Slashback: Australia, Nomenclature, Books 231
Please, no more name changing. suqur writes "As a follow-up to many stories previously posted, News.com reports that the recently renamed Mozilla Firebird browser (previously known as Phoenix) has finally given up on its new name, and relinquished the name. The new names for the Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird will be Mozilla Browser and Mozilla Mail, respectively. Looks like they're right back where they started, eh?"
Whatever the name, Mozilla is still only almost perfect: GeekLife.com writes "An old Mozilla exploit continues to crash almost any version/flavor of Mozilla with just 5 lines of plain HTML code (no JavaScript, ActiveX, etc.). If you're very brave, you can test/crash your Mozilla by going here.
It's important to report fairly on issues like this, or people will come to think of the Open Source journals as biased, uninformative, irresponsible propaganda machines, which will greatly harm any legitimate cause that the OS folks are promoting."
Books to download, at varying prices. Scott Pendergrast writes "We're working here at Fictionwise to convince publishers to release Neal Stephenson's works as eBooks. Recently his Cryptonomicon work finally became available in Secure Microsoft and Palm Reader formats (yes, the irony of this title being sold in an encrypted format is not missed ;-)
To encourage sales of this title, which hopefully will result in more of his works becoming ebooks, we're offering a 50% micropay rebate on it (so we're actually losing a bit on each sale)."
If you like your books free and non-fiction, though, mindpixel writes "I am not lying. The National Academies Press which was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States, has more than 2,500 free, searchable, high quality books online. Some random examples:
- The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling the Unity of Life
- Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time
- Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy
- Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response"
This ought to be tax-deductable, too! ThreeToe writes "Recently the RIAA settled a lawsuit with four college students; one of them was Daniel Peng of Princeton University. Daniel is accepting donations to help pay his $15,000 settlement fee along with related legal fees. You can send money via paypal by clicking here. Remember that Daniel simply wrote an MP3 search engine; he didn't distribute MP3s himself. Those who share my belief that this lawsuit was wrong-headed should make a statement by assisting Daniel."
Mozilla Firebird? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mozilla Firebird? (Score:2)
Otto Mann: No problemo, Bartdude!
[Otto runs small car off the road]
Hans MolemanBart: I just made the final payment!
(Or pretty close to that.)
the "four" lines (Score:5, Informative)
Re:the "four" lines (Score:4, Funny)
# lynx -mime_header http://www.geeklife.com/files/crashMoz.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
(Had to resort to lynx, because my mozilla crashed.)
Not really an "HTML" exploit Re:the "four" lines (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ha! (Score:2, Insightful)
Umm, cause it wasn't an exploit.
IE exploits gives bad people access to your machines. This just crashes your browser. Does a crash in code that is so obscure that nobody ever triggered it using tags that I've personally never heard of (I'm no HTML expert but I have been a professional webmaster on and off for 10 years) warrant a font page story? My vote is no.
Uh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
And it might be worth noting that discussion on Bugtraq seems to indicate that the IE bug isn't exploitable (maybe that kind of discussion could happen on the M
sorry (Score:5, Funny)
really sorry (Score:3, Funny)
I have a 16X burner. That should be worth $800!
Re:sorry (Score:2, Funny)
And I thought Metallica would lead the way by giving away their music and making money off shows and merchandise.
They put on a great show. (Used to at least.)
donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
And more importantly, the RIAA's goal is to intimidate everyone who can't afford a year long legal battle into staying away from MP3s, peer-to-peer, ripping, and anything like it. If Daniel Peng's life gets ruined (or sidetracked) by this the RIAA wins and everyone is scared. If the community helps Peng out of this unfair mess, the RIAA loses.
Re:donate money... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong is that the RIAA used their huge legal and financial resources to persecute a student who ran a computer network search engine?
Not an MP3 trading application, just a search engine that could be used, as Altavista and Google can, for finding MP3s...
If they are so right, why didn't they sue Altavista first? Why not Google first? Because they would have fought back and won. Therefore the RIAA was NOT suing because they were right, they were using their superior force to pervert our legal system and intimidate people who are doing LEGAL things that conflict with the RIAA's goals.
