Did you generate that list by browsing netflix? Or by independently thinking of a bunch of good movies you want to see? I don't disagree that there is lots of good stuff on netflix, because there is. However, its just as notable for how much stuff is missing.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
I -just- looked that up, and it says: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is unavailable to stream I checked both the US and Canadian netflix sites... maybe its available where you are but its not here.
Dr. Strangelove Excellent choice, I'm a big fan of Kubrick; one of the greatest directors of all time...
Dr. Strangelove - present!
2001: A Space Odyssey - unavailable to stream The Shining - unavailable to stream Full Metal Jacket - unavailable to stream A Clockwork Orange - unavailable to stream Barry Lyndon - unavailable to stream Lolita - unavailable to stream Spartacus - unavailable to stream Eyes Wide Shut - unavailable to stream... So much much for Kubrick.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink [...]
Did you go to netflix, search for those and then get the rest of the list by see what it suggested? Because how else do you get that particular list of 80s flicks and not have 16 Candles or Real Genius or Fast Times at Ridgemont High?!
Let me guess, netflix didn't suggest them. Because they are unavailable to stream.
And of course if you have kids The Croods, Mulan, Hercules,...
I do have kids, and I quite liked Mulan, and Warburton stole the show in Emperor's New Groove... but Netflix defintely is running the "B" list for kids movies...
A Bugs Life, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story, Cinderella... all... you guessed it... unavailable to stream
As for your mention of Dreamworks [How to Train Your Dragon Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, Madagascar...]
Again, I -just- checked, there some miscellaneous holiday shorts, and what appear to be the bonus shorts that are in the DVD extras are available. The actual movies though, each one is of those is "unavailable to stream".
So, you're saying that would never happen if they stayed independent?
It would be instagram ads and whatsapp ads. Not facebook ads. That's a big difference.
The amount of information whatsapp has on me is pretty limited compared to the profiles facebook or google are trying to build. I'm ok with small individual companies having small limited profiles of my activity with that company. I strongly object to the macro-scale surveillance that google and facebook attempt.
Both Instagram and Whats App are working as they originally did prior to their acquisition.
Well except where everything you do is fed into facebook's data mining backend, and its only a matter of time before they add a back channel to start showing you facebook ads.
If facebook buys something outright, it will be turned to social-shit. FTFY.
If I happen to share Zuckershits taste in coffee makers, that won't affect my enjoyment of the coffee maker. On the other hand, if Facebook buys out my favorite coffee maker... then yeah, my next coffee maker will be a brand that doesn't try and change my status to "making facebook coffee" everytime I brew a cup. (Well... I don't have a facebook account so that's moot... although I expect a facebook coffeemaker would require one before allowing coffee to be brewed so... there's that.)
I am a netflix subscriber and I think it represents tremendous value. House of Cards is excellent (and that's actually representative of the fragmentation problem since its a netflix program not available legitimately elsewhere.)
However, I often decide what I want to watch, and then look to watch it. The odds that anything I might wish to watch being on netflix chosen outside of "browsing netflix" is pretty small.
I've even often had things on my "list of things to watch" disappear from netflix before I've watched them, or worse, in the case of series, before I've finished watching them.
Anyone who claims "netflix is 100% satisfying" must be the sort of person who logs in, browses until they find something, and then watches that. That's actually a pretty sad model of consumerism -- as you are basically content to have netflix dictate what tiny subset of what is available you watch; and for the most part you miss out on most of the stuff that's actually good. (regardless of whether you put any stock in various film awards ceremonies, even a list of YOUR top 20 movies is likely to be unfulfilled by netflix.
Million Dollar Baby - No Ray - No The Aviator - No Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - No Sideways - No The Incredibles - No The Sea Inside (foreign language) - Yes Wasp (live action short) - No Ryan (animated short) - No Born into Brothels (documentary) - No Mighty Times: The Children's March (documentary short) - No Finding Neverland - No The Motorcycle Diaries - No Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - No
So... 1 out of all of them.
don't believe you're being fair.
I think I'm being VERY fair. 2004 is 10 years ago.
"Windowing systems already had good support for it [multiple screens of different sizes]"
The windowing system physically supported it yes. But menu bar along the top, task bar along the bottom isn't a terribly good paradigm on widescreens or multiple widescreens.
The newer desktop paradigms seem to be driven by devices with very small screens, so it seems that more traditional desktop environments might actually have better support than the newer ones.
