It sounds like you are saying something along the lines of, "It's impossible to build an accelerometer"; but that is patently false. It's easy to measure large accelerations such as gravity, and geoscientists already measure variations in gravity. The tricky part (or so we thought) was "just" engineering an adequately sensitive detector.
Yeah, but what about in the good old days when you used different units for different dimensions? Fathoms were for depth and height measurements, leagues were for horizontal measurements, and ells and hands were what you used when you couldn't be sure which direction it might be (such as rope).
Problem? What problem are you talking about? GP didn't dis eastern Europe, he advocated it. The only people he painted in an arguably bad light were drug-using tourists from the West.
IMO, unless they get Dave Herman back, it's not the whole cast. That guy is awesome. His regular voices like Roberto, Mayor Poopenmeyer and Dr. Wernstrom are all hilarious, but also he's got range: he can produce amazingly different voices for all those one-time characters he does, whom you don't really remember, like Leela's martial arts sensei Fnog.
Also it's silly to focus just on the voice acting cast. I don't know their names, but I know it takes a huge crew of talented artists and writers to make the magic happen, and I hope all those talented people come back. It would be bad to cut back on the visual and writing talent to pay for the voice talent. The last thing any of us want is 26 half-baked, mediocre episodes. Better the show should end at five good seasons.
To say "you don't vote with your feet" is to betray ignorance of what the expression means. When you choose one store over another, you vote with your feet. When you emigrate and thus pay your taxes to one state rather than another, you vote with your feet. "Vote with your feet" means, "By your patronage, you indicate your approval." The expression is perfectly appropriate here.
That is true; what you describe is known as the prohibition on ex post facto laws: new legislation cannot put you in jeopardy for something that is over and done with, and that was not illegal when you did it. But in this case we are not talking about new legislation, just registration of copyrights, i.e., a bit of important paperwork. IANAL, but as I understand US copyright law, you cannot get monetary damages unless and until you register your copyright, and you can only get damages for infringement that occurs after registration. So the RIAA has no legal right to collect damages for works if they were unregistered at the time of the infringement.
Yeah, the no-retroactive-liability issue is similar. So I guess there is a parallel there.
[She] decided instead to appeal the ruling that she was guilty instead on the basis of a dubious technicality which was unlikely to change the final jury verdict.
The word "instead" here is incorrect or misleading.
You call it a "dubious technicality," referring I assume to the making-available legal theory. However, the making-available argument was the linchpin of the RIAA's argument in the first trial, and the subject of fairly heated debate. Personally I consider this argument to be bunkum and balderdash, but federal judges have weighed in on both sides. It's no technicality, it is a live wire of case law.
It was not a pointless retrial -- when the judge gives the jury rotten instructions, a citizen damn well deserves a new trial.
She lost in court, was given a penalty that while high, was actually on the lower end of the possible outcomes.
No, the law says penalties range from $750 to $150k per offense, so the median there is $75375, and so a per-offense fine of almost-$80k is on the higher end of possible outcomes (exceeding the median, to be precise). Moreover, the real story here is that the penalty wasn't just "high," it was stratospheric compared to the worth of the items in question.
I agree with you on the facts of the case though -- the evidence was squarely against her, she (IMO) lied to the jury, and deserves some penalty. The important question is how much, and that is where the debate should lie. Pretending this punishment is anything but manifest injustice and a cruel absurdity is, I think, misinformed or disingenuous.
Without exception [the African immigrants I knew] agreed on one thing: American blacks are racist dumb shits.
Wow, your foreign friends must be amazingly skilled sociologists, in order to draw such concise conclusions on such a large population. They must have studied the social patterns of the United States for many years, in order to make any such claim. Because most people would not dare to try to summarize the nature of a population of 36 million individuals in a three-word phrase. Why your sociologist foreign friends must be absolute fucking geniuses! Either that, or maybe they don't really know what they're talking about (that is if your friends really did say what you claim they did).
May I offer my summary instead: that some black folks are racist and some are not; some are dumb and some are not. But now it's not such a pungent little assessment, and applies to all sorts of groups.
Oh, I forgot, your friends are from Africa, so that gives them the right to make blanket generalizations about American blacks!
They couldn't understand where the "dignity" was in rap "music," hip-hop "culture"
. . . and therefore it must not exist!
[They] didn't think the government owed them a living like 99% of American blacks seem to.
You are referring to UK practices when the article is about Greece...
(there, fixed it for you.) It's England that has the gazillion police cameras mounted on every streetlamp. The USA is far behind the UK on ubiquitous video surveillance.
I've got more storage in my desktop computer (3TB) than existed in the world at that time.
