I think that this will catch low level fraud such as exagerated and false claims on things like household work and travel insurance. How well will depend on how good the equipment is and how frequently it is used. Also, publicising its use will have a great detterent effect which is why they are doing so.
I rather think thats the point. Like warez the intent is not to stop it happening but to reduce its prevalance. A lot of travel insurance fraud is opportunist - people genuinely lose something and then decide to claim more. It costs the companies a fortune and most people dont regards it as criminal. Warning people of voice lie detectors will put a lot of people off. Eradicating fraud is not the goal, reducing it is.
Re:End the Violence! Return the Vowels!
on
Flavor vs. Flavour
·
· Score: 1
@These vowels were seized from the Balkans by British soldiers marching across the penninsula to the Crimean War, and never returned.@>/i>
this is tired old anti-English propaganda. We did <b>NOT</b> steal these vowels they were purchased in a fair trade. The descendants of the selllers just dont like the deal and are lying to get thier vowels back. Thats just sad we make better use of the vowels anyway.<br>
"...Though at the rate they are burning cash on lawyers, one has to wonder if SCO the company is going to last that long..."
They have enough money for a few lawsuits. In any event if they run out of cash they will offer sell more licences to Microsoft who will buy as many licences as needed to finance the actions.
yes a very good point and your comment should be modded up. I make just this point to anyone asking about liability to SCO. Until they reveal the infringing code they, almost certainly, get no damages. And this principle applies in most other common law jurisdictions.
It is on this basis, as well as others, anyone in the UK (and anywhere else with a sensible legal system) can thumb their nose at SCO extortion attempts.
UK readers may be interested to note that merely humming the words to a Spice Girls song while jogging down the street is the creation of a transient and incidental copy, and an infringement. really? on what permanent media is this copy made?
Reading a book causes transient and incidental copies of the text on your retinas, not to mention the gross copyright violations that occur in movie theaters across the UK. Even if this were copying you would have, at law, an implied licence from the copyright owner to do these acts. Otherwise youd'd never be able to legally see the film you paid to see or read the book you've bought.
Prof. Moglen makes the point that mere use of a program doesnt infringe the copying provisions of the Copyright Act. That may or may not be the correct analysis, noonetheless its worth pointing out that this is only true for US law. UK readers may be interested to note that under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act section 17(6) (here)the making of transient or incidental copies is an infringing act i.e. the mere act of loading it into RAM.
In the UK therefore users of 2.4 kernels would not have this defence if SCO is right. The same may be true elsewhere in the EU.
Why on earth would you want to make a shredder that makes it easy to put the bits back together????
Easy. For the same reason the NSA certifies crypto exports - but only after ensuring key bits are slowly secretly leaked & allowing them to get the key eventually. For the same reason Brits sold Enigma machines to its allies after WW2 - because they knew how to recover the plaintext: HP (or the US government) tells people (like foreign companies competing with American companies for business, or foreign governments) its a secure shredder, they buy and use it. Then the spooks pick up the rubbish and using HP patented technology reconstruct the secrets you didnt want them to know.
Sly cynical disreputable & underhand but a great strategy.
Im also a lawyer and have the same view. Citations and indices are a bitch under Word. Added to which legal documents often have rafts of lists sub sub sections which latex handles easily but Word, and even OpenOffice, handle badly.
Its an informal gathering of geeks who hang out in some venue like a church hall for a week and hack and give talks. We also go on walks around interesting areas in the locality; mountains hills whatever. We also go siteseeing a lot caves and castles being a perennial favourite. In truth less walking goes on than I think should happen but hell its a holiday people do what they want.
Then in the evening we invade the local pubs and get blasted (well I do). When the beer hike hits town its a shock and awe thing; we invariably pick a small village with pubs or restaurants that are normally used by 4/5 locals; and all of a sudden they are swamped by 40/50 geeks, its anarchy.
At the moment we only do European country in which some sucke^Hvolunteer has arranged a hall with Net connectivity and power and scouted out accommodation etc. There talk of a US version since so many Americans come but thats not happened so far.
Its totally informal and fun - those of who go are always keen for the next one.
More right wing new labour nonsense
on
Twist on DNA Privacy
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
The basis of this legislation is so false as to be nearly comical. If you have dealt with as many cops as I have you will know that as inept as they are proving identity is virtually never a problem - even where false ID is provided - since fingerprints and direct corroboration is a standard procedure. In fact the police themselves have said just this in the recent identity card debate (where this was also used as a justifying excuse). Presumably therefore extremely low numbers of people escape justice based on false identity. And many of these crimes will presumably not keep you awake at night - tramps shoplifting, speeding etc. So the proposition is that millions of innocent people who come into contact with the police should have their most intimate detail stored on a system as a potential criminal in order to avert the terrifying prospect of a shoplifter evading justice.
