The Japanese elite *may* have outlived the European/American elite but I'm gonna [citation needed] you on that one... The Japanese common man, however, certainly did NOT live longer or better than his Western counterpart.
I refer you to "Standard of Living in Japan Before Industrialization: From what Level did Japan Begin? A Comment" by Yasukichi Yasuba in The Journal of Economic History Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 217-224.
Yasuba takes to task the notion that life for the commoner in Japan was better than that in the West. While economic development HAD been ongoing throughout the Tokugawa shogunate, and circumstances had improved for the Japanese laborer, the reality of the situation is that farmers here and farmers there both were treated very poorly. He also points out, specifically, the flaw in Hanley's research (which estimated life expectancy to be around 40 years in Japan) specifically used a source which excluded year 0 deaths, and then substituted Western infant mortality rates in its place. At the time, Japan would be much closer to India than the West. By using data which matches temple records more closely, Yasuba suggests that the actual life expectancy of the time was around 35, which (again) puts it below the West.
Back in 1999, a teacher at my High School was injured because a kid thought a dry ice bomb in a trash can would be a "funny" prank. I don't know how much dry ice was placed in the soda bottles -- I suspect they were 2L bottles -- but he put several bottles of dry ice in different trash cans around the school:
It's not mentioned in the article, but the teacher did suffer lacerations on his face -- an inch or two to either side, and he might have actually been blinded.
I don't see how you can not call it a bomb. It's a device that explodes. Improperly placed (or designed), and it can hurt innocent bystanders. Putting dry ice and water in a sealed bottle can *ONLY* result in an explosion. What else would you call it?
The real story is the massive STFC spending cuts that impact their group. Those spending cuts were announced the same day, and are being blogged about by the same folks:
Same thing applied to me, some decades earlier; I learned to read, write and spell before kindergarten in order to be able to beat an old Atari game (Castle Hexagon).
most games don't require reading in order to figure out what to do next; with Castle Hexagon, you had to know what you had picked up, and you had to know the room to which it belonged.. it was fairly logical, but if you couldn't read the name of the item you were holding or the title of the room you were in, you wouldn't get far.
Researchers (and sci-fi writers) always talk about things like gigantic space elevators and star-encompassing spheres; works that would take an entire world's focus (and several generations of dedicated work) to accomplish. I always figured that those were unaccomplishable dreams...
But then I read this story and got to thinking... Why not make a gigantic net and scoop up all that garbage?
It's fake. The 1st expansion, Burning Crusade went live in January 2007 -- but Wrath of the Lich King was announced (INCLUDING zone information) in August of that year. By September, all of that info was everywhere, including approximate level of the zones, preliminary notes about possible raid zones, etc. Basically, the list used readily available data based on RPG sourcebook material, in-game quests, and instruction manuals for previous Warcraft games.
Further, even if the list was legitimate: It makes no sense why a multi-billion dollar company would continue to base its video game's success or failure on a sole wordpad document transformed into a PDF.
SIGINT isn't just data collection -- it's also data distribution. Make the person you're listening to think they're being listened to by another group, or exchange information with an informant without them knowing who "you" are, and without them suspecting anything's wrong with the transaction.
I heard a story once [citation needed], where "we" were feeding a terrorist fake info to relay to his friends, and the terrorist gobbled it up and told his superiors... which then changed the location of some meeting, which resulted in them getting blown up (with relatively fewer civilian casualties).
Whether Calixte's guilty or not (and whether or not he's committed any crime) the warrant wasn't requested because of a scary demon -- it was because there's a strong connection between Calixte and a (hate crime?) e-mail that was sent to the entire student body, and (possibly) because Calixte has apparently got a history of suspicious (criminal) activity previously:
On 1/27/09, "_____ advised Officer Eng that Mr. Calixte has changed grades for students by accessing the Boston College computer system." and on 1/28/09, "Mr. Calixte was also a suspect in a stolen Boston College laptop computer report I investigated previously."
After the outing e-mail, "Mr. Escalante told me... this IP address... indicat[ed] the sender was on BC campus and was using a wired connection in Gabelli residence hall." further, that Calixte registered the computer name and info of the computer that was using the connection at the time. Additionally, they got info from GMail and Yahoo regarding how the e-mail was sent, including a screenshot of another site that also happened to have misc. info connecting the site visitor with Calixte.