No. Devices with very small screens operated by touch work abysmally with 'traditional desktop environments'. That's why Windows CE phones never took off.
Interesting, because, to me, most movies that win lots of those awards [...]
Yeah. Whatever. The point stands. Make any list of 'good movies' you like using ANY criteria you want, and most of them won't be on netflix.
The only exception would be if your list was literally "good movies I found on netflix today"... and even that would fail after a few months due to netflix only having temporary rights to many of the movies in its library.
Hell, these people think 'gravity' is good science fiction, so their opinions count for exactly nothing to me.
Is 2001 on netflix? Is Bladerunner? Is "Solaris" (either of them)? Is "Alien"? "The 13th Floor"? "Inception"? "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? I don't pretend to know what YOU think were good SF movies... but that's some highlights from my list and NONE of those are on netflix...
How many "bin laden/bin ladin/bin ladan/ben laden/etc" names are there in the US
bin Laden is, if i recall correctly, little more than "son of Laden"
Osama's full name per wikipedia is:
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden
Granted its not a common American name, but as a middle eastern name, it might as well be Tom O'Conner.
False positives would be restricted to relatively small populations anyway, like Muslims and non-Western names.
Yes. Small populations, like "foreigners". This is not a good plan.
The other thing you're ignoring is that name matching is just part of identity verification.
I'm not ignoring it. I'm not suggesting we're going to be arresting muslim grandmothers, I'm just pointing out that false positives waste time, and a LOT of false positives is like the boy who cries wolf, the border agents will ignore them if the computer cries terrorists on every flight.
Yeah there could be a typo in the name. But in the case we're talking about, it wasn't a typo, it was an alternate phonetic spelling.
The point there was simply that it closes plugs one small whole in a very leaky boat.
Over a decade ago, I had a single 17" CRT and yes "it worked well". Today I have a pair of 24" wide screen monitors.
It doesn't "work well" anymore.
The left side panel works better especailly on modern wide screens, where the limitation is usually vertical, and for most applications you have extra horizontal space.
But still flawed on large multimonitor desktops.
Of course, I agree with you that providing the option to change it from the defaults is generally a good thing, especially with linux.
A major problem with soundex is false positives. A terrorist named John Smith on the watch list would be hell on a lot of people... but if they were using soundex... he's now J500 S530. So Now Jan, Jim, Jens, Jon, Jaymee, Jayne, Jane cross product with Smith, Smit, Smite, Smithe, Smithee, Smythe, Smathe, Snuthe, Smothe...
all get caught in that web.
Similar problems exist for hamming and so on. There's a LOT of very different names a very short "distance" from each other in nearly any scheme.
But on top of all the false positives, your still going to miss people due to typos and data entry issues:
David and Dacid is just fat fingering the keyboard and missing the v for c, resulting in a different soundex.
Similarly Christy and Chritsy is simple transposition error during typing, resulting in a different soundex.
If your wallet gets stolen, for example, you can clearly say that a crime has occurred
I certainly don't know your wallet has been stolen, and the fact that you claim its missing is scant evidence. Maybe you simply lost it and don't want to admit it. Maybe you left it somewhere and just innocently forgot. Maybe you hid it so you can make a fraudulent insurance claim.
I'd hesitate to leap to the conclusion that it was stolen; even if it was MY wallet that was missing, nevermind yours. Unless I was robbed at gunpoint - then I'd be convinced about the status of my wallet. But you might not be.
Suppose you and I had a contract that had terms unfavorable to you that would trigger if I my wallet were stolen; would you be likely to accept me activating those terms solely on 'my say so', no matter how convinced *I* claimed to be. You'd rightfully insist on a neutral 3rd party arbitrator to review the 'evidence', or perhaps at the very least, a police file number.
Now for something as ephemeral as internet activity? What sort of evidence are we going to get? The RIAA is going to produce what? Months old logs that allege that an ip address belonging to your ISP shared a file. Logs from a automated, buggy piece of software, that generates mass lawsuits? A system so shoddy and rife with mistakes that it that has led them to launch suits against households for file sharing that do not even own a computer or have internet service. (At least they won't have to worry about getting disconnected from their ISP as they don't even have one.) They've even filed suits against the dead.
So yeah, before my ISP triggers clauses in our agreement that hinge on a crime having been committed with my account, they better have something airtight.
