Really? Go to redhat.com and click on 'products'. First thing displayed is 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux - DESKTOP'.

My company has deployed thousands of laptops with RHEL desktop on them.

It's not really hardware vs software, it is memory vs other stuff.

Memory makes sense to measure in powers of two, because then you can split up the addressing as 'x bits for row select, x bits for column select, x bits for chip select, x bits for DIMM select', etc. Every component of that address (except the very highest level, eg number of DIMMs) is going to be a power of two in size. When the minimum size you could purchase was 1024 bytes, it made sense to be use a well-known prefix that was close to that size. It no longer makes sense.

Disks, network speeds, etc have no such 'binary' component. There is absolutely no reason that those things should be counted in binary.

So you're claiming Amazon got the right to sell these ebooks from the publisher for $0? Fascinating. I wonder how the publishers and authors planned to make any money like that.

Or maybe the publishers sold the books to Amazon from some non-zero price. That price would of course be a COST to Amazon, and if they sold the books to their customers for less than that amount then they sold them below cost.

Well, I am not a gmail user for precisely this reason.

Also, Google is not scanning for ads in order to provide you with free email service, they are providing free email service in order to be able to show you ads. The 'free email' is just a cost of doing business - the selling of ads is worth much more than that expense.

The big difference between scanning for spam and scanning to place ads is that scanning for spam benefits me, and scanning for ads is for Google's benefit.

I guess that is why when we ship something that is sensitive enough to require a shockwatch there is a giant 'check shockwatch before accepting' printed on the box. Seems a hell of a lot easier than some bluetooth device. Plus, has the added benefit that every point in the delivery chain can make sure they are getting an undamaged package, and the presence of the shockwatch and warning will probably cause handlers to be more careful.

If you are just trying to see if handlers have abused your package (not sure what value that would be) a device hidden inside the package makes sense. If you are more concerned about your package being delivered undamaged, a device and warning on the outside makes more sense.

You just repeated what the other guy said, and it is still wrong. There is no `statement of noninfringement` in a counter notice, just a statement that you believe the material was removed by mistake or misidentification. `By mistake or misidentification` does not mean `I think this is not infringing, therefore it was a mistake to delete it`, it means that you believe the person who filed the notice made a mistake or misidentification when they said the work was theirs.

The person making the notice says, under penalty of perjury, that he believes the work is his. The person making the counter notice says, under penalty of perjury, that he believes the work is not what the notice says it is.

Now, if you think that your use of a work should be fair use and you send a counter notice saying the work was taken down because of a mistake or misidentification (the only option there is), then you would be liable for perjury, because you said you believe the work was misidentified when actually you know it was identified correctly, but you feel you are allowed to use it. That is not being held l Iiable for saying it was noninfringing, it is being held liable because you lied.

Eh, what? Exactly where in the law does it says that 'falsely claiming to not infringe is punishable as perjury'? Nowhere. The only thing punishable by perjury is if, in bad faith, you state that the material is not what the person filing the notice says it was. How exactly is that a 'higher standard' than making the person filing the notice state that they are authorized to represent the work?

What exactly are the 'things you can do in a notice that you can't do in a counter notice' that would be perjury in the counter notice but not in the notice?

Both takedown notices and counter-notices are already made under penalty of perjury. Since you can't be bothered to educate yourself:

Under Elements of Notification

Under Contents of Counter Notification

Penalties (criminal and civil) are identical in each case.

And how would a host 'intentionally and knowingly' violate copyright? How would they know? Maybe by receiving some sort of notification that they are infringing, and if they ignore it they are liable for copyright infringement in court? That is exactly what we currently have - the notification is called a DMCA takedown notice.

Or are you just trying to set up a situation where the host can always say 'I didn't know it was infringing', (because you have eliminated the method by which they find out it is infringing) and thus be free from all liability? That was one of the options I already presented.

Or, the other option I already presented, was that each and every case winds up in court, and the host is liable for all infrigement, whether they 'knew' or not.

You still have not provided any alternative to either the status quo (shielded if takedowns are done), full liablility for the hosts, or full immunity for the hosts.

I am not following what you mean. If we discard DMCA takedown notices, what do we have left? Either hosts are somehow shielded from ever being liable for copyright infringement, or they are not. If they are shielded, then there is no effective copyright protection. If they are not shielded, then they are liable for any and all infringement on their site.

The first option is effectively no copyright protection, and hence no way to enforce copyright. The second option is effectively the end of user-provided content hosts. What other options are there?

I said 'better or realistic'. You may consider lack of copyright protection 'better', but since industries that depend on copyright and/or other IP protection are a major source of jobs and money in America's economy it is in no way realistic to think it will ever happen.

I don't see how your 'third option' is actually a third option. If you remove the takedown notices, you are left with only the two options I already gave.

Yes, you are correct that everything is legal except that which has been specifically forbidden, and that you are only liable for your own actions.

Here is the problem: copyright infringement (reproducing or distributing without authorization) has been illegal in the US for more than 200 years. When someone watches a video on YouTube (for instance) it is YouTube, and not the person who uploaded it, who is distributing without authorization and is therefore liable for copyright infringement. YouTube would not be liable for the actions of someone else (whoever made the copy on YouTube in the first place), they would be liable for their own action of distributing copyrighted material without authorization.

So the DMCA carved out a special provision in copyright law in order to allow services like YouTube to exist. You will not be held responsible for distributing copyrighted material as long as you remove the copyrighted material when you are informed that you are not authorized to distribute it.

And you can't say that these service are being held liable for the actions of others. They are the ones who say 'we will distribute whatever anyone uploads, no questions asked'. That is their action, not someone else's. Look at it this way: suppose you ran a consignment shop, and offered to sell whatever anyone gave you. Do you think you would get away with saying 'not my fault' when some of the things you were selling turned out to be stolen or illegal? No, you would not.

Can you explain why repeal of the DMCA would be considered 'ideal'? Have you actually thought at all about what that would mean?

Repealing the DMCA would mean that web sites that host 'user-supplied' content (such as YouTube, word press, github, flickr, et al) would be liable for every piece of copyright-infringing material that someone puts on their site. They would no longer have the 'safe harbor' that the DMCA provides. Now, how many of these sites do you think would still exist when they are forced to have an army of lawyers to defend the thousands of legitimate copyright infringement lawsuits brought against them?

As for the idea of making 'foreigners' pay an escrow, etc, forget it. As soon as we did that, every foreign country would do the same to us. No way that is ever happening (nor should it).

Your freedom of the press buts zero onus on anyone else. You have the right to publish what you want, nobody has the responsibility to give you the means to do so. Or do you think every book publisher, newspaper, magazine, TV station, etc is somehow required to publish everything anyone sends them?

Oh, and another thing: you are not the only one with the right to freedom of the press. The actual 'press' has the, say it with me, freedom to decide what they will and will not publish.