Speaking of Germany, third-party people are actually required to be present as witnesses. Usually these are city workers or other state-employed people, though not policemen (at least when the commanding officers give a flying crap about the legality of their raid). So long as these people do not actively help with the raid, this can be kosher. Of course, telco people directing people where and what to search is not "witnessing" anymore and probably not legal. No matter though, Germany has no such thing as the fruit of the poisonous tree. Even if a raid was illegal, even if evidence was obtained illegally, even if it was found "by accident" on a raid for an unrelated cause it can and is still used in court. This is why German police don't generally give a flying crap about the legality of their raids or actions -- they get to use what they find anyway.

It's astounding how you can read bits and snippets and form an entirely incorrect picture based on what you want it to be.

"screwing people on PSN" ? No. They pointed out that it was possible to disable consoles -- IF you know their exact console ID. Which is a long string of numbers, not easily guessed. The chance of this happening by accident is pretty damn small, and you don't usually display your console ID anywhere public. Granted, the people first "reporting" on this issue in "scene" sites did not understand this either and were after big headlines -- unfortunately, little substance.

"acting like martyrs" ? How do you act like a martyr ? Get the sanctity of your home invaded by thugs in uniform because you enjoy poking things you own ?

"free lunch" ? PS3s were sold with "Other OS" enabled. This was a reason for buying them for many people. You will also note that not a single one of the hackers which had their assets seized engaged in piracy or provided tools for piracy.

"they" ? Wow, it's a "us" vs "them", and your "they" is a conflated mass of nonsense.

If publishers "flee" the platform you "own", maybe those publishers are not worth supporting.

And then you can get overpriced, DRM-inflicted emulators in Steam for very old Sega games.

That, or you go non-legal. Great.

In many cases, the porn you download /is/ the advertisement. On most, if not all, current produced-for-internet porn you can find the name of the outlet somewhere in the frame. If you like the quality, you might want to go get the rest of their stuff. People who never pay for porn do not cost them anything -- question is whether the people who pay for it after having gotten parts for free outweigh the people who may have paid for it but opted to scour usenet instead -- the age-old unanswerable question, really. And this only works if you can stand behind your product.
Granted, usually porn producing outlets do not seed torrents, so the seeder will not make money. But you asked who made money, not how the seeder makes any :P

Even if you buy the premise that this would work the way described and actually "increase" security and "decrease" the botnet problem, and even if it works 100% of the time, and even if they somehow also do this so that OSX, Ubuntu, and 1000 other operating system variants can take advantage of it, and even if you then do not run into the problem of the computer behind the computer/router having been certified (remember NAT?) being infected ...

Even then, do you really think that if this infrastructure were pervasively implemented, it would not then get used for something entirely different? I mean, you are already looking deeply into the system, you are already cutting off internet access permanently ... Why not simply check for Limewire while you are at it? Or uTorrent? I am sure the right lobby could persuade Microsoft to do that with a wad of cash or some juicy contracts for their media division ... And really, LibreOffice is not certified secure (all those homeless, stinky hackers working on it for free never really got a proper Microsoft Certified Security Expert badge, they probably don't even know what security is all about ... so better not allow subversive freeloader-stuff like that to run, either. Oracle OpenOffice is OK, after all, they are a big company and MS really needs that patent exchange deal with their database folks, right?
And everybody knows people get their viruses and worms via social networks, especially the newfangled ones like Ping or newcomers ... Surely facebook can secure their stuff (they can pay MS Security experts with badges to secure their Windows servers, after all), but twitter? Those guys don't even have a revenue stream. Better to just cut off access to that as well.

Granted, I need to patch some holes in my tinfoil hat, but is it really so far-fetched to assume MS or whoever were to be in charge of it would not abuse it? And if they are all ethical, reasonable people who will not at all abuse their power when given the chance, do you really think they could secure their own services so that they are beyond reproach? Why develop a botnet to take down Amazon.com when you can simply flip a switch and take half the planet offline?

It's almost entirely the former.

"Offensiveness"-statutes would be porn (which Google does not allow on YouTube in any case, in no jurisdiction), and stuff related to hatespeech and Nazi symbols -- though I somehow suspect that Sony/BMG/EMI would not be cited as the culprits for blocking in that case. Furthermore, most hatespeech is probably against the general ToS of YouTube, as well ;)

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is simply not true. Try surfing YouTube in Germany, for instance. Lots and LOTS of videos are pulled or "not available in your country", they do pay out some local media conglomerates, and, guess what, Google has offices here too.