But again...in such a case, why would they ever BOTHER trying to link it a ToS clause on illegal activities? Just disconnect it with no explanation beyond "we reserve the right to terminate service at our discretion for any reason", and call it a day.
It is entirely legal, albeit probably unethical and immoral, to discrimate against anybody for absolutely any reason at all, even race, religion, race, or sexual preference, as long as the reason is left unspecified.
Sure, but if you systematically disconnected everyone with a latino name (per the example cited); and were subsequently challenged on it, the odds are good that the court will 'ascertain' for itself the reason you were doing it, and find you guilty of racial discrimination even if you don't explicitly specify it.
Based on the evidence that showed, presumably, that the IP was used for that activity.... whether or not it was you who personally did it, it would be a violation of the ToS.
We're going in circles here. How would it be a violation of the ToS? There is evidence that a crime took place, yes. But that evidence is not "certainty". They do not KNOW that a crime took place, and they cannot legitimately determine that for themselves. They cannot invoke a clause that says they can act if a crime has taken place until its properly established that a crime has in fact taken place. A 3rd party complaint and the ISP cannot decide that unilaterally for themselves.
Consider a different situation:
If you have a contract with your tenant that stipulates he cannot use the suite for "illegal activities", and then you get a call that a dead body was found on the property, that is NOT sufficient cause to evict.
The fact of a dead body is evidence a death, sure, but not necessarily a crime. Not until its actually ruled a homicide by the authorities is a crime deemed to have even taken place. Nevermind who did it.
And you, the landlord, do not get to make that determination. If you want to evict him before its ruled a homicide, you better have something ELSE in your agreement you can use.
In the tenant case, there are strong protections of his rights to stay.
In the ISP case, the opposite... so while they CAN'T act against for what they suspect (but cannot themselves establish) is criminal activity, they CAN just suspend your account "for no reason at all" if they want.
all hell would break loose if they decided they "just" didn't want customers with Latino family names, for example...
Discriminating against race is illegal. If they decided they "just" didn't want customers who lived at addresses that were prime numbers though they could do that.
I wasn't suggesting they would convict you... I was suggesting that they would terminate your service.
Based on what, exactly?
They can't terminate your service based on the illegal activity you performed, because they cannot say you performed illegal activity.Innocent until proven guilty.
They can't terminate your service based on the illegal activity performed on "your account"; because again, that requires an actual court finding that something illegal actually happened.
The RIAA asserting it doesn't make it so, the RIAA showing the ISP some 'evidence' doesn't make it so either. They ISP can't legally hold you accountable for illegal activity that "may have occurred" as it also "may not have occurred" or "may not have actually been illegal activity" after all.
However, they CAN terminate your account because they don't want you as a customer. But they can do that anyway, regardless of whether or not they have some ToS to 'justify it', because they don't need to 'justify it'.
That's my point; the ToS isn't relevant. They can boot you off the network without it, and in fact, they MUST boot you off the network without it. Because if they kick you off and cite the 'illegal activity clause' in the ToS they open themselves up to a lawsuit -- because that's not a determination they can legitimately make; and claiming that they made one is grossly overstepping what they can do.
$30 per YEAR... $2.50 per month. Yeah, I'd pay that much.
And realistically, my own value is even less. I use search and maps daily, but I don't use google drive, or google apps, or hangouts. I watch stuff on youtube, but not daily. I have a gmail account, but don't use it much. (my android phone is connected to it for the play store, but i don't use it for email, contacts, or calendars, and its not even setup on my phone) I have yet to spend money in the app store.
And above all I practically never click on ads or sponsored links. If I paid google $1/per month, they'd probably be ahead on me. But yeah, if their average ad revenue per user is $29/year I'd still spring for that.
But you are mixing civil and criminal responsibility. The ToS is a civil contract, you can't sign a civil contract to accept criminal responsibility for something.
A ToS assignment of responsibility basically amounts to little more than the ISP asserting that any expenses (ie financial damages) that arise from the use of your service account can be collected from you. That's it.
Of course... but most ISP's do prohibit using their service to do things which happen to illegal in the same jurisdiction as the ISP, even if they do not explicitly list the particular activity
First, the ISP cannot convict you of doing something illegal; and cannot legally judge you to have done something illegal until you are convicted in an actual court. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. They certainly cannot evaluate evidence provided by a 3rd party and assess your criminal guilt.
