Finland: Open WiFi Access Point Owner Not Liable For Infringement 156
New submitter mjrauhal writes "In Finland, the operator of an open WiFi access point was found not guilty for copyright infringement allegedly committed over said access point. The operation of such access points would have become legally risky were this decided otherwise. Appeal by the Finnish Anti-Piracy Center is still possible for this district court ruling."
Better be safe than sorry (Score:1)
I think this goes to show that in most cases, its better to have some encryption than an open network. Sure, you can possibly
fight your way legally, but you're going to need decent lawyers, money, and the press. I just don't think its worth it for most people,
especially with draconian penalties for stuff like child porn tacked on.
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i think this shows the opposite...
Had he locked down his wifi he wouldn't have so easily been able to fight the charges. and would now be facing either fines or jail time whatever the the Fin's penalty is for this.
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Would he? Maybe he wasn't infringing, but someone did it over his wireless access point? I'm guessing that you're assuming he actually did engage in copyright infringement, but maybe he didn't?
The alternative is that someone else did it on his open wifi. If he had locked it down, that probably wouldn't have happened.
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now i am not advocating that you should break copyright (or that the guy from the article was guilty), but if you are going to break copyright, this case shows you are better off leaving it open as it allows for some plausible deniability that someone else had used the open wifi to do it. had it been locked down it would be quite a bit more difficult to argue that someone else was may have been at fault.
or there is another possibility, had he locked down his access point, and then someone either broke int
Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Offtopic: Can we please automatically delete all posts with links to my clean pc?
Ontopic:
This baffles me on how money is wasted on anti-piracy. This case should have been dismissed at the very beginning. How can you blame someone simply on the basis of ownership? This is like suing an owner of a car for not locking his car, because his car stolen and used in a crime.
What happens if I use WEP encryption? Would I be liable as well? I wish that the media corporations stopped trolling and started creating some business models which actually make sense in this day and age. All others have already moved forward.
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I'm surprised by the ruling because it removes the teeth of most copyright law. Now anybody can upload anything safely at airports, cafés, hotel lobbies. Hell, do it from your home WiFi router only make sure you don't use encryption for plausible deniability.
What I'm waiting for is a ruling on an upload from the wired LAN of a largish corporation where they can tie the infringement to the company but not to an individual MAC address. Will employers be forced to do ISP-type logging of all employee netwo
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I'm surprised by the ruling because it removes the teeth of most copyright law.
I'm surprised too, but I think this ruling is satisfying. After all, just because it's hard/impossible to find the people who actually committed the crime (or perhaps it's just a civil suit), that doesn't mean they should be able to successfully punish/sue the wrong people.
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I don't agree with punishing the wifi owner for the actual crime of the person who uses their wifi, but I do think wifi should be locked down for a variety of reasons - including piracy, viruses, hacking, etc. I also think ISPs
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then maybe a small fine (which is not connected to the crimes committed) which is attached to the monthly bill.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Not even if it's the ISP's decision alone (especially not if enforced by the government). I don't believe in punishing people for something merely because it could be abused. Especially since the internet is intended to be open to begin with.
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Well excuse me but my crappy PMCIA card and router refuse to talk beyond anything but WEP regardless of upgrades, so their crappy code is now my fault, well, FU ;D (joking about the last bit but seriously I should hardly be liable for broken upgrade code that's meant to allow WAP but doesn't and I'm stuck with WEP). So who gets the fine in this case me or the router/PMCIA card manufacturer (same company).
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A friend has a smartphone that can either run Skype audio calls or use WPA. The CPU is not strong enough to run both. So, his accesspoint uses WEP.
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Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, people should not have anonymous Internet access least they commit a crime. Nice.
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I disagree, you should keep your wifi open if possible, with strong passwords on your wired network and a firewall between your network an modem. I'd leave my wifi open if my ISP's TOS didn't forbid it.
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This is why the Finnish citizens will get an extended "kasettimaksu" (cassette fee). They will increase the price of devices capable of storage (even the clouds) to support the music industry.
