I'm with you that ideas should be free, I do wonder what would happen if Nimblebit started copying Zynga games from now on though. I suspect we might see some hypocrisy in Zynga's response, but I'd be happy for Zynga to prove me wrong and put out a statement that this is fine in their opinion.
Unfortunately, due to the our government basically bending over for the US when the extradition laws were last redrafted, it's a lot more difficult to get an extradition from the US to the UK than it is vice versa (basically we have to argue the evidence in a court before their judges, they, on the other hand, only need make an accusation).
The details of that enforcement are up to the member states, though. Quite often we've seen the meaning of laws bent by the legislation that puts them on the member states' statute books where individual states are either more or less in favour of said laws. There are lots of ways to interpret even the strictest sounding law, in terms of evidence required, leniency of punishment, etc.
Do you think, when people lose their personal data because a company didn't secure it properly online or because an employee of that company had a laptop full of data and left it on a train, that's somehow the responsibility of the people and not the company? Short of becoming a hermit your data will end up in third party hands and you have very little control over what happens next, even if you give them the data in expectation of total privacy. Governments are some of the worst offenders when it comes to losing public data, and unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to avoid at least being in their databases.
PC gaming was never really dead. It was just a convenient excuse for a) draconian DRM ("piracy is killing PC gaming, we need DRM...") and b) cheap console ports ("PC gaming is dead, it's not economically viable to do anything beyond a cheap port - you should be grateful we're even doing that").
How did they take money out if the companies didn't do anything out of line? If it's a frivolous lawsuit without real grounds doesn't the person who instigates get stuck with the costs? If you think you have a real case (i.e. the loss of $600) then my understanding is that you can always opt out of the class action and bring your own private action.
By that definition there's no such thing as a free market. Every nation on earth has at least some tricks up their sleeves to give their own native companies an edge over countries from competing nations.
It's still not a fair comparison. China is currently going through its industrial revolution - it's polluting in the same way western capitalist countries polluted during their industrial revolutions (okay it's magnified by the larger population and the fact that industry can now do this on a much bigger scale, but neither of those things are due to their type of government). A fairer comparison would be, say, one of the socialist European countries (e.g. France for the time being, I guess) and capitalist USA, where the USA is hands down the worst polluter.
I guess the question would be, do you run 24/7, and do you have so much equipment that you require supplemental air conditioning running all the time? Is your power bill at least a couple hundred dollars higher than would be typical for a house in your area with similar square footage?
That probably describes the computer situation of 90% of the self respecting geeks here, myself included:)
Can the police or courts order a civilian to break the law in pursuit of a warrant, though? Not that it matters, as pointed out elsewhere, they'd just have you key it in so you didn't have to tell anyone.
Because it's something stored in your head that they are asking you to produce. It makes a mockery of the whole process if they can say "provide us this information that's stored in your head or go to jail for contempt". Why even have a trial, why not just say "we think you did it, provide the truth that's stored in your head and if it doesn't match what we believe, you'll go to jail for contempt".
Only while under oath. You are not required to tell the truth during a police investigation, but any lie that you tell them can impeach your credibility later in court. And since sometimes you telling the truth can be impeached by the testimony of another person, your credibility can be damaged in court later regardless of the truth of your statements... so don't talk to the police except to demand a lawyer.
And count yourself lucky you have that option. Here in the fun-packed UK your silence can also be used against you in court (i.e. if you later provide an explanation of events in court, they can use the fact that you didn't tell the police about it at the time to cast doubt on your testimony). Yay, justice!
Do you think a police state happens overnight, or that people in police states never made this kind of argument before the tipping point? (hell, even after the tipping point people would say "don't rock the boat, they're not after us" right up until the door is broken down - that's how police states even continue to function). Would you rather people wait for an actual police state to be in effect before speaking out about the erosion of rights?
The reason they don't like to release as soon as content is ready is that the labels like to manage the PR to head off early, negative feedback. People are more likely to say they like a piece of content if their magazine/radio show/website of choice has told them everyone else likes it. The labels are terrified of content standing on its own merits, because frankly there's a lot of dross out there.
They already have a kill switch for Youtube content, it's just that playing whack-a-mole there is probably a full time job for a bunch of minimum-wage-slaves, while this is a case their trained lawyers and bought-and-paid police force can sink their teeth into.
Not only selling junk knowing it was junk but then betting against that junk in the hope that it would fail (when they'd already stacked all the cards in order to achieve this). If I sold a race horse that I'd crippled, pretending all was okay just so that I could then bet against that horse in a race, I'd certainly be in jail for fraud and illegally using my insider knowledge. Meanwhile the banking system continue to award themselves record bonuses, knowing they're untouchable (aside from the odd scapegoat thrown to the press).
