Didn't we just cover this the other day? In the UK truth is not an absolute defense against libel. It should be, but it isn't. It's pretty clear that the intent behind posting what he's posted was malicious and as such he could very well be liable for that.
We've been through that, and you don't understand the meaning of "malicious". 1. There are plenty of ways to damage someone's reputation maliciously while saying literally the truth, which is why "truth" is not an absolute defense. But 2. Informing others truthfully that someone is a thief and general scumbag doesn't damage the thief's reputation; he does that himself by stealing. And 3. since the thief damaged his reputation himself, exposing him is not malicious.
There needs to be heavy punitive measures against this sort of thing
Please explain why. There is a law in place that gives websites free harbour, while giving copyright holders a way to take down copyrighted materials that they own. And you say there should be heavy punitive measures against using your legal rights? If you put the material up then you can inform the website that you are not committing copyright infringement. Should there be heavy punitive measures against that as well?
More than half the population in the United States cannot afford an attorney to go as far as representing them in a civil suit. I suspect it's even worse in Britain. The court systems are thus fundamentally unfair just because of that aspect alone.
Your assumption is wrong. If you have no money to defend yourself, you will most likely receive legal aid, which means the state pays for your defense.
Why is the truth not considered a valid defense in British courts? Doing otherwise would seem to invite these sorts of suits.
Because you are reading a lot of nonsense on Slashdot. And because what really counts is whether there was defamation or not. I could say something about you that is strictly the truth, but leaving out information or twisting information in such a way that someone reading it would get the wrong impression about you. In that case, it's defamation and truth is no defense.
But saying the truth doesn't imply defamation. Uncovering the truth about you doesn't damage your reputation. Think about it, every policeman solving a crime and any jury convicting a criminal would be sued for defamation for destroying someone's reputation. They are not, because committing the crime destroys the criminal's reputation, not the police solving the crime. And a jury sending a criminal to jail isn't acting malicious for the same reasons.
If you mistreat me, as a customer (or any other entity), why should I not be allowed to state the truth (or even opinion) with intent to damage or malice? If you're a shitty person or a shitty company doing shitty things, then I have every right to have malice and want to damage your reputation. IT DESERVES TO BE DAMAGED.
NO NO NO you are missing the point. If a company mistreats customers, their mistreating of customers is what causes the damage. Reporting the mistreatment doesn't cause the damage.
Actually that seems to be the case here. Basedo on this Guardian article [guardian.co.uk], where she says "He said that I was damaging his reputation and that it was all done maliciously" (while nowhere in the article does it say that the company disputes the truth of her claims)
That's the claim, but informing people correctly about what someone is up to is not "damaging their reputation". The truth is not a defense if saying the truth while making people believe something that is untrue, that would be damaging. For example, if I knew that you were once arrested for murder, but fully knew that shortly afterwards the true murderer was found, confessed, was convicted and is in jail, then telling people that you were arrested for murder would give them the wrong impression and would be libel. In this case, if you give the impression that they are scumbags and that is correct, it is not libel.
people without money don't receive justice against the people buying laws.
Modded up as insightful, but the poster is obviously oblivious to the legal situation in the UK, where this happened. In this situation, UK residents without money will get legal aid, which will pay for their legal costs. And the United Kingdom has more money than some little company in Qatar. If you have a little money in the UK, that's when you have a problem.
Amazon wants the best for the customer? They were killing the publishers, and once publishers are gone, that's it.
But since Iain Banks is mentioned, I compared a few prices (Amazon UK). eBooks they seem to be identical to iTunes. For audiobooks, there is a strange pattern: Hydrogen Sonata, £24.27 reduced to £12.74. At iTunes, £10.95. (At iTunes paid for with my stash of gift cards purchased 20% reduced, £8.76). That same pattern through all Iain Banks audiobooks. There's a high price shown at Amazon, heaven knows where it comes from, there is a much lower price that Amazon charges, and there is a lower iTunes price.
By showing a higher price and making the customer think they get a bargain, while being considerably more expensive than Apple, they demonstrate quite clearly that they do NOT want the best deal for the customer.
For future reference, the adobe digital edition version is the drm-wrapped epub for transferring to any compatible app/reader.
To clarify: ePub can be DRM free, or it can have DRM _inside_ the ePub itself. You are saying that Adobe Digital Edition is ePub that is itself DRM free, wrapped in a DRM wrapper, like an mp3 file could be wrapped in a DRM wrapper, and not ePub with built in DRM?
