The danger is not of poor, downtrodden people that have nothing to live for. It is people that we would think have everything to live for but yet choose to focus on the benefits in the afterlife. This is not exclusively a Muslim problem as it can happen with Christians as well. No, I do not believe there are any Jews focused on the afterlife as the whole religion doesn't work that way.
Once you have someone that is focused on a better afterlife you can't really do anything to them except kill them. Anything you do - including torture - is a mild annoyance on the way to the afterlife where everything will be perfect. We in our Western philosophies are almost incapable of understanding how a functioning human being can be turned in such a way that life is unimportant and the afterlife is all-consuming. Well, we better wake up or the folks yelling Allah Akbar as they storm the cockpit, plant the bomb or derail the train will succeed - their success means death and lots of it. Isn't that the whole point of being focused on the afterlife, anyway?
You might not have heard about this, but some people don't have high-speed Internet connections. They really frown on using BitTorrent clients at the library.
It is all a question of the digital haves and have-nots. The haves get free music and movies, the have-nots don't and have to buy at BestBuy and WalMart.
Sorry, but nearly everyone is downloading music for free these days. Hang around in a 5th grade schoolyard and you will hear them talking about the music they downloaded, not the music they bought.
Very few people "woke up" about getting something for nothing and it being somehow wrong. Most of the people I know are very happy about getting something for nothing - one less thing in their lives that costs money. A lot of people seem to feel that it goes along with paying for access to the Internet - free music and movies is included.
I think it is somewhat dated but I recall a study that said iTunes was wildly successful but got at most 2% of the music downloads out there. Everyone else charging was getting less. Added together the paid services represented maybe 7% of music downloads with the remaining 93% being free p2p downloads.
Can't. Nearly all of them are outside the US and protected in their home country. And raking in enough dough that they can afford to keep the locals paid off.
These days there are no Internet "Canadian Pharmacies" that are actually in Canada. The business of selling fake pills from India has completely taken over the business of selling real pills from Canada.
It's not like someone is ever going to see a commercial for one of the countless stupidly named drugs out there and demand them from their doctor.
That is exactly what happens. People see the ad and think "Gosh, I bet I have that disease. I better get these pills right away." They then go to the doctor and demand not a a cure for some aliment they may or may not have but demand a brand-name drug. Period.
In some groups of people this gets very much out of hand. Some doctors end up having to prescribe the drug just to shut the patient up. I believe in some cases they write a prescription that tells the pharmacy to put some sugar pills in a bottle and say it is Vytorin or whatever the drug-of-choice that week is.
We are not talking about sales from real Canadian Pharmacies. We are talking about folks labelling themselves as a "Canadian Pharmacy" which is code for willing to sell without prescriptions and at a (supposedly) huge discount.
This banner has been taken up by companies in India, Indonesia and other Southeast Asia locations. They advertise as a Canadian Pharmacy because Americans think that they are just getting a good deal from Canada.
There is nothing legitimate about the pills they are selling. Most are fakes. If you suggest to grandma that she get her pills from a Canadian Pharmacy I strongly suggest going there to pick them up. Because anyone advertising on the Internet is going to be run from somewhere else today. The business has changed a great deal since the 1990s.
The problem isn't lost profits but the brand name "Canadian Pharmacy" that has been taken over by folks operating from India and Indonesia.
This got started by real, actual Canadian mail-order pharmacies selling cross-border which has been going on for 20 years or more. However, recently the "brand" has been taken over such that you are dealing with an operator in Southeast Asia rather than Canada. They do a pretty good job of disguising that fact but they will tell you that your package will be shipped discreetly from an international location.
The problem is that in many places it simply isn't illegal to package up some drain cleaner and label it Viagra. There is no enforcement of trademarks and there are no laws against labelling drain cleaner as something else. Also, since these operations are very lucrative, they can pay off any local officials that need to be greased.
So how do you stop people from buying fake drugs from supposedly "Canadian Pharmacies"? Well, one way is to shut off the advertising. Another way is to shut down the web sites hawking this stuff - which so far has been next to impossible to do.
