That there is a pod of great white shark eating Killer Whales out there suing the lawyers for trying to deny them a perfectly good source of high quality protien which it is now known that Orcas commonly eat by trying to copyright Left Shark when everyone knows you can't copyright a food source an alpha predator desires and should the lawyers wish a demonstrations a pod of orcas will be glad to demonstrate the fulility of that the next time they go swimming off the coast of southern California. After, of course, they've been properly tested and have the Nutrition Facts labels propertly tatooed on themselves and adjusted for orcas as, after all no one really knows what genus "lawyer" actually consumes and some of it is likely toxic in large amounts to alpha predators. :-)

I've got to observe that Chen must have gone on his mini-rant before a couple of things happened. The first is the recent announcement that Blackberry and Samsung will be merging, put another way Samsung is buying Blackberry and the other is that you actually can run android apps on Blackberry 10+ devices so he has his open internet there.

When digital sound recording became almost became alomst completely impossible to tell from analog is when artists began to release digital works rather than analog no matter that the media was and that pretty much ended the RIA's fight. And now film makers are starting to embrace digital from beginning to end of the film making process, the cameras, editing, effects and so on are done in a digital enviornment so much of the MPAA's opposition suddently becomes at best quaint. Digital cameras these days turn out images of the best quality of film cameras and remember that film itself is an increasingly rare commodity. I also remember through the years that when the MPAA has gone on one of it's occasional anti-piracy campaigns has been when piracy has spiked. They have inadvertaintly advertised new works both good and bad which brought people into theatres and might have increased downloads legal and illegal depending on how you wanted to define those words. There is and never has been a crisis, Mike is right about that. There has beeen a change in production and distribution methods, that's all.

I've been in rooms in church basements full, just packed, with extremists!! These are Alcoholics Anonymous where some newbies take the Anonymity clause to ridiculous extremes and so use Tor as their way of maintaining their anonymity while on line! Though they'll stay members pf Facebook! Which we all know is just packed with extremists!

THE reality is that for police to seize anything (with or without a warrant and I assume you're citing something done without a warrant) they need a minor little legal concept known as probable cause. This is how police get to pull over everyone driving even mildly erratically should they wish,given the probable cause is imparement of some nature. It's entirely possible than an undiagnosed person with epilepsy could be pulled over by an officer for imparement early on in the seizure process as the person is distracted by or in the aura phase of a seizure. I'm not saying the person isn't impared, they are and more dangerously so than a drunk or drug user. Which is why in many states and Canadian provinces we epileptics can't drive till we establish that our seizures are well under control and we aren't a danger to the lives and well being of others. I am as I've hinted an epileptic as well and while not being able to drive is inconvenient my life is simply more ordered that it was previously because I have to make plans and can't just take off on impulse. Before the police come barging into a home they have to have reasonable probable cause to do so and if they do without a warrant there had better be a very good reason for the police to do that. This kind of legalese and legal hoops to jump through keep the police as servants of broader society rather than just doing what they want at any time. Further, the police and ISP need probable cause to intercept and "read" what is coming out a wired connection or a wireless one. Just having a TOR exit node isn't probable cause unless and until some crime is committed nothing illegal has occurred and under the British legal system with both Canada and the United States have inherited we are innocent until we are proven guilty or (in common law cases such as lawsuits,) until on "balance of probability" we have caused or enabled some non criminal act to occur. Austria, like most other parts of Europe which suffered under Napoleon Bonaparte have inherited the Code Napoleon which assumes, in criminal cases, that one is guilty until proven innocent. Countries that were, at one point a part of the British Empire have inherited the presumption of innocence and all that goes with it. Counties once a part of the French Empire and European nations once ravished and conquered by Napoleon, operate under the civil and criminal laws he developed as Emperor. The Austrian Empire elected to use the Code Napoleon in the early 19th Century. Other counties have developed their own legal systems which may or may not have the vital presumption of innocence which guards against what the USA Constitution describes as unreasonable search and seizure and forbids which the rest of the English speaking world and those parts of the world using a version of British Criminal and Common Law have also adopted and use including Great Britain. So I can't see anyone being raided by the police because they are running a TOR exit node just because the have a TOR exit node unless and until that becomes illegal. Even at that, the server operator, from a home operator to a business cannot be reasonably be held as an accessory before the fact until after a crime is committed. Of course there are other things that come into play such as the amount of traffic you cause on your home ISP link (wired or wireless) which violates your contract with them. And just about all of them loosely cap bandwidth a home user can use and forbid servers of one type or another. The contract with the telco or cableco may in fact, forbid the running of a TOR exit node that you signed which may result in you just being cut off with or without notice. Normally without.