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b) Copyright organizations claim it's necessary to pay (some of ) the costs of piracy
Then no wonder some people claim the former. If you're having to pay these organizations when you didn't even pirate anything to begin with, is that any surprise?
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I'm surprised by the ruling because it removes the teeth of most copyright law.
Not really. It still has all its power and teeths for those copyright infringement cases for which it was designed in the first place. (hint: internet did not exist at that time, so I doubt it involves wlan access points).
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I'm surprised by the ruling because it removes the teeth of most copyright law. Now anybody can upload anything safely at airports, cafés, hotel lobbies. Hell, do it from your home WiFi router only make sure you don't use encryption for plausible deniability.
You are completely misinterpreting this. Your comment about airports, cafes etc.: This ruling helps the owner of the open router; it doesn't affect the user of that open router (who would likely not be caught anyway), so there it doesn't make any difference. Your comment about home use: "Plausible deniability" isn't going to help you, it's "preponderance of evidence" that is against you. In this case, there wasn't just "Plausible deniability", there was about hundred people present at exactly the time when
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If a hoax or threatening or terrorist telephone call is made from a payphone, either one run directly by the telephone company or one in privately owned premises such as a hotel or motorway services (gas station for those in the USA), the authorities would not confiscate the phone or arrest the owner of the premises. So should an open WiFi connection available to the public not be treated the same way as a payphone?
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If a hoax or threatening or terrorist telephone call is made from a payphone, either one run directly by the telephone company or one in privately owned premises such as a hotel or motorway services (gas station for those in the USA), the authorities would not confiscate the phone or arrest the owner of the premises. So should an open WiFi connection available to the public not be treated the same way as a payphone?
The phone won't have logs--the phone company will, and they will almost certainly share them with law enforcement. The phone cannot contain evidence of the wrongdoing--it won't have a cached copy of the threat. The phone company is also not the prime suspect in the case.
Particularly in a civil trial, the burden of proof is essentially "more likely than not." The standard for evidence gathering is even lower. It's perfectly reasonable to demand an image of a suspect's drive, assuming there is reasonable
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was on reddit the other day and the creator of Isohunt mentioned several times that making money from piracy was the holy grail and he had no idea how to do it. (Yeah, Kim Dotcom got money off of piracy, though I'm sure he was earning far less than market value, which makes sense since he didn't have the burden of any costs of production.) So, here's your chance to give suggestions. Preferably ones that don't end up making a *lot* less money than the current system. For example, I recently read a suggestion that companies should put all their movies on something like Hulu for free (but ad supported). The problem is that ads aren't close to paying the bills once you include the cost of making movies and the bandwidth of sending them to you. The only reason ad-supported movies are even available on Hulu is because they're long past their prime, so they're being used to make a few extra bucks. Maybe the solution is to only create movies that cost less than $10 million to make - then, even if piracy grows and takes 90% of your profits, you could still get by. In many ways, I think that's a sad outcome for the movie industry. Even more worryingly, I've noticed a lot of articles talking about new ad-skipping technologies (http://www.dishtvblog.com/dish-news/the-dish-hopper-adds-all-new-feature-auto-hop-that-will-allow-for-a-commercial-skipping-option/) and several people I know have been talking about how they always skip the ads. Which makes me think: gee, people don't want to pay for their entertainment and they're becoming more empowered and pushy about being able to skip the ads, too. I wonder how anyone is supposed to pay for the costs of creating stuff?
So, I just thought I'd put that question there. It's easy to say "hey, you guys should figure out a way to
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The way to make money on piracy is the way that some content businesses are already doing it - by selling hardware. Media players, home theaters, hard drives - all the trappings of locally maintained content. They're not free, and they can't be copied. I remember reading that Sony makes 70-80% of their revenue from hardware (tangible products), and 20-30% from content. That's the model.
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It's the model for whom? It works fine for hardware manufacturers. But how does it help content producers?
