"I guess it's a little sad to see Sun unable to continue by themselves"
Indeed, anyone know if Oracle plans to keep the Sun brand or do away with it?
I have to admit I never used Solaris, although I've used Java extensively. For some reason I've always had a soft spot for Sun, although I can't pin point why. It would be rather sad to see them dissapear entirely into the history books.
Here's hoping Oracle allow some remnants of the old Sun branding to live on!
Fuck no, he'd create a covert rifle that cost 5 times as much as it's worth, couldn't be reloaded because the magazine was sealed into the weapon, lacked a trigger because it would ruin the aesthetics and wouldn't work outside the UK due to region restrictions.
But then, I suppose at least it would look cool, could be activated by making a gesture at someone and have some fancy effects when it did fire.
Well, it's not quite as straightforward as you make out. Privateering was used only in war time as a tactic to cut off enemy supply routes so differs to piracy in that it was for a specific military purpose against a nation who we were at war with. Cutting off supply routes by attacking and destroying, or by hijacking merchant ships is something that has happened in pretty much every war since, of course, most prominently, in the second World War where there were massive naval battles. The US of course performed this practice using it's own military in the Pacific campaign but of course would more commonly destroy the ships than capture them. You could argue there's a difference there but I don't really see how, both navies had the goal of cutting off enemy supplies, one just effectively used mercenairies and let them keep what they captured rather than just outright destroying it and killing everyone on board.
Of course, you could reasonably argue that what America has done in Iraq with it's pillaging of resources by Halliburton and co., although not privateering in the traditional seaborne sense is equally similar. But again there's the key, under the guise of war these things will be justified by all nations with the power to do so. The key difference between this sort of thing and piracy is that piracy is performed against multiple nations without favour, and without the excuse of war.
Britain's military past isn't exactly pleasant, there's a hell of a lot of nasty stuff you can dig up. But that doesn't detract from my point that as the major seaborne power at the time, our nation did a hell of a lot of good work against the slave trade and piracy. Similarly, one can hardly say the US has been a purely good, pleasant nation in the last few decades, but also similarly, that doesn't change the fact they do a lot of good work with their patrols off Somalia and so forth.
Personally I'd love to work on a project like that, I think it would be extremely interesting and I do not believe it'd bother me.
Why? Because that job is going to get done anyway by someone else if not by me and at the end of the day you'd learn so much that you may be able to use for peaceful beneficial means elsehwere a few years down the line. I'd rather focus my moral efforts on things I can help with. I'd have a lot more respect for someone who works on weapons systems but didn't vote Bush in 2004 knowing how much of a warmonger he was after his first term than I would someone who works in a peaceful profession but did vote Bush and support the war in Iraq for example. I would argue that those who voted Bush and/or supported the war in Iraq have far more blood on their hands than the guys who developed the weapons. Why? Because I'd say that those that made the weapons didn't make any moral judgement on how the weapons should be used or that people should die, but those who supported the war did make a moral judgement that people should die.
I guess different people view it differently, but personally I'm not convinced that if I were to work on a project like that or not I'd have no effect on whether anyone died or not, I would however likely enjoy the job more and possibly get paid more if I did work on such a project and again, working on such a project wouldn't mean I was excluded from still doing good work by not supporting wars, or perhaps simply doing good in other areas, like helping to save the environment perhaps.
I'd argue it's the price you pay for being the world's number one naval power. I'm British and you have to realise that back when Britain was the world's number one naval power for 400 odd years it was up to us too to patrol the seas dealing with both piracy and and even slave ships at the back end of our period of naval domination.
Part of it is self interest - do you want to stay the world's number one naval power? Part of it is the responsibility that comes with that power. You do it because you can help.
I do agree with you to some extent, something does smell rather rotten when you're having to defend say, Venezuelan ships when Venezuela is busy trying to shit on your country continuously but you have to bear in mind, day to day political muscle flexing is sometimes put aside to deal with international problems. After Hurricane Katrina hit are you aware that Cuba and Venezuela were the first to offer assistance, Cuba particularly because it was so experienced with dealing with such hurricane related tragedies? Are you aware that Iran, Russia, China, Belarus all offered to help? Have a look here it's quite interesting:
I think you'd be surprised sometimes at how cooperative nations that seem so horribly hostile can be when it comes to international problems or national tragedies. I think most realise that sometimes, just sometimes, there are things we can all agree on and can all offer what we can to try and help deal with the problem - and yes, even the US needs help in return sometimes. The worst that can happen is that you'll build bridges with countries you've otherwise had problems with, and gain respect from other nations.
