Your Rights Online

[3278]

[With apologies to /. for the namesteal.]

Continuing this thread, about various issues at the intersection of technology and law...

<hr>While I have unfettered access to the database here on Bulldrek, I still don't know your password. I can read everything in the database, but I still can't read your password. This is because, behind the scenes, the board software hashes your password into something that isn't human-readable, and that isn't easily reverse-engineerable [but, since the hash doesn't ever change, the board still recognizes that when you type "IHeartPonies," that's the same thing as the "AG65DA65" hash that's stored].

This sucks for me, because people tend to use the same passwords for multiple services, so in theory if I knew Bone's Bulldrek password, I could use it to log into his email and send tons of invitations to sexual adventures to myself, which he would thus be required to fulfill. ["You emailed me an offer for a Cleveland Steamer! That's a contractual obligation!"] But for you, it's great: it means you can sign up to sites willy-nilly, without concern that someone out there will know about your secret love for ponies.

However, this sucks for an additional group of people who have slightly more power over your daily affairs than I do: governments. See, they love unhashed passwords, preferably retained for as long as possible, so they can go back to some account you used three years ago, subpoena your password, and have their way with you. Do they really need the password? In most cases, no: a subpoena will get them the data they require. But they want the password, for many of the same nefarious reasons I do: not only would they like to be able to log into your same-password site in a country that doesn't recognize their subpoena, they'd also like to be able to have your password in the event that the information itself is not accessible without a password, as in the case of encrypted sites and files.

Governments have slightly more power than I do, and they're making their move. Now, the EU has been doing some dangerous things with data retention for a while now - holding records longer than I think is necessary, making ISPs government gatekeepers: leaving information hackers would love to have accessible for years behind walls built by ISPs.

But the French have an idea: they want to go beyond the draconian EU data retention regulations, and bar all sites from hashing passwords. They want this unhashed password - and user's names, postal addresses, phone numbers, etc. - to be available for one full year, to "police, the fraud office, customs, tax and social security bodies."

Now, the hash issue is arguable - various sources claim a hashed password would be fine - but the retention is not: for a year, in France, thousands of people would have access to an unprecedented amount of personal information. I detailed in the other thread why this is seriously bad news, so I won't belabor the point here, but this new action by the French government is deeply worrying, plaintext passwords or not. It's predictably being challenged by the corporations involved - many of whom don't want to do the government's job, and almost none of whom want to have to completely redesign their services for one nation's idiosyncrasies - so one can at least hope that the courts will act rationally and in the best interests of the populace.

I'll keep abreast of the case, of course, and update the thread as I learn more.

<hr>When you do a Google search for my name, you get my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and my public Picasa page, and not a whole lot else. I'm not searched for very much, or linked to very much [as I like it]. But when you start typing my name into the search field, Google's autocomplete starts making suggestions: ESPN, for instance, for "E." Once you get to my whole first name, it suggests, "Early signs of pregnancy," which presumably is the most-often-searched-for term people go for that starts with "earl."

But what if people didn't like me very much? What if, when people searched for my name, their most common searches were things like, "Earl Hollar truffatore" or "Earl Hollar truffa?" If enough people performed this search, eventually, when searching for my name, the autocomplete would suggest these words...Italian for "con man" and "fraud," respectively. Google didn't assign those words to go with me, but their algorithm did. So, are they liable for what their algorithm does to the actions of others?

Italy thinks so. Italy, who believes Google's managers are personally responsible for videos posted to YouTube. Italy, who clearly doesn't comprehend the internet and how it works. As far as Italy is concerned, if one of you posts a work that harasses someone, I'm responsible for it, even if I haven't seen it. So of course, Italy won this case, which will either presumably force Google to no longer use Autocomplete in Italy, or else change their algorithm to filter out any libel. Both of those things are impossible, so what Google appears to be doing is trying their best at the latter and then claiming that's enough, and it'll probably work out for them.

The long-term impact, though, of this type of legislation is chilling. Much of the legislation going on in the EU right now points toward one possible future of the internet, one which looks a lot more like real-life expectations of behavior than the wild west internet we have today. Unfortunately, their real-life expectations don't seem to be informed by the technological realities.

Mind you, I don't support the wild west as a vision for the future: as much as I enjoy it, this can't be how we run our infosphere. But there are major cautions to be made moving forward, actions whose effects could be troubling or even catastrophic. We must move forward with law and order on the internet, absolutely, but we must assure we do so in the most logical, rational, well-informed, just and fair way possible.

<hr>Lunch now. More later.

[3278]

The Dutch government is making some interesting reforms to copyright law itself, in this case criminalizing the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted music and movies. [Uploading was already illegal.] In exchange, the old-school blank media penalties - a ridiculous band-aid of a solution originally levied against VHS tapes, on the theory that the proceeds would offset the studio losses to piracy - disappear from both PMPs [mp3 players, in other words], laptops, DVD recorders, blank CDs, thumb drives, etc. It's about time: these kinds of levies are completely arbitrary: they have no relation to actual rates of piracy, and punish pirates and non-pirates alike.

They're also tweaking their fair use laws - an important part of any first-world government's intellectual property statutes - and the way the government approaches the legality of rights licenses.

All this sounds pretty good, and it genuinely is, but let me break out what I perceive to be one flaw in this legislation, as it pertains to the long-term utility of the proposed changes. While the plan makes downloading copyrighted material illegal, it doesn't actually establish penalties or enforcement: the idea is supposed to be that this will make it easier for the Dutch government to block and filter sites which they feel infringe on Dutch IP, without actually taking any action to stop their own citizens from pirating copyrighted material.

I've said previously that I think the future - much as I might not like it - means criminalizing piracy, but doing so requires some agency to find perpetrators and induce punishment for their actions: online cops, the same way you'd have offline cops at your door if you violated offline copyright law. The other solution is to revisit how we as a culture deal with "intellectual property," but I genuinely don't see a major re-appraisal of this view any time soon.

