Correction: his lawyers would have to prove an expectation to profit off the presidency as opposed to my original assertion they would have to prove intent.
Ah, but Trump has long claimed he is not profiting off the presidency, Which is why it would be "...quite something to attempt" to try to show that President Trump has been commercially impacted by the news coverage. The president's legal team would have to actually prove an intent to profit off the presidency, which would be super on brand for this White House, arguing in court that he is indeed profiting of a presidency he has been declaring he is not profiting off of.
Service is supposedly required, but as it will not require formal proof of service, it is quite possible the service will be indistinguishable from mail we would throw out as spam.
But if we actually get it, the law actually has an opt-out clause which shuts this down...which needs to be filed within 30 days of the unverified informal service. Oi.
B) as much as I love Leonard french and his analysis, he dropped the ball when he addressed the EFF's complaint, confusing the EFF pointing out that the law does not require proof of infringement (harm, as the EFF called it) to be established, an issue when faced with the type of trolls known have had issues with proper service, with the issues of proving damages (which copyright does not require).
I'd imagine CP sharing via a website (dark or otherwise) that involves money transfers has to do a lot less about making money than it does costs of administration and using a buy-in as a filter as opposed to vetting.
You saw a similar evolution in piracy and file sharing. There is sneaker-net piracy where you see tape trading as a big thing. But to "buy in", you had to be sharing tapes to get tapes. If you were collecting and not sending tapes around, you choked off the market. In the DVD era, just burning another DVD became far easier, and so people would also sell copies outright. While I have no knowledge of the CP market at this time, I imagine The sharing and trading P2P and high-speed internet made video piracy feasible. Torrents and Private Trackers make Piracy harder to track. And in the early days the Buy in was the important bit. The buy in for private trackers was seeding content. You didn't have to necessarily bring with you a rare tape, now you had to help the data move for the tracker to remain healthy. But as time went on, a private tracker develops enough power users seeding that Ratio isn't necessarily required. Thats when you get private trackers who will charge for access, or charge to ignore those seeding limits. Its not just about making money, its also about the willingness to buy in, to contribute as a vetting mechanism. The person who pays is at risk as much as the person who seeds, if the wrong person finds out.
That vetting is, I would imagine even more important for CP distributors. You need to either provide new material, or pay for access, thereby putting you at risk if you tell the wrong person about it. So the money might not be at all about making a profit, or at least only partially about profit. Its about limiting the knowledge, by putting everyone on the hook.
Id like to highlight the last line of the final quote.
This, then, would require government surveillance to become more targeted and methodical, rather than indiscriminate and universal.
Surveillance and investigation is focused on "Third Party Records". To use a communications platform, you have to give those communications to that platform. E2EE denies the meaning of those communications to everyone but those on the endpoints, even if it still leaks large volumes of metadata. Surveillance and investigation can still be done absent the content of communications. Before we could just subpoena entire text conversations with a pen trace order, even when they got a wiretap, there was no guarantee of understanding of the content of communications they got, or if they did understand that information that they could prove the communication said what they thought it did. Coded speech is lost on a large portion of the US population if we take reactions to the President's use of coded mob language as genuine.
In the end though, properly assessing targeted surveillance and investigation takes people and money. And they are wasting a ton of it watching porn and creating fake terrorist plots. Actually allocating resources to assess threats and perform actual investigations with the thousand smaller pieces of evidence? That would cut into the time law enforcement is spending distributing Child Porn more efficently.
The judicial branch responds to the cases laid out before it. They do not proactively seek to judge the behavior of government, they mediate the disputes of the application of law, and that includes the constitutionality of laws. Courts require jurisdiction to act, and within the rules of procedure, will hear a legal case only if the plaintiff has "standing". In criminal Law this means the prosecutor needs to allege a statutory crime has occurred. In civil law this means the plaintiff needs to establish they are impacted by the actions of another, and that those actions are a tort and that the court can provide a relief or remedy of that tortuous action. In the case of challenging legislation, that involves showing that you either are affected or can reasonably assume you will be affected by the legislation, and assert constitutional deficiency with that legislation. A court will not, under the current rules of civil proceedure, hear a case without standing. This is unlikely to change, as it is believed that those who have a stake in overturning the law are those with standing and that those without standing are wasting the courts time. The standing rule ensures that those who have something at stake and therefore theoretically will present the best case are the ones who actually get the court's time.
