"One million accounts" is quoted. But it appears that fewer than 5000 of them were active, and there is no estimate of how many individuals that represents.
Just looking at this website is illegal in many places. It's likely that the users regularly created and abandoned accounts to avoid leaving an obvious long-term record of their activities. Some may have have done it as frequently as every use. 5000 active accounts over a year might be only 100 active users.
A similar thing is true for the image view counts. Most users are presumably going back to the site rather than downloading incriminating content. And viewing with their browser caching turned off, or even with browsers that retain no state. Each time the page is viewed the images are downloaded. In some cases just scrolling up and down will load an image multiple times, or re-load the page to render additional content.
The count of individuals is important. Police are justifying their actions based on large counts. If the reality is there are few people creating and viewing child porn, it may be that the police are actually the largest purveyors and consumers.
More to the point, how is having money and credit cards in a wallet evidence of the suspected crime? Before this was a seizure, it was a search -- why were they searching in the first place? What relevant evidence did they expect to find in his wallet?
The equipment is free, but it can be extremely expensive to operate and maintain. A Bearcat spare tire is $5K. Helicopters cost at least a few hundred an hour, up to $1K.
Once you can pass the cost to someone else, there is a strong incentive to move every expense in the operating cost column. For instance leasing the equipment instead of purchasing, and have the lease contract include training.
I'm sure many companies would be happy to rip up the rules and start over.
Not because they want clarity and fairness, but because they expect that they will be able to grab a bigger piece of the pie.
Even if that happens, licensing of existing content will continue under the current rules, so deciding what those rules actually mean is important. And once the rules are clarified, there might be little reason to make new ones.
There used to be arguments over what constituted a "copy" sufficient to implicate copyright law, but that has long been decided. Ephemeral copies are not covered.
There might be thousands of identifiable "copies" along the distribution chain, but legally that counts as Zero Copies. Not one of the copies from the master tapes, through storage, memory and registers of uncounted servers and routers counts. You don't need a separate license for DRAM chip, swap disk, flip-flop and transistor along the way.
Thanks for the link that reminded me of those comments.
There was also the poster that (intentionally?) conflated disparaging property (a putative undervalue estimate) with disparaging property rights (falsely claiming some aspect of ownership), combined with stretching "injurious falsehood" to cover a value estimate.
They have carefully avoid deciding an issue that might make them look archaic in a few years.
Just as Linux devices (Trolltech Greenphone), PDAs and music players simultaneously developed into sophisticated smart phones in just a few years, digital cameras may suddenly become something more. Or perhaps not, as GoPro is demonstrating.
Arguing that digital cameras should fall into the same category as wallet photos couldn't have helped their case. To most people it just solidifies how different the two situations are.
So many sketchy things, why are they bring it to the court's attention?
It appears that the top two guys at Proper Media have done many, many questionable things. What type of personality would drag their own soiled laundry into court and not expect everyone to notice the stench?
The opening question might be establishing that they are truly officers of Proper Media. An corporate officer is generally a statutory employee. Exceptions may be made for officers that have extremely limited, token, perfunctory or no duties.
If they have claimed in corporate tax filings that they are not employees, then they aren't legitimate corporate officers.
It wouldn't surprise me if the judge takes the easy way out and dismisses the case because Proper Media isn't a valid plaintiff.
I don't think that Green comes out looking too bad. He was a minority shareholder, and thus had very limited power. He was heavily pressured into signing a loan guarantee that disproportionately imposed liability on him, at the risk of losing even that small share of ownership.
If that email is genuine, and there is no reason to suspect that it is not, Proper grossly misrepresented the employment situation in their complaint.
When I read this story I was thinking "in what mall storefront could you find an attorney to take such an obviously bogus case?"
So I checked.
Apparently this lawyer doesn't have an office, instead working out of his house. He is variously listed as a detective, computer forensic investigator and a litigation attorney. His website proclaims that he has a "law enforcement commission from the governor of South Carolina". Which sound serious, but seems to typically mean an auxiliary police officer, volunteer/reserve constable, or a park ranger.
There are a huge number of potential innovations on the horizon. Many are based around spacial sensors and image processing -- stereoscopic vision, time-of-flight sensors, IR imagers, etc. Gesture recognition might become interesting, or entirely news ways of interacting with the device might become suddenly popular. Eye,and even focus tracking might become input methods.
Who knows, after more than a century, typing might be gone in the blink of an eye.
Looking at the filing, the cash transfers are pretty damning .
