Posts by Andrew Norton
202 posts • joined Friday 31st August 2007 00:23 GMT
Re: Concert spending
"With "copyfighters" it's all about choosing the evidence to back up your prejudice. You must reject all evidence that doesn't."
While 'copyrighters' don't have any evidence to back up their claims, and thus just make it up. They just reject all evidence.
Come on Andrew, this isn't a new issue. If every 'chicken little' prophecy of the damage of 'piracy' was true, and evidentially based, they'd have gone bankrupt a dozen times over by now. Kinda reminds me of the meetings/conferences I had to go to when I was a copyright infringement investigator for a UK record label in the late 90s.
And who can forget the lovely slapping down the IPO gave to industry claims with a request that claims be made WITH EVIDENCE (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/consult-2011-copyright-evidence.pdf), thanks to the Hargreaves review's call that policy be evidentially made, not lobbyist made.
You know, like that 'democratically mandated' law you mentioned, which got a major boost (and mired in 'wash up') after the head of UMG has a private meeting with Darth Mandy and feeds him a load of lies ('revenue down by half this year' - actually was up slightly)
By the way, I didn't notice any source for the 'under 10k/15k earnings figures on page 2. However, I *DO* recall a similar figure and claim being used by Fergal Sharkey a few years back (also unsubstantiated) to push for the 20 year EU extension of copyright terms for recorded music. Is that where you got it from, or has there been some 'evidence' behind it too?
Re: No surprise here - It is DRM that increases piracy
Hmm, odd. I've been known to do a book or two. My wifehas worked in the publishing field for YEARS, most recently doing the graphics and preflighting books for a number of publishers (including textbooks from the likes of Oxford university press, MIT, etc)
eBooks are easier in a lot of ways, if nothing else there's less worry about inks, etc. and they don't have to wait for a printmatch to be printed, sent back etc.
ebooks take maybe 2/3 the work of a print version. Now if they're going to do a print copy too, they have to do all the steps as well, but combined it's maybe 105% the work of doing a print-only.
This is of course, the experiences of the middle-man company who gets the raw manuscripts and images, and outputs either a finished ebook file(s) or sends the print order to the printer of choice.
Re: The scum fleecing the dumb
"First off, I don't think Prenda actually prosectuted anyone for copyright infringement, so none of its targets have been found guilty in a court of law. I believe that once a defendant started to put up a defence, they backed off. (Sorry, can't find the source for this right now)"
Wrong.
I know of at least one case where they went for it, and got a default judgement. Of cours,e less than a week later, the defendant had got his stuff together, hired an attorney and filed a response and a request to re-open the case. That was 2 months ago. Then Prenda decided to drop the suit (after getting a default win, just after the March hearing, and before the judge ruled on re-opening) so there was a sanctions motion filed. that's still ongoing, with the prenda lawyer firing any and all personal attacks on the defendants lawyer possible. The latest document there should be filed today
*disclaimer* I've been working with said defense lawyer.
Re: ok, so ...
Use Opera?
Re: @ Lars G - Or... more likely ...
Is this the story you're talking about
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/18/mcdonalds_computer_vision_spectacles_attack/
Funny John, the story's spent the weekend (and the previous week) doing the rounds.
What you seem to have missed is that the files the DoJ used to get the warrants the NZ anti-terror squad used for the raid, was based on files not being taken down that CARPATHIA had been told to not touch, because of a warrant for the Ninjavideo case. Now, the DoJ had responded saying 'we never told MU not to delete it, we only talked to Carp, so when MU didn't download the files and were aware of it, it wasn't us that told them. Completely missing that carp told MU about the service of court orders they got from the DOJ.
So, on one hand, had MU deleted the files, they would have been prosecuted for tampering in an investigation and destruction of evidence. When they didn't touch them, they got this. DoJ wanted to have it both ways. It's really not that hard to grasp, especially as the DoJ's filings over the past week have basically confirmed the story.
She wasn't going to recomend 6 months; so not even her husband believes her. I say that because earlier this week, he (an IBM exec) launched a tirade on twitter about it (http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2013/01/15/carmen-ortizs-husband-twitter-aaron-swartz/), saying the PLEABARGAIN was for 6 months. When he turned it down, then Ortiz said they'd push for 7, which matches the rest of the claims.