Basically, it's not Linux that got this kid in trouble, it's his own stupidity. And he's supposedly a smart CS student, to boot. Where were his 7 proxies?:p
A year or two ago, I was doing helpdesk stuff when a user called in regarding a phishing e-mail they'd received regarding some transaction in Africa. They wanted to know if it was legitimate, because it sounded (to him) like the business opportunity of a lifetime. I told him that it was a scam, and explained how the scam worked. He thought for a moment, and said "Yeah, maybe, but he's promising millions!" (uh oh)
I directed him to read up on some of the 419 anti-scam sites. We read the literature together, and discussed why these operations work, and why it's dangerous to respond to them, etc.
At the end of the call, despite having spent more than 45 minutes trying to dissuade him, and having read multiple stories that all had the same general flow, he remained skeptical of MY explanation that it was a scam. He wanted to believe it was legitimate, and so he believed it was legitimate.
I haven't spoken to him since, but some of my colleagues have. We came to the general consensus that he probably sent several thousand dollars to them before realizing it was fake.:/
Siy and Pearlman also expressed skepticism at the notion that these "dynamic, non-literal elements" constitute a distinct copyrighted work.
If I'm reading the trial order correctly (IANAL), it seems to cite the following cases in support of "non-literal elements" being copyrighted:
See Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, 888 F.2d 878, 884-85 (D.C. Cir. 1989); Midway Mfg. Co. v. Arctic Int'l, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009, 1011-12 (7th Cir. 1983); Williams Elec., Inc. v. Arctic Int'l, Inc., 685 F.2d 870, 874 (3d Cir. 1982); Stern Elecs., Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852, 855-56 (2d Cir. 1982)
What I'd like to see from Siy and Pearlman is a description of what these cases are, and why their citation is somehow irrelevant with regards to non-literal elements and copyright enforceability. The judge certainly seemed to think they applied. (Again, if I'm reading the order correctly. I might be wrong. Who knows.)
Although I haven't been in a store that sold new VHS tapes in years, I'm a little apprehensive.
While it is true that many shows have been re-released in DVD format, there are plenty of titles that did not (and/or will not) see re-release. In many cases, these aren't "essential" or "good" works, but film historians often use relics of the past to show the evolution of a director's style or the level of technological development at the time. They might also use these works to show the political climate of the country it was produced in, or as a source for historical evaluation.
If you need to make a film based in 1988, wouldn't it be nice if you had a lot of filmed material from 1988? What if you can't get access to what you know you need because it was all copyrighted, but never released on DVD? What if you can't find a collector who's willing to sell you their VHS tapes?
I don't think it's a fault so much of VHS going out of the market, but of copyright law. It's easy to find a VCR, or a tape deck or a record player, but finding a specific release from those mediums is nearly impossible without extensive searching, often commanding high prices from collectors. If that material was considered out of copyright, I could take my library and digitize it, throw up a torrent, and *poof* it's around for forever.. but because I can't, it will sit around until I'm an old man before there's even a glimmer of hope that it might be made available to the public.
TwentyFifthNovember is a guild made up of Nihilum and SK-Gaming (aka Curse). Both guilds had members that experienced Naxxramas at level 60 (when it was originally released), and most of the bosses in Naxxramas (retuned and re-released for level 80) are largely unchanged since that time. Both of these guilds had very significant presences in the Closed Beta, where this raid content was available for anyone who could gather enough players. Many of them killed these bosses for weeks and months, before the game went live. The slight differences between these bosses at level 60 versus these bosses at level 80 is minor enough that even those who DIDN'T see the retuned content would still know how to get past it.
Raiding in World of Warcraft is more about skill than gear (although there are a few hard gear checks, such as needing 8.5k HP to survive Naj'entus area-effect nuke). These guys certainly are skillful, but there was never any doubt that they would steamroll all of this content as soon as they hit 80. The slightly bigger concern is that they managed to get 25 members to level 80 in ~65 hours of gameplay. Still, with the first 80 after 27 hours, it wasn't unexpected. People were hitting level 70 in Burning Crusade in about the same amount of time, and once the strategy for doing so was optimized, anyone (with a lot of time, and/or friends) could grind out the levels.
Heroic Glory of the Raider involves a series of moderate to very hard challenges in Naxx, with the reward being an exclusive Proto-Drake mount. Until they get that, it's not news.. and even if they do get that, they've STILL got the qualifiers mentioned earlier.
