The grandparent was listing jokes, not actual malicious software.
Of course I jest, but which other Windows program anywhere near as popular brings up UAC prompts out of nowhere in the way Java updater does without even being "opened"? I bet Java is partially to blame for a huge number of users blindly clicking "Yes" to all UAC prompts - in the average user's eyes it just won't stop prompting until you accept its damn update.
I was too young for the ICQ era but I can vouch that MSN Messenger was definitely the most popular one in Britain in the 2000s. Never once had to use AIM to talk to someone who wasn't America.
No one IM protocol compares with Facebook on a global scale.
IANAL but a lot of that sounds like it'd might fall foul of the EU-wide Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations. The bricking definitely.
If I wanted a 3DS I'd still get one regardless. If they bricked my device I'd see them in small claims. Call me overconfident if you want, but living the lifestyle where you're worried about terms that don't look like they'll stand up is quite boring and sometimes expensive.
I recently bought my first Steam game and didn't care about the ToS for the same reason - nothing that looked threatening seemed valid. Yeah they're a US company, but I'm sure they'll have enough presence/assets in the UK to hold accountable (notably there are quite a few terms say things like "May not be valid if you're an EU customer", so it seems they do feel threatened to comply with EU laws at least somewhat).
I think you completely missed the point of the grandparent. He's saying that thanks to there not being an 18+ rating ("bureaucratic red tape"), banning the game was not a "poor decision", as the only other decision that could be made at the time is to make it 15+, which shouldn't be acceptable (something you don't seem to contest)
He never said that the lack of 18+ rating wasn't a poor decision - it's simply not the decision he's referring to (Unless when reviewing a game the ratings board have the power to instantly introduce the 18+ rating so they can rate that game as such, but I think it's safe to say that's impossible). I imagine he probably agrees with most of what you just lectured him on. Not sure how you got +3 insightful for poor reading.
I imagine you've probably also been replied to many times that not updating "removes" other functionality. I'm not a PS3 owner but I've heard this includes using the PSN, playing new games, potentially playing new Blu-Rays, and of course any advantages that come with software updates. At least two of those are very easy to justify as advertised features (Games & Blu-Ray).
So either you lose one feature or you lose (at least) one other. I think the GP's comment applies perfectly, Sony cannot escape their "asshatness" by the fact that you can choose between two unpleasant outcomes.
Please don't mention anything to do with EULAs by the way. Whilst I would happily justify against Sony in a legal discussion of the matter, all we're talking about right now is Sony being an asshat.
Your keyboard has a button on it near the bottom that's really long and doesn't have a label. Most of the time, when you're typing sentences, when you press this button it inserts a space character in the text. Do you get confused when you're online and you're using TAB to skip between interface elements, you land on a button, press the space bar, and it "clicks" the button? This key is only supposed to insert spaces into text, right? Why is it also clicking buttons that you've focused? That's madness!
I cannot believe there are so many comments with a lack of understanding of what 100/1 is. I cannot believe one of them has been modded +3 interesting.
100/1 means if you bet £1 and the bet wins, you get your £1 stake back and your winnings of £100. Their winnings aren't 1%, they are 100x i.e. 10000%. So if contact was made, the bookmaker would lose £100 on a £1 bet, and hence would have somehow had to turn that £1 into £101 beforehand in order to not make a loss. Forget the people talking about how 3% is impossible, there is NO savings account or bond that'll let you do that in a year.
In the UK, the sale is already "prevented" in that's it's illegal to sell games to consumers outside of their rated ages. Done. That's as much as you could ever actually do. That's been in places for years,
I thought it was obvious I already knew that...?
That piece of legislation is fine but if it's never enforced (like in the UK)
Huh?
And even with the law? Still you don't *stop* anything. Nothing. Kids of parents that don't keep an eye, don't run a household with consequences, etc. still smoke, drink, have sex, play violent videogames, bully, steal, watch porn and whatever else.
More black and white viewpoints from you, that all kids are either angels or devils. There are plenty of children who will attempt to do many of those things and then just give up if they fail, meaning the existence of the law had an effect.
The rest of your post I'm not going to even individually comment on as it shows you pretty much ignored half of mine. For the parents to be able to take action over children having these items requires the parents to know their children have them, and I already explained that for the parents to know about them oversteps the boundaries of freedom that British teenage children generally have.
