In other words "existing convictions will collapse as soon as they are challenged in court, but let's lie about this and hope that everyone believes us".
The copyright holders are now getting fines of about $100000 per illegal download, if I remember correctly. So if the Pirate Bay will pay this as compensation every time it slips up, it's going to have to be a rather expensive pay site, isn't it?
"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
The reason for the change is that the "right to silence" has gone: if you don't immediately tell the police your defence when you are arrested, the court may ignore anything you say in your trial, and convict you anyway.
No. there's a much better way to get legal immunity. Set up a porn filtering business and sell it to the government, like these people have done. Then you can spend all day "checking web sites", and you won't get locked up: in fact, you'll get paid for it.
I don't know about New Zealand, but in the UK you might even be in line for a knighthood from the Queen, for "services to the child protection community".
Try tardigrades. I've seen a film of them walking around in an electron microscope: hard vacuum plus the microscope radiation (and, I think, a coating of metal to enhance the contrast) had no effect on them.
Actually, they are not signing up for standardization at all. Instead, the Chinese government has forced it on them by law, and they don't want the extra cost of making different phones for the European and Chinese markets.
What is being cynically presented by the EU as a fine example of manufacturers voluntarily cooperating with the European regulators is simply due to the manufacturers being forced into this by the Chinese.
You're not the first person to notice that the domain name system is under the control of an organisation that puts "intellectual property" rights above everything else. That's a situation that most people on Slashdot would normally be wary of. But proposals to put the control of the system under a more representative governance - for example, to hand it over to a representative international organization - are represented as attempts by the evil United Nations to "take over the internet".
Of course, in the UK the situation is not helped by the fact that the first 100000 people whose details are entered into the system will be rewarded by having all their private medical history copied onto an unencrypted CD which will then be left on a train by a junior civil servant.
In the UK we've got a different approach: you need to possess a driving licence in order to legally drive a car, but you don't need to carry it around with you as ID, even when driving a car. Indeed, the last time I was stopped by a policeman, he remarked that it was convenient that I didn't have my licence with me, as it reduced his amount of paperwork.
Given that a driving licence is supposed to be proof of your ability to drive, I would have thought that the more licences a person could obtain from different states, the less likely it would be for that person to be a bad driver. Or doesn't the driving licence in your country require passing a driving test, as it does in mine?
Your rights under copyright law come entirely from the government and legal system: without copyright laws, you would have no such rights at all. So, just as the government can choose to keep granting more and more rights to some favoured parties (the music industry), so it can choose to arbitrarily take copyright rights away from other people (such as you). If you didn't want that to happen, you should have bribed some politicians.
I know it seems unfair, but that seems to be the way it works.
At least in my country, it's common to see "not for rental" stickers on DVDs that you buy. The media companies obtained a special clause in our copyright law that allows them to enforce this.
Books can be loaned out by libraries, because the book publishers haven't enough financial clout to get a similar law passed. And banning libraries, which have been around for many years, would cause an outcry, whereas banning DVD rentals was never noticed by the public, because there were no DVD rentals before the law was passed, because DVDs hadn't been invented.
I think that DVD rental shops have to buy special "rental" versions of DVDs, which have a much higher price than the regular ones.
The problem is that many companies these days are international, so have business interests in the UK.
For example, Google has offices in the UK. So if a UK court upholds a libel action against a web site, the court could order that Google must remove all traces of that website from its search results and cache. Under this law, each time anyone finds the website through Google (even if they are not in the UK), Google is liable for "republication", and its UK offices can be threatened with a hefty fine.
Not hosting your servers in the UK is a good idea, but media companies are more interested in profit than in avoiding censorship, so most of them will do business with the UK (and China an so on); for them this sort of thing is just part of the price of running an international business.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right. All these prisoners who flush their medications down the toilet should be put in prison.
Oh, wait...
"Existing convictions will stand"
In other words "existing convictions will collapse as soon as they are challenged in court, but let's lie about this and hope that everyone believes us".
The copyright holders are now getting fines of about $100000 per illegal download, if I remember correctly. So if the Pirate Bay will pay this as compensation every time it slips up, it's going to have to be a rather expensive pay site, isn't it?