If the content producers can make money by selling hardware, why wouldn't they just give up on making the content? Or, if not, if they cross-subsidise the content from the hardware sales, how do they stop Wing-Wang-Po Industries making similar hardware more cheaply by not subsidising the content?
The only way I can think of doing it is to put encryption keys in your product, protected as best you can, so
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No, the model is coming up with new ways to make money off of the entertainment being created. Give it away for free (or sell it at a fraction of the cost where it becomes more work to pirate it) so it becomes wildly popular. Then, sell merchandise related to said media. Have special showings of said media. Have live shows...people can't pirate live shows. Sell advertising inside the media using product placement. I dunno...I am just making shit up but there ARE possibilities here. Why is everyone so
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I thought of some ideas in 30 seconds and I am an engineer with no creative ability.
An engineer with no creative abilities? How do you do your job?
Arcade first (Score:2)
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Dunno, but a lot of people pay to watch virtual actors in virtual scenery. That's how Disney got started after all...
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How about starting with appreciating your customer?
Currently it looks like this [i-am-bored.com] and it is getting worse. At some point, it is simply being greedy. Most triple-A movies already pay off during first weeks of release. E.g. ( The Avengers [mtv.com]). At that point, even $3 per copy makes you money.
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Interesting)
The model is to banish our perpetual copyright, and go back to a sane amount of years until works enter the public domain.
I think 25 years is reasonable. At that rate, every movie from 1987 & before would be public domain, and we could have a decent selection on hulu.
Then, I might be willing to pay for a new movie...
business models that can undercut piracy which don't also involve a large cut in revenues.
Lobbying for new laws should not be a 'business model.' Who cares if they have to take a revenue cut? They backed themselves into this corner, fuck 'em, they *should* be taking a revenue cut.
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I know you're AC and unlikely to return back here, but back in my AC days I did.. so let's give it a shot..
Precursor: I've argued for the removal of copyright, period, before - my view on this is rather black-and-white, if you will.
You say that 25 years is reasonable. But do you then believe that strict enforcement under the full penalty that the law allows is also reasonable for infringement of works that fall within that 25-year period?
You note that you 'might' be willing to pay for a new movie. Can you
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I'm not the AC you responded to, but I agree 25 years is reasonable. However, today's penalties are as insane as today's copyright lengths. Look at the difference between a music pirate and a music thief.
The theif steals a CD from walmart, and whether or not he ever intends to listen to it, walamart is out the price of the CD. If caught, it's a misdemeanor and he'll pay a few hundred bucks in fines.
The pirate downloads a song, and if he listens to it and likes it he's likely to buy the CD. Whether or not he
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Excellent reply and I thank you for taking the time to revisit and post it.
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You mean they might end up having to make more movies with a compelling story and rely less on special effects? What horror.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the thing, though: the "rights-owners" act as if the people who want to pay are pirates themselves, or potential pirates. DRM doesn't convince people to pay for a product; rather, it's more likely to convince people that it's not worth the hassle of trying to be good, and end up pirating anyway. DRM is targeted at the people who are paying for the product, rather than the pirates who are going to hack the product anyway and never would have bought it in the first place.
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DRM doesn't target them, it's just that pirates are so adept that paying customers are the only ones that get hit.
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If it's not targeted at them but they're the only ones getting hit, then the people deploying the DRM have really shitty aim.
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You keep... missing... your... Target! -- james T Kirk, The Wrath of Khan. Oh, the evil geniuses in the entertainment industry! Just like Khan.
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DRM is targeted at the people who are paying for the product, rather than the pirates who are going to hack the product anyway and never would have bought it in the first place.
DRM is targeted at technophobes and there's still plenty people who can't figure out to use a ripper and won't go to TPB because they still feel a little bit dirty about it, as least enough that they won't ask the kid down the street to teach them this torrents thing. But those people are either getting very old or have finally after 10+ years finally figured it out. It may have made sense back when one kid got a CD from their parents and another kid tried to copy it, not when both of them are downloading o
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Copyright is a government-enforced monopoly. It's really hard to beat monopoly pricing when it comes to making money, but generally we don't think monopolies are a good idea.