There are lots of ways to transfer other assets for much less than market value when you have control of the company.
The touchstone for those transfers might be the vehicle. To transfer ownership, the title needs to be transferred. Most states really, including California, really don't like losing out on the tax revenue from vehicle sales. Typically for vehicles less than ten years old the declared sale price must be close to the "blue book" value (the state has its own tables).
Amber Alerts were originally for kidnapping, and were explicitly not to be used for custody disputes.
It turns out that there are vanishingly few stranger abductions, and the system's budget couldn't be justified. So they gradually broadened it. Today it's used almost exclusively in custody disputes.
The Panama Papers are all fiction. Someone simply created a few tens of thousands of internally consistent financial documents that superficially match the identity and dealings of thousands of people worldwide.. exactly.
So you shouldn't believe anything contained in them. Because it's really easy to create convincing forgeries.
Or just look at this story for an example of how difficult it is to create a short, single-topic document that doesn't, well, step on its own dick.
I recall that when I worked at NASA we were delighted to get "Space Station desks".
These were used desks from one of the canceled efforts to design a space station. The effort must have been lavishly funded, because they were much, much nicer than our 1960s-era dark gray steel desks that showed their decades of use.
They will almost certainly come to a settlement agreement.
To make that clearer, they will almost certainly push for a tax-deductible out of court settlement agreement rather than a non-tax-deductible judgment.
Put a can of soda in your bag. The TSA clerk will be so enthralled with scolding you and confiscating the can they will completely ignore anything else in the bag.
This once saved a Leatherman knife that I had forgotten to remove from my bag.
Another trick is to go during a time with long lines. Sure, you'll waste a half hour in the security line. But the checks will be perfunctory, with most of the TSA effort going to yelling at people to remove their shoes/belts/jackets. (People that fly once every few years legitimately don't know the arbitrary rules. Yelling doesn't help.)
The worst time is when there are few people, as the TSA intentionally slows down processing so that there is always a line. How does doing a triple-good search then improve overall security?
On the post: Australian Police Ran A Dark Web Child Porn Site For Eleven Months
Just looking at this website is illegal in many places. It's likely that the users regularly created and abandoned accounts to avoid leaving an obvious long-term record of their activities. Some may have have done it as frequently as every use. 5000 active accounts over a year might be only 100 active users.
A similar thing is true for the image view counts. Most users are presumably going back to the site rather than downloading incriminating content. And viewing with their browser caching turned off, or even with browsers that retain no state. Each time the page is viewed the images are downloaded. In some cases just scrolling up and down will load an image multiple times, or re-load the page to render additional content.
The count of individuals is important. Police are justifying their actions based on large counts. If the reality is there are few people creating and viewing child porn, it may be that the police are actually the largest purveyors and consumers.
On the post: Cop Cleans Out Wallet Of Unlicensed Hot Dog Vendor Just Because He Can
Re:
On the post: Bill Introduced That Would Make Arrested Protesters Pay Police Overtime, Gov't Expenses
Re: Re:
Once you can pass the cost to someone else, there is a strong incentive to move every expense in the operating cost column. For instance leasing the equipment instead of purchasing, and have the lease contract include training.
On the post: Spotify Finally Realizes That Streaming Isn't Reproduction Or Distribution
Not because they want clarity and fairness, but because they expect that they will be able to grab a bigger piece of the pie.
Even if that happens, licensing of existing content will continue under the current rules, so deciding what those rules actually mean is important. And once the rules are clarified, there might be little reason to make new ones.
On the post: Spotify Finally Realizes That Streaming Isn't Reproduction Or Distribution
Re:
There might be thousands of identifiable "copies" along the distribution chain, but legally that counts as Zero Copies. Not one of the copies from the master tapes, through storage, memory and registers of uncounted servers and routers counts. You don't need a separate license for DRAM chip, swap disk, flip-flop and transistor along the way.
On the post: Court Dumps Lawsuit Against Zillow Over Its Inaccurate 'Zestimates'
Re: Re:
There was also the poster that (intentionally?) conflated disparaging property (a putative undervalue estimate) with disparaging property rights (falsely claiming some aspect of ownership), combined with stretching "injurious falsehood" to cover a value estimate.
On the post: State Supreme Court Says Digital Cameras Can't Be Searched Without A Warrant
A good decision
Just as Linux devices (Trolltech Greenphone), PDAs and music players simultaneously developed into sophisticated smart phones in just a few years, digital cameras may suddenly become something more. Or perhaps not, as GoPro is demonstrating.
