Outside of the /. crowd

Sometimes I wonder why this particular website bothers to cover issues related to that particular crowd. They're such an insignificant minority!

No 3rd either, so the king can even do that in time of peace!

Char coal, yes. Mined coal isn't that ancient.

If Cox is liable for user's copyright infringement then Tesla is liable for drivers speeding.

Not if there's a federal law that explicitly declares that middlemen are liable if they don't comply with the DMCA process, while there isn't a federal law saying car manufacturers are liable for speeding.

You might be looking at the underlying principles and making common sense value judgements, instead of reading what the law says.

This is ultimately why politics exists: to influence what the law is, in an attempt to make it more like your common sense value judgements. And it's really hard because these are issues that your congressional candidates probably aren't talking about at all, because they're talking about someone else's "important" [eyeroll] issues instead. We needed to stop DMCA in 1997/1998 and we failed.

The jury seemed to decide that accusations qualify as infringement

However regrettable, it's easy to understand how that can happen.

The jury could have just been told testimony that "we saw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was seeding our movie" (with screenshots of MPAA's torrent client showing a seeder at that address and the packets they got from that address correctly matching the torrent's checksum). Meanwhile, Cox wouldn't have any evidence refuting it (even though the assertion isn't proven; the "screenshots" could have been made in GIMP for all we know). And then the jury might have ruled based on "preponderance" of evidence.

Kind of like 3 cops saying "the perp resisted arrest" and the perp saying "no I didn't" and a criminal jury (where the bar is much higher) still deciding that the perp resisted arrest. Sigh. You know that happens.

Had Cox ratted their customer out (or gotten a DMCA counternotice from them), then the customer could have been sued instead, and raised doubts by saying "I have an open wifi" or something like that. But Cox didn't, and they certainly aren't going to say "we have an open wifi" since they're in the network business so of course they don't offer free networking to strangers. It sounds like a difficult situation for Cox.

The story is light on details so I ass/u/me some things. The copyright infringement was likely due to torrents, i.e. from the internet's point of view, addresses owned by Cox were publishing/hosting content (under the hood: really Cox's customers seeding torrents).

So if I were an MPAA/RIAA -member company, I'd send Cox a DMCA notice ("Cox, stop sharing my copyrighted work") which really means "Cut that customer off or otherwise make them stop, or else get a DMCA counternotice from them, so I can go after them instead of you." And if that's what happened, then it sounds like Cox said no (didn't make it stop and also didn't pass the buck to their customers. So they sued Cox instead of Cox's customers.

But that's based on assumptions and speculation, hence my question. But yes, I know what a DMCA notice is and I think that mechanism was likely in involved at some point in the story.

It's unclear from the articles whether or not this happened: did the record labels send DMCA notices to Cox, which Cox blew off (thereby becoming liable in place of the original suspected infringer)? Or did the record labels just sue 'em first?

Prior to 1998 they wouldn't have been liable (just like Western Digital and Seagate aren't liable for whatever I may be suspected of doing) but DMCA makes hosting services (and networks? hmm...) a special case, unlike power utilities, computer equipment manufacturers, etc.

Many of us on this website dream of a day when humans no longer have to perform backbreaking or mind-numbing labor. Our spirits are assaulted whenever we hear politicians hatefully brag about how they will create more jobs instead of leading us toward the Star Trekkian paradise of less soul-crushing or injurious toil.

I thought Amazon was one of the few good guys, working to help create a world of 100% unemployment. I know it's only an ideal to strive for (we'll likely never free everyone from having to work) but they seemed to be trying.

How many times have we been promised "I'll replace you with a script" or "AI is coming for your job?" Empty words. Lies. To find out they were secretly saddling innocent humans with computers' jobs, is an insult to both of our races.

It's absolutely ridiculous to claim these anecdotes mean computers suck.

These computers which initially worked and then turned against their owners all had one thing in common: they run proprietary software, made to serve the manufacturer's interests at the expense of the owners' interests.

So stop saying "smart devices are bad." The obvious conclusion is that "proprietary smart devices are bad."

various Microsoft tools - such as the setup programs for SQL Server Management Studio - like to lock out the Explorer window

I've not observed that behavior in a long time...and as it happens, Winget is upgrading SSMS as I type this. Everything else continues to work as normal while it does its thing.

If they were really serious about this severe problem, they would kick all the people out of their state, so that nobody would ever see anyone else. Until humans are eliminated, Texas' vision cannot be fulfilled. FUCK HUMANS! (Err, I mean that figuratively, of course. You should never literally fuck a human. That's not even a thing, kids, I swear!)

Next step: State of Texas sues all their ISPs.

On what are you basing that statement?

The first meme of the two here explains it.

The ideal is a seedbox somewhere, where one can have all that stuff done offshore, then fetch your goodies via SFTP.

I was doing that for a bit, but then I mashed Transmission and a VPN client together in one container and started using that. Files land directly on my home server, while the VPN endpoint is in a country that takes a more relaxed view of "sailing the high seas." Keeping this URL in your BitTorrent client allows you to quickly verify that the VPN is doing its job.

And this is on Slashdot why?

Ditto. News for nerds? Stuff that matters? I'm not seeing it.