The US does not block anything being imported unless it is identified as illegal drugs - mostly by dogs sniffing it.
There is just too much stuff coming in to bother and it would increase prices. It is illegal in the US to sell an unlicensed DVD player. It costs $5 per player for the proper license. So when you go to the store and buy one for $29.99 do actually believe the manufacturer paid $5 for the license? No way - there isn't an extra $5 in the pricing structure.
Once you understand how this system works you understand that nothing is blocked at all. OK, you cannot ship in a bale of marijuana or a kilo of cocaine. I think there are some problems with shipping heroin as well. But just about anything else is fair game.
Fake prescription drugs? Absolutely they come in, every day and it is known to both the customs folks and the FDA. But they would have inspect every single item being shipped in and that is impossible.
Well, let's see... a lot of this stuff is now coming from places other than any sort of licensed pharamcy with the pills being made up in the back room. License? They don't need a license, they have the Internet.
Canada (well, RCMP for one) is trying to find ways to stop the folks advertising as a "Canadian pharmacy" when in reality the entire operation is being run from India or somewhere else in Southeast Asia. They aren't having much luck. I saw a single operator with around 50 different domains. Shut one down and it pops back up with a different name the next day. There are no laws outside the US and Canada that are going to control this because it simply isn't illegal to defraud Americans in most countries. In fact, it is a respected occupation.
The biggest problem isn't that people are getting pills they want without a prescription. The problem is that the pills contain nothing like what you would expect them to. Get some and have them analyzed - the Viagra may be nothing more than blue-colored salt. It could also be other substances designed to make sure you aren't going to report the seller to anyone. Ever. After all, when you buy pills that do nothing you aren't likely to be a repeat customer, now are you? So how about making sure?
Again, there are no laws about this. If a country does not have an FDA or something like it, they may not care what sorts of things people are selling. Also, they may have laws against selling within the country but no laws about exporting, just like the US - we export pesticides that are illegal to use in the US.
So this isn't at all the big pharma companies responding to losing their profits. This is about people buying stuff that isn't what it is claimed to be and there being utterly no controls at all about what you might be getting. Having talked with some FDA people about this in the US, there is literally nothing they can do about it. They can try to shut down individual web sites, but it isn't having any real effect.
Problem is, what if the house contains a meth lab? If you knock on the door and say "Police" the response is to immediately (a) fire off many weapons and (b) detonate any possible meth-making supplies to destroy the evidence (and a good portion of the block as well).
Any warrant being served on a house needs to take that into consideration. If the people in the house are just using meth then (b) from above does not apply, but (a) does - and the people are likely paranoid enough to do (a) to the limit of their ability when the person knocking on the door says "Avon calling" instead of "Police" because it might be the police lying about who they are.
You have to understand the psychology of meth, meth users and meth makers. In many parts of the country meth has completely taken over.
And no, the people were not compensated in any way, including for the damage to their property and possessions.
Did they sue? You realize that most people would not sue to recover such damages and in the US the only way you are going to be compensated at all is to sue. Now, it is unlikley it would come to trial because the city/county/whatever would settle but the gateway is to file a lawsuit.
Failing to sue means that it wasn't that big a deal.
Unfortunately, in the US we have environmental groups that are convinced that building one more power plant will be the thing that pushes everything over the "tipping point" and the environment will crash in some spectacular way. Perhaps the oceans will boil, the whales return to the land and devour all non-whale life on the planet. Or something like that.
Anyway, there have been very few large-scale power plants built since around 1970 or so. Sure, a bunch have been started but they have not been finished. So we have been existing for the last 40 years on a tendancy to overbuild that existed 1900-1969. Very fortunately that we had that tendancy if I say so. The result is that no amount of conservation is going to help and we will start seeing electricity rationing in the near future. It is now too late to build - it would take five years for a coal plant to come online and more like ten years for a nuclear plant and we simply do not have that much time left.
I suppose a reasonable paraphrasing might be "The way for someone to really conserve electricity is to be dead, and if you aren't careful you are going to be conserving soon."
