Definitely a fan of tobanjan. I usually only find it at import stores, but we always keep some on hand. In addition to being the primary ingredient in Mabo-dofu, it's great in ramen and stir fry.
How do you think Facebook grew to be multi-billion dollar company? It wasn't because the upper slice of the bell curve needed an outlet to share pictures of their supper.
You, sir, win the Internet today.
Almost as good, though, is the new listing for a picture of the guy who bought a picture of an Xbox One. [listing]
Nice twisting of the case. Yup, the DA realizes that Gizmodo didn't break the law in writing about the phone. He probably realized that some time before law school. The question at hand (and the presumed potential charges) was re receiving stolen property. The second is not a necessary prerequisite for the first.
Other news sources have stated the DA isn't willing to engage in a long battle (and spend taxpayer money) to fight a well-funded first-ammendment decoy to a case of purchasing stolen property.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18653245
Yeah, not filing charges was probably a good move; the DA's office likely has easier criminal cases with more direct impact on public good.
I think the best comment I've read on this was (IIRC) from slashdot, where a user implied what Google may have been signaling was how irrational software patents are...
Should A Company Be Liable For What Its Affiliates Do?
To some extent, yes, companies should be responsible. (This is the case, for example, with TCPA and junk faxes.) With no directly traceable revenue stream (i.e. no charges to the customer's credit card), it's all too easy to create a shadow affiliate that misbehaves, only to close it when justice comes calling before opening it up again under a different name.
What it boils down to is this: If a company pays its affiliates, it tacitly endorses their actions on its behalf, and should hold some measure of responsibility. Additionally, the root company is in a better position to recover damages from affiliates than end customers are.
sigh*. Can you explain that to all the people who worked in record stores, or in video stores, and are now unemployed because widespread piracy decimated the music industry's retail trade?
One effect, multiple causes. The industry's reliance on monopolistic practices (perpetrated by an oligopoly, to be more precise, not a monopoly) of forced bundling and artificially high prices propped up the industry.
Yes, the introduction of piracy years ago challenged the artificially restricted supply (and manufactured demand through bundling) and caused a change in how consumers viewed the industry. But so did the emergence of online retailing, and the Internet in general, both of which have legitimately challenged the business models of traditional middle-men.
For many reasons (including, piracy), more songs came to be sold individually, rather than by the album. This shift from album sales to song sales is the primary cause of lost revenues for the music industry. Yes, the change may have been triggered by piracy (or it might simply have been the shift to digital availability or a multitudinous host of other factors), but it does not perpetuate the losses you describe. (Which can also be partially attributed to the growth of online retailing, a la Amazon.com.) For such a claim to be true, you must also mean that if piracy were to somehow magically disappear overnight that those industries would return.
Trying to pin a complex phenomenon on a single cause is silly, and implying the changes would revert in the absence of piracy is even sillier.
So you're pulling out the answer I learned in my MBA program: "It depends."
Now that I'm working on a PhD, most answers still boil down to "It depends," it's just that researchers seem to take more words (often, several pages worth) to say it.
Maybe next time you could link to a non-Flash-wrapped version of the pdf? After spending several minutes searching for the link you promised, I realized I I had to switch to a computer with Flash to view it.
(IANAL) They can't answer yes, even if they did it. Doing so is an admission, admissible in court, of libel. Thus, they're referring you to their lawyers (DOJ).
I think your summary suffers from a bit of hyperbole ... just sending stuff to Cali residents wouldn't be enough. Affiliates benefit (short term) from sending spam, and the parent company (companies) have agreements and financial information for the offenders. The root company is not prevented from taking action to recoup costs from the offending affiliate (in fact, they should be encouraged to).
Holding root vendors liable does two things. First, it prevents vendors from affiliate hopping?that is, moving from one badly behaved affiliate to another. Second, if provides consumers, who typically have less relative power in these adversarial relationships, with an easy to identify entity that should hold some responsibility in solving the problem of spam. Tracking down vendors is easy; just follow the credit card payment. Tracking down spammers is hard (and often impossible, due to overseas connections).
No, the article was correct. I too "checked" (via dnsstuf.com):
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Dates: Created 03-jan-2007 Updated 04-jan-2011 Expires 03-jan-2012
DNS Servers: NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Info for both .net and .com ere the same. However, if you follow the whois information and look it up on GoDaddy, it does show it expired ... until you grab the underlying whois info from them, which shows the 2012 date. So, GoDaddy's data is a mess, but the whois seems consistent from multiple sources.
Note that nothing actually changes about the movie. When a copyright system punishes people based on how people classify a movie, that seems like the system isn't working.
