Technically he lied, but in that "depends on what the meaning of the word is is" way.
Technically they can intercept almost any communication within the US borders, and probably do on a regular basis. Legally the collection of such data is probably "incidental" to ongoing investigations. If you dug deep enough you could probably prove they have broken the law. Problem is the information you need to prove it is all classified.
This kind of thing is nothing new really when it comes to ICANN. There have been many concerns about how they operate since the day ICANN was established. I remember many articles and editorials in the late 90's about the board member's were selected, the lack of transparency in their operations, and the fact that many of their policies really only benefited large business.
No doubt, what Ravi did was despicable, but is it really criminal?
It was absolutely criminal. Filming someone in the nude alone, without their permission is a crime. Filming someone having sex without their permission even more so.
Should he be charged with a crime directly related to the death? I am not sure. Having been the target of bullying from the time I was a child until my mid-twenties, due to being a skinny geek with glasses, I don't know if I can have an unbiased opinion. But I will say unless you have been bullied day after day for many years you just cannot understand the impact it has on your life and psyche.
Should Ravi serve 10 years? Probably not. Should he serve some time and get deported? Absolutely! He is an adult, not some 10 year old, and should know this kind of bahavior is just plain wrong.
"Try to buy porn with your American Express. Good luck."
I have purchased what would be considered porn by many, and would be excluded under the Paypal rules, from Amazon using American Express. So this is not universal at all.
This and the Order of the Stick support just go to show that there is a demand out there for many things that larger companies don't want to be a part of, but require more money than a small company can get via more "normal" means. Kickstarter is just one way of getting the support you need. Minecraft alpha and beta pricing is another.
You still need to have an appealing product of course, but if you do there is a market out there for it, and the internet and resources like Kickstarter that it enabled, make it much easier to give it a try.
The 80/20 split is about the same I used to see back in the early 80's when it came to Apple II games and home recording of albums onto cassette tape. So it's really not about the "digital generation" that you would think of today. It mostly comes down to limited money, but mostly unlimited desire for stuff.
You also have a certain percentage of downloaders that do it because it is the only way to get something. Because of region blocking there are a fair number of countries where you can not even purchase a game or music even you are willing to pay for it.
Patents probably have the higher dollar cost. Current copyright has a much higher social cost. In particular copyright is currently being inforced and furture legislation is focused on censorship and the restriction of civil rights. So I think that copyright as it currently being pursued is much worse. I'll gladly pay a bit of extra money in exchange for civil rights.
My dad was a teacher(high school and middle school level) for 30+ years. So I have seen the inside workings of the primary education system in the US.
Other then the internet based stuff, many of the ideas Mike talks about have been around for a long time. Things like individual pacing, students teaching students, etc. were being done in a town of 14,000 when I was in grade school 40 years ago.
The biggest issue facing primary education in the US is a lack of resources and funding. All the advancements that technology can bring are great IF you can afford to do them. It's not just about the cost of some computers either. You also need the network infrastructure and the IT staff to support things.
Particularly on the IT side of things the pay is much lower than if you were to work in IT for any other business. So it can be very difficult to attract and retain really good support people. You will never get the best people because very few schools can pay what Microsoft, Google, etc. can pay for IT talent.
I went to the UW-Stout campus, and even got my degree, in the 1980's. This kind of stupid stuff is nothing new.
UW-Stout is in a small town, in one of the poorest counties in the state. About half the population are students. This makes for a fair amount of friction with the community. On top of this there has always been a disconnect between the university administrators, the teaching staff, and the student population.
All of the disconnects and friction lead to a lot of small problems like any college town in the US. At UW-Stout they flare up every few years into something bigger and more important.
In the late 70's and into the 80's when I was there it was common for the town police and UW police to decide at 10-11 PM on homecoming night that the bars should all close NOW, instead of the usual 1 AM closing time. You then suddenly get a few thousand people in the streets all at the same time. By in the street I mean literally in the street, not on the side walks. The police would then try to clear the streets because of the traffic hazard. Guess what that leads to? Lots of agravation of a drunken crowd of kids. Things get out of hand and you end up with police being called in from other communities as far as 50 miles away to clamp down on things and hundreds of arrests are made.
Lots of first and fourth amendment abuse happened while I was thier. It seldom went very far however because no one really believed the student side of things, and you didn't have the internet to get things out to a larger audience.
Yes, many police officers, but not all or even a majority, think that think that taking photos, or videos, or reporting on things is disorderly conduct. This is because in their mind anything you are doing that they don't wnat you doing is disorderly conduct and/or obstruction of justice. It doesn't matter what the courts have said or what your rights actually are.