A more technical legal objection is that this case points to a more worrying prospect: by this the police are effectively compelling you to give evidence against family members. This is a principal that many decent societies regard with horror. A character of many totalitarian regimes is that they force sons to betray fathers. That appears to be similar to what happened here - a close relative was made to testify, by DNA, against him. What next? a mothers DNA used to convict a son?
The proposed law changes just further supports the view that new Labour is far more right wing and anti-civil liberties than even the Conservatives. Its interesting that the Conservatives (for Gods sake) have consistently criticised Labour on its proposed anti civil freedom legislation.
"...Next we have Linux users violating the EULA for the X-Box and
tinkering with it so that it can run Linux...."
OK your a troll with a lobotomy but I'll respond.
This 'EULA' nonsense neatly illustrates dangers of software companies doing hardware. They apply, inappropriately, a legal paradigm appropriate to one type of property to another.
The, simplified, reason for the existence EULA or other licences is to do with the necessity of giving someone the right to use software they have properly acquired without either breaching copyright or giving away legal ownership of the software. The latter would damage the company the other would make the software useless to the user.
Hence the licence.
This legal reasoning does not apply to physical goods. If I buy a Ford Im not violating any of their legal rights by driving it, parking it or re-painting it pink. Those acts do not involve breaching any of Fords rights. Ford do not get to tell me I can drive their car in any city of the World except London or New York or that I must agree not to exceed 70MPH. Yes painting a Ford pink might interfere with their carefully designed branding and marketing, it might embarrass them and cause adverse publicity. These acts whilst potentially disadvantageous are not prohibited by any law. At law the act of selling something gives the entire right of physical control to another. Similarly Micro$oft do not have the legal right to tell me that I cant use the Xbox as a doorstop or to bang/. trolls upside the head. Or to rip out the ROMs and install and use Linux on it.
They want to prevent Xbox hacking because it does not accord with their inevitably abusive business strategy. Business strategies are not protected by law and so the 'EULA' give them no legal remedy.
This doesnt of course permit anyone to breach the copyright in the software on the Xbox. Making derivative works, dissasembling reverse engineering the code or any other software/firmware, as opposed to hardware, acts may breach copyright law/DMCA or whatever. But hacking just the hardware of the Xbox is no-ones damned business but the owner.
This attempt to control not only how users use their software but also the hardware is typical of the anal control mentality of Micro$oft and big US corporation. I doubt if they are unaware of the poor legal basis for their actions but they are Micr$oft and since they bested the DOJ they think they are bulletproof. I havent read it but I suspect pivotal chunks of the supposed 'EULA' are unlawful.
I freely confess I do not know exactly what the Linux Xbox team are doing - there may be the possibilty of unlawfulness is what they are doing but certainly not if it only relates to hacking hardware.
you joke, but blow-hard Balmer sold stock recently.
probably just co-incidence. I mean if it wasnt he'd be insider trading and that would be illegal. And nobody in Microsoft management would ever do anything illegal would they?
great idea. heres an improvement. Actually provide an mp3, named as you suggest, with a recording of you saying "RIAA, what the fuck do you think you are doing?"
That was a clueless answer, I sincerely hope you're only pretending to be a lawyer. I dont know what the full position is under the medieval criminal laws of the US but under most other common law jurisdiction mens rea remains pivotal, mercifully.
The reason for criminal intent being introduced in criminal jurisprudence is precisely to avoid the horrifying consequences people have mentioned in this thread. At one time men rea was not a legal requirement - in the middle ages appropriately. It was introduced when people started getting hung for eating venison they had unwittingly bought from others who had poached it from the king. It was said there needed to be a moral failure also: a guilty intention as well as a guilty act (the actus reus).
Because it makes criminal convictions harder to obtain it is a principle that is the subject of erosion where there are countervailing issues of moral panic such as, well, KP drugs (and soon terrorism no doubt). At the other extreme where the consequences of a conviction are not serious - such as safe food handling in restaurants - there is also a trend to reduce the need for mens reas and create so called strict liability offences since these become easier to prosecute without making convictions offensive.