The Dutch solution avoids, however, what I perceive to be the greatest flaw of the ridiculous American non-solution: since the law enforcement agencies aren't being given rights or responsibilities as pertains to intellectual property, the onus has been placed on rightsholders and our civil court system, which is absolutely not how criminal activity is intended to be dealt with. About which, more, later.

[3278]

Obviously, I can't just pass along every tech story I hear: if people wanted that, I'd just recommend a couple good RSS feeds. No, something's got to be reasonably significant in some relatively topical way before I think it's worth writing about. And this issue, at first, I didn't think was particularly important, but on review, I think it might be very significant, if subtle.

Right now, in Europe, internet piracy is dealt with in many cases by the same means used here in the US: civil suits. Judges make decisions which extend laws, rather than interpret them. Judges are taking legal action which supercedes the legislation on which their decisions are based, which is not how the legal system is supposed to work. Well, one of Europe's top legal minds unsurprisingly agrees with me.

This ruling isn't binding, but Europe's judges tend to take them seriously, nevertheless. The ruling would mean that the IP war would have to be taken to the legislators, and not the courts, which is exactly the way the system is supposed to work. This could be a real sea change for the pursuit of intellectual property rights and enforcement in Europe, a small perturbation which influences the course of the future stream.

_
To some degree, the above lawyer's opinion - probably worth reading the article I linked; it's brief - is influenced by the idea that the free communication of ideas cannot be infringed without legislative approval. And in this case, "free communication of ideas" means internet access that hasn't been blocked. But there are some people who hold a much more extreme view: that internet access itself is a human right. Like access to clean water. [Which I'm not sure I believe is a human right, but okay.]

What this particular brilliant windowlicker thinks is that web access is a human right because people who don't have it will continue to fall behind people who do, but this argument isn't compelling, in my view: the same is true of printing presses, cars, telephones, refrigerators, hand sanitizer, fresh fruit, and on and on and on. Inequality exists in the world, and determining that something is a right because the lack of it will produce inequality is senseless and impossible. It's admirable, in its way, just like it's admirable to feed the world, but internet access should not be considered a human right in the same way that "not getting hacked up by your neighbor with a machete" is a human right.

[Serious Paul]

All of this has been an interesting read so far. I am not sure about a human right, but I think we should seriously consider looking at what we think economic rights are, and how they should play against or with human rights.

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I am not sure about a human right, but I think we should seriously consider looking at what we think economic rights are, and how they should play against or with human rights.

What's an "economic right," in this context?

[Serious Paul]

That's the question. I don't have an answer to that. I think it's something that we as a society need to examine. Do we have economic rights? My initial reaction is to say yes we do, but that they are secondary to actual human rights.

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Of course, not all news is good for those who would like to see the IP war come out of the courtroom: the ability of P2P lawyers to join motions has just stepped up a notch [where by "just," I mean, "a couple of weeks ago]. I've spoken [at length, I'm sure] in the earlier thread about the US Copyright Group and their ilk, and their desire to join hundreds or even thousands of defendants into one suit, which saves them possibly millions in filing fees and legal expenses, but which is - in many views - legally unjust [as it joins a lot of people who don't live next to each other, who didn't commit the same infringing act, etc].

But in a recent case, a judge ruled that the very initial filings could be joined, and essentially that defendants would need to prove [individually] that they shouldn't be joined in the case. This is bad news, because not allowing the joining at any stage would effectively defeat P2P trolls: cases would have to be filed individually against each defendant, in their own jurisdiction, the same as most any comparable case. This means that P2P trolls can at least begin these cases, which means thousands of people will have to defend themselves against these cases, usually at great expense. This isn't how copyright law should be enforced.

Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that the judge used to be a lobbyist for the RIAA. This is a complex issue, because it's not at all uncommon for the ranks of lobbyists to be filled with people who move back and forth between public and government life, and there's no law saying she must recuse herself from issues on which she's lobbied. She seems like a nice enough person from what I've read, and there's no indication that her decision to allow joined cases was some sort of nefarious move to aid her former masters, but it's hard not to wonder if someone's legal opinions are at all influenced by years spent trying to change other people's legal opinions.

She's not the only judge out there, though, and not long after that decision, another judge handed down one of the many severance decisions, dropping 1,800 cases to 2. Fuck you, P2P attorneys!

<hr>Critics - like me of controversial Canadian DCMA-like legislation C-32 - no relation - will be happy to note that it's dead, following the fall of the minority government in that nation. Since 2005, three different versions of this same unpleasant legislation have been introduced up nort', and all have failed for one reason or another...although typically it's because of citizen displeasure, and not because of government collapse.

_Many times in the past I've made note of Operation: In Our Sites, the Department of Justice's ill-advised, technologically-ignorant, and largely futile attempt to get its hand into the IP-enforcement game. Torrentfreak - by far the least biased source of IP-related information [no, not really] - points out how ineffective it has been, pointing out that 5 of the 6 sites in the most recent round are still running [and one was voluntarily taken offline after having been immediately returned to service after the domain heist], and that 3 of the 4 in the round before that are still running. 3 of 8 of those sites caught in the first round, almost a year ago, are still up, a much better record, but many of the 5 remaining are probably back online in some other way; it's worth wondering, too, what percentage of those sites would have been online by this time, anyway: sites fall for all sorts of reasons.

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Italy thinks so. Italy, who believes Google's managers are personally responsible for videos posted to YouTube. Italy, who clearly doesn't comprehend the internet and how it works. As far as Italy is concerned, if one of you posts a work that harasses someone, I'm responsible for it, even if I haven't seen it. So of course, Italy won this case, which will either presumably force Google to no longer use Autocomplete in Italy, or else change their algorithm to filter out any libel. Both of those things are impossible, so what Google appears to be doing is trying their best at the latter and then claiming that's enough, and it'll probably work out for them.

But but but wait, quoth Onyx, it gets worse. Italy also has decided that search engines should be liable for the results you find through them, a case that will either have long-reaching consequence, or else be completely ignored due to utter impossibility.

