Oh god please stop with the inane conspiracy theories regarding the federal reserve. The federal reserve is a government entity. It just happens to be subject to regulatory capture more openly than most. Congress sets the fed's mandate and the President nominates the chairman.
Argh! Yes there is a difference. Treasuries != Cash. You cannot take treasuries to go out and purchase goods and services. Therefore, you cannot bid up the price level using treasuries. Therefore, you cannot create inflation by financing spending with debt.
Re: I also noted their "technical difficulties" with a dual-boot system
Yes. I've met several forensic court experts and the first step is to take the hard-drive out, setup a write block and dd the whole disk to an image. Then you backup the image and start working on the image itself. At that point, the hardware becomes useless.
Another way to put this is that ICE is practicing being childish. The drive is probably encrypted and they most likely are just doing that to be vindictive. Quite honestly, I just don't see any good reason for ICE to even exist.
I'm not sure this is "give it away and pray" Mike. He gives away a demo version (pdf) and then sells a premium version. (paper) It's a very simple setup, but it's not necessarily a bad model generally.
How is it willful ignorance to not do the research to figure out who uploaded something and whether they had the legal rights to do so? It seems like simple ignorance caused by a lack of desire to spend huge sums of money doing things which are other people's responsibility to do.
Also, all that you have demonstrated is that they might make less money without illegal downloads. That does not mean they would not make enough money to stay profitable.
And we are not talking about honest mistakes. If I think that your car is my car and I put my key in it, that is an honest mistake. If I simply assume that it is and call the cops when I see you driving away, that is being reckless.
It's true we don't have the whole story. But I imagine that the discovery request probably includes a request for proof that they have copyright over the content they claim copyright over. If they can't produce that, the DMCA takedown request was fraudulent without ever having to know who does own the copyright. The discovery could also reveal materials such as junior lawyers asking their supervisors: "Do we have rights over content XYZ?" And the supervisor responding with something like: "Who cares? Just issue a DMCA take down."
You're right, we don't have all the facts, but if hotfile is smart about how they do this, they won't have to answer the admittedly embarrassing questions you mentioned above.
Also, the whole "do you have a license?" question would be easy to handle: "Our upload process says you must be authorized to upload it and that you give us a license. So I suppose we do have a license unless someone fraudulently uploaded content they were not authorized to upload. But that's not our responsibility to detect."
I don't see how an anti-piracy plan "derives independent economic value from not being publicly known". I mean, we're all going to find out what it is soon enough. Unless of course the plan involves some illegal activity and therefore they would loose a bunch of money if people knew about it. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.
They would never have to testify on that issue. All they have to do is provide the documentation that shows the MPAA filed a take-down and then ask the MPAA for evidence they own the copyright.
I don't think this is an issue of UK courts having jurisdiction in the US. I think it's actually closer to being the other way around. My reading of this is that basically, if work A is copyrighted in the US and you go to the UK and copy it, UK law applies to the act of infringement, but whether the work is under copyright or not is determined by US law. (within certain bounds of course) So it would be some US laws having applicability in the UK. I don't know if this is right, but that's what it sounds like to me.
I must say that I am really glad this is happening on Techdirt. I trust Mike not to just hand over my info if the CoC rolls its muscles a bit.
I didn't really expect better from the CoC. (Though I didn't expect them to pay any attention to my comment.) I merely recommended we try to open dialog with someone whose tragic story they are abusing. As Mike pointed out, I specifically discouraged harassing that woman because I know that some people (mostly under 16) will wrongly think it's a good idea. The CoC's response was to try to get such reasonable speech censored. Nothing more consistent than using censorship in the promotion of a censorship bill I suppose.
Surely if the CoC has its way with PROTECT IP, sites like Techdirt will be taken down for commenters advocating open dialog instead of blind allegiance to the tenets of IP. I suppose Adam Smith was right, business organizations are always out to screw the public and their competitors.
I don't think you read my comment and the link I gave on the original post. It pointed to the official website of her city where she is a member of the "Mayor Council". To say that she is a private citizen is wrong if only just because of that.
Then there is the part where she shares her story with the whole world as propaganda for a bill in the house of representative. She has joined the public debate and is definitely fair game for a polite letter trying to explain to her that she is making a mistake. If she does not want to be part of the public debate, she shouldn't go on the record telling her story to the world and pushing legislation.
As for forcible enlightenment, I don't see how that is. Sending a letter to someone does not force them to read it or pay any attention to its content or reasoning. There is nothing arrogant about trying to converse with those on the other side of the aisle.
As it turns out no letter was sent by me. Nobody responded to my offer and I didn't feel like sending a letter coming from me alone would have the effect I was hoping for.
I live and work in the US. As it turns out, if a co-worker felt uncomfortable because of this, they could complain to a supervisor who would then face the option of exposing the company to a lawsuit (which they would loose easily based on precedent) or take some sort of disciplinary action against me. Let me guess what would happen... So no, telling people to piss off is not an option. As much as I don't think this sort of images should be considered offensive, they are considered offensive and so I'm just asking Mike to give us a heads up so those of us who need to can read the article on a cellphone or wait until we get home in order to not get in trouble.