If Domino's had a monopoly on pizza, I'm sure they'd make a lot more money than they do now. And if you came along and said, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't have a monopoly on pizza," they'd be upset at the prospect of losing all that revenue. They'd demand that you provide them with a business model that was just as lucrative. If all you cou
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Worse that that, because once they had paid for the R&D for the recipe the real cost of ingredients in each new instance of the pizza approaches zero. With infinite supply the value of that product to the market should approach cost, which approaches zero.
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Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Preferably ones that don't end up making a *lot* less money than the current system.
Why?
What data did you use to reach the conclusion that our current level of spending on copyrighted works is the right amount?
We have a finite amount of money to spend on things (U.S. GDP, if the "we" we are talking about is the United States). Over the past 100 years, we have continually strengthened copyright. This has the effect of increasing the portion of GDP that is flowing to copyrighted works. Over the past 15 years, we have seen an escalating war between piracy and increased enforcement, and the data on whether this conflict has increased or decreased net proceeds to artists is *extremely* unclear and wildly misrepresented by all sides of the debate.
Seems to me in a data storm like that, it's pretty important to find some solid ground on which to stand. It behooves us to have some way of measuring whether the current approach to funding the production of copyrighted works is consuming too much or too little of our GDP. If we don't know whether we are spending too much or too little, we can't really say whether an alternative solution would do best to result in more or less funding.
Here's one example for spot-checking the situation: Are we more like the decadent side of Rome during the run-up to the decline, awash in circuses of spectacle, or are we more like Sparta in its prime, potent but lacking in culture? If the former, we may be spending too much on copyrighted works. If the latter, it would suggest we are spending too little.
There are other ways to hold a finger up to the wind, and still more to dig into harder data. Do you think we are under-spending or over-spending on the production of copyrighted works, and why?
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This has the effect of increasing the portion of GDP that is flowing to copyrighted works.
Footnote: Another way to frame this is that it increases the portion of U.S. resources (land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship) that are being dedicated to the production of copyrighted works instead of producing something else.
Authorship is the U.S.'s big export (Score:2)
Re:Authorship is the U.S.'s big export (Score:4, Informative)
copyrighted works are one of the few things that the United States still successfully exports.
Citation needed. Here's what I found on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Exports: $1.511 trillion (2011 est.)
Export Goods: agricultural products (soybeans, fruit, corn) 9.2%, industrial supplies (organic chemicals) 26.8%, capital goods (transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment) 49.0%, consumer goods (automobiles, medicines) 15.0%
Here's another good source [worldsrich...ntries.com]:
1. Civilian aircraft: $74 billion (5.7% of total exports)
2. Semiconductors: $50.6 billion (3.9%)
3. Passenger cars: $49.6 billion (3.9%)
4. Pharmaceutical preparations: $40.4 billion (3.1%)
5. Automotive accessories: $39.9 billion (3.1%)
6. Other industrial machines: $38.1 billion (3%)
7. Fuel oil: $34.9 billion (2.7%)
8. Organic chemicals: $33.4 billion (2.6%)
9. Telecommunications: $32.9 billion (2.6%)
10. Plastic materials: $31.6 billion (2.5%)
So, copyright is not in the top 10, and it's not more than 2.5%.
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Copyrighted works are rarely directly exported from the US. It usually exported from a shell company in a tax haven abroad. It avoids any export taxes the US may have (I doubt it has any, but still there might be some restrictions), and saves the parent company taxes in the US.
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Copyrighted works are rarely directly exported from the US. It usually exported from a shell company in a tax haven abroad.
I think I see what you're saying: If copyrighted works are not being taxed like other exports, then we can't make a direct dollar-to-dollar comparison with, for example, industrial equipment exports which pay a larger tax burden. A dollar worth of industrial equipment export contributes more to the public coffers than a dollar of copyright export.
