1. Take people's data, hold it hostage
2. Tell people to pay if they want to see the data ever again
3. Profit!
It's not quite like that. Megaupload paid Carpathia for hosting user's data. Carpathia doesn't care what data, they just supplied the storage and took money for it. Megaupload stopped paying Carpathia. So what is Carpathia going to do?
I would think it would be completely legal for them to just re-use all their servers that Megaupload is paying for, with total destruction of all the user data. Probably a matter of contract and contract law: For how long would a hosting service be required to keep your data if you stop paying? And I don't think Carpathia has any legal obligations to Megaupload's customers. On the contrary, I doubt that Carpathia has any right to give anyone other than Megaupload access to those servers without some court order, even Megaupload customers who want to access that data.
People will just start trolling behind proxies/on public networks.
In the case in question, it seems that the trolling was done by a bunch of mindless idiots. So no reason to believe they would do anything remotely clever.
The universe can only be experienced through a single life, no more, no less, so the destruction of any one life is the destruction of an entire universe of experience. For that reason, the "badness" of that death is infinite.
Since about 150 million humans die every year, the badness of working for a pharmaceutical company or the arms industry is totally insignificant to 150 million times infinity of badness every year.
Australia is not like the USA in regards to loving/respecting companies ripping off the system.
And next you will complain if prices are higher in Australia, because the cost of doing business in Australia is higher. The cost to Apple of selling iPads in Australia has just gone up by two million dollars. So what do you think will that do to the price that customers pay?
The problem is, this covers ANY laptop that is thinner on one edge, which is purely an evolutionary change as some parts (like the HD) get smaller, while other parts (like the battery) don't. Are they supposed to artificially thicken the front edge to the same height as the battery, just to avoid this patent?
Could you please google for "design patent"? It covers ANY laptop that is a copy of the MacBook Air, which probably includes every model created by the "designers" of some companies, but it doesn't cover all laptops that are thinner on one edge.
Apple even gave a wedge shaped laptop design by Sony as prior art. By definition, anything that looks more like the wedge shaped Sony laptop than like the wedge shaped Apple laptop doesn't infringe on Apple's design patent (but might infringe on Sony's design patent, if they have one).
RIM was in a similar situation, with two companies, one of them RIM, trying to do the same thing, and both getting patents in the area. The problem for RIM was that they beat their competitor in the market, so the competitor didn't need RIM's patents (because they failed to sell things), while RIM needed the competitor's patents and had to pay hundreds of millions.
You don't even need differential GPS. You don't need the exact coordinates of the mine, you just need to get to its real location. Take the GPS location from the rat, then move until your own GPS location (almost) matches that location.
Anyone who thinks code beyond "Hello World" can be not only written bug-free but handle the abuse a client will put it through obviously never got past "Hello World".
What does "Hello World" do when the stdout is redirected to a file, and the hard drive is full?
Thus, the New Zealand Police and FBI (And potentially the MPAA/RIAA as well) are guilty of illegally copying copyrighted works without a license, thus infringing on the copyrights of all the users of MegaUpload.
A New Zealand police officer or an FBI agent who copied those files in order to watch copied movies at home would be committing copyright infringement. But I would think that making copies to collect evidence in a criminal prosecution is allowed by copyright law.
As an example, emails would obviously fall under copyright protection. But even in civil cases, defendants (and plaintiffs as well) are often forced to supply opposing lawyers with copies of those emails, and nobody has ever questioned that for copyright reasons.
If you had read carefully about that report, you would have noticed that Greenpeace made a report based on promises that companies made. As an example, HP promised to get rid of BFRs (Brominated Flame Retardants) within a few years and got 10 points of that, while Apple made no such promise and got zero points. What Greenpeace had missed was that Apple didn't make that promise because the had already removed all BFRs! So Greenpeace's rated vague promises for the future higher than action that had already taken place.