<hr>Speaking of economics, a Senator is introducing a bill to start taxing the internet. In my opinion, this is probably wise timing: early in its evolution, this might have had a chilling effect on ecommerce, but we're at the point where the amount of the tax is less than the difference between margins online and offline: it'll still be cheaper to buy online, even if you have to pay 6 percent [or whatever] more because of sales tax. Obviously, a high enough tax might have a chilling effect, but a reasonable sales tax will probably generate useful revenue for the government, and help level the playing field between online and offline stores. I'd want to know more before throwing my minuscule weight behind it, but it seems like a decent idea to me.

One issue it avoids is that of "use tax," where people who live in states like Michigan who require sales tax on internet purchases have to pay sales tax on their state taxes every year...which no one does. One issue it does not avoid is that of jurisdiction: taxes are different everywhere, for different products. It seems to me that the easiest way to deal with this would be to charge taxes based on the seller's jurisdiction, but this could easily create "tax havens" where corporations move to a specific locality that doesn't require sales tax. This is one of those cases in which it'd be easier if we weren't a federation, but rather a single nation.

<hr>One strange development in the nature of the internet is how many more requests for electronic intercepts police are making. According to a new paper by researcher Christopher Soghoian, police are making use of this ability far more often than before, but with less accountability. The problem is twofold: first, requests to the phone company for real-time intercepts - wiretaps - are very expensive [thousands of dollars] but requests for stored data [say, email] are very inexpensive [tens of dollars]; second, while many departments have very stringent regulations regarding disclosure and accountability as it pertains to wiretaps and pen registers, these requests for stored digital information are often not covered by outdated departmental regulations.

What's the scale of the increase? From 1987 to 2009, an average of 1364 wiretaps were placed per year, total, from all law enforcement agencies. In 2006, AOL was receiving over 1000 requests per month. And that's one ISP. Facebook gets something like 10-20 requests per day. Sprint got so sick of dealing with the volume that they built an automated website that would authenticate the user [make sure it's a police officer, in other words], and then give the user the location of any of their subscribers. How many times did that get used? More than eight million times in one year.

On the surface, you say, great. Police are leveraging technology to do their jobs, jobs we largely want them to be doing. But the lack of oversight, the ridiculous ease with which law enforcement officers can access this information - do you think 8 million subpoenas went out for the Sprint user location system? - are likely to lead to abuse of the system. Further, as police come to rely on these systems, they require more and longer data retention, making sensitive information available for a longer period to anyone who might want to illicitly harvest it. This is definitely a worrying state of affairs, and we can only hope - or, whatever, take action or some shit - that legislation will catch up to technology sooner, rather than later.

It's weird, though: why doesn't the federal government just let law enforcement officers access ECHELON? I mean, such an expensive and expansive system that it's capable of reading the whole internet all the time, but they hog it for themselves? Why, one might almost think the actual role and capabilities of ECHELON has been somewhat overstated.

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Damn. Just fixed, like, ten links and tags I'd fucked up. Apparently I'm not very good with this "forum software" stuff. Maybe after I get some more experience.

<hr>In an interesting move in the ongoing cyberwar [or whatever you want to call it], the FBI got permission to hunt down and destroy a botnet, instead of just cutting off its head.

A botnet is a network of computers which have been infected with a program - often one which appears to do something useful - which secretly does stuff to and with their machine. Once a computer is infected, the person running the botnet can use it to, say, break encryption, or make distributed denial of service attacks, or just upload the contents of its own My Documents folder to someone. This network of infected machines is controlled by a bunch of central command and control servers.

So normally, when we - meaning my buddies in the global law enforcement community - take down a botnet, we turn off the command and control servers, which stops the botnet from taking immediate action. But it doesn't remove the software from the infected machines, meaning they're all just waiting to be reactivated, if someone can just communicate with the original malware. This has happened many, many times. This time, though, we didn't fuck about: we got permission to issue commands to the malware ourselves. The command - no, not "delete yourself," which was considered legally too daring - is basically, "don't do anything." Then the malware shuts down, until you reboot, at which point it calls the C&C server, which says, "don't do anything." And so on.

This isn't as dramatic as what the Dutch did last year: they went so far as to have their C&C servers command the malware to direct users to a page which would help them clean the infection. I'm not sure you could get away with that here in the US, unless the infection were a matter of national security, and I'm not sure if I approve, but it seems to be working thus far, despite ongoing attempts to wrangle the botnet back from its new Dutch Masters.

[Salvation122]

One issue it does not avoid is that of jurisdiction: taxes are different everywhere, for different products. It seems to me that the easiest way to deal with this would be to charge taxes based on the seller's jurisdiction, but this could easily create "tax havens" where corporations move to a specific locality that doesn't require sales tax. This is one of those cases in which it'd be easier if we weren't a federation, but rather a single nation.

States can enter into their own agreements on matters like this, of course, and a great many already have.

[3278]

That's really interesting. It seems to me that I'd heard about something like this, but I didn't realize it was in 44 states! It's an interesting approach to unification that you don't usually see: state-to-state negotiation, as opposed to federal. I've seen things like this before - as when several states cooperated to build a police information-sharing network which was eventually ruled unconstitutional - but you don't hear about them very often. Is this because they don't happen very often, or because they're not discussed very often, do you suppose?

[Salvation122]

That's really interesting. It seems to me that I'd heard about something like this, but I didn't realize it was in 44 states! It's an interesting approach to unification that you don't usually see: state-to-state negotiation, as opposed to federal. I've seen things like this before - as when several states cooperated to build a police information-sharing network which was eventually ruled unconstitutional - but you don't hear about them very often. Is this because they don't happen very often, or because they're not discussed very often, do you suppose?

They don't happen very often. It skirts real close to interstate commerce and no state wants to deal with the Fed coming in and telling them not to do it that way.