Be proud that your guys are out there doing some good for the world - I know I am. It doesn't always have to be about hostility to each other and it doesn't always have to be about keeping your navies at home unless it's about self interest. Sometimes cooperation with even your worst enemies is the best thing for everyone.
A fairly recent round of laws to come into play for all EU member states specifies that data like this must be retained for 6months.
But fuck the legality of it, he may be in the wrong legally, but he's one of the few ISPs in the right morally. It's just a shame more wont stand up across the industry and do this.
I find it odd that the EU recognises that storing people's DNA on a DNA database when they're innocent and haven't been convicted of any crime is clearly wrong, but that on the flip side of it they support the storage of what people did and where on the internet.... even if people are innocent and haven't been convicted of any crime.
It's just a shame they don't understand technology and the implications of their decisions related to it as well as they do real world justice.
The people who ordered the lawsuit were not in any way Swedish.
You are naive if you do not believe that the people who pushed the lawsuit were the people running these firms from nations such as the US and that the lawsuits were done entirely off the back of the Swedish branches of these firms (if they even all have Swedish branches of course).
You really believe that there was no involvement at all from elements outside of Sweden in this such as from the head offices of Sony BMG or Warner?
The very fact the IFPI was involved is quite telling seeing as it is by it's own definition an international group.
This was a trial in Sweden that has stemmed from very international interests and that may have very international effects. To say that it's a Swedish only affair simply because the case itself was in Sweden and the defendants are Swedish is ignorant. It seems TPB doesn't even keep all it's servers in Sweden anymore.
"I'm a cofounder of a small software company that makes entertainment software and we have definitive, crystal clear data that shows how we've been hit by piracy--almost to the point of putting us out of business."
Cool, most companies in the industry just say these things without evidence to back it up. Where can we view this data you have? It'd be nice to see solid data for once.
Also what method(s) did you use to prove without a doubt that people who pirated your product would have instead been willing or even had the money to pay the price you ask for it if piracy hadn't been possible?
I've not encountered any methods yet to prove that piracy leads to a solid loss in what would otherwise have been a sale so I'm certainly intrigued to see what approach you took to prove it so definitively.
12% of the population don't commit tax fraud because most realise the benefits of a tax system. If 12% of the population are committing tax fraud then it's not a question of whether it should be legal, it's a question of what's so broken about the tax system that such a large amount of people aren't paying it. It is that that needs to be fixed. Perhaps people don't feel their taxes are being used properly in such a scenario and as such it's the governments responsibility to fix the tax system.
It goes beyond that. if the Swedish court system fails them they can take it to Europe and the European court of human rights (i.e. by claiming not being given the right to fair trial) so there's hope even beyond the Swedish court system. The European court of human rights has been suprisingly good and effective.
A recent example in the UK is our DNA database, designed to hold DNA of criminals also had data on people who were innocent. The UK courts supported the government in allowing this but luckily the European court of human rights ruled this illegal and have forced our government to remove all DNA records of innocent people from the database.
"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,"
Yes John, let us know how that goes wont you?
I'm sure as of this day everyone will suddenly say "Hey man, piracy is bad, the music industry shouldn't have to deal with it. Let's all stop and instead buy every single music track we'd have otherwise downloaded with our infinite amounts of money we have secretly stashed away".
"The court doesn't hand out fines that can't be paid back - it's not in the court's interest."
Unless say, it was political and they wanted to make a point?
Maybe things are different in Sweden but certainly all the US cases involving the movie and music industry seem to result in fines that are unpayably high.
Unfortunately I don't know Swedish so can't read it in context. But if that's purely the context then surely he's missed an absolutely more fundamental point - he hasn't actually ruled whether it was illegal.