One more time: over here it is normal for children to go out on their own with friends at a young age, unsupervised. Thus it is only appropriate the duty of care for some things like sale of unsuitable goods temporarily shifts from the distant parents to the adults around them.
Really? You don't think economic pressures alter the content and destroy the artistic integrity of creative minds? Do you have any idea how much gets ripped out of movies and games to achieve 'desired ratings'? It may not be de jure censorship, but it is de facto censorship.
Don't you already have that de facto censorship in the US? I thought that Wal Mart prevents the sale of AO rated games, and cinemas don't take NC-17 rated movies.
Besides, many comments claim that the majority of US retailers already don't sell M rated video games to minors. Those are the only retailers that publishers really care about, so will this really change anything?
People don't magically gain all of their responsibility at some magical age like 18 or 21. In the UK, we don't keep tight leashes on 15 year old children (I could probably put a lower number there but I'm going to play it safe). We let them go outside without their parents and we let them stay in their rooms without checking on what they're doing every 10 minutes. However we do not think they are responsible enough to play certain violent video games. Preventing the sale of the violent video games to children gives a way to stop many children from playing the violent games without affecting their freedoms to do other things that they are in fact responsible enough to do. Affecting those freedoms will aversely affect them; they will benefit more from being introduced to some parts of life at a younger age.
Assuming by "places" you mean "countries", I agree.
This always bothers me. It seems to me that a fair bit of the west seem perfectly fine regulating what movies and games minors are allowed to buy, with the main exception being the US. In the countries with regulation, while there are complaints, the complaints are rarely to do with preventing sale to minors.
Let's concentrate on Australia for now, since it seems to be the one that comes up the most. Now whenever the OFLC is mentioned on Slashdot, every Australian cries about the same thing - about how if a game is deemed unsuitable for a 15 year old, then it is banned. But the solution that the comments call for is rarely for the OFLC to be disbanded. No, they call for the existence of an 18 rating, so that nothing has to be banned.
Similarly here in the UK - there is outcry whenever something is actually banned (e.g. Manhunt 2 temporarily), but no one seems to have any problem about things not being suitable for children. The sole exception to that rule was probably the Spiderman movie - parents were not happy about the 12 rating it got. However that's been fixed now, 12 has been replaced with 12A - basically the same as PG-13.
Okay I am really confused over all of these attempts to sue the manufacturers, maybe I'm missing something here. In the UK, if a product is not as described/fit for purpose among other things, the seller is liable (providing they're a business etc.). It's the same thing EU-wide (1999/44/EC), surely it's the same with Australia and North America?
Or am I wrong about the UK, and the manufacturer is also liable? Any British IANALs got some case or statute law that says that a buyer can sue a manufacturer for false advertising?
And he's sure to only increase the popularity of his empire with our generation as he attempts to sue Skype for having the same three letters in it as his other news organization that nobody under 25 has heard of.
Not that I don't think the lawsuit is stupid, but wow, what a pointless diss. Rupert Murdoch owns a company in the UK that some North Americans haven't heard of - so what? We've certainly all heard of it over here.
By the way, BSkyB isn't a "news organization", although they do have a news channel or two.
Back in 2006, I made the mistake of buying a Nokia N70 from Orange. Now let's skip the debate as to whether or not the N70 continues Nokia's trend of excellent user interfaces. What's certain is that the "Orange Homescreen" was a LOT worse than the options that Nokia offered - just Google it and you'll see what I mean. There was an option to disable it (which required a reboot), but guess what, if you rebooted after that then it just brought itself back.
The solution I found on the Internet at the time was to tell the N70 to report itself as an N70 Music Edition, and then the Nokia firmware updater would gift you a nice clean non-Orange firmware. Far too much effort (and risk) for the standard user.
Luckily I am also British, and as the parent says I don't have to deal with this. The networks offer decent SIM-only plans direct, but you can also find resellers who will sell you a contract with a phone and an amount of cashback - the cheaper the phone you choose, the more cashback, meaning if you choose the Nokia 1208 (and sell it on for £9) then you've got a really good SIM-only deal.
Their losses are the money you didn't have to spend on a PSP or PS3 to buy the versions they do currently publish.
