It doesn't quite work that way. I can live in California, have all my servers in California, do absolutely nothing myself that would cause me to do business in the UK, and yet you could come along and force me to do business in the UK merely by accessing my Web site. And I can't block you, because you can go through Tor or a VPN and make your IP address appear to be from anywhere in the world you want. I'd literally have to block everything and then whitelist only IP blocks known to belong to network segments physically in the United States, which I can't reliably do because that information isn't known (nobody but IBM for instance knows exactly which of their assigned netblocks is allocated to which physical facilities, assuming they even map them to physical facilities).
The problem comes from trying to take a different view of on-line businesses vs. brick-and-mortar ones. A b&b business can't control where it's customers live, but we treat it as doing business where the business is located regardless of where the customers come from. On-line we abandon that and try to treat the business as being located wherever it's customers are, not where the business is. Why? Why not treat a b&m business as doing business wherever it's customers live instead? Because, obviously, that would cause exactly the kinds of headaches on-line businesses are subject to, and we consider those headaches unreasonable. So why do we suddenly accept them as reasonable?
Yes, and those companies are wrong. You have to take reasonable steps to protect your trademark, but one of those reasonable steps can be to evaluate the usage and determine that it isn't confusingly similar to your trademark and thus doesn't warrant any action at this time.
Because companies would move the equipment, damage it in the process, then try and claim they hadn't done anything (how many times have we heard that from users?), move the machine back to where it was originally if need be and try and get the manufacturer to cover the repairs. So rig the equipment so there's no problem if it's left alone, but if it's moved significantly it locks itself. If the owner's followed the service contract they'll never have this happen because they'll have you there during the move and you'll unlock the machine as part of checking that it's installed properly in the new location. And if you get a service call for a "faulty" machine and it turns out it's been locked because it was moved, the owner can't try and make you foot the bill for damage they caused. Most of these machines that I've dealt with can have the lockdown disabled, and the manufacturer will do exactly that for you if you're not renewing the service contract (although they'll also usually require you to sign a statement that you understand the equipment will not be covered by a warranty or service agreement after this point and if it needs repairs it'll all be on your dime).
I was taught to do something similar on cars. I'd chalk-mark parts before work was done, so I could tell afterwards if they'd moved stuff they shouldn't've or failed to move stuff they ought to have. Worst case was catching a dealer trying to tell me they'd put a completely new transmission in (manufacturer recall, the transmission was to be completely pulled and replaced, housing and all), but there on the "new" transmission were the exact chalk marks I'd put on the old one marking the alignment with the engine and the drive shaft.
There's another reasonable reason to lock a machine like this: there's some fairly delicate parts in these machines that can be easily damaged if the machine's not moved properly or isn't placed and leveled correctly. Most manufacturers already say "If you don't have us assisting in moving it to make sure everything's done right, we won't do repairs on it and won't support it from that point on until we've come in and done a complete prep-and-install on the machine to make sure everything's right again. And it will be at your expense.". It's much the same reason companies I worked for put ShockWatch tags on expensive equipment we were shipping, to be able to tell when it arrived whether it'd been mishandled. Policy was that if it arrived with a ShockWatch tag showing red, we were to document everything including photos and make sure the damage claim form was filled out and signed by the driver before we accepted delivery. If they'd broken it in transit we wanted their insurance to be picking up the tab for replacing a hundred grand worth of tool, not us.
That's one of the problems with ad networks: Yahoo has no direct control over what ads get carried and may not know exactly who's placing ads on their site. That's one reason I'd never allow an ad network onto a site I run, I want to know who I'm dealing with and I can't if there's a middleman in between.
They aren't losing me. Frankly, both the Democrats and the GOP are about as bad when it comes to personal rights. The Dems are somewhat better, but neither's particularly good so that point's a wash. And the Dems are closer to my positions on all those other issues. So why in the world would I abandon any hope of progress on those other issues just to fail to make a point about personal rights? I hold no political loyalty to the Democrats, but as long as they're a better choice overall than the GOP I'm going to tend to vote for them. The only time I wouldn't is when there's an even better overall option who stands a reasonable chance of being elected. But I'm not going to spend my vote on someone who's got no chance of being elected unless there aren't any other acceptable options. I'd rather get 70% than lose 100%.