Effectively if he's saying he made the decision because it was on a commercial scale and organised and he made it on that alone then his ruling is simply idiotic because businesses run on a commercial scale and are organised but that doesn't make them illegal. He must surely have also decided that he felt their operation or actions were for some reason illegal? It's that conclusion I'm intrigued about because I'm still rather puzzled as to why or how linking is illegal in his view.
Certainly, but in reality what is the proportion of content that is file shared and does fall into that category? It seems unlikely that it would be anything other than a statistically negligible amount compared to the vast amount of illegal material that is transferred through file sharing.
There is nothing Swedish about the companies pushing this case both through money and political pressure. This is very much a decision that has been forced upon the defendants through foreign commercial influence and as soon as foreign commercial influence has pushed it's influence we are equally within our rights to push our views too.
By showing our distaste and by acting against those foreign companies in boycotting their products in our own countries, by pressuring our governments to also stop catering to these companies there is still a lot we can do.
The court may be Swedish, the defendants may be Swedish, the site may even be Swedish, but the companies and groups pushing the prosecution as well as the result of the prosecution most certainly are not purely Swedish and it is against these that we can act.
The chances are they don't even have the kind of money they're being asked to pay and as such they'll never be able to pay the fine.
If we start paying it for them we'll be giving money to the very people we don't want to give it to who would otherwise not have received it because the TPB owners didn't have the money to pay it in the first place.
"As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go."
Why when the laws are wrong and need to be defied?
The UK's official statistic body, the Office of National Statistics released their latest report on the UK population just this week. It stated that 12% of the population file share, and that's only those who admit to it in surveys or don't hide their activities well not to mention not including those who give physical copies to friends and use say, USENET rather than P2P so the real figure is almost certainly far, far higher than 12%. Even taking the original estimate though, you cannot reasonably continue to persist with laws that criminalise 12% of your population. That's 7.2million people out of 60million, having the activities of that much of the population illegal is clearly wrong.
I'm not justifying the idea that copyright needs to go completely, I don't think it does, I think it's valid in some circumstances, but I do think there needs to be much more of a balance between citizens and the industry as to how the problem is dealt with, currently the solutions are repeatedly skewed 100% in favour of the industry's interests and in that scenario it is only right that citizens defy and ignore the solutions when their opinions aren't taken into account whatsoever in the development of solutions.
The MPAA/RIAA/Police can still join the filesharing swarm you're connected to and see that you're sharing the copyrighted materials.
At best encrypting it just stops your ISP from easily seeing what exactly you're transferring.
SSL USENET allows you to connect to a trusted source and no one else (and that's the key difference, P2P software means you're connecting to untrusted sources) whilst allowing your connection to be encrypted and hence the contents invisible to your ISP too.
The only weakness with USENET is whether the MPAA/RIAA are successful in going after long established USENET providers like Giganews too like they have The Pirate Bay but at least whilst they don't you're safe as an individual whereas with P2P on public swarms you are not safe as an individual.
During the trial it was pretty clear the prosecution had no idea about what they were actually accusing the defendants of because they simply didn't understand the technology. Effectively throughout the trial they were unable to prove their case at all. What I'm interested to know is why - despite the prosecution failing to really prove their case, only to speculate on various things - this decision was reached.
In a way I kind of expected them to lose before the trial began because I presumed big media had spent the time and effort to find countless valid legal arguments, evidence and technicalities to get them on, but once the trial started it seemed much less likely as the prosecution was clueless and provided neither of these three things which is again why I'm baffled about the outcome. The decision doesn't appear to have been made based upon the court case at all hence why I'm interested to know if there is any further information from the court to explain how they came to this conclusion based on the court case.
I think I know what the answer probably is, that it really was about political pressure or bribery, but I'd like to give Swedish courts the benefit of the doubt first and see the reasoning behind the decision. Does the Swedish legal system make this sort of thing available?
"When you look at the actual sales slopes, and count the fact that a significant number of 360 sales are people buying a new console 'cause their old one died out of warranty or for issues that aren't covered by the warranty extension, that doesn't seem to be the case."