Not really. We're not talking about damages because he didn't purchase those songs on iTunes for a dollar each... We're talking about damages because he uploaded those songs. Apple pays a lot more than a dollar for the rights to distribute. In fact, some years back, Michael Jackson bought the rights to distribute 4,000 Beatles songs. Did he pay $4,000? No, try $47.5 million. The $22,500 per song for Tenenbaum's infringement of the distribution right is pretty reasonable in view of that.
Actually, what you say is quite idiotic. Michael Jackson paid for exclusive rights to sell songs to record companies, who would sell them on a huge scale for big profits. In the UK, newspapers have been adding free CDs to newspapers. I'm quite sure they had a license to do so. And they produced tens of thousands to hundres of thousands of copies. Which is probably more than thousand times as many copies as Tenenbaum made. And I bet they didn't pay $22,500 per song.
So the punishment a person receives should not be based on what they did but on (something completely out of their control) how the victim took it?
When you punch someone in the face, the damage done will depend on how hard you punch, where exactly you hit, and on the constitution of the victim. The punishment would depend on the damage done. There could be more damage than you intended. Solution to this dilemma: Don't punch the victim.
Same with any other action. If you don't want to live with the consequences, then don't do it.
There's also some loss of information in TFA. The submitter changed "a plant that covers 40,000 square meters" to "a 40,000 square meters plant". Quite possible there will be more than one floor. A plant with five floors covering 40,000 square meters would be a 200,000 square meter plant.
If someone stole and destroyed my $20,0000 car, and I sued him for 4.7 Million, do you think a court would award me such damages? No, the would laugh me out of court.. So how is it that 30 songs is worth over a half a million? And this is fair and reasonable? Some one please explain it to me..
To bring the money into perspective, in the widely reported Apple vs. Psystar, Psystar was ordered to pay $30,000 for making about 800 illegal copies of MacOS X for commercial gain. I think the software was sold for $129 a piece at that time. So $675,000 for an unknown number of copies of 30 songs that can be bought for $0.99 each seems a bit exaggerated in comparison.
Comparing piracy to childhood cancer, that's pretty low.
He wasn't comparing piracy and childhood cancer. He was comparing the state of the greek economy with childhood cancer. There's a chance of survival, put it is a painful and frightening experience.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse, it's hard to see how you arrived at the above conclusion from this article. It seems to me that this was a win all around.
Do you really, really think that Apple would do anything because of Greenpeace? Greenpeace has been attacking Apple for years, after Apple refused to donate money to the worthy cause. And again and again their attacks have been proven to be completely clueless.
If Apple is using 100% renewable power for some data centre, then the only reason for that is that they planned to do exactly that from the start.
And? They already killed Mac OS X Server and removed X11 support, I somehow doubt Apple really cares about anyone that uses Mac OS X because it's UNIX.
You're posting nonsense. MacOS X Server is well and a live. They killed the XServe hardware which sold only about 300,000 units a year from what I heard. They are selling the Mac Mini Server, and MacOS X Server will run just fine on any Mac Pro. X11 support is available, and Apple tells you were to get it.
Sounds about right, which would probably be a good thing. Too many programmers are obsessed with getting the mathematically correct answer to a precision that can have no actual impact on whatever they are trying to accomplish (or even worse, is rendered 'wrong' anyway by FP limitations of the language or chip anyway).
Too many programmers appreciate a programming environment where the FP implementation doesn't play any tricks that messes up perfectly good code.
Look, we've been there 40-50 years ago. Floating-point arithmetic was rubbish, because the amount of hardware that was available was very much limited. Thanks mostly to Prof. Kahan, Apple who introduced SANE floating-point arithmetic (very fitting acronym), and Intel who proved it could be implemented in a hardware FPU with the 8087 co-processor, sanity prevailed. These guys at Rice University should be hanged, quartered, flogged and shot, I just can't decide in which order.
If PStar bought boxed copies of OSX, but did not activate the OS or even look at the EULA, that whatever it says is irrelevant. It takes TWO parties to agree to a contract, not one.
