), but I would argue that the TV production companies are in the business of selling/distributing content, so if they can find alternate ways of distributing material for a fee, they no longer need the networks.
Not literally at that moment, obviously, but someone would say 'I will pay 50 cents each to stick commercials in an 1000 episodes of BtVS' and someone ... ... who pay subscription fees and a small extra fee and get episodes without commercials, etc, etc.
The Google Ads-style idea does sound interesting, but once again we run into the problem of taking power (and potentially revenue) away from the networks. While the networks remain the gatekeepers for TV, it will be very hard to wrestle any control from them (same with record labels and music, and film production companies and film).
I think a saner way to do that is to require a mandatory level of sales to renew copyright. You get it for seven years. At the end of seven years, you must demonstrate that X people have purchased a copy, and/or Y people have viewed a copy, to keep your copyright.
This sounds a little to... obligatory or mandatory for my tastes. Mandatory licensing or "public domaining" is a very dodgy place to go to, as it transfers powers not to the public (as copyright expiration should) but to the relevant authority. The better way (imho) of achieving the same effect is to allow renewals of copyright after n years, but charge a fixed fee (or possibly increasing for e
If patents are needed to "protect" your "invention", something is seriously wrong with your patent law. Patents are there to give an inventor the first chance to profit from his invention - they are about protecting financial interests of the inventor.
If you are going to have an invention (does Android count as an invention?) then you need to make sure that it does not infringe on any patents; if it does, you need licenses for them - it is that simple. If you find you can't make a simple OS *without* infringing someone's patent, that suggests either you're granting too many patents, too broad patents or patents for too long (OSes have been around for some time now).
The same applies to copyright; copyright does not "protect" content, if anything it puts it at risk of being lost for ever (both thought experiments and real-world examples support this), all the copyright does is increase the opportunity for the author to make money (although it is neither necessary nor sufficient).
Distributing with commercials won't be enough, as commercials tend to be region-specific and can be stripped from the files quite easily.
My other thought concerning TV shows is that the production companies should stop bothering with the whole "getting networks to bid" thing, and instead just sell licences for a flat rate to anyone who wants it (i.e. "for $n you can show each episode once", "for $m you can show them as many times as you like", "for $p you can distribute them" and so on).
This way the power reverts from the Network to the production company - although it doesn't cover the issue of initial costs, which I understand the networks tend to pay for.
But then, I'm all for reworking licensing laws - something like the original copyright law, whereby if someone was charging too high a price you could take them to the authorities who could force them to charge less...
Legally you can rent out movies you own, so long as you have the physical media, aren't copying that media, and aren't renting them for public viewing.
This is, imho, one of the few things US copyright law "got right". It also seems fairly unique to the US (which is rather surprising).
This is also why there is no Netflix-type thing anywhere else (iirc Canada only has the streaming side); getting the rental licences would be far too problematic.
This. Getting TV (and films) to people using the huge advantages the Internet provides for distribution of content.
Personally, I envisage some sort of "Steam for video" (minus the DRM) - software that you install on your computer and has a store, community and library of TV series and films (although with better library organisation/customisation):
You browse for stuff you want (older stuff there as well), fork over your 40p per episode (1p/minute, for normal stuff, more for new stuff, less for old stuff) and have it download to your computer in an "open"ish format, so you can watch it on any platform (although I imagine that last part will never work).
To that you add Steam-style pricing; special offers all the time (e.g. "buy this entire season/series for quarter-price", "pre-order this season and get a special TF2 hat"). You would be able to pre-order a season, (maybe free pilot episodes?) and then be able to download the episodes in advance encrypted, and have them decrypted on the release date (probably just after the "on air" broadcast; need to give the cable companies their first go).
Then throw in a recovery system (Steam-style, where you can redownload anything you've paid for at any time from anywhere - my main gripe with AmazonMP3), a p2p-distribution network (might as well get users to help distribute - and encourage them to keep the files in the default folder), and a streaming service for "on the go" viewing, or those without vast hard drives.
There - a whole plan, for free.
Of course, it will never happen; licensing laws are far too complex, the cable companies will never go for it as they like their exclusive licenses and don't trust the Internet, and apparently "restricted access streaming" (i.e. AppleTV/GoogleTV/Hulu/Canvas) is the way forward...