I'm not sure that's true. Microsoft gave a 3 year warranty for the original consoles and the new generation ones seem to be as stable as either the Wii or PS3. Most failures would've been replaced in warranty with the new gen stable consoles - mine certainly was. I had my 3 failures in the first 18 months and my new console has lasted me since then, my sister's boyfriend has had a similar experience whilst my other friends with 360s all only got them in the last 6 months to a year or so and so had the new versions from the outset and haven't seen any failures. It's only anecdotal personal experience but it does seem to be the case that if it was going to fail, it would've failed in it's 3 years and you'd have got a more stable system that wouldn't need replacing for free. If you look at the software sales figures the 360 is selling over twice as many retail games as the PS3 or Wii per console. That's a pretty high attach rate anyway, if a significant number of those console sales were indeed replacement systems people wouldn't be rebuying games as well meaning the actual retail game sales per owner (rather than per console) would go up drastically which seems unlikely when it's already so far ahead of the Wii and PS3 in retail software sales anyway.
"The 360 has a significant head start, but it seems to basically be maintaining its lead rather than pulling further ahead."
If you follow the NPD sales stats (or the ones presented from that at vgchartz.com you'll see the 360 is week after week outselling the PS3 worldwide by tens of thousands of units so it certainly is increasing it's lead. It's not gaining on the Wii though, the only time it outsold the Wii was at Halo 3 release week I believe, but that was a one off, the Wii has successfully outsold the 360 every other week since it's release. The PS3 was outselling the 360 about 6 months after it's release for a period of about 6 months but has since lost it's period of gain. This can be attributed mostly to the 360 price drop, as soon as that happened the 360 started increasing it's lead on the PS3 again rather than losing it's lead and has not faltered since. I believe this will only last until the PS3 also has a drastic price drop too however. The Wii seems to be staying ahead regardless of price - it's currently more expensive than the low and mid range XBox 360s although is of course cheaper than the PS3.
I think the reason we get ripped off in Britain is partly to cover these costs. I think they make enough profit to be able to factor the costs you mention in and then some on top compared to other countries who get everything cheaper so although you're right it may take a cut out of what they could potentially make, they still make more off UK consumers per console than almost anywhere else in the world even in such a scenario.
Well no, because when Google does it you have to visit a site that uses Google's technology, you can easily choose not to, you can also just opt-out.
When Phorm does it they are searching through every single action you take on the internet, whether it's a site that has anything to do with Phorm or not. Phorm works at ISP level by watching all the data that goes in and out on your connection. There's no avoiding it, you just have to go through it no matter what.
You see the fundamental difference is this, with Google I have to effectively send the data to them, it is only what I allow to pass out of my connection to them that is effected and only if I haven't opted out.
With Phorm I have no choice, every single bit of data whether I want it to or not goes through their systems.
I don't like what Google is doing either, but at least they make it possible for me to avoid their systems. With Phorm, they get to look at every single bit of data I send or receive, they say I can opt out but that doesn't mean my data isn't still passing through their systems and that's assuming I can opt-out unlike the people who they tested it on covertly with no notice or chance to opt-out.
"You're right I don't own one. And it's not because I don't want to. I'd love to get an Elite, honestly. I just won't buy one, because I refuse to pay for bad hardware."
That's fair enough if that argument is cited in a balanced context of not wanting other consoles. The problem is a lot of people cite bad hardware as a bigger issue than say a lack of games, which is silly. Bad hardware, when there's a proper replacement process in existence I feel is less of an issue than problems that plague the other gaming platforms (i.e. DRM on PCs, lack of longevity with the Wii, lack of games with the PS3). All systems have issues and I think this is probably one of the most minor due to the infrequency of it affecting the user when the rest of the time (which is by far the vast majority of the time) it's a good system.
I'd argue if you're going to ignore the 360 because of the infrequent (really, they are in the grand scheme of things) hardware issues then there's probably not a suitable gaming system out there for you at all because the others have equally large issues albeit in other areas.
The only other reason I suppose is if you have some kind of moral belief that bad hardware is a problem worth boycotting over because of the waste or so on that it causes which is in itself a fair point that I don't totally even disagree with.
Slashdot Mirror
"I guess it's a little sad to see Sun unable to continue by themselves"
Indeed, anyone know if Oracle plans to keep the Sun brand or do away with it?
