You could look, example, at the world of professional wrestling. Ring names are sort of like character names on a TV drama, but with a twist. Sometimes it's the wrestling promotion that comes up with the name, gimmick, or angle that gets the character "over", and sometimes it's the wrestler that comes to the promotion with it all pre-made.
You can look at the story of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who came to the fore at WWE (then WWF) during wresting's golden growth era in the mid 90s. They were known as Diesel and Razor Ramone. They were insanely popular, but ended up moving to a competiting promotion. WWF would not allow them to take the characters with them, and they were forced to use other names in the new promotion, even though well known. WWF even mocked them by putting other people in their place with the same names, perhaps to somehow prove they owned the names.
Yet, at the same time, you have people like Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan who "own" their names, and have moved back and forth between promotions without issue.
Colbert is a character, but it's also a role that (like Diesel and Ramone) can't be played successfully by anyone else. Part of what made Colbert's show work was that he was, for all intents and purposes, that character all the time, and did not fall out of character even in appearance outside the show. It would seem to be entirely wrong to stop him from being and acting in the manner he is best known for. We all lose when he can't be that character.
"Paying for a 20Mb/s internet service means 20MB/s * 60 Seconds * 60 Minutes * 24 Hours * XX days per month of download capacity. Anything less than that is "LIMITING"."
Incorrect, possibly one of the most misleading concepts out there.
A 20 MB connection means that your connection from your home to the first network point (usually a C/O or remote C/O) will test at 20 meg a second or better. It is NOT, and never has been, an assurance of 20 meg a second to any particular (random) point on the internet.
"If the ISPs do not have the capacity to serve every customer at their paid for maximum data rate, that is limiting."
It would be cost prohibitive for an ISP to build a network that could handle 100% of the customers running at 100% bandwidth at all times. When you consider that most ISPs (including the sainted Google Fiber) oversell total connectivity anywhere from 3 to 100 times gives you an idea of the situation. Having not only to purchase more connectivity from companies like Level3 or HUrricane Electric, but also to "end to end" their networks to support this would be cost prohibitive. To do so would likely double your current internet bill.
In the end, they sell you the ability to send and receive at a burst level that is higher than the sustainable level. It means that if you are downloading a Unix distribution (because people mostly do that when they download), you will be able to download it at a pretty high speed. However, if everyone in your neighborhood was download unix 24/7, it's likely you would get slower speeds.
"Between the FTC and the FCC we should be able to wrangle these Internet mobsters into shape."
Yes, you should be able to make it even less appealing for new players to enter the market, and force the existing players to adjust their plans accordingly.
All of this gets back to a car analogy - your connection speed is like your car's maximum speed. The fuel in your tank is the bandwidth. You can drive very fast and use it all up sooner, or you can drive at a reasonable pace with occassional bursts of speed and have plenty of fuel left for your full monthly "journey" online.
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"Welcome to the post-truth era's disinformation wars, ladies and gentlemen. Team "level headed" is going to need all the help it can get."
Techdirt has been working on the "post truth" era for more than a decade now. Why are you suddenly welcoming us to something that's been ongoing that long?
One sided "information" sites are (IMHO, suck it up Paul) a major contributor to the problems in modern society. Sites from Drudge to Fox "news" to Techdirt and Huffington Post all end up pushing their own somewhat extreme agenda, all under the guise of being (to quote Fox) "Fair and Balanced".
The world is full of people with 1% opinions talking like they are the majority. Civil discourse has died (f-you Paul). See?
Judge gets it right... (and this post censored for a while too!)
The judge got this exactly right. A public place is a public place, plain and simple. The steps (and surrounding area) of a court house is perhaps one of the most public places of all. You don't have to think very hard to realize that it is an area likely filled with law enforcement types, many of them in plain clothes for court appearances and such.
Simple: There is no true expectation of privacy in the public commons. Worrying about "hushed tones" and whatnot is a total misdirection, taking away from the clearly obvious fact that a public place is, well, PUBLIC.
Actually, what should have happened is that the project should have been stuctured as a normal business deal, with milestones and partial payments as those milestones are reached. The problem here is that government shovels over a pile of money and walks away, and never actually checks the end result.