None of the above means that they are right however.
We also need to remember that not even a majority of police officers believe the above or support the kinds of actions that have happened. It really only takes a few bad officers in the right positions to make for really bad situations.
... You would think that someone on the legal team might say, "You know, there's no way we come out of this looking good" or better yet, "There's no way the Mayan Archaeological Institute is part of this complete breakfast," ...
While it may not amke Kellogg's look good it does make the lawyers look good. For many in the world of lawyers it is all about billable hours, and something like this generates a lot of billable hours. Thus the lawyers end up looking good, to other lawyers.
Maybe, sort of. The potential issue is that even without any watermarking you still end up with data in an MP3 file that could be used to identify a particular PC as the source of the encoded MP3. The argument is that some of this MP3 metadata will be the same across all MP3 files created on a given PC, with a given encoder. Thus, you could potential identify a bunch of different MP3 files as all coming from the same source, track back to that source and prove that they came from your PC. So unless you manipulate the metadata on every MP3 file you have, after you encoded it, it could be tracked back to you.
Of course all of this is speculation at this point, as there has been no proof of concept shown yet. It would also be fairly easy for an encoder to add in some sort of random seed to the meta data to make it more difficult to link tracks to a given PC.
The problem with this argument is that almost any photo you take of a person, other then possibly nudes, will include something that is copyrighted or trademarked. In the case of the original album cover then pattern of the fabric in the tie, and possibly the coat and shirt, is probably copyrighted. The trumpet and its mouthpiece are probably trademarked, along with the ring he is wearing.
A very classic example is the "32 Campbell's Soup Cans" by Andy Warhol. The copy he made was most definitely of something that was covered by both copyright and trademark.
My guess is that they agreed to give their lawyers a huge cut, they ran up huge legal bills, or both. So even though the total amount is larger they may actually only get a few million each after taxes. Which of course they don't see as enough actually in their pockets.
It was still stupid of them to push things. Because if they hadn't they would have probably had significantly more in their pockets. When it comes to money, particularly what looks to be a lot of money, most people don't think logically.
I'm not so sure about the paying people thing, but it will definitely generate interest among fans and does give them even more reason to spread the word wherever they can. Which in turn generates more interest. So overall a nice idea that gets people looking at the very least and has been said many times here exposure is one of the most valuable things an artist can get.
It always amazes me that everyone assumes they know the details of a contract, without ever having seen it and before it is even signed. For all any of us know she could have negotiated any number of concessions from the potential publisher. She may be keeping certain rights, such as Cory Doctorow's ability to put his stuff online for free, or she may have kept the ebook portion for herself, or negotiated a larger percentage or a lower price point. Who knows.
Also Eisler turned to self publishing because the numbers came out better then half a million up front. What if he was offered one million? Would the equation have leaned the other way?
No you got it all wrong. The transparency is how transparent all of us regular folks information is to the government and corporations. On that goal he's doing pretty good. ;-(
On the post: NSA Insists It Doesn't Have 'The Ability' To Spy On American Emails, Texts, Etc.
Technically they can intercept almost any communication within the US borders, and probably do on a regular basis. Legally the collection of such data is probably "incidental" to ongoing investigations. If you dug deep enough you could probably prove they have broken the law. Problem is the information you need to prove it is all classified.
On the post: ICANN Confirms That It's Going To Make It Easier For Governments To Seize Domains Around The Globe
On the post: From Lori Drew To Dharun Ravi, Punishing People Based On Others' Suicides Is A Mistake
It was absolutely criminal. Filming someone in the nude alone, without their permission is a crime. Filming someone having sex without their permission even more so.
Should he be charged with a crime directly related to the death? I am not sure. Having been the target of bullying from the time I was a child until my mid-twenties, due to being a skinny geek with glasses, I don't know if I can have an unbiased opinion. But I will say unless you have been bullied day after day for many years you just cannot understand the impact it has on your life and psyche.
Should Ravi serve 10 years? Probably not. Should he serve some time and get deported? Absolutely! He is an adult, not some 10 year old, and should know this kind of bahavior is just plain wrong.
On the post: Authors Can Sleep Easy Now; Paypal Reverses Its Censorship Decision
On the post: Tell Paypal To Stop Playing Morality Cop With Booksellers
Re: Re: Re:
I have purchased what would be considered porn by many, and would be excluded under the Paypal rules, from Amazon using American Express. So this is not universal at all.
On the post: Paypal Pressured To Play Morality Cop And Forces Smashwords To Censor Authors
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They also need to cut off eBay. ;-)
On the post: People Rushing To Give Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars In Just Hours For Brand New Adventure Game
There is demand out there
You still need to have an appealing product of course, but if you do there is a market out there for it, and the internet and resources like Kickstarter that it enabled, make it much easier to give it a try.