The legislative branch needs to be able to investigate the reality of how laws are functioning to draft legislation. This has long been enshrined in Common Law, and is the reason Congress can issue subpoenas at all. I would assume the bill is required because access to communications content has a warrant requirement to be accessed by the executiv, and the assumption is they would need similarly specialized authority to access. It is however a silly move given the goal is the restriction of speech, an area the Supreme Court has been highly protective of in the last 30 years.
This comment is interesting. Its conclusion asks a question that seems to argue a similar conclusion to the article, and its framing suggests it is a contrasting response to something. The first sentence therefore establishes the something being a purported Techdirt audience. But as this comment is not in response to any other commentor, it then appears the comment is therefore in response to the article and Techdirt, thereby suggesting that Techdirt is asserting that Facebook should be an arbiter of Fact, something Techdirt did not express. Techdirt raises the same question as in the conclusion, so why post this comment?
Ideas which would, conceivably, require remotely compromising the device to give up that information, fighting against device manufacturer's work to fill security holes, at which point you cloning the SIM card is the least of the mark's problems. You also are losing the benefit of not being able to close the SIM clone vulnerability, as Device manufacturers could close the vulnerability that gets you the SIM card information from the phone itself.
I'm not saying SIM cloning isn't a thing. It likely is. But I perceive its only benefit being in longer term targeted surveillance by governments, rather than the benefits of SIM Swapping or SS7 hacking which are in rapid moves to steal assets in moments. And given that a SIM Swap stops the feed of information, or worse you might be vulnerable to intentional misinformation if the cloning is discovered, its likely not laziness or lack of need, but lack of practicality.
As the AC notes, SIM cloning requires physical access to the SIM card. Unlike TV depictions, SIM cloning isn't a wireless process. While its an open hole, its hard to pull off and if your mark notices a missing phone a legit SIM swap completely shuts down any future exploitation. SIM swapping doesn't require the SIM card, the phone, or even being in the same Time Zone as the targeted phone. And SS7 hacking is wireless and provides much of the same benefit as SIM Cloning. Its not an efficent vulnerability.
A SIM swap is where you swap the SIM associated with a number. What other short descriptor would you use to describe swapping the associated SIM card? As the first AC points out, Porting is also confusing as that term refers to switching carriers, not getting a new SIM card.
That would be an accurate description of the terminology. I think both techniques are being used to the ends presented here, but I agree it is irresponsible for the article to conflate the two.
A trademark can be originated by a corporate entity or trust, which could be structured to hide the identit(ies) of Bansky.
A copyright, even if originally registered by a trust or corporation, requires identifying the individual or individuals who fixed the artwork in the medium of the wall. And the copyright assignment to the trust or corporate entity who would then hold it. And to meet evidentiary standards, that person can not be anonymous.
Register your address with the correct house number (street name does not matter) and zip code.
Defeat any address verification.
Address verification verifies nothing in the way you think it does in the era of green dot.
B) A big point in the article is that the ex provided locations such as his home and work. Previous stories indicate the ex may have been following him to provide a location at times that were worst for Herrick. Address verification does nothing to verify the locations provided by users to other users in messages. Unless Grindr is reading what are likely some very personal messages, there is nothing Verifying a credit card address would do to stop this issue.
Actually, I'd find the statement highlights the flaw in the narrative of the cable companies. Namely, that while the bill itemizes the base cost of service, the actual cost of service goes up when you include taxes and fees. And about 24% of that actual cost isn't the base cost of service, or customer-chosen upgrades, or government taxes, but fees that should be in the advertised base price of service.
I would agree the way Karl phrased that passage leads to bad conclusions, notably that the entire increase from $156.71 base price to $217.42 final price comes from underhandedness, rather than acknowledging that some of that average increase includes premium services which are opt-in.
Thankfully, Karl linked his source, so you can easily look it up. On page 7 (page 12 of the PDF) of the Linked Report, a nice Donut graph shows the numbers clearly.
The advertised average price is $156.71, with company imposed below the line fees averaging $37.11 as reported. The rest is made up of:
$9.15 for premium services (so, hopefully extra costs a consumer opted in to)
$13.28 for Government Fees and Taxes
$1.17 Miscellaneous
If it was in fact, exactly the same, that would have been the claim in the lawsuit. That they did not make the claim that the guitar hook was copied, only that there were substantial similarities, of which the guitar hook being an exact replication is not one of them. The claims most on point seem to claim a similar technique is used, but does not state that the exact notation was used. Specificity in a copyright claim is encouraged when it is in favor of the claim. The claim details issues in the entirety of the work sounding similar in themes (strings set against hip-hop), being in the same genre (chord usage), and similarity of techniques (shifting to a less complex guitar part to perform basic scales).