That's sort of a good point, but you can only count people who downloaded the port and would have bought a PSP/PS3 if the port didn't exist, otherwise it fails the but-for test and isn't a loss (remember no punitive damages). What you're suggesting is counting each download as a lost sale - something many Slashdotters continuously complain about with respect to anti-piracy statistics.
So the actual figure is probably something like the cost of the PSPs/PS3s not bought times the probability a downloader would have bought a PSP/PS3 if the port didn't exist. How big is the resulting number?
The punitive damages in this case don't have to be huge, they just need to be large enough to punish the wilful infringement that's occurred here.
I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean European courts award amounts of punitive damages, I meant they are heavily against any punitive damages and they are only awarded in exceptional circumstances (if that). They believe punishment should only be held to the standards of criminal courts.
The value of their trademark is being diluted. If these ports crash, or contain rootkits, or brick your handset, that harms Sony. They enjoy the right to be protected from that possibility.
So assuming the ports don't crash, contain rootkits or brick your handset, Sony weren't planning to release for those platforms, and we're in a jurisdiction without punitive damages, what would Sony's damages be?
I'm not saying I think Sony's in the wrong, however I do want to know what their actual losses are.
Serious question, what damages are they suffering? For each platform that Sony are not currently selling Lemmings on or planning to sell Lemmings on, surely there are no damages whatsoever?
Bear in mind European courts do not hand out punitive damages anywhere near as much as US courts do.
...we have many cashback sites that give you a cut of the money from you clicking their affiliate links, usually a percentage of the amount you spend. There are many of them so it's clearly a viable business model, and as a customer it's brilliant. I've got the impression that Bing worked differently and I've got the impression that in the US you don't have cashback sites like we do, am I correct?
No, I do not think there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" with unencrypted wireless data. However it is still personal data, and as such while a member of the public can do whatever I do not believe that a company has the right to retain that data.
Besides your first sentence you appear to have somewhat ignored my assertion that people and companies do not have equal rights to trump other people's privacy rather specifically dispute or agree with it. I completely agree with your examples about the girl, however if instead of a passer by we had an employee photographing for a company, the company would most likely not have a legitimate reason to keep her personal data and hence it shouldn't be kept. If he was just a lucky passer by then he should be able to keep it.
Additionally I have to respectfully disagree with your opinion that people who don't encrypt get what they deserve. I'm willing to bet the majority of unencrypted access points are so for lack of technical expertise, and while I do not think they have a "right" to use the Internet without expertise, I don't think we should expect them not to try to use it if they don't have the expertise.
By the way I think you'll find most civil laws in the UK are pretty decent, and while many of the reported criminal laws bother me I appreciate I am far more likely to use the civil ones to my advantage than have the criminal ones to my disadvantage.
Article 8 - privacy
Article 8 provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"
Many Slashdotters seem to think no one has a right to privacy, but people DO have a right to privacy, albeit a restricted right such that it doesn't trump everyone else's rights. Sounds fair and balanced to me.
One of the restrictions "necessary in a democratic society" is that it doesn't trump a person's rights such as taking photographs in a public place. It's not that you have no privacy outside, it's that other people's rights for the most part trump your privacy and hence effectively you have no privacy outside. However a company does not have fundamental rights like a human, and as such a person's fundamental rights prevail over a company's rights, including a person's right to privacy.
Remember I did say that a company can keep the data with a good reason. Debt collectors get to keep your contact details for instance. Google Streetview blanks out nearly everything that could infringe someone's privacy and hence probably doesn't fall foul. I hardly see a good reason that Google would need to keep your SSID and the like.
Your impression that there is a contradiction between Slashdot's anti-privacy views (photographing a police officer or a building) and Slashdot's pro-privacy views (Google SSID) hinges on your impression that a company (or the government) has the same rights as a person (or that people don't have a right to privacy, but you know that's not true). I know you said you're from Australia but that's a very American view IMO, not really compatible with Europe.
By the way the Data Protection Act is a good piece of legislation, it has specifically helped me twice before. The extent of the complaints I've seen about it on Slashdot have been that companies can easily get around it, not that it's damaging.
Slashdot Mirror
Gah, meant to mod you funny and my finger slipped. Replying to undo.
The grandparent was listing jokes, not actual malicious software.
Of course I jest, but which other Windows program anywhere near as popular brings up UAC prompts out of nowhere in the way Java updater does without even being "opened"? I bet Java is partially to blame for a huge number of users blindly clicking "Yes" to all UAC prompts - in the average user's eyes it just won't stop prompting until you accept its damn update.
