That depends. For exampe [...]

Exactly. So you are saying that the US court CAN demand that MS-USA make MS-Ireland turn it over; and **provided** its legal for the MS-Ireland to do so, it would in fact have to do so.

So the question is then not whether MS has the authority to demand that MS-US make MS-Ireland do it. It clearly does as long as its legal for MS-Ireland to comply with its parent corp.

The only question is whether or not it is legal for Ms-Ireland to send the data. See my other replies for more details.

But really, we seem to be in agreement that the US court, can make the order to MS-USA. And in turn that MS-USA can make the order to MS-Ireland.

At this point then its up to MS-Ireland to establish whether or not it can or can't not legally comply.

So why is this argument that they "can't" before the US courts now exactly? This should be MS-Ireland in front of Irish courts seeking clarification. If MS-Ireland thinks it will be illegal to comply it should be able to get the Irish courts to issue an injunction blocking the doctument transfer. Which it can then hand to the US court. End of story.

But that's not what's happening, instead of we have a media circus US blaring that that the US is trying to compel MS Ireland to break the law, and arguing that they trumping the laws of a foreign country etc... which they are not.

For example, to use your example, if an historic artifact belonged to Microsoft which needed government approval to exit the country, then Microsoft could order MS-USA to submit it as evidence -- there is nothing wrong with that. And that is what has happened here. Why is it a big deal?

Ireland, if it doesn't want the evidence to leave the country would in response issue an injunction preventing the transfer; or deny the application to transfer it out, or whatever the process is. And MS-USA would present that denial to the court.

Why hasn't that happened here?

technically and strictly seaking, yes, as they would be violating EU data protection laws, prohibiting transfer of any kind of personal data outside EU, for any processing purpose , and processing being defined as any kind of operation, not limted to computers, without the express permission from all involved. so the issue is verymuch in this case

I hear you, but its really not nearly quite so cut and dried. You for example wrote "permission" from all involved, but the EU data directive only requires proper "disclosure". And there are exceptions to that such as if processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest ... etc etc. Is there not a public interest in prosecuting a crime that is an offense in both countries involved? Arguably yes.

Further while the transfer to non-EU countries has a number of restrictions, it is not an outright ban and there are exceptions there too. For example if the 3rd party countries can receive data if that country provides an "adequate level of protection".

Further the EU data protection directive is not a law; it must be enacted in each member state... so what matters is Irelands implementation of it.

All that said, it very well may be illegal. I'm only making the argument that its an open question not, as you seem to presume, automatically and obviously illegal.

Your entire post really just boils down to this.

I explicitly said "so as long as Microsoft US doesn't demand that it do something illegal by Irish law...".

So then you agree with me: that if a US Court demands that MS US make MS Ireland forward something to the US court that would be entirely legal and proper. So long as doing so wasn't in violation of the law in Ireland.

And the ONLY point of contention is nothing at all to do with the US making extra-territorial demands or asserting that US law trumps international law, and all that is a red herring after all.

The question is not whether the US court can compel Microsoft US to make Microsoft Ireland do something illegal. We agree they can not. I don't think anybody thinks otherwise.

The question is also not whether the US court can make Microsoft US make Microsoft Ireland do something legal. We seem to agree they can. This is a pretty interesting notion, even if it doesn't apply to this particular case.

But in this case the question before us is whether Microsoft Ireland sending a copy of the requested data to the US would in fact be against the law in Ireland. It might well be. As you said, EU data protection / privacy laws are quite strong. However, it is NOT cut and dried whether the transfer would be prohibited by those laws. Read the Data Protection directive -- there is LOTS of wiggle room for interpreting it to allow this; and it is not law unto itself... it depends entirely on what Ireland has actually enacted as law. I am not a lawyer, and I am certainly not an Irish lawyer -- so whether or not this is or is not legal in Ireland, to me at least, remains very much an open question.

well, you missed the most critical point. How does the person in VR feel and act when they are of a different color?
Soming no avatar can do.

I disagree. It definitely impacts how many people act. VR vs avatar -- what's the difference? If you put on a long sleeve shirt and gloves you don't see -yourself- even in the real world unless you look in a mirror.

How other people treat you is your primary "feedback" mechanism.

What makes this better than an MMO really? (Everquest even has facial expression / camera support etc) -- not that I know of anyone who actually uses it. The point is that the tech has been there; and people have been able to experience this for a while now.

Of course, MMOs are some of the worse places for any experiment where you want the result to be applicable outside an MMO.

Agreed. That's the main reason for the disclaimer at the end of my post. I'd hardly call EQ or WoW anecdotes top-shelf science. :)

Property ownership of a legal corporate entity doesn't mean that the parent entity can compel the owned entity to break the law. Corporations exist entirely under national laws of incorporation.

Of course. I never suggested otherwise.

So if it would be illegal for an Irish citizen to comply with this order without an order from an Irish court ...

Are you saying it would be outright illegal for an Irish citizen to forward a document or a copy of it to a court in the United States?

That's a pretty strong claim. I'm not saying you are wrong, data protection laws in the EU are pretty strong; and they may well prevent this particular transfer. And MS, in this particular case, IS asking for a document pertaining to a 3rd party MS services user, not a document belonging to MS itself.

And if it is illegal, then you are quite right, EU/Irish law blocks the request, and there is nothing MS can do about it; other than coordinate with EU law enforcement to get an order through EU courts allowing it.

However in another scenario, where the EU data protection laws don't apply, there might well be nothing wrong at all with what the US courts are trying to do.

As you say, the parent entity cannot compel the owned entity to break the law. But what if the parent entity isn't being asked to compel the owned entity to do something that is illegal. Can the courts do that? Because I find that an interesting question too.