Anyway, until a crime has actually occurred it is very very hard under the Criminal legal system used in places like Canada, the United States and so on to be held or even investigated as accessories before the fact which is what Austria is pulling here. It's all very interesting and a fascinating discussion to have but it's all theoretical until it lands in a criminal court where the presumption of innocence holds sway rather than a presumption of guilt. It will be interesting to follow such a case if it is ever prosecuted.

What this does do is provide a novel definition of the legal phrase of "accessory before the fact" by which Austria assumes as do you that every user of TOR is as criminal. The TOR exit node operator here doesn't even have to know of a particular case or situation. He would only have to know that his action (to open the node to anyone and everyone) is likely to lead to some sort of criminal activity being conducted over it. yet criminal activity occurs even without TOR, or Mibbit even. SO at best linking a TOR exit node to criminal activity is a stretch at best. There are more anonomyzing sites and software freely available out there, have a peek at Source Forge if you like . And you don't know any more than I do if every operator of a TOR exit node allow connection to it without restriction. The user of the node isn't anonymous until they use the node. In other words, they can be logged and, if necessary traced as long as they are on my server. (It's not impossible or even hard to do it on an Apache server. I don't know about a MS server cause I'm not fool enough to run one. Still some people have a legitimate reason to be anonymous on the Internet or believe they do and that does not automatically translate into illegal or anti-social behaviour.

ooops: Here's their facebook info: https://www.facebook.com/RicoManagement
They also appear to be brainless idiots but who knows :-)

What's even more suspicious is that RICO Management doesn't even have a web site not to mention any way to contact or check up on them. But to prove they aren't all that bright they have a Facebook account complete with name, address, contact number, and a little slice of Google Maps that shows exactly where they hide. Not a single "like" of course, and a lot of really nasty messages :-) Yeah, they are trolls .

Although for reasons most don't seem to suspect, which is that the ruling invades an area of federal jurisdiction which, to put it simply is, that when trade and commerce cross provincial are territorial boundaries it's the feds that own it not a province and the BC Supreme Court is provincial. Keep in mind that the World Wide Web has become about trade and commerce to a large extent. To this point, I have to say I haven't read the entire ruling but that it doesn't appear to revolve around a civil suit where the plaintiff is accusing Google.com and Google.ca jointly and severally of unfair competition and that, this isn't about as it is about at least one of the contenders in the civil suit Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack wanting Google (in it's global entirety) to remove it's listing, something Google is highly resistant to do. Only Google.ca has a psychical presence in Canada (likely Toronto and I hope they are enjoying the mayor there!)and that Parliament made clear in the 1980s that the Internet and Web, for regulatory and legal purposes were under Federal jurisdiction. That said I'll have to read the entire ruling. But the judge there is messing out of her jurisdiction as there is nothing I've read so far that excludes it from that and a federal court should have heard the case she's ruling on, not the BC Supreme Court. Still this looks like it will be fun. It looks less and less like censorship than it does about someone having a hissy fit about something and wanting to be removed from Google's database. Too bad, IMHO. I understand that Google.ca has deleted their entry though not Google.com which strikes me as the right response on their part. In the meantime someone is going to leap on this on appeal as being in federal jurisdiction and the whole thing will have to start all over again. Now, if the court had ruled that company X be deleted cause they were bad and what not that would be censorship. Ruling in Company X's favour to be deleted cause they're having a hissy fit would get appealed in any event. This is gonna be fun to watch. :-)
I'll finish reading the entire ruling sometime tomorrow when I have the time. We're a strange bunch here in BC who often provide entertainment to the rest of the country. What would you expect from a Province whose first Premier called himself Amour De Cosmos? :-) Bill Smith was just too boring.

Your argument doesn't really hold much water unless, as in most civil matters the fake you describe of someone posting as Mike complete with the Techdirt logo causes Techdirt and/or Mike some real damages.

Then again no one would believe it was Mike so the damages part can be quickly dealt with other than a few messages here saying WTF if people didn't real the URL they went to. (Most people here would do that faster than instantly. There might be a trademark issue using the Logo but for the same reasons that no one would believe Mike posted it I can't see much in the ways of damages there. Mike might have the fake taken down or he might even repost it here to point out there's a new troller out there. Either way you're full of it.

I frequently do my level best to avoid commenting on OOTB's posts but this one did scrape bottom even for him. Which is why I included the line on him polling the site to see if Mike or anyone has mentioned copyright again. It's too coincidental just how quickly he responds to them for it to be otherwise.

