So those sanctions against Russia target the wrong products!

The purpose of sanctions is to hurt the government rather than the common people. I don't think there are many people that depend on typewriters nowadays, so banning the export of typewriters and their supplies to Russia would paralyse the government while leaving the common people alone. As an added bonus, it'd have a much smaller effect on European farmers than the current boycotts have.

This is not going against free trade, at all. This is free trade: part of free trade is that the seller is allowed to choose who to sell to. Free trade agreements are agreements between governments, to not put any restrictions on the trade by businesses.

When buying on a streaming service, the copyright holder has a say on who/where this service may sell a license to. After all, if you play a show on Netflix, they effectively sell you a license to watch it, and the rights holder has the right to put restrictions on its sale to Netflix - and if Netflix breaks that contract, to stop selling to Netflix altogether.

The Australian or US governments do not put any additional restrictions on the sale. Neither government levies import/export taxes on the trade. Netflix is fully allowed to sell in Australia under Australian law - it's just that their content suppliers don't let them.

If Netflix is not doing it, they risk losing all their content - and with it their whole business. It's not foolish from their pov, it's just what they have to do to keep their business alive.

That is per rights holder. If you've downloaded 10 works from one rights holder, they can get no more than $5k. However if you've downloaded 10 works from 10 different rights holders, you may end up on the receiving end of ten law suits, with total potential fine of $50k. Both amounts not counting legal costs.

You will only get warning letters if you're downloading copyrighted stuff that:

1. the rights holder is monitoring,
2. from a service the rights holder is monitoring,
3. if they can identify you somehow.

Using encryption and built-in blacklists (of known monitoring sites) will help a lot.

So the race is on for torrent client developers to make it even harder to track who's downloading what.

Easy enough to make this mistake, and not realising it.

Develop something that needs Amazon S3 access, and put it on GitHub. It's easy enough to forget about removing your keys before doing a git commit, putting them on GitHub.

Next time maybe you do remember to do so; possibly not realising your first mistake. The keys remain available in previous versions of your software, and you'll never see this old version until you happen to do a rollback to exactly that revision. Rollbacks don't happen too often; to that specific version even less; and then you still have to look at the bit of code that has the keys and realise it's coming from the rollback.

Others that may download your updated (keyless) version also won't notice your keys are on GitHub, after all they're hidden in an older version, which you never see unless specifically requesting it.

What makes matters worse: with this bot it may take just minutes for your keys to be copied and put in use. TFS mentions just five minutes for that to have happened. Maybe it's specifically looking for new commits?

Anyway, easy enough to make such a mistake and not realising it. As such there are many AWS secret keys out there, that are still valid (owner doesn't realise they're out there so won't revoke them), and that are just waiting to be found and put into use.

Agreed. It's Iraq, Saddam Hussein and his WMDs all over again.

Not a shred of verifiable evidence given - we just have to believe what those in power say - and accept more death and destruction.

That hackers defeated the security, doesn't necessarily mean it was easy to do so.

As I understand it, it was related to social engineering - they managed to get their hands on actual user accounts and passwords, so could log in tot the network the intended way. There is nothing that stops a hacker the moment they have valid credentials, credentials that are meant to give access.

Any network is by nature vulnerable as it is designed to allow people to get in. Without that option, the network would be useless for any practical use. The trick is to make sure only give access to people you want to be able to access it, and find a way to make it impossible for others to impersonate those people. And that's hard - really hard.

They'd kill themselves - the current slow but steady rise in the RMB is hard enough on their central bank already (as it means a steady decline in the value of their main asset: their massive USD holdings).

Registration is not necessary, but it does make things a lot easier if you indeed have to defend a copyright.

And that's also not true. It's not a prerequisite to register copyrights for it to be enforceable. Having it registered however does make it a lot easier to enforce later.

About 95% of the people in this world do not live in the US, and will not register their copyrights in the US, yet the material they produce is fully copyright protected in the US under US copyright law.

Most of the software created by individuals and released under the GPL is not registered either. That doesn't make the GPL any less valid or applicable.

There is a difference between reporting, and wholesale redistribution. Reporting is fair use, but that's not happening (much). Wholesale redistribution is certainly not fair use, and Sony can indeed claim such redistribution violates copyright.

Now the interesting thing is going to be (if this ever gets challenged in court): who owns the copyright over those e-mails? Is it Sony as employer, or are it the individual authors of those e-mails? The received e-mails are certainly not copyright Sony, the copyright on those is owned by those who sent them to Sony employees.

In principle, everything falls under copyright. Even these comments. However by posting it on a public board, we implicitly give Slashdot permission to redistribute it. An e-mail I send to the feedback section of a newspaper also comes with the implicit permission to print and redistribute it in the newspaper. An e-mail one sends to Sony or someone else, however, does normally not have such a permission - it's hard to argue implicit permission to redistribute. This sidestepping the obvious privacy related to e-mail, which is generally meant to be read by the recipient(s) only.

Most scientists work for scientific institutions (universities, research companies) where their employer has a license for all to read those journals. Just like the old university libraries where you could find all these journals in print. To these people there is not much of a hindrance and the digital availability may make exchange of ideas actually easier than it was before.

They do however keep curious bystanders out - people who have an interest in science but are not working in the field. This are the same people that did not have easy access to the journals (unless they'd hop on their bike and cycle over to their local university's library - assuming there even was one nearby). For these people access hasn't worsened much, but definitely hasn't improved either.

All in all I can't really agree with them hindering the exchange of information, though they could very well make it a lot easier - for example by making everything older than say a year or a few years free to access, leaving the latest and greatest to those that are willing (and capable) to pay for it.

Somehow these journals need to be paid for their work. Peer review is not free, publishing is not free. Just putting it all out on the Internet for free is not a viable business model, as is proven by the many pay-to-publish crap journals discussed here many times recently.

It is just journals doing their work when they bounce unconventional research, asking for further proof or clarifications. There is a lot of unconventional research out there, and while some may be the beginning of a breakthrough, most of it is not. Just look at atomic fusion.

Of course it makes it harder for really new and exciting things to get in the journals, it also keeps a lot of the crap out.

Here in Hong Kong, I routinely see freezer trucks delivering bags of ice cubes to bars and restaurants. No isolation, presumably they're stored cold in the establishment, still it's ice trade.

I've even seen large freezers full of such bags of ice cubes for sale at 7-11, especially in summer, for people to bring a bag or two of ice cubes for their boat or beach party. Probably kept in a isolated container, or it'd melt in the >30 heat in an instant.

For sure it's not what it used to be, and not natural ice - it is a trade that's still alive. As a further statement to its historical importance, there are two streets in Hong Kong named for the former ice factory: Ice House Street in Central, and Ping Chong Road (lit: ice factory road) on Cheung Chau.