Re:donate money... (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't matter. Remember the Sony decision: as long as there is a possible substantial non-infringing use of the technology, the mere fact that the technology exists isn't enough for the provider to be liable.
A pure mp3 search engine is fine.
There are only three factors to be considered, and whether the search engine is general purpose or not is NOT one of them.
1) Does it help people infringe?
2) Does the provider know of specific infringements that it has helped? (more specific than knowing that they're possible; less specific than knowing individual filenames, though that would be good too)
3) Could the provider have stopped helping people infringe by changing his technology or failing to provide it anymore?
I suspect this kid knew that people were actually infringing using his search engine. I bet he even used it himself in that manner, as even getting a listing of illegally downloadable files could infringe the copyright holder's distribution right.
There is also one other way to escape liability; it is the one that the search engines use. And that is to comply with the DMCA safe harbor in 17 USC 512. But these kids didn't do that either, or else they'd be laughing at the RIAA while totally immune from suit.
So the reason to not sue Google et al, aside from that they do have better lawyers, is that Google was smart enough to shield themselves with the law; these kids were stupid and left themselves wide open to liability. Even though it would be easy-peasy to get the immunity.
But they didn't, and RIAA _was_ right here. Still a bully, but right. It happens from time to time, you know.
bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Does it help people infringe?
2) Does the provider know of specific
infringements that it has helped? (more specific than knowing that they're possible; less specific than knowing individual filenames, though that would be good too)
3) Could the provider have stopped helping people infringe by changing his technology or failing to provide it anymore?
First, excuse me for being so b
Re:donate money... (Score:3, Informative)
I knew a formerly married couple where the guy actually quit his job (very high-paying, no less) t
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Better yet, create some free information yourself. Write free software. Write some documentation. Report bugs in free software, or submit patches, or report errors in the documentation. Write free books. Make some music and release it for free. (Or do any of the above, make the information free-as-in-speech, and find a way to profit from it.)
I really couldn't care less about the fate of these students who got sued by the RIAA. All they're doing is perpetuating the public's misconception that free information is a form of parasitism, rather than a form of creativity.
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:2)
Wake up (Score:3, Informative)
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:2)
Billions for Defense, not a damned cent in Tribute (Score:5, Insightful)
As a more libertarian sort, I'm much more likely to contribute to mutual aid than to give outright charity. Helping somebody fight against injustice boils down to selfish self-defensein that it lowers the odds of it happening to me in turn. Helping somebody who wants to bend over and take it only raises the odds of getting screwed in return, and where is my motivation for that?
Yes it sucks to be that one guy who gets picked as a test case, but Freedom isn't free any more than Free Software is free. And it isn't until the crap hits the fan that you are forced to look deep down into your self and decide whether to be a sheep or stand up and accept the responsibility to defend the Liberties you were supposedly endowed with. And should the day come that a hero fights a truly just cause alone, our experiment in self government is concluded.
If this guy didn't know that being a mp3 trader (yes I know he claims the defense of only indexing files) in any way risked the wrath of the RIAA then the guy is an idiot. Idiots deserve no help from me. So lets assume he did know and was doing it as an act of civil disobedience. Then he is obligated to follow through and BE the test case. I'm sure that the authorities would have been more than happy to let Rosa Parks chicken out and settle for a small fine and stop the growing civil rights battle swirling around her case, but what sort of world would she have helped build?
Re:Billions for Defense, not a damned cent in Trib (Score:2)
I, too, consider myself libertarian, and sent him $10.
The monies collected by the RIAA in the settlement will not represent a great proportion of their revenue, nor will they make them a greater threat -- the purpose was to intimidate.
Imagine, if you will if 10,000 people send him $10. Or 100,000. Or, dare we suggest, a mullion? Imagine that he receives significantly more money than it takes to settle. The honourable thing to do would be to realize (a) lots of people support
Re:Billions for Defense, not a damned cent in Trib (Score:2)
> takes to settle.