Oh, and the INITIAL indictment was for 35 years max, with just the 5 charges "wire fraud; unauthorized access to a protected computer system; reckless damage to a protected computer system; aiding and abetting; criminal forfeiture"
Ortiz added more charges recently, upping it to 13 charges, and 50+ years max.
Re: Wydenism in the UK: "Wydening" the Loopholes...
How is your horse doing?
Don't have a horse for everyday transport? You use a car? Do you keep to below 4mph (2mph in cities) and have a man with a red flag/lamp walking in front to warn others?
You don't?
But in driving a car you've enabled tech oligarchs to get their filthy paws on other peoples livlihoods and lives, and effected their property and labor and effort (which is labor).
BTW, since when is 'effort' rewardable?
And your argument is based on one premise - that you just 'saying' you did a dilligent search is good enough. Whatcha going to do when they say 'prove it'? At which point you're straight back to regular old 'infringing'.
Your outrage is based on a misreading of the law, expressed in a Daily Mail style outpouring of moral indignation.
Re: Heartening
"How in the hell do these MPs and business cronies of theirs think they can just co-opt individual artistic property rights? "
Er, they don't? Possibly because it's not quite as Andrew says...
Actually, the original writers died before it was even copyrighted.
IIRc, the tune was written by one sister in 1896, for a tune called 'good morning to you'. Then another sister came up with the birthday words a bit later.
In/around 1930, a THIRD sister copyrighted the song, after the other two were dead. It's her grandson that gets a significant portion of those royalties.
Of course, other evidence points to the copyright claims these days not being valid, so who knows.... noone wants to test it in court.
I noticed you forgot to mention the UK legislation only passed because a backroom meeting between Mandy and UMG got Mandy to support things by lying to him, which led to it being a 3-line whip item during washup and still barely passed. And there's still lots of problems.
Or that this CCI system has other problems, like the 'independent review' not actually being all that independent; or the underlying assumptions the system uses have started to be destroyed when actually tried in court.
Why not?
Re: Legitimate usage
Actually we don't. We have the most popular movies each week, but that's a ranking within the set movies, and has no relevance to the overall prevalence of files as a whole.
And TPB's top100 is also NOTORIOUSLY inaccurate, because like all such lists, it relies on scrapes. Scrapes are incredibly easy to fake. In fact, it was one of the things that really undermined that university study that AFACT paid for for the IInet trial, since the study selected only one site's 'top list' to get the figure of '97% infringing' figure they touted, ending up with a lot of fake torrents (put to sucker in downloaders into jumping on faked/trojaned files or monitored swarms)
Andrew Norton
TorrentFreak.com Senior Researcher
(also AT&T customer)
Posted in Is lightspeed really a limit?
bleh
"The surprising outcome: with just two assumptions"
I stopped reading then.
I don't think much of the assumptions made. I can make two assumptions and give a whole different graph (although, I'll admit, I only play part-time with neutrinos as I design particle accelerators in my spare time) but this article smacks of 'having an interview and needing to get some use of it'
Re: Lessons you remember
We had similar after a 1st year class on the reactivity series.
half the class nicked either magnesium ribbon, or in one case, a chunk of calcium.
Next class was swimming, and guess where all the stuff ended up...
Yep the bottom of the school swimming pool
"I like Amanda Palmer, but I was with the musicians on this one"
Er.... which ones?
The ones who were happy to do it, and didn't have a problem? Or the not-musicians who saw 'she got money, ergo she must give money'?
It was a free and open choice. It's not like anyone was being forced to participate for free, you know, with contracts and stuff. Or being told they were being paid, and then stiffed.
I notice that whole 'bit' was taken out. Kinda like how people are queueing up for Britains got no talent, and guess who's raking in the money? Where's the protests about that? After all, they're dangling the prospect of money up front, while Amanda was clear 'beer+hugs' up front.