Copyright, in so much it exists, exists only in the exact notation, and minor variations thereupon. This lawsuit does not allege copying of exact portions, but similarities in the "sound", "feel", and techniques of the piece, which was the concern around the blurred lines ruling, as the "sound", "feel" and musical techniques are not the copyright able elements of a composition.
On the post: Bringing Free Speech Back: Trump Promises To Sue CNN Over Its Biased Coverage Based On Dumbest Legal Theory Ever
Re: Re: Complexities
Correction: his lawyers would have to prove an expectation to profit off the presidency as opposed to my original assertion they would have to prove intent.
On the post: Bringing Free Speech Back: Trump Promises To Sue CNN Over Its Biased Coverage Based On Dumbest Legal Theory Ever
Re: Complexities
Ah, but Trump has long claimed he is not profiting off the presidency, Which is why it would be "...quite something to attempt" to try to show that President Trump has been commercially impacted by the news coverage. The president's legal team would have to actually prove an intent to profit off the presidency, which would be super on brand for this White House, arguing in court that he is indeed profiting of a presidency he has been declaring he is not profiting off of.
On the post: Congress Looks To Rush Through Unconstitutional Pro-Copyright Trolls Bill, Despite Promising To Explore Alternatives
Re: Re: Re:
Service is supposedly required, but as it will not require formal proof of service, it is quite possible the service will be indistinguishable from mail we would throw out as spam.
But if we actually get it, the law actually has an opt-out clause which shuts this down...which needs to be filed within 30 days of the unverified informal service. Oi.
On the post: Congress Looks To Rush Through Unconstitutional Pro-Copyright Trolls Bill, Despite Promising To Explore Alternatives
Re: Re: Is it really unconstitutional?
A) effectively none
B) as much as I love Leonard french and his analysis, he dropped the ball when he addressed the EFF's complaint, confusing the EFF pointing out that the law does not require proof of infringement (harm, as the EFF called it) to be established, an issue when faced with the type of trolls known have had issues with proper service, with the issues of proving damages (which copyright does not require).
On the post: Ed Snowden: Governments Can't Make The Public 'Safer' By Undermining The Encryption Essential To The Public's Security
Re:
I'd imagine CP sharing via a website (dark or otherwise) that involves money transfers has to do a lot less about making money than it does costs of administration and using a buy-in as a filter as opposed to vetting.
You saw a similar evolution in piracy and file sharing. There is sneaker-net piracy where you see tape trading as a big thing. But to "buy in", you had to be sharing tapes to get tapes. If you were collecting and not sending tapes around, you choked off the market. In the DVD era, just burning another DVD became far easier, and so people would also sell copies outright. While I have no knowledge of the CP market at this time, I imagine The sharing and trading P2P and high-speed internet made video piracy feasible. Torrents and Private Trackers make Piracy harder to track. And in the early days the Buy in was the important bit. The buy in for private trackers was seeding content. You didn't have to necessarily bring with you a rare tape, now you had to help the data move for the tracker to remain healthy. But as time went on, a private tracker develops enough power users seeding that Ratio isn't necessarily required. Thats when you get private trackers who will charge for access, or charge to ignore those seeding limits. Its not just about making money, its also about the willingness to buy in, to contribute as a vetting mechanism. The person who pays is at risk as much as the person who seeds, if the wrong person finds out.
That vetting is, I would imagine even more important for CP distributors. You need to either provide new material, or pay for access, thereby putting you at risk if you tell the wrong person about it. So the money might not be at all about making a profit, or at least only partially about profit. Its about limiting the knowledge, by putting everyone on the hook.
On the post: Ed Snowden: Governments Can't Make The Public 'Safer' By Undermining The Encryption Essential To The Public's Security
Id like to highlight the last line of the final quote.