Interesting. Good point to consider. Do
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Maybe the solution is to only create movies that cost less than $10 million to make - then, even if piracy grows and takes 90% of your profits,
What makes you think piracy takes any profits at all? Do you have any proof that those downloading free copies of a given content (be it music or movies) would have otherwise paid for it? There is research proving otherwise.
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Or. Anyone who uploads bits to anyone else gets a very small fee per MB. Anyone who downloads pays that fee plus a handling fee to their ISP (rather than a connection fee).
In other words you pay simply for the volume of data you take from the Internet. Sure you may still get piracy, but the people downloading would know that by going to the official site they are supporting the work, otherwise they are not.
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Bad idea.
How do you track who's using what and how long without causing an unacceptable breach of privacy?
ISP already knows a lot about you, to protect your privacy we have laws.
What's covered by this "package"? Will people downloading Linux distributions and other free software and even proprietary freeware also cause money to flow to the creators of such software?
Whoever is the "owner" gets paid.
And who gets to set the "price"? Is a fart app on your smartphone worth as much per hour of use as Photoshop?
Me, 10E is ok. If you spend the same amount of time, then to you it has the same worth.
How politically correct is it to propose a model which would essentially give a large amount of money to porn companies?
So what, if they provied what you want they will get paid.
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What's covered by this "package"? Will people downloading Linux distributions and other free software and even proprietary freeware also cause money to flow to the creators of such software?
Whoever is the "owner" gets paid.
So how does the ISP determine 1. what works of authorship are being used at any given moment, especially on a computer running a Free operating system and not connected to the Internet 24/7, and 2. who is the copyright owner of each work?
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A sandbox that can't see much (Score:2)
You could have a centralized system (like Steam) for tracking user activities.
How would such a system track user activities on a Free operating system, where the user can modify the OS kernel to limit the "centralized system (like Steam) for tracking user activities" to a sandbox that can't see much? And even without a sandbox, how would it track music and movies that don't match any well-known hashes because they have been copied through the analog hole or otherwise reencoded?
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"what original files does it match" (Score:2)
As for unknown files, all you need is a pop up box where you ask the user what original files does it match.
For one thing, the user has no incentive to answer correctly. Either there is a way to answer that the file is a file that the user created (in which case the user will lie), or there is no way for the user to create an original work or otherwise add a file that isn't a major-label published work (in which case it's as locked down as a game console). Or I'm missing something fundamental.
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ISP already knows a lot about you, to protect your privacy we have laws.
Yeah. Let's not make it worse. And I'd prefer not to rely on corrupt lawmakers, either, to protect my privacy. They're the same geniuses that came up with the TSA and Patriot Act.
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"How politically correct is it to propose a model which would essentially give a large amount of money to porn companies?"
If more people watch, for example, Juicy Lucy goes Down Under, than Tom Cruise in his latest drivel (and you know they do, despite what the box office figures say), why shouldn't Lucy and her cohorts get remunerated accordingly?
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The centre for economic and policy research postulates a tax deductable "artistic freedom voucher":
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-artistic-freedom-voucher-internet-age-alternative-to-copyrights [cepr.net]
Then there is Kickstarter.
Or you could look to how artistic works got created in the past - patronage.
Wanna know where that movie or music money goes? Well sometimes it goes to the star (McCartney is worth almost $800 mil, Cruise around $250 mil). But a huge wedge goes to the publishers and dis
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Actually a large chunk of it goes to executives.
For most bands, the advance is the entire amount they'll be paid for an album. Let's say it's $10,000. After retailer's cut, the wholesale price of a CD is around $15 or so. The artist may get maybe $1 of that, but before that happens, the $10,000 has to be pai
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How about merchandising? You can't deny that the Avengers movie won't boost sales of action figures or Avengers themed rides in amusement parks, etc. What I'm saying is that instead of "selling the movie", you use the movie to sell something else (like seats in a theater---there's no reason why theaters don't play "old" movies---lots of folks didn't see Avatar in a cinema, and would pay for that kind of entertainment---especially without all the crowds).