Not a patch on salthouse
I was lucky to attend one of Dr John Salthouse's lectures at Salford Uni in 98. He's been described as a pyromanic with a chemistry degree and I'd concur. Even my school's department head was in awe and he was also a pyro (and the my school left one lab unrefurbished for him, on the basis of it having survived that teachers experiments since the 60s, it would carry on - notably a 3rd floor room, with windows on 3 sides and it's own fire escape)
I'm not saying some of the bangs were loud, but we were in the biggest lecture theatre at Salford's chem dept, and one bang broke a ceiling tile and dropped it (right at the back, up the aisle from the bang, clearly an acoustic concentration with the aisle funneling and the back wall echo) an impressive feat I'm sure you'll agree. Sometimes I wonder if I should have done Chemistry, instead of Robotics as my degree subject....
Re: The clueless
Except Andrew forgot to mention this isn' the first Pirate book. Nor is she the 'most prominent' pirate to release one.
In January, the US party released No Safe Harbor, which was co-edited by the first head of Pirate Parties International, and the head of the Florida Pirate Party. A few months later, Rick Falkvinge (the founder of the movement) and Christian Engstrom (the first Pirate elected to major office) released their own book.
Both books are available to download for free from the authors, both are released with the ability to remix.
And speaking as a long term pirate, I'd hardly call her 'prominent', because I've certainly never heard of her.
@AC 10:18
You must be new here. As soon as I saw "by Andrew Orlowski" I already knew exactly what the piece would say. He actually surprised me and was more restrained than usual.
.... Although the cory reference was a bit weak, considering BoingBoing is US based and can make use of 17USC107 for news reporting, while the DM is UK based and there's NO such provision there for any kind of fair use
Re: Bootnote
@Ian
I remember when the SPECS system was installed around 2001 on the M62 near Warrington (the stretch near IKEA / Junction 9)
Was a stretch of 5-6 cameras for a few miles on the Liverpool side approach to the M6 covering 5-6 lanes.
Funny thing was, that for at least the first 7-8 months of operation, the widening work meant that at least one lane was on a contraflow. A crash barrier was in the way.
Also, at the time I was driving a volvo 340, the front mounting point for the number plate is under the front bumper, pointing slightly down (and it's quite common to 'nudge' the plate when parking in some kinds of bays, pushing it further from vertical) and I'm not sure on the 'range', but I can't see it being that easy for the cameras to read.
Re: And in what public forum
was the discussion whereby it was established that such idiocy represents the will of the people?"
That's easy to answer Neil.
It was in a very public consultation (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/consult-2011-copyright) that ran from December to March of this year. I took part in it, didn't you?
http://www.ktetch.co.uk/2012/03/consultation-response-to-uk-ipo.html is my response.
Even better, it was the FIRST consultation by the UK IPO that had a REQUIREMENT that claims be backed by evidence, and that evidence include facts, figures and methodologies, so that the quality of said evidence could be judged.
Re: Collection Society
Quoting "El Presidente"
"No, nothing like a collection society and nothing like PRS
More like a bunch of government sanctioned thieves stealing individuals work and flogging it for profit."
Not had much experience with Collection Societies then, have you. Or have you, since your second sentence described them so perfectly
Re: Collection Society
Poh-lease..
This is just establishing collecting societies for other things, except they will have actual authority to do the stuff they do.
But you know about the UK Gov's love of collection societies, after all they had a consultation on the topic of collection societies earlier this year (although it was stricter than the sham one run to support the DEA, since this one required evidence; SOURCED evidence, with methodologies etc, rather than the usual anecdotal 'we lose a lot and need extra laws really badly' sort of thing) or didn't you contribute? I certainly did (Norton P2P Research). Nope, just checked the Annex of contributors, no Register, Orlowski, or Situation Publishing (which is odd, since you CLEARLY have strong views.
If you want to talk about 'massive copyright land snatch', then it's all the 'land snatches' of work from the public domain, by extending copyright terms, snatching it from the public trust. Funnily enough, I believe extended terms and this collection society bullwhah are being snuck in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.
Collection Society
It's a lot like PRS, or re:Sound in Canada then... except for pictures?
Re: Blocked? CENSORED.
Let's be honest, VCR's were mainly used for copyright infrignement. So what's the difference? I wish I could remember what the timeshifting rules were for the UK... I know it used to be illegal in VCR times...