Kinda risky strategy. Give the money to the EFF and you know exactly where it will go.
And yes, I can imagine the RIAA launching moreof these attacks if they get their money from this one. Sure 15,000 isn't a whole lot to the MUSIC INDUSTRY, but it isn't peanuts to the RIAA. They are just an industry lobbying organization. They just might decide that if suing one worked a hundred would net them a serious chunk of cash.
Re:Billions for Defense, not a damned cent in Trib (Score:2)
So you are saying that Libertarians don't give unless they directly benefit from the giving? I'm honestly curious, because I've never heard anything remotely like this attached to Libertarianism. Seems more like Objectivism to me.
As for motivation, I suppose one could be motivated to help a guy out when he's been screwed. If you were standing on a street corner and someone walked off the curb without
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I gave him a few bucks because that could have been me in his shoes. I've written lots of programs, and plenty of them could be used for illegal activities, and it's not that hard to imagine being sued in this day and age because somebody else did something illegal with software I wrote and distributed.
It's easy for you to say that you would have fought it if it had been you, but how many of you would actually do so? What if that meant putting college on hold for a couple of years? Even if you could afford the legal defense, how would you keep yourself fed?
What if you were one of the four targetted by the RIAA, and the RIAA refused to accept a settlement unless all four students settled, and what if the other three students wanted to settle? I'm just trying to point out that it's not fair to judge Daniel Peng for settling under these extreme circumstances, especially when we don't know all of the details.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. Nobody deserves to be in a situation like he was in just for writing some software that could be used for both legal and illegal activities.
Re:donate money that goes straight to the RIAA?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Write a check to Daniel Peng in the amount of $10-15.
2) Photocopy the check a few times before sending it.
3) Mail the check to Daniel. You're a good man/woman for helping out.
4) Mail the check copies to the RIAA and the record labels that are publishing some CD. Pick one that you would normally buy, or pick one that's popular right now. With the check, include a letter that tells them that you vote with your dollars and your dollars don't go to a corporation that prefers to bully students into settling lawsuits. Tell them that the check represents 1 CD that they won't sell because of their tactics.
5) ??? (wait, I suppose)
6) RIAA doesn't profit!!!
If enough people did that, I think it would get the attention of those who prefer to make their money though the U.S. legal system rather than the U.S. capitalist system. To get the fullest effect, send your letters and copied checks to more than just the RIAA -- send it to the artist's agent, the record companies, your neighbor, your local retailer and your former first grade teacher. Spread the word that we vote with money, and we don't like the shit the RIAA is pulling.
Brave? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Brave? (Score:2, Insightful)
Amusing (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet an equivalent bug (because they're bugs, not vulnerabilities) in IE makes the front page and generates hundreds of 'M$ is teh sux' posts.
Ahhhh, but this is open source, so the bug must be 'less bad'.
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Oh c'mon. You know perfectly well that it will be the rare techie who isn't touched by Windows/IE in some manner.
Some have to use Windows even if they dislike it and once they do that they're running IE whether they use Mozilla or Opera to browse. Others may be able to stick to MacOS, Linux, or *BSD but will still have customers o
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Of course, this then leads to the never-ending fight over whether the results are valid or what the smart user fakes so they don't get turned away from particularly brain-dead web sites. Or whether this simply reflects "at work" browsing where one "is forced to use Windows" (I can identify with that
It would be interesting to see the link again - assuming it wasn't removed to simply eliminate tr
Re:Amusing (Score:2, Insightful)
"<html>
<fieldset style="position:fixed;">
<legend>Crash</legend>
</fieldset>
</html>"
you will see that this looks like a planed thing used to testing certian functions, probably auto bug reporting when it crashes for real.
Also have you ever considered why MS software makes the front page when another bug comes out and OSS doesn't?
Maybe it is because we pay large sums of money for MS software and O
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Do you remember...? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Slashdot" was brutal enough (and even
Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
The Browser Formerly Known as Phoenix [mozilla.org] people seem to be asserting that.
Perhaps it's just a glib reversal to save face?