Also, the reasons that advertising doesn't work is bec
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"I'm skeptical that there are any business models that can undercut piracy which don't also involve a large cut in revenues."
Sounds like a false assumption is made in your decision process. The way people consume media has changed. That will likely require a change in business model and/or revenue stream. money for media will fall, people trying to innovate and make money will do so within the parameters available. then money for media may climb again. for those people, and the landscape will likely look a
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Even more worryingly, I've noticed a lot of articles talking about new ad-skipping technologies (http://www.dishtvblog.com/dish-news/the-dish-hopper-adds-all-new-feature-auto-hop-that-will-allow-for-a-commercial-skipping-option/) and several people I know have been talking about how they always skip the ads. Which makes me think: gee, people don't want to pay for their entertainment and they're becoming more empowered and pushy about being able to skip the ads, too. I wonder how anyone is supposed to pay for the costs of creating stuff?
I don't know. Maybe by the monthly fees charged by the cable and satellite companies? Where does that money go, if not to the people creating stuff?
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They'll figure it out, eventually. The music industry is doing well enough. The movie folks seem to be doing alright, too. But it's their problem, not ours.
Unless you think we should all be worried about how you make a living, too? (I mean personally I'm a liberal and all and I'm concerned for your welfare, but do you see what I'm saying?)
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(Yeah, Kim Dotcom got money off of piracy, though I'm sure he was earning far less than market value, which makes sense since he didn't have the burden of any costs of production.)
That is so wrong. Kim Dotcom made his money selling bandwidth. Maybe you missed this but he ran a cloud hosting business where you upload smaller files and and download with limited bandwidth for free, but could subscribe to premium services which included more storage, longer lifespan for uploaded material and much greater bandwidth for downloads. He never sold the stuff people uploaded, nor was it his business to care what they uploaded. Stupid legislation forced him to implement DMCA tools that allowed c
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Game of Thrones S1 DVD version costs 25 pounds.
It has 5 disks, each costing about 1 pound (that's if they were burned. Pressed disks are cheaper). I assume 3 pounds for the box. Transporting of that box from the manufacturer to Amazon couldn't possibly cost 5 pounds (they'd never ship only 1 box set) but I'll assume 5.
This leaves 12 pounds or 1.2 pounds per episode.
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Offtopic: Can we please automatically delete all posts with links to my clean pc?
Ontopic: This baffles me on how money is wasted on anti-piracy. This case should have been dismissed at the very beginning. How can you blame someone simply on the basis of ownership? This is like suing an owner of a car for not locking his car, because his car stolen and used in a crime.
Hmmm... just for the sake of (hopefully civilized) debating: would one be off-the-hook if the dog one is owning bite a person passing-by? (say... while walking in the park. Even when on leash, sometime it happens)
If you think this is not a valid analogy, can you please explain why?
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I doubt that you would be prosecuted as if YOU did the biting. i.e. for assault or murder, depending on the nature of the bite. Far more likely the only crime you may have committed would be keeping a dangerous dog, but only if it were reasonable for you to suspect that the dog was dangerous - such a dog that is required to wear a muzzle in public, or that you trained him to bite.
Of course it is not a valid analogy. You are equating a dog to a wireless access point and the act of that dog biting someone to
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In that situation, there is no human to punish.
The dog's owner?
Furthermore, the owner is the only one that can keep the dog under control.
The dog was on leash. The bitten person just approached to much and too sudden for the owner to react (and actually the dog bite because of the surprise)
You don't typically have full control over other human beings so you can keep them from committing crimes.
And then there's the fact that, unlike in the situation you describe, open WiFi can be used for legitimate purposes.
A dog may be useful for legitimate purposes as well - property defense, guide dogs for the blind, etc.
There would be a difference: there was no other human using the dog for illegitimate purposes.
But this were it becomes interesting: even if the owner hasn't been negligent with the dog (his property) and there was noone else to "mishandle"
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the dogs owner is responsible. sheesh. just like the guns owner is responsible if the guns owner shoots it. or the traps owner if the traps owner builds and arms a trap to harm another person.