Easy, but it means the customer cannot read ebooks where the publisher added DRM. What you need to ask is: How difficult is it to allow publishers not to use DRM (hello, Amazon!), and how difficult is it to convince publishers to use standard formats that are DRM free. The first one is easy, and everyone except Amazon does it. The second one, tougher.
Another question: Do you consider your email address embedded in a book to be DRM? DRM usually means "we prevent you from doing any copyright infringement, we also prevent you from doing things that you should be perfectly entitled to do". Embedded email address means "you can do all the things that you should be entitled to do. You can also commit copyright infringement if you want to, but you might get caught".
The link you posted goes to a page where Google explains their policies and what they claim are the rules that they use to store data about you. That's not what the law asks for. They have to tell _you_ exactly what information they have stored about _you_, not what information they might have stored about any arbitrary person.
I cannot know what information they have stored about me by reading their policy, because that would make it necessary for me to keep track of any single contact I have with Google, and obviously I wouldn't know what data was stored because someone used my computer, or used my name. I also wouldn't know if they made any mistakes and incorrectly attributed information of some other person to me. That's a good reason why they have to tell you what they stored about you, to give you a chance to make them correct any mistakes.
Does it has to be typed by a human? If so what's preventing me from launching a DDOS attack against any company by generating tens of thousands of emails to customer support and asking for a response?
German laws, which would make you responsible for the damage caused. Once you are found, you would be charged with the cost of replying to each email. They'd find other things to charge you with if you were a competitor.
Yes, exactly: No company should provide a service that they can not sustain while complying with the law.
I always thought that's why you make a business plan before starting an enterprise: To make sure that you can actually do it.
If there are any fines against Google, they can be collected from the German company, and probably from any Google branch in the EU. I bet they can also be collected from anyone who pays money to Google in the EU. So even if Google was solely a US company, they would be forced to pay.
Now if you can't run your business while complying with the laws due to cost, you'll go bankrupt. We'd see how Microsoft would be doing with Bing.
Foxconn isn't just an "Apple OEM", they make portable electronic devices for nearly everybody, including - yes - Android devices.
Foxconn isn't an Apple OEM at all. They would be an Apple OEM if you could buy Foxconn labeled computers or phones or tablets that are identical to or very similar to Apple products. Foxconn is a manufacturer building products _for Apple_ (among many others), that's the complete opposite of an OEM.
Buy $1bn worth of shares in the name of your company. If it works out and the shares go up by one percent, sell them for $1bn and $10 million, take the $10 million, and run. If it doesn't work out, your company goes broke and you go to jail.
Except Apple didn't, you need to stop talking about consumers like they are stupid. Apple successfully recreated itself as an electronics company its computing business is dying YOY its sales are down 22%
Were do you get that number from? The latest predictions were 7% down (IDC) and 7% up (Garter), so they are probably staying the same in traditional computers. Market share on the other hand is growing.
But iPads _are_ part of the computing business. Last week some guy here claimed that Apple was doing really badly because it's iPod sales were down - Apple doesn't mind because most of the people not buying an iPod don't buy one because they have an iPhone. Same with computers; the loss of sales to the iPad isn't something that hurts Apple at all, because for every Macintosh that isn't sold because of the iPad, there are ten or twenty PCs not sold because of the iPad.
When you use your cell phone in a restaurant to speak to someone 3000 miles away, you are doing something usually acceptable, but you are doing it in an unacceptable time and place.
It's fine talking to someone who is 3000 miles away. As long as you remember that your voice is transmitted electronically and not by sound waves, so you don't have to shout. A mobile phone has some quite ingenious electronics built in that will amplify the volume of your voice, and filter out noises from your surroundings, even if you talk in a low voice.
Ignoring your personal attacks. My comments were in reference to a factual error by the original poster. Like you made with this one. Google will NEVER sell your data, because they can only do so once..
That's Ok then. They don't sell my personal data, they just rent it out. Great. So what difference does that make to me?
Not even close; Google+Samsung alone are larger than Apple:).
And my dad is bigger than your dad... It seems very important to you that Google and Samsung together are very large, isn't it? Emotionally involved with them? One of those companies makes their money selling your data. The other has conviction after conviction for price fixing, has been poisoning employees by the hundreds, their boss was convicted for tax evasion (and given a presidential pardon). Lovely bunch.