Do you believe that in the name of "free speech" it is a good idea to show cartoons of Mohammed depicted as a pedophile rapist? After all, he called a girl to her "wifely duties" at age 9, so there is more than a little accuracy there.
But for some odd reason about 1/3rd of the planet seems to revere this long-dead pedophile (peace be upon him) and tend to riot at the suggestion that he might ave (gasp!) taken advantage of his political position to explore the wonders of a nine-year-old girl. Or was she only six? That wacky guy! I seem to forget just exactly how young his youngest wife was.
Anyway, don't you think it might be a good idea to suppress such cartoons in the name of peace as well as law and order? Because certainly folks are going to be killed if they are published or posted on the Internet. If nothing else it will be fellow rioters that push others under the wheels of buses and cars.
So, why do we want to see clearly inflamatory pictures of a dead Muslim leader, even if he was the leader of a radical bunch that just want to blow things up and kill people? Do you not think this will inspire people more than the news reports without pictures?
The thing has no shielding, so it is going to radiate all over the place. It can't be used in a home environment - your neighbors would complain. It probably would pass UL testing because it runs off a power cube, I would presume, so it is just low voltage inside.
Without FCC certification it is an "experimental" device and not going to be stocked by anyone as a "consumer" device.
The model for the music business is one not of "selling music" but of promotion.
What "the labels" do is promote music. This is done through radio, magazines and a few other venues. The big ones that people hear about are certainly radio and magazines. Did you know there are three or four magazines dedicated solely to the promotion of music? Billboard is one of these. When "the labels" die out, there will be a large gaping hole left that will not be filled.
One of the casulties of the death of music promotion will certainly be FM radio. Today's format and cost structure doesn't really allow for the independent station playing requests and providing input into the music promotion business - instead they are pretty much a consumer of music rankings and that is what builds their playlists. Do you think we will go back to the local, independent DJ playing requests? No, because the reason this disappeared was having to pay that person instead of paying one person who is heard on hundreds of stations. No, most FM stations are just going to fold up. And many of you will be saying "good riddance".
MTV started out as a music promotion vehicle, as did VH1. Both of these moved away from the music promotion business and will likely be only partly affected. Without someone paying, there is unlikely to be any more music videos made, ever.
The concept of the record business where you find unknown talent, promote them and hope 1 in 10 or 2 in 10 is successful enough to pay for the failures has been copied in other industries. But the key has always been that there will be expensive failures and spectacular successes. Both the record business and the copies of it have been harmed greatly by management desiring to limit the downside exposure by trying to change the operational model slightly. While the record business has been wildly successful in promoting unknowns and reaping the rewards of the successes, none of the more risk-adverse strategies have paid off in any respect whatsoever. It has been tried with books and software and probably a few other areas that I know nothing about and in every case the more risk-adverse a model was used the less successful it has been.
But it probably does mean that if you have a web site hosted in Utah and a shell company also in Utah that you can claim your use of a trademark isn't infringing based on this ruling. Because that is all it would take.
This then opens the door to a shell company and hosting being used by literally anyone to denigrate products. I wonder how much Pepsi would be willing to pay for a trademark-laden anti-Coke site? Or a Toyota-bashing site offered to GM? There has to be some significant money available here.
Obviously, the requirement for the shell company would be to make the web site completely non-commercial. Maybe just a couple of links to the "good guys" - the ones paying for the web site with heavy emphasis about them being the "good guys".
Do you know why the Internet isn't polluted with such sites today? Well, maybe because this rather transparent ploy would be clear to enough people that there would be a lawsuit. Except obviously this judge never thought about that. I guess he was under the impression that people are just out there doing good things and only "spawn of the devil" or whatnot would ever consider using his opinion as the basis for a moneymaking scheme.
I don't see any reason for filing against the people. The IP addresses are owned by the ISP and it is clearly their responsbility here. There is no free pass given to ISPs because they are moving data around.
