No, that's not some cute, obscure Japanese smiley face. It's short hand for zero last year, zero this year. I value my privacy, and if my friends want to know what I'm doing, they can call me up and ask me.
Of course the troubling thought is: Does Slashdot count as a social network?
The idea that these are 'fair lawsuits' that you and the previous poster put forth is nonsense. The article says they are looking for statutory damages. The absolute minimum is $750. Statutory damages are decided by the jury, not by the lawyers; and I know of no jury that has awarded less than $10,000. The same group has put for letters for Far Cry, extorting (via threat of law suit) $1500. Which means we are already at 200x actual damages.
Then we come to the enormous trail of evidence that has to be looked at:
A computer G in the hands of someone with lots of money to be made says address X is downloading file y.
Address X is transmitted to corporation C.
Corporation C says that address belongs to subscriber S.
Subscriber S could be the only person at the keyboard.
That entire trail has to be absolutely perfect. Every program that handled the 'evidence' can be proven never ever to make a mistake, Corporation C must know perfectly that their records are pristine and that no unauthorized persons have access, and that there is absolutely no possibility of any sort of error. There can't be any possibility that anyone could have used S's computer without her knowledge. But most importantly, the person that stands to gain many $10,000s can be trusted never to just add a few extra addresses in there. Hey, if you're going to sue 5,000 people, you might as well just toss in a few hundred more random addresses just for the fun of it and push your profit a little more. It's not like anyone is really caring how the big law firms and movie studios and distribution houses are abusing people here.
From my view point, lawyers and big content have decided that copyright infringement is a new profit center. There is no down side, all you do is grab a few random IP address, send a few thousand demand letters. The ISPs do all the leg work for you for free, and you pick one unlucky loser to actually sue so that the rest of the people that get your extortion letters are scared to tell you 'no'.
The only way to fix this mess is to remove the statutory damages; to limit damages to 10x actual damages or 50x profits made from distribution.
So I almost lost my breakfast over this one. The amendment doesn't say word one about getting anything useful, only that the spending continue. The legislators in question don't seem to care if the money spent returns anything worthwhile, only that we keep spending. Barf! No wonder everyone hates politicians.
As if I didn't have reason enough to despise Apple, they pull this sort of stunt. And yes, I blame Apple completely and without reservation, whole-heartedly convinced of both malice and the intent to cause harm entirely beyond the pale. Apple as a company, and as a way of doing business, deserves only contempt and scorn.
Gamification is not a word. More importantly, depending if you use a hard 'a' sound (as in play) or a soft one (as in plan), you get a completely different view of what it's actually supposed to mean. Personally I like the soft a version instead.
PS If you don't understand, read more 40's detective fiction and pay attention to the slang.
Just a bit of statical analysis:
30,000 flights/day * 365.25 days/year*10 years = 110 million flights.
22 laptop fires
1 in 5 million odds of having your flight involved.
Apparently someone decided that they needed some press coverage, as I'm not buying it as a credible hazard.
To do nothing is to be nothing.