Standalone music players don't sell too many at the moment, but most are sold by Apple. Even if you count only portable music players that are not game consoles, Apple sells most. If you count portable game consoles with or without music players included that are not phones, Apple sells most. Apple's market share of phones has grown year after year after year, so I don't know what Microsoft would be bragging about.
I do not care who makes the product. As long as the artists make a fair wage, and the content is quality. Good audio quality content is hard to find anywhere on the web. Finding quality MP3 bitrate is hard as well. That is why people turn to apple, because there is quality control.
I have no problems at all finding music in MP3 format in good quality. I just go to Amazon. Usually I go to iTunes for AAC format, but as I said, finding MP3 music is no problem at all. Is there something I'm missing in what you are trying to say?
Can't speak for nowadays because I don't use iTunes any more, but I remember that going back when I registered it was not possible to create an account without a credit card or an equivalent debit service. This was one of the European iTunes stores.
You could _always_ open with a credit card, and then immediately remove the credit card from the account. You could also open an account without a credit card if you knew how: You just had to click "Buy" on a free item, and then you could open an account with no credit card or even a gift card at all.
Do you need to have an iTunes account to use your iGadgets?
You can use any iOS device without having any account. You need an iTunes account to buy anything or to get free downloads. However, that account doesn't need any credit card or debit card attached to it, and in that case if there is no money in the account, you just can't buy anything. You can pay in money via giftcards (which is highly recommended because you usually find giftcards sold at less than face value), in which case you can't spend more than the money in your account.
You still need a password to do anything. And if your kids manage to buy stuff (they need your password for that), you make a phone call to Apple support and they will sort it out. Unless you let your kid spend tons of money over three months, in which case you have a problem.
What about the job seeker who is not using Windows? You relegate those potential employees to having to either borrow someone's computer or go to a public library to apply for a job. When was Microsoft granted the right to determine who is going to be able to enter the work force?
Worse, if you are looking for a Mac or iOS developer, or Linux, or Android.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't we just cover this the other day? In the UK truth is not an absolute defense against libel. It should be, but it isn't. It's pretty clear that the intent behind posting what he's posted was malicious and as such he could very well be liable for that.
We've been through that, and you don't understand the meaning of "malicious". 1. There are plenty of ways to damage someone's reputation maliciously while saying literally the truth, which is why "truth" is not an absolute defense. But 2. Informing others truthfully that someone is a thief and general scumbag doesn't damage the thief's reputation; he does that himself by stealing. And 3. since the thief damaged his reputation himself, exposing him is not malicious.
There needs to be heavy punitive measures against this sort of thing
Please explain why. There is a law in place that gives websites free harbour, while giving copyright holders a way to take down copyrighted materials that they own. And you say there should be heavy punitive measures against using your legal rights? If you put the material up then you can inform the website that you are not committing copyright infringement. Should there be heavy punitive measures against that as well?
More than half the population in the United States cannot afford an attorney to go as far as representing them in a civil suit. I suspect it's even worse in Britain. The court systems are thus fundamentally unfair just because of that aspect alone.
Your assumption is wrong. If you have no money to defend yourself, you will most likely receive legal aid, which means the state pays for your defense.
Why is the truth not considered a valid defense in British courts? Doing otherwise would seem to invite these sorts of suits.
Because you are reading a lot of nonsense on Slashdot. And because what really counts is whether there was defamation or not. I could say something about you that is strictly the truth, but leaving out information or twisting information in such a way that someone reading it would get the wrong impression about you. In that case, it's defamation and truth is no defense.
But saying the truth doesn't imply defamation. Uncovering the truth about you doesn't damage your reputation. Think about it, every policeman solving a crime and any jury convicting a criminal would be sued for defamation for destroying someone's reputation. They are not, because committing the crime destroys the criminal's reputation, not the police solving the crime. And a jury sending a criminal to jail isn't acting malicious for the same reasons.
If you mistreat me, as a customer (or any other entity), why should I not be allowed to state the truth (or even opinion) with intent to damage or malice? If you're a shitty person or a shitty company doing shitty things, then I have every right to have malice and want to damage your reputation. IT DESERVES TO BE DAMAGED.
NO NO NO you are missing the point. If a company mistreats customers, their mistreating of customers is what causes the damage. Reporting the mistreatment doesn't cause the damage.