Of course, they can disconnect you more or less at will, as a general "right to refuse service", at their own discretion, and they could make a judgement call if they wished to keep you as a customer everytime a 3rd party alleged something. But its not in the ISPs best interests to cut off paying customers they have no issues with simply because the RIAA or whoever alleges something.
Second, the main reason the ISPs put that in their ToS is primarily to shield themselves from any liability spilling over onto them if you get charged with something in conjunction with using their service. No one can argue that the ISP encouraged you to break the law -- indeed they've expressly prohibited you from doing that.
The idea that you can somehow have both a society where everyone has a audio-visial recoding device on their person at all times, but somehow magically expect law enforcement to not be recording things of interest is pants-on-head-retated.
I also support people being allowed to carry guns as ubiquitously as cameras, and simultaneously expect them not to shoot each other with those either.
So? If you use my golf clubs to beat a homeless man, that's on you, not me.
such activity still can violate the TOS of the ISP... and regardless of who was doing it, it can still be reasonably grounds for termination of service.
The service contract with the ISPs is at the ISPs discretion. 3rd parties can't dictate what the ISP does with your service.
If somebody was actually doing this without authorization and without his knowledge, then the person will hopefully take something positive from the experience and learn how to properly secure their own network so that it doesn't happen again.
Or better still he will continue to refuse to bow down to silly oppressive tactics, and will do what he wants with his wifi, instead of cowering in fear.
Slashdot Mirror
Not looking terribly hard:
Did you generate that list by browsing netflix? Or by independently thinking of a bunch of good movies you want to see? I don't disagree that there is lots of good stuff on netflix, because there is. However, its just as notable for how much stuff is missing.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
I -just- looked that up, and it says:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is unavailable to stream
I checked both the US and Canadian netflix sites... maybe its available where you are but its not here.
Dr. Strangelove
Excellent choice, I'm a big fan of Kubrick; one of the greatest directors of all time...
Dr. Strangelove - present!
2001: A Space Odyssey - unavailable to stream ...
The Shining - unavailable to stream
Full Metal Jacket - unavailable to stream
A Clockwork Orange - unavailable to stream
Barry Lyndon - unavailable to stream
Lolita - unavailable to stream
Spartacus - unavailable to stream
Eyes Wide Shut - unavailable to stream
So much much for Kubrick.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink [...]
Did you go to netflix, search for those and then get the rest of the list by see what it suggested? Because how else do you get that particular list of 80s flicks and not have 16 Candles or Real Genius or Fast Times at Ridgemont High?!
Let me guess, netflix didn't suggest them. Because they are unavailable to stream.
And of course if you have kids
The Croods, Mulan, Hercules,...
I do have kids, and I quite liked Mulan, and Warburton stole the show in Emperor's New Groove... but Netflix defintely is running the "B" list for kids movies...
A Bugs Life, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story, Cinderella... all... you guessed it... unavailable to stream
As for your mention of Dreamworks [How to Train Your Dragon
Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, Madagascar...]
Again, I -just- checked, there some miscellaneous holiday shorts, and what appear to be the bonus shorts that are in the DVD extras are available. The actual movies though, each one is of those is "unavailable to stream".
So, you're saying that would never happen if they stayed independent?
It would be instagram ads and whatsapp ads. Not facebook ads. That's a big difference.
The amount of information whatsapp has on me is pretty limited compared to the profiles facebook or google are trying to build. I'm ok with small individual companies having small limited profiles of my activity with that company. I strongly object to the macro-scale surveillance that google and facebook attempt.
Well they "bought out" (that is, "hired") the lead Btrfs developers, so how do you count that?
I still see it as a jointly developed GPL project, that facebook cannot own.
Both Instagram and Whats App are working as they originally did prior to their acquisition.
Well except where everything you do is fed into facebook's data mining backend, and its only a matter of time before they add a back channel to start showing you facebook ads.
They will monetize it. Its just a matter of time.
If Facebook likes something, it must be evil.
If facebook buys something outright, it will be turned to social-shit. FTFY.
If I happen to share Zuckershits taste in coffee makers, that won't affect my enjoyment of the coffee maker. On the other hand, if Facebook buys out my favorite coffee maker... then yeah, my next coffee maker will be a brand that doesn't try and change my status to "making facebook coffee" everytime I brew a cup. (Well... I don't have a facebook account so that's moot... although I expect a facebook coffeemaker would require one before allowing coffee to be brewed so... there's that.)