How do video games fall into this continuum of "unhappy" to "happy"? In some respects, video games are like TV, like reading (many RPGs, visual novels), and (particularly with MMOs and live competitive games) socializing, too.
I would generally say that if the original developers/company _offers_ the game (and/or the source) for free with no support, players will freely support it themselves. A community will form around the players who support the game, and the game will live indefinitely. If the fanbase is technically knowledgeable in any way, you may even see patches to fix bugs and other dev tools come out -- particularly if the source is provided.
The problem, of course, is simply getting the game/source.
Are transcripts of the video responses available anywhere? I checked quickly, but there doesn't appear to be one on the main site. It's a shame that such a 'high-tech' 'debate' can't deliver information to those unable to hear the responses.
Since 2001, I've made a number of trips to Japan. I fit the "dirty hippy" profile, and I usually carried a laptop, so customs would regularly pull me aside and ask me about why I was traveling, or do drug tests, etc. When they asked about the laptop (which wasn't often), I told them that it had a power cable in the carrying case, but no battery installed (which was the truth). The battery was usually either in another carry-on or in stored luggage.
To date, neither Japanese nor US customs has asked me to plug in or turn on the laptop, or even to discuss its contents.
I recently happened to stumble across Good Old Games -- GOG.com -- which is a (supposedly) new download site. If it lives up to the claims on the first page, it'll singlehandedly be the best direct download game site ever. No DRM, cheap (under $10) games, Vista/XP-compatibility, after-sales support, etc.
Whether it's legit or not, and/or whether it's actually capable of being as awesome as it sounds remains to be seen. Supposed to go live sometime this month (but we're running out of month, so..)
Why should EA install Securom AND limit the number of installs? If EA doesn't trust Securom to do its job, then why are they using it at all?
Here's my proposed "compromise": Permit the end user to select whether he/she wants Securom on their computer.
1. If I refuse to install Securom, give me limited #s of installs based on hardware profile. Use the online authentication for installation authorization. If the system for the 'new' install closely (>90%?) matches the most recent previous submitted hardware profile, give me a free re-install.
If the install doesn't match the hardware profile, allow me to cancel it without using up the installation credit. Allow me to see what the hardware profile is, and how much of it matches, so that I can see why I'm not getting a "free" re-install. If needed, allow me to buy (at a reduced price) more installation credits.
And, most importantly, **TRUST ME** when i'm trying to be an honest consumer.
2. If I accept Securom on my computer, give me unlimited installs regardless of hardware configuration changes. Period.
2. Provide your full name, address, telephone number, and email address, and the username of your YouTube account....
What happens next?
After we receive your counter-notification, we will forward it to the party who submitted the original claim of copyright infringement. Please note that when we forward the counter-notification, it includes your personal information. By submitting a counter-notification, you consent to having your information revealed in this way.
CoS files false takedowns, Anonymous critics file counter-claims, CoS gets all of their personal information.
And yes, they do collect personal information and do exploit it to threaten and silence their critics. See, for example, the case of G. Allen. Allen was a regular guy who stopped by to look at the Anonymous protesters in February, with no real interest in the group, and then received a threatening letter from CoS because they ran his license plates and dug up his information to harass him.. and harass him they did. http://blackfish.biz/allen/?p=246
Christianity + Islam = ~3-4 billion people, which is 50-66% of the world, depending on how (and who) you're counting. Additionally, due to missionary work, it's likely that 3/4ths of the world has at least *heard* the Abrahamic stories, even if they discard them as being incongruous with their own beliefs.
Slashdot Mirror
The Japanese elite *may* have outlived the European/American elite but I'm gonna [citation needed] you on that one... The Japanese common man, however, certainly did NOT live longer or better than his Western counterpart.
I refer you to "Standard of Living in Japan Before Industrialization: From what Level did Japan Begin? A Comment" by Yasukichi Yasuba in The Journal of Economic History Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 217-224.
Yasuba takes to task the notion that life for the commoner in Japan was better than that in the West. While economic development HAD been ongoing throughout the Tokugawa shogunate, and circumstances had improved for the Japanese laborer, the reality of the situation is that farmers here and farmers there both were treated very poorly. He also points out, specifically, the flaw in Hanley's research (which estimated life expectancy to be around 40 years in Japan) specifically used a source which excluded year 0 deaths, and then substituted Western infant mortality rates in its place. At the time, Japan would be much closer to India than the West. By using data which matches temple records more closely, Yasuba suggests that the actual life expectancy of the time was around 35, which (again) puts it below the West.