The GPL tells you that you have to release source code if you distribute GPL licensed software. But they can't force you; you have the choice of not agreeing to the license (makes it copyright infringement) or agreeing (and you have to release the code). With a EULA, you can agree or not agree. If you don't agree, you don't have the right to copy. In case of MacOS X, you don't have the right to install the software even on a Mac if you don't agree. If you agree, you have the rights that the EULA allows. Which limits your right to make copies.
If Apple's EULA said "you agree to pay $10,000 for every copy that you install on a non-Apple branded computer", that would be unenforcable because you could say you didn't agree to the EULA. It would still be copyright infringement.
As much as Apple might protest, Hackintoshes are perfectly legal. Fair Use allows hobbyists to make the modifications. But copyright law limits anyone from selling (redistributing) those machines as they are derivative works. Hobbyists selling a few machines on eBay probably won't get Apple's attention. Psystar was a business.
It is "perfectly legal" until you do something that annoys Apple enough to sue you. Which the Hackintosh community carefully avoids doing. If you created a single Hackintosh, and then went on national TV and told the nation how doing this is perfectly legal and Apple can't do anything about it, you would get sued and you would lose just like Psystar did.
Psystar made many tactical mistakes that you would obviously avoid, but there are two obstacles that you can't get around: You don't have a license to install MacOS X on a computer that isn't Apple branded, so that's copyright infringement. And you have to get around Apple's copy protection to run the software, so that is a DMCA violation.
First Sale should apply for any scarce good. As long as they are creating artificial scarcity via copyright, they should have to live with the consequences. If I buy a scarce good, I should be able to resell it to someone else who can use it.
You can buy MacOS X with a license. The license allows you to install the software on a Mac, but not on a different computer. Instead of installing it, you can sell that copy of MacOS X together with the license. First Sale Doctrine in action. Whoever buys it has a license that allows them to install the software on a Mac, but not on a different computer.
The keener observer will note that Apple used to sell anyone off the street a full copy of OS X, all without requiring them to sign a contract that would limit their otherwise-permitted use of the product they'd just purchased.
The even keener observer will note that Apple sold OS X subject to acceptance of the license. Without acceptance of the license, no sale has happened, therefore no right to install anything.
And here's the crux of the matter, and why I find the ruling so despicable: those are terms that were added after the sale through the EULA clickthrough. At the time Psystar paid Apple for their copies of OS X, there were no signed contracts showing that Psystar agreed to abide by those extra-legal terms and conditions. They were bound by normal copyright law, sure, but I'm not aware that they were ever accused of violating copyright.
1. It doesn't happen after the sale. What Apple offered was "you get this package and the right to install the software on a Mac if you (a) give us some cash and (b) agree to the license". Until you agree there is no actual sale. On the other hand, until you agree you can return the software and ask for your money back because it hasn't yet been legally sold.
2. Psystar was a company. Where I come from, rules for companies are very different from the rules for ordinary citizens. If you, as an ordinary citizen, buy something without being correctly informed about the terms of the sale, there are consumer laws to protect you. If a company buys something without being correctly informed about the terms of the sale, they are just stupid and get what they deserve. If they can't find the exact terms outside the box, they can call Apple, and if Apple doesn't tell them, they take their chances or don't buy the software.
Total ignorance of facts. You may think that you buy the software, but you don't. The sale of the software depends on your acceptance of the license agreement. When you hand your money over for a box, no sale has yet happened. You can take the box home, read the license conditions carefully instead of being in a rush in the shop, or give it to a lawyer to read, and then you have a choice: You accept the license, and the sale is done, or you don't accept the license, and you can take the software back to the shop and ask for your money back.
But in the end, all this has been explained again and again years ago when Psystar started selling computers, then again when Apple sued them, and again when Psystar lost their case, and again when they appealed, and again when the next court even refused to look at the appeal.
It's not at all about copyright. It's all about software licensing. Psystar wasn't copying anything. They were purchasing copies directly from Apple.
But Apple didn't complain that Psystar bought their software. Apple complained that Psystar installed Apple's software on Psystar computers. And you are very welcome to explain how Psystar is supposed to do that without copying.