It goes even deeper than that - from what I recall the episodes were destroyed (rather than lost) by the BBC as the TV production unions were charging huge royalties simply for storing the episodes, during the "home taping is killing the television industry" craze of the 70s. It is excessive copyrights "protection" that caused the destruction in the first place - and being so popular, DW is one of the few shows from that time that survived in any form (mainly thanks to piracy and actual theft as all official copies were ordered to be destroyed). Fortunately it seems that none of the new DW episodes will ever be lost (or possibly unfortunately in the case of Midnight).
Steam isn't DRM.
Steam contains DRM.
The distinction is quite important - while Steam does restrict what can be done with legally downloaded stuff, it does so in a manner that also offers a very good service to the legitimate customer. The best kind of DRM is that which rewards the legitimate user, rather than punishes the unlawful one.
Steam is far from perfect, and DRM is still bad, whatever form it takes, but I would much prefer that Steam-style DRM (i.e. link the game with an account which enables you to download the game wherever you like, whenever you like while the service operates, adds Cloud support, updates, a store and community stuff) become the standard than the generally less pleasant type that most other major publishers are using.
Perhaps the Thomas-Rasset case show more how ridiculous your copyright law is over there, when you can get fined a minimum of $750 for sharing one track (although I understand a judge later suggested that one album could count as a single work, rather than each track).
Compare this with a recent case in Germany where a judge ruled on €15 per song (assuming each was uploaded 100 times - personally I'm not sure how many seeders get *that* high a ratio, but anyway). If that isn't low enough, there's also the advice offered to a lawyer who was "mass-threatening" people for file-sharing in the UK, in which the advisor (an expert on these matters) suggested that in trial the claimant might be able to prove a single upload per song (so that works out as €0.15 per track) if they were lucky enough to be awarded any damages at all.
Finally, even if settling leads to a lesser punishment than a full trial, that does not mean one should automatically settle. Far too many cases are settled (or in these file-sharing cases, too many people just pay up as soon as they are threatened) when - in most jurisdictions at least - there is barely any case against them.
... unless, of course, you count the Gmail servers as a "computer program, computer, computer system or computer network", which I am fairly certain a court would.
At that point, by accessing her account on the servers he is "exceeding valid authorization" (i.e. he is only authorised to access his accounts and the public areas), so the first bit is satisfied.
He has accessed the servers, so that gets the second criteria...
and he used the service (which you can read as "theft of service", but that isn't actually what it says) so the final criteria is met.
So based solely on the snippets of law you have provided (and noting I'm not a *US* lawyer) it would seem he did break the law. If this is the wrong "result", then the law is badly written (or perhaps common law needs to provide that marriage gives implicit authorisation), but the law being silly doesn't mean you can't break it - just that you shouldn't be punished for doing so.
I quite like the UK common law system; if a judge makes a stupid ruling it can be corrected by a senior judge and the junior judge ends up looking silly. If some "made up law" makes it all the way past the High Court, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court and both European Courts it can't be all *that* bad. Plus, via lawyers if needed (as expensive and useless as they can be), the individual citizen can directly influence the judicial process.
If a politician makes a stupid law, it ends up stuck on the statute books until another politician can be bothered to remove it. And the law has to be really, really stupid for it to bring down governments/politicians; most people don't know what the law is anyway so don't care if a stupid one is passed (and even if some do, they are rarely localised enough to influence elections - kept a safe distance of 4-5 years apart to help us all forget).
I much prefer a system whereby politicians decide on the general policy and put in place a wide range of non-specific laws, leaving the judiciary to fill in the gaps and apply it - after all, parliamentary draftspeople can't cover ever situation when they write the laws, but the judge should have the specific details before them. Sadly politicians hate anything that might take some or all of their power away so seem intent on limiting the ability of judges to actually make decisions and instead leave them to just applying their increasingly convoluted laws and guidelines.
For the record, this is not about child abuse images (which in the UK includes drawings - including, potentially, stick figures) but about any pornographic material - the story initially started because some backbench politician asked for a filter due to her children "accidentally" stumbling across porn while online and unsupervised, or something similar. The UK already has a near-compulsory child porn filter (controlled by the unaccountable IWF) that was introduced against the wishes of the ISPs and even the IWF after pressure from the government and media.
Of course, everyone involved knows that filters - particularly on child abuse images - are completely pointless for protecting children or making the world safer in any way, but they make good campaign pieces for politicians.
