Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 25 Feb 2012 @ 8:53am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This could be known as the four factors test of piracy vs. buy
So, just because you buy from a legitimate source doesn't always mean that the $I = 0
Yep. We even see this with physical products. Although I would change "legitimate" to "legal" in this case:
Look at what happened after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many people chose to drive past BP gas stations, even if other competitors were higher priced or less convenient.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 24 Feb 2012 @ 11:12pm
Re:
To call one "crazy" with whom you happen to disagree is to close one's mind to the possibility the other actually presents fair and valid points.
So present those "fair and valid" points. We're waiting. We're practically begging for substantive discussions, but all you have is rhetoric and unfounded assertions. Put forth your facts. Or, to put it another way, "Put up, or shut up."
I can respect your right to have a differing opinion, even if I have no respect for that opinion. But I see nothing wrong with calling someone crazy when they can't back up their opinion with data or logical arguments.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 24 Feb 2012 @ 12:52pm
Re: Re: Re: This could be known as the four factors test of piracy vs. buy
you can mitigate any advantage the pirates have as long as your $I cost remains 0
Every time I see a new story about how a record label is cheating an artist for millions of dollars, their integrity cost skyrockets.
On the other side, pirating some infinitely copyable bits and using the money I would have spent on it instead on something (merchandise, concert tickets, direct donation, whatever) that better compensates the actual artist has a zero or even negative integrity cost.
I acknowledge that it is possible I have rationalized two wrongs into a right, but I'd like to see the rationalization on the label's side for cheating the artists they claim to represent.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 23 Feb 2012 @ 3:13pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yes, it is different.
Phone companies need that info to make the service work. They need it to bill customers, and resolve disputes about a bill. Once that data is no longer useful to the company, it is entirely their choice to discard it or not.
I'm not aware of a single ISP, anywhere in the world, that has a "pay-per-email" charge. Many have data charges, but there's no difference to them between sending your boss an email with a 1 MB attachment, or sending an email with the same size attachment to a political organization, activist group, religious (or anti-religious) group, a journalist, a porn site, or to someone you're having an extra-marital affair with. But when the records go to the government, or become public, as many undoubtedly will, there is a serious difference.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 23 Feb 2012 @ 2:38pm
Re:
Bottom line, the online world still isn't showing enough promise to make it worth giving up the other models.
Because you keep trying to kill, strangle, or buy then destroy every promising service that emerges.
Because you keep passing horrible laws to stop promising services from even appearing.
Because you treat your customers and target audiences as criminals, or at best a wallet to squeeze every penny out of.
You have no one but yourself to blame. You are chasing weekly or quarterly pennies at the expense of long term piles of money. You cannot see the forest, I doubt if you can even see the tree, and you're clutching at a dead twig.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 20 Feb 2012 @ 11:35am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Having jotform come down the pike days or weeks after a phishing scam has been running and finally shut the form down because someone actually complained is not enough to solve the problem.
So your solution is to shut down every user generated content site on the internet, regardless of all the legitimate speech on them.
Thanks for being honest that you are completely against free speech unless it is put out by a large corporation.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 18 Feb 2012 @ 6:49pm
Re: Re: Re:
What I am getting at is that fraudsters feel that the service is valid enough that, even with their automated take down tools, they are still missing more than enough to make it worth doing.
Fraudsters will take advantage of every free or low cost service online if they can make a profit off it by duping a few people.
Why the hard number?
I want a hard number so you can't weasel your way out of a debate. So again, what percentage of rogue content is acceptable before you shut down a service's legitimate uses to stop the illegitimate uses?
In this case, it's 10%, and that is more than enough to justify action.
Again, you're ignoring the fact that those forms were taken down. You are acting like those phishing forms are still up and tricking people. They are gone! As far as we know, there could be zero active phishing forms up on Jotform right this very second. That would make their "failure rate" 0%. Stop trying to justify killing a service because of your own made up statistic.
