Nope! No drawbacks here. Why would the headline be written in anything other than pure, positive spin? Especially since this was probably posted from a chipped car with big brother watching quite carefully for any accidents, traffic or wrong thoughts.

-- Ravensfire

Isn't this the way it should be working? Allocate X dollars to group. Group really needs X + Y dollars to do everything they want so they create a group to review all the projects and allocate the dollars. If you don't have enough funding, programs WILL be cut or scaled back. Save program A and program B is cut, which costs jobs around program B. Congrats though, program A's jobs are intact.

Prioritization sucks but if you don't have all the funding you need you have to make the call at some point. Having a (theoretically neutral) group review everything and make the call is better than having Congress make the decisions for you. And yeah, it would be much better for everyone if there was enough funding, that's the easy way out of this dilemma.

-- Ravensfire

"1) Transparency. If an opponent is making a claim against you then be transparent about the issue and prove them wrong. Allow an independent body to investigate and verify your taxes or whatever is in question."

Congrats - utterly ineffective. Candidate A releases a claim shortly before the election about Candidate B. Claim is false, but has JUST enough plausibility to get it through libel laws. Claim affects the election because you can't prove it false in time. Yup, happens now quite often and one of the most effective dirty tricks out there. Transparency is a great way to make someone feel better ... after the fact and rarely makes up for the damage done.

-- Ravensfire

The appeal court decision mentioned that the original request was for some 26k. Personally, I think the fine is intended as a "wake up" slap. The nice part of the sanction is #2. He's been bad and now potentially lots of other courts will know about it and be able to check if he's pulling the same stunt again. And usually subsequent sanctions get harsher.

-- Ravensfire

From the ruling,
"the court imposed $10,000 in sanctions on Stone and also required the following:
1) Stone shall serve a copy of this Order on each ISP implicated and
to every person or entity with whom he communicated for any purpose
in these proceedings.
2) Stone shall file a copy of this Order in every currently-ongoing
proceeding in which he represents a party, pending in any court in
the United States, federal or state.
3) Stone shall disclose to the Court whether he received funds,
either personally or on behalf of Mick Haig, and whether Mick Haig
received funds for any reason from any person or entity associated
with these proceedings, regardless of that person’s status as a Doe
Defendant or not, (excepting any fees or expenses paid by Mick Haig
to Stone).
4) Stone shall pay the Ad Litems’ attorneys’ fees and expenses reasonably
incurred in bringing the motion for sanctions. The Ad
Litems shall file an affidavit or other proof of such fees and expenses
with the Court within thirty (30) days of the date of this Order.
Stone may contest such proof within seven (7) days of its filing.
Stone shall comply with these directives and supply the Court with
written confirmation of his compliance no later than forty-five (45)
days after the date of this Order."

-- Ravensfire

MANY people have complained about program trading before with far better credentials than Mark, yet it's suddenly news because he whines about it? It took him 10+ years to figure this out, or did he take some serious losses and it just whining about losing (something else)?

Pack what's critical first. Servers. Critical networking gear. Workstations. Ignore the phones, printers and wireless gear unless you've got extra time. And good luck.

Hmm, seems this has been used by The Fed and European Central Bank for quite a while now.

Since you linked to the article with the announcement from Germany, you really should have actually read the article.

If you had, you'd have known that the German announcement was just a general warning, posted on the shipping page. Contrary to the ominous warning about the Lusitania you make it sound like, it was anything but.

Of course, I shouldn't expect any less from someone that links to Conservipedia.

-- Ravensfire

While IANAL, if you read the EFF brief & the judgement in depth, an interesting defense is being promulgated... Even if the defendants specifically allowed MediaSentry to download these files, as authorized agents of the copyright holders, no copyright infringement actually took place!!! There's case law that says that a copyright holder (or their agent) cannot infringe on their own copyright... Hence the new, stupid, "making available" claim...

What does that mean? Assuming this argument is valid (which I can't see how it couldn't be), the plaintiffs would have to go back to square one and find someone else on Kazaa who downloaded specific files from the defendants--specifically infringing on copyright law. And for anyone who has used P2P before, how often do you know (or remember) who you're downloading from? Personally, I think that borders on impossible to prove--unless Kazaa keeps some sort of detailed log data file that MediaSentry would have to gain access to...


The judge threw that argument out the window.

From the ruling "Amicus curiae, Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF"), responds that a copyright owner cannot infringe its own copyright, so its agent also cannot infringe the copyright owner's rights when acting on the owner's behalf. But the recording companies obviously did not intend to license MediaSentry to authorize distribution or to reproduce copies of their works. Rather, "the investigator's assignment was part of [the recording companies'] attempt to stop [Howell's] infringement," and therefore the 12 copies obtained by MediaSentry are unauthorized. "

-- Ravensfire