That the government isn't taking action and a private company is instead trying to do it can tell you that the government is generally okay with the end results, or at least unwilling to deal with the reality of a poorly structured and un-monitored project.
Did Frontier do wrong? Looks like it. Should they be accountable? Honestly, it's a little late now. Any lawsuit will get the government dragged in, and it will look good for nobody. Want to bet that this ISP suddenly drops the lawsuit when they get a "subsidy" to develop their network?
"What does that have to do with anything? Is this just yet another situation where you can't address any facts or defend the corporations, so have to activate the deflectors?"
Paul, I know you are an idiot, but geez, give it a rest. You are going to hurt yourself!
No deflectors, and yes, I AM ADDRESSING THE FACTS. The fact (that you don't like) is that both sides use "fronts" and public facing organizations to obscure who is asking for what. The idea of the Copia Institute is to have a way to communicate to the press and media under the guise of some grand think tank / objective group when in reality it's just more Mike Masnick and his Minions say stuff.
Like Step 2 and a few other classic projects, it seems to have been stillborn, with absolutely nothing new on the site since March. Considering how much volume of stuff gets posted here on Techdirt, it's pretty much a good indication that the project is already dormant (and I know, that will get the standard Mike "you don't know anything" post, which he used about Step2 as well. You can check what's new over there if you like. it's been dormant since 2014).
See, the fact is simple: Using fronts isn't uncommon. Yes, I agree that naming something "digital citizen" is completely misleading, but then again, naming something an "institute" to try to put a scholarly spin on the same old same old isn't much better.
So Paul, perhaps you should consider that facts exist outside of what you have been carefully (and repeatedly) spoon fed here. Expanding your thought process might even improve you as a person, moving you up the ladder slightly above primordial ooze.
Remind me again how Wikileaks isn't playing politics? Timing the release like this is just plain nasty, gotta wonder if the Republicans have inside connections.
Between that and all the hateful anti-Hillary GIFs appearing online, you gotta know some modern day Karl Rove is pushing a social media agenda like mad - and sucking at it.
A whole bunch of NOT MUCH here. The allegations come from a competitor unable or unwilling to finance their own network. The reasons have nothing to do with frontier, and instead have everything to do with this simple map:
Basically, outside of a few areas, West Virginia is as densely populated as Alaska. The costs to provide boradband service to everyone is pretty darn high, when you consider the distance per drop, and the amount of cabling that would be required. Distance wise, it makes DSL lines all but useless, as they lose speed with distance and most people would be quite far from a CO.
It's not surprising.
Now the lawsuit (which contain allegations, not confirmed facts) raises some good issues. But really, the company should be suing the government for lack of management, and not Frontier for using the funds to expand the network. This appears to be a classic case of throwing money at something and then not checking to see how it was spent.
That it took them 2 years to even SERVE the lawsuit tells you everything you need to know.
As piracy becomes less attractive and the legal services become more attractive... and if the pirate versions are harder to reach and harder to use, you can guess the rest.
"Do you really think anyone will respect copyright (more) because of this shenanigans?"
I am betting that more than a few people will consider getting out of the business of selling downloads. I am thinking that having pirate links a LITTLE harder to get to make slightly change the flow of the tide. Think of it as a butterfly effect thing, except of course this is just about the biggest butterfly of them all.
"Can you perhaps cite the part of the law that states a percentage of links that need to be infringing in order for that not to applicable?"
There is no hard and fast number. It's a question of inevitable knowledge. If your site is entirely nothing but likes to pirated material, it's hard to deny that you know it. Heck, all you had to do was look at their most popular download list, and you would see. I am sure that the site admins did that regularly. For that matter, in selling advertising for high rates, I am sure they were very much aware which pages and which downloads were generating the most attention, traffic, and therefore profit.
if those top files had all been unix distributions and free android apps, then they might have some deniability.
"Citation for the applicable law? Apologies for not believing the bare assertions of a proven liar, but that's the hole you've dug for yourself."
Paul, I cannot and will not spend all the time required to teach you the basics of criminal conspiracies. Knowledge of and profiting from a crime is in itself a crime. Selling ad space on pages full of pirate downloads - knowing fully well that they are pirated material - creates that basic conspiracy.
