As a matter of fact, there's 2 people in the current CSM not representing a large alliance (ankhewhatever and myself)

However, you'll find that even the large alliance players tend to care about the way things are in highsec, piracy, industry, etc.

On the other hand, the other player not representing a large alliance is a pure empire player and doesn't know *anything* about lowsec or 0.0. As such, the situation is quite the contrary to the situation you describe. 0.0 members usually offer have a wider view while empire players care only about their missions.

That's my experience with the current CSM. Now vote for Meissa Anunthiel to elect someone who cares about everything ;-)

It represents a share of the playerbase, you can't represent people who don't want to be represented.

Like for real elections, people who don't bother to vote don't have a ground to complain when they don't get what they want.

Part of what I'm doing at the moment is make sure people who don't vote do so knowingly. I meet a few people who say "hey, I'm not voting, the CSM is a joke". Frankly that's fine with me. What I don't like, however, is the bazillion others who ask "what's the CSM?"

The way I see things, it's not frequently that a game developer gives their community a chance to directly speak with them. My initial reaction was "just another PR thing", but I figured this is an opportunity worth taking and let's see where this goes...

Yep... Oh, by the way, vote Meissa Anunthiel ;-)

There's a sizeable share of the players who are french and don't speak english (the client is localized).

There's also a very large share of russian speaking players. The only CSM candidate who seems to understand a limited amount of russian is myself, and I'm not even bothering with getting the word out to them, they're mostly not interested and out of touch with all aspects of meta-gaming. Besides, the fact that a small amount of the playerbase actually votes doesn't mean anything with regards to the attention CCP pays [or doesn't] to the CSM.

There have been 3 different improvements to the Black Ops ships over patches, the first 2 failed to significantly address the weakness of the black ops. The third and latest makes black ops useful, convenient and not overpowered.

I'm sure some black op pilots would have appreciated their ship to become FotM, but asking around, I think these patches finally fix the Black Ops issue for most of them.

As for other things proposed by the CSM, some have been implemented, some haven't yet. Changes take time.

One thing to remember is that the CSM also serves as an easy feedback for the devs, I can't comment on particulars due to NDA (I'm on the CSM), but they sometimes throw development ideas at us for comment before they make it into the game (or to give us a chance that they don't).

I'm a member of the CSM, and I can concur with Judinous. The representative of Goonswarm in the CSM, Darius Johnson (his character name), hasn't been unreasonable in the least.

Quite frankly, he's been reasonable and intelligent. Sure most of the thing he's been interested in was 0.0 improvements, although not limited to it at all.

In my experience, the ones you have to "fear" in the CSM are the carebears, empire dwellers who know nothing of the game except what happens in empire.

Like you said it's amazingly one-sided!

On the other hand it's good that anything non-infringement related gets removed from the investigation, though that might make identifying the "operator" of the computer difficult.

And I'm a disinterested observer in this case only in this that I'm no party to the case, however considering I engage in P2P activities, I like to know where I would stand, so in that sense I'm interested.

And that's why I seldom argue :-) It's too time consuming when you want, for a change, to try and defend [part of] an unpopular idea (in this case, that the RIAA may be partially right).

I'm not arguing for the RIAA itself for a number of reasons, the first of which is that they're a bunch of extortionist putting out low-value junk music to the point where (until recently) there was nothing else to listen. However, I'm trying to discuss the arguments made in the case, individually, and not as a bundle. Of the 5 presented, the RIAA vs Does thing should have been thrown out based on one (the bundling of Does), if only that. Does that means that I should accept at face value all the other arguments the defence presents? Not at all...

Of the other 4, the only one anyone ever replied to was the use of MediaSentry. Their methodology and their "expert" (great transcript of your bashing him btw ;-) ) are junk and does not prove anything (you can't tell who's sitting at a computer at a given time, IP adress or not). If, however, a copyright holder were to file a suit against a single Doe, does the fact that the evidence was obtained illegally through an unlicensed investigator mean the case should be thrown out? That's what I'm asking and all the elements I could see initially lead me to think otherwise.

The case used as a reference (about the quasi-criminal illegal evidence thing) is way too technical for me to properly comprehend. Which is why I stopped trying to understand it (I'll come back to it when I have a law degree, in another life :p). As such, I don't feel qualified at all to discuss the technicality, which is why I stopped discussing it technically. All I'm left with arguing on that point is wether it's "right" to prevent one from trying to obtain proof based on non-proof/inadmissible/unlicensed/whatever, which is debatable (stricto sensu), and what that last post was about.

You say my arguments are bunk, I take that as your expert opinion on the matter. I now know for a fact that illegally obtained evidence, by non-government agents, is inadmissible in court, even in a civil trial. Case closed for that point as far as I'm concerned. I still think that it shouldn't be the case in this instance, as a matter of opinion.