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1. Take people's data, hold it hostage
2. Tell people to pay if they want to see the data ever again
3. Profit!
It's not quite like that. Megaupload paid Carpathia for hosting user's data. Carpathia doesn't care what data, they just supplied the storage and took money for it. Megaupload stopped paying Carpathia. So what is Carpathia going to do?
I would think it would be completely legal for them to just re-use all their servers that Megaupload is paying for, with total destruction of all the user data. Probably a matter of contract and contract law: For how long would a hosting service be required to keep your data if you stop paying? And I don't think Carpathia has any legal obligations to Megaupload's customers. On the contrary, I doubt that Carpathia has any right to give anyone other than Megaupload access to those servers without some court order, even Megaupload customers who want to access that data.
People will just start trolling behind proxies/on public networks.
In the case in question, it seems that the trolling was done by a bunch of mindless idiots. So no reason to believe they would do anything remotely clever.
The universe can only be experienced through a single life, no more, no less, so the destruction of any one life is the destruction of an entire universe of experience. For that reason, the "badness" of that death is infinite.
Since about 150 million humans die every year, the badness of working for a pharmaceutical company or the arms industry is totally insignificant to 150 million times infinity of badness every year.
Australia is not like the USA in regards to loving/respecting companies ripping off the system.
And next you will complain if prices are higher in Australia, because the cost of doing business in Australia is higher. The cost to Apple of selling iPads in Australia has just gone up by two million dollars. So what do you think will that do to the price that customers pay?
The problem is, this covers ANY laptop that is thinner on one edge, which is purely an evolutionary change as some parts (like the HD) get smaller, while other parts (like the battery) don't. Are they supposed to artificially thicken the front edge to the same height as the battery, just to avoid this patent?
Could you please google for "design patent"? It covers ANY laptop that is a copy of the MacBook Air, which probably includes every model created by the "designers" of some companies, but it doesn't cover all laptops that are thinner on one edge.
Apple even gave a wedge shaped laptop design by Sony as prior art. By definition, anything that looks more like the wedge shaped Sony laptop than like the wedge shaped Apple laptop doesn't infringe on Apple's design patent (but might infringe on Sony's design patent, if they have one).
RIM was in a similar situation, with two companies, one of them RIM, trying to do the same thing, and both getting patents in the area. The problem for RIM was that they beat their competitor in the market, so the competitor didn't need RIM's patents (because they failed to sell things), while RIM needed the competitor's patents and had to pay hundreds of millions.
You don't even need differential GPS. You don't need the exact coordinates of the mine, you just need to get to its real location. Take the GPS location from the rat, then move until your own GPS location (almost) matches that location.
Anyone who thinks code beyond "Hello World" can be not only written bug-free but handle the abuse a client will put it through obviously never got past "Hello World".
What does "Hello World" do when the stdout is redirected to a file, and the hard drive is full?
Thus, the New Zealand Police and FBI (And potentially the MPAA/RIAA as well) are guilty of illegally copying copyrighted works without a license, thus infringing on the copyrights of all the users of MegaUpload.
A New Zealand police officer or an FBI agent who copied those files in order to watch copied movies at home would be committing copyright infringement. But I would think that making copies to collect evidence in a criminal prosecution is allowed by copyright law.
As an example, emails would obviously fall under copyright protection. But even in civil cases, defendants (and plaintiffs as well) are often forced to supply opposing lawyers with copies of those emails, and nobody has ever questioned that for copyright reasons.
If you had read carefully about that report, you would have noticed that Greenpeace made a report based on promises that companies made. As an example, HP promised to get rid of BFRs (Brominated Flame Retardants) within a few years and got 10 points of that, while Apple made no such promise and got zero points. What Greenpeace had missed was that Apple didn't make that promise because the had already removed all BFRs! So Greenpeace's rated vague promises for the future higher than action that had already taken place.
