Then unless you have a >50% tax on profits, paying the $100M fine is still better for the bottom line of the company.

Considering this amount I don't think it's a law-prescribed number. Like with traffic fines which is generally a prescribed amount: park where you're not allowed to, and pay $100 or whatever.

TFS doesn't say how the judge comes to this $100M, but I may assume he did take things like revenue or profit into account. After all, fining a smaller company such an amount would put them out of business, which is not what this fine is meant to do. It's meant to correct behaviour, not to kill. Now whether $100M is reasonable for this I can't judge as I don't know how it's calculated, and how much they estimate AT&T actually gained by this false advertising.

They should and it's the smart thing to do, because if they don't and the competition does, they lose out. And if they upgrade but the competition does not, they're the ones that can offer the better plans at the lower rates and end up laughing all the way to the bank.

Your argument may work for individuals (though even there it's tricky: "sorry sir, I didn't know it's illegal to kill my neighbour for disturbing my night's rest by making too much noise when having sex with his mistress"), not so much for big companies with lots of lawyers on the payroll. Those really should know better. They really should check relevant laws when they say "unlimited" yet do pose some "fair use policy" or even hard limits on an account, to make sure their advertising is still within the law.

Of course it's not possible to know every single law, yet not every single law applies to any random situation. Here's where common sense comes in (I know sue-happy Americans show serious lack of that, but that's another matter). People and especially companies should realise when they may enter a grey area: if your neighbour's apple tree extends its branches over your garden, are you allowed to pick the apples that hang above your garden? Are you allowed to collect the apples that naturally fall off those branches and land in your garden? Is the neighbour allowed access to your garden in order to pick apples from the tree?

For an employee, gross income and "profit" are very close as they do not resell anything. Also, in many countries individuals get to deduct various profession-related costs from their income, or sometimes a fixed amount to cover costs of work (costs like commuting, mandatory suits/uniforms, etc). An individual's "profit" is basically their "taxable income" - this may be salary, income from investments, income from property value increases, etc, depending on the laws of their locality.

So to be fair, in determining a fine you would have to look at taxable income for both companies and individuals.

A regular retail CD or mp3 file is sold with a copyriight license that allows it to be played to a private audience only. No redistribution, no renting out, no public performances.

Many shops are playing background music because it helps increase sales. As they use music to make money it is reasonable they have to pay a license fee to the copyright holders. If they don't want to do this, they'll have to hire some musicians to record music for them, so they are the copyright holders themselves.

Many bars and restaurants play background music to increase sales. Again, it's reasonable for them to pay for the use of that music for that purpose.

In the current case it is obvious that this restaurant was playing music to increase sales. They hired the DJ to play some tunes, and I assume they also promoted the event. It is no more than reasonable that the DJ makes sure he has the right to play that music.

From the face of it, it appears to me the DJ did not have the correct license, though the responsibility should be fully with the DJ and never with the restaurant. As a restaurant, I don't think the restaurant holder will ask, verify and double check whether the DJ has the right to play those songs. There is a limit to what you can reasonably expect a restaurant holder to check on when hiring a DJ or other kind of musician to perform in their premises - hire a professional musician and this musician should make sure that whatever he is performing he can do so lawfully. Either by having written the music himself, or by having the appropriate licenses to use other's music in his performance. The restaurant apparently claims the DJ paid his dues to be allowed to perform the music - if so, there should be no problem.

It is to me outright strange that this restaurant is held responsible for the failings of this DJ. If this is according to the law, which is hard to believe, it's a law that needs amending. If it is not according to the law, they had a terrible lawyer.

Sometimes that works, not always. One time I was really happy to be an "expert" user to diagnose a problem with my connection.

A few years ago I had a very very weird connection problem. I could browse, download my e-mails (IMAP), and send out small e-mails. I could not send out larger e-mails (more than about a dozen words and the SMTP upload would stall), nor log on to web sites (the login POST would get stuck indefinitely).

Some serious analyses from my side showed that I could only send out about 190 bytes in one go (using traceroute and varying package sizes I found the exact size). Any larger outgoing data amount would fail. Now try to explain that to the phone support (I got them to replace their equipment at my home), or even the support guy that came to replace the equipment. After replacing he used his laptop to show browsing works - the standard test, and usually just fine.

I wasn't so sure, so did my own testing before I let him go, and quickly found out it still was not working. Then I actually showed the guy my traceroute problem using my own laptop, that one packet size works but add a byte and it fails, and then he finally understood the problem was not solved.