An example is the San Diego mayoral primary. The GOP candidate "won", but didn't carry a majority because the Democratic vote was split between 2 candidates (one of whom had withdrawn and endorsed the other, but once the slate is set candidates can't be removed). Unfortunately for the GOP the rules are that if no candidate gets a majority then the top two go into a runoff election, and the people who voted for the #3 Democrat are... unlikely to vote GOP against the #2 Democrat. But you can see the issue: if I vote in favor of a candidate I 100% agree with but who isn't going to poll enough to even be in the running, I may end up seeing the candidate I 100% disagree with elected over the one I 70% agree with. Which is one reason I favor preferential voting, where I rank candidates in order with my vote going to my highest-ranked candidate who's still in the running and if no candidate has a majority the one with the fewest votes is dropped from the field and the votes re-tallied until one of them wins >50% of the votes.
I'd note that as a tech one sure sign that the presentation is content-free or deceptive is the speaker using tons of jargon in place of explaining just what their product does. Think "buzzword bingo" and the like. If I were in a position to do it, I'd probably respond to a lot of salescritters trying to peddle their cruft that wouldn't solve my problems but woud net the sales guy a big commission with exactly the same response Obama gave. Especially if you're giving a presentation to someone you know isn't a technical specialist themselves, you don't go using a lot of jargon only a technical specialist would understand unless your whole goal is to bamboozle them into making a decision without understanding what it is they're buying.
The precedents are too solidly behind "at the border you aren't in the US yet, so due process doesn't apply". My solution would be 2 SSD drives: one with my actual system and full-disk encryption, one with a vanilla freshly-installed-and-activated copy of Windows and nothing else. Before heading across the border I pop the actual system drive out and ship it to where I'm going, and pop in the vanilla drive for ICE to search to their hearts' content. They can't even legitimately complain, there wasn't a blessed thing standing in their way of a complete search of every file and every byte of data on the laptop. Except of course for there being nothing interesting there, but that's their problem.
It's probably the dynamic pages many news sites use. The picture may have been on the page when Google crawled it, but now that image has been replaced by another in the database behind the dynamic images so what you're seeing now isn't what Google saw originally. Think about a news site with related-stories lists down the side, or you-have-recently-viewed lists (you can imagine what that'd do with a site crawler).
More importantly, why if it was so critical to search first and get a warrant later did the cops wait 3-4 hours before going to search? In that time they could've done what they did later: go to the judge with the tip in hand and get a warrant issued. Were I a judge, the fact that the police had time to get a warrant issued and didn't would've killed their arguments dead right there.
That argument was lost when the voters passed the matter into law. The majority of society there decided it wasn't acceptable for businesses to refuse service to certain classes of people. We've done it before, deciding it wasn't acceptable to refuse service to blacks, or to Chinese, or to Catholics (yes there was a time when businesses in heavily-Protestant areas would refuse service to Catholics).
Here's the thing: when you're running a photography business you aren't taking the pictures you want to take. You're taking the pictures your customer wants you to take. And that is the critical difference. If there's any speech involved it's the customer's, not yours, because they're the ones choosing what is to be photographed. If they want the family car photographed, you as the photographer can't decide that the house would make a better subject than the car. If you do, they get to sue you for breach of contract because you weren't hired to photograph the house. So if they can dictate something as basic as that, how is the photograph speech of any sort on the photographer's part?
I don't know. If a straight couple hired a photographer and they left the camera out of focus, only took pictures of everyone's feet, only took pictures of derp faces, would that couple have grounds to sue for failure to complete work as contracted? It seems to me that they would, since that kind of stuff fails the test of a minimum quality of work one could reasonably expect from a professional photographer offering their services as such to the public.