Not really. We're not talking about damages because he didn't purchase those songs on iTunes for a dollar each... We're talking about damages because he uploaded those songs. Apple pays a lot more than a dollar for the rights to distribute. In fact, some years back, Michael Jackson bought the rights to distribute 4,000 Beatles songs. Did he pay $4,000? No, try $47.5 million. The $22,500 per song for Tenenbaum's infringement of the distribution right is pretty reasonable in view of that.
Actually, what you say is quite idiotic. Michael Jackson paid for exclusive rights to sell songs to record companies, who would sell them on a huge scale for big profits. In the UK, newspapers have been adding free CDs to newspapers. I'm quite sure they had a license to do so. And they produced tens of thousands to hundres of thousands of copies. Which is probably more than thousand times as many copies as Tenenbaum made. And I bet they didn't pay $22,500 per song.
So the punishment a person receives should not be based on what they did but on (something completely out of their control) how the victim took it?
When you punch someone in the face, the damage done will depend on how hard you punch, where exactly you hit, and on the constitution of the victim. The punishment would depend on the damage done. There could be more damage than you intended. Solution to this dilemma: Don't punch the victim.
Same with any other action. If you don't want to live with the consequences, then don't do it.
There's also some loss of information in TFA. The submitter changed "a plant that covers 40,000 square meters" to "a 40,000 square meters plant". Quite possible there will be more than one floor. A plant with five floors covering 40,000 square meters would be a 200,000 square meter plant.
If someone stole and destroyed my $20,0000 car, and I sued him for 4.7 Million, do you think a court would award me such damages? No, the would laugh me out of court.. So how is it that 30 songs is worth over a half a million? And this is fair and reasonable? Some one please explain it to me..
To bring the money into perspective, in the widely reported Apple vs. Psystar, Psystar was ordered to pay $30,000 for making about 800 illegal copies of MacOS X for commercial gain. I think the software was sold for $129 a piece at that time. So $675,000 for an unknown number of copies of 30 songs that can be bought for $0.99 each seems a bit exaggerated in comparison.
Comparing piracy to childhood cancer, that's pretty low.
He wasn't comparing piracy and childhood cancer. He was comparing the state of the greek economy with childhood cancer. There's a chance of survival, put it is a painful and frightening experience.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse, it's hard to see how you arrived at the above conclusion from this article. It seems to me that this was a win all around.
Do you really, really think that Apple would do anything because of Greenpeace? Greenpeace has been attacking Apple for years, after Apple refused to donate money to the worthy cause. And again and again their attacks have been proven to be completely clueless.
If Apple is using 100% renewable power for some data centre, then the only reason for that is that they planned to do exactly that from the start.
And? They already killed Mac OS X Server and removed X11 support, I somehow doubt Apple really cares about anyone that uses Mac OS X because it's UNIX.
You're posting nonsense. MacOS X Server is well and a live. They killed the XServe hardware which sold only about 300,000 units a year from what I heard. They are selling the Mac Mini Server, and MacOS X Server will run just fine on any Mac Pro. X11 support is available, and Apple tells you were to get it.
Sounds about right, which would probably be a good thing. Too many programmers are obsessed with getting the mathematically correct answer to a precision that can have no actual impact on whatever they are trying to accomplish (or even worse, is rendered 'wrong' anyway by FP limitations of the language or chip anyway).
Too many programmers appreciate a programming environment where the FP implementation doesn't play any tricks that messes up perfectly good code.
Look, we've been there 40-50 years ago. Floating-point arithmetic was rubbish, because the amount of hardware that was available was very much limited. Thanks mostly to Prof. Kahan, Apple who introduced SANE floating-point arithmetic (very fitting acronym), and Intel who proved it could be implemented in a hardware FPU with the 8087 co-processor, sanity prevailed. These guys at Rice University should be hanged, quartered, flogged and shot, I just can't decide in which order.
If PStar bought boxed copies of OSX, but did not activate the OS or even look at the EULA, that whatever it says is irrelevant. It takes TWO parties to agree to a contract, not one.