No, it's not theft. This is nothing to do with "language lawyers" it's to do with actual law. We don't call car jacking "rape", we don't call tax evasion "murder" and we shouldn't call copyright violation "theft". All of those things have very specific meanings in the legal system and calling one thing a different thing just leads to confusion (which is obviously the intention of the rights holders - and I'd say question any group's motives who want to further confuse tricky legal situations since it can serve no good purpose). If copyright violation is as bad an offence as actual theft, let it stand with it's own name, don't try to give it a scarier sounding name - the law should not be a PR game.
Unfortunately the people who vote on removing the money are the ones receiving the money. Short of revolution, it's incredibly difficult to kick start that process. In the UK we had a huge scandal over politicians' expense claims which played out over months in the mainstream media which resulted in a couple of notable heads rolling, red faces and slapped wrists all around, and what, slight re-wording of the voluntary codes of practice and pretty much business as usual?
We're at a point where technology should make democracy much more realistic. Why don't we have systems to allow the populace to vote individually on the big topics instead of everyone having to pick from one of two parties that vaguely aligns with their views (and if your views are radically different to both parties you're out of luck). I'm not suggesting the government should be bound to such votes, but at the very least they should have to consider the will of the people and stand up and explain why, in this or that case, they thought that will should be overruled. We should be using this opportunity to make the political process as transparent as possible, but instead the people in power are using their position to spin everything they do and say and keep the public in the dark. And then we have the cheek to suggest that other countries democratise their governments...
Indeed, legally it's not a given that the act needs to be against the law in both the country requesting the extradition and the host country - while this is often the case, it depends entirely upon the terms of the extradition treaty between the two countries, and levels of proof required may differ, too. The UK-US extradition treaty is heavily biased in favour of the US. To extradite a US resident to the UK, the UK government have to establish sufficient evidence of a crime in a US court. In the opposite situation, the US government need present no evidence in a UK court, simply allege the crime, and this is sufficient even if UK courts have alread seen the evidence and ruled that there is no case to answer. It's pretty messed up, really - the rules were drafted in the aftermath of 9/11 supposedly to make it easier to extradite terrorists, yet between 2003 (when the law came into effect) and 2009 (I don't know if more recent figures have been published, these were the latest I found) 63 people where extradited from the UK to the US and only one of those was on terrorism grounds.
Or they could just pay him what his skills are worth from the outset instead of trying to micro-manage things to pay him as little as possible without it being so little that he'll leave.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if you live under a rock and fail to recognise that IP law creep is a global issue right now.
I'm with you that ideas should be free, I do wonder what would happen if Nimblebit started copying Zynga games from now on though. I suspect we might see some hypocrisy in Zynga's response, but I'd be happy for Zynga to prove me wrong and put out a statement that this is fine in their opinion.
Unfortunately, due to the our government basically bending over for the US when the extradition laws were last redrafted, it's a lot more difficult to get an extradition from the US to the UK than it is vice versa (basically we have to argue the evidence in a court before their judges, they, on the other hand, only need make an accusation).
The details of that enforcement are up to the member states, though. Quite often we've seen the meaning of laws bent by the legislation that puts them on the member states' statute books where individual states are either more or less in favour of said laws. There are lots of ways to interpret even the strictest sounding law, in terms of evidence required, leniency of punishment, etc.
Do you think, when people lose their personal data because a company didn't secure it properly online or because an employee of that company had a laptop full of data and left it on a train, that's somehow the responsibility of the people and not the company? Short of becoming a hermit your data will end up in third party hands and you have very little control over what happens next, even if you give them the data in expectation of total privacy. Governments are some of the worst offenders when it comes to losing public data, and unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to avoid at least being in their databases.
PC gaming was never really dead. It was just a convenient excuse for a) draconian DRM ("piracy is killing PC gaming, we need DRM...") and b) cheap console ports ("PC gaming is dead, it's not economically viable to do anything beyond a cheap port - you should be grateful we're even doing that").
If songbirds and bats can't afford to hire lawyers individually, they'd have to get together and raise a class action, obviously.
How did they take money out if the companies didn't do anything out of line? If it's a frivolous lawsuit without real grounds doesn't the person who instigates get stuck with the costs? If you think you have a real case (i.e. the loss of $600) then my understanding is that you can always opt out of the class action and bring your own private action.
By that definition there's no such thing as a free market. Every nation on earth has at least some tricks up their sleeves to give their own native companies an edge over countries from competing nations.
It's still not a fair comparison. China is currently going through its industrial revolution - it's polluting in the same way western capitalist countries polluted during their industrial revolutions (okay it's magnified by the larger population and the fact that industry can now do this on a much bigger scale, but neither of those things are due to their type of government). A fairer comparison would be, say, one of the socialist European countries (e.g. France for the time being, I guess) and capitalist USA, where the USA is hands down the worst polluter.
The giant pig-blood-and-hormone fueled pike probably scared them all away.
I guess the question would be, do you run 24/7, and do you have so much equipment that you require supplemental air conditioning running all the time? Is your power bill at least a couple hundred dollars higher than would be typical for a house in your area with similar square footage?