Doctor Who first aired in 1963, 3 years before Star Trek (and aired continuously until 1987 when TNG started), so it is quite easy to imagine a time when it was the only scifi show on the air.
As for where the market went - I assume it is partly that "real" scifi is no longer exciting; a combination of having seen it all before (with 700+ episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek each, 300+ Stargates etc. it's quite hard to find an original scifi plot), becoming too nerdy/geeky rather than mainstream (the early shows were family-orientated, so had large market shares) and the rise in other media for the young, intelligent and inquisitive viewers (such as computer games). Plus there is the general shifts in public attitudes away from the "bright, exciting future" (TNG being a classic example) to the dark, grimy present (Dollhouse, Fringe, Heroes) and from science, fact and reason to superstition, pseudo-science and the supernatural.
Then you have expense to consider; a reality show must be significantly cheaper to produce than sci-fi and all that money on CGI (which we've all seen before) means less to go on writing (Doctor Who is a great example of this - while the new series have impressive CGI that the original couldn't have dreamt of, the writing and acting seem much more solid), and then with more channels and more shows, there is less money to go around in general.
Of course, that's just my depressing side, looking at the list of stuff I've watched over the last few years, there have been plenty of ... at least average sci-fi-esque shows; BSG/Caprica, Bionic Woman, Doctor Who*/Torchwood*, Dollhouse, Firefly, Fringe*, Heroes, Sanctuary*, Stargate, Terminator - tSSC, The 4400, V*... and they haven't all been cancelled (the * ones are still going - the others have all been airing in the last 4ish years aside from Firefly). There is plenty of stuff to watch, perhaps the problem is dilution rather than a lack of market - too much stuff, only so many good writers/producers/viewers, whereas when TNG was on it was so big that there were few strong competitors.
Copyright also applies to buying, selling, renting, hiring and loaning in many countries (including, iirc, the US). It is my understanding (ianal) that all of these count as copyright infringement in the US unless there is a licence. However, the "First-sale doctrine" is a way to get around this by saying that if the original copyright owner sold the copyrighted material initially (i.e. there is a first sale), this is all ok and the material can be treated like real property (rather than intellectual property).
This means that if you download an unlicensed copy of a DVD, burn it and sell it, that sale, and all subsequent ones are still infringements of copyright (as is your downloading and burning), but if you buy a DVD from a (legal) shop and sell it on, that is fine.
I haven't read the judgment in this case, but it makes sense to me - the "first sale" is part of US law. It doesn't exist everywhere (in fact, the opposite happens in the EU with the artist's resale right, which means that in some cases, if you sell real property you have to pay a royalty to anyone who owns the copyright in materials included in it). If the original sale was in a foreign country, it seems logical that the sale is governed by the laws of that country, not any country you move to (this works both ways).
Of course, this whole issue has arisen due to the stupid copyright laws we have and how they aren't harmonised - in some cases (as here) working in opposite ways across different countries.
Incidentally, this is probably why Netflix and RedBox exist in the US only (as far as DVD rental goes) - in the EU, renting or loaning requires a licence (which libraries etc. hate). On the plus side, selling is perfectly legal (provided what is being sold wasn't created via infringement). Not sure what the situation is in Switzerland.
How do you differentiate a DDoS attack from the usual slashdotting of a web site?
From a legal perspective you would consider intent and authorisation - at least, you would under English/Welsh law, specifically the Computer Misuse Act 1990. For this law to apply, the action must be unauthorised (or the accused unaware whether or not it is authorised) and the accused must intend to prevent or hinder access to some computer system.
The authorisation thing is a little tricky as general website use is a murky legal area (due to the web growing up without lawyers pawing all over it) - in a recent High Court case here, it was held that merely visiting a website could count as copyright infringement if the person browsing wasn't following the Terms and Conditions (even though they required visiting the site to see... yes, that doesn't make any sense to me either). In this case, the T&Cs of a website were found to be legally binding and the idea of an "implicit licence" was rejected by the court. As such, to not fall afoul of the Computer Misuse Act in terms of authorisation, there would need to be T&Cs on the site that specifically authorise /. ing, but not DDoSing.
Interestingly, /.'s Terms of Service (well, GeekNet's) - by which we are all bound - prohibits unlawful use (in section 2), but in this case, this would mean you couldn't know if /.ing or DDoSing was unlawful unless it was unlawful, which could lead to much fun for lawyers...
