thanks, but I'm not finding anything.

however, a google search turns up that, whatever the grant was, the money's being used for a bunch of privacy-related research, and a lot of the fruits-of-research are publicly available.

does this mean that army research contracts are like senate bills - a list of fundings/grants awarded as a group?

Acquisti (NSF grant) had almost $400,000 for his last project, also 'privacy' related.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0713361
(the more current info about this grant isn't up on nsf.gov yet)

anyone know how to find army contracting info?

Right now I bet if you were to snap pictures of 10,000 people, you would incorrectly classify at least 100 of them...

thats only a 1% error... is that supposed to make me feel more comfortable? Sounds like the technology works pretty well, pragmatically...
Anyway, sounds mildly-moderately threatening to general privacy. Who's paying for this?

FTFA, grants from:
National Science Foundation, grant # 0713361
US Army Research Office, contract # DAAD190210389
How much?

this reminds me of pynchon lyrics... it's perfectly in the spirit.

First of all, "That is why in certain areas where the law is framed in terms of "consumer protection" actual individuals have no standing to claim damages or bring lawsuits against "offending parties"." what? Do you have examples or anything to bring this sentence into some kind of context, instead of just anti-corporate ranting? (not that I'm against anti-corporate ranting!)

I would agree that a major difference between illegal streaming and counterfeit distribution is the consumer as victim. But I'm making the case that it is easy to define illegal streaming as distributing counterfeit goods - in a legal/legislative sense - ESPECIALLY because both political parties in the US serve the wrong masters (namely corporations) . As I said in a different thread in this article, a main purpose for the existence of governments is to protect commerce (er... the ONLY purpose for the current US government), and I would argue that anti-counterfeit laws exist and are mainly for the protection of producers, not consumers.

From wikipedia/copyright_infringement: "Article 61 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries establish criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale".[4]"

Whatever your personal feelings on copyright enforcement, a primary purpose of governments is to protect commerce. As the TRIPS quotation shows, governments besides the US have agreed that copyright piracy is a criminal offense.

Although I do think the "commercial scale" clause is an important one.

From TFA: "Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes..."

In most countries, manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods ARE series crimes, and considering that many sites that stream media-content (legally or otherwise) make money through advertising, it makes sense to define illegal streaming as distributing counterfeit goods. Although wiretapping and felonies are scary enforcement tactics, why should "counterfeit" content distribution online be any different than the 'real world' version?

Glad to hear someone's working on this...

sounds horrible...
don't you just end up with a hodge-podge of functionality, with no unity to the whole at the end?

I'm a CS student at ODU (virginia, US) and we have (almost) exactly this as our "capstone" CS course. It's two semesters: the first is software specs, development timeline, funding, that sort of thing; and the second is a kind of semi-implementation. As far as I know, the implementation is done by the same group of students though.

I can see a benefit of a different group doing the implementation, though - when using someone else's specs, it makes you aware of deficiencies in communication, both in the to-be-impemented specs and your personally written ones.

I have to say that I'm not really looking forward to this class. I probably won't be that interested in the group project, and the whole focus seems to be business-oriented... and while I want to develop software (that I'm interested in), I don't want to deal with the business end so much. Yes, INB4 comments about my naivety and such, but what is your advice on what I should try to get out of (focus on) in this dream-class of yours?

If you did some research, you'd find at least a couple of alternatives (not saying you don't have any in mind). Unfortunately, they kinda break the current corporate/global system...

I whole-heartedly concur. I have an imac as my desktop, basically so it's reliable and I don't have to mess with it, and run linux mint on an asus netbook. I run linux because a) I'm a CS student, and running *nix is a valuable educational experience, and b) it was a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a macbook when I began to need a laptop. After a year or two of experience, I think I would feel comfortable switching to a linux distro on the desktop, and I would have the ability to do that with minimal hassle.

However, that's the main difference between most ./ 'ers and the average mac user. If all apple products became locked down like the iphone/ipad, a disgruntled average user would be a lot more *locked* into just having to deal with it, because of the hassle/cost involved in the move to a different OS and/or hardware. Just because it's a viable option for hybrid mac/linux users doesn't mean that Apple won't switch to this type of software/hardware model out of fear that there will be a sudden mass exodus from OSX.

http://thinkorthwim.com/2010/02/12/mathematical-porn

if you take the time to watch till the end, its worth your while....

Fraud IS a felony... and *that's* why it's different than 'blatant theft'. I'm wondering the same thing OP.

When I "steal" digital music (and get caught) I too must pay a hefty fine... with no jail time. Why should Dell be treated differently?