"CNet seems to do OK, as does Sourceforge and a number of other free software repositories."
You can check Alexa to see the deal. Kat dot CR was ranked in the top 20 websites in the world. CNET as a whole was around #120, but downloads only account for about a third of their hits. So there is a major order of magnitude thing at play here.
Just as importantly, there are literally hundreds or thousands of torrent search sites, including kat clones and mirrors. Their actual traffic position was much more likely on the edge of top 10. CNET is an exceptional case, a rare site indeed. There are only a very few sites in that marketplace (like Tucows), and otherwise few get involved.
"Do you have any defence for your claims, or are you as ever talking out of your ass and creating a fictional reality where you can attack this site for imaginary indiscretions?"
Actually, your assertions seem to be the sort of crap you always come up with, trying to poke holes and ignoring the proverbial elephants in the room. Perhaps it would be to your benefit to read the criminal complaint and actually try to understand it (you can use the dictionary for the bigger words, if that will help).
First amendment arguments in this area generally run into a dead end (ask your sainted Lessig about that). The problem is actually pretty simple:
What EXACT free speech is being violated?
The question is pretty important. In the same manner that I don't have access to the coding of this website (I can only see the results, not the code driving it), I don't have any particular rights to code that may exist as part of an item, beyond those set forth in the purchase agreement. You have ownership of the thing, and a license to use the code to operate the machine.
So the hurdle is simple: Before they can have a hope of winning the argument, EFF would have to work harder to define what right is being actually broken. If they cannot define it simply and directly within existing legal terms, then they are very likely to fail.
The police used the phone to do something it can do without password and without otherwise unlocking it. No debate here, all phones can make an emergency call. That information is "free".
After that, getting the information from the carrier is a no brainer as well. The phone company has that information and they are generally more than willing to share it.
So there really isn't much here, except perhaps a cop who is a little smarter than most taking advantage of technology to bring a criminal to justice.
Apparently, Techdirt hates it when criminals get arrested!
You might be able to play the secondary infringement card if a small number of links on KAT had been pirated material. You might even have been able to play it if say, 20% of the links were pirated material.
However, reality is different. Almost every popular torrent listed on the site was pirated. TV shows and such were sorted into special pages with information provided, which clearly showed that the site owners and maintainers knew what was on their site.
It's also clear that the guy was selling advertising on the site knowing that the attraction was piracy, and was charging more for popular pages. Knowing the material was pirated, knowing that people are coming because they can get illegal content, and selling ads based on this a direct infringement situation. They don't have to actually rip of the content or host it, the only have to profit from it.
Put it another way: Do you honestly think that KickAssLegalSoftwareDownloads would have been able to collect millions in ad fees?
Remind us again how corporate sovereignty is going to destroy all laws and make each us slave to the corporations... oh yeah, wait, first big cases, all won by the countries and not the corporations.
Some of the highest profile copyright cases (including those of mega-fail defendants like Thomas and Tenebaum started out with VERY VERY VERY low offers of settlement. Considering the volume of infringement in those cases (Thomas was charged related to 30 or so file, even though there were literally hundred or even thousands possible) and yet the settlement offered was as low as a few thousand dollars.
So for Cruz, a settlement in the same range is likely. That isn't political favoritism or anything like that - it's a reasonable offer made in almost every case.
The real difference? Cruz probably has lawyers smart enough to know to settle, instead of pushing on and on through court with horrible legal advice, crashing into a dead end of full liability and a life long punishment to pay off.
In most cases, it's how you choose to handle it. Cruz will likely have it handled quietly and discretely, an amount will be paid and the case will be settled, and everyone can move on. Jammie Thomas? Who knows where she is hiding anymore, there ain't much call for download martyrs these days.
I had the same opinion. Reading the story here (and at the Times) made me think that there is a whole lot more to this story that just isn't being told.
First off, such a small amount of a drug should lead to an arrest, if it's illegal. But that arrest should lead to bail, not three weeks of incarceration. We are left to fill in an incredibly huge blank here.Having a lawyer that is pushing for her to take the deal rather than fight it seems pretty weird too, considering the lawyer SHOULD know that the $2 test isn't always accurate.