Actually that seems to be the case here. Basedo on this Guardian article [guardian.co.uk], where she says "He said that I was damaging his reputation and that it was all done maliciously" (while nowhere in the article does it say that the company disputes the truth of her claims)
That's the claim, but informing people correctly about what someone is up to is not "damaging their reputation". The truth is not a defense if saying the truth while making people believe something that is untrue, that would be damaging. For example, if I knew that you were once arrested for murder, but fully knew that shortly afterwards the true murderer was found, confessed, was convicted and is in jail, then telling people that you were arrested for murder would give them the wrong impression and would be libel. In this case, if you give the impression that they are scumbags and that is correct, it is not libel.
people without money don't receive justice against the people buying laws.
Modded up as insightful, but the poster is obviously oblivious to the legal situation in the UK, where this happened. In this situation, UK residents without money will get legal aid, which will pay for their legal costs. And the United Kingdom has more money than some little company in Qatar. If you have a little money in the UK, that's when you have a problem.
Amazon wants the best for the customer? They were killing the publishers, and once publishers are gone, that's it.
But since Iain Banks is mentioned, I compared a few prices (Amazon UK). eBooks they seem to be identical to iTunes. For audiobooks, there is a strange pattern: Hydrogen Sonata, £24.27 reduced to £12.74. At iTunes, £10.95. (At iTunes paid for with my stash of gift cards purchased 20% reduced, £8.76). That same pattern through all Iain Banks audiobooks. There's a high price shown at Amazon, heaven knows where it comes from, there is a much lower price that Amazon charges, and there is a lower iTunes price.
By showing a higher price and making the customer think they get a bargain, while being considerably more expensive than Apple, they demonstrate quite clearly that they do NOT want the best deal for the customer.
For future reference, the adobe digital edition version is the drm-wrapped epub for transferring to any compatible app/reader.
To clarify: ePub can be DRM free, or it can have DRM _inside_ the ePub itself. You are saying that Adobe Digital Edition is ePub that is itself DRM free, wrapped in a DRM wrapper, like an mp3 file could be wrapped in a DRM wrapper, and not ePub with built in DRM?
Come on, how hard is it to not implement DRM?
Easy, but it means the customer cannot read ebooks where the publisher added DRM. What you need to ask is: How difficult is it to allow publishers not to use DRM (hello, Amazon!), and how difficult is it to convince publishers to use standard formats that are DRM free. The first one is easy, and everyone except Amazon does it. The second one, tougher.
Another question: Do you consider your email address embedded in a book to be DRM? DRM usually means "we prevent you from doing any copyright infringement, we also prevent you from doing things that you should be perfectly entitled to do". Embedded email address means "you can do all the things that you should be entitled to do. You can also commit copyright infringement if you want to, but you might get caught".
The link you posted goes to a page where Google explains their policies and what they claim are the rules that they use to store data about you. That's not what the law asks for. They have to tell _you_ exactly what information they have stored about _you_, not what information they might have stored about any arbitrary person.
I cannot know what information they have stored about me by reading their policy, because that would make it necessary for me to keep track of any single contact I have with Google, and obviously I wouldn't know what data was stored because someone used my computer, or used my name. I also wouldn't know if they made any mistakes and incorrectly attributed information of some other person to me. That's a good reason why they have to tell you what they stored about you, to give you a chance to make them correct any mistakes.
Does it has to be typed by a human? If so what's preventing me from launching a DDOS attack against any company by generating tens of thousands of emails to customer support and asking for a response?
German laws, which would make you responsible for the damage caused. Once you are found, you would be charged with the cost of replying to each email. They'd find other things to charge you with if you were a competitor.
Yes, exactly: No company should provide a service that they can not sustain while complying with the law.
I always thought that's why you make a business plan before starting an enterprise: To make sure that you can actually do it.
If there are any fines against Google, they can be collected from the German company, and probably from any Google branch in the EU. I bet they can also be collected from anyone who pays money to Google in the EU. So even if Google was solely a US company, they would be forced to pay.
Now if you can't run your business while complying with the laws due to cost, you'll go bankrupt. We'd see how Microsoft would be doing with Bing.
Foxconn isn't just an "Apple OEM", they make portable electronic devices for nearly everybody, including - yes - Android devices.
Foxconn isn't an Apple OEM at all. They would be an Apple OEM if you could buy Foxconn labeled computers or phones or tablets that are identical to or very similar to Apple products. Foxconn is a manufacturer building products _for Apple_ (among many others), that's the complete opposite of an OEM.
