sure, but if you've signed a contract that has such vague terms in it (so that the judge doesn't summarily rule in your favour) that they *might* legally be able to cap you, turn you over to the MAFIAA, disconnected you, kill you with bogus surcharges, or whatever, then the burden will be on you to take them and possibly the MAFIAA on in court. Are you really going to spend that kinda money just to lose and switch to another carrier that will do exactly the same thing?

United we stand, divided we fall, etc, etc, but the little guys don't even get any real satisfaction if the actually manage to win a class action suit, only the lawyers do.

How can a company amend/break their contract with a customer based solely on the word of some third party? With no due process, or anything of the sort?

Because they're not breaking their contract with you if they have some vaguely worded clause to the effect they can throttle you at their discretion for "better network management" or somesuch.

For the "greater good" of their network, all those greedy bandwidth hogs who have the nerve to make full use of the pipeline they paid for will be blacklisted; if that just "happens" to appease the MAFIAA for alleged IP violations, well isn't that a happy coincidence?

500 postings linked to crime out of how many? This just in: paper is also used to write ransom notes, stationery stores to be outlawed

sure, unless they have a somewhat sketchy cease & desist from the RIAA/MPAA...or if they simply don't want to piss off the feds (wikileaks anyone?). I'm sure they'll apologize later if they were wrong...as long as you can afford the lawyers to prove you were wrong...

gawker lost all credibility with me when they blamed easyDNS for pulling the plug on Wikileaks (actual culprit was everyDNS). Shit happens, it's an easily made typo. My problem is when they basically told the easyDNS owner that they would edit the original press release without acknolwedging that any edit had been made, let alone apologize. They basically told easyDNS to fuck off and quit whining after gawkers error almost got easyDNS DDOS'd into oblivion. Even the National Enquirer has more spine (at least when they admit fault)

To sum a few threads posted above with a merging of riffs from Chris Rock: What we need is the tossed salad man "Toss his salad? Nooooooo!!!! I'ma gonna learn, I'ma gonna read, I'ma gonna get a job!"

granted the article is all the way back in early May, but it was clearly an opt-in feature. Whether through ignorance or informed consent, if you want your real life details splattered all over the net, doesn't matter to me, I won't be affected because I won't opt-in.

Quite different from this week's announcement that it's all public and non-discretional. In fact, IMO, the implied subtext was that they anticipated this backlash (as an obvious and reasonable reaction) and (it went without saying) wouldn't have dreamed of making Real-ID mandatory.

Culturally, I think we have become more and more accepting of social networking in the context of your real identity and Facebook

Really? Sadly, /. crowd is atypically informed on the ramifications of losing anonymity on the net. We would certainly be the percentage that is more opposed than ever to losing control over our privacy.

So what we are doing is we are introducing this feature called Real ID, an optional layer of identity
So what changed in just 6 weeks?

not ranting at you, thanks for the article that summarizes exactly what we're all pissy about...I'm not sure I trust their about-face when I find it so hard to believe that they only got to that place in just 6 weeks. Perhaps they'll wait until we've all sunk our money into the new starcraft and the wow expansions then change back again?

Can they seriously not notice the weekly Facebook privacy dramas and not connect the dots as to how this scheme would blow back on them?

I haven't seen the issue addressed, but I can't see that this measure wouldn't violate EU privacy regulations in some way

Stop me if you've heard this one: Innocent until proven guilty. That's the Golden Rule of the Rules of Law in most of western civilisation...except when governments and/or corporations find the rules inconvenient. Us little people have no such option.

rule of law is dead

Hate to reply to my own comment but...

now picture this argument being brought to the US where the FBI gets a button, each of the 50 states gets a button, every county, town, city PD gets a button, etc. etc....the internet would collapse under the weight of all the buttons, none of which would ever get used for a useful purpose...

20 ga-jillion websites in the world, why should facebook and a select few others bear the burden? Australian police want a "report crime" button on a website, put it on their own...you know, where I'd look for one...if i was looking in the first place...whatever the aussie equivalent of dialling 911 is still going to be faster than typing a report into a website...which, in the unlikely event it actually worked, would instantly generate a phone call from the police to the submitter anyway...

can't see the website button getting abused in any way, no siree...