I don't consider this a matter of speech. That it's a photographer doesn't change the fact that it's a business. The law doesn't put any requirements on the photographer as far as choosing the subjects of their photography, the models they use or anything that goes into the photographs. At least, not when it's the photographer doing their own work for sale. What it puts requirements on is the business dealings of the photographer's business, which isn't speech. When the photographer goes beyond creating photographs and begins offering their services to the public, then they have to treat all customers equally just like any other business. You don't get to claim that somehow your selection of customers is free speech, because it isn't.
Just like if I'm writing and printing my own books vs. if I'm running a print shop printing books for others. The former is my free speech, the latter is a business.
That works the first time. But what happens the next time, when Disney pulls content out from under those new people? And what happens the first time they talk to one of their friends who got caught before and hears "Oh yeah, didn't you know about that already?"? The only thing that makes people madder than being scammed like this is finding out that the scam artist is well-known and everyone else knows to avoid him. This is one of those things that sounds like a good idea short-term but will blow up in your face long-term.
Re: I still want physical audit of the Aereo system.
There's a principle in law, though: if I'm entitled to do something, I'm generally entitled to have someone else do it for me. You do this every day when you use a credit or debit card or write a check: you aren't paying the merchant, you're authorizing the bank or credit-card company to pay the merchant for you. Anyone who has a secretary sorting their mail is doing the same thing, authorizing the secretary to open and read the mail instead of them doing it themselves. So, assuming that I'm entitled to record the shows and play them back later (and I am, thanks to the time-shifting ruling), why would I not be entitled to have someone else run my DVR for me?
I'd note that this same principle is why people are so upset over the government's position about access to e-mail on servers: we think of it in terms of us having the provider run our mailbox for us, and the government wouldn't be entitled to come in and riffle through our mailbox without a warrant if it were us operating it directly.
Here's the catch, though, as the courts ruled in the Roommates.com case: just because a site is a provider of a service hosting content provided by a content provider [i]does not[/i] make it impossible for them to be a content provider themselves. Where the site actively selects which information to post, which this site does through it's solicitation of particular kinds of content for specific purposes, then it is a publisher itself and not merely a provider.
Long and short, you don't get to solicit blackmail material, use it to pry money out of people and then hide behind "Someone else gave me the stuff, I'm not responsible for having used it.".
I think it heavily depends on what you're soliciting. For instance, Facebook is soliciting content in general and their marketing is asking for content the posters in fact have a right to post and that isn't illegal. If despite that a user posts something illegal or something they have no right to post, Facebook didn't solicit that and doesn't have any control over it.
Contrast that to a site that actively markets itself as a place to post ads and solicitations for stolen car parts. The site has to know that the posts it's soliciting are illegal. When the users post exactly what the site asked for, the site can't hide behind "We don't control what they post." because it could have controlled it (eg. by not asking for posts offering stolen parts).
In the case of SpamHaus, it is your actions that result in you being blacklisted. To my knowledge SpamHaus does not charge for removal of listings, however it may be difficult to get your listing removed if it was caused by eg. mail that's not an account-signup confirmation request arriving at a SpamHaus spamtrap address that's never ever been used to request e-mail from anyone.
By contrast, it would not have been your action that got your images posted to this revenge-porn site, the site knows the person who did post it doesn't have the right to and actively solicits such postings and it isn't the person who made the posting who's being charged to remove it.
On the post: British Judge Rules Google Can Be Sued In UK Over Privacy Case
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The problem comes from trying to take a different view of on-line businesses vs. brick-and-mortar ones. A b&b business can't control where it's customers live, but we treat it as doing business where the business is located regardless of where the customers come from. On-line we abandon that and try to treat the business as being located wherever it's customers are, not where the business is. Why? Why not treat a b&m business as doing business wherever it's customers live instead? Because, obviously, that would cause exactly the kinds of headaches on-line businesses are subject to, and we consider those headaches unreasonable. So why do we suddenly accept them as reasonable?
On the post: King Cries Trademark Over The Banner Saga
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I'm waiting for King to step into an Apple trap.
On the post: Why Exactly Do We Need To 'Protect' US And EU Foreign Investments Through TAFTA/TTIP Anyway?
