I wasn't thrilled with the reply but it's not uninformed:
Dear Mr. Harris:
I received your letter expressing your opposition to the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act," commonly known as the "PROTECT IP Act." I appreciate knowing your views on this matter.
America's copyright industry is an important economic engine, and I believe copyright owners should be able to prevent their works from being illegally duplicated and stolen. The protection of intellectual property is particularly important to California's thriving film, music, and high-technology industries.
The "PROTECT IP Act" (S. 968) would give both copyright and trademark owners and the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to take action against websites that are "dedicated to infringing activities." These are websites that have "no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating" copyright infringement, the sale of goods with a counterfeit trademark, or the evasion of technological measures designed to protect against copying. The bill would not violate Internet users' First Amendment right to free speech because copyright piracy is not speech. On May 26, 2011, this legislation was reported favorably out of the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration by the full Senate.
I understand that you oppose the "PROTECT IP Act." While I supported reporting the bill to the full Senate, please know that, prior to the close of the 111th Congress, I worked with California high-technology businesses and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to improve upon language from previous versions of the bill and to address the concerns of legitimate high-tech businesses, public interest groups, and others. However, I recognize that the bill needs further work to prevent it from imposing undue burdens on legitimate businesses and activities, and I will be working to make the improvements, either by working in cooperation with Chairman Leahy or by offering amendments on the floor of the Senate. Please know I will keep your concerns and thoughts in mind should the full Senate consider the "PROTECT IP Act."
Once again, thank you for sharing your views. I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.
In the LA area, I ran into these twice in a week. Once at the station on a commuter train, and once on the subway in LA.
While they thankfully weren't groping anyone, they would not allow you on the train unless you let them search your bag. These are trains that people rely on to get to work (and often prepay for) and they appeared without warning one day. My choices were submit to search, or not go to work I guess.
I think the opposite, which is that the vast majority of Xbox 360 owners are happy to see cheaters and people who abuse exploits kicked off the service. It's a very vocal minority who rabble rouses on the internet stating how M$$$$ made their console useless and that's not FAIR! that is being extremely over represented.
I happily play my console on live all the time, but the implication that it just DOESN'T WORK without Live is idiocy. The fact is, unless you're modding your box to pirate games or cheating at online games to ruin everyone else's experience at the cost of your own, you don't have anything to worry about. Everyone who is up in arms about it is either looking for a reason to rail on MS because that's what they do, or pissed off that they can't cheat anymore.
Excuse me if I don't find this position sympathetic.
This is a load of crap, and was just as much of a load of crap when people were talking about modders being banned. I take my console off of XBL and play it offline all the time, and EVERYTHING WORKS FINE. No, i can't log on to facebook, stream netflix or listen to last.fm, but these are peripheral features of my gaming console. It still plays everything fine and 99% of what people do work fine.
All of this moral outrage because asshole kids exploit games and can't go online to download new clothes for their avatar is incredibly irritating. Especially because it's just academic and coming from people who don't even use the service in the majority of instances.
Your description is off, for starters. A grenade exploding after you die is actually a feature of the Martyrdom perk, and part of the game.
The exploit here is that people somehow glitch out one of the rocket launchers so that every time they die a huge explosion (MUCH MUCH bigger than a 'nade) kills everyone in the area.
I was playing yesterday, and 2 guys were exploiting this. Basically what happens is, every time you shot them, you would die. They would blow up in an explosion so big that you and anyone else around would die. It made the game pretty much unplayable for everyone else on the other team.
They were fully aware that it was an exploit and were laughing at everyone about it on voice after the match.
Do I feel bad if those guys get banned for 24 hours? Not one bit. These people are fully aware they're doing something they shouldn't, and laughing in the faces of the 10 other people who's games they're ruining.
I'd be shocked if any of the people bitching above had played MW2, or were gamers at all.
I use Winamp for all of my iPod needs, or all my music playing in general, really. iTunes is big, bulky, slow, and I got sick and tired of manually updating my library all the time. Add this to the many reasons I can't stand iTunes.
Response from Diane Feinstein
I wasn't thrilled with the reply but it's not uninformed:
Dear Mr. Harris:
I received your letter expressing your opposition to the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act," commonly known as the "PROTECT IP Act." I appreciate knowing your views on this matter.
