Agreed that it's not in the summary, but as you correctly note, it's just a "summary". Anyone who reads the underlying blog post will read this among the facts on which the court based its opinion: "The public was allowed to search by keyword. The search results showed only the page numbers for the search term and the number of times it appeared; none of the text was visible."

So those readers who RTFA will be in the know.

Don't I wish.

A cynic might argue that the key difference in this case was that, for a change, the ISP's, and not merely defendants, were challenging the subpoenas; but of course we all know that justice is 'blind'.

An ingrate might bemoan the Court's failure to address the key underlying fallacy in the "John Doe" cases, that because someone pays the bill for an internet account that automatically makes them a copyright infringer; but who's complaining over that slight omission?

A malcontent like myself might be a little unhappy that it took the courts ten (10) years to finally come to grips with the personal jurisdiction issue, which would have been obvious to 9 out of 10 second year law students from the get go, and I personally have been pointing it out and writing about it since 2005; but at least they finally did get there.

And a philosopher might wonder how much suffering might have been spared had the courts followed the law back in 2004 when the John Doe madness started; but of course I'm a lawyer, not a philosopher. :)

Bottom line, though: this is a good thing, a very good thing. Ten (10) years late in coming, but good nonetheless. - R.B. )

Wikipedia has a much larger audience, and Slashdot is a community.

You need to figure out how to monetize it to an extent that it at least supports itself and does so in a way without offending anyone.

Good luck. I would love to see such a site get created.

Yes, but he does have a point. Slashdot is being ruined far more by the complaints than the Beta (fucking POS). So whatever damage is being done at this point is "your" fault. I put that in quotes as I don't know the extent of your involvement in the revolt.

It's very effective, but is also exactly what terrorists do. Make it so bad for the innocent bystanders that they have no option but to listen to you. I'm not the only one that senses an undercurrent of spoiled entitlement in the messages and actions either.

You guys can flame away on me as much as you want and claim I'm a corporate apologist, but that would just be reactionary, emotional, and illogical.

I'm with all of you on this. Slashdot is being ruined by corporate greed and shortsighted decisions by executives, and they are all worthless wastes of skins based solely on their actions . I have to block 9 trackers, beacons, and widgets on this site, and this site, above all others, should NOT be violating our privacy with 3rd party corporations known to be raping us in cyberspace.

However, while we voice our displeasure with what has happened to our beloved community let us not attack those who are not our "enemies", but those that have valid complaints about how we are reacting to it.

Fuck Beta is annoying from all angles.

Let's just leave and come back the Tuesday after next and see what happens.

I don't think it's possible to make a site unsupported by advertisements. Where you do plan on getting the money for hosting from? Private donors?

I might give you 20-40 a year. I think I may have given Slashdot like 60 bucks before the economy went into the shitter.

Why on earth would Adobe flash be required for anything? Every time I see Flash on the page I just come to the conclusion they had poor website designers. Seriously. Who chooses that complete waste of a corporation now? If they didn't have Photoshop I would not use a single program by their ridiculously abhorrent corporation, and I only use Photoshop because I don't consider GIMP to be an alternative that is there just yet. Getting there, but not yet.

Kudos on getting rid of the trackers, beacons, and widgets though. We would be blocking them anyways, so there is no point for anything outside of internal analytics.

That's simplistic.

It's also used to warn that there might be a "g" missin' and it was intentional

You just gave the exact reason why I wait for somebody to cap the whole thing (just like it is their job), remove all highly objectionable corporate content and political bullshit, and package it up and send it out as a torrent.

They can try as hard as they want to, and will never defeat that.

With memberships at closed private tracker sites I sit comfortable in the knowledge that I can tell them to fuck off anytime I want to and watch that content on MY terms.

The harder they try for control, the more they push people like me away. If they calmed down for one second, I might seriously consider paying 30-50 bucks for Olympic coverage sans commercials.

Since they're stupid and greedy (wonderful combination) I just get the content for free instead.