The story reads more like "sweatshop law" rather than anything to do with a defective drug test. It would seem that the lawyer and the police were on he same team.
When you reconsider the story in that manner, you start to understand better. Officers trained to believe a test is absolute proof, a lawyer who does nothing to correct them, and as a team they can crow about their huge numbers of drug arrests and convictions.
The $2 drug test isn't a big deal here, except that the results are being misrepresented as "absolute proof" when they are at best a "strong indicator". I think they should still be enough for an arrest, but should also be something that leads to an insanely low bail, or even a ROR with a future court date, especially when talking about such a small amount of "drugs" seized.
I don't feel any particular sympathy for the girl. Yes, it sucks, but yes, the story also provides enough details to suggest that she made a series of pretty solid errors along the way and pretty much opened herself up for what looks like an arrest mill operation.
Can anyone explain why there was no bail on the table? I am thinking there is more to this than meets the eye.
This story honestly is garbage. Some borderline misogynistic references and a whole bunch of crap assumptions, it's almost like Karl wrote it.
Let's see. Moving the opening ceremony (you know, the one with no drama about who wins) into relative prime time seems like a no brainer. No, it won't be live, but honestly, DOES IT MATTER? Live and most people miss it or delayed by an hour and somewhat time compressed seems like a good choice here.
Moreover, the "most live" is in no small part because the events are happening in a time zone that is very convenient for the US. It makes it very much more realistic to run stuff live instead of the usual up to 12 hour delay (because few people want to be up at 3 in the morning to watch women's shot put or what have you). It also allows them to use prime time for "best from today" coverage and that's pretty good too.
I think you are making a truly big deal out of nothing particularly serious.
On the post: Intellectual Property Fun: Is Comedy Central Claiming It Owns The Character Stephen Colbert?
You can look at the story of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who came to the fore at WWE (then WWF) during wresting's golden growth era in the mid 90s. They were known as Diesel and Razor Ramone. They were insanely popular, but ended up moving to a competiting promotion. WWF would not allow them to take the characters with them, and they were forced to use other names in the new promotion, even though well known. WWF even mocked them by putting other people in their place with the same names, perhaps to somehow prove they owned the names.
Yet, at the same time, you have people like Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan who "own" their names, and have moved back and forth between promotions without issue.
Colbert is a character, but it's also a role that (like Diesel and Ramone) can't be played successfully by anyone else. Part of what made Colbert's show work was that he was, for all intents and purposes, that character all the time, and did not fall out of character even in appearance outside the show. It would seem to be entirely wrong to stop him from being and acting in the manner he is best known for. We all lose when he can't be that character.
On the post: Wireless Industry To Request En Banc Appeal Hearing On Net Neutrality Rules
Incorrect, possibly one of the most misleading concepts out there.
A 20 MB connection means that your connection from your home to the first network point (usually a C/O or remote C/O) will test at 20 meg a second or better. It is NOT, and never has been, an assurance of 20 meg a second to any particular (random) point on the internet.
"If the ISPs do not have the capacity to serve every customer at their paid for maximum data rate, that is limiting."
It would be cost prohibitive for an ISP to build a network that could handle 100% of the customers running at 100% bandwidth at all times. When you consider that most ISPs (including the sainted Google Fiber) oversell total connectivity anywhere from 3 to 100 times gives you an idea of the situation. Having not only to purchase more connectivity from companies like Level3 or HUrricane Electric, but also to "end to end" their networks to support this would be cost prohibitive. To do so would likely double your current internet bill.
In the end, they sell you the ability to send and receive at a burst level that is higher than the sustainable level. It means that if you are downloading a Unix distribution (because people mostly do that when they download), you will be able to download it at a pretty high speed. However, if everyone in your neighborhood was download unix 24/7, it's likely you would get slower speeds.
"Between the FTC and the FCC we should be able to wrangle these Internet mobsters into shape."
Yes, you should be able to make it even less appealing for new players to enter the market, and force the existing players to adjust their plans accordingly.