In most parts of the World, including the US I suspect, you would need to demonstrate a knowing sharing of KP . Unwitting participation in sharing KP merely by running a freenet node not would not make one guilty.
I like the idea of this but what they say worried me;
"There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world. There is no separate development environment, no user environment. It is all be the same thing. We can even change and author the worlds in collaboration with others inside them while they are operating"
You damn well better have your security architecture sorted or Outlook would look robust by comparison. Imagine what a virus could do in a system like this.
Partly true. Most politicians however dont just wait to get approached they read newspapers editorials, even apparently lurk on/. so they clue themselves up.
But you make a good point. They should be approached proactively and informed. One should not just hope that they are diligient or not too busy & this is the function of activism.
The tone of this piece suggests that this is a new law. It isnt. The ASA is merely an industry self regulatory body with no legal power. It can only provide guidance and instructions to advertisers. At best they can use their influence to persuade publishers not to carry advertising from the offendor: great for newspapers adverts but irrelevant for spam.
Where you store the data is irrelevant. The Data Protection Act 1998 regulates the acquisition transmission and processing of data. It prevent you from transferring such data out of the jurisdiction without safeguards.
If Dabs or eBay serve web pages in the UK/EU (even if they do it from servers in the US) and gather personal data from that web page that activity is governed by the DPA since user interaction takes place with the UK/EU. Some other actions on the data (e.g. automated decision making & processing) may be lawful if they occur outside the EU but the gathering and transmission of the data to the US falls with UK law. Also eBay has a.co.uk domain indicating an intention to focus on UK users which would persuade a court to take jurisdiction. see privacy
"..They wanted to work with Novell, but Novell weren't interested.."
You have this inverted. It would've been rather more insightful if you'd asked why people dont want to work with Micro$oft. Think stacker patent, DOS, Sendo, utility apps, etc etc etc etc. People who do joint ventures with MS wind up getting f**ked up the arse by them. This is why phone and embedded device manufacturers have the often expressed attitude "we'll work with anyone but M$".
Asking why no-one wants to work with M$ is a bit like Saddam asking "no-one wants to hang with me. Why is that?"
Slashdot Mirror
I rather think thats the point. Like warez the intent is not to stop it happening but to reduce its prevalance. A lot of travel insurance fraud is opportunist - people genuinely lose something and then decide to claim more. It costs the companies a fortune and most people dont regards it as criminal. Warning people of voice lie detectors will put a lot of people off.
Eradicating fraud is not the goal, reducing it is.
@These vowels were seized from the Balkans by British soldiers marching across the penninsula to the Crimean War, and never returned.@>/i>
this is tired old anti-English propaganda. We did <b>NOT</b> steal these vowels they were purchased in a fair trade. The descendants of the selllers just dont like the deal and are lying to get thier vowels back. Thats just sad we make better use of the vowels anyway.<br>
"...Though at the rate they are burning cash on lawyers, one has to wonder if SCO the company is going to last that long..."
They have enough money for a few lawsuits. In any event if they run out of cash they will offer sell more licences to Microsoft who will buy as many licences as needed to finance the actions.
ha ha!! "where the British empire stashes its loot" funny blog
yes a very good point and your comment should be modded up. I make just this point to anyone asking about liability to SCO. Until they reveal the infringing code they, almost certainly, get no damages. And this principle applies in most other common law jurisdictions.
It is on this basis, as well as others, anyone in the UK (and anywhere else with a sensible legal system) can thumb their nose at SCO extortion attempts.
UK readers may be interested to note that merely humming the words to a Spice Girls song while jogging down the street is the creation of a transient and incidental copy, and an infringement.
really? on what permanent media is this copy made?
Reading a book causes transient and incidental copies of the text on your retinas, not to mention the gross copyright violations that occur in movie theaters across the UK.
Even if this were copying you would have, at law, an implied licence from the copyright owner to do these acts. Otherwise youd'd never be able to legally see the film you paid to see or read the book you've bought.
Do you understand now? Do you see how it works?
IAAL - and I do software licensing & copyright.
Prof. Moglen makes the point that mere use of a program doesnt infringe the copying provisions of the Copyright Act. That may or may not be the correct analysis, noonetheless its worth pointing out that this is only true for US law. UK readers may be interested to note that under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act section 17(6) (here)the making of transient or incidental copies is an infringing act i.e. the mere act of loading it into RAM.
In the UK therefore users of 2.4 kernels would not have this defence if SCO is right. The same may be true elsewhere in the EU.