Which would do absolutely nothing for poor editing, since it is actually impossible to edit things there and the editors on Slashdot are not, you know, editors. They like to pretend they are, though.

It's also full of spam and things that could be weeded out automatically, these days. It's not enough to just point people there, they need the tools for it, too.

They do not pretend to be unbiased.

That's exactly /not/ what that quote is saying. This quote you provided highlights the fact that they feel it is their mission to release the entire source material, in addition to any conclusion they might have arrived at -- so that you can then look at the source data and come to your own conclusions. That is precisely the reason why they can "frame" their releases in such a way -- because you can disagree and point to the source as proof.

I read the statement you quote as it relates to the release of the source material. You know, the unedited source material -- which is now in the historic record, along with the edited version which is quite plainly biased -- you can see this in the title itself. Unlike propaganda spewn on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, various print magazines, etc., you have the tools to examine their claims from the source material.

I'll share the opinion that it is a lot worse than those three, but this in no way means that MSNBC, ABC, or CNN are doing a bang-up job -- they are not. Just not as ridiculously bad as Fox.

Debatable :P

Ok, why should he not have a point? This is not a journalist. He does not purport to be a journalist. He purports to supply journalists with source data. We could talk about selection bias -- and there will be some -- but to Mr. Assange's credit, unlike Mr. Beck, Mr. Olberman, and Mr. O'Reilly, he actually provides his source material rather accessibly. You do not have to take his word for it, or subscribe to his opinions to evaluate the leaks.

By your own logic, even that would still be biased -- namely one would have to assume selection bias (what gets released, what does not, what gets held back from releases, etc.)

Given that Wikileaks is actually doing its job as a conduit for information while protecting their sources, personally I have no problems with them /also/ providing their own commentary on their releases -- provided this commentary is in addition to, not instead of, the data. If and when you provide the same service WikiLeaks does, I'll grant you the same prerogative.

Which is useful, especially when one is interested in what media not centered in the US makes of things.

Ah, but that is the crux of the matter, is it not? Who is to say the person originally leaking documents/media are telling the whole story and not just attempting to plant certain material to their own advantage? What is the motivation of the person(s) leaking this information? Do you honestly have the feeling that, going by the source material, you have been duped out of the real leak? Does it not offer you enough data to reach your own conclusions, or do you somehow suspect the source data has been altered in non-obvious ways? There is going to be selection bias in what they publish (given the limited manpower they have, this is most certainly the case), but then again, they are constricted by what people actually leak to them.

None of all of this changes one of the things that this leak quite clearly showed, edited video or not : war is hell. It is not pretty, no matter how you look at it. It is not clean-cut, and it is certainly not easy.

Hello Bobby,

The retraction has happened before release. Furthermore, the White House was offered, prior to release, a chance to review and suggest additional retractions. They declined. So, Bobby, can you please tell us what more you want them to do?

Also, Bobby, what new things did you learn on the news last night that you did not already know? Corporations are evil, you knew that before, traffic accidents happen, you knew that before, politicians are sleazebags, you knew that before ... so why report on all this irrelevant stuff? Why is it of any public interest? What NEW things have you learned, Bobby?

Also, Bobby, my name is not Bobby. Maybe yours is Bubba, not Bobby, too, I don't know. Mind if I call you Joe?

And them meddling kids at Wikileaks had the audacity, the AUDACITY, to think of these eventualities and actually make it pretty damned hard to "remove" the "site" from the "net". As we can see now, for good reason.

... while at the very same time giving us the complete, unedited source video file, additional information, an extensive amount of research and reporting beyond the video, etc? Wikileaks' motives are clear. They do not claim to be unbiased, "fair and balanced", etc. like so many propagandist organizations do.

Wikileaks gave you all the source material. Feel free to come to a different conclusion than they have. I did not.

Correct. He never claimed to be a proper journalist. In fact, Wikileaks invites "proper journalists" to cooperate with them to give their take on the material provided. Unlike the "regular" press, however, Wikileaks' source protection actually has some teeth.

If you applied this logic to all news and journalism you consume, am I to conclude that you find them all untrustworthy?

You said it yourself -- the bias is obvious. Thing is, here are the sources. Come to your own conclusions. You are welcome to. You do not /need/ to trust his judgment, position, or editorializing. You have the tools to effectively reach your own conclusions. That is what wikileaks enables you to do.