[3278]

In what will either be the most important development of our time, or a complete and colossal blunder, the government is moving forward with the NSTIC, which, among other things, is going to need a better name. This is basically a national secure ID program, a system which would allow for the possibility of both trusted and anonymous identities online, and which would allow the individual to control exactly what information was associated with what identities.

It's intended to be completely voluntary, and completely private-sector: it's basically the government suggesting to corporations that they do something like this, which is both hilarious and not a terrible idea: we're so scared of governments that even our government doesn't think we'd want them to hold the keys to proving our identities, even though that's exactly the sort of thing governments are for; instead, we'd rather hand the keys to corporations, who have no interest in what's best for us beyond that they'd like to stay alive to keep buying their stuff.

Anyway, they moved one notch closer this week, releasing the final plan, which is a lot like the draft plan from a few months ago, with more emphasis on the voluntary and private-sector parts. It probably won't roll out for as much as five years - what was that about governments lagging behind technology? - but it could be the most significant development in the internet since, well, the internet.

[3278]

What? Operation: In Our Sites doesn't really work? Ars does a tiny bit of fact-checking DoJ claims and discovers 4 out of 6 organizations hit in the February seizure are still operating their sites [under new domain names], and that the other two were US-operated.

Except that the US people could have been handled with arrests [as one was] or a lawsuit; the whole point of this ridiculous exercise is to get around the problem that we can't shut these people down because they're in other countries. But if only the domestic ones work, and the overseas ones simply change domains, effectively nothing has been accomplished at all, except the ruinous bypassing of the way law enforcement has traditionally operated.

[3278]

Wait, what? [Flash video.] So the Michigan State Police have cell phone extractors - which can read your entire phone, effectively - and when the ACLU requested to know how and why five of the devices had been used, the MSP priced the cost of the FOIA request as $500,000.

First, why is the MSP reading phones? Are they going to read my phone if they pull me over? What are they doing with the records they pull from the phone? What kind of security will they be placed under? How long will they be retained? These are clear and obvious details which wouldn't effect the utility of the devices but which the public has a right to know.

Second, $500,000 to fulfill the FOIA request for five of these devices? Isn't this just the MSP saying, "Fuck off," to the ACLU? What's to stop an agency from saying, "Sure, you can know what we're doing, but it'll cost you a billion dollars?" Stupid.

Perhaps the MSP has a great reason to use these. Perhaps they've only been used in good faith. Perhaps all relevant data is appropriately used and collected. But there's no reason we should be left with "perhaps." The Michigan State Police need to immediately release all relevant information, and without the $500,000 price tag to tell us what we should already know for free.

[Nicephorus]

But if only the domestic ones work, and the overseas ones simply change domains, effectively nothing has been accomplished at all, except the ruinous bypassing of the way law enforcement has traditionally operated.

I don't think there's going to much progress on shutting down domains until their is more international cooperation. Within the EU, there have been judgments all over the place on aspects of online rights - it's hard for the U.S. to come to an understanding when they have no consistency. Countries that benefit from copyright violation have would have to be twisted into agreeeing - Russia would be very hard to crack as the government/KGB/mafia is in all likelihood either getting money from or even running most of it (including software and music is copied illegally and sold on an industrial scale). Without cooperation, there's no way to seize servers or people until Disney hires the government to operate UAVs to take them out.

In the meantime, the U.S. could try requests to not recognize specific IP addresses. But the conditions would have to be spelled out so it doesn't become a tool to kill sites the government doesn't like. It would laso impair sites but not kill them as they could always move fairly quickly. A system would have to be in place such that once an entity is banned or whatever, new addresses could be quickly banned.

A more promising route agaisnt some sites might be to shut off the flow of money. Through Visa/Mastercard/Paypal, the U.S. controls most electronic transfers of money. This could even affect free sites as most of them operate off of advertising money and if advertisers have trouble paying them, they have trouble paying their ISP bills.

But the whole thing lacks standards. What can a government do in what cases that is fair and what are the procedures for determining what is actually happening?

[3278]

I don't think there's going to much progress on shutting down domains until their is more international cooperation.

Won't help. The way the "domain" system works means that no means [that I'm aware of] of domain restriction will ever shut down a web site. If nothing else, the server can just use IPs, and the whole solution vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Now, shutting down sites, and servers - which, looking back, is probably what you meant; sorry - that can be done, as you say, when there is more international cooperation. Hell, this whole O:IOS domain-shutdown workaround is basically because we don't have the agreements we'd need to call up Spain and say, "Make your copyright law match ours, and then arrest the following people." That's, in fact, what all this ACTA stuff is for: get one standard for IP, which everyone would enforce in the same way. On that day, well, the internet won't look much like we remember.

In the meantime, the U.S. could try requests to not recognize specific IP addresses. But the conditions would have to be spelled out so it doesn't become a tool to kill sites the government doesn't like. It would laso impair sites but not kill them as they could always move fairly quickly. A system would have to be in place such that once an entity is banned or whatever, new addresses could be quickly banned.

This is effectively what the US is doing with O:IOS, and the concerns you mention are the concerns I share. We're already doing exactly what you've described above: the US government gets orders from private trade groups, which the government then passes along to the people who run the DNS servers that change "freespeech-alpha.com" into "70.85.249.34," with orders to stop changing "freespeech-alpha.com" into "70.85.249.34." This means all they have to do to work around the DNS block is change their domain name - "freespeech-alpha.tv," say - and they're back.

We could go another route: demand all US ISPs keep a blacklist of IP addresses they won't take traffic from. There are some problems with this: firstly, it's not how the internet works, because sometimes a given address is merely passing along information, and you've got to get into that packet to tell who it's really from and to, which isn't something we want ISPs or the government doing. Secondly, this would only block the offending sites from working in the US: a Spanish dude can still pirate a US film just fine.

We sorted through a huge number of solutions in the Animalball thread, and I think the consensus was that this just won't work without massive changes to international law and the underlying structure of the internet. But I do believe this is going to happen, so clearly I believe we're going to make massive changes to international law and the underlying structure of the internet.

