He is one of the very few core VLC developers and has been for some time. He is involved in a lot of the hard bits of VLC's code, so it is very unlikely that his code could be replaced.

What secrets?

There is no magic here - it's not a technologically advanced bit of kit. Just good execution, and marketing.

1) While people believe that the vaccination programs are part of a crazy conspiracy, then children will die.
2) On at least one occasion, (Osama Bin Laden), the USA has used a vaccination program as part of a conspiracy to find the guy they wanted to kill (and some of his family)
3) Now we need to convince people that all the _other_ conspiracy theories are crazy and would never happen.
4) Meanwhile in the same region, the USA (and others?) kill men women and children with rockets from their robot drones

Why don't they just trust us?

costs can be awarded so that the loser pays, but is isn't as straightforward as the loser always paying what the winner's legal bills are.

the judge has a lot of discretion here.

nonetheless, you're right about the dynamic. The BPI is threatening the individuals here. The law is far from clear cut.

It is very unlikely that they would win and recoup their full legal bills from the opposition (even if costs are awarded, they don't generally actually cover the full legal cost of your case).

It is perfectly possible that they could lose and still have to pay massive legal bills for the BPI.

and there you have your dilemma.

one of the consequences of free speech is that you get arses like the Westboro church.

speaking as UK citizen, I envy the ability of the USA legal system to say 'we hate what they're saying, but there is a bigger principle at stake here'.

the only other alternative is for someone somewhere to be in charge of deciding when the line has been crossed.

-westboro 'god hates gays'
-pro life 'murderer' signs outside abortion clinics
-islamist 'death to those who insult Islam'
-atheist 'islam is stupid'
-some guy 'some celebrity is fat and ugly'

for any place that you are willing to draw the line, I'll find some offensive speech that sits just above or below your line. The next person in the room won't quite agree with you on where the line has to go.

who decides which person goes to jail?

the Westboro baptist church, is actually something to be proud of. Not because it is hateful, but because it is allowed to be hateful.

failing to warn people that you have a problem with their actions, and just leaping straight to a court case is also bad.

I'm fairly sure that what you call 'threatening', the BPI would call 'fair warning'

Not that I support their case, just that if they are going to take it - I would absolutely require them to warn the pirate party, and attempt a settlement first.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure this is how the british legal system encourages people to act.

how about VLC Streamer ?

It's an app I wrote...

http://hobbyistsoftware.com/vlcstreamer

developers get 70% on Android too.

well - if you're a company that bought hundreds of the things, then it might help you a lot.

read the bottom of the press release; You can use the EU judgement in court as absolute proof that price fixing went on, and they specifically state that damages (payable to you) should not be reduced on account of the fine already levied.

frankly - if I had purchased an expensive TV in that period, I'd be tempted to take a small claims case now just for fun.

I think you mean a 'ding'

> If you can't link a sentence without paying for it, then you can't include it in search results either.

sure you can.

Google searches my entire site - but they definitely do not have permission to take all my content and reproduce it on their new site for supporting their remote control apps. Similarly with use of the news stories, there is a reasonable debate to be had about what constitutes fair use.

The newspapers are arguing (quite reasonably) that Google News (where summaries of news stories are presented in what is essentially a newspaper) is different from Google Search.

the point where they get unreasonable is in arguing that Google should pay for the snippets whilst failing to opt out of Google News (which they could easily do with their robots.txt)

that would be abusing the search ~monopoly for a different business.

there are two separate businesses here
1) google search (newspapers want to be in this, but possibly don't want snippets showing)
2) google news (newspapers want payment for snippets in this)

at the moment, they can opt out of 1, or 2 independently using robots.txt

if they switch to demanding payment for #2, then google should just de-list them from #2 until they pay an advertising fee (which is coincidentally equal to the government mandated copyright charge plus 15% admin cost).

if google removed companies from #1 as a result of their position on #2 then that would be a clear abuse of power.

that's kinda the point.

The broader question : which companies/organisations are ok.

e.g. a company selling sex toys (totally legal in their market) and another selling horror movies have been denied service by visa/mc/paypal
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/eu-maste-reglera-hur-visa-mastercard-och-paypal-far-bete-sig/

The regulation is required if you do not think that visa/mc/paypal should be the ones deciding which companies should be allowed to accept payments online.

can you post any example implementations?

one thing I can't see immediately is the ability to manage subgroups.

e.g.

My company
-product1
-product2

would you have to set up multiple groups to do this?

there is an implicit assumption here that he can build something bigger.

Lots of people believe that they can be serial successes, but lots of people fail to do anything special after their first good idea.

Kinda like the many many one-hit-wonders in the music industry.

still - if he gets a good offer here, then selling sounds smart. It's probably easy enough for Facebook to just reproduce his work, open source it and maim his business.