Ah, IPO delivers
"Time-shifting
A recording of a broadcast can be made in domestic premises for private and domestic use to enable it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time.
This time-shifting exception does not however cover the making of recordings for placing in a collection for repeated viewing or listening. The making of a recording for purposes other than to time-shift a programme for your or your family is likely to be illegal."
So the dozens of tapes we all bought were not to keep (which is why there is absolutely NOT still a tape of the Tyson-burbeck fight, the Italian Job and the last episode of the Crystal Maze's first season - 10 crystals, but they got the 2nd rate prizes - on one tape in my dads house, next tot he tape of carry on abroad+behind, and 140 other tapes.
And that's why VCR's were banned, because they had these illegal uses going on...
Re: Build More Nukes
" Nuclear is only economic when heavily subsidised by government for the bomb program"
A large proportion of the costs of nuclear plants is due to excessive safety demands put in place by NIMBY's that don't understand nuclear technology. When the threshold for "leak" is so low, that it will be set off by a packet of brazilnuts, or a bunch of bananas or two, then you've got problems in your risk assessment, that's driving up costs.
I'll happily live near a nuke plant again (used to live near sellafield). Can't be worse than the <20 year old coal plant near me, which has now found to have given some local residents uranium poisoning. Don't remember ANY nuclear plant doing that, in fact....
Re: Oh get real
Just like to point out, i've a few torrents on there, including a book. ALL are fully legal to be on there. In fact, SIX of the torrents I have on there include panel discussions talking about the legality of such blocks, and the legality of sites like this,
It's almost as if they completely ignored the thousands of LEGITIMATE uses of the site...
Re: Solutions
" and facilities are state of the art, (60,000 or 70,000 seater stadiums for american football)."
Think bigger.
University of Georgia has a 92,746 seater stadium (that's bigger than Wembley or any in the UK) in a town the size of Exeter (about 100,000 residents, 1/3 of them students). UF (the university here) is only slightly smaller than Wembley (90,000) with a capacity of 55,548.
Also having stadiums bigger than Wembley are Louisianna State (92,542), UCLA (92,542), University of Southern California (93,607), then there's Soccer City in johannasburg, Camp Nou in Barcelona, and the Iranian national stadium, and the Melbourne Cricket ground (which takes us over the 100k seats line). Ready for more US Universities? University of Texas at Austin (100,119), University of Alabama (101,821), Ohio State University (102,329), University of Tennesee (102,455), [Mexico national stadium, 105k], Penn State University (106,572) and finally University of Michigan (109,901)
There's only two bigger in the world, one in India (Salt Lake Stadium) and the North Korean national stadium. Both of those countries have reputations for less than stellar infrastructure.
Want to know why US education is so bad? There's a starting point...
summery?
For something like this, remember, it's spread over 5 pages.
Would it be so much to have a little data table at the end, where we can see the facts again, but in a format that allows comparison?
Also, the cost average, is that average for this batch of 10, for all printers, or just printers of this rough class-range?
Re: Learns How Much Enegery You Are Using
Does it break it down by device? No.
Does it give you daily usage? no
Hell, It doesn't even tell them when the power is out (or for that matter, when it's back on)
We've had 9 power outages in the last 13 months, the longest was 3 days (when a tornado took out the sub station for our 'extension cord' last March). I only count outages of 10mins or longer mind.
I'm with Georgia Power, and got a 'smart meter' about 2 years ago.
It's actually harder for me to see usage. Before I could see how fast the disc spun, now it's a guess as to how long the lcd segment takes to move on to the next.
I wish they'd spent the money on upgrading the infrastructure. We're literally on an 'extension cord' from a town to the northwest, which means we get our power from upstate.
Funnily enough ,we have a hydro power station in the county. We're not linked to it. There's a massive coal plant (the biggest CO2 polluting plant in the US) about 20 miles south of us, we're not linked to it. There's another coal plant 15 miles east of that, we're not linked to that either. I just want power thay doesn't go out if it rains hard. Is that too much to ask?
Re: And wait for the....
I know I do. It's VERY handy at resizing images (and viewing them) and cropping.
Posted in Labour targets Tories' Google problem
It appears that No.10 fell for 'carousel propaganda'.