On the post: Despite Being Pirated 4.5 Millions Times, 'Witcher 2' Developer Refuses To Annoy Paying Customers With DRM
Re:
You also have a certain percentage of downloaders that do it because it is the only way to get something. Because of region blocking there are a fair number of countries where you can not even purchase a game or music even you are willing to pay for it.
On the post: Which Causes More Harm: Copyright Or Patents?
On the post: Innovation In Education: Changing The Pace
Other then the internet based stuff, many of the ideas Mike talks about have been around for a long time. Things like individual pacing, students teaching students, etc. were being done in a town of 14,000 when I was in grade school 40 years ago.
The biggest issue facing primary education in the US is a lack of resources and funding. All the advancements that technology can bring are great IF you can afford to do them. It's not just about the cost of some computers either. You also need the network infrastructure and the IT staff to support things.
Particularly on the IT side of things the pay is much lower than if you were to work in IT for any other business. So it can be very difficult to attract and retain really good support people. You will never get the best people because very few schools can pay what Microsoft, Google, etc. can pay for IT talent.
On the post: University Police & Administration Freak Out Over Nathan Fillion Firefly Poster; Censor, Threaten Professor
Love to see my alma mater in the news
UW-Stout is in a small town, in one of the poorest counties in the state. About half the population are students. This makes for a fair amount of friction with the community. On top of this there has always been a disconnect between the university administrators, the teaching staff, and the student population.
All of the disconnects and friction lead to a lot of small problems like any college town in the US. At UW-Stout they flare up every few years into something bigger and more important.
In the late 70's and into the 80's when I was there it was common for the town police and UW police to decide at 10-11 PM on homecoming night that the bars should all close NOW, instead of the usual 1 AM closing time. You then suddenly get a few thousand people in the streets all at the same time. By in the street I mean literally in the street, not on the side walks. The police would then try to clear the streets because of the traffic hazard. Guess what that leads to? Lots of agravation of a drunken crowd of kids. Things get out of hand and you end up with police being called in from other communities as far as 50 miles away to clamp down on things and hundreds of arrests are made.
Lots of first and fourth amendment abuse happened while I was thier. It seldom went very far however because no one really believed the student side of things, and you didn't have the internet to get things out to a larger audience.
On the post: Does The NYPD Really Think That Shooting Photos/Videos Of Protests Is 'Disorderly Conduct?'
Of Course
None of the above means that they are right however.
We also need to remember that not even a majority of police officers believe the above or support the kinds of actions that have happened. It really only takes a few bad officers in the right positions to make for really bad situations.
On the post: Kellogg's Stakes Claim To Toucans, Mayan Imagery; Issues Cease-and-Desist To Guatemalan Non-Profit
While it may not amke Kellogg's look good it does make the lawyers look good. For many in the world of lawyers it is all about billable hours, and something like this generates a lot of billable hours. Thus the lawyers end up looking good, to other lawyers.
On the post: Could Apple's MusicMatch Be A Tool To Identify Infringers?
Re: Re:
Of course all of this is speculation at this point, as there has been no proof of concept shown yet. It would also be fairly easy for an encoder to add in some sort of random seed to the meta data to make it more difficult to link tracks to a given PC.
On the post: If Jay Maisel's Photograph Is Original Artwork, Then So Is The Pixelated Cover Of 'Kind Of Bloop'
Re: Primacy
A very classic example is the "32 Campbell's Soup Cans" by Andy Warhol. The copy he made was most definitely of something that was covered by both copyright and trademark.
On the post: Winklevii Finally Realize That Appealing To The Supreme Court Is A Lost Cause; Will Have To Live With 'Just' $160 Million
It isn't enough, because of the lawyers
It was still stupid of them to push things. Because if they hadn't they would have probably had significantly more in their pockets. When it comes to money, particularly what looks to be a lot of money, most people don't think logically.
On the post: Band Lets Fans Create Customized Album... And Help Sell It (Allowing The Fans To Make Money Too)
Nice Interest Generator
On the post: Police Using Skype To Get Warrants While At A Crime Scene
On the post: Crossing Paths: Published Author Goes Self-Published, As Self-Published Author Considers Big Publishing Deal
Also Eisler turned to self publishing because the numbers came out better then half a million up front. What if he was offered one million? Would the equation have leaned the other way?
On the post: For All The Promises Of Transparency, Obama Administration Responding To Fewer FOIA Requests
Re:
Next >>