Surveillance and investigation is focused on "Third Party Records". To use a communications platform, you have to give those communications to that platform. E2EE denies the meaning of those communications to everyone but those on the endpoints, even if it still leaks large volumes of metadata. Surveillance and investigation can still be done absent the content of communications. Before we could just subpoena entire text conversations with a pen trace order, even when they got a wiretap, there was no guarantee of understanding of the content of communications they got, or if they did understand that information that they could prove the communication said what they thought it did. Coded speech is lost on a large portion of the US population if we take reactions to the President's use of coded mob language as genuine.
In the end though, properly assessing targeted surveillance and investigation takes people and money. And they are wasting a ton of it watching porn and creating fake terrorist plots. Actually allocating resources to assess threats and perform actual investigations with the thousand smaller pieces of evidence? That would cut into the time law enforcement is spending distributing Child Porn more efficently.
On the post: Congressional Reps Targeting Homegrown Terrorism Are Pushing A Bill That Would Allow Congress To Subpoena Citizens' Communications
Re: Re: Re:
The judicial branch responds to the cases laid out before it. They do not proactively seek to judge the behavior of government, they mediate the disputes of the application of law, and that includes the constitutionality of laws. Courts require jurisdiction to act, and within the rules of procedure, will hear a legal case only if the plaintiff has "standing". In criminal Law this means the prosecutor needs to allege a statutory crime has occurred. In civil law this means the plaintiff needs to establish they are impacted by the actions of another, and that those actions are a tort and that the court can provide a relief or remedy of that tortuous action. In the case of challenging legislation, that involves showing that you either are affected or can reasonably assume you will be affected by the legislation, and assert constitutional deficiency with that legislation. A court will not, under the current rules of civil proceedure, hear a case without standing. This is unlikely to change, as it is believed that those who have a stake in overturning the law are those with standing and that those without standing are wasting the courts time. The standing rule ensures that those who have something at stake and therefore theoretically will present the best case are the ones who actually get the court's time.
The legislative branch needs to be able to investigate the reality of how laws are functioning to draft legislation. This has long been enshrined in Common Law, and is the reason Congress can issue subpoenas at all. I would assume the bill is required because access to communications content has a warrant requirement to be accessed by the executiv, and the assumption is they would need similarly specialized authority to access. It is however a silly move given the goal is the restriction of speech, an area the Supreme Court has been highly protective of in the last 30 years.
On the post: Top Myths About Content Moderation
Re: Mythbusters...
Commentor has asserted facts not in evidence.
On the post: Cop Peforming A Welfare Check Kills Woman By Shooting Her Through Her Own Backyard Window
Re:
When making material claims such as this, Citations are valuable.
According to the article I linked, the officer was indeed charged Monday morning after resigning before he could be fired.
On the post: Elizabeth Warren's Feud With Facebook Over 'False' Ads Just Highlights The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale
Re:
This comment is interesting. Its conclusion asks a question that seems to argue a similar conclusion to the article, and its framing suggests it is a contrasting response to something. The first sentence therefore establishes the something being a purported Techdirt audience. But as this comment is not in response to any other commentor, it then appears the comment is therefore in response to the article and Techdirt, thereby suggesting that Techdirt is asserting that Facebook should be an arbiter of Fact, something Techdirt did not express. Techdirt raises the same question as in the conclusion, so why post this comment?
On the post: After Jack Hack, Government Starts Taking Wireless 'SIM Hijacking' Seriously
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Ideas which would, conceivably, require remotely compromising the device to give up that information, fighting against device manufacturer's work to fill security holes, at which point you cloning the SIM card is the least of the mark's problems. You also are losing the benefit of not being able to close the SIM clone vulnerability, as Device manufacturers could close the vulnerability that gets you the SIM card information from the phone itself.
I'm not saying SIM cloning isn't a thing. It likely is. But I perceive its only benefit being in longer term targeted surveillance by governments, rather than the benefits of SIM Swapping or SS7 hacking which are in rapid moves to steal assets in moments. And given that a SIM Swap stops the feed of information, or worse you might be vulnerable to intentional misinformation if the cloning is discovered, its likely not laziness or lack of need, but lack of practicality.
On the post: After Jack Hack, Government Starts Taking Wireless 'SIM Hijacking' Seriously
Re:
As the AC notes, SIM cloning requires physical access to the SIM card. Unlike TV depictions, SIM cloning isn't a wireless process. While its an open hole, its hard to pull off and if your mark notices a missing phone a legit SIM swap completely shuts down any future exploitation. SIM swapping doesn't require the SIM card, the phone, or even being in the same Time Zone as the targeted phone. And SS7 hacking is wireless and provides much of the same benefit as SIM Cloning. Its not an efficent vulnerability.