All of this gets back to a car analogy - your connection speed is like your car's maximum speed. The fuel in your tank is the bandwidth. You can drive very fast and use it all up sooner, or you can drive at a reasonable pace with occassional bursts of speed and have plenty of fuel left for your full monthly "journey" online.
On the post: 'Wish I Had The Power' To Hack Enemies' Emails, Says Man Very Close To Having Such Power
This comment was held for moderation for at least 24 hours
Enjoy the results!
On the post: Putin's Internet Trolls Are Stoking The Vitriolic Fire By Posing As Trump Supporters
This post will be held for moderation for 24 - 72 hours
Techdirt has been working on the "post truth" era for more than a decade now. Why are you suddenly welcoming us to something that's been ongoing that long?
One sided "information" sites are (IMHO, suck it up Paul) a major contributor to the problems in modern society. Sites from Drudge to Fox "news" to Techdirt and Huffington Post all end up pushing their own somewhat extreme agenda, all under the guise of being (to quote Fox) "Fair and Balanced".
The world is full of people with 1% opinions talking like they are the majority. Civil discourse has died (f-you Paul). See?
On the post: Court Says Bugs The FBI Planted Around California Courthouses Did Not Violate Anyone's Expectation Of Privacy
Judge gets it right... (and this post censored for a while too!)
Simple: There is no true expectation of privacy in the public commons. Worrying about "hushed tones" and whatnot is a total misdirection, taking away from the clearly obvious fact that a public place is, well, PUBLIC.
DUH! Judge wins!
On the post: Lawsuit Claims Frontier Misused Millions In Federal Broadband Stimulus Funds
Re: Re: YAwn
That the government isn't taking action and a private company is instead trying to do it can tell you that the government is generally okay with the end results, or at least unwilling to deal with the reality of a poorly structured and un-monitored project.
Did Frontier do wrong? Looks like it. Should they be accountable? Honestly, it's a little late now. Any lawsuit will get the government dragged in, and it will look good for nobody. Want to bet that this ISP suddenly drops the lawsuit when they get a "subsidy" to develop their network?
On the post: MPAA Front Group, Pretending To Represent Consumer Interests, Slams CloudFlare For Not Censoring The Internet
Re: Re: *cough*
Paul, I know you are an idiot, but geez, give it a rest. You are going to hurt yourself!
No deflectors, and yes, I AM ADDRESSING THE FACTS. The fact (that you don't like) is that both sides use "fronts" and public facing organizations to obscure who is asking for what. The idea of the Copia Institute is to have a way to communicate to the press and media under the guise of some grand think tank / objective group when in reality it's just more Mike Masnick and his Minions say stuff.
Like Step 2 and a few other classic projects, it seems to have been stillborn, with absolutely nothing new on the site since March. Considering how much volume of stuff gets posted here on Techdirt, it's pretty much a good indication that the project is already dormant (and I know, that will get the standard Mike "you don't know anything" post, which he used about Step2 as well. You can check what's new over there if you like. it's been dormant since 2014).
See, the fact is simple: Using fronts isn't uncommon. Yes, I agree that naming something "digital citizen" is completely misleading, but then again, naming something an "institute" to try to put a scholarly spin on the same old same old isn't much better.
So Paul, perhaps you should consider that facts exist outside of what you have been carefully (and repeatedly) spoon fed here. Expanding your thought process might even improve you as a person, moving you up the ladder slightly above primordial ooze.
On the post: MPAA Front Group, Pretending To Represent Consumer Interests, Slams CloudFlare For Not Censoring The Internet
*cough*
Pot, meet kettle.
On the post: Yes, The Democratic National Committee Flat Out Lied In Claiming No Donor Financial Info Leaked
Between that and all the hateful anti-Hillary GIFs appearing online, you gotta know some modern day Karl Rove is pushing a social media agenda like mad - and sucking at it.
On the post: Lawsuit Claims Frontier Misused Millions In Federal Broadband Stimulus Funds
YAwn
http://s144.photobucket.com/user/michael5186/media/WV.jpg.html
Basically, outside of a few areas, West Virginia is as densely populated as Alaska. The costs to provide boradband service to everyone is pretty darn high, when you consider the distance per drop, and the amount of cabling that would be required. Distance wise, it makes DSL lines all but useless, as they lose speed with distance and most people would be quite far from a CO.
