Could anyone infiltrate a group such as this? Absolutely; there's few criteria for membership, no real review of members, no centralized leadership to weed out trolls from governments or other sources, and basically no defenses.

The catch is, because there's no central leadership, there's not too much to gain from 'infiltrating' them. lulzsec does not operate secretly; they operate openly and blatantly. They're a rampaging elephant. And because leadership is decentralized, your careful 'people management' system that you would advertise to use in your 'infiltration' to 'control lulzsec' will be totally derailed the moment they all decide attacking X is cool and run off to do it.

They organization is too anarchic and open to really be 'infiltrated' by the sense implied here; it's like trying to 'infiltrate' your average recess in grade school. What the hell are you going to gain from it? Maybe assign an intern you pay minimum wage to hang out in an Anon IRC and get a bit more heads-up warning, but it's not gonna be worth more then that.

Hopefully now we'll get to see some real patent reform; honestly, I'm not sure why this hasn't come up already. The popular political topic right now is 'Obamacare' and how it 'creates uncertainty' and that is a horrible thing for business; understandable in a way, as they set aside money for the worst-case scenario whenever possible.

So, assuming along those same lines, I wonder what their patent costs are? I know I've heard before that tech companies set aside a 'patent licensing fund' when they can to deal with patent trolls; if they could get rid of the need for that, or at least substantially lessen that, it'd be great for business, right? And everyone HATES a patent troll, right? C'mon, someone take this ball already and dunk it. The only people who hate it are easily turned into villains for the camera. They're leeches profiting off of GOOD Ol" FASHIONED AMERICAN INGENUITY.

...So, wait, lemme get this straight. Because of privacy and tracking issues, they'll deal with Facebook, but not Google? Here's some links from approximately ten seconds of searching one reliable site.

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/05/understanding-the-latest-facebook-privacy-train-wreck.ars

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/privacy-groups-complain-to-ftc-over-facebook-privacy-tweaks.ars

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/ftc-complaint-says-facebooks-privacy-changes-are-deceptive.ars

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/more-privacy-headaches-for-facebook-gay-users-outed-to-advertisers.ars

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/08/privacy-groups-facebook-already-facing-off-over-places.ars

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/11/facebook-reevaluating-beacon-after-privacy-outcry-possible-ftc-complaint.ars

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/04/suit-accuses-blockbuster-facebook-of-privacy-law-violations.ars

I mean, google ain't a saint. They've got tons of ammunition that can be pulled up ALMOST as easily as Facebook, but, well, Facebook's got at least a 3.5-year track record since Beacon of violating your privacy in a way that a prison boss could only envy with it's depth. If you tell me I've got to give that information to one of them, I'm picking Google any day of the week. They let me delete more stuff.

Their selling point is, basically, that they'll respect privacy and all those other things that we, the tech geeks, care about. After that, they'll use their Google brand, the widespread dissastisfaction with Facebook's frequent UI and ToS changes, and our own social pressure to pull people in. But really, see Swordgeek's post. http://xkcd.com/918/ is exactly what they offer. And why they've got all these people interested.

This makes me wonder - seeing the HUGE level of success achieved here, relative to the XBLIG, and compared to PSN Minis, what do people see as the chances of Steam or a Steam-like platform dedicated solely to indie games coming out soon? This story's starting to pick up some major press for an 'Indie' game, enough that other developers are going to see it. I think Steam's going to become a part of all their plans now - they're interested enough in making money to do it. I think the Indie scene is looking better then ever with this result.

No, I don't think so - not for a while. The Redbox model is highly productive. People still want the premium editions, still want the Blu-Rays. Not everyone has the bandwith needed for high quality streaming. People still prize the reliability and dependency of physical media, ESPECIALLY with how sometimes things just disappear from Netflix. If Netflix is killing DVDs (Which I'll admit is possible), I don't see DVDs dying for about a decade, at least, as the content models have to shift first - and those guys are notorious for suing the pants off of everyone, getting stupid laws passed to protect their industry, and have tons of money to fight with.

I actually think that there's something going here. Pretty much all of us here, personally, would not benefit from government intervention - this is true. If you're here on /. reading the comments, I'll bet damn near all of us who have GOTTEN a virus, either did it on purpose or took a calculated risk expecting one. Most people who pick up malware are, to put it bluntly, idiots when it comes to computers.