A more promising route agaisnt some sites might be to shut off the flow of money. Through Visa/Mastercard/Paypal, the U.S. controls most electronic transfers of money. This could even affect free sites as most of them operate off of advertising money and if advertisers have trouble paying them, they have trouble paying their ISP bills.

Yeah, but then the dude's just one new PayPal account away from being paid again. We've tried cutting off money to some sites - Wikileaks, mainly - and it works okay if there's massive public support, but I don't see that kind of effort being made over search-torrents.org or whatever. But yeah, this has to be part of the future arsenal, the same way it is for any criminal getting paid for criminal acts through the international "digital money" system. That said, this all presupposes there's not one rogue agency somewhere in the world who is willing to move this money, like, say, Rabobank, or Swiss firms. The current system gives us some control, but [nearly] absolute control is all that'll work.

But the whole thing lacks standards. What can a government do in what cases that is fair and what are the procedures for determining what is actually happening?

This is our problem now. There's a morass of competing legal standards, even just here in the US! The DoJ is doing their O:IOS thing, and the courts are full of P2P civil cases, and sometimes the cops actually arrest a dude and confiscate the physical hardware, and sometimes we politely ask another government...and much of this is without legislative basis or oversight. It's not good.

The internet needs to become ordered, needs to leave off the Wild West mentality, and someday it will. What'll be required is simple legislative frameworks empowering law enforcement to investigate and prosecute intellectual property violations online, and international standards of intellectual property that are at least close enough to "local" implementations as to not be disruptive. This is what we'll have someday, the same way we have that for crimes like murdering people. But it'll be a long while before we iron it all out...hell, we're not even that great about international standards for what happens when someone murders someone.

[Nicephorus]

The supreme court is about is to decide on a pharm data mining case. When you get a prescription filled, it's likely that the pharmacy sells the details of that transaction (doctor, patient gender, address) to a data minign company that uses it to target ads to doctors and other things. Patient info is supposed to be taken out due to hipaa but when and how thoroughly personal info is taken out is unclear.

Unlike financial data, I don't recall seeing any data privacy notices or chances to opt out but maybe I tossed them as one more crappy thing to read.

Some states have passed laws to make data mining like this illegal. Data mining companies say such a law obstructs their freedom of speech. One level of court has said that this doesn't reall count as speech or opinion so censorship doesn't apply.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13190004

I put this in this thread because the outcome will afffect online practices. If all this is happening from a prescription, just imagine all the crap that facebook does, encouraging you to go around tagging what you like and also trying to be so that you're essentially always logged in, even trying to get you to use your facebook id to log in to other places to help them connect the dots. Google has similar practices.

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If all this is happening from a prescription, just imagine all the crap that facebook does, encouraging you to go around tagging what you like and also trying to be so that you're essentially always logged in, even trying to get you to use your facebook id to log in to other places to help them connect the dots. Google has similar practices.

Then translate that all to the smartphone arena, and you have this week's big news, that smartphones [Apple's and Google's, anyway] retain a great deal of personal data, including detailed location information [more detailed in Google's case, more lengthy retention in Apple's]. Worse, this data is stored on the phone in both cases, and then transmitted back to Apple and Google to be stored for...who knows how long?

They were discussing this issue on the radio today, and saying, "Eh, so what? So Google knows where I've been," and in that way you can say the same about Facebook's data retention, above: hey, so what if they're watching what I tag, because I don't have anything to hide from Facebook. But the concern isn't Google and Facebook and Apple, but private individuals who might hack those organizations, or abusive governments. People like to think datasteals like this aren't possible, or likely, or that they only happen to minor companies, or that only minimal information is stolen. Think again.

[Nicephorus]

It's so obvious that Apple is evil that it goes without saying.

The location storage might tie in badly with the fact that Michigan appears to be downloading phone info from drivers without a warrant. You were in a black neighborhood. You must have been buying drugs. With the push for phones to work as credit cards, hacks to steal info could net credit card numbers as well.

I wouldn't doubt a hack for stalking - find a way to load it on a target's phone and then it transmits their location to you every few minutes. As it is, many apps routinely access personal info without it being obvious to the owner. Look for this to make the wider news in a year and a half when it plays a role in a murder.

[3278]

The location storage might tie in badly with the fact that Michigan appears to be downloading phone info from drivers without a warrant.

The state police are saying otherwise, but it troubles me that they're not simply willing to hand over the records for free, or a reasonable cost. I just don't understand.

With the push for phones to work as credit cards, hacks to steal info could net credit card numbers as well.

Yeah, I've been a big fan of NFC for monetary transactions for a long while; I use NFC payment from my wallet now, but from my phone would be even better: I'd stop carrying a wallet, then. But they're really going to need to look hard at security when the banks get tied in, because this is a place where hacks are going to be catastrophically bad.

I wouldn't doubt a hack for stalking - find a way to load it on a target's phone and then it transmits their location to you every few minutes.

I'd estimate that I could do this on any unlocked smartphone - and let's face it, there's no real security on anything shiny and smooth that you touch to unlock - Apple or Android, in about 15 seconds. Most in under 10, particularly if I'm already a contact on their phone, and I'm prepared.

As it is, many apps routinely access personal info without it being obvious to the owner. Look for this to make the wider news in a year and a half when it plays a role in a murder.

The funny thing is, it really ought to be worse than it has been. I'm usually pretty amazed at how restrained and well-behaved the human species is, in general, because really, it could be so much worse. I can think of dozens of nightmare scenarios that are technically completely possible - from waves of smartphone viruses to script kiddies making free phone calls on your minutes - but that aren't widespread.

[3278]

They were discussing this issue on the radio today, and saying, "Eh, so what? So Google knows where I've been," and in that way you can say the same about Facebook's data retention, above: hey, so what if they're watching what I tag, because I don't have anything to hide from Facebook. But the concern isn't Google and Facebook and Apple, but private individuals who might hack those organizations, or abusive governments. People like to think datasteals like this aren't possible, or likely, or that they only happen to minor companies, or that only minimal information is stolen. Think again.

