Curt

I can see that you might struggle to understand why you shouldn't get a cut every time something you once produced is re-sold. After all, when you buy a used book you send some money to the original publisher right?. And every time you sell your used car, you are happy to make sure a percentage makes its way to the original manufacturer don't you?.

Just think, that beautiful antique Ming vase you brought, the original effort and creativity that went into the painting. It's unique, some Chinese artisan spent months, or even years, of their life making it. They would never do that if they didn't know that hundreds of years later when you bought it at an auction in New York, they were not going to get a cut of that.

Yes, I see your problem. Your problem is that an item's value consists of it's useful value (the value of actually using it), plus the residual value. The residual value is the amount the owner can get by selling the item once they have no further use for it. You are attempting to reduce the residual value artificially. Your problem is that reduces the actual value of the game over all. So guess what? people won't pay you as much for it.

Your other problem is that you really don't understand the above.

I agree, it absolutely should not be. But you have to admit, that's what it is basically coming down to now. This is why it will be interesting to see what other companies such as Rapidshare and Dropbox do in response to this case. As it stands, the content industry is pushing the line that you must proactively assist them, and prefer their interests over your customers.

I predict a big loss here for MU, while the other companies whistle and look the other way. But I could be wrong, maybe given the increased tension over SOPA/PIPPA some of the tech giants will realize they need to stop bowing to the wishes of the relatively small media industry.

Megaupload was targeted because they did the absolute minimum they could to comply with the DMCA and other US legislation. It's probably true that they quietly encouraged uploading digital copies, even when they knew that material was illegal, and they were slow in taking it down. Things such as having de-duplication in place, but only removing the one specific link to a file, not removing all the copies, when a takedown notice was sent. It's those actions that will mean they might lose in court unfortunately.

I'm sure Dotcom is hoping to get other tech companies to support his case though. Dropbox, Amazon, even Google will be asking "First they came for the dodgy upload sites .... will we say nothing and hope they don't come for us too?"

What happens (hopefully) is that next month when there is another peaceful sit-in and the university staff call the police and say "hey I don't like how those poor students are complaining in public, it makes me look bad to my wealthy friends, get rid of them for me", the police say "sorry no - if I do that I will lose my job".

Actually 'Pop Idol' was a rip-off of a Kiwi show, 'Popstars'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popstars

New Zealand would like to take this opportunity to apologize.

Actually, it's entirely possible and sensible. In order for a law to be effective it just has to REDUCE the risk, so for your example it just has to be the case that occasional sudden braking for police causes less accidents than unrestricted speed. Ths is particularly true when matched with laws and education about safe following distances.
Now, what the article is suggesting is that having a few distracted drivers who are also attempting to conceal their texting is actually causing more accidents than having a higher number of distracted drivers who don't need to conceal what they are doing. I'd stamp it 'plausable, needs further study'.
Of course, it doesn't mean the law should be revoked. Maybe there are other things we can do to supppliment it, just like with the minimum following distance example above.

Flash memory? You mean like the SD card slot on the front of the machine? Did you totally miss that?. Since the Wii Menu 4.0 update you can use SDHD cards for up to 32GB per card, and you can have as many cards as you want.

It's even worse, you should have a look at the patents themselves, such as the '507 patent...
We claim:
1. A system for acquiring and reviewing a body of information, wherein the body of information includes a plurality of segments, each segment representing a defined set of information in the body of information, the system comprising:

means for acquiring data representing the body of information;

means for storing the acquired data;

first display means for generating a display of a first segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data; means for comparing data representing a segment of the body of information to data representing a different segment of the body of information to determine whether, according to one or more predetermined criteria, the compared segments are related; and

second display means for generating a display of a portion of, or a representation of, a second segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data, wherein the second display means displays the portion or representation of the second segment in response to the display by the first display means of a first segment to which the second segment is related.

So .... they appear to claim they invented diff in 1996. All other claims are based from this claim. Unfortunatly for them diff was invented in the early 1970s.

Actually, I believe you are fundamentally wrong about the 'privilege' vs 'right' distinction. In the USA the legal system is based on a set of laws that restrict what you are allowed to do. The fundamental premise of the system is that you are allowed to do anything that is not forbidden by law. That means that *everything* is a 'right', and those 'rights' are restricted or removed by the passing of a law stating so.

Nothing is a 'privilege', and I don't know of any countries that operate a privilege based system, although there might be a few dictatorships where everything is illegal unless there is a law allowing it.