The progression goes sort of to start with suing the ISP. 23,000 people probably have no more than five different ISPs total given the consolidation today. At that point it is up to the ISP to prove that their customers did it, not them, and that they are not a party to this at all. In some cases this may not be possible because they don't have the logs or whatnot. Too bad, the ISP loses on that one. Bet they won't be losing those logs or mishandling them ever again.
At that point we have the ISP account holders named. OK, fine - the account holders can prove, with legally sufficient logs and documentation, that they had no part in this and their relative from Bulgaria was using their connection. If they can prove it, fine - Bulgaria is one of those places that lawsuits don't count in and they get a free pass. The other 22,999 account holders either settle or move on to trial.
Bet the week after this gets filed that every ISP in the US makes sure this never, ever happens to them again.
The step following identifying the account holder is to seize the computers for discovery. All of them that could be potentially connected to that ISP account.
If one of them has a BitTorrent client installed and some movie files, well, that is pretty much the end of the story right there. Even if there are no "signatures" left of a client but some movie files - not including the one in question just some other clearly pirated materials - that is going to make for some pretty unpleasant time in a court room. And if there is evidence of a BitTorrent client having been installed but then deleted that is likely to count as spoliation - destroying evidence looks real bad for the defendent.
You see, the people doing this have taken lessons from kiddy porn prosecutions, either by defending or prosecuting them. Or just reading through the cases. Every argument you can think of has already been expressed in these cases because this was dealing with putting people in prison for 20 years or more. What's a little money compared with that?
With kiddy porn we are talking about people being prosecuted for having five or ten pictures on their computer. Every once in a while they come across someone with 100,000 pictures plus video of neighborhood kids engaging in some... activities... with the computer owner.
Trust me, this has been explored in considerable depth and they know when there is a winnable case and when there is not. And a couple of these 23,000 people will end up with having 15,000 movie files on some big hard drive that is seized because the owner didn't think they would ever be able to do that. The information will get turned over to the rights holders and they will be sued for 15,000 * $150,000 and likely end up doing some jail time for criminal copyright infringement.
How are they offering? Are you suggesting that this was a gigantic scam whereby the copyright owners seeded the movie and then got a list of the downloaders?
How about this. They were using the "forensic" version of a BitTorrent client which did not seed but only gathered a list of the people seeding?
What really irks me, is that they'll try to sue these people into paying rather than engaging them as customers. MPAA, here's an idea, instead of sending notices to ISPs about someone stealing a movie, how about you work with ISPs to send the downloader a link to pay for the movie instead. Give the option to rent or buy it, and play with the price until you find a sweet spot these el cheapo's are willing to fork over. Threatening them with lawsuits because it seems like a great way to set an example hasn't worked thus far, why keep beating this dead horse then?
OK, when I was like 8 years old I saw the movie Mary Poppins four times. Four separate trips to the theater at about $5 each time. With parents and sister. Wow. Since then, I don't think I have seen a movie twice except maybe Star Wars (1977), the original.
So what would anyone having downloaded and watched a movie once with a offer to buy the movie again? Well, I believe that for the most part people would find this rather funny... you know, they seem to think their movie is worth not only watching again but buying this time? Hey, I've already got the file, right?
I simply do not understand this thinking at all. Once you have "consumed" the entertainment what would possess someone to "consume" it again? There are very, very few movies that are actually worth watching twice in close proxmity. I could see maybe after 5 or 10 years if it was actually that good, but when was the last time you saw a movie that was indeed that good? And so incredibly good as to make you want to actually pay for the second experience?
No, if you didn't pay the first time there is no chance in hell of paying for a repeat performance.
About Helen Caldicott: anyone that can say with a straight face that any radiation, including background radiation, is unsafe is a nut.
A statement that background radiation can cause cancer isn't necessarily too strange to be believed. That is something that I don't think anyone really knows but I am not certain. Good luck trying to do much about it though.
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The danger is not of poor, downtrodden people that have nothing to live for. It is people that we would think have everything to live for but yet choose to focus on the benefits in the afterlife. This is not exclusively a Muslim problem as it can happen with Christians as well. No, I do not believe there are any Jews focused on the afterlife as the whole religion doesn't work that way.
