At the time the Sony rootkit came to light, the Canadian government in extracting its settlement with Sony made them promise to never do it again or they would open Sony up to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individual lawsuits.
In the USA, however, Sony fought tooth and nail to keep "promise not to do it again" provision out of the FTC settlement. ... So, in the USA, there is nothing to prevent Sony or anyone else from installing a rootkit on your PC.
Maybe US Attorney Carmen Ortiz should go after the chairman at Sony like she did with Aaron Schwartz.
Political and not-for-profit RoboCalls are not exempt from the DoNotRoboCall law.
Penalties for political RoboCalls are the imprisonment of the candidate for 20 years, no exceptions. In the case of RoboCalling on behalf of ballot initiatives the the vote goes against the desired outcome of the RoboCaller. The officers and directors of the payor for the RoboCall are presumed to be the initiators of the RoboCall; penalties are the same as commercial RoboCallers. In the case of "front" organizations, strict liability is passed through to the real backers of the initiative.
Penalties for not-for-profits is the same as previously stated for [presumably] for-profits. In addition, the not-for-profit is dissolved with all proceeds from its liquidation going to the US Treasury.
A facility implemented by the telcos and enabled by default would put every phone number served by the telco on a DoNotRoboCall list. Consumer could un-subscribe to the DoNotRoboCall list by using a *xx facility the telcos use to let consumers tweak their own telco service options to enable or disable this feature.
Telcos would implement an out-of-band signaling mechanism where a signal is sent to the originator of the all calls. RoboCallers would have to implement technology to recognize the out-of-band signal and terminate the call immediately before the call rings through to the consumer; a timeout facility is implemented by the telco that if the call does not terminate in (2 seconds (pick a number)) then the telco puts the call through to the consumer. The consumer on detecting a RoboCall presses a *xx number on the telephone keypad. The remainder of the call is recorded by the telco. The telco is required to listen to each call recorded by the DoNotRoboCall facility and determine its validity. RoboCall operators would have to upgrade/replace their existing RoboCall equipment immediately; no grandfathering of existing equipment is allowed. If the RoboCaller lets a call go through to someone on the DoNotRoboCall list, then the RoboCaller is considered in violation of the law.
National legislation would be necessary that says that any RoboCaller that dials a phone number with anti-robocall enabled is liable for payment, say $10,000 per call, via the telco to the consumer. The telco is permitted to take a small portion of the payment to implement the DoNotRoboCall feature.
Violation of the DoNotRoboCall mechanism is also a criminal offense where the officers and directors of the robocalling entity are strictly and personally liable for each and every violation. Financial penalties become the personal liabilities of the owners, officers and directors of the RoboCalling entities and are not shielded by normal "corporate shield" law. After a first conviction, mandatory sentencing of 20 years for ALL owners, officers and directors is the law of the land. Fines cannot be discharged by bankrupcy. Community property laws do not shield spouses under the principle that the spouses benefitted from the ill-gotten gain of the RoboCaller. The US Marines may be deployed to any nation that shields assets of a RoboCaller.
I wonder if the reasons Stevens Media wants to keep the other material sealed is because it reveals a clear case of RICO by Stevens Media and other entities, lawyers?
My niece, a 30-something, uses Facebook. She has had her computer infected with malware and effectively disabled with malware because she clicked a link on Facebook. ... Twice within a few months.
She simply cannot resist following links to "cute kittens" and the like. She cannot be trained to NOT do it.
Maybe the high number who would not pay anything to determine who goes to congress for their district simply says that they believe there is no meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans.
I think both parties are really agents of the Fascist Oligarchy that really runs the country. Nothing more nothing less.
Re: this can't be legal ...
At the time the Sony rootkit came to light, the Canadian government in extracting its settlement with Sony made them promise to never do it again or they would open Sony up to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individual lawsuits.
In the USA, however, Sony fought tooth and nail to keep "promise not to do it again" provision out of the FTC settlement. ... So, in the USA, there is nothing to prevent Sony or anyone else from installing a rootkit on your PC.
Maybe US Attorney Carmen Ortiz should go after the chairman at Sony like she did with Aaron Schwartz.