I have to admit I never used Solaris, although I've used Java extensively. For some reason I've always had a soft spot for Sun, although I can't pin point why. It would be rather sad to see them dissapear entirely into the history books.
Here's hoping Oracle allow some remnants of the old Sun branding to live on!
Fuck no, he'd create a covert rifle that cost 5 times as much as it's worth, couldn't be reloaded because the magazine was sealed into the weapon, lacked a trigger because it would ruin the aesthetics and wouldn't work outside the UK due to region restrictions.
But then, I suppose at least it would look cool, could be activated by making a gesture at someone and have some fancy effects when it did fire.
Well, it's not quite as straightforward as you make out. Privateering was used only in war time as a tactic to cut off enemy supply routes so differs to piracy in that it was for a specific military purpose against a nation who we were at war with. Cutting off supply routes by attacking and destroying, or by hijacking merchant ships is something that has happened in pretty much every war since, of course, most prominently, in the second World War where there were massive naval battles. The US of course performed this practice using it's own military in the Pacific campaign but of course would more commonly destroy the ships than capture them. You could argue there's a difference there but I don't really see how, both navies had the goal of cutting off enemy supplies, one just effectively used mercenairies and let them keep what they captured rather than just outright destroying it and killing everyone on board.
Of course, you could reasonably argue that what America has done in Iraq with it's pillaging of resources by Halliburton and co., although not privateering in the traditional seaborne sense is equally similar. But again there's the key, under the guise of war these things will be justified by all nations with the power to do so. The key difference between this sort of thing and piracy is that piracy is performed against multiple nations without favour, and without the excuse of war.
Britain's military past isn't exactly pleasant, there's a hell of a lot of nasty stuff you can dig up. But that doesn't detract from my point that as the major seaborne power at the time, our nation did a hell of a lot of good work against the slave trade and piracy. Similarly, one can hardly say the US has been a purely good, pleasant nation in the last few decades, but also similarly, that doesn't change the fact they do a lot of good work with their patrols off Somalia and so forth.
Personally I'd love to work on a project like that, I think it would be extremely interesting and I do not believe it'd bother me.
Why? Because that job is going to get done anyway by someone else if not by me and at the end of the day you'd learn so much that you may be able to use for peaceful beneficial means elsehwere a few years down the line. I'd rather focus my moral efforts on things I can help with. I'd have a lot more respect for someone who works on weapons systems but didn't vote Bush in 2004 knowing how much of a warmonger he was after his first term than I would someone who works in a peaceful profession but did vote Bush and support the war in Iraq for example. I would argue that those who voted Bush and/or supported the war in Iraq have far more blood on their hands than the guys who developed the weapons. Why? Because I'd say that those that made the weapons didn't make any moral judgement on how the weapons should be used or that people should die, but those who supported the war did make a moral judgement that people should die.
I guess different people view it differently, but personally I'm not convinced that if I were to work on a project like that or not I'd have no effect on whether anyone died or not, I would however likely enjoy the job more and possibly get paid more if I did work on such a project and again, working on such a project wouldn't mean I was excluded from still doing good work by not supporting wars, or perhaps simply doing good in other areas, like helping to save the environment perhaps.
I'd argue it's the price you pay for being the world's number one naval power. I'm British and you have to realise that back when Britain was the world's number one naval power for 400 odd years it was up to us too to patrol the seas dealing with both piracy and and even slave ships at the back end of our period of naval domination.
Part of it is self interest - do you want to stay the world's number one naval power? Part of it is the responsibility that comes with that power. You do it because you can help.
I do agree with you to some extent, something does smell rather rotten when you're having to defend say, Venezuelan ships when Venezuela is busy trying to shit on your country continuously but you have to bear in mind, day to day political muscle flexing is sometimes put aside to deal with international problems. After Hurricane Katrina hit are you aware that Cuba and Venezuela were the first to offer assistance, Cuba particularly because it was so experienced with dealing with such hurricane related tragedies? Are you aware that Iran, Russia, China, Belarus all offered to help? Have a look here it's quite interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina
I think you'd be surprised sometimes at how cooperative nations that seem so horribly hostile can be when it comes to international problems or national tragedies. I think most realise that sometimes, just sometimes, there are things we can all agree on and can all offer what we can to try and help deal with the problem - and yes, even the US needs help in return sometimes. The worst that can happen is that you'll build bridges with countries you've otherwise had problems with, and gain respect from other nations.