Once you have someone that is focused on a better afterlife you can't really do anything to them except kill them. Anything you do - including torture - is a mild annoyance on the way to the afterlife where everything will be perfect. We in our Western philosophies are almost incapable of understanding how a functioning human being can be turned in such a way that life is unimportant and the afterlife is all-consuming. Well, we better wake up or the folks yelling Allah Akbar as they storm the cockpit, plant the bomb or derail the train will succeed - their success means death and lots of it. Isn't that the whole point of being focused on the afterlife, anyway?
I suspect the figure was arrived at after looking at what was available and saying "OK, we'll take it all."
Anything that the CEO didn't spend in the last few months was fair game.
Yeah, and just yesterday I saw an ad for the "Paint like Van Gogh" online course.
Mixing and production skills are not something you just pick up in a week or two.
You might not have heard about this, but some people don't have high-speed Internet connections. They really frown on using BitTorrent clients at the library.
It is all a question of the digital haves and have-nots. The haves get free music and movies, the have-nots don't and have to buy at BestBuy and WalMart.
Sorry, but nearly everyone is downloading music for free these days. Hang around in a 5th grade schoolyard and you will hear them talking about the music they downloaded, not the music they bought.
Very few people "woke up" about getting something for nothing and it being somehow wrong. Most of the people I know are very happy about getting something for nothing - one less thing in their lives that costs money. A lot of people seem to feel that it goes along with paying for access to the Internet - free music and movies is included.
I think it is somewhat dated but I recall a study that said iTunes was wildly successful but got at most 2% of the music downloads out there. Everyone else charging was getting less. Added together the paid services represented maybe 7% of music downloads with the remaining 93% being free p2p downloads.
Can't. Nearly all of them are outside the US and protected in their home country. And raking in enough dough that they can afford to keep the locals paid off.
These days there are no Internet "Canadian Pharmacies" that are actually in Canada. The business of selling fake pills from India has completely taken over the business of selling real pills from Canada.
It's not like someone is ever going to see a commercial for one of the countless stupidly named drugs out there and demand them from their doctor.
That is exactly what happens. People see the ad and think "Gosh, I bet I have that disease. I better get these pills right away." They then go to the doctor and demand not a a cure for some aliment they may or may not have but demand a brand-name drug. Period.
In some groups of people this gets very much out of hand. Some doctors end up having to prescribe the drug just to shut the patient up. I believe in some cases they write a prescription that tells the pharmacy to put some sugar pills in a bottle and say it is Vytorin or whatever the drug-of-choice that week is.
We are not talking about sales from real Canadian Pharmacies. We are talking about folks labelling themselves as a "Canadian Pharmacy" which is code for willing to sell without prescriptions and at a (supposedly) huge discount.
This banner has been taken up by companies in India, Indonesia and other Southeast Asia locations. They advertise as a Canadian Pharmacy because Americans think that they are just getting a good deal from Canada.
There is nothing legitimate about the pills they are selling. Most are fakes. If you suggest to grandma that she get her pills from a Canadian Pharmacy I strongly suggest going there to pick them up. Because anyone advertising on the Internet is going to be run from somewhere else today. The business has changed a great deal since the 1990s.
The problem isn't lost profits but the brand name "Canadian Pharmacy" that has been taken over by folks operating from India and Indonesia.
This got started by real, actual Canadian mail-order pharmacies selling cross-border which has been going on for 20 years or more. However, recently the "brand" has been taken over such that you are dealing with an operator in Southeast Asia rather than Canada. They do a pretty good job of disguising that fact but they will tell you that your package will be shipped discreetly from an international location.
The problem is that in many places it simply isn't illegal to package up some drain cleaner and label it Viagra. There is no enforcement of trademarks and there are no laws against labelling drain cleaner as something else. Also, since these operations are very lucrative, they can pay off any local officials that need to be greased.
So how do you stop people from buying fake drugs from supposedly "Canadian Pharmacies"? Well, one way is to shut off the advertising. Another way is to shut down the web sites hawking this stuff - which so far has been next to impossible to do.
