Say the check claims to be a direct cashiers check from First Bank Of Mumbai on third street or some other far away place. You deposit it and your bank, assuming that you want that money right away, makes the funds available to you (after all, you have never been this dumb before).
You send the check, more often a wire transfer or bank draft Back to them, or cash, goods, etc, back to mr scammer. All this time you bank has been sitting on this check, waiting to process it in bulk with all its other checks for overseas or that country. Tick tock, tick tock, still waiting. You sent the goods, made the transfer or whatever. Now, Finally, your bank gets around to sending some stuff around.. Oops, they got a message back that, not only does that account not exist, the Bank does not even exist.
Quicker to cover their mistake then take measures earlier, they snap all the money back out of your account. If you already did something with it.. well, too bad. Its all slurped back out, in theory to be returned once this little snafu is fixed.. but it wont be fixed, because..
The authorities (if there are any this week) in the "responsible" area don't really care about this, so any business complaints from your bank fall on deaf ears. If you manage to get the FBI involved.. well, the country still does not care (and the FBI wouldn't be that eager to try helping anyhow, because you are the hundredth shmuck this week to call them about this)
So now you are minus money or goods, And, fun enough, the bank will keep you on their records of trying to cash bad overseas checks, the kind of record that will linger.
The other ways this scam works are worse, of course. "oh i just need a couple of those numbers off the bottom of your check so i can wire the money to your bank account for that laptop" means "Give me your account information and my totally corrupted friend will use his bank (that exists only on paper) to register a transfer from your account to a few hundred fake accounts and then to me.. thanks. and while I'm at it, I'm going to take out a few dozen student loans, car applications and mortgages in your name with the other info you gave me.. plus, thanks for the new laptop"
Depending on the agreement between authors and the publisher, they may in fact not have the Right, as laid down in contract, to take that manuscript to anyone else for a certain time period or until certain conditions are met.
So in this case the authors could be trying to preserve their work with IP laws because other functions of law and contract make it difficult to find satisfaction in any other way.
Bill, too many of those "consumer groups" and farm groups, when you start poking at them, fall over and reveal that they are, in essence, subunits who take their cues directly from Connected Nation.
Think of it like a puppet master waving about marionettes who sing his praises, then citing his puppets as proof of how wonderful he is.
If, for example, you make your money by producing.. oooh.. custom artwork for a variety of things, would it be..
A) Better to have older work spread wide, with plenty of attribution so people know where to find more.. and Pay you for new things.
B) Better to keep every scrap of paper locked in a vault. After all, Everyone knows you, right? you don't need any kind of free publicity and advertisement.
Re: Ummm...The President already can shut down the Internet...
but even the most devious hacker has no way to hijack an Internet and crash it into a building.
Air Traffic Groundstop =/= Internet Communications Stop
Utility infrastructure online?
Medical records without a thousand offline and onlined backups?
I would support bills to force utilities to keep their systems tight, and systems in place to force Them off the net when compromised, and accountability/backup requirement for medical records storage.
Any mythical superhackers with their supervirus would have compromised systems and planted timed packages long before their "Cyber 9/11 Scenario" went into effect, and a POTUS-initiated "Internet Shutdown" could only have the effect of slowing/stopping detection and reaction to threats.
Think of it like closing all roads to all traffic, even police and fire teams, AFTER the criminals have left. Or locking the gate after the horses have all been stolen. Its reactionary in the worst ways.
This is of course assuming that, even after chopping fiber hardlines with an axe or something, you could really kill all network connections between the US and anywhere else.
Re: Re: Question of efficacy or question of privacy?
Crime, violent and otherwise, is falling in many countries and cities, and, gasp, they are managing to do so without recording every motion made by every single supposedly free citizen.
funny enough, i tend to agree with this to a degree.
The growing irrelevance of hourly work, if its happening, is happening in a comparatively small section of the workforce. This is the domain of management or upper levels in most firms, where the rest of us poor schmoes, if i may use the term, are down here at the bottom. We work to a clock because its not like i can count inventory or handle checkouts from home(waiting on surrogates)
If i was somehow getting calls and emails that involved my job while off-clock but was expected to handle them Now, i think i would be right up there.. well, not making the lawsuits, but at least checking on the outcome. So i would expect anyone who is getting Paid for a number of hours but is expected to Work beyond that to feel somewhat the same way.
if you want to own my life, you are going to have to work out a better contract for that in advance. and toss in a new work-paid super-ultra-data-computer-phone.
card processors are not in the business of screening people and imagining theoretical futures where they are responsible for the actions of others.