Having re-read your post, it occurs to me that you were probably asking from a technical perspective, in which case my answer is completely irrelevant. Damnit, I'm turning into a lawyer...
Baby steps. Next we work on the telepathic paper.
You mean Psychic paper?
Yes, I am a pedant and Whovian; probably not that rare a combination.
While there was some interesting thoughts here (although nothing particularly new), I think he still makes one of the funamental mistakes the copyright industry pushes for;
For the leechers, pretty obviously, the major motivation was financial. They wanted to acquire music or films without paying for it because it was cheaper than going out to buy it.
He is willing to accept that seeders might not be only interested in financial gain, but fails to consider that this might also be the case for some leechers (as other studies and real-world situations have suggested). The greater convenience of pirated media over a licensed version can be enormous. For example, there have been cases where material has been offered on a "pay-what-you-want-but-pay-something" basis and yes people still pirated the content; showing that there is a disproportionate difference between paying $0.01 (or £0.01) and not paying. For some this might be some principle of not paying and being cheap, but for others this may well be an issue of convenience.
As for the "pretty obviously" part, whenever someone states that something is obvious I recall something my analysis tutor said; "if someone is obvious, prove it; either it is obvious, in which case it won't take long, or it may turn out to be obvious, but untrue." Obviously this was in maths, which has much higher levels of proof, but it does seem that calling something "obvious" is a way of dismissing the converse without proper consideration.
The survey data suggested there was a deep-seated belief that this type of activity shouldn’t be illegal, that there was no criminal act involved.
Also, it is worth noting that in the UK there isn't necessarily any criminal act involved with unlawful file-sharing. Our copyright law is based on civil lawsuits and "actual damages", provided one avoids infringing in the course of business. Of course, this hasn't stopped the copyright industry from twisting our fraud laws to prosecute (unsuccessfully, in general) and persecute those allegedly involved in copyright infringement.
So, the IFPI's site got shut down... and how many people noticed and cared? I know I've visited it a few times (in a "know your enemy" context) but I would imagine this isn't going to affect any of the major players in the copyright troubles or the general public. I guess it is kind of like picketing somewhere that no one really wants or needs to visit.
While I would not wish to recommend or encourage illegal action, it is possible that targeting (lawful) content distributors would be more appropriate and have a greater impact (although might be harder to achieve). After all, shouldn't this be aimed at raising awareness in the general public as much as showing that "the Internet" is just as good (if not better) than the US government at taking down sites?
Mathematics isn't information. The expressions of it are information, and it is those that may be confined to this universe (i.e. the [open or closed] set of timespace in which we exist). The abstracts themselves are ... abstract, not information.
There is something of a blur between applied maths and theoretical physics (although, in my opinion, it comes down to approach), so yes, there is a blur between what was invented/discovered by mathematicians or physicists. Sometimes infinities can be dealt with using a change of reference frame, which is perfectly valid (Zeno's dichotomy paradox is kind of an example of this) in the "real world" but yes, there are other, more abstract, ways of dealing with singular points, not all of which work all the time.
What I was trying to say is that in all the cases I can think of where a 1/0 might appear in physics, either it can be "dealt with" using some sort of mathematical trickery (as with the event horizon of a black hole where there is a removable singularity) or the model is imperfect (with water splashes etc.) and not detailed enough, or the physicist complaining about the 1/0 hasn't read the instructions carefully (as at the centre of a black hole, where there is a 1/0 [which is really a 0/0] - but where the mathematical model is not valid).
Mathematics studies Platonic abstract thingamies that do not require a universe to exist (in fact, some don't exist in our universe; non-metric stuff, complex numbers, abstract set theory etc.) - it is merely the tools we use that are bound to our reality (i.e. the symbols used). Without this universe, maths still exists, it is merely our expression of it that would not. Although, sadly, I cannot prove this.
As for the expression; if it is a common figure of speech, it is a misleading one. Maths can quite often deal with singular points and a good mathematician should not be afraid of an infinity. When singularities (i.e. 1/0s) crop up in physics, it is usually because the physicists didn't follow the instructions (given to them by the mathematicians) carefully enough, or are using the wrong / an over-simplified model.
Before that, the math completely falls apart, and we have no idea what was happening.
I may not be an expert (just have a degree in applied maths/theoretical physics), but don't you mean that the "physics" completely falls apart? Maths doesn't require a universe to function.