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
I was under the impression that "Thunderbird" and "Firebird" were fortified wines and the prefered drink of transients which resembled the taste of zippo lighter fluid, but not approaching the quality of such fine beverages like Boones Strawberry Hill.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Funny, I was under the impression that "Thunderbird" and "Firebird" were muscle cars and the preferred car of many fast-car owners which resembled the feel of a real muscle car, but not quite approaching the quality of such fine cars like a Hemicuda.
Mozilla-Back where it started (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
You sure about that? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this [nj.com] --
Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly, but weren't there mp3s *on his box* available for downloading? Unless they were all ok for distribution (certainly possible, but unlikely) wouldn't this qualify as `distributing mp3s himself' ?Re:You sure about that? (Score:2)
And this analysis of the case against Peng [barillari.org] says that
(that text is from the RIAA's complaint.) If true, then he was actually offering mp3 songs for download.
This analysis does not cover the possible direct
Mozilla: CRASHED (Score:2)
Apparently they're used to do form meta-layout, as a hint to non graphical browsers, or a browser with a special form handler.
Apparently they don't get played around with much, (d'Oh!)
Konqueror - The smarter alternative. (Score:2, Offtopic)
It's lighweight
It's Stable
It's Got the support of Apple Computers Inc
It's got decent fonts
It also a universal fileviewer/manager
You can even run a terminal emulator at the bottom of it.
It's basically Internet Explorer for linux, but without the bugs and spyware!
Konqueror, the cause of the Dinosaur's extinction
And, it dosen't crash on the crash mozilla page either!
Avalible in all good linux distros, MacOS X, *BSD and even experimentally on Windows!
Re:Konqueror - The smarter alternative. (Score:2)
Exactly.. it's the only web browser on my system that doesn't block pop ups. If it weren't for that, it would probably be my default browser.. until then, it's opera.
Re:Konqueror - The smarter alternative. (Score:2)
Re:Konqueror - The smarter alternative. (Score:2)
but, It still lacks all the cool plugins that Mozilla Browser (new name..:)) has.
which is why I still put up with the fucking ugly fonts....any idea how to impove fonts on Linux....they fucking suck.
Re:Konqueror - The smarter alternative. (Score:2)
Oh, BTW: fonts on Linux don't suck. That's a really old and obsolete argument. Just install those
Pay him in CDs (Score:4, Funny)
I'll just head over to my burner first...
Pay for a settlement? I'd rather pay for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck the RIAA, but fuck them with the law.
Settlements do not create legal precedent (Score:2)
crippleware books, not free books (Score:3, Informative)
Re:easily reassembled (Score:3, Informative)
One could just wget all of the single pages:
for ((a = 1; a < 17; a++)); do wget -b http://print.nap.edu/pdf/0309038901/pdf_image/R$a . pdf; done
or equivalent, then convert to postscript file:
for ((a = 1; a < 123; a++)); do pdftops $a.pdf $(($a + 1000)).ps; done
or equivalent, then merge to a single postscript:
ghostscript -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pswrite -dBATCH -sOutputFile=all.ps 1
Not Crippleware, Thinkware (Score:2, Informative)
Basically, for x=0, x less than [last page number], x++
Get URL blah.blah.blah/blah/blah/pageX.pdf (The URLs are consistent)
Merge/Process/Print pages, Crippleware no more!
Cryptonomicon encrypted! (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary, I find it quite apt.
Old News (Score:5, Informative)
"Use the names 'Mozilla Browser' and 'Mozilla Mail' to describe the Firebird and Thunderbird projects after the 1.4 release," reads a Mozilla branding policy published April 25, referring to the release slated for May 14.
Published April 25? Good thing Slashdot is on top of things.
Mozilla release names and mozilla codenames.. (Score:2)
To Quote:"The Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird names are simply codenames, and the resulting products will be referred to as 'Mozilla Browser' and 'Mozilla Mail'."
Mozilla crash, a rarity for me now. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla crash, a rarity for me now. (Score:2)
XSLT that generates document.write in file scope also chokes Moz.