The problem is not just a few bad apples. The problem is that agents of the state are afforded so much power that a few bad apples are enough to fuck things up pretty bad. The solution is to make sure that 1) police officers are held accountable at a higher degree than normal citizens. (Double sentences if it's a police officer) 2) make sure police officers do not have any powers above and beyond what normal citizens do.
I think only marketers and lawyers is quite an absurd conclusion. There are lots of service jobs which replicators do not eliminate: Researchers to invent better replicators, healthcare professionals, computer programmers, architects, teachers, starship captains, etc... Also, replicators are limited in size so you would need people to assemble large objects from replicated parts. Finally, let's say there are no jobs needed. What that would mean would be that replicators have replaced humans. So what? We would all be fabulously wealthy incredibly rapidly. Jobs are a means not an end in themselves: http://youtu.be/GTQnarzmTOc
On the post: Apple Does Not Have More Cash Than The US Gov't; Stop Saying That It Does
Re:
On the post: Apple Does Not Have More Cash Than The US Gov't; Stop Saying That It Does
Re: Re: Re: confused
On the post: Court Finds Megaupload Could Be Guilty Of Direct Infringement In Perfect 10 Case
Re: Re:
On the post: Apple Does Not Have More Cash Than The US Gov't; Stop Saying That It Does
Re: Re: Re: confused
On the post: Court Finds Megaupload Could Be Guilty Of Direct Infringement In Perfect 10 Case
On the post: Another View Of The Netflix Price Hike: It's Speeding Up The Shift To Online Streaming
On the post: Feds Say They Can Search Bradley Manning's Friend's Laptop Because They Can
Re: I also noted their "technical difficulties" with a dual-boot system
Another way to put this is that ICE is practicing being childish. The drive is probably encrypted and they most likely are just doing that to be vindictive. Quite honestly, I just don't see any good reason for ICE to even exist.
On the post: Copy Protection Does Not Mean More Sales
On the post: Hotfile Claims Warner Bros. Issued Takedowns On Content It Had No Copyright Over
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Also, all that you have demonstrated is that they might make less money without illegal downloads. That does not mean they would not make enough money to stay profitable.
And we are not talking about honest mistakes. If I think that your car is my car and I put my key in it, that is an honest mistake. If I simply assume that it is and call the cops when I see you driving away, that is being reckless.
On the post: Hotfile Claims Warner Bros. Issued Takedowns On Content It Had No Copyright Over
Re: Re: Re:
You're right, we don't have all the facts, but if hotfile is smart about how they do this, they won't have to answer the admittedly embarrassing questions you mentioned above.
Also, the whole "do you have a license?" question would be easy to handle: "Our upload process says you must be authorized to upload it and that you give us a license. So I suppose we do have a license unless someone fraudulently uploaded content they were not authorized to upload. But that's not our responsibility to detect."
On the post: Hotfile Claims Warner Bros. Issued Takedowns On Content It Had No Copyright Over
On the post: Hotfile Claims Warner Bros. Issued Takedowns On Content It Had No Copyright Over
Re:
On the post: Forget The Stormtrooper Costumes, Get Worried About UK Courts Saying They Can Judge US Copyright Law
On the post: US Chamber Of Commerce: Communicating With Woman Whose Sad Story We Manipulated Is Harassment
I didn't really expect better from the CoC. (Though I didn't expect them to pay any attention to my comment.) I merely recommended we try to open dialog with someone whose tragic story they are abusing. As Mike pointed out, I specifically discouraged harassing that woman because I know that some people (mostly under 16) will wrongly think it's a good idea. The CoC's response was to try to get such reasonable speech censored. Nothing more consistent than using censorship in the promotion of a censorship bill I suppose.
Surely if the CoC has its way with PROTECT IP, sites like Techdirt will be taken down for commenters advocating open dialog instead of blind allegiance to the tenets of IP. I suppose Adam Smith was right, business organizations are always out to screw the public and their competitors.
On the post: US Chamber Of Commerce: Communicating With Woman Whose Sad Story We Manipulated Is Harassment
Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
Then there is the part where she shares her story with the whole world as propaganda for a bill in the house of representative. She has joined the public debate and is definitely fair game for a polite letter trying to explain to her that she is making a mistake. If she does not want to be part of the public debate, she shouldn't go on the record telling her story to the world and pushing legislation.
As for forcible enlightenment, I don't see how that is. Sending a letter to someone does not force them to read it or pay any attention to its content or reasoning. There is nothing arrogant about trying to converse with those on the other side of the aisle.
As it turns out no letter was sent by me. Nobody responded to my offer and I didn't feel like sending a letter coming from me alone would have the effect I was hoping for.
On the post: Idea/Expression Dichotomy Is Dead; Judge Allows Photographer's Lawsuit Against Rihanna To Move Forward
Re: Re:
On the post: Idea/Expression Dichotomy Is Dead; Judge Allows Photographer's Lawsuit Against Rihanna To Move Forward
On the post: Star Trek In The Age Of Intellectual Property
Re: we allready have replicators
On the post: Man Made Famous Over 2006 Arrest For Videotaping Police... Arrested Again While Videotaping Police
Re: it is not so bizzare
On the post: Star Trek In The Age Of Intellectual Property
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