I'll grant you have more hard drive space, but "storage" itself of digital information has been around for a long, long time --- for one, in the "aperiodic crystals" that store the blueprints for our own bodies: DNA. For example, the DNA in a human cell contains about one CD ROM worth of quaternary digital storage. Your body contains somewhere from 10-100 trillion cells, so assuming you are human, you yourself embody at least a zettabyte of digital, chemical information storage.
Ok, I was being a little mean there -- I concede no one really thinks what I was ascribing to you. I was just exaggerating a little to make a point. But you must concede that no one actually thinks what you are now ascribing to me!
First, I'm making no claims about Madison or Hamilton. My little historical fantasy was an absurd anachronism: as best I gather, Hamilton and Madison had nothing to do with helping incite revolution, and I only mentioned them as political philosophers who were vocal about individual liberties. Their period of activity was from a decade after the revolution, by which time the Crown was not so relevant.
Second, what I am attributing to you is an attitude of accommodation, and not that of a goon at all. Now, often there is much of value in accommodation. It's pragmatic; it's prudent. And it was characteristic of those who advocated conciliation with the colonies' imperialist masters. Whereas it was the staggering idealism and hubris of the American Revolutionaries to believe in the existence of Natural Rights, and to think them worth killing for. I'm not saying you don't believe in a natural right of privacy; maybe you do. But if you do, you seem to be... hmm... very well adjusted to the idea of your own rights being continuously violated by all and sundry.
What I'm saying is, the Founding Parents of America were crazy enough to think that they really ought to have public institutions that respected their natural rights, including privacy. So I think your sense of surprise that "anyone considers it any other way" should be piqued whenever (if ever) you hear the names Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, etc. (If you are not American, that might be seldom.) They considered it another way.
Short answer: yes, I think the answer is to hold the "goons" accountable. I feel I'm in good company. I wish other Americans were less used to being outraged. And I'm not talking about those foolish "tea parties" they just had.
Whensoever some Broadsheet publisheth some scandalous Story about the practise of "Paper Retention" and "File Mining," or the King's Men are observed in the act of prying into the Affairs of others, I must confess to Incredulousness. Can it be that you expect the Crown to honor his subjects' Security? I make bold to offer this Advice: if ye put some matter to Paper, then quite simply ye should expect it sometime to be read by Others, and not only by Yourself. Although some young Upstarts these days like Mr. ALEXANDER HAMILTON and Mr. JAMES MADISON might like to think that a loyal Citizen's Person, Houses, Papers and Effects should be secure against arbitrary Search and Seizure, I find this suggestion both Naive and Risible and it seems most Odd anyone should consider this Question any other way.
Perhaps you misunderstand me; "factual" and "creative" are not mutually exclusive; and I'm not trying to make any aesthetic judgment. What I have in mind is this:
As a general rule, copyright is said to protect "expressive, creative works" that are fixed in a tangible medium. The requirement that a work be expressive and/or creative to attract copyright protection means that it has to be the product of someone's effort and ingenuity. Mere facts and ideas are not protectable.
My point is, copyright law is a tool designed for a different purpose. It isn't going to protect privacy well, because that wasn't what it was crafted to do. You have a good suggestion, though:
How about prosecution of the former associate under computer fraud and abuse act, for gaining access without authorization, . ..
That sounds like a great idea. However, as discussed elsewhere, that probably won't suffice to get the illegally obtained evidence thrown out. That's why I think we probably need better privacy laws.
I agree, it is a low bar, but don't you agree it isn't low enough? Copyright essentially protects creative work, not information; it's privacy law that protects you and your information (papers, effects, etc.). IP laws were not designed to protect privacy, and my spidey sense says they wouldn't do that task well.
If current privacy law does not provide adequate protection, then we need better law. I don't mind if we can squeak by using a (silly IMO) copyright defense, but that's basically a workaround, an ugly hack. I'm not above resorting to ugly hacks for temporary relief, but if the law needs to be improved, I hope for that too.
As sweet as it might taste to use copyright against them, that sure sounds like a bad tack.
First, you can only copyright works with some creative content. So that means the MPAA would be off the hook for, hypothetically, a short email containing a one-word noncreative reply like "yes" -- such an email could perhaps be damning information, but arguably devoid of creative content and therefore not protected by copyright. I don't like the sound of that (that you can spy on me as long as I'm not writing anything creative).
Second, the Copy Right has numerous loopholes, such as fair use for purposes of critical commentary, noncommercial educational use, satire, etc. So the MPAA might try to mount some sort of fair use defense. I don't like the sound of that either (that you can spy on me as long as it is "fair use.")