Re: A solution could emulate the anti-spam technology
An addendum to my proposal:
Political and not-for-profit RoboCalls are not exempt from the DoNotRoboCall law.
Penalties for political RoboCalls are the imprisonment of the candidate for 20 years, no exceptions. In the case of RoboCalling on behalf of ballot initiatives the the vote goes against the desired outcome of the RoboCaller. The officers and directors of the payor for the RoboCall are presumed to be the initiators of the RoboCall; penalties are the same as commercial RoboCallers. In the case of "front" organizations, strict liability is passed through to the real backers of the initiative.
Penalties for not-for-profits is the same as previously stated for [presumably] for-profits. In addition, the not-for-profit is dissolved with all proceeds from its liquidation going to the US Treasury.
A solution could emulate the anti-spam technology
Just a thought:
A facility implemented by the telcos and enabled by default would put every phone number served by the telco on a DoNotRoboCall list. Consumer could un-subscribe to the DoNotRoboCall list by using a *xx facility the telcos use to let consumers tweak their own telco service options to enable or disable this feature.
Telcos would implement an out-of-band signaling mechanism where a signal is sent to the originator of the all calls. RoboCallers would have to implement technology to recognize the out-of-band signal and terminate the call immediately before the call rings through to the consumer; a timeout facility is implemented by the telco that if the call does not terminate in (2 seconds (pick a number)) then the telco puts the call through to the consumer. The consumer on detecting a RoboCall presses a *xx number on the telephone keypad. The remainder of the call is recorded by the telco. The telco is required to listen to each call recorded by the DoNotRoboCall facility and determine its validity. RoboCall operators would have to upgrade/replace their existing RoboCall equipment immediately; no grandfathering of existing equipment is allowed. If the RoboCaller lets a call go through to someone on the DoNotRoboCall list, then the RoboCaller is considered in violation of the law.
National legislation would be necessary that says that any RoboCaller that dials a phone number with anti-robocall enabled is liable for payment, say $10,000 per call, via the telco to the consumer. The telco is permitted to take a small portion of the payment to implement the DoNotRoboCall feature.
Violation of the DoNotRoboCall mechanism is also a criminal offense where the officers and directors of the robocalling entity are strictly and personally liable for each and every violation. Financial penalties become the personal liabilities of the owners, officers and directors of the RoboCalling entities and are not shielded by normal "corporate shield" law. After a first conviction, mandatory sentencing of 20 years for ALL owners, officers and directors is the law of the land. Fines cannot be discharged by bankrupcy. Community property laws do not shield spouses under the principle that the spouses benefitted from the ill-gotten gain of the RoboCaller. The US Marines may be deployed to any nation that shields assets of a RoboCaller.
... No prisoners.
smells like RICO to me
I wonder if the reasons Stevens Media wants to keep the other material sealed is because it reveals a clear case of RICO by Stevens Media and other entities, lawyers?
IANAL
Re: sweden, really?
I thought Sweden was a wholly owned subsidiary of the RIAA.
I wouldn't trust any privacy thingie that was hosted in Sweden no matter what.
Just my snarky opinion.
context menu overrides easily defeated
In Mozilla Firefox (on Linux):
Edit -> Preferences
Select "Content"
Turn off "Disable or replace context menus"
There! FTFY
check out microsoft.es and intel.es
http://microsoft.es and http://intel.es both point to their respective companys' Spanish web presences.
Maybe the Spanish registrar to seize both of these to get the ball rolling. Eh?
beware malware ...
My niece, a 30-something, uses Facebook. She has had her computer infected with malware and effectively disabled with malware because she clicked a link on Facebook. ... Twice within a few months.
She simply cannot resist following links to "cute kittens" and the like. She cannot be trained to NOT do it.
Oh well.
an alternate hypothesis
Maybe the high number who would not pay anything to determine who goes to congress for their district simply says that they believe there is no meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans.
I think both parties are really agents of the Fascist Oligarchy that really runs the country. Nothing more nothing less.
... now where is my tin foil hat.
Punitive damages should be exactly that: punitive!
The institution broke its own rules, then further punished the student by putting a disciplinary note in his file and reducing a grade to 0.
I suppose a 10-million U$D fine will, indeed, discourage them from doing it, or something like it, again.
Agreed?