Be proud that your guys are out there doing some good for the world - I know I am. It doesn't always have to be about hostility to each other and it doesn't always have to be about keeping your navies at home unless it's about self interest. Sometimes cooperation with even your worst enemies is the best thing for everyone.
A fairly recent round of laws to come into play for all EU member states specifies that data like this must be retained for 6months.
But fuck the legality of it, he may be in the wrong legally, but he's one of the few ISPs in the right morally. It's just a shame more wont stand up across the industry and do this.
I find it odd that the EU recognises that storing people's DNA on a DNA database when they're innocent and haven't been convicted of any crime is clearly wrong, but that on the flip side of it they support the storage of what people did and where on the internet.... even if people are innocent and haven't been convicted of any crime.
It's just a shame they don't understand technology and the implications of their decisions related to it as well as they do real world justice.
The people who ordered the lawsuit were not in any way Swedish.
You are naive if you do not believe that the people who pushed the lawsuit were the people running these firms from nations such as the US and that the lawsuits were done entirely off the back of the Swedish branches of these firms (if they even all have Swedish branches of course).
You really believe that there was no involvement at all from elements outside of Sweden in this such as from the head offices of Sony BMG or Warner?
The very fact the IFPI was involved is quite telling seeing as it is by it's own definition an international group.
This was a trial in Sweden that has stemmed from very international interests and that may have very international effects. To say that it's a Swedish only affair simply because the case itself was in Sweden and the defendants are Swedish is ignorant. It seems TPB doesn't even keep all it's servers in Sweden anymore.
"I'm a cofounder of a small software company that makes entertainment software and we have definitive, crystal clear data that shows how we've been hit by piracy--almost to the point of putting us out of business."
Cool, most companies in the industry just say these things without evidence to back it up. Where can we view this data you have? It'd be nice to see solid data for once.
Also what method(s) did you use to prove without a doubt that people who pirated your product would have instead been willing or even had the money to pay the price you ask for it if piracy hadn't been possible?
I've not encountered any methods yet to prove that piracy leads to a solid loss in what would otherwise have been a sale so I'm certainly intrigued to see what approach you took to prove it so definitively.
Freud? I assume you mean fraud.
12% of the population don't commit tax fraud because most realise the benefits of a tax system. If 12% of the population are committing tax fraud then it's not a question of whether it should be legal, it's a question of what's so broken about the tax system that such a large amount of people aren't paying it. It is that that needs to be fixed. Perhaps people don't feel their taxes are being used properly in such a scenario and as such it's the governments responsibility to fix the tax system.
It goes beyond that. if the Swedish court system fails them they can take it to Europe and the European court of human rights (i.e. by claiming not being given the right to fair trial) so there's hope even beyond the Swedish court system. The European court of human rights has been suprisingly good and effective.
A recent example in the UK is our DNA database, designed to hold DNA of criminals also had data on people who were innocent. The UK courts supported the government in allowing this but luckily the European court of human rights ruled this illegal and have forced our government to remove all DNA records of innocent people from the database.
"Maybe that was just me wanting to believe that, and so I believed the propaganda."
No, you believed it because you're capable of rational thought.
Apparently however, the judge in this case wasn't.
"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,"
Yes John, let us know how that goes wont you?
I'm sure as of this day everyone will suddenly say "Hey man, piracy is bad, the music industry shouldn't have to deal with it. Let's all stop and instead buy every single music track we'd have otherwise downloaded with our infinite amounts of money we have secretly stashed away".
"The court doesn't hand out fines that can't be paid back - it's not in the court's interest."
Unless say, it was political and they wanted to make a point?
Maybe things are different in Sweden but certainly all the US cases involving the movie and music industry seem to result in fines that are unpayably high.
Unfortunately I don't know Swedish so can't read it in context. But if that's purely the context then surely he's missed an absolutely more fundamental point - he hasn't actually ruled whether it was illegal.
