Um, this law is wholly illiberal, why would liberals ever want this? Anyone wanting this is not liberal by definition.

This is a classic conservative type proposition, not surprisingly, being put forth by the UK's Conservative party who sit on the centre-right (with a handful of far-right elements like Peter Bone).

I suspect what you really mean is "People I don't like will love this law", but whoever those people are, I assure you they're not liberals by the very fact that this law change goes against liberalism.

Because Richard and Judy got a bit of backlash when Judy decided it was okay to grossly upset a rape victim by belittling the harm done to her and we can't possibly have a situation where it's okay for celebrities to grossly offend people but not do anything when they suffer an inevitable backlash from their stupidity can we?

Right but that wasn't the AC's question was it? The question was how many had received 6 month sentences.

The answer is very few, of the thousands you cite, most didn't even get jail sentences, and even fewer again got a full 6 months.

Part the problem we have with the act though is the use of magistrates in the first place. Magistrates are kangaroo courts really, untrained busy bodies handing down judgements based on their own social hangups.

Which is a wider problem, because magistrates sit over many other cases.

Ironically, the proposal in TFA might actually therefore be an improvement - more cases being passed up to actual real courts with trained professionals overseeing the cases rather than magistrate chimps wont likely me more and longer jail sentences, it'll just mean more cases being thrown out because they're so fucking stupid in the first place.

Except this is a reference to the provisions in the malicious communications act 2003.

So what? the point is that if we increase our usage to match the amount we have then we're not suddenly living in a world where there is an abundant supply, we'll just use more and have shortages just as much as always.

With that will be increased heat dissipation also resulting in another set of climate problems to that which we have now with CO2, unless we produce 100% efficient electronics, which isn't going to happen.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing though, I'm saying it's not going to be a magical panacea that lets us create a utopia. We'll still face similar problems to those which we face now, and we'll still have to deal with them.

Yeah, you say that now, but when we get more power, you can all but guarantee we'll use more power.

Probably, we'll start creating climate controlled neighbourhoods or something, live in Sunnyvale Town, where it's 30c all year around!

Judges do have the final say, but it's impossible for judges to assess every single data acquisition and processing by every company, it would be an impossible task. Companies have to make the first decision as to what is and isn't acceptable, and if a company is believed to have made a wrong choice then that is challenged by whichever party in court where a judge (or jury) does have a say.

As a European you obviously have no idea what the law protects you from if you're saying such a stupid thing.

Have a read here to get an understanding of how important data protection laws are and to understand what you're arguing against:

http://www.dataprotection.ie/d...

Despite what you say, you probably don't actually want to live in a world without data protection laws and there's no reason to think Google should be some special case that's immune to them.

What? Google didn't even exist when the 1995 European Data Protection Directive was being discussed. This is the law which the courts deemed Google to have breached.

The 2012 refresh is STILL being discussed.

Google is not the final judge in the matter, the courts would be if someone feels Google has not made the correct decision, but as the data controller and data processor Google has a legal obligation to ensure that all personal data which it holds is accurate, uptodate, relevant, and obtained with permission.

These are the criteria Google must use when determining whether it should continue to hold such data. Thus, for example, claims (with proof) of data inaccuracy or outdatedness, claims against data which is not relevant to Google's task as a public search engine (i.e. personal medical history), and claims of data being obtained without permission (personal nude photos) would all pass the test for Google to remove them from search results.

Personally I thought Google was being quite difficult in that it was intentionally pretending it was hard done by by removing legitimate public interest news articles and so forth, but after the European Commission slapped it on the wrist and after it's competitors started following the law without trying to play politics Google fell into line and started fulfilling it's legal obligations without engaging in censorship for the sake of political point scoring. As such, and given the 58% rejection rate it would seem that Google is now doing what it's supposed to and hence doing a decent job of adhering to the law at last.

It still has the opportunity to get the law changed in it's favour through lobbying and negotiations over the 2012 Data Protection Directive update which is the correct avenue to pursue any issues it takes with the law.

It's not even about not being able to report them, CRAs are just out and out not legally allowed to even store that information past a certain time. Once that period has elapsed companies must delete that data from their databases.

Data such as county court judgements in the UK are still held on file as part of public record past this point but corporations are not allowed to retain copies of or use that information and are hence not allowed to supply it forward as part of a credit report. I believe the cut off is currently 7 years for CCJs in the UK.

FWIW this isn't even part of any special laws regarding CRAs, this is just the plain old Data Protection Act (the UK's implementation of the European Data Protect Directive 1995). The only special treatment CRAs get is that they're allowed to gather and process personal credit data without first having to seek permission of the data subject - they can't even pass it on unless it's part of a formal request by the data subject (i.e. an application for a credit card). Everything else in the DPA still applies- they must hold it securely, it must only be kept if it's relevant to their job, it must be correct, it must be recent enough to be relevant and so on.

Yes, you missed the whole post. You seem to be claiming that the massive advantage I was referring to was simply the fact you got less abuse, when in reality it was the fact that you got given more free shit, got invited to groups more often, and got better spots in raiding parties more frequently. The game was much easier when teenage boys made the incorrect assumption that female character = female player.

Again, try reading the whole post next time rather than cherry picking the bits you feel like arguing over despite the fact said argument then makes absolutely no sense because it's based on half a point and not the whole point.

Agreed but as I understand it it's possible that the agreement stands regardless of the validity of the patents, so if their agreement with Microsoft is such that they're paying for these patents regardless of validity then there's no point them focussing on invalidating the patents, hence why I suspect they've instead decided to try and invalidate their agreement by arguing that Microsoft is now a smartphone manufacturer where it wasn't before- just as Microsoft managed to argue that payments should be made regardless of patent validity, Samsung probably managed to argue the agreement was only valid whilst Microsoft is not acting as a smartphone vendor itself.

Have Google ever sued anyone that hasn't sued them first on patent issues? I don't think Google has, which would still make it purely defensive and not an aggressive patent troll like MS is.

Samsung isn't being told by the EU it faces a fine for using patents offensively and not defensively, it's being fined because it's being told it can't use those specific patents at all in court action because they're too fundamental to be allowed to do anything with them as compared to say, swipe to unlock. As such Samsung's potential fine still says nothing whatsoever about the defensiveness or lack of of their patent litigation.

I don't think the GP was saying Google/Samsung haven't sued, I think he was just saying that they've only ever counter-sued in response to being sued on these particular issues, which may still be wrong, but I can't think off the top of my head of any examples of Google/Samsung suing first in the smartphone race rather than simply as a response to being sued by someone else - i.e. neither of them sued Microsoft/Apple or whoever until Microsoft/Apple had already sued them.

Problem is, look what happened to Estonia, they were victims of a Russian state sponsored cyber attack which was quite problematic because they had built their state around heavy internet focus for provision of services and so forth.

It's a good idea, if you're a nation that has enough control of it's borders to prevent physical access to important internet infrastructure from Russian agents, and if you can withstand Russian cyber attack both focussed hacks and dumb DDOS attacks, but I don't think Ukraine is there right now, and it would probably just result in a quick and easy way for Putin to dig his claws back into the country.

I like their idea, most definitely, but I don't think the Ukraine is ready for it just yet, it doesn't have the independent strength of security to protect itself from Russian cyber-attack and meddling - they're having a hard enough time protecting themselves physically from Russian soldiers invading their territory, let alone protecting their digital infrastructure which will likely require decent physical security in the first place.

Um, try reading the rest of the post and you might make a bit more sense.