I would assume that the only liability, if any at All for a processing company is in making sure they have factual information and keep records on who they do business with to avoid fraud, and thats it.
If you allow this wooly-minded and backwards thinking, what will be next?
"Bed, Bath and So-on is responsible for this murder, because they sold a knife set that the killer received as a wedding present"
"Radio-Hovel should have known.. only a Terrorist would buy a pair of alligator clips and a pack of AA batteries. Officer, round up these clerks, they obviously knew exactly what the madman had planned all along"
Re: You make it it sound like they just keep the money and don't pay anyone. What a misleading post.
Hey, that's a good point.
How about you just tell your boss to keep half your paycheck. I mean, they are still paying you, right?
They can call the part they keep "Administrative Overhead and Market Research" charges, then use it to research new sports cars and coffee machines. That shouldn't be a problem, right AC?
Having worked in a rather huge arcade (Gameworks. Know it, love it) I can tell you from the inside that many of the things being done regarding the "license" of video games is a pure money grab.
There was no restriction on games, we could have anything we wanted as long as we paid. The city just wanted to come by every month, send a guy to wander around and check the date and placement of the tags on every individual unit.
The GM wasnt supposed to talk about the costs of the license, would only admit under pressure that it was a considerable slice of operating expenses. The whole thing was a continual money grab by the city thanks to some much-amended "Mechanical Gambling (and all other video game) Security and Registration Act.
Short version: They would require a license on Shelves if they could get away with it, to keep bringing in the fines.
"professional news people" are allowed to take things from other people.
In their mind, anything not owned by them is worthless until they report it. And then it is the reporting itself that is important rather then silly things like origins or attributing.
"taking" anything from professional news people, even if they are Giving it to you, is of course criminal.
Re: "so the Smithsonian could afford to take ultra high def photos.."
Funny enough, there should not be a need for too much of this. As a way to make supplemental profits, the Smithsonian already takes "ultra high def digital photos" of their works for various prints, posters, teeshirts mugs and everything else in the world.
These actions should be already paying for themselves. The thing that has been lacking has been a way to properly open up these images and scans to the public, in a format that properly expresses that it is, in fact, for open domain use.
(along with making sure there is no claim to the work done by photographers or anyone else who would claim to control a piece because they held a lamp to light a shoot)
"Establish a pan-Institutional policy for sharing and using the Smithsonian’s digital content". In other words, the content is there, the hurdle is Doing something with it.
not really.
One of the beauties of the BT protocol, but all internet sharing as well, is the infinite nature.
Right now, i could invest a little time in reading, invest $0 in software and, with the internet connection i Already have, become the center of a secret distributed broadway musical sharing site. My henchmen (and henchwomen) will employ the latest and greatest things in cryptography and social engineering and never, ever, get 'busted' by the RIAA.
For every "mole" you manage to whack, you spawn a hundred more. And the funny thing about moles, they find a way to dig new holes All The Time.
more and more it seems like this entire affair was a complicated prank, serving to both elevate the blood pressure of certain content industry execs and lawyers and help spread the name of TPB around medias again.
allow me to offer a rebuttal in the language that many industrial associations would like to use.
The Interplanetary Tranhumanist Intellectual Property Association is proud to report that so-called "IP-Theft" is not a real problem. This is plainly shown with this graph I have just drawn on a napkin.
If you need a second opinion, please ask one of my licensed media partner corporations. They will be happy to repeat the numbers I have just given you, since I sent a memo around earlier.
How did we at the ITIPA reach these conclusions? That's a very.. interesting.. question. The kind of thing a Terrorist would ask! Guards, Seize them!
The same "complaint" can be made of forks, spoons, cars, pencils and Anonymous Coward blog posts.
I happen to agree that X can be quite a useful tool, but when placed in the hands of certain people who care less about the law utility is readily drawn into question.
While you may have had user-end mistakes, perhaps due to reading torrent information as much as you have read this article, the back-end protocol to BT is clean and surprisingly reliable.
Its great to see one more, of the Many, wholly legitimate and unassailable use to this overly demonized tech.
The concept of print media as a scarce good has been something I have long recognized. While I have vast amounts of my collection in digital format, reliable print is a wonderful addition.
It is worthwhile, to me, to own well-bound hardcovers, either of interesting new printings or well-preserved classics. This tangible, physical good has a greater value then the plain printed (well, scanned and lcd displayed) word.