Effectively if he's saying he made the decision because it was on a commercial scale and organised and he made it on that alone then his ruling is simply idiotic because businesses run on a commercial scale and are organised but that doesn't make them illegal. He must surely have also decided that he felt their operation or actions were for some reason illegal? It's that conclusion I'm intrigued about because I'm still rather puzzled as to why or how linking is illegal in his view.
Certainly, but in reality what is the proportion of content that is file shared and does fall into that category? It seems unlikely that it would be anything other than a statistically negligible amount compared to the vast amount of illegal material that is transferred through file sharing.
Bullshit.
There is nothing Swedish about the companies pushing this case both through money and political pressure. This is very much a decision that has been forced upon the defendants through foreign commercial influence and as soon as foreign commercial influence has pushed it's influence we are equally within our rights to push our views too.
By showing our distaste and by acting against those foreign companies in boycotting their products in our own countries, by pressuring our governments to also stop catering to these companies there is still a lot we can do.
The court may be Swedish, the defendants may be Swedish, the site may even be Swedish, but the companies and groups pushing the prosecution as well as the result of the prosecution most certainly are not purely Swedish and it is against these that we can act.
That's the worst thing we can do.
The chances are they don't even have the kind of money they're being asked to pay and as such they'll never be able to pay the fine.
If we start paying it for them we'll be giving money to the very people we don't want to give it to who would otherwise not have received it because the TPB owners didn't have the money to pay it in the first place.
"As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go."
Why when the laws are wrong and need to be defied?
The UK's official statistic body, the Office of National Statistics released their latest report on the UK population just this week. It stated that 12% of the population file share, and that's only those who admit to it in surveys or don't hide their activities well not to mention not including those who give physical copies to friends and use say, USENET rather than P2P so the real figure is almost certainly far, far higher than 12%. Even taking the original estimate though, you cannot reasonably continue to persist with laws that criminalise 12% of your population. That's 7.2million people out of 60million, having the activities of that much of the population illegal is clearly wrong.
I'm not justifying the idea that copyright needs to go completely, I don't think it does, I think it's valid in some circumstances, but I do think there needs to be much more of a balance between citizens and the industry as to how the problem is dealt with, currently the solutions are repeatedly skewed 100% in favour of the industry's interests and in that scenario it is only right that citizens defy and ignore the solutions when their opinions aren't taken into account whatsoever in the development of solutions.
And that achieves what exactly?
The MPAA/RIAA/Police can still join the filesharing swarm you're connected to and see that you're sharing the copyrighted materials.
At best encrypting it just stops your ISP from easily seeing what exactly you're transferring.
SSL USENET allows you to connect to a trusted source and no one else (and that's the key difference, P2P software means you're connecting to untrusted sources) whilst allowing your connection to be encrypted and hence the contents invisible to your ISP too.
The only weakness with USENET is whether the MPAA/RIAA are successful in going after long established USENET providers like Giganews too like they have The Pirate Bay but at least whilst they don't you're safe as an individual whereas with P2P on public swarms you are not safe as an individual.
During the trial it was pretty clear the prosecution had no idea about what they were actually accusing the defendants of because they simply didn't understand the technology. Effectively throughout the trial they were unable to prove their case at all. What I'm interested to know is why - despite the prosecution failing to really prove their case, only to speculate on various things - this decision was reached.
In a way I kind of expected them to lose before the trial began because I presumed big media had spent the time and effort to find countless valid legal arguments, evidence and technicalities to get them on, but once the trial started it seemed much less likely as the prosecution was clueless and provided neither of these three things which is again why I'm baffled about the outcome. The decision doesn't appear to have been made based upon the court case at all hence why I'm interested to know if there is any further information from the court to explain how they came to this conclusion based on the court case.
I think I know what the answer probably is, that it really was about political pressure or bribery, but I'd like to give Swedish courts the benefit of the doubt first and see the reasoning behind the decision. Does the Swedish legal system make this sort of thing available?
No, it's 30 million Swedish Kroner, that's just under 3 million Euros.
"When you look at the actual sales slopes, and count the fact that a significant number of 360 sales are people buying a new console 'cause their old one died out of warranty or for issues that aren't covered by the warranty extension, that doesn't seem to be the case."
