because clouds don't need hard drives? No reason why they can't do whatever the "cloudy thing" does in-house

oblig XKCD https://xkcd.com/1425/

Thanks goodness for that, eh?

That'll probably be right after a US court prevents access to the network, forcing them to build their own mega constellations.

What are the ex-viewers of these media companies now doing? Are their competitors happy with an increase in viewers? or are people taking more walks instead?

I use speedify,as a VPN, not for privacy, but because it makes it easy to bond two crummy connections in redundant mode - resulting in a decent connection. (well, sometimes - when their own servers are not freaking out)

I wouldn't be surprised if they are logging everything, would rather they don't but not a big issue, I'll be protecting myself in other ways if needed.

Sounds a lot like.... Money - if only it were directly tied to a common good (such as wheat).
I'd be very interested to see how well that worked, with money being hard-tied to something - sure it would have some downsides, but perhaps worthwhile.

replying to myself after reading other comments

AmiMoJo mentions it only affects older versions of windwows, which are not getting updated

Why not use the update system to fix the underlying issue - and not have the user's machines send passwords to corp.com?

repeat 500 [fd repcount rt 103]

Looks like the patent is for secure direct IP communication, perhaps with a VPN... Do you really think that is original, inventive work - even back when the patent was filed?
On top of that, looks like the company is a patent troll who picked up the patent with the express intention of extracting cash from people who independently implement this concept. Do you really think they deserve a payout?

Did they take down "only" 9 items, because they only recieved 9 requests?

I agree, meat no longer means "any food" - though you did miss parents other points.

Are you really not OK with "Coconut meat" or a Christmas "Mince Meat" pie?

Flipping things around, if we were to grow a huge vat of potato skin/flesh from cultured cells would it have to be called "Solanaceae cell culture"?

If we grate and fry it, we can't call the results "Hash Browns"?

I can't tell if you are responding in earnest, or purposefully missing the distinction between copying and stealing...

Say someone copies your lungs without your permission. Not too cool? Agreed
Now compare it to someone stealing your lungs.

Back to music - we currently have a rather interesting balance where sharing of music tends to result in more sales of the song and in particular more tickets sold at live concerts. Not too bad for something people didn't need to buy in the first place.

That said - there should be a balance, copyright was intended to help both a creative individual and enrich society. Micky Mouse and infinite IP are too far in one direction, the hackers who are the subject of this article are too far in the other direction.

Unless we are redefining "theft" - this indeed is not theft, but copyright infringement.

In the "singular" case, there may not seem to be so much difference, but consider an individual "downloading a copy of every song and bit of software in the world" compared the same situation, but taking without leaving a copy in place.

Copying - there is no noticeable effect on the "victims", Stealing (particularly if you include all backups) is a global catastrophe.

That said, as this concept seems unclear to begin with, and we've had various actors intentionally blur the lines for quite some time, perhaps it does make more sense to redefine the word, perhaps pick a new word for the less-common offence previously known as theft.