And the bad part IMO comes from when they get themselves turned into zombies - I wouldn't mind seeing the government trying their hand at applying their force and legal requirements to this end. Because most people don't have a financial incentive to try to remove themselves from a botnet if they're part of one, they won't go through the effort - or spend the money - for a private solution. To them, it's just a hassle, and one they've got no reason to go through with. The only way to persuade them to deal with that, at least, is a bigger hassle - the government being a pain in the neck.

Now, for other malware, for phishers and scammers, hostile viruses and worms that attack you directly, I don't think the government can do much that the private industry isn't already doing - or the free software available is. When a problem comes up, they respond quickly, and I don't see how the government could aid aside from mandating some AV software of some kind - but that will already get rammed down your throat by whoever you call for tech support when your system goes belly-up, rendering it IMO not much improvement at all.

True, but, that still leaves out why the information is being retained. I'm somewhat supportive of dragnet'ing the uninsured/suspended: Mainly because I come from New Orleans, which had the highest auto insurance costs ANYWHERE because of the number of uninsured drivers. See, if both drivers are insured, the insurance company for the driver at fault pays out for the repair of both cars - if the other dude is uninsured, then even if you're not at fault (Someone rammed your car while it was parked in the driveway after plowing through an orphanage), then your insurance company has to pay. The higher rates reflect that - not that you're a worse driver, but that they've agreed to repair your car. You might not pay, but someone will.

And, hell, even if it's a false positive to pick up someone driving a criminal's car, if you're driving his car, that's a good enough reason to guess you might know where he is. But there's still no reason for the retention if that's your goal. It's got to be something else. That's my point here - a lot of people are discussing the right/wrong about the police implications here, but the police implications do not fully explain this policy.

...Because, seriously, I'm thinking, but, I cannot think of ANYTHING the state can do productively with that kind of information that isn't going to be thrown out in court. It's the 'held onto indefinitely' part that's damning.

An idea I could get behind and understand: Immediately comparing on arrival the information with a database of license plate numbers of people with warrants currently out on them. Bonus points if you can get the hits back to the officer in time for him to turn on the lights and go after the guy. But there's no need to keep the data for more then a minute after the search is done.

The 'redundant' idea: You already -have- a list of what plate goes with what vehicle and where it's supposed to be, it's your Motor Vehicle Registry. Cops already delve into this all the time.

The 'criminal' idea: Immediately taking said registry information and...doing much of anything with it, you've just performed a dragnet search.

The 'likely' idea: Guess what! Facebook and Google, along with many other valued partners, are now government affiliates! (Seriously, I'm thinking, and this is the only thing I've come up with so far that wouldn't go to the Redundant Department of Redundancy, considering the data retention)

Indeed, the problem that all these people need to identify:

The pirates are NOT beating you just because their product is free. Their product is also SUPERIOR. It arrives quicker, it's more reliable, it's more versatile. If you want to beat them, then work at making your product the better one, first! Go ahead and provide 'Product Codes' on CDs/DVDs that allow access to 'cool extras' and 'bonus clubs' and what have you - you can do this, and the pirates can't! Use those internet connections for more then just providing ads - I know people who prize Netflix's suggested movies! The more you try to squeeze, the more people are going to slip away.

And for the love of god, make a benign pricing model. You know, the sort where subscribing rates are 'locked in' because there's no realistic justification for anything else except your naked greed, where you 'value customers' by allowing them one track for free a month permanently and an option to buy others at a discount...you could be doing a lot more to make people WANT your product, but instead, you're trying to compel your entire target audience into accepting an inferior product at legal gunpoint. There's already mass legal disobedience, you're an inch away from obsolence - you should stop.

Well, to summarize responses to all there of these:

Epic was certainly caught 'history stealing' - the contention is if they continue this practice even if you opt out, not that the practice occurs in the first place.

While it goes through your web history, it separates out into 'interest segments' rather than directly pulling URLs; in other words, while directly collecting them WOULD count as personally identifiable information, Epic isn't doing that. They don't read 'You went to groupon!', they read 'You went to a site about mass-consumer deals, of which there are 37 sites in this segment.'