America's copyright industry is an important economic engine, and I believe copyright owners should be able to prevent their works from being illegally duplicated and stolen. The protection of intellectual property is particularly important to California's thriving film, music, and high-technology industries.
The "PROTECT IP Act" (S. 968) would give both copyright and trademark owners and the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to take action against websites that are "dedicated to infringing activities." These are websites that have "no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating" copyright infringement, the sale of goods with a counterfeit trademark, or the evasion of technological measures designed to protect against copying. The bill would not violate Internet users' First Amendment right to free speech because copyright piracy is not speech. On May 26, 2011, this legislation was reported favorably out of the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration by the full Senate.
I understand that you oppose the "PROTECT IP Act." While I supported reporting the bill to the full Senate, please know that, prior to the close of the 111th Congress, I worked with California high-technology businesses and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to improve upon language from previous versions of the bill and to address the concerns of legitimate high-tech businesses, public interest groups, and others. However, I recognize that the bill needs further work to prevent it from imposing undue burdens on legitimate businesses and activities, and I will be working to make the improvements, either by working in cooperation with Chairman Leahy or by offering amendments on the floor of the Senate. Please know I will keep your concerns and thoughts in mind should the full Senate consider the "PROTECT IP Act."
Once again, thank you for sharing your views. I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
Witnessed these myself
In the LA area, I ran into these twice in a week. Once at the station on a commuter train, and once on the subway in LA.
While they thankfully weren't groping anyone, they would not allow you on the train unless you let them search your bag. These are trains that people rely on to get to work (and often prepay for) and they appeared without warning one day. My choices were submit to search, or not go to work I guess.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lots of people missing the point
I think the opposite, which is that the vast majority of Xbox 360 owners are happy to see cheaters and people who abuse exploits kicked off the service. It's a very vocal minority who rabble rouses on the internet stating how M$$$$ made their console useless and that's not FAIR! that is being extremely over represented.
Re: Re: Re: Lots of people missing the point
I happily play my console on live all the time, but the implication that it just DOESN'T WORK without Live is idiocy. The fact is, unless you're modding your box to pirate games or cheating at online games to ruin everyone else's experience at the cost of your own, you don't have anything to worry about. Everyone who is up in arms about it is either looking for a reason to rail on MS because that's what they do, or pissed off that they can't cheat anymore.
Excuse me if I don't find this position sympathetic.
Re: Lots of people missing the point
This is a load of crap, and was just as much of a load of crap when people were talking about modders being banned. I take my console off of XBL and play it offline all the time, and EVERYTHING WORKS FINE. No, i can't log on to facebook, stream netflix or listen to last.fm, but these are peripheral features of my gaming console. It still plays everything fine and 99% of what people do work fine.
All of this moral outrage because asshole kids exploit games and can't go online to download new clothes for their avatar is incredibly irritating. Especially because it's just academic and coming from people who don't even use the service in the majority of instances.
Your description is off, for starters. A grenade exploding after you die is actually a feature of the Martyrdom perk, and part of the game.
The exploit here is that people somehow glitch out one of the rocket launchers so that every time they die a huge explosion (MUCH MUCH bigger than a 'nade) kills everyone in the area.
I was playing yesterday, and 2 guys were exploiting this. Basically what happens is, every time you shot them, you would die. They would blow up in an explosion so big that you and anyone else around would die. It made the game pretty much unplayable for everyone else on the other team.
They were fully aware that it was an exploit and were laughing at everyone about it on voice after the match.
Do I feel bad if those guys get banned for 24 hours? Not one bit. These people are fully aware they're doing something they shouldn't, and laughing in the faces of the 10 other people who's games they're ruining.
I'd be shocked if any of the people bitching above had played MW2, or were gamers at all.
I use Winamp for all of my iPod needs, or all my music playing in general, really. iTunes is big, bulky, slow, and I got sick and tired of manually updating my library all the time. Add this to the many reasons I can't stand iTunes.
This isn't new...a friend of mine applied for the police department and they had the same sort of deal. I don't think this is particularly uncommon.