That said, I completely agree with you on not giving OOB,AJ and Darryl the attention they crave. Perhaps they would go somewhere else just as long as it's not the IRC channels I op. :-) But then again, the ignore switch is beautiful there as is an op version of same where the entire channel is excused from their rants and they don't even know it. Next time I'll probably leave him alone. It's just not worth my time.

I'll ask a constantly self renewing question here, OOTB, can you actually read?
The answer, it always seems, is no. What Mike is talking about in his post is both a blatant abuse of copyright and using copyright as censorship which it was never intended to be either in the UK or the USA the countries where it first appeared. And whether or not Mike wants to do away with copyright which, as it exists today is far from the worst idea in the world. And from all Mike's posts I can see his viewpoint and agree with it even though I do hold a number of copyrights. (All with Creative Commons licenses so I can avoid being the screaming hypocrite you are.)

It is interesting that every discussion of copyright around here is quickly followed by your mostly unwelcome and occasionally, unintentionally funny posts. I'm beginning to suspect that you must poll the site to see if any of the posts contain the world copyright when you rarely appear to discuss anything else.

By the way, OOTB, while from your "years and years" of posts I seriously have ever produced a single creative document. Quoting "Mary has a litte grifter lamb" doesn't count.

I can understand the idea that endless discussion and attention to Snowden can become and may already be a side show. Particularly since the publicity hounding Assange and Wikileaks got involved.

What is technically fascinating is the route he's taken to keep the rest of his material away from the American government and intelligence community unless or until something happens to him. It's possible the key could be as little as a single byte which could trigger the sending of his other documents out after they've been unscrambled.

Despite what he's charged with he's a whistle blower, nothing more or less. Which is an honourable thing in an open and free democracy when government starts to get out of control. which, in this case, and more it seems, it has.

Well, perhaps Equador has recognized that Assange cares only about Julian Assange. If it gets and keeps him in the spotlight so much the better. Snowdon can rot in Russia for all he cares. And all he's wanted is for Equador to jump when he pulled the strings.

Another question which comes up is that Assange was wanting Asylum in Equador as well. This could get very interesting.

The difference is that this will just piss people off more.

The dog better remember the cat, otherwise it will end up with a bloody nose. Many dogs have learned respect for how well armed cats are that way.

A great deal of the distraction around Snowden seems less in his alleged character, though there's plenty of that, than in the media's fascination with "the thrill of the chase." This is the same media that is so broke, they want us to believe that they're shutting down bureaus galore, laying off reporters and photographers en masse and cutting off services to those who still get their news from dead trees. But they seem to have the resources to suddenly jump onto Aeroflot having arrived in Moscow to find Snowden, to follow him to Cuba without ever seeing hide nor hair of him in Moscow.
For all any of us know he's still safe and comfy in Hong Kong.
In the meantime what needs to be paid attention to is what the NSA and parallel spy agencies elsewhere in the "free" world are up to as they merrily spy on us.

In the USA someone disagreeing with authority was probably pro-British or something.
Once upon a time terrorist had a meaning, it's used so much now it has none. Before that calling someone a communist at least described a certain political, economic and social ideology, being pro-Brit, well, a denial of where the 13 States came from but still understandable at least.
Used too often words lose meaning. Terrorist has lost it's meaning, as communist did before that (until it's total failure in imperialist places like Russia.)
All any of these has ever meant, when tossed about like the water board guy did, is dissidents or people who complain about the fact that they can use their water as a substitute for concrete. Ahhh, freedom, where art thou now that we need you|!

The problem is that Rogers can't bullshit with the best of them.
Two and three year olds caught red handed with their hands in the cookie jar to a better job of it than he does.

Oh please, he's not going to stop now. He's always right you know even on subjects he knows less than nothing about and even has to twist his comments on what Mike said rather than the post he's responding to. I know we shouldn't feed the troll but OOTB has just become such a big target of ridicule over the years there are times I'm sure he's impervious to it.

The gem concisely states history that Mike wants to ignore: that after entirely new gadgets became commonplace and the related law cases were worked out in courts, then legislatures made statutes based on common law.

Then some people need to understand the difference between statue law and common law. Statue law is what legislatures run through their mill, often in some sort of who got to lobby me last BS whereas the Common Law consists entirely on the outcome of court cases and the precedents set there. I'd sooner trust the vast majority of courts than any collection of politicians to come up with something sane.

It is comforting, in a sad sort of way that some things never change such as the dubious though highly interesting and amusing readings of law be it of patents or copyrights that erupt from OOTB's fertile brain. Not to mention OOTB's almost total lack of knowledge of the movie and music industries which all boils down to the fact that musicians, actors, technicians and so on are almost always part time. Hate to tell you this, OOTB, the Studio system died way back in the 1950s, probably long before you were an undreamed of zygote.