Yet isn't that exactly what occurs for a parody exception, which you're in favor of? Indeed, most of the exceptions hinge on how we classify some new work without changing the work itself. Although I often agree with your arguments, I'm not sure the line of reasoning at the end was thought through.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Tom.
Definitely a fan of tobanjan. I usually only find it at import stores, but we always keep some on hand. In addition to being the primary ingredient in Mabo-dofu, it's great in ramen and stir fry.
Re: Taking Advantage of the Stupid is NOT a Crime, It's the American Way
You, sir, win the Internet today.
Almost as good, though, is the new listing for a picture of the guy who bought a picture of an Xbox One. [listing]
Spin doctor
Nice twisting of the case. Yup, the DA realizes that Gizmodo didn't break the law in writing about the phone. He probably realized that some time before law school. The question at hand (and the presumed potential charges) was re receiving stolen property. The second is not a necessary prerequisite for the first.
Other news sources have stated the DA isn't willing to engage in a long battle (and spend taxpayer money) to fight a well-funded first-ammendment decoy to a case of purchasing stolen property.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18653245
Yeah, not filing charges was probably a good move; the DA's office likely has easier criminal cases with more direct impact on public good.
But Gizmodo are still #@$^&%.
Irrational bids
I think the best comment I've read on this was (IIRC) from slashdot, where a user implied what Google may have been signaling was how irrational software patents are...
To some extent, yes, companies should be responsible. (This is the case, for example, with TCPA and junk faxes.) With no directly traceable revenue stream (i.e. no charges to the customer's credit card), it's all too easy to create a shadow affiliate that misbehaves, only to close it when justice comes calling before opening it up again under a different name.
What it boils down to is this: If a company pays its affiliates, it tacitly endorses their actions on its behalf, and should hold some measure of responsibility. Additionally, the root company is in a better position to recover damages from affiliates than end customers are.
Re:
One effect, multiple causes. The industry's reliance on monopolistic practices (perpetrated by an oligopoly, to be more precise, not a monopoly) of forced bundling and artificially high prices propped up the industry.
Yes, the introduction of piracy years ago challenged the artificially restricted supply (and manufactured demand through bundling) and caused a change in how consumers viewed the industry. But so did the emergence of online retailing, and the Internet in general, both of which have legitimately challenged the business models of traditional middle-men.
For many reasons (including, piracy), more songs came to be sold individually, rather than by the album. This shift from album sales to song sales is the primary cause of lost revenues for the music industry. Yes, the change may have been triggered by piracy (or it might simply have been the shift to digital availability or a multitudinous host of other factors), but it does not perpetuate the losses you describe. (Which can also be partially attributed to the growth of online retailing, a la Amazon.com.) For such a claim to be true, you must also mean that if piracy were to somehow magically disappear overnight that those industries would return.
Trying to pin a complex phenomenon on a single cause is silly, and implying the changes would revert in the absence of piracy is even sillier.
So you're pulling out the answer I learned in my MBA program: "It depends."
Now that I'm working on a PhD, most answers still boil down to "It depends," it's just that researchers seem to take more words (often, several pages worth) to say it.
Just a pdf would be nice ...
Maybe next time you could link to a non-Flash-wrapped version of the pdf? After spending several minutes searching for the link you promised, I realized I I had to switch to a computer with Flash to view it.
Damned if you do, ...
(IANAL) They can't answer yes, even if they did it. Doing so is an admission, admissible in court, of libel. Thus, they're referring you to their lawyers (DOJ).
Thank you note
Although I'm not a resident of Oregon, I sent him a thank you note for this action. You can too.
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/
They're still affiliates
I think your summary suffers from a bit of hyperbole ... just sending stuff to Cali residents wouldn't be enough. Affiliates benefit (short term) from sending spam, and the parent company (companies) have agreements and financial information for the offenders. The root company is not prevented from taking action to recoup costs from the offending affiliate (in fact, they should be encouraged to).
Holding root vendors liable does two things. First, it prevents vendors from affiliate hopping?that is, moving from one badly behaved affiliate to another. Second, if provides consumers, who typically have less relative power in these adversarial relationships, with an easy to identify entity that should hold some responsibility in solving the problem of spam. Tracking down vendors is easy; just follow the credit card payment. Tracking down spammers is hard (and often impossible, due to overseas connections).
Check and recheck
No, the article was correct. I too "checked" (via dnsstuf.com):
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Dates: Created 03-jan-2007 Updated 04-jan-2011 Expires 03-jan-2012
DNS Servers: NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Info for both .net and .com ere the same. However, if you follow the whois information and look it up on GoDaddy, it does show it expired ... until you grab the underlying whois info from them, which shows the 2012 date. So, GoDaddy's data is a mess, but the whois seems consistent from multiple sources.
Hold on a moment...