Nah
Actually, it's my 40th birthday, and I've been amused (pleased, too) by the nice greetings I've gotten from friends both older and younger. If Dice Incorporated Amalgamated International Limited wants to make something of the results, they're free to, but since (this being a Slashdot poll) the answers are far less the point than the discussion, I don't think that's very likely. Our polls (we love poll submissions, by the way) are kernels for discussion, and often the product of whimsy. There are lots of ways that age (esp. in technical fields) tends to come up on Slashdot, and a pretty wide range both of what "old" *is* and what it means.
There may be many conspiracies in the world; this just isn't one
Happy birthday! Mine's today, too, hence the poll
At the same time, even this narrow limitation on ISPs’ immunity could have the salutary effect of requiring ISPs to respond to takedown notices by disabling DNS lookups of pirate sites through the ISPs’ own DNS servers, which is not currently a general practice. Importantly, the argument for such a requirement need not turn on the Communications Act, but can instead be based on the DMCA itself, which expressly limits ISPs’ immunity to each “separate and distinct” function that ISPs provide. See 17 U.S.C. 512(n). A reasonable argument can be made that DNS functionality is an “information location tool” as contemplated by DMCA Section 512(d) and, therefore, that ISPs are required, as a condition of the safe harbor, to cease connecting users to known infringing material through their own DNS servers. Should this argument hold – and we believe that it has a reasonable prospect of success – copyright owners could effectively require ISPs to implement a modest (albeit easily circumvented) form of DNS-based site blocking on the basis of only a takedown notice rather than litigation.In short, since DMCA takedown notices apply to "information location tools," but not to "transitory network communications," the MPAA would like to argue that just the DNS lookup functionality is an information location tool -- and can thus be censored with just a takedown notice. This is both really slimy (though brilliant in its nefariousness) and insanely dangerous for the internet and free speech . We see so many bogus DMCA takedowns of basic content today, and here the MPAA is looking to effectively, and sneakily expand that to whole sites by misrepresenting the law (badly).
To be sure, the argument is not guaranteed to succeed, as unlike a “pointer” or “hyperlink text,” DNS provides a user’s browser with specific information (IP routing information) that the user has requested by other means (alphanumeric internet addresses), as opposed to providing the user with an active interface allowing the user to request information online, as they might from a clickable page of search results. But at least in the literal sense, DNS appears to fit within the list of Section 512(d) functions and a reasonable argument can be made that DNS is more like a “directory” than the provision of “routing” and should be treated accordingly under the statute as a Section 512(d) function rather than a Section 512(a) function.Pushing this argument would raise many of the problems found with the original DNS-breaking proposal in PIPA/SOPA. It would raise even more serious questions about the First Amendment and prior restraint. Effectively, it would be moving the definition of "information location tool" down the stack, such that rather than requiring the removal of access to the specific infringing content, it would require removal of access to an entire site based on a single accusation of infringement. Someone uploaded an infringing video to YouTube? Under this interpretation, the MPAA can force Verizon to make YouTube disappear from the internet for all users relying on Verizon's DNS. The censorship implications are massive here, especially with no court proceeding at all. This wouldn't require anything in court -- just a single takedown notice, of which copyright holders send millions. Rather than sending all those notices to Google and getting them delisted from search, copyright holders could turn the firehose towards Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, and basically take down half the internet on their say so alone. Yes, sites could counternotice, but ISPs would have 10 business days in which they can keep sites off their DNS entirely.
Nothing in those [prior court] decisions contemplated, much less required, a legal regime that forces individuals to choose between maintaining their privacy and participating in the emerging social, political, and economic world facilitated by the use of today's mobile devices or other location-based services."That's where we are, as far as private citizens are concerned. The government, through its thorough exploitation of the Third Party Doctrine, has basically forced the public to choose between allowing warrantless access to tons of their data (and metadata) or living some sort of off-the-grid lifestyle that doesn't involve generating "business records" via cell phone, internet service, etc.
Davis may not make out a right to be secure in someone elses papers, see U.S. Const. amend. IV, by complaining that those papers contained his location data. Evidence lawfully in the possession of a third party is not his, even if it has to do with him. Indeed, so far as the Fourth Amendment is concerned, Davis could not have prevented MetroPCS from producing the records in question even if they were his.Here, the government argues that the records you generate by using a cell phone are not yours, nor will they ever be. They belong solely to the company that retains them and, as such, can be obtained with a minimum of paperwork or effort. It expands a bit on this argument a little later in the brief, but the underlying assertion is clear. These records are yours in the fact that they can identify you, but they are not yours should you seek to control access to them.
In general, courts have held that phone customers could not have maintained an actual expectation of privacy in routing-related business records made by a phone company to document transactions to which it was a party. See Smith, 442 U.S. at 741-43, 99 S.Ct. at 2580-82; United States v. Gallo, 123 F.2d 229, 231 (2d Cir. 1941). There is no cause to take a different view as to cell tower records.The DOJ may say that cell phone records are pretty much the same as they've always been, but the dates of the cases cited don't bear this out. One decision is 35 years old. The other is 73 years old. Phone records used to be limited to phone numbers only. Now, they carry additional data, including location -- something that definitely wasn't on the courts' radar 40-70 years ago.
At any rate, Davis is not in a good position to complain that the government improperly obtained his location data, since he himself exposed and revealed to MetroPCS the very information he now seeks to keep privatei.e., the general vicinity information circumstantially inferable from cell tower records"Exposed" and "revealed" are pretty harsh terms for something citizens are forced to give up in order to use cell phones. Without a doubt, many would like to keep this information private, but are unable to do so because even though they generate the records, they ultimately have no control over their distribution. Not only that, but they have considerably less access to records they've generated than law enforcement agencies do. The Third Party Doctrine has managed to turn the American public into handy little data generators -- data that the government can avail itself of with nothing more than a subpoena.
Food for thought about the "old West, where everyone had a gun": http://jim.com/wild_west.htm
You might not agree with the author / his conclusions, but the "wild west" myth has a lot of myth to it. (Yes, many people were armed, but armed chaos certainly didn't prevail
You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.