I was too young for the ICQ era but I can vouch that MSN Messenger was definitely the most popular one in Britain in the 2000s. Never once had to use AIM to talk to someone who wasn't America.
No one IM protocol compares with Facebook on a global scale.
IANAL but a lot of that sounds like it'd might fall foul of the EU-wide Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations. The bricking definitely.
If I wanted a 3DS I'd still get one regardless. If they bricked my device I'd see them in small claims. Call me overconfident if you want, but living the lifestyle where you're worried about terms that don't look like they'll stand up is quite boring and sometimes expensive.
I recently bought my first Steam game and didn't care about the ToS for the same reason - nothing that looked threatening seemed valid. Yeah they're a US company, but I'm sure they'll have enough presence/assets in the UK to hold accountable (notably there are quite a few terms say things like "May not be valid if you're an EU customer", so it seems they do feel threatened to comply with EU laws at least somewhat).
I think you completely missed the point of the grandparent. He's saying that thanks to there not being an 18+ rating ("bureaucratic red tape"), banning the game was not a "poor decision", as the only other decision that could be made at the time is to make it 15+, which shouldn't be acceptable (something you don't seem to contest)
He never said that the lack of 18+ rating wasn't a poor decision - it's simply not the decision he's referring to (Unless when reviewing a game the ratings board have the power to instantly introduce the 18+ rating so they can rate that game as such, but I think it's safe to say that's impossible). I imagine he probably agrees with most of what you just lectured him on. Not sure how you got +3 insightful for poor reading.
I imagine you've probably also been replied to many times that not updating "removes" other functionality. I'm not a PS3 owner but I've heard this includes using the PSN, playing new games, potentially playing new Blu-Rays, and of course any advantages that come with software updates. At least two of those are very easy to justify as advertised features (Games & Blu-Ray).
So either you lose one feature or you lose (at least) one other. I think the GP's comment applies perfectly, Sony cannot escape their "asshatness" by the fact that you can choose between two unpleasant outcomes.
Please don't mention anything to do with EULAs by the way. Whilst I would happily justify against Sony in a legal discussion of the matter, all we're talking about right now is Sony being an asshat.
No, all that's available are the deathmatch and ctf-playing 14-year-old fatsos who live in their parents' basement,
To be fair, there isn't too much wrong with living in your parents' basement if you're 14 years old ;p
Your keyboard has a button on it near the bottom that's really long and doesn't have a label. Most of the time, when you're typing sentences, when you press this button it inserts a space character in the text. Do you get confused when you're online and you're using TAB to skip between interface elements, you land on a button, press the space bar, and it "clicks" the button? This key is only supposed to insert spaces into text, right? Why is it also clicking buttons that you've focused? That's madness!
.....Madness?
THIS
IS
SPACE BAR!
My bad, I've just reread your post. You actually do have an understanding of 100/1. Fail on my part :-/
I cannot believe there are so many comments with a lack of understanding of what 100/1 is. I cannot believe one of them has been modded +3 interesting.
100/1 means if you bet £1 and the bet wins, you get your £1 stake back and your winnings of £100. Their winnings aren't 1%, they are 100x i.e. 10000%. So if contact was made, the bookmaker would lose £100 on a £1 bet, and hence would have somehow had to turn that £1 into £101 beforehand in order to not make a loss. Forget the people talking about how 3% is impossible, there is NO savings account or bond that'll let you do that in a year.
In the UK, the sale is already "prevented" in that's it's illegal to sell games to consumers outside of their rated ages. Done. That's as much as you could ever actually do. That's been in places for years,
I thought it was obvious I already knew that...?
That piece of legislation is fine but if it's never enforced (like in the UK)
Huh?
And even with the law? Still you don't *stop* anything. Nothing. Kids of parents that don't keep an eye, don't run a household with consequences, etc. still smoke, drink, have sex, play violent videogames, bully, steal, watch porn and whatever else.
More black and white viewpoints from you, that all kids are either angels or devils. There are plenty of children who will attempt to do many of those things and then just give up if they fail, meaning the existence of the law had an effect.
The rest of your post I'm not going to even individually comment on as it shows you pretty much ignored half of mine. For the parents to be able to take action over children having these items requires the parents to know their children have them, and I already explained that for the parents to know about them oversteps the boundaries of freedom that British teenage children generally have.