Truth be told, I'd rather have noone else to defend me in a lawsuit against the RIAA should it ever happen (unlikely, I'm not a US citizen), I thought however that the comment section was for discussing, not just for chest-beating and rooting for the team. The fact that you've been winning case after case (or have them dismissed) means I'm most likely wrong, but does that means I should suspend any thinking ability I may possess and take everything said by the side I favor as truth? That would be the equivalent of an "appeal to authority" fallacy and that of division as well, and I just can't do that.

I'm away for the week-end, so I'll stop the discussion here. I'll just end this post with thanking you for your contribution, to the thread, to the news section in general and to my personal enlightenment :-)

Also, thanks for defending those people as you do, and for making the documents/discussions public, that's a lot of food for thought and interesting reads.

See, you come up with this straw men, but they are quite easy to blow down. The situation that I described and the one that you described are completely different. Case 1: Unlicensed investigator is trying to dig up dirt on a person. And comes up with an accusation of car theft. There is no evidence of theft except the statement of an unlicensed investigator. Case 2: Homeless person is hired to watch your car. Note that he isn't acting as an investigator. He doesn't need a license for car watching. He hasn't done anything wrong. And his statement is not the only evidence of theft: There is also the evidence of the car's owner, who found that his car is gone. So yes, the police shouldn't get a search warrant on the word of a scumbag and nothing else. They should likely get a search warrant based on the word of a car owner who reports his car stolen and a homeless person who witnessed the theft.

I still agree that bundling the Does together is wrong.
I also agree that whatever mediasentry is doing is not a proof of anything.
I also agree that shooting wildly as the RIAA does is abusing the system.

However I still think that even if it is insufficient to prove infringement, it is reasonable enough a suspicion to warrant inspection, and thus the discovery of who the people are, albeit not ex-parte.

The unlicensed investigator thing does not mean it's inadmissible in a civil lawsuit. If MediaSentry is breaking the law in any way, the Does should sue them.

To keep on with analogies, something that's closer to what's really happening then, since the last one failed. Suppose I own a hangar with stuff and I think some people are stealing. I pay some [unlicensed] dude to go take pictures of people leaving the hangar. He grabs license plate numbers.

That's definately not proof of anything, but shouldn't it be sufficient for me to file a suit against Doe with license plate number whatever and get the court to identify the person and get a search warrant?

Thanks for questioning my sanity, I do that frequently too. Though that leads me to wonder how one can be objective about one's own sanity... Anyway ;-)

My questions are not about the improper joinder, I agree with that.
OTHER arguments.

Frankly I'm happy to see the Court of Appeals being concerned, it at least means that whatever reasoning the Magistrate used is going to be examined and the defendants get a[nother] chance at making their point, which would otherwise be moot.

So far, however, they haven't said anything about the Magistrate being wrong, which is what I'm questioning. I don't frequently think that because someone is generally right, everything they say is right...

Hadn't I started with the disclaimer, I'd have been labelled one anyway, guess next time I'll avoid that starting sentence ;-)

And that's right, I'm no lawyer, and I did see a problem with them bundling 16 cases together, my question was on the other 4 points.

I'm close to getting an answer on wether the judge should have thrown out the evidence presented by MediaSentry. However it seems that even if it's illegally obtained, it's admissible in a civil trial. The case cited (summary here?: http://supreme.justia.com/us/380/693/ ) to support that it shouldn't is way over my head to debate (after reading it about the quasi-criminal nature or whatnot), which is why I'll stop here and accept that until further notice, which leaves me with 3 points ;-)

If the judge is right, this is not true. Information obtained illegally is admissible in civil lawsuits. (The judge goes farther and says MediaSentry's activity is not illegal, which is another point entirely). The judge says this:

So you're saying if I hire some homeless person (hey, I'm cheap) to watch over my car, someone steals it, the homeless guy I hired tells me who the thief is and I go to the police, they won't be able to get a search warrant? If that's true that's fucked up...

How on earth does someone suspecting someone they can only partially identify go about and find out who the person really is if what you say is true?

I do not know what I'm talking about, that's the whole point. "IANAL" and "Anyone cares to explain?" in my OP is there to explicitly state that I don't understand and would like to. I made no statement of fact (ie, "the RIAA is right"), I asked a question...

I went the trouble of reading the documents, that of both parties and the judge (which, I admit, is very unslashdot-like) to make my own idea on the thing. And was left with those questions.

I realize you probably wouldn't be able to say that the arguments may be [somewhat] valid even if you thought it to be the case as it could be used against you, which is why I didn't ask you specifically. However I thought the "comment" part of stories was for discussing the topic...

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my comment however, and for posting these stories.