Buy $1bn worth of shares in the name of your company. If it works out and the shares go up by one percent, sell them for $1bn and $10 million, take the $10 million, and run. If it doesn't work out, your company goes broke and you go to jail.
Except Apple didn't, you need to stop talking about consumers like they are stupid. Apple successfully recreated itself as an electronics company its computing business is dying YOY its sales are down 22%
Were do you get that number from? The latest predictions were 7% down (IDC) and 7% up (Garter), so they are probably staying the same in traditional computers. Market share on the other hand is growing.
But iPads _are_ part of the computing business. Last week some guy here claimed that Apple was doing really badly because it's iPod sales were down - Apple doesn't mind because most of the people not buying an iPod don't buy one because they have an iPhone. Same with computers; the loss of sales to the iPad isn't something that hurts Apple at all, because for every Macintosh that isn't sold because of the iPad, there are ten or twenty PCs not sold because of the iPad.
When you use your cell phone in a restaurant to speak to someone 3000 miles away, you are doing something usually acceptable, but you are doing it in an unacceptable time and place.
It's fine talking to someone who is 3000 miles away. As long as you remember that your voice is transmitted electronically and not by sound waves, so you don't have to shout. A mobile phone has some quite ingenious electronics built in that will amplify the volume of your voice, and filter out noises from your surroundings, even if you talk in a low voice.
Ignoring your personal attacks. My comments were in reference to a factual error by the original poster. Like you made with this one. Google will NEVER sell your data, because they can only do so once..
That's Ok then. They don't sell my personal data, they just rent it out. Great. So what difference does that make to me?
Not even close; Google+Samsung alone are larger than Apple :).
And my dad is bigger than your dad... It seems very important to you that Google and Samsung together are very large, isn't it? Emotionally involved with them? One of those companies makes their money selling your data. The other has conviction after conviction for price fixing, has been poisoning employees by the hundreds, their boss was convicted for tax evasion (and given a presidential pardon). Lovely bunch.
Standalone music players don't sell too many at the moment, but most are sold by Apple. Even if you count only portable music players that are not game consoles, Apple sells most. If you count portable game consoles with or without music players included that are not phones, Apple sells most. Apple's market share of phones has grown year after year after year, so I don't know what Microsoft would be bragging about.
I do not care who makes the product. As long as the artists make a fair wage, and the content is quality. Good audio quality content is hard to find anywhere on the web. Finding quality MP3 bitrate is hard as well. That is why people turn to apple, because there is quality control.
I have no problems at all finding music in MP3 format in good quality. I just go to Amazon. Usually I go to iTunes for AAC format, but as I said, finding MP3 music is no problem at all. Is there something I'm missing in what you are trying to say?
Can't speak for nowadays because I don't use iTunes any more, but I remember that going back when I registered it was not possible to create an account without a credit card or an equivalent debit service. This was one of the European iTunes stores.
You could _always_ open with a credit card, and then immediately remove the credit card from the account. You could also open an account without a credit card if you knew how: You just had to click "Buy" on a free item, and then you could open an account with no credit card or even a gift card at all.
Do you need to have an iTunes account to use your iGadgets?
You can use any iOS device without having any account. You need an iTunes account to buy anything or to get free downloads. However, that account doesn't need any credit card or debit card attached to it, and in that case if there is no money in the account, you just can't buy anything. You can pay in money via giftcards (which is highly recommended because you usually find giftcards sold at less than face value), in which case you can't spend more than the money in your account.
You still need a password to do anything. And if your kids manage to buy stuff (they need your password for that), you make a phone call to Apple support and they will sort it out. Unless you let your kid spend tons of money over three months, in which case you have a problem.
Sometimes it is rather arbitrary, such as: lives too far away, or uses an unprofessional sounding email address (for example: hotkitty@aol.com).
You should at least check whether someone living far away did apply _because_ they were intending to move to a different place.
What about the job seeker who is not using Windows? You relegate those potential employees to having to either borrow someone's computer or go to a public library to apply for a job. When was Microsoft granted the right to determine who is going to be able to enter the work force?
Worse, if you are looking for a Mac or iOS developer, or Linux, or Android.
Isn't there an ongoing debate whether bitcoin is a "commodity" or a "currency" or both?
Neither. It's just a bloody waste of CPU time.