What real world examples
In a previous comment I've already mentioned email and spam. Using 10%, every email provider I've used other than Gmail falls short of filtering it out and according to you should be shut down.
A significant percentage of PCs are spam zombies or serving as web hosts for every type of malware. Figures vary based on antivirus vendors, but have frequently been between 40-50%, a quarter of which have types of malware used in financial crimes.
There's domain kiting, in which someone can register a domain under a 5-day grace period for free, and then use it for ad pages or illegal purposes, and then re-register once that 5 day period is up.
How about physical examples:
Risky surgeries like organ transplants or bypasses have a failure rate, either directly in surgery or in later complications.
Every county or city in this country has to decide what failure rate is acceptable for fire and police services, because there isn't enough money to guarantee every fire gets put out before a building burns down or every person who runs a light or stop sign gets a ticket.
Every product manufacturer has to deal with failure rates. When Toyota had issues with accelerator pedals, the entire company wasn't shut down. They issued a recall and fixed the problem.
And that's the point. Jotform takes down abusive forms both by themselves, and when alerted to them. They fix the problem. They are acting in good faith. That does not justify shutting them down, damaging their business, and harming their legitimate customers. Unless you have evidence that they were deliberately ignoring abusive use of their service then you are taking a "guilty until proven innocent" stance and siding with a clear abuse of power by the government.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 17 Feb 2012 @ 3:10pm
Re:
Even Jotform is not exempt. Plenty of the regular posters here (and even the site owner) was going on and on about the 2 million forms... while completely discounting that somewhere like 10% of all forms created are used for phishing. Can you imagine how you would feel if your internet connection didn't work 10% of the time, or your car failed to start one day a week? That's what the failure rate is like.
And you completely ignore the fact that Jotform TOOK THOSE FORMS DOWN. They removed them in the interest of public good. Despite the fact that if they served ads alongside those forms, they could have made money. They willingly removed them. That IS NOT A FAILURE.
I want a clear answer to this question: what percentage of "rogue" content is acceptable to you for a service to let slip through without being shut down? Give a hard number. Then we can start comparing other products and services online and in the physical world that don't meet your standards.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 17 Feb 2012 @ 9:46am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Josh, the phone calls you got match up perfectly with what I posted above. VoIP or Skype has become a very simple way for scammers in foreign countries to try to hit people in the US with various scams.
Exactly my point. It's trivially easy and extremely common. You were the one trying to claim that it was "rare these days" when it is undoubtedly not rare. Your solution to this is to block Skype and other VoIP providers because they have to "take some responsibility for what happens" and "know who [they] are dealing with" and not "turn a blind eye towards blatantly illegal activities, under the guise of being "too big to check"."
I see your cognitive dissonance detector is malfunctioning. Or is it being overridden by your paradox absorbing crumple zones?
2 million forms. You can load 1 every 20 seconds,
20 seconds to review something for abuse? You're crazy.
Even if it was plausible, your math is horrible.
2 million forms. 2,000,000
3 forms per minute. 2,000,000 / 3 = 666,667 minutes
60 minutes in an hour. 666,667 / 60 = 11,111 hours
8 hour day of work. 11,111 / 8 = 1,389 days
4 employees. 1389 / 4 = 347 days of work per employee
In what universe is 347 working days 3 months?
2 million forms / 7200 forms checked per week = 278 weeks to check 2 million.
278 weeks to check / 4 employees = 69.5 weeks per employee
I think your mistake was in assuming that was 69.5 days. You're off by a factor of 5. So instead of 3 months, it is well over a year.
Now, even if they paid a team of people to go over every single form, are they guaranteed from not being shut down? What if a form slips through and the abuse ends up on the desk of a clueless Secret Service agent?
You claim you want business to have a chance. How is burdening a startup like this giving them a chance?