The US does not block anything being imported unless it is identified as illegal drugs - mostly by dogs sniffing it.
There is just too much stuff coming in to bother and it would increase prices. It is illegal in the US to sell an unlicensed DVD player. It costs $5 per player for the proper license. So when you go to the store and buy one for $29.99 do actually believe the manufacturer paid $5 for the license? No way - there isn't an extra $5 in the pricing structure.
Once you understand how this system works you understand that nothing is blocked at all. OK, you cannot ship in a bale of marijuana or a kilo of cocaine. I think there are some problems with shipping heroin as well. But just about anything else is fair game.
Fake prescription drugs? Absolutely they come in, every day and it is known to both the customs folks and the FDA. But they would have inspect every single item being shipped in and that is impossible.
Well, let's see... a lot of this stuff is now coming from places other than any sort of licensed pharamcy with the pills being made up in the back room. License? They don't need a license, they have the Internet.
Canada (well, RCMP for one) is trying to find ways to stop the folks advertising as a "Canadian pharmacy" when in reality the entire operation is being run from India or somewhere else in Southeast Asia. They aren't having much luck. I saw a single operator with around 50 different domains. Shut one down and it pops back up with a different name the next day. There are no laws outside the US and Canada that are going to control this because it simply isn't illegal to defraud Americans in most countries. In fact, it is a respected occupation.
The biggest problem isn't that people are getting pills they want without a prescription. The problem is that the pills contain nothing like what you would expect them to. Get some and have them analyzed - the Viagra may be nothing more than blue-colored salt. It could also be other substances designed to make sure you aren't going to report the seller to anyone. Ever. After all, when you buy pills that do nothing you aren't likely to be a repeat customer, now are you? So how about making sure?
Again, there are no laws about this. If a country does not have an FDA or something like it, they may not care what sorts of things people are selling. Also, they may have laws against selling within the country but no laws about exporting, just like the US - we export pesticides that are illegal to use in the US.
So this isn't at all the big pharma companies responding to losing their profits. This is about people buying stuff that isn't what it is claimed to be and there being utterly no controls at all about what you might be getting. Having talked with some FDA people about this in the US, there is literally nothing they can do about it. They can try to shut down individual web sites, but it isn't having any real effect.
Problem is, what if the house contains a meth lab? If you knock on the door and say "Police" the response is to immediately (a) fire off many weapons and (b) detonate any possible meth-making supplies to destroy the evidence (and a good portion of the block as well).
Any warrant being served on a house needs to take that into consideration. If the people in the house are just using meth then (b) from above does not apply, but (a) does - and the people are likely paranoid enough to do (a) to the limit of their ability when the person knocking on the door says "Avon calling" instead of "Police" because it might be the police lying about who they are.
You have to understand the psychology of meth, meth users and meth makers. In many parts of the country meth has completely taken over.
And no, the people were not compensated in any way, including for the damage to their property and possessions.
Did they sue? You realize that most people would not sue to recover such damages and in the US the only way you are going to be compensated at all is to sue. Now, it is unlikley it would come to trial because the city/county/whatever would settle but the gateway is to file a lawsuit.
Failing to sue means that it wasn't that big a deal.
Aha. Perhaps in a country that isn't a democracy.
Unfortunately, in the US we have environmental groups that are convinced that building one more power plant will be the thing that pushes everything over the "tipping point" and the environment will crash in some spectacular way. Perhaps the oceans will boil, the whales return to the land and devour all non-whale life on the planet. Or something like that.
Anyway, there have been very few large-scale power plants built since around 1970 or so. Sure, a bunch have been started but they have not been finished. So we have been existing for the last 40 years on a tendancy to overbuild that existed 1900-1969. Very fortunately that we had that tendancy if I say so. The result is that no amount of conservation is going to help and we will start seeing electricity rationing in the near future. It is now too late to build - it would take five years for a coal plant to come online and more like ten years for a nuclear plant and we simply do not have that much time left.
I suppose a reasonable paraphrasing might be "The way for someone to really conserve electricity is to be dead, and if you aren't careful you are going to be conserving soon."