And let's not forget that companies don't necessarily feel they have a vested interest in protecting your data, either. Not only will most of them turn over your data if subpoenaed, but some of them will gleefully sell your data for plain old boring money.

[3278]

Wait, what? [Flash video.] So the Michigan State Police have cell phone extractors...?

It seems like the solution to this would be encrypting your cell phone. Honeycomb has file-level encryption, but does anyone know of any for 2.x?

[Nicephorus]

I'm glad that I'm in medicine (in a data/research capacity) and the rules have been largely worked out for safeguarding patient data - there's even a small industry of oversight for medical research. It would be cool if other industries adopted a simplified version of such rules but I don't see any motivation for them to do so without new laws.

[3278]

How does the security in health care strike you? When I was in IT in a hospital, there were some things done well, and a lot done not well, but this was several years ago and it was a pretty horrific hospital. Are the security standards now for health care pretty good?

[Nicephorus]

I don't work directly in a hospital but in a university handling medical data and the security is pretty strong. We program entry systems to be hard to crack even though we're not a strong target. We think twice about collecting private data and only a few people on a study have access to that part. We've largely gotten around payroll's requirement to collect social security numbers (which they want for every check written to a person) by using gift cards for subject payment. Of course security is largely only as good as passwords.

The hospitals are hit and miss. A coworker recently enrolled in a study she didn't work on. She noticed that the label for the blood tube had her ssn, which was totally unnecessary and just dumb.

I'm also not sure what kind (if any) of tracking or audit trail the local electronic systems have. Apparently, once a doctor or other medical professional has access, they have general access to all parts of all patient records, without breakdown by user roles, patient lists, or anything. I can see some case made for it, but it's open for abuse, from simple stuff like looking up your ex-spouse's records to identity theft. If they are going to allow open access, they need to at least record what records were opened when by who but it's not clear that they do.

[3278]

That's my biggest concern about massive, comprehensive systems like this: that security is only as strong as its weakest link. Now, I'm not personally up in arms about this system, largely because my medical record is extraordinarily shocking in its brevity, but if this were the sort of thing I cared more about, I'd care a whole lot about this.

[Nicephorus]

I don't wanna make a new thread but this article brings up a related point. What if internet entities censor content becausethey think that they're being helpful?

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/05/19/ ... tml?hpt=C2

Google tries to personalize searches . For example, you'll see more hit for stuff near you. I don't even know what else they use. If the poor hit rate of Google ads is anything to go by, the personalization probably sucks beyond identifying your location by IP. It would be nice if you could click this off and get a generic search.

I long for the purity of the original Google. Once people understood how it works, they gamed the system, through keywords and spambots. Then there's ads placed at the top of searches in the list results. These used to be clearly demarcated - now I don't see any dividing line but wonder if the top choices are secretly paid ads and not genuine search results.

This applies to other entities, I just used Google as the biggest example.

[3278]

This is as issue that has two concerns, both of which I've been thinking increasingly of lately. The first is the one they concentrate on, that personalization can be helpful [particularly if you know it's happening], but that it also can result in a sort of hidden tyranny, somewhat like "popularity" does: if 90 out of 100 people like X, then X will be at the top of every list, but that doesn't mean you'd like X, and increasingly, you're not even being told X is an option, and that's bad. That's bad enough with products, but with ideas - and these kinds of filters are increasingly being used that way - it's downright frightening.

The other concern is one I'm less bothered by, although it's quite possible I shouldn't be, and that's how these various companies track your activities so that they can filter your results. These various methods of tracking - which are currently getting a lot of attention, even at governmental levels - are insecure and often violate what we think of as fundamental privacy concerns. I'll be talking more about this next week when I get caught up again - convention the last couple of days - but it's a serious and ongoing concern.

[3278]

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has released its annual report [PDF], and once again Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Bolivia, Brunei, Romania, Spain, and Mexico are on their list of horrible intellectual property offenders, but only four third-world overpopulated half-collapsed nations make that list: China, Russia, India...and Canada. Once again, we bitched out .ca for not passing exactly the IP law we wanted. [As some of you may recall, the Canadians fought back against strong government IP policies, largely because of my efforts to bring attention to the issue on Animalball.]

Canada's law enforcement officers are concerned about being copyright police, just as US law enforcement is: in 2008, the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security wrote a memo to the US Trade Representative saying, "Look, dude, if you increase our responsibilities without increasing our resources, we won't have enough resources to take care of our responsibilities. Delightfully, the Wikileaks cables contain some behind-the-scenes views of the pressure some portions of the US government are putting on Canada [and other nations, all while other portions of the US government are saying, "We don't want that, either!"

Even - well, okay, maybe especially - security expert, Eugene Kaspersky says it's time for us to get law enforcement on the web. [And maybe it would help to stop thinking of the internet as something divorced from the "real world," someplace the police aren't already.] He also points out that cybercrime is the second largest criminal enterprise in the world, which is hilarious when you consider that poor countries can participate in the drug trade in a way they simply can't think to participate in the internet. He makes a call for an internet interpol, and again, local law enforcement [Aussies, in this case] agree that they don't have the resources to do it themselves.

But there's really no other choice. Law enforcement has to be the one to, you know, enforce laws. We can't keep doing this off law suits: that's not what the civil court system is for. So the only rational response is to assign some resources to IP and the internet, enough to do what we think should be done there.

Our current solutions - like, say, asking US DNS providers to redirect domains [which doesn't work, and may well make the web less secure [PDF] - aren't working, even when going so far as to ask Mozilla to dump plug-ins that help get around the redirection. And judges are getting sick of these mass-IP cases [one judge even pointing out [PDF] a previous case in which an IP led to the wrong individual...in a child porn case], which are currently the go-to methods for rightsholders. Not that the recent turning of judges against these methods have stopped them: the largest case of its kind yet targeted 23,000 anonymous defendants last month, all with nothing more than IP addresses.