Basically, copyright law is the wrong law to use here. It has got to be something more along the lines of the Wiretap Act or the Stored Communications Act.
Slashdot Mirror
Except, apparently, cellphones.
It sounds like you are saying something along the lines of, "It's impossible to build an accelerometer"; but that is patently false. It's easy to measure large accelerations such as gravity, and geoscientists already measure variations in gravity. The tricky part (or so we thought) was "just" engineering an adequately sensitive detector.
Yeah, but what about in the good old days when you used different units for different dimensions? Fathoms were for depth and height measurements, leagues were for horizontal measurements, and ells and hands were what you used when you couldn't be sure which direction it might be (such as rope).
(Yet more practical knowledge drawn from LOTR.)
Problem? What problem are you talking about? GP didn't dis eastern Europe, he advocated it. The only people he painted in an arguably bad light were drug-using tourists from the West.
IMO, unless they get Dave Herman back, it's not the whole cast. That guy is awesome. His regular voices like Roberto, Mayor Poopenmeyer and Dr. Wernstrom are all hilarious, but also he's got range: he can produce amazingly different voices for all those one-time characters he does, whom you don't really remember, like Leela's martial arts sensei Fnog.
Also it's silly to focus just on the voice acting cast. I don't know their names, but I know it takes a huge crew of talented artists and writers to make the magic happen, and I hope all those talented people come back. It would be bad to cut back on the visual and writing talent to pay for the voice talent. The last thing any of us want is 26 half-baked, mediocre episodes. Better the show should end at five good seasons.
Sorry to be the grammar Nazi, but you, or perhaps others, might enjoy this bit of orthographic hairsplitting: it's scrip not script.
I can tell this /. thread is going to make my inner GN antsy enough to burn down the Reichstag.
No, not for public domain works, such as anything deliberately placed into Public Domain, or anything old enough.
The problem is, the Berne Convention has conditioned everyone to believe that there is always a copyright. (sigh)
To say "you don't vote with your feet" is to betray ignorance of what the expression means. When you choose one store over another, you vote with your feet. When you emigrate and thus pay your taxes to one state rather than another, you vote with your feet. "Vote with your feet" means, "By your patronage, you indicate your approval." The expression is perfectly appropriate here.
That is true; what you describe is known as the prohibition on ex post facto laws: new legislation cannot put you in jeopardy for something that is over and done with, and that was not illegal when you did it. But in this case we are not talking about new legislation, just registration of copyrights, i.e., a bit of important paperwork. IANAL, but as I understand US copyright law, you cannot get monetary damages unless and until you register your copyright, and you can only get damages for infringement that occurs after registration. So the RIAA has no legal right to collect damages for works if they were unregistered at the time of the infringement.
Yeah, the no-retroactive-liability issue is similar. So I guess there is a parallel there.
Although your item #3 is above is technically correct, it distorts the story badly:
Yes, she could and did appeal the penalty.
The word "instead" here is incorrect or misleading.
You call it a "dubious technicality," referring I assume to the making-available legal theory. However, the making-available argument was the linchpin of the RIAA's argument in the first trial, and the subject of fairly heated debate. Personally I consider this argument to be bunkum and balderdash, but federal judges have weighed in on both sides. It's no technicality, it is a live wire of case law.
It was not a pointless retrial -- when the judge gives the jury rotten instructions, a citizen damn well deserves a new trial.
No, the law says penalties range from $750 to $150k per offense, so the median there is $75375, and so a per-offense fine of almost-$80k is on the higher end of possible outcomes (exceeding the median, to be precise). Moreover, the real story here is that the penalty wasn't just "high," it was stratospheric compared to the worth of the items in question.
I agree with you on the facts of the case though -- the evidence was squarely against her, she (IMO) lied to the jury, and deserves some penalty. The important question is how much, and that is where the debate should lie. Pretending this punishment is anything but manifest injustice and a cruel absurdity is, I think, misinformed or disingenuous.
Wow, your foreign friends must be amazingly skilled sociologists, in order to draw such concise conclusions on such a large population. They must have studied the social patterns of the United States for many years, in order to make any such claim. Because most people would not dare to try to summarize the nature of a population of 36 million individuals in a three-word phrase. Why your sociologist foreign friends must be absolute fucking geniuses! Either that, or maybe they don't really know what they're talking about (that is if your friends really did say what you claim they did).
May I offer my summary instead: that some black folks are racist and some are not; some are dumb and some are not. But now it's not such a pungent little assessment, and applies to all sorts of groups.
Oh, I forgot, your friends are from Africa, so that gives them the right to make blanket generalizations about American blacks!