Do you believe that in the name of "free speech" it is a good idea to show cartoons of Mohammed depicted as a pedophile rapist? After all, he called a girl to her "wifely duties" at age 9, so there is more than a little accuracy there.
But for some odd reason about 1/3rd of the planet seems to revere this long-dead pedophile (peace be upon him) and tend to riot at the suggestion that he might ave (gasp!) taken advantage of his political position to explore the wonders of a nine-year-old girl. Or was she only six? That wacky guy! I seem to forget just exactly how young his youngest wife was.
Anyway, don't you think it might be a good idea to suppress such cartoons in the name of peace as well as law and order? Because certainly folks are going to be killed if they are published or posted on the Internet. If nothing else it will be fellow rioters that push others under the wheels of buses and cars.
So, why do we want to see clearly inflamatory pictures of a dead Muslim leader, even if he was the leader of a radical bunch that just want to blow things up and kill people? Do you not think this will inspire people more than the news reports without pictures?
Remember, we are not dealing with "adults" here.
The thing has no shielding, so it is going to radiate all over the place. It can't be used in a home environment - your neighbors would complain. It probably would pass UL testing because it runs off a power cube, I would presume, so it is just low voltage inside.
Without FCC certification it is an "experimental" device and not going to be stocked by anyone as a "consumer" device.
The model for the music business is one not of "selling music" but of promotion.
What "the labels" do is promote music. This is done through radio, magazines and a few other venues. The big ones that people hear about are certainly radio and magazines. Did you know there are three or four magazines dedicated solely to the promotion of music? Billboard is one of these. When "the labels" die out, there will be a large gaping hole left that will not be filled.
One of the casulties of the death of music promotion will certainly be FM radio. Today's format and cost structure doesn't really allow for the independent station playing requests and providing input into the music promotion business - instead they are pretty much a consumer of music rankings and that is what builds their playlists. Do you think we will go back to the local, independent DJ playing requests? No, because the reason this disappeared was having to pay that person instead of paying one person who is heard on hundreds of stations. No, most FM stations are just going to fold up. And many of you will be saying "good riddance".
MTV started out as a music promotion vehicle, as did VH1. Both of these moved away from the music promotion business and will likely be only partly affected. Without someone paying, there is unlikely to be any more music videos made, ever.
The concept of the record business where you find unknown talent, promote them and hope 1 in 10 or 2 in 10 is successful enough to pay for the failures has been copied in other industries. But the key has always been that there will be expensive failures and spectacular successes. Both the record business and the copies of it have been harmed greatly by management desiring to limit the downside exposure by trying to change the operational model slightly. While the record business has been wildly successful in promoting unknowns and reaping the rewards of the successes, none of the more risk-adverse strategies have paid off in any respect whatsoever. It has been tried with books and software and probably a few other areas that I know nothing about and in every case the more risk-adverse a model was used the less successful it has been.
Well, that isn't going to affect much.
But it probably does mean that if you have a web site hosted in Utah and a shell company also in Utah that you can claim your use of a trademark isn't infringing based on this ruling. Because that is all it would take.
This then opens the door to a shell company and hosting being used by literally anyone to denigrate products. I wonder how much Pepsi would be willing to pay for a trademark-laden anti-Coke site? Or a Toyota-bashing site offered to GM? There has to be some significant money available here.
Obviously, the requirement for the shell company would be to make the web site completely non-commercial. Maybe just a couple of links to the "good guys" - the ones paying for the web site with heavy emphasis about them being the "good guys".
Do you know why the Internet isn't polluted with such sites today? Well, maybe because this rather transparent ploy would be clear to enough people that there would be a lawsuit. Except obviously this judge never thought about that. I guess he was under the impression that people are just out there doing good things and only "spawn of the devil" or whatnot would ever consider using his opinion as the basis for a moneymaking scheme.
I don't see any reason for filing against the people. The IP addresses are owned by the ISP and it is clearly their responsbility here. There is no free pass given to ISPs because they are moving data around.