France has this thing set up where they log your IP, and once they've caught your IP downloading infringing material 3 times, they disconnect you from the internet. Except their system was insecure, and they've had to halt the program as a result. This is something I'd pointed out quite some time ago about massive data storage: unless you can guarantee security, and you can't, then you should avoid it if you can. Something many people don't seem to understand is that all that data people collect has to exist somewhere, and that means it can be stolen, used, altered, or just about anything else you'd care to consider. Sony, anyone? So whenever people start talking about logging IPs or smart electricity meters, I try to remind them that these are highly problematic issues.

Clearly, we need new legislation: the PROTECT IP Act. [I do prefer this disingenuous acronym to COICA, which I always made me think "cloaca."] This wouldn't just redirect IPs, it would...well, force US law onto the internet as much as is possible:

Under the new proposal, search engines, Internet providers, credit card companies, and ad networks would all have cut off access to foreign "rogue sites"—and such court orders would not be limited to the government. Private rightsholders could go to court and target foreign domains, too.

The major governments don't think we have a choice, either: at the recent G8 summit, they talked much as we have about the need to end the Wild West, to find the internet version of barbed wire, to bring civilization to the web. They even released a report that shows you what the direction of the internet is likely to be, as envisioned by the most powerful governments in the world. Is this law? No. But it gives a direction to their thinking, and it's one that leads toward civilization, and away from anarchy.

This is hard to do without Crazy Elf arguing with whatever I say. Previously, he'd show up and be all like, "The man can't keep us down! Information wants to be free!" and that'd give me an opportunity to show how not true that is. I'm not really used to working without a shill.

It's not all "bad" news. Pat Leahy would like the government to get a warrant before it reads any private emails of yours more than six months old. Oh, yeah: today, if the government wants to read your emails from last year, they can, and without any showing of cause. The proposed legislation would also require warrants for real-time cellphone tracking, but not for historical data. My view? Fuck off. You want anything private, you need a warrant, and to show cause. I don't even understand how this is a fucking debate, an issue that needs parsed.

I had only one other thing - sorry, I've been behind by a month or so - but no time to talk about it [same as all these others, I'm afraid], do instead you just get a link: CNET's getting sued for creating internet piracy. Well, that's a little hyperbolic, but you get the point.

Sorry for the speed with which I went through these, and all the Ars links: usually I try to find more alternate sources, and explain things a little more. Too much shit to do! Mea culpa.

[paladin2019]

Okay, how? Police don't police copyright/IP infringement. It's up to the rightsholder to identify and complain about it. Bringing in the police at this point is prudent. As officers of the court, they should be digging through some guy's harddrives and PS3, not the plaintiffs who have a strong motivation to "find" or "discover" incriminating information. There is also no problem with criminalizing infringement and the victims reporting crimes to authorites, again with the authorities doing the investigating of suspect persons and equipment.

But to have the police actively searching for infringement crosses the line.

[3278]

Okay, how? Police don't police copyright/IP infringement. It's up to the rightsholder to identify and complain about it. Bringing in the police at this point is prudent.

That's exactly how. If someone takes my car, I call the police, and they investigate, and if there's wrongdoing, they arrest the perpetrator and hand him off to the judicial branch. I don't sue you for stealing my car [although if I lose money somehow, I certainly can], I call the cops, and they investigate. That's how it should work online, too.

As officers of the court, they should be digging through some guy's harddrives and PS3, not the plaintiffs who have a strong motivation to "find" or "discover" incriminating information.

That's exactly correct. The police should be the ones gathering evidence, not the civil court system.

There is also no problem with criminalizing infringement and the victims reporting crimes to authorites, again with the authorities doing the investigating of suspect persons and equipment.

That's also correct. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I wasn't clear, since all your disagreement thus far looks like agreement.

But to have the police actively searching for infringement crosses the line.

I'm not sure I feel the police necessarily have to do this, but I also don't see how it's significantly different from the police driving down my street watching to see if anyone's stealing my car. Police don't always wait for my call; they also patrol. Should the rule be different offline than online, and if so, why?

[paladin2019]

As officers of the court, they should be digging through some guy's harddrives and PS3, not the plaintiffs who have a strong motivation to "find" or "discover" incriminating information.

That's exactly correct. The police should be the ones gathering evidence, not the civil court system.

I was referring to the cops vs. Sony in a specific case we've seen recently.

But to have the police actively searching for infringement crosses the line.

I'm not sure I feel the police necessarily have to do this, but I also don't see how it's significantly different from the police driving down my street watching to see if anyone's stealing my car. Police don't always wait for my call; they also patrol. Should the rule be different offline than online, and if so, why?

Scale and what would be involved. I find it difficult to see how online copyright infringement could be spotted without essentially an open warrant to search my drives whenever I'm online. And I'm not ready to go there.

[Crazy Elf]

I'm not sure I feel the police necessarily have to do this, but I also don't see how it's significantly different from the police driving down my street watching to see if anyone's stealing my car. Police don't always wait for my call; they also patrol. Should the rule be different offline than online, and if so, why?

Because it's primarily a civil matter and it's not in the best interests of the community to have police trolling the internet for copyright infringements when they can be patrolling for crimes of a more serious nature. Also, legislation in regards to copyright is often federal rather than state based (at least in Australia) giving local police no authority to look for it.

[Nicephorus]

I'm not sure I feel the police necessarily have to do this, but I also don't see how it's significantly different from the police driving down my street watching to see if anyone's stealing my car. Police don't always wait for my call; they also patrol. Should the rule be different offline than online, and if so, why?

Scale and what would be involved. I find it difficult to see how online copyright infringement could be spotted without essentially an open warrant to search my drives whenever I'm online. And I'm not ready to go there.

On any practical, not super invasive scale, I think it would have to be aimed at the big targets, not the downloaders. For example, a federal official might do a few searches of popular books/songs/games and see what illegal downloads pop up in the first few pages. Person A emailing an MP3 to person B isn't going to show up. But large depositories of infringed material would be quick to spot.