You said "no" but then you went on to paint a picture that supports what I said.
What?
You argue that more "traditional desktops environments might have better support than the new ones"
I said, new small screen devices are abysmal with "traditional desktop environments".
How does "abysmal" translate to "better"?
I am a netflix subscriber and I think it represents tremendous value. House of Cards is excellent (and that's actually representative of the fragmentation problem since its a netflix program not available legitimately elsewhere.)
However, I often decide what I want to watch, and then look to watch it. The odds that anything I might wish to watch being on netflix chosen outside of "browsing netflix" is pretty small.
I've even often had things on my "list of things to watch" disappear from netflix before I've watched them, or worse, in the case of series, before I've finished watching them.
Anyone who claims "netflix is 100% satisfying" must be the sort of person who logs in, browses until they find something, and then watches that. That's actually a pretty sad model of consumerism -- as you are basically content to have netflix dictate what tiny subset of what is available you watch; and for the most part you miss out on most of the stuff that's actually good. (regardless of whether you put any stock in various film awards ceremonies, even a list of YOUR top 20 movies is likely to be unfulfilled by netflix.
This year's winners might not be there, but previous years' are.
No. They aren't. Lets pick a year at random .. 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7...
Ok Netflix:
Million Dollar Baby - No
Ray - No
The Aviator - No
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - No
Sideways - No
The Incredibles - No
The Sea Inside (foreign language) - Yes
Wasp (live action short) - No
Ryan (animated short) - No
Born into Brothels (documentary) - No
Mighty Times: The Children's March (documentary short) - No
Finding Neverland - No
The Motorcycle Diaries - No
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - No
So... 1 out of all of them.
don't believe you're being fair.
I think I'm being VERY fair. 2004 is 10 years ago.
"Windowing systems already had good support for it [multiple screens of different sizes]"
The windowing system physically supported it yes. But menu bar along the top, task bar along the bottom isn't a terribly good paradigm on widescreens or multiple widescreens.
The newer desktop paradigms seem to be driven by devices with very small screens, so it seems that more traditional desktop environments might actually have better support than the newer ones.
No. Devices with very small screens operated by touch work abysmally with 'traditional desktop environments'. That's why Windows CE phones never took off.
Interesting, because, to me, most movies that win lots of those awards [...]
Yeah. Whatever. The point stands. Make any list of 'good movies' you like using ANY criteria you want, and most of them won't be on netflix.
The only exception would be if your list was literally "good movies I found on netflix today"... and even that would fail after a few months due to netflix only having temporary rights to many of the movies in its library.
Hell, these people think 'gravity' is good science fiction, so their opinions count for exactly nothing to me.
Is 2001 on netflix? Is Bladerunner? Is "Solaris" (either of them)? Is "Alien"? "The 13th Floor"? "Inception"? "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? I don't pretend to know what YOU think were good SF movies... but that's some highlights from my list and NONE of those are on netflix...
How many "bin laden/bin ladin/bin ladan/ben laden/etc" names are there in the US
bin Laden is, if i recall correctly, little more than "son of Laden"
Osama's full name per wikipedia is:
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden
Granted its not a common American name, but as a middle eastern name, it might as well be Tom O'Conner.
False positives would be restricted to relatively small populations anyway, like Muslims and non-Western names.
Yes. Small populations, like "foreigners". This is not a good plan.
The other thing you're ignoring is that name matching is just part of identity verification.
I'm not ignoring it. I'm not suggesting we're going to be arresting muslim grandmothers, I'm just pointing out that false positives waste time, and a LOT of false positives is like the boy who cries wolf, the border agents will ignore them if the computer cries terrorists on every flight.
Yeah there could be a typo in the name. But in the case we're talking about, it wasn't a typo, it was an alternate phonetic spelling.
The point there was simply that it closes plugs one small whole in a very leaky boat.
And even today "a lot of people use a single 4:3 screen"
But the balance has certainly shifted wouldn't you agree?
Netflix is 100% satisfying.
Sure, if you are satisfied by most of the top 200 movies on IMDB not being available there...
Most academy award winners? Not present. ...
Most Oscar winners? Not present.