The next day I saw a van of the ISP parked at the connection box across the street for a few hours. After that, everything worked again. I have still no idea what could possibly have caused such a problem to pop up.

Most constitutions in force today were written more than 85 years ago and have only seen minor adjustments. That's an example of a political long term commitment. So it can be done.

Uranium is a mineral deposit, not fossilised material (which is formed from dead organisms).

Unless you're Apple, iOS and OSX are not an option.

I don't think there is really a fight between iOS and Android. iOS is Apple, Android is the rest. OK, there's Windows Phone and Blackberry but they don't really count in this market. Windows Phone is almost exclusive to Nokia; Blackberry is just Blackberry.

The battle is between Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc. Not between the OSes. Samsung is targeting the high-end market about as much as Apple, though while Apple targets only the high end, Samsung targets also other segments of the market. The other manufacturers are targeting anything from rock bottom to the top.

We should really stop this "Android vs iOS" nonsense. I've never, ever heard someone choosing a phone based on it having iOS or Android. Instead they want an Apple iPhone (which happens to come with iOS). Or they want the latest Samsung (which happens to come with Android - Samsung's Android, a version of Android bastardised to an extent that it is hardly recognisable as the same OS that runs many other phones, from manufacturers that use something close to stock Android).

Now it may very well be that Apple users are the ones that are more susceptible to advertising (which in turn could explain why they chose Apple's offering; after all Apple's marketing is second to none), and hence more valuable to advertisers. But it's not just that "Apple/iOS has the high-end market". Samsung's top end is at least as high end as Apple's iPhones and they seem to compete quite strongly, taking a good share of that market.

That Apple makes a lot more profit on their phones than Samsung and other Android makers do... that's a whole different story. Maybe it simply is the case that Apple users are those that are swayed easiest by advertising, making them pay a massive premium for their phones. And people that already have shown to be happy to buy big in an advertising ploy should be valuable for other advertisers as well.

Oh, now that'd be great! That'd allow me to take the Linux kernel, redistribute it in my devices with enhancements and whatnot and without providing the source code.

Do come after me, I'll instantly plead guilty and my cost is limited to just a stamp. Because as the wholesale value of Linux is $0.00, the maximum amount they can sue me for is $0.00

Do you really look forward to that? Without any punitive damages copyright will become a free for all. That includes all GPLed software - after all remember that our beloved GPL stands and falls with strong copyright laws. This includes serious consequences for breaking that law. As it stands in Australia, there are effectively no deterrents for keeping on the correct side of copyright any more.

I have to disagree with you here. Those amounts are penalties for copyright infringement. Having to pay no more than retail value of the downloaded copy is no deterrent, so worthless as penalty.

The real issue with the US damages amount is the actual amount. A couple thousand dollars fine for a few dollars worth of retail value is too much. More reasonable would be something like a factor of 20-50 on the retail value. Sufficient to act as deterrent for would-be infringers, not enough to bankrupt most people (download 20 songs worth $0.99 each - get fined no more than 20x50x0.99=$990 - an amount that's almost certainly painful for most, but not destructive).

The same can be applied for commercial infringement, no need to distinguish. Distribute 1,000 CD's, worth $20 each? You may have a fine of at least 20x20x1,000 = $400,000. And then I'm at the low end of both penalties, and number of infringements. Commercial pirates probably go for the tens of thousands if not more. I'd also assume judges will go for the lower factor for personal downloaders and the higher factor for those that make money with their infringement, the opposite of what I used for my calculations.

Siding with the shady business means each case is a 10-minute job (possibly less) by some low-paid employee to get the details they want.

Siding with the customer means each case is many hours of work by high paid lawyers.

You need to have a hell of a lot more instances of the first case to make the second case the more economical option for the company. Therefore many companies will choose the first - especially if there are already laws in place that tell them they probably have to (meaning a most likely lost battle: you lose your lawyer fees and still have to pay the low-paid employee to get the requested information), and the political climate of their country leans towards the copyright holders' interests.

Can't compare with insurers. They have lawyers to figure out who of the two sides is liable for a certain damage - and with it, who is going to pay for it. So paying those lawyers is meant to lower the overall payouts for the insurance company, basically by getting the other side to pay.

In this case I can't think of any direct benefit for the ISP. There may be a benefit of attracting more customers or so, but these lawyers will never lower the cost of any payout for the ISP, as it's never the ISP but always the customer who in the end has to pay the settlement.