It's not surprising.
Now the lawsuit (which contain allegations, not confirmed facts) raises some good issues. But really, the company should be suing the government for lack of management, and not Frontier for using the funds to expand the network. This appears to be a classic case of throwing money at something and then not checking to see how it was spent.
That it took them 2 years to even SERVE the lawsuit tells you everything you need to know.
On the post: Kickass Torrents Gets The Megaupload Treatment: Site Seized, Owner Arrested And Charged With Criminal Infringement
Re: Re: Oh, wahwahwah...
"Do you expect a surge in DVD purchases?"
Your answer is here:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160708/18024234925/as-uk-piracy-falls-to-record-lows-govern ment-still-wants-to-put-pirates-jail-10-years.shtml
As piracy becomes less attractive and the legal services become more attractive... and if the pirate versions are harder to reach and harder to use, you can guess the rest.
"Do you really think anyone will respect copyright (more) because of this shenanigans?"
I am betting that more than a few people will consider getting out of the business of selling downloads. I am thinking that having pirate links a LITTLE harder to get to make slightly change the flow of the tide. Think of it as a butterfly effect thing, except of course this is just about the biggest butterfly of them all.
On the post: Kickass Torrents Gets The Megaupload Treatment: Site Seized, Owner Arrested And Charged With Criminal Infringement
Re: Re: Oh, wahwahwah...
There is no hard and fast number. It's a question of inevitable knowledge. If your site is entirely nothing but likes to pirated material, it's hard to deny that you know it. Heck, all you had to do was look at their most popular download list, and you would see. I am sure that the site admins did that regularly. For that matter, in selling advertising for high rates, I am sure they were very much aware which pages and which downloads were generating the most attention, traffic, and therefore profit.
if those top files had all been unix distributions and free android apps, then they might have some deniability.
"Citation for the applicable law? Apologies for not believing the bare assertions of a proven liar, but that's the hole you've dug for yourself."
Paul, I cannot and will not spend all the time required to teach you the basics of criminal conspiracies. Knowledge of and profiting from a crime is in itself a crime. Selling ad space on pages full of pirate downloads - knowing fully well that they are pirated material - creates that basic conspiracy.
"CNet seems to do OK, as does Sourceforge and a number of other free software repositories."
You can check Alexa to see the deal. Kat dot CR was ranked in the top 20 websites in the world. CNET as a whole was around #120, but downloads only account for about a third of their hits. So there is a major order of magnitude thing at play here.
Just as importantly, there are literally hundreds or thousands of torrent search sites, including kat clones and mirrors. Their actual traffic position was much more likely on the edge of top 10. CNET is an exceptional case, a rare site indeed. There are only a very few sites in that marketplace (like Tucows), and otherwise few get involved.
"Do you have any defence for your claims, or are you as ever talking out of your ass and creating a fictional reality where you can attack this site for imaginary indiscretions?"
Actually, your assertions seem to be the sort of crap you always come up with, trying to poke holes and ignoring the proverbial elephants in the room. Perhaps it would be to your benefit to read the criminal complaint and actually try to understand it (you can use the dictionary for the bigger words, if that will help).
On the post: EFF Lawsuit Challenges DMCA's Digital Locks Provision As First Amendment Violation
What EXACT free speech is being violated?
The question is pretty important. In the same manner that I don't have access to the coding of this website (I can only see the results, not the code driving it), I don't have any particular rights to code that may exist as part of an item, beyond those set forth in the purchase agreement. You have ownership of the thing, and a license to use the code to operate the machine.
So the hurdle is simple: Before they can have a hope of winning the argument, EFF would have to work harder to define what right is being actually broken. If they cannot define it simply and directly within existing legal terms, then they are very likely to fail.
On the post: Ed Snowden And Bunnie Huang Design Phone Case To Warn You If Your Phone Is Compromised
All you need is a case, and LED, and a battery. As soon as the case is on the phone, turn on the LED. It would be right probably 99% of the time.
On the post: Court Says Cop Calling 911 With Suspect's Phone To Obtain Owner Info Is Not A Search
The police used the phone to do something it can do without password and without otherwise unlocking it. No debate here, all phones can make an emergency call. That information is "free".