The GPL tells you that you have to release source code if you distribute GPL licensed software. But they can't force you; you have the choice of not agreeing to the license (makes it copyright infringement) or agreeing (and you have to release the code). With a EULA, you can agree or not agree. If you don't agree, you don't have the right to copy. In case of MacOS X, you don't have the right to install the software even on a Mac if you don't agree. If you agree, you have the rights that the EULA allows. Which limits your right to make copies.
If Apple's EULA said "you agree to pay $10,000 for every copy that you install on a non-Apple branded computer", that would be unenforcable because you could say you didn't agree to the EULA. It would still be copyright infringement.
As much as Apple might protest, Hackintoshes are perfectly legal. Fair Use allows hobbyists to make the modifications. But copyright law limits anyone from selling (redistributing) those machines as they are derivative works. Hobbyists selling a few machines on eBay probably won't get Apple's attention. Psystar was a business.
It is "perfectly legal" until you do something that annoys Apple enough to sue you. Which the Hackintosh community carefully avoids doing. If you created a single Hackintosh, and then went on national TV and told the nation how doing this is perfectly legal and Apple can't do anything about it, you would get sued and you would lose just like Psystar did.
Psystar made many tactical mistakes that you would obviously avoid, but there are two obstacles that you can't get around: You don't have a license to install MacOS X on a computer that isn't Apple branded, so that's copyright infringement. And you have to get around Apple's copy protection to run the software, so that is a DMCA violation.
First Sale should apply for any scarce good. As long as they are creating artificial scarcity via copyright, they should have to live with the consequences. If I buy a scarce good, I should be able to resell it to someone else who can use it.
You can buy MacOS X with a license. The license allows you to install the software on a Mac, but not on a different computer. Instead of installing it, you can sell that copy of MacOS X together with the license. First Sale Doctrine in action. Whoever buys it has a license that allows them to install the software on a Mac, but not on a different computer.
The keener observer will note that Apple used to sell anyone off the street a full copy of OS X, all without requiring them to sign a contract that would limit their otherwise-permitted use of the product they'd just purchased.
The even keener observer will note that Apple sold OS X subject to acceptance of the license. Without acceptance of the license, no sale has happened, therefore no right to install anything.
And here's the crux of the matter, and why I find the ruling so despicable: those are terms that were added after the sale through the EULA clickthrough. At the time Psystar paid Apple for their copies of OS X, there were no signed contracts showing that Psystar agreed to abide by those extra-legal terms and conditions. They were bound by normal copyright law, sure, but I'm not aware that they were ever accused of violating copyright.
1. It doesn't happen after the sale. What Apple offered was "you get this package and the right to install the software on a Mac if you (a) give us some cash and (b) agree to the license". Until you agree there is no actual sale. On the other hand, until you agree you can return the software and ask for your money back because it hasn't yet been legally sold.
2. Psystar was a company. Where I come from, rules for companies are very different from the rules for ordinary citizens. If you, as an ordinary citizen, buy something without being correctly informed about the terms of the sale, there are consumer laws to protect you. If a company buys something without being correctly informed about the terms of the sale, they are just stupid and get what they deserve. If they can't find the exact terms outside the box, they can call Apple, and if Apple doesn't tell them, they take their chances or don't buy the software.
Total ignorance of facts. You may think that you buy the software, but you don't. The sale of the software depends on your acceptance of the license agreement. When you hand your money over for a box, no sale has yet happened. You can take the box home, read the license conditions carefully instead of being in a rush in the shop, or give it to a lawyer to read, and then you have a choice: You accept the license, and the sale is done, or you don't accept the license, and you can take the software back to the shop and ask for your money back.
But in the end, all this has been explained again and again years ago when Psystar started selling computers, then again when Apple sued them, and again when Psystar lost their case, and again when they appealed, and again when the next court even refused to look at the appeal.
It's not at all about copyright. It's all about software licensing. Psystar wasn't copying anything. They were purchasing copies directly from Apple.
But Apple didn't complain that Psystar bought their software. Apple complained that Psystar installed Apple's software on Psystar computers. And you are very welcome to explain how Psystar is supposed to do that without copying.