Re:Mozilla crash, a rarity for me now. (Score:2)
But it's a lot better than IE on my Windows test machine. I have to reboot that thing 2 or 3 times a day, mostly when I'm using IE and it freezes. Then the damned startup code chides me for not shutt
Darn that Feedback Agent! (Score:5, Funny)
Its not often I get to mock an otherwise smart guy like this. Matt, this one's for you:
<Nelson>
Ha ha!
</Nelson>
Ah HA! (Score:3, Informative)
What I have found, though, is that http://www.noise.net.au/ does something evil to my IE preferences that makes it completely die on exit (including subsequent exits, even if I don't go back there). Force quitting just stops it from madly reading the drive, and from there you can only restart. I don't get this problem on OSX at all, and the only way to fix it is to completely delete the Explorer prefs.
He should pay the RIAA in pennies. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:He should pay the RIAA in pennies. (Score:3, Informative)
interestingly, in many countries ( don't know if US is one ) this would be illegal. Pennies, and all other coins are legal tender only to a certain amount.
Some guy tried that once to protest a new tax. Didn't work.
Re:He should pay the RIAA in pennies. (Score:3, Funny)
Yet another example of Slashdot's bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
You may notice that one of the numerous links in this Slashback is to a page that crashes Mozilla.
cant_get_a_good_nick replies to the following (written by cscx):
"So how come this "exploit" wasn't deserving of its own front page story like the IE one was?"
with
"Umm, cause it wasn't an exploit.
IE exploits gives bad people access to your machines. This just crashes your browser. Does a crash in code that is so obscure that nobody ever triggered it using tags that I've personally never heard of (I'm no HTML expert but I have been a professional webmaster on and off for 10 years) warrant a font page story? My vote is no."
And yes, he is right! But what he fails to remember is that just a few days ago the same sort of crash was labelled as an "exploit" by slashdot.
here [slashdot.org]
He also makes reference to the fact that this is really uncommon html code. i.e. we should go easy on Mozilla for this. But IE received no such grace from slashdot readers. Go on, click on the link. Read through the comments.
We all know we're biased in some sense to Linux. But does it have to be so god damn obvious? We're geeks. We're supposed to be smarter than average. We should be better than this.
What really gets me though is that cscx was modded as a troll for his statement. Bias doesn't get anymore blatant than that.
Sean
Re:Yet another example of Slashdot's bias. (Score:2)
Most nerds I know don't like microsoft. Many of them hate, hate, hate them. Lots of nerds love to flame the hell out of microsoft. Many nerds enjoy this flaming. Its like a social weenie roast. Since slashdot is dominated by nerds I wouldn't be surprised if slashdot is biased towards flaming microsoft.
I personally don't mind. I don't think I would hang out at slashdot as often if there was some artificial toning down of micro
Re:Yet another example of Slashdot's bias. (Score:3, Insightful)
These bugs are not of equivalent "obviousness" despite the similar lengths of the code that triggers them. The IE bug is in a tag that is among the most commonly used, and can be triggered with a simple typo in the input type designation (leaving out the '='). The Mozilla bug, OTOH, requires the use of a particular style element (posi
Re:Yet another example of Slashdot's bias. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have been tempted to mod you down because:
1) You begin your post with the typical martyr complex demands for mod / karma.
2) Your post's content is all references to other threads in this very same discussion, yet you create a seperate post instead of replying to the actual threads.
This isn't about the issue at hand. Its about grand-standing.
For your convenience (2nd try) (Score:5, Informative)
<html>
<form>
<input type crash>
<fieldset style="position:fixed;">
<legend>Crash</legend>
</form>
</html>
Re:For your convenience (2nd try) (Score:2)
Pls fix thx.
Don't just sit there... (Score:4, Funny)
I'd be happy to buy Crytonomicon (Score:2)
Now I understand (Score:4, Funny)
timothy: it was simple really. Web pages have a preset "bandwidth limit", once they reach this limit, they shut down. knowing their weakness, i just sent wave after wave of our own browsers into view them, once they crashed them all, they were effectively shut down.