"us" ? Were you there, on the ground? Do you wholeheartedly agree with everything the military does? Do you consider it to speak in your name? And the real question is not whether somebody was put in danger for cooperating (they are going to be in danger /no matter what/, especially if there is any sort of record), it is whether the release of this information serves a worthwhile purpose. To me, it does. It is not like they released a list of "10 people who helped the dirty, dirty Americans." They release an almost complete archive of the record on the ground. This is, in my mind, very, very valuable. And if somebody is going to try to take the moral high ground about lives being put into jeopardy : no shit Sherlock. It's a fucking war.

I don't know about you, but I don't throw my clothes away due to some tear or rip. We have plenty of tools at our disposal to actually fix these things.

[quote]Crysis is a well known example of a video game. While technically profitable, it was not competitively profitable, in that it performed much worse than other games of its scope in the past (for example, Doom 3) as a consequence of piracy.[/quote]

and this is proven ... how? Doom 3 is by id Software. Makers of Doom 1, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 3 Arena, etc., and coded by John Carmack. There are lots of people who would anything from that development house at that time, unseen.

Now Crysis was not bad, but not exactly great, either. It's the same genre, but really not the same thing.

[quote]
This would imply a substantive loss due to piracy.[/quote]

Again, proven how?

[quote]Try Googling crysis piracy, or read a link here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19203%5B/quote%5D

Which is full of speculation -- and not backed up by even a speck of actual data.

Don't get me wrong -- Crysis sure was pirated.

[quote]The CEO of Stardock wrote an excellent article explaining business models for accounting for piracy, specifically commenting on the Crysis case. http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512%5B/quote%5D

There is no mention on Crysis in that article, and no mention of piracy harming their business model either.

[quote]Later, piracy would prove to damage his game Demigod's short term viability, though technical measures (DRM in abstraction, though in practice just a method to detect pirated copies of the games) recovered it from likely failure. [/quote]

Backup, please? As asked in the original question?

[quote]Piracy is perceived to be a sufficiently significant problem that dealing with piracy is as important as dealing with marketing, deadlines, etc.[/quote]

Indeed. And all I can read out of that is that it's greed at work -- after all, if you have 100k pirates playing your game, the greedy mind will think "wow, 100k sales !" and go on to try to implement DRM, restrictive licensing, crappy always-online "protections", etc. to make that happen -- which does nothing to actually curb 100k pirates, and it really doesn't convert 100k pirates into sales. But a greedy mind will still feel as if they just lost 100k sales. (Not to say pirates are not greedy, I am looking at it from the other side in this argument).

[quote]It's a core business concern. What you're asking for then is "prove to me that measles is a horrible disease. Can you show me evidence of large populations dying due to measles in recent history?" You won't accept the answer, "we vaccinate against measles, everyone knows its bad but there aren't population-wide failures precisely because we vaccinate." [/quote]

Bad analogies and trying to subsume other people's reasoning is not exactly a good discussion tactic.

[quote]DRM and other measures have made serious problems due to piracy unlikely, but they still harm the product.[/quote]

How have DRM made serious problems due to piracy unlikely? Backup, please? Data?

[quote]You also are problematic with "provably": "provably" by mathematical standards or by, say, business standards? No one can "prove" why a product is a success or failure, but merely provide persuasive evidence for it. I would imagine you have the same misunderstanding with the legal system, which does not require proof of "no possible doubt" but rather proof of "no reasonable doubt." [/quote]

Again you assume unrelated things in this discussion. It makes you look stupid.

[quote]There is no reasonable doubt that piracy harmed Crysis, making it (compared to other games) a financial failure for Crytek.[/quote]

But indeed there is reasonable doubt. One could ask whether its system requirements were simply too high, whether its marketing plan was decently executed, whether its prospective customer base had other things on the market more interesting to them at the time, etc. etc. etc. To me there is not just reasonable doubt that piracy harmed Crysis -- in fact, were CryTek to claim so, I would look at it as the "easy excuse" or the scapegoat. After all, you cannot, as you so eloquently stated, prove it -- so you cannot disprove it either.

[quote] To the readers of my comment: my point is that there's clear, reasonable evidence of the harms of piracy. But we're faced with a questioner who has an adversarial and unconvertible frame of mind.[/quote]

An assumption on your part, of course. The questioner asked for something rather reasonable : a financial failure of a product directly attributable to piracy. There probably is such a product, but Crysis is not it. Of course, once we find such products, another question should then be asked : are there any cases of products being a financial success due to piracy? Please don't dismiss it out of hand :-)