On the post: After Jack Hack, Government Starts Taking Wireless 'SIM Hijacking' Seriously
Re: Re:
A SIM swap is where you swap the SIM associated with a number. What other short descriptor would you use to describe swapping the associated SIM card? As the first AC points out, Porting is also confusing as that term refers to switching carriers, not getting a new SIM card.
On the post: After Jack Hack, Government Starts Taking Wireless 'SIM Hijacking' Seriously
Re:
That would be an accurate description of the terminology. I think both techniques are being used to the ends presented here, but I agree it is irresponsible for the article to conflate the two.
On the post: Banksy's Fake Store Is An Attempt To Abuse Trademark Law To Avoid Copyright Law
Re:
A trademark can be originated by a corporate entity or trust, which could be structured to hide the identit(ies) of Bansky.
A copyright, even if originally registered by a trust or corporation, requires identifying the individual or individuals who fixed the artwork in the medium of the wall. And the copyright assignment to the trust or corporate entity who would then hold it. And to meet evidentiary standards, that person can not be anonymous.
On the post: Attorney Who Sued Grindr Responds Extremely Poorly To The Supreme Court's Rejection Of Her Section 230 Lawsuit
Re: IMHO...
A) CC Address Verification is a joke.
Get a green dot card at any convenience store.
Register your address with the correct house number (street name does not matter) and zip code.
Defeat any address verification.
Address verification verifies nothing in the way you think it does in the era of green dot.
B) A big point in the article is that the ex provided locations such as his home and work. Previous stories indicate the ex may have been following him to provide a location at times that were worst for Herrick. Address verification does nothing to verify the locations provided by users to other users in messages. Unless Grindr is reading what are likely some very personal messages, there is nothing Verifying a credit card address would do to stop this issue.
On the post: The Cable Industry Makes $28 Billion Annually In Bullshit Fees
Re: Re:
Actually, I'd find the statement highlights the flaw in the narrative of the cable companies. Namely, that while the bill itemizes the base cost of service, the actual cost of service goes up when you include taxes and fees. And about 24% of that actual cost isn't the base cost of service, or customer-chosen upgrades, or government taxes, but fees that should be in the advertised base price of service.
I would agree the way Karl phrased that passage leads to bad conclusions, notably that the entire increase from $156.71 base price to $217.42 final price comes from underhandedness, rather than acknowledging that some of that average increase includes premium services which are opt-in.
On the post: The Cable Industry Makes $28 Billion Annually In Bullshit Fees
Re:
Thankfully, Karl linked his source, so you can easily look it up. On page 7 (page 12 of the PDF) of the Linked Report, a nice Donut graph shows the numbers clearly.
The advertised average price is $156.71, with company imposed below the line fees averaging $37.11 as reported. The rest is made up of:
$9.15 for premium services (so, hopefully extra costs a consumer opted in to)
$13.28 for Government Fees and Taxes
$1.17 Miscellaneous
Which accounts for the missing $23.60.
On the post: Not The First Rodeo: Lil Nas X And Cardi B Hit With Blurred Lines Style Copyright Complaint Over Rodeo
Re:
If it was in fact, exactly the same, that would have been the claim in the lawsuit. That they did not make the claim that the guitar hook was copied, only that there were substantial similarities, of which the guitar hook being an exact replication is not one of them. The claims most on point seem to claim a similar technique is used, but does not state that the exact notation was used. Specificity in a copyright claim is encouraged when it is in favor of the claim. The claim details issues in the entirety of the work sounding similar in themes (strings set against hip-hop), being in the same genre (chord usage), and similarity of techniques (shifting to a less complex guitar part to perform basic scales).
Copyright, in so much it exists, exists only in the exact notation, and minor variations thereupon. This lawsuit does not allege copying of exact portions, but similarities in the "sound", "feel", and techniques of the piece, which was the concern around the blurred lines ruling, as the "sound", "feel" and musical techniques are not the copyright able elements of a composition.
On the post: The DOJ Is Conflating The Content Moderation Debate With The Encryption Debate: Don't Let Them
Re: Out of sight, out of their minds
Primarily, content moderation is involved with publicly facing content. That's where the debate focus is.
However, content moderation does involve content shared between users, with its own differences and challenges.
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