Mozilla naming problems (Score:5, Informative)
The big, bloated, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink Mozilla that you download from mozilla.org [mozilla.org] is called Seamonkey [mozilla.org].
However, nobody ever refers to it as Seamonkey - it's just Mozilla. Phoenix/Firebird was just being referred to directly as Phoenix/Firebird until Seamonkey could be retired and the rest of the developers could move over to the new codebase. At that point it would've been "Mozilla Browser" and "Mozilla Mail & News" again (as far as we end-users are concerned).
If Phoenix hadn't flipped out and had just waited a few months the "Phoenix Browser" would probably have been forgotten.
It's not like Mozilla ever got sued by Exploratoy [sea-monkeys.com].
Mozilla Firebird is an Internal Codename (Score:5, Informative)
Please see this MozillaNews article [mozillanews.org] for reference to the real story.
Free books (Score:3, Informative)
Mozilla naming "change" (Score:4, Informative)
But, before the change happens, there are likely to be one or more releases of the Mozilla Firebird Browser as a standalone application. That was also always in the plan.
Move along, no change, nothing to see here.
Gerv
(gerv at mozilla.org)
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately the RIAA have chosen to target University students, the same people who in couple of years will graduate and gain employment and therefore have more disposable income to purchase music through the 'proper' channels.
It's been said many times before, the RIAA are digging there own gra
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:2)
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:2)
B) my money will NEVER be sent to the RIAA
C) Piracy is fun! Hooray for piracy!
PS for the inattentive: piracy is *not* the same as theft.Theft is depriving somebody of their property, whereas piracy is merely copyright infringement.
Re:This is insane (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is insane (Score:2)
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:2)
Actualy, Piracy is also depriving someone of their property, but with a boat.
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Avast ye! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:2)
It needs to be redefined. Somewhere between 'trying before you buy' and 'muderous robbery' is the answer.
There is nothing at all wrong with the term copyright infringment. As you imply, this is all that it is. It is not theft and it is not piracy.
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:3, Funny)
Try before you buy? Hah. (Score:2)
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:3, Insightful)
Go lookup Payola and learn about the record business. If some people don't get to enjoy your stuff for free (via radio or other means) you won't ever recover your expenses. Of course even if you do sell nearly a 1/2 million CD's you might not recover your expenses either. That how it works and if
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should people pay for every MP3 they download? When did altruism vanish from the face of the planet? I suspect you Americans think that you can patent ideas too
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:2)
I was going to write a big reply to you, but I re-read this line and figured it was enough. Just remind me to never buy your cd if the only reason you do it is because you EXPECT to get money back. Thanks, but no thanks, and rather listen to musicians who do it because they love music, not money =).
Re:Help pay the RIAA? Are you KIDDING? (Score:2)
ACLU (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that what the EFF and ACLU are for?
Actually, the ACLU kind of has a lot on their plate these days, what with trying to stop Ashcroft from spying on everyone and locking them up in Gitmo without even being charged and all...
GMD
Re:ACLU (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely, look once the press have walked away the kid's lawyer will turn round to the RIAA and point out that their chance of collecting any judgement on a college kid until he gets out of college are nil. The RIAA will then accept an undisclosed sum in actual settlement. This was not about getting the damages.
Now spam senders on the other hand is a different game. AOL's lawyer definitely wants to put as many of those people under and keep them in debt for the rest of their lives. He is very pround of the fact that none of the defendants he has won judgements against have discharged them in bankruptcy.
The ACLU has enough to do protecting the rights that are not authors of their own misfortunes from the likes of Ashcroft. Heck even Bob Barr is frightened by the guy's behavior!
Re:ACLU (Score:2)
Yeah, like opposing campaign finance reform bills.
The ACLU is one of the biggest opponents to many of the finance reforms that limit the amount of money campaign doners can contribute.
I'd say that powerful lobbies with lots of money to give is the root of this entire mess, and they're not helping fix it.
Re:ACLU (Score:2)