Back in 1999, a teacher at my High School was injured because a kid thought a dry ice bomb in a trash can would be a "funny" prank. I don't know how much dry ice was placed in the soda bottles -- I suspect they were 2L bottles -- but he put several bottles of dry ice in different trash cans around the school:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4179/is_19990402/ai_n11719980/
It's not mentioned in the article, but the teacher did suffer lacerations on his face -- an inch or two to either side, and he might have actually been blinded.
I don't see how you can not call it a bomb. It's a device that explodes. Improperly placed (or designed), and it can hurt innocent bystanders. Putting dry ice and water in a sealed bottle can *ONLY* result in an explosion. What else would you call it?
The real story is the massive STFC spending cuts that impact their group. Those spending cuts were announced the same day, and are being blogged about by the same folks:
http://herschelmission.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/so-here-it-is-physics-doomsday/
http://herschelmission.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/blood-on-the-floor-for-uk-physicists/
20% cuts here, 15% cuts there, and soon enough you won't have enough money to fund anything at all.
Or.... the daughter of Waldo AND Carmen Sandiego?
http://www.tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=433
Same thing applied to me, some decades earlier; I learned to read, write and spell before kindergarten in order to be able to beat an old Atari game (Castle Hexagon).
most games don't require reading in order to figure out what to do next; with Castle Hexagon, you had to know what you had picked up, and you had to know the room to which it belonged.. it was fairly logical, but if you couldn't read the name of the item you were holding or the title of the room you were in, you wouldn't get far.
Researchers (and sci-fi writers) always talk about things like gigantic space elevators and star-encompassing spheres; works that would take an entire world's focus (and several generations of dedicated work) to accomplish. I always figured that those were unaccomplishable dreams...
But then I read this story and got to thinking... Why not make a gigantic net and scoop up all that garbage?
They've never said 100 is the max level. That statement is GENERALLY attributed to the fake "expansion list" that people keep linking to. Here's the original source for that list:
http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=21;mid=119012268058738816
It's fake. The 1st expansion, Burning Crusade went live in January 2007 -- but Wrath of the Lich King was announced (INCLUDING zone information) in August of that year. By September, all of that info was everywhere, including approximate level of the zones, preliminary notes about possible raid zones, etc. Basically, the list used readily available data based on RPG sourcebook material, in-game quests, and instruction manuals for previous Warcraft games.
Further, even if the list was legitimate: It makes no sense why a multi-billion dollar company would continue to base its video game's success or failure on a sole wordpad document transformed into a PDF.
>dessert dwellers
Dessert, eh?
http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF145-Nunez.jpg
SIGINT isn't just data collection -- it's also data distribution. Make the person you're listening to think they're being listened to by another group, or exchange information with an informant without them knowing who "you" are, and without them suspecting anything's wrong with the transaction.
I heard a story once [citation needed], where "we" were feeding a terrorist fake info to relay to his friends, and the terrorist gobbled it up and told his superiors... which then changed the location of some meeting, which resulted in them getting blown up (with relatively fewer civilian casualties).
Whether Calixte's guilty or not (and whether or not he's committed any crime) the warrant wasn't requested because of a scary demon -- it was because there's a strong connection between Calixte and a (hate crime?) e-mail that was sent to the entire student body, and (possibly) because Calixte has apparently got a history of suspicious (criminal) activity previously:
On 1/27/09, "_____ advised Officer Eng that Mr. Calixte has changed grades for students by accessing the Boston College computer system." and on 1/28/09, "Mr. Calixte was also a suspect in a stolen Boston College laptop computer report I investigated previously."
After the outing e-mail, "Mr. Escalante told me ... this IP address ... indicat[ed] the sender was on BC campus and was using a wired connection in Gabelli residence hall." further, that Calixte registered the computer name and info of the computer that was using the connection at the time. Additionally, they got info from GMail and Yahoo regarding how the e-mail was sent, including a screenshot of another site that also happened to have misc. info connecting the site visitor with Calixte.