Most Sundance Film Festival Winners? Not present.
its worked well for over a decade,
Over a decade ago, I had a single 17" CRT and yes "it worked well". Today I have a pair of 24" wide screen monitors.
It doesn't "work well" anymore.
The left side panel works better especailly on modern wide screens, where the limitation is usually vertical, and for most applications you have extra horizontal space.
But still flawed on large multimonitor desktops.
Of course, I agree with you that providing the option to change it from the defaults is generally a good thing, especially with linux.
A major problem with soundex is false positives. A terrorist named John Smith on the watch list would be hell on a lot of people... but if they were using soundex... he's now J500 S530. So Now Jan, Jim, Jens, Jon, Jaymee, Jayne, Jane cross product with Smith, Smit, Smite, Smithe, Smithee, Smythe, Smathe, Snuthe, Smothe...
all get caught in that web.
Similar problems exist for hamming and so on. There's a LOT of very different names a very short "distance" from each other in nearly any scheme.
But on top of all the false positives, your still going to miss people due to typos and data entry issues:
David and Dacid is just fat fingering the keyboard and missing the v for c, resulting in a different soundex.
Similarly Christy and Chritsy is simple transposition error during typing, resulting in a different soundex.
" though experts familiar with the country have said there's no evidence a new hairstyle rule has gone into effect."
From the article you linked to...
If your wallet gets stolen, for example, you can clearly say that a crime has occurred
I certainly don't know your wallet has been stolen, and the fact that you claim its missing is scant evidence. Maybe you simply lost it and don't want to admit it. Maybe you left it somewhere and just innocently forgot. Maybe you hid it so you can make a fraudulent insurance claim.
I'd hesitate to leap to the conclusion that it was stolen; even if it was MY wallet that was missing, nevermind yours. Unless I was robbed at gunpoint - then I'd be convinced about the status of my wallet. But you might not be.
Suppose you and I had a contract that had terms unfavorable to you that would trigger if I my wallet were stolen; would you be likely to accept me activating those terms solely on 'my say so', no matter how convinced *I* claimed to be. You'd rightfully insist on a neutral 3rd party arbitrator to review the 'evidence', or perhaps at the very least, a police file number.
Now for something as ephemeral as internet activity? What sort of evidence are we going to get? The RIAA is going to produce what? Months old logs that allege that an ip address belonging to your ISP shared a file. Logs from a automated, buggy piece of software, that generates mass lawsuits? A system so shoddy and rife with mistakes that it that has led them to launch suits against households for file sharing that do not even own a computer or have internet service. (At least they won't have to worry about getting disconnected from their ISP as they don't even have one.) They've even filed suits against the dead.
So yeah, before my ISP triggers clauses in our agreement that hinge on a crime having been committed with my account, they better have something airtight.
But again...in such a case, why would they ever BOTHER trying to link it a ToS clause on illegal activities? Just disconnect it with no explanation beyond "we reserve the right to terminate service at our discretion for any reason", and call it a day.
It is entirely legal, albeit probably unethical and immoral, to discrimate against anybody for absolutely any reason at all, even race, religion, race, or sexual preference, as long as the reason is left unspecified.
Sure, but if you systematically disconnected everyone with a latino name (per the example cited); and were subsequently challenged on it, the odds are good that the court will 'ascertain' for itself the reason you were doing it, and find you guilty of racial discrimination even if you don't explicitly specify it.
Based on the evidence that showed, presumably, that the IP was used for that activity.... whether or not it was you who personally did it, it would be a violation of the ToS.
We're going in circles here. How would it be a violation of the ToS? There is evidence that a crime took place, yes. But that evidence is not "certainty". They do not KNOW that a crime took place, and they cannot legitimately determine that for themselves. They cannot invoke a clause that says they can act if a crime has taken place until its properly established that a crime has in fact taken place. A 3rd party complaint and the ISP cannot decide that unilaterally for themselves.
Consider a different situation:
If you have a contract with your tenant that stipulates he cannot use the suite for "illegal activities", and then you get a call that a dead body was found on the property, that is NOT sufficient cause to evict.
The fact of a dead body is evidence a death, sure, but not necessarily a crime. Not until its actually ruled a homicide by the authorities is a crime deemed to have even taken place. Nevermind who did it.
And you, the landlord, do not get to make that determination. If you want to evict him before its ruled a homicide, you better have something ELSE in your agreement you can use.