So, if content-owning companies can keep from tripping over themselves, I look forward to our future with well-printed newpaper comics and well-bound books as a bit of a luxury item, produced for the masses who desire a little more.
Its like this:
IV buys, begs borrows or steals (with lawyers) a fuzzy patent, like "System for having a cover and keeping out rain"
They then make sure it is fully amended and expanded to the extent that examiners can ignore.
"System for having a cover and keeping out rain"
*On houses
*On cars
*On orphanages
*On decorative hirdhouses, because the word 'house' is used.
They then go around to Orphanage builders, car companies, birdhouse designers and home builders and Casually mention "Oh.. by the way, I have a huge portfolio of patents that could somewhat apply to your product in the right light.. give me money or I might just have to call my lawyers and interfere with your business for the next 5 years"
Some are asked for small fees, and pay up fast and try to move on. These fees are used to buy more lawyers for the next people. Others fight it, burning millions of dollars in the courtroom trying to convince a patent-ignorant judge that 1+1=2. Still others, with looming lawsuits, just close up and abandon Orphanage Construction CO.
The horrible net result is scummy lawyers making money, scummy patent troll companies making money (and using it to buy more patents) and legitimate businesses getting bad promotion and mindless judgments against them ("I rule that 1+1=4, pay IV 5 dollars per unit you build, forever")
This is not to say that everyone who has ever been sued or threatened in an infringement issue is as pure as fallen snow, but we can certainly see that the "defender" in many of these cases is anything but.
If this is anything like some of my past experience being in a company shutting down, you can expect that a good number of those laptops (thought to be risky) managed to Walk away, along with desktop gear, computers, incidental equipment, paperwork that looks interesting and All of the paperclips.
Everything else will be sold off in bulk lots. From buying computers at bulk lots before, any data-stripping is haphazard at best (like pulling out all the hard drives.. only to sell them, otherwise untouched, as a separate auction lot)
We may indeed here more (bad) news from this shell of a company before things are over, if any connected party actually cares enough to step up for responsibility after their big shutdown firesale.
On the post: Is It Identity Theft Or A Bank Robbery, Part II: Couple Sues Bank Over Money Taken
Re: (check scam)
Say the check claims to be a direct cashiers check from First Bank Of Mumbai on third street or some other far away place. You deposit it and your bank, assuming that you want that money right away, makes the funds available to you (after all, you have never been this dumb before).
You send the check, more often a wire transfer or bank draft Back to them, or cash, goods, etc, back to mr scammer. All this time you bank has been sitting on this check, waiting to process it in bulk with all its other checks for overseas or that country. Tick tock, tick tock, still waiting. You sent the goods, made the transfer or whatever. Now, Finally, your bank gets around to sending some stuff around.. Oops, they got a message back that, not only does that account not exist, the Bank does not even exist.
Quicker to cover their mistake then take measures earlier, they snap all the money back out of your account. If you already did something with it.. well, too bad. Its all slurped back out, in theory to be returned once this little snafu is fixed.. but it wont be fixed, because..
The authorities (if there are any this week) in the "responsible" area don't really care about this, so any business complaints from your bank fall on deaf ears. If you manage to get the FBI involved.. well, the country still does not care (and the FBI wouldn't be that eager to try helping anyhow, because you are the hundredth shmuck this week to call them about this)
So now you are minus money or goods, And, fun enough, the bank will keep you on their records of trying to cash bad overseas checks, the kind of record that will linger.
The other ways this scam works are worse, of course. "oh i just need a couple of those numbers off the bottom of your check so i can wire the money to your bank account for that laptop" means "Give me your account information and my totally corrupted friend will use his bank (that exists only on paper) to register a transfer from your account to a few hundred fake accounts and then to me.. thanks. and while I'm at it, I'm going to take out a few dozen student loans, car applications and mortgages in your name with the other info you gave me.. plus, thanks for the new laptop"
On the post: Copyright Used Against Censorship?
Re: (*THEN* release the original)
So in this case the authors could be trying to preserve their work with IP laws because other functions of law and contract make it difficult to find satisfaction in any other way.
On the post: Minnesota Governor Pushes Connected Nation Before Panel He Appointed Has Its Say
Re: Can someone explain to me..
Think of it like a puppet master waving about marionettes who sing his praises, then citing his puppets as proof of how wonderful he is.