The progression goes sort of to start with suing the ISP. 23,000 people probably have no more than five different ISPs total given the consolidation today. At that point it is up to the ISP to prove that their customers did it, not them, and that they are not a party to this at all. In some cases this may not be possible because they don't have the logs or whatnot. Too bad, the ISP loses on that one. Bet they won't be losing those logs or mishandling them ever again.
At that point we have the ISP account holders named. OK, fine - the account holders can prove, with legally sufficient logs and documentation, that they had no part in this and their relative from Bulgaria was using their connection. If they can prove it, fine - Bulgaria is one of those places that lawsuits don't count in and they get a free pass. The other 22,999 account holders either settle or move on to trial.
Bet the week after this gets filed that every ISP in the US makes sure this never, ever happens to them again.
The step following identifying the account holder is to seize the computers for discovery. All of them that could be potentially connected to that ISP account.
If one of them has a BitTorrent client installed and some movie files, well, that is pretty much the end of the story right there. Even if there are no "signatures" left of a client but some movie files - not including the one in question just some other clearly pirated materials - that is going to make for some pretty unpleasant time in a court room. And if there is evidence of a BitTorrent client having been installed but then deleted that is likely to count as spoliation - destroying evidence looks real bad for the defendent.
You see, the people doing this have taken lessons from kiddy porn prosecutions, either by defending or prosecuting them. Or just reading through the cases. Every argument you can think of has already been expressed in these cases because this was dealing with putting people in prison for 20 years or more. What's a little money compared with that?
With kiddy porn we are talking about people being prosecuted for having five or ten pictures on their computer. Every once in a while they come across someone with 100,000 pictures plus video of neighborhood kids engaging in some ... activities ... with the computer owner.
Trust me, this has been explored in considerable depth and they know when there is a winnable case and when there is not. And a couple of these 23,000 people will end up with having 15,000 movie files on some big hard drive that is seized because the owner didn't think they would ever be able to do that. The information will get turned over to the rights holders and they will be sued for 15,000 * $150,000 and likely end up doing some jail time for criminal copyright infringement.
That version is clearly marked "law enforcement and forensic use only" in the store. You have to show ID to get it.
How are they offering? Are you suggesting that this was a gigantic scam whereby the copyright owners seeded the movie and then got a list of the downloaders?
How about this. They were using the "forensic" version of a BitTorrent client which did not seed but only gathered a list of the people seeding?
You obviously aren't familiar with the "forensic" version of BitTorrent clients which do not seed but only leech.
What really irks me, is that they'll try to sue these people into paying rather than engaging them as customers. MPAA, here's an idea, instead of sending notices to ISPs about someone stealing a movie, how about you work with ISPs to send the downloader a link to pay for the movie instead. Give the option to rent or buy it, and play with the price until you find a sweet spot these el cheapo's are willing to fork over. Threatening them with lawsuits because it seems like a great way to set an example hasn't worked thus far, why keep beating this dead horse then?
OK, when I was like 8 years old I saw the movie Mary Poppins four times. Four separate trips to the theater at about $5 each time. With parents and sister. Wow. Since then, I don't think I have seen a movie twice except maybe Star Wars (1977), the original.
So what would anyone having downloaded and watched a movie once with a offer to buy the movie again? Well, I believe that for the most part people would find this rather funny... you know, they seem to think their movie is worth not only watching again but buying this time? Hey, I've already got the file, right?
I simply do not understand this thinking at all. Once you have "consumed" the entertainment what would possess someone to "consume" it again? There are very, very few movies that are actually worth watching twice in close proxmity. I could see maybe after 5 or 10 years if it was actually that good, but when was the last time you saw a movie that was indeed that good? And so incredibly good as to make you want to actually pay for the second experience?
No, if you didn't pay the first time there is no chance in hell of paying for a repeat performance.
About Helen Caldicott: anyone that can say with a straight face that any radiation, including background radiation, is unsafe is a nut.
A statement that background radiation can cause cancer isn't necessarily too strange to be believed. That is something that I don't think anyone really knows but I am not certain. Good luck trying to do much about it though.