Why on earth would you want to make a shredder that makes it easy to put the bits back together????
Easy. For the same reason the NSA certifies crypto exports - but only after ensuring key bits are slowly secretly leaked & allowing them to get the key eventually. For the same reason Brits sold Enigma machines to its allies after WW2 - because they knew how to recover the plaintext: HP (or the US government) tells people (like foreign companies competing with American companies for business, or foreign governments) its a secure shredder, they buy and use it. Then the spooks pick up the rubbish and using HP patented technology reconstruct the secrets you didnt want them to know.
Sly cynical disreputable & underhand but a great strategy.
Im also a lawyer and have the same view. Citations and indices are a bitch under Word. Added to which legal documents often have rafts of lists sub sub sections which latex handles easily but Word, and even OpenOffice, handle badly.
Its an informal gathering of geeks who hang out in some venue like a church hall for a week and hack and give talks. We also go on walks around interesting areas in the locality; mountains hills whatever. We also go siteseeing a lot caves and castles being a perennial favourite. In truth less walking goes on than I think should happen but hell its a holiday people do what they want.
Then in the evening we invade the local pubs and get blasted (well I do). When the beer hike hits town its a shock and awe thing; we invariably pick a small village with pubs or restaurants that are normally used by 4/5 locals; and all of a sudden they are swamped by 40/50 geeks, its anarchy.
At the moment we only do European country in which some sucke^Hvolunteer has arranged a hall with Net connectivity and power and scouted out accommodation etc. There talk of a US version since so many Americans come but thats not happened so far.
Its totally informal and fun - those of who go are always keen for the next one.
Oh right the
col^Hde war.
phew.
The basis of this legislation is so false as to be nearly comical. If you have dealt with as many cops as I have you will know that as inept as they are proving identity is virtually never a problem - even where false ID is provided - since fingerprints and direct corroboration is a standard procedure. In fact the police themselves have said just this in the recent identity card debate (where this was also used as a justifying excuse). Presumably therefore extremely low numbers of people escape justice based on false identity. And many of these crimes will presumably not keep you awake at night - tramps shoplifting, speeding etc. So the proposition is that millions of innocent people who come into contact with the police should have their most intimate detail stored on a system as a potential criminal in order to avert the terrifying prospect of a shoplifter evading justice.
A more technical legal objection is that this case points to a more worrying prospect: by this the police are effectively compelling you to give evidence against family members. This is a principal that many decent societies regard with horror. A character of many totalitarian regimes is that they force sons to betray fathers. That appears to be similar to what happened here - a close relative was made to testify, by DNA, against him.
What next? a mothers DNA used to convict a son?
The proposed law changes just further supports the view that new Labour is far more right wing and anti-civil liberties than even the Conservatives. Its interesting that the Conservatives (for Gods sake) have consistently criticised Labour on its proposed anti civil freedom legislation.
wow thats useful. My digital watch hasnt had a battery change since I bought it 2 years ago.
info
pass...
If you think she needs to have it explained I suggest you email and explain why she is wrong about free software and software patents.
In the heat of the moment I was very rude to her but can I suggest others be moderate.
amccarthy@europarl.eu.int or
arlene.mccarthy@easynet.co.uk
OK your a troll with a lobotomy but I'll respond.
/. trolls upside the head. Or to rip out the ROMs and install and use Linux on it.
This 'EULA' nonsense neatly illustrates dangers of software companies doing hardware. They apply, inappropriately, a legal paradigm appropriate to one type of property to another. The, simplified, reason for the existence EULA or other licences is to do with the necessity of giving someone the right to use software they have properly acquired without either breaching copyright or giving away legal ownership of the software. The latter would damage the company the other would make the software useless to the user. Hence the licence.
This legal reasoning does not apply to physical goods. If I buy a Ford Im not violating any of their legal rights by driving it, parking it or re-painting it pink. Those acts do not involve breaching any of Fords rights. Ford do not get to tell me I can drive their car in any city of the World except London or New York or that I must agree not to exceed 70MPH. Yes painting a Ford pink might interfere with their carefully designed branding and marketing, it might embarrass them and cause adverse publicity. These acts whilst potentially disadvantageous are not prohibited by any law. At law the act of selling something gives the entire right of physical control to another.
Similarly Micro$oft do not have the legal right to tell me that I cant use the Xbox as a doorstop or to bang
They want to prevent Xbox hacking because it does not accord with their inevitably abusive business strategy. Business strategies are not protected by law and so the 'EULA' give them no legal remedy.
