Apple only removed non-Apple, emulated Fairplay DRM encoded music from iPods. Any music you actually ripped from CDs, downloaded from the internet or got from friends were completely and totally unaffected. Only music files that used a hack to make them appear to be protected by Apple's Fairplay DRM were removed.

I hope they're planning on going at night!

I don't agree with the protesters, but their argument is that by providing these busses, Apple and Google are encouraging their employees to live in the area the busses service.

Previously the employees would have chosen to live somewhere convenient, but more expensive, due to the need to drive themselves. Now the Apple and Google employees can buy up places near the bus routes, causing a mini-housing shortage and driving up prices, thus pricing locals out of the housing market

These may be reasons not to hire this person. But the man filing the lawsuit is still qualified for the job. The firm cannot hire H-1B visa holders if a qualified American is available, whether they wish to hire the qualified American or not.

The law requires that to hire an H-1B visa holder that the company must certify that there is no American that qualifies for the position. It doesn't matter if the Bangladeshi is qualified or not. If the American was qualified the firm broke the law by hiring the H-1B visa holder.

Reacting to a company breaking the law by filing a lawsuit is the right thing to do.

If they're not protecting their computers they are far from innocent.

I never understood why they haven't built a geothermal power plant at Centralia. It's got a seemingly never ending supply of fuel and thus heat.

We can't put it out, we might as well take advantage of it.

They're going to go at night?

They wouldn't need to prove anything. They'd just cut off the account the first time there is more than say 5 logins from geographically separated locations within one hour.

And a completely trackable one. Amazon doesn't give these accounts to just anyone. You have to create an account with them and, it appears, have purchased something from them. They have the offender's name, address and payment information.

I don't imagine they'd hesitate to turn you in to protect their service.

I would too, if not for the earlier my.mp3.com case. Since that happened they'd be crazy to do as you suggest. Surely their lawyers would have pointed this out to Amazon.

This is a different situation than my.mp3.com. In that case the website stored one copy of each piece of music, required the user to verify they owned it, then allowed you access to their stored copy. This was found to be actionable as they were allowing multiple people to download one master copy of a MP3, essentially repeatedly pirating that MP3.

Amazon is establishing a separate cloud drive for each user. If you buy a MP3 they copy it to your personal drive for you. They also allow you to upload your music to that drive. There is a separate copy of each song stored on the cloud drive for each user, and the only MP3s Amazon copies to the drive are legally purchased. As the user can only download what they have uploaded or purchased, no piracy occurs, at least on Amazon's part. Users may be storing pirated music on their personal cloud drives, but these are private file storage areas and do not allow MP3s to be exchanged among users, thus the cloud drive does not facilitate piracy.

It appears that the rumors that the Muslim Brotherhood are the main instigators in these protests is coming from the Egyptian government. Don't believe it. This is a populist uprising.

You can just order the disk alone from Microsoft at the Microsoft Supplemental Parts center. 800-360-7561