After that, getting the information from the carrier is a no brainer as well. The phone company has that information and they are generally more than willing to share it.
So there really isn't much here, except perhaps a cop who is a little smarter than most taking advantage of technology to bring a criminal to justice.
Apparently, Techdirt hates it when criminals get arrested!
On the post: Kickass Torrents Gets The Megaupload Treatment: Site Seized, Owner Arrested And Charged With Criminal Infringement
Oh, wahwahwah...
However, reality is different. Almost every popular torrent listed on the site was pirated. TV shows and such were sorted into special pages with information provided, which clearly showed that the site owners and maintainers knew what was on their site.
It's also clear that the guy was selling advertising on the site knowing that the attraction was piracy, and was charging more for popular pages. Knowing the material was pirated, knowing that people are coming because they can get illegal content, and selling ads based on this a direct infringement situation. They don't have to actually rip of the content or host it, the only have to profit from it.
Put it another way: Do you honestly think that KickAssLegalSoftwareDownloads would have been able to collect millions in ad fees?
On the post: Defeat Of Philip Morris In Its Corporate Sovereignty Case Against Uruguay Likely To Open Floodgates For Tobacco Packaging Legislation
So remind us again...
"the sky is falling..."
Sooner or later, people stop listening.
On the post: Ted Cruz Campaign Infringed On Copyright, But Will Probably Be Treated With Kid Gloves Just Because
Are you kidding me?
So for Cruz, a settlement in the same range is likely. That isn't political favoritism or anything like that - it's a reasonable offer made in almost every case.
The real difference? Cruz probably has lawyers smart enough to know to settle, instead of pushing on and on through court with horrible legal advice, crashing into a dead end of full liability and a life long punishment to pay off.
In most cases, it's how you choose to handle it. Cruz will likely have it handled quietly and discretely, an amount will be paid and the case will be settled, and everyone can move on. Jammie Thomas? Who knows where she is hiding anymore, there ain't much call for download martyrs these days.
On the post: Field Drug Tests: The $2 Tool That Can Destroy Lives
Re: A Crumb?
First off, such a small amount of a drug should lead to an arrest, if it's illegal. But that arrest should lead to bail, not three weeks of incarceration. We are left to fill in an incredibly huge blank here.Having a lawyer that is pushing for her to take the deal rather than fight it seems pretty weird too, considering the lawyer SHOULD know that the $2 test isn't always accurate.
The story reads more like "sweatshop law" rather than anything to do with a defective drug test. It would seem that the lawyer and the police were on he same team.
When you reconsider the story in that manner, you start to understand better. Officers trained to believe a test is absolute proof, a lawyer who does nothing to correct them, and as a team they can crow about their huge numbers of drug arrests and convictions.
The $2 drug test isn't a big deal here, except that the results are being misrepresented as "absolute proof" when they are at best a "strong indicator". I think they should still be enough for an arrest, but should also be something that leads to an insanely low bail, or even a ROR with a future court date, especially when talking about such a small amount of "drugs" seized.
I don't feel any particular sympathy for the girl. Yes, it sucks, but yes, the story also provides enough details to suggest that she made a series of pretty solid errors along the way and pretty much opened herself up for what looks like an arrest mill operation.
Can anyone explain why there was no bail on the table? I am thinking there is more to this than meets the eye.
On the post: NBC's 'Most Live Olympics Ever' Will Have A One Hour Broadcast Delay For The Opening Ceremony
Tripe
Let's see. Moving the opening ceremony (you know, the one with no drama about who wins) into relative prime time seems like a no brainer. No, it won't be live, but honestly, DOES IT MATTER? Live and most people miss it or delayed by an hour and somewhat time compressed seems like a good choice here.
Moreover, the "most live" is in no small part because the events are happening in a time zone that is very convenient for the US. It makes it very much more realistic to run stuff live instead of the usual up to 12 hour delay (because few people want to be up at 3 in the morning to watch women's shot put or what have you). It also allows them to use prime time for "best from today" coverage and that's pretty good too.
I think you are making a truly big deal out of nothing particularly serious.
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