Arguing that digital cameras should fall into the same category as wallet photos couldn't have helped their case. To most people it just solidifies how different the two situations are.
On the post: Aspiring Actor Forges Court Order To Delist Content, Gets Busted By Judge, Forges Court Order To Delist Article About Contempt Charges
Re: Tried and got burned?
On the post: The Snopes Fight Is Even Way More Complicated Than We Originally Explained
So many sketchy things, why are they bring it to the court's attention?
The opening question might be establishing that they are truly officers of Proper Media. An corporate officer is generally a statutory employee. Exceptions may be made for officers that have extremely limited, token, perfunctory or no duties.
If they have claimed in corporate tax filings that they are not employees, then they aren't legitimate corporate officers.
It wouldn't surprise me if the judge takes the easy way out and dismisses the case because Proper Media isn't a valid plaintiff.
On the post: The Snopes Fight Is Even Way More Complicated Than We Originally Explained
If that email is genuine, and there is no reason to suspect that it is not, Proper grossly misrepresented the employment situation in their complaint.
On the post: Psychiatrist Files Lawsuit Over Wordless One-Star Review
So I checked.
Apparently this lawyer doesn't have an office, instead working out of his house. He is variously listed as a detective, computer forensic investigator and a litigation attorney. His website proclaims that he has a "law enforcement commission from the governor of South Carolina". Which sound serious, but seems to typically mean an auxiliary police officer, volunteer/reserve constable, or a park ranger.
On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 132: Is There Any Smartphone Innovation Left?
Who knows, after more than a century, typing might be gone in the blink of an eye.
On the post: Google Asks US Court To Block Terrible Canadian Supreme Court Ruling On Global Censorship
Re: Re:
You shouldn't get to claim to be a U.S. company for the purposes of court protection if the bulk of your revenue is booked as occuring in Bermuda.
On the post: Giganews Sues Perfect 10 For $20 Million For Trying To Play 'Hide The Assets' After Jury Award
There are lots of ways to transfer other assets for much less than market value when you have control of the company.
The touchstone for those transfers might be the vehicle. To transfer ownership, the title needs to be transferred. Most states really, including California, really don't like losing out on the tax revenue from vehicle sales. Typically for vehicles less than ten years old the declared sale price must be close to the "blue book" value (the state has its own tables).
On the post: Prosecutors Say Subpoenas Will Be Used For Serious Crimes Against Children, Use Them For Everything Else
Just like Amber Alterts
It turns out that there are vanishingly few stranger abductions, and the system's budget couldn't be justified. So they gradually broadened it. Today it's used almost exclusively in custody disputes.
On the post: From Sans Serif To Sans Sharif: #Fontgate Leads To Calls For Pakistan's Prime Minister To Resign
The Panama Papers are all faked
So you shouldn't believe anything contained in them. Because it's really easy to create convincing forgeries.
Or just look at this story for an example of how difficult it is to create a short, single-topic document that doesn't, well, step on its own dick.
On the post: De-Escalation Works, But US Law Enforcement Hasn't Show Much Interest In Trying It
Re: Re: To be fair
"Taking command of the situation" before you know the situation is likely to lead to conflict.
On the post: Desk Jockeying: FBI Puts Out The Call For 'Cyber Security Furniture'
These were used desks from one of the canceled efforts to design a space station. The effort must have been lavishly funded, because they were much, much nicer than our 1960s-era dark gray steel desks that showed their decades of use.
On the post: Court Won't Let Patent Troll Dismiss Its Way Out Of A Lawsuit, Orders It To Pay Legal Fees
To make that clearer, they will almost certainly push for a tax-deductible out of court settlement agreement rather than a non-tax-deductible judgment.
On the post: Taking The 'S' Out Of 'TSA:' Minneapolis Screeners Fail To Detect Contraband 94% Of The Time
Put a can of soda in your bag. The TSA clerk will be so enthralled with scolding you and confiscating the can they will completely ignore anything else in the bag.
This once saved a Leatherman knife that I had forgotten to remove from my bag.
Another trick is to go during a time with long lines. Sure, you'll waste a half hour in the security line. But the checks will be perfunctory, with most of the TSA effort going to yelling at people to remove their shoes/belts/jackets. (People that fly once every few years legitimately don't know the arbitrary rules. Yelling doesn't help.)
The worst time is when there are few people, as the TSA intentionally slows down processing so that there is always a line. How does doing a triple-good search then improve overall security?
Next >>