Not at ALL like how the Labour govt. went and forced through a law based on a private chat a record label head had with Mandy, eh. You know, a chat where he flat out lied, and Labour lapped it up to the extent of a 3-line whip?
Because, you know, that's COMPLETELY different from commissioning a report which came back with the headline point "maybe we should stop listening to those lying lobbyists, and make policy based on fact." That's REALLY evil.....
Re: Re: I stopped watching years ago,
I stopped watching, I still SEE it every now and then.
Still a lot of procession stuff
not really
It could consider it a 'wayward province' but without the authority to do as it claims, such as grant TM rights. Or that any such rights are valid for that province only, just like how in the US, state law only applies to that state.
Re: Re: Let me add some food for thought here...
BUT did 7digital have as it's CEO a music producer who is also married to a Big Name Star(TM)?
MegalUpload does, with Alecia Keys' husband taking over as CEO a little over a month ago, it was he who got the artists on board for the MegaSong etc.
Makes a bit of a difference...
I stopped watching years ago,
When they stopped having any passing, and it was the slowing down of things, I gave up. It turned into a race won on the qualifying, and on pitstops.
I'll stick to BTCC now. Better, closer racing, lots of overtaking, and no Murdoch. What could be better?
would require sealand to first be a country.
It is not.
I *LOVE* these kinds of statements, makes it sound so simple, but really, it's 'perfect world' nonsense.
You might well have read this article, but you've clearly not read the rest, or relevant case law, or much else connected to the case.
Think back oooh 30 years, to the Betamax case. There was a ruling by a little known body called the US SUPREME COURT that noted that VCR's were NOT to be banned if they had 'significant non-infringing uses.' (that means designed uses which do not require infringement)
Now tell me, how exactly do you show that this was happening and widespread? Easiest way would be to have the data available....
I know I had non-infringing use of MU. I launched a book last week, a combination of essays. It's called "No Safe Harbor" (www.nosafeharbor.com) and it's free to download. I'd been putting versions of the ebook (in different formats) onto MU for some friends to check. When done ,that would have been another alternate download source.
As for your side note, quite a straw man. The only reason the MU version might be the only copy is because 'you deleted the original'? So, hard drive failure, computer stolen, fire/flood/unexpected corporate-driven police-raid, what about in THOSE circumstances?
By the way, i was cranking through ebook versions 2 weeks ago so fast at one point, that sometimes the MU versions were only in one place, MU.
As usual, those trying to show how 'good' they are fail at copyright...
you're downloading copyrighted content ALL the time, no matter what connection speed you're on.
You read this story, that's copyrighted content. You read the comments, they're copyrighted too. everything is copyrighted on the net, that's how copyright works.....
If you're going to try and make a point, try to at least make sure you understand the point first. Don't regurgitate Orlowski, because while he might be one of the editors here, his actual knowledge of copyright, and copyright law is pretty shoddy.
I'm in rural Ga.
I've got DSl.The FCC's broadband map says Comcast has a 50Mbit service, AT+T CLAIM a 15Mbit service, Verizon claims a 3Mbit 3g service.
In reality, There is no Comcast service, AT ALL. Not even TV. There's no cables actually laid in the area. I've got the very BEST AT&T package for DSl. 6/0.5. 3G speeds are also not as advertised either, 1.2/0.9...
Of course, I keep getting hughsnet mailers and I've had to file complaints about deceptive advertising. When you sent adverts saying 'this is the fastest internet you can get in <my address>, it's generally an idea to make sure. Instead $109/month for 2Mbit down, with 300kbit up, is not even close to the fastest, and more than twice what I'm paying.
My wife had to use hughsnet at a previous job (literally right over the road from Fort Benning, you think there would be some infrastructure) and it was horribly unusable. Latency was terrible.
First step to improve engagement
Would be to have a way to automatically add content.
When I have to always manually go and add content then often I forget, facebook and twitter get the content automatically, and within 15 minutes of the site getting it, which means the page followers get the stuff soon, so they can discuss it.
That's why the Facebook page has 13337 fans, and the G+ page has... 163.