That goes for a large number of other things as well. I loved some shows so much that I would happily pay $10 a month per show to receive it streamed without commercial content. While I pirated the crap out of the shows while they ran, I also rented every DVD on Netflix and returned it, and purchased DVD box sets, and received DVD box sets as gifts.

I'm paying for content, just not as much as they demand, and I'm not letting them rape my eyeballs with such intellectual poison that commercials have turned into.

The reason you are forced to have a cable subscription to watch content is the same exact reason why car manufacturers tried to make it illegal for you to make after market purchases and modifications to the vehicles (which failed).

Old men with old business models that don't feel they have to compete fairly for one second.

Television is just information, and information is just bandwidth usage, and we already created an incredibly robust way to transfer huge amounts of information.

They're upset that the Internet killed their cash cow, and instead of innovating and trying to create new markets and new business models, they resort to highly unethical and abhorrent attempts to force the subsidization of their aging business models at all costs.

You have to look at another fact as well. We only have so much disposable income, and corporate greed demands continuous growth. ESPN seems to think it's possible to continually increase their costs beyond inflation to satisfy the shareholders. The idea that the shareholder must be satisfied at all costs is what creates shortsighted decisions with long term consequences.

We already have everything we need. It should never cost more than $100 (adjustments for inflation are fine) to purchase bandwidth. In fact, it can really costs a whole heck of a lot less than that even.

It reminds me of when aluminum used to be worth more than gold and a single invention killed it. Well I don't seem to recall that when we buy gold that we are also forced to buy aluminum at the same price in the same transaction lest we have no access to gold. Do you?

Yes, the Olympics should just be renamed Corporate Greed & Corruption Incorporated

It's very telling that an event that was supposed to bring us all together as one people (planet wide) to participate in a friendly sports competition, that is thousands of years old, has been turned into nothing but a political money grab to roam around the planet and make rich men richer while denying access to this humanitarian event unless you are regularly paying a corporation to sell your eyeballs to other corporations to drown you in inane intellectually offensive material to convince you that you need some worthless shit you never knew you needed.

That's why I don't watch the Olympics, and I don't give two shits about who has gold or silver what. Never have.

Call me back when it actually means something, and I will get excited over it.

Apparently, you have not met the *new* Corporate America. That's EXACTLY what they did with the bailouts for Wall Street, and pretty much defines a large part of capitalism now.

If you're big enough, you don't have to suffer any consequences anymore.

If you're a regular person, then shut up. You don't say anything because you clearly understand nothing of economics, that's just the way it is, get a haircut you fucking hippie, pay taxes, and die with individually mandated health insurance, and no, we won't actually fix medicine or any of the cronyism and nepotism you continue to claim are present... what's wrong with you? Fucking Communist.

I would argue that we are owed access to the content in a reasonable manner without monopolies and undue restrictions.

It's not an issue of entitlement, but discrimination.

I openly admit to pirating the living shit out of Disney because they are doing their best to sequester the content and not allow access. I'm talking about stuff well over 20 years old, so I refuse to respect the copyright on a fucking mouse created in the 30's with the daughter of the creator dying at old age already.

If NBC refuses to make a deal with me individually, and demands that I possess an existing contract with another corporation for thousands of dollars per year, then they can lick balls.

They're not offering the content in any way that I can compensate them for the production.

Therefore, it's Public Domain instantaneously since it's being kept from people. At no time do I ever respect ownership of ideas and expressions. I respect, support, and encourage artists and I'm willing to do that with money, but only if they are willing to act in good faith and allow me peaceful enjoyment and reasonable compensation.

So NBC can say hello to "piracy". At least from this individual...

They're most likely never going to get it right, precisely because of what you just pointed out:

Audience vs. Community

It's abundantly clear that Slashdot is run by corporate masters and marketing suckheads. Those people are ALWAYS about an audience, as advertising and shill articles make money for those execs, which translates into more money/resources allocated for the marketers.

They don't have any incentive to treat us as a community as long as treating us like an audience is making them money.

I think you nailed it, and I think it's time for must of us to exit Slashdot and find a place that gives news that matters for nerds in a community oriented atmosphere with information dense interfaces that aren't purely about the shiny.