". Whatâ(TM)s most exciting about this channel of research is that it gets at the kind of complex, subtle prejudices that most people canâ(TM)t even articulate if asked directly."

This is sort of MMO old news. Any MMO with sufficient character customization options will let you create a black (human) or female avatar.

And anyone whose 'gender-bended' or 'race-bended' can tell you all kinds of ways they were subtly treated differently as a result.

Just an observation. I'm not saying this research is worthless or anything. Its an interesting avenue of study.

Microsoft in Ireland may be a wholly owned subsidiary, but it is a separate legal entity operating under the laws of Ireland, and incorporated under Irish law. You can't bypass the Irish courts because Microsoft US owns Microsoft Ireland.

If I own a car located in Sweden, and I'm a US citizen in the US, arrested in the US... can the court compel me to make arrangements to produce for the court something in that car's glove box? I don't actually know...could one? Its not entirely unreasonable to speculate that they could make that demand and then hold me in contempt if I refused to make that arrangement.

Microsoft in Ireland may be a wholly owned subsidiary, but it is a separate legal entity operating under the laws of Ireland, and incorporated under Irish law.

According to you, it is also the legal property of Microsoft US. They don't need to compel the Irish to do anything. They can (arguably) simply compel the US entity in their jurisdiction to summon its own property.

If corporations are legally people [...]

They are clearly not the same as human people. For starters, you can own them as property.

Microsoft Ireland is 100% subject to applicable Irish law.

It is also subject to the orders of its owner, what with it being property and all. So as long a Microsoft US doesn't demand that it do something illegal by Irish law, it has to do whatever Microsoft US tells it to do.

I'm not arguing that you are "wrong" merely that your argument omits the crucial element of property ownership in play.

If so, this boils down to can a court compel a property owner to direct his property to do something (such as forward a document in that properties possession), even if the property happens to be in another country? (one could also substitute "property" for "slave" in that sentence... and

When looked at like that, its not really ridiculous at all.

This is not a case of a court making demands directly of an Irish citizen; which is the possible strawman you erected. This is the case of a court making demands of a US corporation. The nature of that demand is that the US corporation in turn compel its own property in Ireland to do its bidding.

It might seem equivalent in the end, but they are NOT the same thing. For example there is no way the courts in the USA can compel ME to do anything because I am not in the USA, nor am I the legal property of any entity in the USA.

check your license. it has your address on it.

"Local traffic only" doesn't mean "residents only" it means "only vehicles which have an origin or DESTINATION" here.

All that proves is you don't -live- there. It doesn't prove you don't have some destination there.Perhaps your visiting or picking up a friend to carpool with. Another poster mentioned simply driving by a house for sale you might be interest in buying... etc.

Worse the only way an officer would be able to catch you would be to follow you from start to finish, pull you over, and then hope you can't think fast enough on your feet to come up with a reason for being there better than "my gps suggested this route to work".

Google is not a US corporation. Last I heard they were Irish.

All the employees and assets within US borders are under US jurisdiction.

Renting a mailbox in ireland and calling it your primary residence doesn't give you the equivalent of diplomatic immunity.

(Although it does give you some tax advantages if your big enough, until / unless they close the loophole.)

It seems to me that it would be simpler for Firefox (and other browsers) to just whitelist a default set of fonts and those are the only ones it uses regardless of what might be installed on the system on any site you are trying to limit tracking. (It can allow for web embedded fonts; it just won't load anything but the default set from the system.)

If MS wanted to do it for IE, they'd just have the non-default font set blocked for the "Internet Zone" and allowed for the "Trusted Zone" which should cover most intranet scenarios where they've got custom fonts.

I suppose an "exceptions" list could be managed separately as well if was really necessary; or it could be tied to the cookie exceptions list -- which would be logical from a "privacy reasoning" perspective... but counter-intuitive from the "why are local fonts not loading for this site just because i blocked cookies" perspective.

In any case the upshot is that any given version of any given browser on any given platform will have the same fonts available as any other instance of that version of that browser on that platform -- then "font profiling" adds nothing to the basic platform information they already had.

Sure. But traffic deaths were already trending down, so while there was a decrease in traffic / traffic fatalities only part of that can be attributed to the recession.

Further, even at 10% fatality reduction; if you use that to infer a 10% traffic reduction, and therefore a 10% pollution reduction... and these are are all pretty handwavy connections that would need to be proprerly established.

But even we carry that through, that's less of an effect than the fleet aging effect in the original article.

Really?

I just tried the .cr one. Search works, and clicking on magnet link in the results gets me a torrent; I decided to search for "Weird Al"; picked his new album, clicked the link, went to content selected just the track "First World Problems" and that's exactly what I got.

So it seems to be a mirror. If its a "fake" what does that mean exactly?

https://thepiratebay.cr/
http://thepiratebay.ee/ ... seem to be working...

You're confusing the sort of password needed to resist offline cracking, versus the sort needed to protect a hardware device.

No. I am not.

A four digit code used for security on a device with physical access is much stronger. If the device allows you to try 4 codes then times out for 30 seconds, it will take 1,250 minutes to access the device if someone keeps trying.

Sure.

That assumes the attacker has no knowledge. Simple inspection of the screen is is often enough to guess which 4 digits are being used; due to dirt and fingerprints.

4 digits is also worthless to secure the device from onlookers. The guy behind me at the store. Or the table behind me at the bar. People at work, school, roomates, family members, any where that has video surveillance and catches me unlocking it. 4 digits ... even if they can't see clearly, its only 4 digits. Just getting one or 2 or an idea of the relative position drops the attack time dramatically into very feasible territory.

Are you sure that the recession didn't result in less people being on the roads in LA particularly, thus resulting in less pollution than if the recession was avoided?

Nope.

Care to cite a study showing the regional decline in traffic over the period, and the analysis of its impact pollution in support of your hypothesis?