. . . and therefore it must not exist!
You need to meet more black folks, bro.
That's right. All those fake files floating around are sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids.
(there, fixed it for you.) It's England that has the gazillion police cameras mounted on every streetlamp. The USA is far behind the UK on ubiquitous video surveillance.
So, apparently FEMA removed the coloring book due to complaints. But I suspect that you knew this already, and that I am just feeding a troll.
I'll grant you have more hard drive space, but "storage" itself of digital information has been around for a long, long time --- for one, in the "aperiodic crystals" that store the blueprints for our own bodies: DNA. For example, the DNA in a human cell contains about one CD ROM worth of quaternary digital storage. Your body contains somewhere from 10-100 trillion cells, so assuming you are human, you yourself embody at least a zettabyte of digital, chemical information storage.
Ok, I was being a little mean there -- I concede no one really thinks what I was ascribing to you. I was just exaggerating a little to make a point. But you must concede that no one actually thinks what you are now ascribing to me!
First, I'm making no claims about Madison or Hamilton. My little historical fantasy was an absurd anachronism: as best I gather, Hamilton and Madison had nothing to do with helping incite revolution, and I only mentioned them as political philosophers who were vocal about individual liberties. Their period of activity was from a decade after the revolution, by which time the Crown was not so relevant.
Second, what I am attributing to you is an attitude of accommodation, and not that of a goon at all. Now, often there is much of value in accommodation. It's pragmatic; it's prudent. And it was characteristic of those who advocated conciliation with the colonies' imperialist masters. Whereas it was the staggering idealism and hubris of the American Revolutionaries to believe in the existence of Natural Rights, and to think them worth killing for. I'm not saying you don't believe in a natural right of privacy; maybe you do. But if you do, you seem to be ... hmm ... very well adjusted to the idea of your own rights being continuously violated by all and sundry.
What I'm saying is, the Founding Parents of America were crazy enough to think that they really ought to have public institutions that respected their natural rights, including privacy. So I think your sense of surprise that "anyone considers it any other way" should be piqued whenever (if ever) you hear the names Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, etc. (If you are not American, that might be seldom.) They considered it another way.
Short answer: yes, I think the answer is to hold the "goons" accountable. I feel I'm in good company. I wish other Americans were less used to being outraged. And I'm not talking about those foolish "tea parties" they just had.
tee hee
The technical term is prompt commands.
Or was the above satirical? If so, good show, Chance! Have you seen Being There?
Perhaps you misunderstand me; "factual" and "creative" are not mutually exclusive; and I'm not trying to make any aesthetic judgment. What I have in mind is this:
My point is, copyright law is a tool designed for a different purpose. It isn't going to protect privacy well, because that wasn't what it was crafted to do. You have a good suggestion, though:
That sounds like a great idea. However, as discussed elsewhere, that probably won't suffice to get the illegally obtained evidence thrown out. That's why I think we probably need better privacy laws.
I agree, it is a low bar, but don't you agree it isn't low enough? Copyright essentially protects creative work, not information; it's privacy law that protects you and your information (papers, effects, etc.). IP laws were not designed to protect privacy, and my spidey sense says they wouldn't do that task well.
If current privacy law does not provide adequate protection, then we need better law. I don't mind if we can squeak by using a (silly IMO) copyright defense, but that's basically a workaround, an ugly hack. I'm not above resorting to ugly hacks for temporary relief, but if the law needs to be improved, I hope for that too.
As sweet as it might taste to use copyright against them, that sure sounds like a bad tack.
First, you can only copyright works with some creative content. So that means the MPAA would be off the hook for, hypothetically, a short email containing a one-word noncreative reply like "yes" -- such an email could perhaps be damning information, but arguably devoid of creative content and therefore not protected by copyright. I don't like the sound of that (that you can spy on me as long as I'm not writing anything creative).
Second, the Copy Right has numerous loopholes, such as fair use for purposes of critical commentary, noncommercial educational use, satire, etc. So the MPAA might try to mount some sort of fair use defense. I don't like the sound of that either (that you can spy on me as long as it is "fair use.")
Basically, copyright law is the wrong law to use here. It has got to be something more along the lines of the Wiretap Act or the Stored Communications Act.
IANAL.
Does Steve Ballmer run your ISP?
Believe it or not, I totally read the headline as "Beware the Perlis of Caffeine Withdrawal," and I thought of the famous quote,
-- Alan J. Perlis
Since then, people have discussed "syntactic salt," "saccharine," and "syrup." I thought someone had discovered syntactic caffeine.
All of their base belong to Tux.