On the post: Latest Twist On DRM Of Physical Products: Machines Locked Down By Geolocation
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I was taught to do something similar on cars. I'd chalk-mark parts before work was done, so I could tell afterwards if they'd moved stuff they shouldn't've or failed to move stuff they ought to have. Worst case was catching a dealer trying to tell me they'd put a completely new transmission in (manufacturer recall, the transmission was to be completely pulled and replaced, housing and all), but there on the "new" transmission were the exact chalk marks I'd put on the old one marking the alignment with the engine and the drive shaft.
On the post: Latest Twist On DRM Of Physical Products: Machines Locked Down By Geolocation
On the post: Yahoo Users Hit By Malicious Ads
Ad networks
On the post: Obama Chastises Keith Alexander For Trying To Befuddle Him With Tech Jargon
Re: Lost a Dem for Life
An example is the San Diego mayoral primary. The GOP candidate "won", but didn't carry a majority because the Democratic vote was split between 2 candidates (one of whom had withdrawn and endorsed the other, but once the slate is set candidates can't be removed). Unfortunately for the GOP the rules are that if no candidate gets a majority then the top two go into a runoff election, and the people who voted for the #3 Democrat are... unlikely to vote GOP against the #2 Democrat. But you can see the issue: if I vote in favor of a candidate I 100% agree with but who isn't going to poll enough to even be in the running, I may end up seeing the candidate I 100% disagree with elected over the one I 70% agree with. Which is one reason I favor preferential voting, where I rank candidates in order with my vote going to my highest-ranked candidate who's still in the running and if no candidate has a majority the one with the fewest votes is dropped from the field and the votes re-tallied until one of them wins >50% of the votes.
On the post: Obama Chastises Keith Alexander For Trying To Befuddle Him With Tech Jargon
On the post: Court Says Border Searches Of Your Computer Are Okay Because You Shouldn't Keep Important Info On Your Computer
Not surprised
On the post: Former Pop Star Angry At Google News For Providing Relevant Search Results
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On the post: Texas Court Allows Cops To Search First, Acquire Warrants Later
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On the post: Unfortunate: ACLU On The Wrong Side Of A Free Speech Case
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On the post: Unfortunate: ACLU On The Wrong Side Of A Free Speech Case
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On the post: Unfortunate: ACLU On The Wrong Side Of A Free Speech Case
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On the post: Unfortunate: ACLU On The Wrong Side Of A Free Speech Case
Just like if I'm writing and printing my own books vs. if I'm running a print shop printing books for others. The former is my free speech, the latter is a business.
On the post: You Don't Own What You 'Bought': Disney And Amazon Play The Role Of The Grinch In Taking Back Purchased Film
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On the post: Aereo To Supreme Court: Yes, Please Review The Ruling In Which We Trounced The TV Broadcasters
Re: I still want physical audit of the Aereo system.
I'd note that this same principle is why people are so upset over the government's position about access to e-mail on servers: we think of it in terms of us having the provider run our mailbox for us, and the government wouldn't be entitled to come in and riffle through our mailbox without a warrant if it were us operating it directly.
On the post: Scumbag Revenge Porn Site Operator Arrested... But Many Of The Charges Are Very Problematic
Re: Re: Re: inducement
Long and short, you don't get to solicit blackmail material, use it to pry money out of people and then hide behind "Someone else gave me the stuff, I'm not responsible for having used it.".
On the post: Scumbag Revenge Porn Site Operator Arrested... But Many Of The Charges Are Very Problematic
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Contrast that to a site that actively markets itself as a place to post ads and solicitations for stolen car parts. The site has to know that the posts it's soliciting are illegal. When the users post exactly what the site asked for, the site can't hide behind "We don't control what they post." because it could have controlled it (eg. by not asking for posts offering stolen parts).
On the post: Scumbag Revenge Porn Site Operator Arrested... But Many Of The Charges Are Very Problematic
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By contrast, it would not have been your action that got your images posted to this revenge-porn site, the site knows the person who did post it doesn't have the right to and actively solicits such postings and it isn't the person who made the posting who's being charged to remove it.
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