In the tenant case, there are strong protections of his rights to stay.
In the ISP case, the opposite... so while they CAN'T act against for what they suspect (but cannot themselves establish) is criminal activity, they CAN just suspend your account "for no reason at all" if they want.
all hell would break loose if they decided they "just" didn't want customers with Latino family names, for example...
Discriminating against race is illegal. If they decided they "just" didn't want customers who lived at addresses that were prime numbers though they could do that.
I wasn't suggesting they would convict you... I was suggesting that they would terminate your service.
Based on what, exactly?
They can't terminate your service based on the illegal activity you performed, because they cannot say you performed illegal activity.Innocent until proven guilty.
They can't terminate your service based on the illegal activity performed on "your account"; because again, that requires an actual court finding that something illegal actually happened.
The RIAA asserting it doesn't make it so, the RIAA showing the ISP some 'evidence' doesn't make it so either. They ISP can't legally hold you accountable for illegal activity that "may have occurred" as it also "may not have occurred" or "may not have actually been illegal activity" after all.
However, they CAN terminate your account because they don't want you as a customer. But they can do that anyway, regardless of whether or not they have some ToS to 'justify it', because they don't need to 'justify it'.
That's my point; the ToS isn't relevant. They can boot you off the network without it, and in fact, they MUST boot you off the network without it. Because if they kick you off and cite the 'illegal activity clause' in the ToS they open themselves up to a lawsuit -- because that's not a determination they can legitimately make; and claiming that they made one is grossly overstepping what they can do.
how much would you be willing to pay for Google?
How much does google search really make off me? I'd probably be willing to pay that in exchange for an ad free experience.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
$30 per YEAR... $2.50 per month. Yeah, I'd pay that much.
And realistically, my own value is even less. I use search and maps daily, but I don't use google drive, or google apps, or hangouts. I watch stuff on youtube, but not daily. I have a gmail account, but don't use it much. (my android phone is connected to it for the play store, but i don't use it for email, contacts, or calendars, and its not even setup on my phone) I have yet to spend money in the app store.
And above all I practically never click on ads or sponsored links. If I paid google $1/per month, they'd probably be ahead on me. But yeah, if their average ad revenue per user is $29/year I'd still spring for that.
Such agreements are not unheard of in an ISP TOS
But you are mixing civil and criminal responsibility. The ToS is a civil contract, you can't sign a civil contract to accept criminal responsibility for something.
A ToS assignment of responsibility basically amounts to little more than the ISP asserting that any expenses (ie financial damages) that arise from the use of your service account can be collected from you. That's it.
Of course... but most ISP's do prohibit using their service to do things which happen to illegal in the same jurisdiction as the ISP, even if they do not explicitly list the particular activity
First, the ISP cannot convict you of doing something illegal; and cannot legally judge you to have done something illegal until you are convicted in an actual court. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. They certainly cannot evaluate evidence provided by a 3rd party and assess your criminal guilt.
Of course, they can disconnect you more or less at will, as a general "right to refuse service", at their own discretion, and they could make a judgement call if they wished to keep you as a customer everytime a 3rd party alleged something. But its not in the ISPs best interests to cut off paying customers they have no issues with simply because the RIAA or whoever alleges something.
Second, the main reason the ISPs put that in their ToS is primarily to shield themselves from any liability spilling over onto them if you get charged with something in conjunction with using their service. No one can argue that the ISP encouraged you to break the law -- indeed they've expressly prohibited you from doing that.
The idea that you can somehow have both a society where everyone has a audio-visial recoding device on their person at all times, but somehow magically expect law enforcement to not be recording things of interest is pants-on-head-retated.
I also support people being allowed to carry guns as ubiquitously as cameras, and simultaneously expect them not to shoot each other with those either.
But it's still that guy's subscription...
So? If you use my golf clubs to beat a homeless man, that's on you, not me.
such activity still can violate the TOS of the ISP... and regardless of who was doing it, it can still be reasonably grounds for termination of service.
The service contract with the ISPs is at the ISPs discretion. 3rd parties can't dictate what the ISP does with your service.
If somebody was actually doing this without authorization and without his knowledge, then the person will hopefully take something positive from the experience and learn how to properly secure their own network so that it doesn't happen again.
Or better still he will continue to refuse to bow down to silly oppressive tactics, and will do what he wants with his wifi, instead of cowering in fear.