Basically, it's not Linux that got this kid in trouble, it's his own stupidity. And he's supposedly a smart CS student, to boot. Where were his 7 proxies? :p
A year or two ago, I was doing helpdesk stuff when a user called in regarding a phishing e-mail they'd received regarding some transaction in Africa. They wanted to know if it was legitimate, because it sounded (to him) like the business opportunity of a lifetime. I told him that it was a scam, and explained how the scam worked. He thought for a moment, and said "Yeah, maybe, but he's promising millions!" (uh oh)
I directed him to read up on some of the 419 anti-scam sites. We read the literature together, and discussed why these operations work, and why it's dangerous to respond to them, etc.
At the end of the call, despite having spent more than 45 minutes trying to dissuade him, and having read multiple stories that all had the same general flow, he remained skeptical of MY explanation that it was a scam. He wanted to believe it was legitimate, and so he believed it was legitimate.
I haven't spoken to him since, but some of my colleagues have. We came to the general consensus that he probably sent several thousand dollars to them before realizing it was fake. :/
Or imagine if you bought the latest edition of a "Call of Duty" game, only to find out the EULA stated it was illegal to play except on weekends?
Try playing WoW between 5am and 11am Pacific time on a Tuesday.
(For those who don't play WoW, that's typically the time when maintenance occurs, patches get deployed, etc.)
FTA:
Siy and Pearlman also expressed skepticism at the notion that these "dynamic, non-literal elements" constitute a distinct copyrighted work.
If I'm reading the trial order correctly (IANAL), it seems to cite the following cases in support of "non-literal elements" being copyrighted:
See Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, 888 F.2d 878, 884-85 (D.C. Cir. 1989); Midway Mfg. Co. v. Arctic Int'l, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009, 1011-12 (7th Cir. 1983); Williams Elec., Inc. v. Arctic Int'l, Inc., 685 F.2d 870, 874 (3d Cir. 1982); Stern Elecs., Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852, 855-56 (2d Cir. 1982)
What I'd like to see from Siy and Pearlman is a description of what these cases are, and why their citation is somehow irrelevant with regards to non-literal elements and copyright enforceability. The judge certainly seemed to think they applied. (Again, if I'm reading the order correctly. I might be wrong. Who knows.)
Sounds like it was actually the name of a product back then, from 1984. Check out Wikipedia regarding it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad/Painter
I also remember hearing it called that.
Although I haven't been in a store that sold new VHS tapes in years, I'm a little apprehensive.
While it is true that many shows have been re-released in DVD format, there are plenty of titles that did not (and/or will not) see re-release. In many cases, these aren't "essential" or "good" works, but film historians often use relics of the past to show the evolution of a director's style or the level of technological development at the time. They might also use these works to show the political climate of the country it was produced in, or as a source for historical evaluation.
If you need to make a film based in 1988, wouldn't it be nice if you had a lot of filmed material from 1988? What if you can't get access to what you know you need because it was all copyrighted, but never released on DVD? What if you can't find a collector who's willing to sell you their VHS tapes?
I don't think it's a fault so much of VHS going out of the market, but of copyright law. It's easy to find a VCR, or a tape deck or a record player, but finding a specific release from those mediums is nearly impossible without extensive searching, often commanding high prices from collectors. If that material was considered out of copyright, I could take my library and digitize it, throw up a torrent, and *poof* it's around for forever.. but because I can't, it will sit around until I'm an old man before there's even a glimmer of hope that it might be made available to the public.
This story is not news.
TwentyFifthNovember is a guild made up of Nihilum and SK-Gaming (aka Curse). Both guilds had members that experienced Naxxramas at level 60 (when it was originally released), and most of the bosses in Naxxramas (retuned and re-released for level 80) are largely unchanged since that time. Both of these guilds had very significant presences in the Closed Beta, where this raid content was available for anyone who could gather enough players. Many of them killed these bosses for weeks and months, before the game went live. The slight differences between these bosses at level 60 versus these bosses at level 80 is minor enough that even those who DIDN'T see the retuned content would still know how to get past it.
Raiding in World of Warcraft is more about skill than gear (although there are a few hard gear checks, such as needing 8.5k HP to survive Naj'entus area-effect nuke). These guys certainly are skillful, but there was never any doubt that they would steamroll all of this content as soon as they hit 80. The slightly bigger concern is that they managed to get 25 members to level 80 in ~65 hours of gameplay. Still, with the first 80 after 27 hours, it wasn't unexpected. People were hitting level 70 in Burning Crusade in about the same amount of time, and once the strategy for doing so was optimized, anyone (with a lot of time, and/or friends) could grind out the levels.