One more time: over here it is normal for children to go out on their own with friends at a young age, unsupervised. Thus it is only appropriate the duty of care for some things like sale of unsuitable goods temporarily shifts from the distant parents to the adults around them.
Really? You don't think economic pressures alter the content and destroy the artistic integrity of creative minds? Do you have any idea how much gets ripped out of movies and games to achieve 'desired ratings'? It may not be de jure censorship, but it is de facto censorship.
Don't you already have that de facto censorship in the US? I thought that Wal Mart prevents the sale of AO rated games, and cinemas don't take NC-17 rated movies.
Besides, many comments claim that the majority of US retailers already don't sell M rated video games to minors. Those are the only retailers that publishers really care about, so will this really change anything?
People don't magically gain all of their responsibility at some magical age like 18 or 21. In the UK, we don't keep tight leashes on 15 year old children (I could probably put a lower number there but I'm going to play it safe). We let them go outside without their parents and we let them stay in their rooms without checking on what they're doing every 10 minutes. However we do not think they are responsible enough to play certain violent video games. Preventing the sale of the violent video games to children gives a way to stop many children from playing the violent games without affecting their freedoms to do other things that they are in fact responsible enough to do. Affecting those freedoms will aversely affect them; they will benefit more from being introduced to some parts of life at a younger age.
Do you have a better idea?
Assuming by "places" you mean "countries", I agree.
This always bothers me. It seems to me that a fair bit of the west seem perfectly fine regulating what movies and games minors are allowed to buy, with the main exception being the US. In the countries with regulation, while there are complaints, the complaints are rarely to do with preventing sale to minors.
Let's concentrate on Australia for now, since it seems to be the one that comes up the most. Now whenever the OFLC is mentioned on Slashdot, every Australian cries about the same thing - about how if a game is deemed unsuitable for a 15 year old, then it is banned. But the solution that the comments call for is rarely for the OFLC to be disbanded. No, they call for the existence of an 18 rating, so that nothing has to be banned.
Similarly here in the UK - there is outcry whenever something is actually banned (e.g. Manhunt 2 temporarily), but no one seems to have any problem about things not being suitable for children. The sole exception to that rule was probably the Spiderman movie - parents were not happy about the 12 rating it got. However that's been fixed now, 12 has been replaced with 12A - basically the same as PG-13.
What's the issue with regulation done right?
Okay I am really confused over all of these attempts to sue the manufacturers, maybe I'm missing something here. In the UK, if a product is not as described/fit for purpose among other things, the seller is liable (providing they're a business etc.). It's the same thing EU-wide (1999/44/EC), surely it's the same with Australia and North America?
Or am I wrong about the UK, and the manufacturer is also liable? Any British IANALs got some case or statute law that says that a buyer can sue a manufacturer for false advertising?
And he's sure to only increase the popularity of his empire with our generation as he attempts to sue Skype for having the same three letters in it as his other news organization that nobody under 25 has heard of.
Not that I don't think the lawsuit is stupid, but wow, what a pointless diss. Rupert Murdoch owns a company in the UK that some North Americans haven't heard of - so what? We've certainly all heard of it over here.
By the way, BSkyB isn't a "news organization", although they do have a news channel or two.
Back in 2006, I made the mistake of buying a Nokia N70 from Orange. Now let's skip the debate as to whether or not the N70 continues Nokia's trend of excellent user interfaces. What's certain is that the "Orange Homescreen" was a LOT worse than the options that Nokia offered - just Google it and you'll see what I mean. There was an option to disable it (which required a reboot), but guess what, if you rebooted after that then it just brought itself back.
The solution I found on the Internet at the time was to tell the N70 to report itself as an N70 Music Edition, and then the Nokia firmware updater would gift you a nice clean non-Orange firmware. Far too much effort (and risk) for the standard user.
Luckily I am also British, and as the parent says I don't have to deal with this. The networks offer decent SIM-only plans direct, but you can also find resellers who will sell you a contract with a phone and an amount of cashback - the cheaper the phone you choose, the more cashback, meaning if you choose the Nokia 1208 (and sell it on for £9) then you've got a really good SIM-only deal.
Their losses are the money you didn't have to spend on a PSP or PS3 to buy the versions they do currently publish.
