Not that I don't think the lawsuit is stupid, but wow, what a pointless diss. Rupert Murdoch owns a company in the UK that some North Americans haven't heard of - so what? We've certainly all heard of it over here.

By the way, BSkyB isn't a "news organization", although they do have a news channel or two.

Back in 2006, I made the mistake of buying a Nokia N70 from Orange. Now let's skip the debate as to whether or not the N70 continues Nokia's trend of excellent user interfaces. What's certain is that the "Orange Homescreen" was a LOT worse than the options that Nokia offered - just Google it and you'll see what I mean. There was an option to disable it (which required a reboot), but guess what, if you rebooted after that then it just brought itself back.

The solution I found on the Internet at the time was to tell the N70 to report itself as an N70 Music Edition, and then the Nokia firmware updater would gift you a nice clean non-Orange firmware. Far too much effort (and risk) for the standard user.

Luckily I am also British, and as the parent says I don't have to deal with this. The networks offer decent SIM-only plans direct, but you can also find resellers who will sell you a contract with a phone and an amount of cashback - the cheaper the phone you choose, the more cashback, meaning if you choose the Nokia 1208 (and sell it on for £9) then you've got a really good SIM-only deal.

That's sort of a good point, but you can only count people who downloaded the port and would have bought a PSP/PS3 if the port didn't exist, otherwise it fails the but-for test and isn't a loss (remember no punitive damages). What you're suggesting is counting each download as a lost sale - something many Slashdotters continuously complain about with respect to anti-piracy statistics.

So the actual figure is probably something like the cost of the PSPs/PS3s not bought times the probability a downloader would have bought a PSP/PS3 if the port didn't exist. How big is the resulting number?

Bah, that should have been "low amounts of punitive damages".

I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean European courts award amounts of punitive damages, I meant they are heavily against any punitive damages and they are only awarded in exceptional circumstances (if that). They believe punishment should only be held to the standards of criminal courts.

So assuming the ports don't crash, contain rootkits or brick your handset, Sony weren't planning to release for those platforms, and we're in a jurisdiction without punitive damages, what would Sony's damages be?

I'm not saying I think Sony's in the wrong, however I do want to know what their actual losses are.

Serious question, what damages are they suffering? For each platform that Sony are not currently selling Lemmings on or planning to sell Lemmings on, surely there are no damages whatsoever?

Bear in mind European courts do not hand out punitive damages anywhere near as much as US courts do.

The original Lemmings is awesome, but I seem to be the only one who prefers Lemmings 2...

Then again, I think I'm also the only one who liked Lemmings 3D.

...we have many cashback sites that give you a cut of the money from you clicking their affiliate links, usually a percentage of the amount you spend. There are many of them so it's clearly a viable business model, and as a customer it's brilliant. I've got the impression that Bing worked differently and I've got the impression that in the US you don't have cashback sites like we do, am I correct?

No, I do not think there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" with unencrypted wireless data. However it is still personal data, and as such while a member of the public can do whatever I do not believe that a company has the right to retain that data.

Besides your first sentence you appear to have somewhat ignored my assertion that people and companies do not have equal rights to trump other people's privacy rather specifically dispute or agree with it. I completely agree with your examples about the girl, however if instead of a passer by we had an employee photographing for a company, the company would most likely not have a legitimate reason to keep her personal data and hence it shouldn't be kept. If he was just a lucky passer by then he should be able to keep it.

Additionally I have to respectfully disagree with your opinion that people who don't encrypt get what they deserve. I'm willing to bet the majority of unencrypted access points are so for lack of technical expertise, and while I do not think they have a "right" to use the Internet without expertise, I don't think we should expect them not to try to use it if they don't have the expertise.

By the way I think you'll find most civil laws in the UK are pretty decent, and while many of the reported criminal laws bother me I appreciate I am far more likely to use the civil ones to my advantage than have the criminal ones to my disadvantage.

From Wikipedia on ECHR:

Article 8 - privacy
Article 8 provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"

Many Slashdotters seem to think no one has a right to privacy, but people DO have a right to privacy, albeit a restricted right such that it doesn't trump everyone else's rights. Sounds fair and balanced to me.

One of the restrictions "necessary in a democratic society" is that it doesn't trump a person's rights such as taking photographs in a public place. It's not that you have no privacy outside, it's that other people's rights for the most part trump your privacy and hence effectively you have no privacy outside. However a company does not have fundamental rights like a human, and as such a person's fundamental rights prevail over a company's rights, including a person's right to privacy.

Remember I did say that a company can keep the data with a good reason. Debt collectors get to keep your contact details for instance. Google Streetview blanks out nearly everything that could infringe someone's privacy and hence probably doesn't fall foul. I hardly see a good reason that Google would need to keep your SSID and the like.

Your impression that there is a contradiction between Slashdot's anti-privacy views (photographing a police officer or a building) and Slashdot's pro-privacy views (Google SSID) hinges on your impression that a company (or the government) has the same rights as a person (or that people don't have a right to privacy, but you know that's not true). I know you said you're from Australia but that's a very American view IMO, not really compatible with Europe.

By the way the Data Protection Act is a good piece of legislation, it has specifically helped me twice before. The extent of the complaints I've seen about it on Slashdot have been that companies can easily get around it, not that it's damaging.

In the UK we have the Data Protection Act. AFAIK it places no restrictions on the public, but it means that companies need to have to have a good, legitimate reason to keep data. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this. A person > a company, agree or disagree?

(And yes, I do think the streetview photos do have a good legitimate reason)

Did this person happen to buy the software from Adobe (unlikely to be cheaper than anywhere else), or is this yet another case in the US confusing us Europeans where the manufacturer is sued instead of the retailer? (like the recent US PS3 class actions against Sony VS the British owner getting a partial refund from Amazon)

Here in the UK, the retailer is liable for anything like this, and I'm pretty sure there's a European Directive to the same effect. I think manufacturers are liable for things like super bad business practices, but you can get the retailer for a much easier to prove breach of implied merchantability.