On the post: Being Unique Is Not The Same As Exclusive (Or Scarce)
Re: "free isnt always the answer"
If, for example, you make your money by producing.. oooh.. custom artwork for a variety of things, would it be..
A) Better to have older work spread wide, with plenty of attribution so people know where to find more.. and Pay you for new things.
B) Better to keep every scrap of paper locked in a vault. After all, Everyone knows you, right? you don't need any kind of free publicity and advertisement.
Think it over, anon.
On the post: Wouldn't The Last Thing We Want During A 'Cybersecurity Emergency' Be For The Gov't To Take Over Private Networks?
Re: Ummm...The President already can shut down the Internet...
Air Traffic Groundstop =/= Internet Communications Stop
Utility infrastructure online?
Medical records without a thousand offline and onlined backups?
I would support bills to force utilities to keep their systems tight, and systems in place to force Them off the net when compromised, and accountability/backup requirement for medical records storage.
Any mythical superhackers with their supervirus would have compromised systems and planted timed packages long before their "Cyber 9/11 Scenario" went into effect, and a POTUS-initiated "Internet Shutdown" could only have the effect of slowing/stopping detection and reaction to threats.
Think of it like closing all roads to all traffic, even police and fire teams, AFTER the criminals have left. Or locking the gate after the horses have all been stolen. Its reactionary in the worst ways.
This is of course assuming that, even after chopping fiber hardlines with an axe or something, you could really kill all network connections between the US and anywhere else.
On the post: Surveillance Cameras In London Not Very Effective At Solving Crime
Re: Re: Question of efficacy or question of privacy?
On the post: Do Hourly Employees Even Make Sense Any More?
Re: tech industry assumptions.
The growing irrelevance of hourly work, if its happening, is happening in a comparatively small section of the workforce. This is the domain of management or upper levels in most firms, where the rest of us poor schmoes, if i may use the term, are down here at the bottom. We work to a clock because its not like i can count inventory or handle checkouts from home(waiting on surrogates)
If i was somehow getting calls and emails that involved my job while off-clock but was expected to handle them Now, i think i would be right up there.. well, not making the lawsuits, but at least checking on the outcome. So i would expect anyone who is getting Paid for a number of hours but is expected to Work beyond that to feel somewhat the same way.
if you want to own my life, you are going to have to work out a better contract for that in advance. and toss in a new work-paid super-ultra-data-computer-phone.
On the post: Gucci Sues Credit Card Processors For Trademark Infringement
Re: Re: Re:
I would assume that the only liability, if any at All for a processing company is in making sure they have factual information and keep records on who they do business with to avoid fraud, and thats it.
If you allow this wooly-minded and backwards thinking, what will be next?
"Bed, Bath and So-on is responsible for this murder, because they sold a knife set that the killer received as a wedding present"
"Radio-Hovel should have known.. only a Terrorist would buy a pair of alligator clips and a pack of AA batteries. Officer, round up these clerks, they obviously knew exactly what the madman had planned all along"
On the post: Project EquillibRIAA: Putting Joel Tenenbaum In Touch With The Musicians In Question
Re: You make it it sound like they just keep the money and don't pay anyone. What a misleading post.
How about you just tell your boss to keep half your paycheck. I mean, they are still paying you, right?
They can call the part they keep "Administrative Overhead and Market Research" charges, then use it to research new sports cars and coffee machines. That shouldn't be a problem, right AC?
On the post: Why Should You Need A Special License To Run An Arcade?
There was no restriction on games, we could have anything we wanted as long as we paid. The city just wanted to come by every month, send a guy to wander around and check the date and placement of the tags on every individual unit.
The GM wasnt supposed to talk about the costs of the license, would only admit under pressure that it was a considerable slice of operating expenses. The whole thing was a continual money grab by the city thanks to some much-amended "Mechanical Gambling (and all other video game) Security and Registration Act.
Short version: They would require a license on Shelves if they could get away with it, to keep bringing in the fines.
On the post: The 'Creative' Technology Behind The AP's News Registry
Re: Perhaps I'm a bit dim, but�
In their mind, anything not owned by them is worthless until they report it. And then it is the reporting itself that is important rather then silly things like origins or attributing.
"taking" anything from professional news people, even if they are Giving it to you, is of course criminal.
On the post: Compare The Smithsonian To London's National Gallery When It Comes To Public Domain Images
Re: "so the Smithsonian could afford to take ultra high def photos.."
These actions should be already paying for themselves. The thing that has been lacking has been a way to properly open up these images and scans to the public, in a format that properly expresses that it is, in fact, for open domain use.