This doesnt of course permit anyone to breach the copyright in the software on the Xbox. Making derivative works, dissasembling reverse engineering the code or any other software/firmware, as opposed to hardware, acts may breach copyright law/DMCA or whatever. But hacking just the hardware of the Xbox is no-ones damned business but the owner.
This attempt to control not only how users use their software but also the hardware is typical of the anal control mentality of Micro$oft and big US corporation. I doubt if they are unaware of the poor legal basis for their actions but they are Micr$oft and since they bested the DOJ they think they are bulletproof. I havent read it but I suspect pivotal chunks of the supposed 'EULA' are unlawful.
I freely confess I do not know exactly what the Linux Xbox team are doing - there may be the possibilty of unlawfulness is what they are doing but certainly not if it only relates to hacking hardware.
you joke, but blow-hard Balmer sold stock recently.
probably just co-incidence. I mean if it wasnt he'd be insider trading and that would be illegal. And nobody in Microsoft management would ever do anything illegal would they?
But Im always fighting with my parents.
great idea. heres an improvement. Actually provide an mp3, named as you suggest, with a recording of you saying "RIAA, what the fuck do you think you are doing?"
That was a clueless answer, I sincerely hope you're only pretending to be a lawyer. I dont know what the full position is under the medieval criminal laws of the US but under most other common law jurisdiction mens rea remains pivotal, mercifully.
The reason for criminal intent being introduced in criminal jurisprudence is precisely to avoid the horrifying consequences people have mentioned in this thread. At one time men rea was not a legal requirement - in the middle ages appropriately. It was introduced when people started getting hung for eating venison they had unwittingly bought from others who had poached it from the king. It was said there needed to be a moral failure also: a guilty intention as well as a guilty act (the actus reus).
Because it makes criminal convictions harder to obtain it is a principle that is the subject of erosion where there are countervailing issues of moral panic such as, well, KP drugs (and soon terrorism no doubt). At the other extreme where the consequences of a conviction are not serious - such as safe food handling in restaurants - there is also a trend to reduce the need for mens reas and create so called strict liability offences since these become easier to prosecute without making convictions offensive.
In most parts of the World, including the US I suspect, you would need to demonstrate a knowing sharing of KP . Unwitting participation in sharing KP merely by running a freenet node not would not make one guilty.
I like the idea of this but what they say worried me;
"There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world. There is no separate development environment, no user environment. It is all be the same thing. We can even change and author the worlds in collaboration with others inside them while they are operating"
You damn well better have your security architecture sorted or Outlook would look robust by comparison. Imagine what a virus could do in a system like this.
Partly true. Most politicians however dont just wait to get approached they read newspapers editorials, even apparently lurk on /. so they clue themselves up.
But you make a good point. They should be approached proactively and informed. One should not just hope that they are diligient or not too busy & this is the function of activism.
clearly a clued up congressional representative. See also her remarks on p2p here
" Illegal file-sharing is a major problem. But we should not create one problem to solve another."
She'd get my vote...
we'll, if I had one over there...
The tone of this piece suggests that this is a new law. It isnt. The ASA is merely an industry self regulatory body with no legal power. It can only provide guidance and instructions to advertisers. At best they can use their influence to persuade publishers not to carry advertising from the offendor: great for newspapers adverts but irrelevant for spam.
IAAL.
.co.uk domain indicating an intention to focus on UK users which would persuade a court to take jurisdiction.
Where you store the data is irrelevant. The Data Protection Act 1998 regulates the acquisition transmission and processing of data. It prevent you from transferring such data out of the jurisdiction without safeguards.
If Dabs or eBay serve web pages in the UK/EU (even if they do it from servers in the US) and gather personal data from that web page that activity is governed by the DPA since user interaction takes place with the UK/EU. Some other actions on the data (e.g. automated decision making & processing) may be lawful if they occur outside the EU but the gathering and transmission of the data to the US falls with UK law. Also eBay has a
see privacy
"..They wanted to work with Novell, but Novell weren't interested.."
You have this inverted. It would've been rather more insightful if you'd asked why people dont want to work with Micro$oft. Think stacker patent, DOS, Sendo, utility apps, etc etc etc etc. People who do joint ventures with MS wind up getting f**ked up the arse by them. This is why phone and embedded device manufacturers have the often expressed attitude "we'll work with anyone but M$".
Asking why no-one wants to work with M$ is a bit like Saddam asking "no-one wants to hang with me. Why is that?"