No matter what goes on in your confused mind, there is no possible way that any business, be it Youtube and the 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, or Jotform and its 2 million forms, can have a human being check every single piece of user generated content and make any kind of reasonable determination. It is utterly impossible.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 17 Feb 2012 @ 9:03am
Re: Why Secret Service?
The Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department. They deal with a lot of financial crimes including counterfeiting (as in money, not products) and fraud. So it's not out of the ordinary for them to deal something that would involve phishing.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 17 Feb 2012 @ 8:47am
Re: Re: Re:
Oh no! Ten whole percent! I guess we have to shut down all email everywhere because more than 10% of one of my email accounts is spam! Not to mention that >90% of email that crosses the internet is estimated to be spam!
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 17 Feb 2012 @ 8:41am
Re: Re: Re:
That would be nearly 200 new phishing scams off the internet every day?
That's easily plausible. Even if 200 completely new scams aren't appearing every day, it's easy to see how one scammer can setup multiple forms using throwaway email addresses from Hotmail.
As for the "on the phone" phishing attempts, they are pretty rare these days,
Really? I was just getting calls a month ago that were blatantly obvious scams. Despite it being the same voice, the heavily accented voice identified as "Bob Smith" "Adam Smith" and "John Brown" over a poor quality connection that sounded like a VoIP service to me. He was demanding payment and threatening me with lawyers, and when I asked for any information about this supposed debt he became angry, and as soon as I mentioned the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act he hung up.
Free one open services that allow people to set up apparently legit things online are really huge security holes.
Look, I know you want the internet to turn into a big broadcast medium where only big entertainment companies can get a message out, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world does too. The only "security hole" this incident shows is ability of the government to shut down millions of cases of protected speech.
Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 17 Feb 2012 @ 8:17am
Re:
They shut of 65,000 phishing forms last year alone. I think they have a serious business model problem.
What planet do you live on? 65,000 out of their 2 million forms and hundreds of thousands of customers is a tiny percentage.
They have established procedures for dealing with abuse. Instead of using them, the Secret Service decided to wipe the entire site out of existence.
Practically every free or low cost service has to deal with phishing or spam abuse. Do all of those services also have business model problems?
If your computer is infected with malware, there's a good chance that you're hosting some piece of a phishing site or spewing thousands of spam emails. Should your internet connection be shut down with no notice, no due process, and then when you contact the government they tell you you have to wait a week before they even tell you what happened, let alone fix it?
On the post: Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored By Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice
Re: Re: Re: Re:
There are no typos in the above sentence.
On the post: If You Want To Compete With Free, This Is What You Need To Know
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This could be known as the four factors test of piracy vs. buy
Yep. We even see this with physical products. Although I would change "legitimate" to "legal" in this case:
Look at what happened after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many people chose to drive past BP gas stations, even if other competitors were higher priced or less convenient.
On the post: Reductio Ad Absurdum: Eternal Copyright Is Crazy... But What About Today's Copyright Term?
Re:
So present those "fair and valid" points. We're waiting. We're practically begging for substantive discussions, but all you have is rhetoric and unfounded assertions. Put forth your facts. Or, to put it another way, "Put up, or shut up."
I can respect your right to have a differing opinion, even if I have no respect for that opinion. But I see nothing wrong with calling someone crazy when they can't back up their opinion with data or logical arguments.
On the post: If You Want To Compete With Free, This Is What You Need To Know
Re: Re: Re: This could be known as the four factors test of piracy vs. buy
Every time I see a new story about how a record label is cheating an artist for millions of dollars, their integrity cost skyrockets.
On the other side, pirating some infinitely copyable bits and using the money I would have spent on it instead on something (merchandise, concert tickets, direct donation, whatever) that better compensates the actual artist has a zero or even negative integrity cost.
I acknowledge that it is possible I have rationalized two wrongs into a right, but I'd like to see the rationalization on the label's side for cheating the artists they claim to represent.