(along with making sure there is no claim to the work done by photographers or anyone else who would claim to control a piece because they held a lamp to light a shoot)
"Establish a pan-Institutional policy for sharing and using the Smithsonian’s digital content". In other words, the content is there, the hurdle is Doing something with it.
Bravo Smithsonian.
On the post: More Double Standards On Journalist Entitlement
They will cash out more then that simply by using it in a few news pieces, not to mention the years and years it will live in blooper shows.
On the post: Pirate Bay Sale Looking Even Less Likely
Re: Re: Added benefits
One of the beauties of the BT protocol, but all internet sharing as well, is the infinite nature.
Right now, i could invest a little time in reading, invest $0 in software and, with the internet connection i Already have, become the center of a secret distributed broadway musical sharing site. My henchmen (and henchwomen) will employ the latest and greatest things in cryptography and social engineering and never, ever, get 'busted' by the RIAA.
For every "mole" you manage to whack, you spawn a hundred more. And the funny thing about moles, they find a way to dig new holes All The Time.
On the post: Pirate Bay Sale Looking Even Less Likely
And if so.. doubly well done.
On the post: Copyright Lobbyists Celebrate Latest Bogus Stats With Willing Gov't Officials
Re:
The Interplanetary Tranhumanist Intellectual Property Association is proud to report that so-called "IP-Theft" is not a real problem. This is plainly shown with this graph I have just drawn on a napkin.
If you need a second opinion, please ask one of my licensed media partner corporations. They will be happy to repeat the numbers I have just given you, since I sent a memo around earlier.
How did we at the ITIPA reach these conclusions? That's a very.. interesting.. question. The kind of thing a Terrorist would ask! Guards, Seize them!
On the post: Asus The Latest To Recognize That BitTorrent Is Quite Useful
Re: Re: Re: Re: in the hands of certain people..
I happen to agree that X can be quite a useful tool, but when placed in the hands of certain people who care less about the law utility is readily drawn into question.
While you may have had user-end mistakes, perhaps due to reading torrent information as much as you have read this article, the back-end protocol to BT is clean and surprisingly reliable.
Its great to see one more, of the Many, wholly legitimate and unassailable use to this overly demonized tech.
On the post: Can Print Be The Next Vinyl?
It is worthwhile, to me, to own well-bound hardcovers, either of interesting new printings or well-preserved classics. This tangible, physical good has a greater value then the plain printed (well, scanned and lcd displayed) word.
So, if content-owning companies can keep from tripping over themselves, I look forward to our future with well-printed newpaper comics and well-bound books as a bit of a luxury item, produced for the masses who desire a little more.
On the post: Intuit Pays $120 Million 'Don't Sue Us' Tax To Intellectual Ventures
IV buys, begs borrows or steals (with lawyers) a fuzzy patent, like "System for having a cover and keeping out rain"
They then make sure it is fully amended and expanded to the extent that examiners can ignore.
"System for having a cover and keeping out rain"
*On houses
*On cars
*On orphanages
*On decorative hirdhouses, because the word 'house' is used.
They then go around to Orphanage builders, car companies, birdhouse designers and home builders and Casually mention "Oh.. by the way, I have a huge portfolio of patents that could somewhat apply to your product in the right light.. give me money or I might just have to call my lawyers and interfere with your business for the next 5 years"
Some are asked for small fees, and pay up fast and try to move on. These fees are used to buy more lawyers for the next people. Others fight it, burning millions of dollars in the courtroom trying to convince a patent-ignorant judge that 1+1=2. Still others, with looming lawsuits, just close up and abandon Orphanage Construction CO.
The horrible net result is scummy lawyers making money, scummy patent troll companies making money (and using it to buy more patents) and legitimate businesses getting bad promotion and mindless judgments against them ("I rule that 1+1=4, pay IV 5 dollars per unit you build, forever")
This is not to say that everyone who has ever been sued or threatened in an infringement issue is as pure as fallen snow, but we can certainly see that the "defender" in many of these cases is anything but.
On the post: What Happens To All That Personal Data Clear Holds? It's Unclear
Everything else will be sold off in bulk lots. From buying computers at bulk lots before, any data-stripping is haphazard at best (like pulling out all the hard drives.. only to sell them, otherwise untouched, as a separate auction lot)
We may indeed here more (bad) news from this shell of a company before things are over, if any connected party actually cares enough to step up for responsibility after their big shutdown firesale.
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