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The bitten person just approached to much and too sudden for the owner to react (and actually the dog bite because of the surprise)
I'd say it's their fault in that case, then. I think too often dog owners get punished when it really wasn't their fault.
I reckon chances are high that a court will still award damages in the favor of the bitten person.
They should really stop that.
Ok. What's your opinion on the more general view of "responsibility of an owner about how their property is used no matter by whom"? Does it exist in such a general context? 'cause in more restricted contexts certainly is: e.g. at least in some (many?) countries, try to get a firearm and you'll be asked to keep it secure/under-lock when you are not wearing/using it.
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More like blaming a property owner when the tenants build a meth lab. And the property owner knew that meth cookers were a local problem. And the property owner let just anyone move in without knowing who they were.
I *want* open hotspots, but the legal issues are real.
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They don't care if you're aiding and abetting or not.
They just want to make you help them by threatening you with a lawsuit if you're not bending over backwards to police things for them.
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This baffles me on how money is wasted on anti-piracy.
The money is not "wasted". It finds its way to lawyers' pockets. This is by design.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Offtopic: Can we please automatically delete all posts with links to my clean pc?
That's one of the things the little black flag is for -- flagging spam so the /. administrators can review and delete it. Just click the flag when you see spam.
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If you flag it, the editors downmod it to -1. They cannot and do not delete it. Email the editors requesting for the ability to delete posts when you see such blatant spam.
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But in this case, they're punishing you for what someone else did.
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Well, I hope you're not assuming I agree with that. Just because a law exists doesn't mean I agree with it.
Just an aside (Score:2)
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yes.
the article body text tries to mimic "official" typeface, ie. shitty typewriter.
It's illegal in Germany. (Score:5, Informative)
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In Germany, you are legally obligated to secure your wifi [techdirt.com]. There's a reason why the Pirate Party is receiving many votes in the state elections. If you're in Germany, a lot of YouTube videos (most of them are legit) are blocked because of GEMA (the German RIAA). I've heard that some bands aren't even allowed to post their OWN music on YouTube because GEMA won't allow this. My guess is that the old East German Stasi was just renamed to GEMA.
GEMA has achieved in Germany, what the MAFIAA could only dream of. A legally protected monopoly. Artists, Youtube Uploaders (even if its just background noise) and anyone else, needs to prove their innocence, or else pay up to GEMA.
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So what happens if your hardware supports only WEP? What happens if you simply have bad luck and buy buggy hardware [slashdot.org] ?
Legacy devices (Score:2)
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Viel Spaß : http://www.unblocker.yt/ [unblocker.yt] :D
Smokescreen (Score:4, Interesting)
This fanfare over piracy, thinking of the children, and terrorism is just masking the real issue. Follow the money trail - it leads to mobile phone carriers.
If everyone had open access wifi, there would be reduced need for 3G data plans in major cities. Handsets would use VOIP.
Internet on the bus (Score:3)
If everyone had open access wifi, there would be reduced need for 3G data plans in major cities.
How so? A device with a 3G data plan can connect to the Internet on public transit, unlike a device with only Wi-Fi.
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Hence the word 'reduced'. But for a lot of cases, wifi would suffice.
Where I am it's about $10 a month for an extra 1GB of data on top of a voice plan.
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Wi-Fi is just as NATted (Score:2)
If everyone had open access wifi, there would be reduced need for 3G data plans in major cities.
A device with a 3G data plan can connect to the Internet on public transit, unlike a device with only Wi-Fi.
Last time I tried, 3G did not connect to the public Internet
Neither does Wi-Fi, which is behind NAT in every single deployment that I remember having used.
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Not to mention neighbours and near neighbours being able to share internet. In Sydney in the early 2000's there was a private network strung together using Pringles cans for antennas. It wasn't allowed to be connected to the Internet due to telco laws.
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A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of fellow slashdotters posted in a comment. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my fellow slashdotter want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
It was pretending to be a strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of.
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