On the post: How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Phone companies need that info to make the service work. They need it to bill customers, and resolve disputes about a bill. Once that data is no longer useful to the company, it is entirely their choice to discard it or not.
I'm not aware of a single ISP, anywhere in the world, that has a "pay-per-email" charge. Many have data charges, but there's no difference to them between sending your boss an email with a 1 MB attachment, or sending an email with the same size attachment to a political organization, activist group, religious (or anti-religious) group, a journalist, a porn site, or to someone you're having an extra-marital affair with. But when the records go to the government, or become public, as many undoubtedly will, there is a serious difference.
On the post: Real Scarcity Is An Important Part Of A Business Model; Artificial Scarcity Is A Terrible Business Model
Re:
Because you keep trying to kill, strangle, or buy then destroy every promising service that emerges.
Because you keep passing horrible laws to stop promising services from even appearing.
Because you treat your customers and target audiences as criminals, or at best a wallet to squeeze every penny out of.
You have no one but yourself to blame. You are chasing weekly or quarterly pennies at the expense of long term piles of money. You cannot see the forest, I doubt if you can even see the tree, and you're clutching at a dead twig.
On the post: How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That depends on your definition of "spying" I suppose.
The UK plan certainly qualifies under my definition.
"The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and received by."
So they'd be tracking everyone I'd sent emails to, or received email from. Sounds like spying to me.
On the post: ACTA Approval On Hold While EU Commission Asks EU Court Of Justice To Weigh In
Re: Query
On the post: Techdirt Deemed Harmful To Minors In Germany
Re: In other news...
On the post: How The Megaupload Shutdown Has Put 'Cloud Computing' Business Plans At Risk
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So your solution is to shut down every user generated content site on the internet, regardless of all the legitimate speech on them.
Thanks for being honest that you are completely against free speech unless it is put out by a large corporation.
On the post: How The Megaupload Shutdown Has Put 'Cloud Computing' Business Plans At Risk
Re: Re: Re:
Fraudsters will take advantage of every free or low cost service online if they can make a profit off it by duping a few people.
Why the hard number?
I want a hard number so you can't weasel your way out of a debate. So again, what percentage of rogue content is acceptable before you shut down a service's legitimate uses to stop the illegitimate uses?
In this case, it's 10%, and that is more than enough to justify action.
Again, you're ignoring the fact that those forms were taken down. You are acting like those phishing forms are still up and tricking people. They are gone! As far as we know, there could be zero active phishing forms up on Jotform right this very second. That would make their "failure rate" 0%. Stop trying to justify killing a service because of your own made up statistic.
What real world examples
In a previous comment I've already mentioned email and spam. Using 10%, every email provider I've used other than Gmail falls short of filtering it out and according to you should be shut down.
A significant percentage of PCs are spam zombies or serving as web hosts for every type of malware. Figures vary based on antivirus vendors, but have frequently been between 40-50%, a quarter of which have types of malware used in financial crimes.
There's domain kiting, in which someone can register a domain under a 5-day grace period for free, and then use it for ad pages or illegal purposes, and then re-register once that 5 day period is up.
How about physical examples:
Risky surgeries like organ transplants or bypasses have a failure rate, either directly in surgery or in later complications.
Every county or city in this country has to decide what failure rate is acceptable for fire and police services, because there isn't enough money to guarantee every fire gets put out before a building burns down or every person who runs a light or stop sign gets a ticket.
Every product manufacturer has to deal with failure rates. When Toyota had issues with accelerator pedals, the entire company wasn't shut down. They issued a recall and fixed the problem.
And that's the point. Jotform takes down abusive forms both by themselves, and when alerted to them. They fix the problem. They are acting in good faith. That does not justify shutting them down, damaging their business, and harming their legitimate customers. Unless you have evidence that they were deliberately ignoring abusive use of their service then you are taking a "guilty until proven innocent" stance and siding with a clear abuse of power by the government.