That probably describes the computer situation of 90% of the self respecting geeks here, myself included :)
Can the police or courts order a civilian to break the law in pursuit of a warrant, though? Not that it matters, as pointed out elsewhere, they'd just have you key it in so you didn't have to tell anyone.
Or you stick the destruction password on a post-it on the box and let the police destroy the evidence themselves.
Because it's something stored in your head that they are asking you to produce. It makes a mockery of the whole process if they can say "provide us this information that's stored in your head or go to jail for contempt". Why even have a trial, why not just say "we think you did it, provide the truth that's stored in your head and if it doesn't match what we believe, you'll go to jail for contempt".
Only while under oath. You are not required to tell the truth during a police investigation, but any lie that you tell them can impeach your credibility later in court. And since sometimes you telling the truth can be impeached by the testimony of another person, your credibility can be damaged in court later regardless of the truth of your statements... so don't talk to the police except to demand a lawyer.
And count yourself lucky you have that option. Here in the fun-packed UK your silence can also be used against you in court (i.e. if you later provide an explanation of events in court, they can use the fact that you didn't tell the police about it at the time to cast doubt on your testimony). Yay, justice!
Do you think a police state happens overnight, or that people in police states never made this kind of argument before the tipping point? (hell, even after the tipping point people would say "don't rock the boat, they're not after us" right up until the door is broken down - that's how police states even continue to function). Would you rather people wait for an actual police state to be in effect before speaking out about the erosion of rights?
The reason they don't like to release as soon as content is ready is that the labels like to manage the PR to head off early, negative feedback. People are more likely to say they like a piece of content if their magazine/radio show/website of choice has told them everyone else likes it. The labels are terrified of content standing on its own merits, because frankly there's a lot of dross out there.
They already have a kill switch for Youtube content, it's just that playing whack-a-mole there is probably a full time job for a bunch of minimum-wage-slaves, while this is a case their trained lawyers and bought-and-paid police force can sink their teeth into.
Not only selling junk knowing it was junk but then betting against that junk in the hope that it would fail (when they'd already stacked all the cards in order to achieve this). If I sold a race horse that I'd crippled, pretending all was okay just so that I could then bet against that horse in a race, I'd certainly be in jail for fraud and illegally using my insider knowledge. Meanwhile the banking system continue to award themselves record bonuses, knowing they're untouchable (aside from the odd scapegoat thrown to the press).
No, it's not theft. This is nothing to do with "language lawyers" it's to do with actual law. We don't call car jacking "rape", we don't call tax evasion "murder" and we shouldn't call copyright violation "theft". All of those things have very specific meanings in the legal system and calling one thing a different thing just leads to confusion (which is obviously the intention of the rights holders - and I'd say question any group's motives who want to further confuse tricky legal situations since it can serve no good purpose). If copyright violation is as bad an offence as actual theft, let it stand with it's own name, don't try to give it a scarier sounding name - the law should not be a PR game.
Unfortunately the people who vote on removing the money are the ones receiving the money. Short of revolution, it's incredibly difficult to kick start that process. In the UK we had a huge scandal over politicians' expense claims which played out over months in the mainstream media which resulted in a couple of notable heads rolling, red faces and slapped wrists all around, and what, slight re-wording of the voluntary codes of practice and pretty much business as usual?
We're at a point where technology should make democracy much more realistic. Why don't we have systems to allow the populace to vote individually on the big topics instead of everyone having to pick from one of two parties that vaguely aligns with their views (and if your views are radically different to both parties you're out of luck). I'm not suggesting the government should be bound to such votes, but at the very least they should have to consider the will of the people and stand up and explain why, in this or that case, they thought that will should be overruled. We should be using this opportunity to make the political process as transparent as possible, but instead the people in power are using their position to spin everything they do and say and keep the public in the dark. And then we have the cheek to suggest that other countries democratise their governments...
Indeed, legally it's not a given that the act needs to be against the law in both the country requesting the extradition and the host country - while this is often the case, it depends entirely upon the terms of the extradition treaty between the two countries, and levels of proof required may differ, too. The UK-US extradition treaty is heavily biased in favour of the US. To extradite a US resident to the UK, the UK government have to establish sufficient evidence of a crime in a US court. In the opposite situation, the US government need present no evidence in a UK court, simply allege the crime, and this is sufficient even if UK courts have alread seen the evidence and ruled that there is no case to answer. It's pretty messed up, really - the rules were drafted in the aftermath of 9/11 supposedly to make it easier to extradite terrorists, yet between 2003 (when the law came into effect) and 2009 (I don't know if more recent figures have been published, these were the latest I found) 63 people where extradited from the UK to the US and only one of those was on terrorism grounds.
Or they could just pay him what his skills are worth from the outset instead of trying to micro-manage things to pay him as little as possible without it being so little that he'll leave.