That's actually from Raiders.

Google begs to differ.

Case law has upheld that a subpoena isn't good enough to get data that is only held by the company for one of their customers, if the company chooses to fight. That is the case here, and thus a warrant is required.

This story is not about a subpoena...it is about a warrant. They are different documents, and have different rules.

The problem is that this case is using a warrant, which historically targets a search of a very specific location and has never been allowed to specify a location not directly within the authority of the court issuing the warrant, yet the administration wants it to act like a subpoena, which does allow the data to be located outside the authority of the issuing court, as long as the person (or company) being served is within the court's authority.

For example, if the Chicago police department is investigating a crime, they can present to a Illinois court a request for a warrant to search something that is within the state of Illinois. They could not request an Illinois court to grant them a warrant to search a location in Texas. They can, of course, request that a Texas court allow them to perform that search.

In the same way, the US government cannot get a warrant from a US court to search a location in Ireland. Yet, the USG is trying to do exactly that. They could ask an Irish court to give them a warrant (and, IIRC, have done so in this case, and been denied) to search that location. If the USG was asking for information that was owned by Microsoft, then a subpoena against the US-based Microsoft would be enough to force them to produce data stored in Ireland. Instead, they are asking Microsoft to produce data that although they technically control, is actually owned by some user of Microsoft's services. For that, they need a warrant.

"Can you get it?" is not a good test, as I can get all sorts of things from my employer's computers (being a system administrator), but legally I can't turn them over to you, even if you have a subpoena, as I don't "own" the data. Even if I was actually the one who gathered data in response to a subpoena, I wouldn't be the one to turn it over to you...I would give it to the person who has the legal authority to act for the company in those sorts of dealings.

Slashdot posters used to be technically savvy people.

Seriously, I've never had a problem with a fake torrent (find an uploader you like, and follow the RSS of their uploads) or a file not being in a playable format (everything today is H.264 in an MKV container, and there are dozens of players that support that format). And, if the only hardware media player you own is a DVD player, then you likely have a really hard time playing back movies from Amazon Prime on your TV, too. Pretty much any other hardware player can stay hooked up to your TV and play either network streams or read your local file shares where you stored whatever you downloaded.

You don't get to "keep" downloads from Amazon. You can keep the file around, but you still need a player that supports their DRM and can authorize you to play the content. This is not an issue with torrents, nor is it an issue with a purchased plastic disc, as you do get to keep the disc forever, and the DRM is easily defeated if you care about that (although it's not necessary, as every Blu-Ray player can play it back without having to phone home to authorize the playback).

All that said, I pay for what I want to own, and only use torrents to download TV shows that I could record anyway (the convenience of having somebody else remove the commercials is worth it...I used to do it myself) and movies that aren't available for purchase or that I already own but don't feel like ripping myself.

I'd love to be able to download movies instead of getting the plastic disc, but there are two big things stopping me:

DRM: any download will only be playable on whatever the studio deems to be "acceptable" hardware and software.

Quality: no download comes close to the quality of audio and video on a Blu-Ray, and downloads almost never have extras like commentary tracks.

For other people, another reason not to download is that Blu-Ray generally has all the subtitles they need to enjoy the movie, but most downloads are very limited in that respect.

By "bank card", do you mean "debit card"? If so, wouldn't it be easier just to get the kid his own bank account with a debit card?

It depends on the transaction. ISTR that PayPal had some concept of "personal" transactions that had either very small or no fees. The idea was to allow people to move money to their friends and relatives without taking a big hit. There are also places like GOG that have a lot of sub-$10 transactions who likely have a special "volume" agreement with PayPal.

For regular one-off transactions, though, there is per-transaction fee that would kill you if you are moving just $5.

I suspect that "any major insurer" would consider the act of flying the drone "negligent".

MS is generally OK in the "programs run" bit, but they really need to force hardware manufacturers to keep supporting the older OS with drivers. When Windows 7 came out, a lot of smaller companies stopped providing XP drivers for their hardware.

If the clone isn't on the same VLAN, accessing the same data-gathering hardware, there is no way the infrastructure can have a test match production. The data-gathering hardware I'm talking about costs $20-70K in supplies to complete a run, and the hardware itself is in the $250K range, so there is no way to duplicate it.

I'm not saying that we don't try (use data from an old run, etc.), but there is no way to truly duplicate everything, and sometimes you just have to live with that.

No approach is terrible compared to the consequences of leaking the types of data mentioned in TFA.

Because they are generally flying over property that they don't own.

I'm willing to bet that an insurance company would laugh at me when I ask for insurance to protect my own home against what might happen if I crash a model airplane into it.