Google's push to try and make it have 'personal' content means that they want people to create stuff just for them, and who has time for that, when it's such a small audience? A typical auto-post on facebook shows that between 80-110 people are 'talking about' each of the auto-posted entries. So I think it's Google's mindset that's the issue.
Funny..
I personally have around 150 hours of audio on TPB, a few videos, OH, and a BOOK on there as of next week.
All legal for download, and perfectly legal for anyone to torrent. My relation to those files? Why... I created those files. from scratch.
I'm far from alone in this too.
There's about 150,000 torrents on ISOhunt that are the same, thanks to their partnership deal with Jamendo.
Fair use? Nope.
He's not commenting on the song.
He's not critiquing the song
He's not parodying the song
He's not using it in a reporting of the news.
In fact he's using it as it was designed to be used.
No fair use provision at all. 100% infringement.
Let me point out to you..
Here's the sentence that's key.
"were financed by Carl Lundström, one of the alleged sponsors of Swedish far-right political party Sweden Democrats."
There's a KEY word in there. It's "alleged". That means there's no proof.
There's another important one.
"Carl Lundström is the CEO and largest shareholder of Rix Telecom, a large provider in Sweden, where at least one member of The Pirate Bay used to work."
So, he's THOUGHT to ALSO finance a political party, but he IS the head of a large telecommunications company. Now, which do you think is relevant to the issue of funding a high-bandwidth web site?
Still spamming tixati?
and probably posting via tor nodes too...
" I am glad that the client I use, Tixati, hands out meta info"
So does every client that handles magnets. It's what we in the know call "part of the specification".
The more and more tixati spam I see, the LESS likely I am to try the client.
the neo-nazi who funds it
Can you clarify this point please.
Is the truth:
A )a 'neo nazi fund it'
OR
b) 'it makes millions in profits off it's adverts
You can't have both. (Unless the Advertising company is a neo-nazi...)
@Rune
"On dry asphalt, ABS is marvelous. I would be very surprised if any driver (regardless of how skilled he thinks he is) could match it in any way."
Really? I think it's pretty simple. I Just don't jam the pedal all the way down. By stopping just short of the skid-point, I get maximum braking ability. ABS is not, and never has been maximum braking ability. The clue's in the operation. It kicks in when the wheels lock. When the wheels lock, you have REDUCED braking force. So when it starts kicking in, you're already behind the curve.
I believe the Michigan State Police experimented with the ABS system during their annual police vehicle tests one year. A braking test is one of the tests they do, and on a non-ABS brakeing, they average about 29ft/s/s deceleration. ABS gives about 23 iirc, which isn't upto the spec they require, which is 24.
The point of ABS is to prevent wheels from STAYING locked into a skid when braking, so that you have steering ability, just as you would if you hadn't caused a lockup to begin with. ABS isn't there to improve braking, but to help with drivers panicking.
Personally, I can't stand it. The one vehicle I had with it, I disabled it. It was a pain. If the wheels lock, it's because I wanted them to. Same vehicle had traction control. It was turned off when the ignition was turned on.
Something really funny though is that 2 years ago, I went to visit a friend who lives on a Mountain in Georgia. It's actually a suburban mountain, just on the edge of Marietta (where the Lockheed Martin plant is, Blackjack mountain is on the flightpath). Anyway, it was snowing. I drove up that place, then had to turn around and drive up the other side, because at the top was a 14 car pile up (with 3 news teams and a news chopper overhead). Every car in the pileup had ABS, most had TC (it's a posh area). Me? I was driving a 20yo american boat (Lumina) which not only had neither, but was a slushbox as well.
ABS/TC are just to make incompetent drivers slightly less dangerous to the rest of us.
oh dear
after all the time we had to deal with the trout-mouthed cockney fishwife (piper) 2 and a bit years is all we get with someone actually worth watching?
Hasn't this been on display since the summer?
I'm sure I read about it then....
Yes I did
http://torrentfreak.com/a-sculpture-of-pirated-files-110820/
no....
they think they're the CRIA
Remember, the music industry group whose members COMMERCIALLY sold music for over 20 years, in violation of copyright, but 'kept it on a list', and then settled for just $45M
(or $150/song).
I'm surprised Andrew didn't mention the similarity, or had it slipped his mind....