One thing to note is that these guys don't yet have the ultra-rare achievement awards, for example:
http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=2138
Heroic Glory of the Raider involves a series of moderate to very hard challenges in Naxx, with the reward being an exclusive Proto-Drake mount. Until they get that, it's not news.. and even if they do get that, they've STILL got the qualifiers mentioned earlier.
How do video games fall into this continuum of "unhappy" to "happy"? In some respects, video games are like TV, like reading (many RPGs, visual novels), and (particularly with MMOs and live competitive games) socializing, too.
>I really have a hard time seeing any game living for terribly long after it's been abandoned by the original company.
Like... Continuum? http://www.getcontinuum.com/
Or Gladiator? http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/gladiator/
Or ZZT? http://zzt.belsambar.net/
I would generally say that if the original developers/company _offers_ the game (and/or the source) for free with no support, players will freely support it themselves. A community will form around the players who support the game, and the game will live indefinitely. If the fanbase is technically knowledgeable in any way, you may even see patches to fix bugs and other dev tools come out -- particularly if the source is provided.
The problem, of course, is simply getting the game/source.
Are transcripts of the video responses available anywhere? I checked quickly, but there doesn't appear to be one on the main site. It's a shame that such a 'high-tech' 'debate' can't deliver information to those unable to hear the responses.
>I'd like to see WoW on the commodore 64...
Done:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/moltencore/
Enjoy it while it lasts!
Exactly.
Since 2001, I've made a number of trips to Japan. I fit the "dirty hippy" profile, and I usually carried a laptop, so customs would regularly pull me aside and ask me about why I was traveling, or do drug tests, etc. When they asked about the laptop (which wasn't often), I told them that it had a power cable in the carrying case, but no battery installed (which was the truth). The battery was usually either in another carry-on or in stored luggage.
To date, neither Japanese nor US customs has asked me to plug in or turn on the laptop, or even to discuss its contents.
I recently happened to stumble across Good Old Games -- GOG.com -- which is a (supposedly) new download site. If it lives up to the claims on the first page, it'll singlehandedly be the best direct download game site ever. No DRM, cheap (under $10) games, Vista/XP-compatibility, after-sales support, etc.
Whether it's legit or not, and/or whether it's actually capable of being as awesome as it sounds remains to be seen. Supposed to go live sometime this month (but we're running out of month, so..)
Why should EA install Securom AND limit the number of installs? If EA doesn't trust Securom to do its job, then why are they using it at all?
Here's my proposed "compromise": Permit the end user to select whether he/she wants Securom on their computer.
1. If I refuse to install Securom, give me limited #s of installs based on hardware profile. Use the online authentication for installation authorization. If the system for the 'new' install closely (>90%?) matches the most recent previous submitted hardware profile, give me a free re-install.
If the install doesn't match the hardware profile, allow me to cancel it without using up the installation credit. Allow me to see what the hardware profile is, and how much of it matches, so that I can see why I'm not getting a "free" re-install. If needed, allow me to buy (at a reduced price) more installation credits.
And, most importantly, **TRUST ME** when i'm trying to be an honest consumer.
2. If I accept Securom on my computer, give me unlimited installs regardless of hardware configuration changes. Period.
Consider the possibility that the main aim of CoS was not simply to remove those videos, but to gather information about the people who posted them. Google DMCA Counterclaim information: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59826
2. Provide your full name, address, telephone number, and email address, and the username of your YouTube account. ...
What happens next?
After we receive your counter-notification, we will forward it to the party who submitted the original claim of copyright infringement. Please note that when we forward the counter-notification, it includes your personal information. By submitting a counter-notification, you consent to having your information revealed in this way.
CoS files false takedowns, Anonymous critics file counter-claims, CoS gets all of their personal information.
And yes, they do collect personal information and do exploit it to threaten and silence their critics. See, for example, the case of G. Allen. Allen was a regular guy who stopped by to look at the Anonymous protesters in February, with no real interest in the group, and then received a threatening letter from CoS because they ran his license plates and dug up his information to harass him.. and harass him they did. http://blackfish.biz/allen/?p=246
Christianity + Islam = ~3-4 billion people, which is 50-66% of the world, depending on how (and who) you're counting. Additionally, due to missionary work, it's likely that 3/4ths of the world has at least *heard* the Abrahamic stories, even if they discard them as being incongruous with their own beliefs.