Not any more. Now it is:
"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
The reason for the change is that the "right to silence" has gone: if you don't immediately tell the police your defence when you are arrested, the court may ignore anything you say in your trial, and convict you anyway.
So, given the choice between a sonic system with the power turned down to 15 milliwatts, or a 75 gigawatt radar, we should go with the radar?
At last! Now I know why my tinfoil hat works!
A while ago Opera Software needed more servers
I think they still do.
No. there's a much better way to get legal immunity. Set up a porn filtering business and sell it to the government, like these people have done. Then you can spend all day "checking web sites", and you won't get locked up: in fact, you'll get paid for it.
I don't know about New Zealand, but in the UK you might even be in line for a knighthood from the Queen, for "services to the child protection community".
Try tardigrades. I've seen a film of them walking around in an electron microscope: hard vacuum plus the microscope radiation (and, I think, a coating of metal to enhance the contrast) had no effect on them.
Let's hope it doesn't meet one of these
Actually, they are not signing up for standardization at all. Instead, the Chinese government has forced it on them by law, and they don't want the extra cost of making different phones for the European and Chinese markets.
What is being cynically presented by the EU as a fine example of manufacturers voluntarily cooperating with the European regulators is simply due to the manufacturers being forced into this by the Chinese.
You're not the first person to notice that the domain name system is under the control of an organisation that puts "intellectual property" rights above everything else. That's a situation that most people on Slashdot would normally be wary of. But proposals to put the control of the system under a more representative governance - for example, to hand it over to a representative international organization - are represented as attempts by the evil United Nations to "take over the internet".
Of course, in the UK the situation is not helped by the fact that the first 100000 people whose details are entered into the system will be rewarded by having all their private medical history copied onto an unencrypted CD which will then be left on a train by a junior civil servant.
I thought everyone was agreed that the cockroaches were next in line?
Look on the bright side: every 6 months you got his nearly-new laptop, didn't you. Didn't you?
In the UK we've got a different approach: you need to possess a driving licence in order to legally drive a car, but you don't need to carry it around with you as ID, even when driving a car. Indeed, the last time I was stopped by a policeman, he remarked that it was convenient that I didn't have my licence with me, as it reduced his amount of paperwork.
Given that a driving licence is supposed to be proof of your ability to drive, I would have thought that the more licences a person could obtain from different states, the less likely it would be for that person to be a bad driver.
Or doesn't the driving licence in your country require passing a driving test, as it does in mine?
I hate to spoil a cliche, but shouldn't the .. er .. "profit" come before the divorce?
Your rights under copyright law come entirely from the government and legal system: without copyright laws, you would have no such rights at all. So, just as the government can choose to keep granting more and more rights to some favoured parties (the music industry), so it can choose to arbitrarily take copyright rights away from other people (such as you). If you didn't want that to happen, you should have bribed some politicians.
I know it seems unfair, but that seems to be the way it works.
No; demonstrations anywhere near parliament have been banned for several years now.
At least in my country, it's common to see "not for rental" stickers on DVDs that you buy. The media companies obtained a special clause in our copyright law that allows them to enforce this.
Books can be loaned out by libraries, because the book publishers haven't enough financial clout to get a similar law passed. And banning libraries, which have been around for many years, would cause an outcry, whereas banning DVD rentals was never noticed by the public, because there were no DVD rentals before the law was passed, because DVDs hadn't been invented.
I think that DVD rental shops have to buy special "rental" versions of DVDs, which have a much higher price than the regular ones.
The first rule of Usenet is: you do not talk about Usenet.
For us Europeans, could somebody say how many Belgiums there are in a Jamaica, please?
Actually, some important rights in Magna Carta were removed a couple of years ago.
The problem is that many companies these days are international, so have business interests in the UK.
For example, Google has offices in the UK. So if a UK court upholds a libel action against a web site, the court could order that Google must remove all traces of that website from its search results and cache. Under this law, each time anyone finds the website through Google (even if they are not in the UK), Google is liable for "republication", and its UK offices can be threatened with a hefty fine.
Not hosting your servers in the UK is a good idea, but media companies are more interested in profit than in avoiding censorship, so most of them will do business with the UK (and China an so on); for them this sort of thing is just part of the price of running an international business.