That's sort of a good point, but you can only count people who downloaded the port and would have bought a PSP/PS3 if the port didn't exist, otherwise it fails the but-for test and isn't a loss (remember no punitive damages). What you're suggesting is counting each download as a lost sale - something many Slashdotters continuously complain about with respect to anti-piracy statistics.
So the actual figure is probably something like the cost of the PSPs/PS3s not bought times the probability a downloader would have bought a PSP/PS3 if the port didn't exist. How big is the resulting number?
Bah, that should have been "low amounts of punitive damages".
The punitive damages in this case don't have to be huge, they just need to be large enough to punish the wilful infringement that's occurred here.
I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean European courts award amounts of punitive damages, I meant they are heavily against any punitive damages and they are only awarded in exceptional circumstances (if that). They believe punishment should only be held to the standards of criminal courts.
The value of their trademark is being diluted. If these ports crash, or contain rootkits, or brick your handset, that harms Sony. They enjoy the right to be protected from that possibility.
So assuming the ports don't crash, contain rootkits or brick your handset, Sony weren't planning to release for those platforms, and we're in a jurisdiction without punitive damages, what would Sony's damages be?
I'm not saying I think Sony's in the wrong, however I do want to know what their actual losses are.
Serious question, what damages are they suffering? For each platform that Sony are not currently selling Lemmings on or planning to sell Lemmings on, surely there are no damages whatsoever?
Bear in mind European courts do not hand out punitive damages anywhere near as much as US courts do.
The original Lemmings is awesome, but I seem to be the only one who prefers Lemmings 2...
Then again, I think I'm also the only one who liked Lemmings 3D.
...we have many cashback sites that give you a cut of the money from you clicking their affiliate links, usually a percentage of the amount you spend. There are many of them so it's clearly a viable business model, and as a customer it's brilliant. I've got the impression that Bing worked differently and I've got the impression that in the US you don't have cashback sites like we do, am I correct?
No, I do not think there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" with unencrypted wireless data. However it is still personal data, and as such while a member of the public can do whatever I do not believe that a company has the right to retain that data.
Besides your first sentence you appear to have somewhat ignored my assertion that people and companies do not have equal rights to trump other people's privacy rather specifically dispute or agree with it. I completely agree with your examples about the girl, however if instead of a passer by we had an employee photographing for a company, the company would most likely not have a legitimate reason to keep her personal data and hence it shouldn't be kept. If he was just a lucky passer by then he should be able to keep it.
Additionally I have to respectfully disagree with your opinion that people who don't encrypt get what they deserve. I'm willing to bet the majority of unencrypted access points are so for lack of technical expertise, and while I do not think they have a "right" to use the Internet without expertise, I don't think we should expect them not to try to use it if they don't have the expertise.
By the way I think you'll find most civil laws in the UK are pretty decent, and while many of the reported criminal laws bother me I appreciate I am far more likely to use the civil ones to my advantage than have the criminal ones to my disadvantage.
From Wikipedia on ECHR:
Many Slashdotters seem to think no one has a right to privacy, but people DO have a right to privacy, albeit a restricted right such that it doesn't trump everyone else's rights. Sounds fair and balanced to me.
One of the restrictions "necessary in a democratic society" is that it doesn't trump a person's rights such as taking photographs in a public place. It's not that you have no privacy outside, it's that other people's rights for the most part trump your privacy and hence effectively you have no privacy outside. However a company does not have fundamental rights like a human, and as such a person's fundamental rights prevail over a company's rights, including a person's right to privacy.
Remember I did say that a company can keep the data with a good reason. Debt collectors get to keep your contact details for instance. Google Streetview blanks out nearly everything that could infringe someone's privacy and hence probably doesn't fall foul. I hardly see a good reason that Google would need to keep your SSID and the like.
Your impression that there is a contradiction between Slashdot's anti-privacy views (photographing a police officer or a building) and Slashdot's pro-privacy views (Google SSID) hinges on your impression that a company (or the government) has the same rights as a person (or that people don't have a right to privacy, but you know that's not true). I know you said you're from Australia but that's a very American view IMO, not really compatible with Europe.
By the way the Data Protection Act is a good piece of legislation, it has specifically helped me twice before. The extent of the complaints I've seen about it on Slashdot have been that companies can easily get around it, not that it's damaging.