Hey, they're fighting over the definitions of it. It's the typical PR spin move - redefine the words of the pratice to something better for you (Changing 'Copyright Infringement' to 'Intellectual Property Theft/Piracy' for example, to associate with things already known and considered criminal by most people rather than having to convince each person over again that this is bad.) If this practice gets labelled as 'History Stealing', then Epic's considered automatically guilty. If they manage to change the name to 'Historical Data Collection', it sounds pretty harmless now, don't it. And that matters to the Congresscritters who would hold a healing on that. Everyone wants to hear about 'History Stealing', but the latter? People gonna fall asleep.

Alright, I read the article on this one, and, there's a divergence of evidence here. Mainly..

"We applied the methodology from last week's study to examine Epic Marketplace's opt-out practices. (Epic Marketplace was one of the eleven NAI members not included in that study.) We found that Epic Marketplace leaves its tracking cookies in place after both opting out with the NAI mechanism and enabling Do Not Track. We also found that history stealing continues after using either choice mechanism." - This one's from the study.

"Furthermore, when the user opts out, all data collection efforts cease. The student erroneously concludes that users are unable to avoid participating in segment verification because the opt-out mechanism does not delete the cookie that exists on the user’s computer. Like many other networks have pointed out already in their responses, this is misleading and inaccurate. When a user opts-out, all further collection of behavioral data from that user stops and existing profile data is deleted, even though the cookie itself is not deleted. The reason for this is simple: these cookies provide important operational information necessary for the delivery of any ad, not just targeted ads. For example, Epic Marketplace needs this data to determine how many times a particular ad has been shown to a user, and to analyze whether fraudulent activity is taking place. Ironically, in order to give effect to a consumer’s decision to avoid data collection, the cookie has to remain, otherwise advertisers have no way of knowing that that particular consumer has elected to opt-out of that advertiser’s data collection practices." - and here's Epic's counter.

These two statements seem strictly at-odds to me; the study states that the History Stealing continues to run, not just that a cookie remains as Epic sems to be saying. Epic claims the data collection stops - straight conflict here. Someone either screwed up their study, or Epic is lying, or Epic is unaware that their 'stop stealing' code doesn't actually work. It looks like they're not gathering personally identifiable or geographical location, and so are in the clear there - but now you've got a pure 'He said, she said' in terms of continuing collection after opt-out. Anyone interested in trying to duplicate this study and add some more evidence to if it continues or not?

The active search comparing Video IDs came up after the lawsuit was filed - I assume this is what you mean by an active search. Either way, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that doing this afterwards wouldn't have removed their liability for previous actions, so I think you're safe without some sort of active search going on. Pretty sure that just responding to DMCA takedown requests counted as enough.

There's a difference here, be fair - Google, for one, doesn't run an index primarily of infringing content. Google's also big enough to be able to fight back directly with big money lawyers as well. And lastly, Google -WAS- sued under this logic once before, in the Viacom-Youtube incident, where Viacom held that Youtube was, essentially, engaging in mass infringement. Actually, on thinking of it, the Viacom-Youtube incident should provide an interesting angle to this - does anyone know if he received, by chance, DMCA takedown requests? That was what threw out Viacom's suit against Google - that they had complied with the DMCA and thus were not liable. I don't see any mention of them here, but I don't know if that means "We didn't bother sending DMCA notifications to a known British National" or "We sent them and they got ignored so nobody cared enough to report them".

First Cisco trying it from Canada, now the MPAA through Britain. An important thing to note through the article is that copyright laws exist in both countries - but that so far, it seems in Britain that link-sharing alone is not as damning as it is in the US. Mainly, it looks like TVShack was much more commercialized than Hotfile, and that's always something that results in a bigger hammer coming down the line. An important thing to note as well is the previous experience British judges have had with copyright litigation - I remember ACS Law and Crossley being torn into, as seen here (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/amounts-to-blackmail-inside-a-p2p-settlement-letter-factory.ars) Really, I don't think he's getting extradited. Britain is markedly hostile to US-style copyright infringement proceedings, and I doubt they failed to figure out where Crossley got his tactics from. Unless if they get someone to play rubber stamp and not examine the case, I'd lay my money on O'Dwyer staying right where he is.