On the post: How The Megaupload Shutdown Has Put 'Cloud Computing' Business Plans At Risk
Re:
And you completely ignore the fact that Jotform TOOK THOSE FORMS DOWN. They removed them in the interest of public good. Despite the fact that if they served ads alongside those forms, they could have made money. They willingly removed them. That IS NOT A FAILURE.
I want a clear answer to this question: what percentage of "rogue" content is acceptable to you for a service to let slip through without being shut down? Give a hard number. Then we can start comparing other products and services online and in the physical world that don't meet your standards.
On the post: Australian Government Holds Secret Anti-Piracy Meetings; The Public Is Not Invited
Re:
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, they can't.
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Exactly my point. It's trivially easy and extremely common. You were the one trying to claim that it was "rare these days" when it is undoubtedly not rare. Your solution to this is to block Skype and other VoIP providers because they have to "take some responsibility for what happens" and "know who [they] are dealing with" and not "turn a blind eye towards blatantly illegal activities, under the guise of being "too big to check"."
I see your cognitive dissonance detector is malfunctioning. Or is it being overridden by your paradox absorbing crumple zones?
2 million forms. You can load 1 every 20 seconds,
20 seconds to review something for abuse? You're crazy.
Even if it was plausible, your math is horrible.
2 million forms. 2,000,000
3 forms per minute. 2,000,000 / 3 = 666,667 minutes
60 minutes in an hour. 666,667 / 60 = 11,111 hours
8 hour day of work. 11,111 / 8 = 1,389 days
4 employees. 1389 / 4 = 347 days of work per employee
In what universe is 347 working days 3 months?
2 million forms / 7200 forms checked per week = 278 weeks to check 2 million.
278 weeks to check / 4 employees = 69.5 weeks per employee
I think your mistake was in assuming that was 69.5 days. You're off by a factor of 5. So instead of 3 months, it is well over a year.
Now, even if they paid a team of people to go over every single form, are they guaranteed from not being shut down? What if a form slips through and the abuse ends up on the desk of a clueless Secret Service agent?
You claim you want business to have a chance. How is burdening a startup like this giving them a chance?
No matter what goes on in your confused mind, there is no possible way that any business, be it Youtube and the 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, or Jotform and its 2 million forms, can have a human being check every single piece of user generated content and make any kind of reasonable determination. It is utterly impossible.
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re: Why Secret Service?
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re: Re: Re:
Care to respond to all the other points I made?
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re: Re: Re:
That's easily plausible. Even if 200 completely new scams aren't appearing every day, it's easy to see how one scammer can setup multiple forms using throwaway email addresses from Hotmail.
As for the "on the phone" phishing attempts, they are pretty rare these days,
Really? I was just getting calls a month ago that were blatantly obvious scams. Despite it being the same voice, the heavily accented voice identified as "Bob Smith" "Adam Smith" and "John Brown" over a poor quality connection that sounded like a VoIP service to me. He was demanding payment and threatening me with lawyers, and when I asked for any information about this supposed debt he became angry, and as soon as I mentioned the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act he hung up.
Free one open services that allow people to set up apparently legit things online are really huge security holes.
Look, I know you want the internet to turn into a big broadcast medium where only big entertainment companies can get a message out, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world does too. The only "security hole" this incident shows is ability of the government to shut down millions of cases of protected speech.
On the post: US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened
Re:
What planet do you live on? 65,000 out of their 2 million forms and hundreds of thousands of customers is a tiny percentage.
They have established procedures for dealing with abuse. Instead of using them, the Secret Service decided to wipe the entire site out of existence.
Practically every free or low cost service has to deal with phishing or spam abuse. Do all of those services also have business model problems?
If your computer is infected with malware, there's a good chance that you're hosting some piece of a phishing site or spewing thousands of spam emails. Should your internet connection be shut down with no notice, no due process, and then when you contact the government they tell you you have to wait a week before they even tell you what happened, let alone fix it?
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