I love this. It shows the authorities how TOR can be used in their favor, instead of demonizing it and making it out to be no good for anything but criminal activities.

There's only 1.357 billion Chinese, so did all of them move, and another 2.243 billion come there from outside of China, to travel across China? The article really doesn't explain where they're getting the numbers from, & I'm having a hard time believing that HALF of all humans went to Beijing for Chinese New Year. According to the article, Baidu's app was on only 200 million cell phones to be able to do this.

That sounds about right, 'cause I know 99 besides me.

.....but shouldn't that be a form of entrapment? I guess the gov't can make whatever rules they want 'til enough United Statesians try a revolution.

I hate to admit it, but I signed up for a few courses at some MOOCs and never did even one lesson of some of those courses. I signed up thinking it would be awesome to learn the subject I signed up for, but then when it came to the time to do it, I didn't have the time to do it. That being said, I know that if I'd paid for the course, then I definitely would've done the courses or given more thought before deciding on whether I could do the course. The way it's all currently set up, you don't have to give any thought to it before signing up besides being excited, because if you change your mind later or if you can't do it later, then you don't lose anything for it.

That being the case, I think MOOC's should charge a small fee from everyone who signs up. Maybe $10-$100, depending on the course. When the student finishes, they either get all the money back or they get a percentage back. Then the student has something to lose, and will be sure to put more effort into the course and make people really think before signing up.

Rolling the stones as huge cylinders would've been cool but they used water to wet the sand, which reduced friction. There's even some hieroglyphs that show it being done. Was big news back in the spring. See:

• Scientists May Have Figured Out How Ancient Egyptians Moved Huge Pyramid Stones
• The surprisingly simple way Egyptians moved massive pyramid stones without modern technology
• Ancient Egyptians transported pyramid stones over wet sand

Daleks have infiltrated the BBC.

I think the example I gave above, along with the questions it raises about the "evidence" against me, would be easy enough for any non-technical minded jury to grasp. Those questions, really make it clear that anybody could've done it. Basically, if there's just 3 people who had access to my internet account, then the likelyhood of any single individual being the one who did it, is only 33%, not 100% or even 50%. Therefore, it's more unlikely that said individual downloaded the copyrighted material, than it is likely they did it.

By the time the prosecution gets a search warrant to comb through all the files on all the devices, the downloaded copyrighted material could have been moved to another device or hard drive. If they finds signs that it existed on one of the devices & no longer exists, the defendant can claim they downloaded the file but it wasn't what they wanted or that they decided not to keep it, so they deleted it. That wouldn't be much different than buying something from Walmart & returning it to get your money back. Even better, it's like a thief who walks out of a store with something, but then returns it to the shelf before anyone busts him. Even if he's noticed on security camera's after the fact, they can't legally make you pay for something you're not keeping or using.

So the case against an individual is so weak that even preponderance isn't really a problem. In fact, it just wouldn't be worth the money it costs to try to fight it in court. For argument's sake though, imagine Rightscorp & the ISP's did allow cases like these to be brought to court and they win a lot of them. The moment ONE of them ends with the defendant being innocent, it creates a precedent. That'd be their worst nightmare, and they do NOT want to risk that happening. The gig would be up, forever.

I'd really love to see them do this to somebody who takes them to court for it. Rightscorp and the ISP will have to prove the guilty party is the account owner. If they can't, then they still have to prove who the guilty party is, and make them pay. It's called burden of proof. This company is simply attempting to circumvent the U.S. legal system because in most cases, they won't be able to prove who was downloading the copyrighted material.

The problem is rooted in the fact that an IP address is not the same as an individual. Take for example, a household of Dad, Mom, and two children. Which device in the house was used to download the copyrighted material? Which individual was using that device at the time? How does anyone know if maybe a family friend was visiting and used the device? Is it possible that a trojan or other malware was on the device and did it without any user consent? The company would have to be able to prove which individual was using the device that was downloading the material at the time it was downloaded, and probably need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was downloaded with the user's consent. Determining all that, is next to impossible in almost all the cases.

Rightscorp & The ISP's case, is very weak if anyone challenges it.

I was just thinking the same thing. For any serious governments, I think a BSD would seem a better choice from their perspective. The license allows them to keep their source changes closed to prying eyes, and the secure reputation of using something like OpenBSD would seem a natural for a nation with concerns about spying. Perhaps they're concerned they won't be able to spy on their own people that are using a BSD as easily as spying on users of other OS's?

I totally agree. I was getting 15 mod points every 3 days or so. I generally upvote stuff that I find worthy of it, and ignore comments "bad" comments unless they were seriously bad/trollish/obvious flambaiting. Recently, somebody down voted all of my comments in one thread so they were 0'd, and then /. suddenly decided that I'll only deserve 5 mod points every few days. That, to me, is obviously weird. I thought my comments weren't that bad, even if they weren't great. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me, and it happens far too easily. So I just stop commenting 'cause I don't want to risk losing all my karma over 1 comment just because somebody might not agree with my viewpoint.

For the record, I'm hesitating to submit this comment. I could do it anon, but, I'd like my thoughts to be attached to my identity..... otherwise it just feels like free speech is really dead around in this community.

I couldn't agree more. I haven't bought a CD, DVD, or cassette, in years, unless it's a CD of something I can't find anywhere else. Even then, I rip it and give the thing away 'cause it's worthless to me. Whenever I'm at Walmart's electronics section, seems there's nobody looking at the large swath of CD's & DVD's, but there are people lookin' at other stuff.

Can easily support business & participants by buying or renting non-physical copies too. Sharing/lending is a plus, for people who still do that. I don't really know anybody who does that anymore. With non-physical copies I can just hook my external drive up to a friend's computer or TV (via HDMI) and we can all enjoy the flick together. My Dad (who's in his 80's) still uses VHS tapes for everything. Friends of ours used to come over and borrow tapes from his large collection of stuff, but they haven't done that in years.... partly 'cause fewer people have VCR's now, but also because people just don't seem to be borrowing as much. People I know, either watch stuff together or get a copy themselves. Non-physical copies cost less & don't take up storage space, so it's easier for people to get copies of films (and music) they really like with the excess price or clutter.

Funny, I've found physical media to be quaint SINCE i was 25. I only buy a physical copy of something so I can rip a copy for myself, and I only do that when I cannot find a non-physical copy of the movie or song. It's been a few years since I wasn't surprised when somebody buys a physical copy of something. I just don't understand why anyone keeps doing it.