I'm not sure that's true. Microsoft gave a 3 year warranty for the original consoles and the new generation ones seem to be as stable as either the Wii or PS3. Most failures would've been replaced in warranty with the new gen stable consoles - mine certainly was. I had my 3 failures in the first 18 months and my new console has lasted me since then, my sister's boyfriend has had a similar experience whilst my other friends with 360s all only got them in the last 6 months to a year or so and so had the new versions from the outset and haven't seen any failures. It's only anecdotal personal experience but it does seem to be the case that if it was going to fail, it would've failed in it's 3 years and you'd have got a more stable system that wouldn't need replacing for free. If you look at the software sales figures the 360 is selling over twice as many retail games as the PS3 or Wii per console. That's a pretty high attach rate anyway, if a significant number of those console sales were indeed replacement systems people wouldn't be rebuying games as well meaning the actual retail game sales per owner (rather than per console) would go up drastically which seems unlikely when it's already so far ahead of the Wii and PS3 in retail software sales anyway.
"The 360 has a significant head start, but it seems to basically be maintaining its lead rather than pulling further ahead."
If you follow the NPD sales stats (or the ones presented from that at vgchartz.com you'll see the 360 is week after week outselling the PS3 worldwide by tens of thousands of units so it certainly is increasing it's lead. It's not gaining on the Wii though, the only time it outsold the Wii was at Halo 3 release week I believe, but that was a one off, the Wii has successfully outsold the 360 every other week since it's release. The PS3 was outselling the 360 about 6 months after it's release for a period of about 6 months but has since lost it's period of gain. This can be attributed mostly to the 360 price drop, as soon as that happened the 360 started increasing it's lead on the PS3 again rather than losing it's lead and has not faltered since. I believe this will only last until the PS3 also has a drastic price drop too however. The Wii seems to be staying ahead regardless of price - it's currently more expensive than the low and mid range XBox 360s although is of course cheaper than the PS3.
I think the reason we get ripped off in Britain is partly to cover these costs. I think they make enough profit to be able to factor the costs you mention in and then some on top compared to other countries who get everything cheaper so although you're right it may take a cut out of what they could potentially make, they still make more off UK consumers per console than almost anywhere else in the world even in such a scenario.
Well no, because when Google does it you have to visit a site that uses Google's technology, you can easily choose not to, you can also just opt-out.
When Phorm does it they are searching through every single action you take on the internet, whether it's a site that has anything to do with Phorm or not. Phorm works at ISP level by watching all the data that goes in and out on your connection. There's no avoiding it, you just have to go through it no matter what.
You see the fundamental difference is this, with Google I have to effectively send the data to them, it is only what I allow to pass out of my connection to them that is effected and only if I haven't opted out.
With Phorm I have no choice, every single bit of data whether I want it to or not goes through their systems.
I don't like what Google is doing either, but at least they make it possible for me to avoid their systems. With Phorm, they get to look at every single bit of data I send or receive, they say I can opt out but that doesn't mean my data isn't still passing through their systems and that's assuming I can opt-out unlike the people who they tested it on covertly with no notice or chance to opt-out.
"You're right I don't own one. And it's not because I don't want to. I'd love to get an Elite, honestly. I just won't buy one, because I refuse to pay for bad hardware."
That's fair enough if that argument is cited in a balanced context of not wanting other consoles. The problem is a lot of people cite bad hardware as a bigger issue than say a lack of games, which is silly. Bad hardware, when there's a proper replacement process in existence I feel is less of an issue than problems that plague the other gaming platforms (i.e. DRM on PCs, lack of longevity with the Wii, lack of games with the PS3). All systems have issues and I think this is probably one of the most minor due to the infrequency of it affecting the user when the rest of the time (which is by far the vast majority of the time) it's a good system.
I'd argue if you're going to ignore the 360 because of the infrequent (really, they are in the grand scheme of things) hardware issues then there's probably not a suitable gaming system out there for you at all because the others have equally large issues albeit in other areas.
The only other reason I suppose is if you have some kind of moral belief that bad hardware is a problem worth boycotting over because of the waste or so on that it causes which is in itself a fair point that I don't totally even disagree with.