The problem now is that there isn't a clear course of action of what to do from there.

[3278]

But to have the police actively searching for infringement crosses the line.

I'm not sure I feel the police necessarily have to do this, but I also don't see how it's significantly different from the police driving down my street watching to see if anyone's stealing my car. Police don't always wait for my call; they also patrol. Should the rule be different offline than online, and if so, why?

Scale and what would be involved. I find it difficult to see how online copyright infringement could be spotted without essentially an open warrant to search my drives whenever I'm online. And I'm not ready to go there.

I'll take this in reverse order, and take "what would be involved" first. I'm definitely on your team when it comes to not having the police randomly searching hard disks or anything of that sort, but there are plenty of non-invasive methods of reducing online piracy.

For instance, focus on the distribution group [TVT, EZTV, Skullptura, Razor, etc]. These guys are on IRC servers whose IP logs can be subpoenaed. They run pseudo-private servers which can be located if you infiltrate the group, which have a physical location which can be known, and which can also be subpoenaed and analyzed. Some of the enforcement efforts that have been made followed this focus, and were highly successful.

Or focus on the downloader, but do so intelligently and surgically. Every bittorrent swarm of pirated material is a list of IPs of people downloading something illegally. Now, the IPs don't get you the person, but they do get you pretty close: after that, it's just investigation. I mean, phone numbers don't equal people, either, but if you use your phone to make a threat on the President, they're not just going to throw up their hands and say, "Well, we can't know which person was calling, just the phone number."

There's a lot of crime online. We enforce - to some degree or another - child pornography legislation online, and put a lot of resources into doing so. [Although many people would agree more could be done.] So crime online can be prosecuted, can be investigated. The limitation is only financial: it's not impossible, it's just that we're not willing to pay for it. From a technical perspective, the vast majority of piracy could be stopped today with known means; there are techniques which can make such investigation difficult, but they're not well-known.

Scope is your other point, and it's a worthwhile one. But we shouldn't establish enforcement based on the number of people breaking a given law: if 50 million people are stabbing their neighbors [way to hyperbolicize, 32!], we don't just throw up our hands and say, "Well, then let's not bother enforcing that law."

I would also argue that the reason the scope is so large is because there have been no repercussions. There were a lot more shootings in the Wild West than today [per capita], because the enforcement wasn't there. If we start enforcing IP law online, I strongly suspect - but could provide no evidence thereof - that the scope would be significantly reduced, just as the scope of murder would radically increase if you stopped investigating and prosecuting it.

[3278]

I'm not sure I feel the police necessarily have to do this, but I also don't see how it's significantly different from the police driving down my street watching to see if anyone's stealing my car. Police don't always wait for my call; they also patrol. Should the rule be different offline than online, and if so, why?

Because it's primarily a civil matter...

Currently piracy is being dealt with as a civil matter [and not criminal], that's absolutely correct. But we can't get a "should" from an "is." Just because currently enforcement is civil doesn't mean it should remain civil, right?

In the US, civil law and criminal law are very different. For example, a civil trial has a burden of proof system which can shift to the defendant. Worse, civil decisions are based on "more than 50 percent" certainty, and not on "reasonable doubt." Civil punishments can never include imprisonment, only monetary damages, which in these cases are often horribly distorted, and which often cannot be collected from individuals at any rate, because they simply don't possess the assets to pay. In addition, the burden of investigation in civil cases is entirely on the plaintiff, meaning that in order to combat piracy, you'd really need to be allowing Sony access to your hard drive all the time.

No, the government and its criminal courts exist for a reason, and I believe they should be leveraged in this case. I mean, really, can anyone think of another example of criminal activity on this scale which carries so little threat of criminal prosecution?

...and it's not in the best interests of the community to have police trolling the internet for copyright infringements when they can be patrolling for crimes of a more serious nature.

This is always true, I suppose. We could get rid of all the traffic cops trolling for speeders so that they could patrol for crimes of a more serious nature. What I would prefer, though, would be to assess what level of criminal activity we're willing to tolerate, and expend the resources required to maintain that level of criminal activity. Violent crime is way down, and thus throwing more police at violent crimes is likely to have a minor effect on their rate, while piracy is way up, and thus throwing more than the almost zero police we have on it could have a major effect.

It's interesting to note, also, that many traffic stops for minor crimes lead to more major convictions. Online police wouldn't just be looking for piracy, they'd also be looking for illegal drug rings, child pornography, and so on. Certainly, we'd want to calibrate their assignments based on the frequency and severity of the crimes - is 1 murder worth 4 assaults is worth 10 grand thefts? - but the idea that we shouldn't enforce these laws at all because more serious crimes are occurring is without merit.

Also, legislation in regards to copyright is often federal rather than state based (at least in Australia) giving local police no authority to look for it.

Again, one cannot get a "should be" from an "is." If this was something that needed to be changed, then it would need to be changed!

That said, in the US we have federal law enforcement officers who would have jurisdiction over federal crimes. Perhaps that's something Australia could look into?

[Crazy Elf]

Currently piracy is being dealt with as a civil matter [and not criminal], that's absolutely correct. But we can't get a "should" from an "is." Just because currently enforcement is civil doesn't mean it should remain civil, right?

Actually that's exactly why it should remain civil. Who is seriously going to benefit from this sort of thing being made criminal other than massive corporations that can now get the police to do their dirty work for them? It would be a huge drain on police resources and waste of their time.

I mean, really, can anyone think of another example of criminal activity on this scale which carries so little threat of criminal prosecution?

Use drug of dependence. At least in this country.

We could get rid of all the traffic cops trolling for speeders so that they could patrol for crimes of a more serious nature.

Speeding kills people. Often. The U.S. road tolls are fucking atrocious. I don't have up to date statistics on it but a rate of 12.75 per 100,000 people in 2003 in Michigan shouldn't fill you with a sense of well being on the road. Around 1998 for the whole of Australia is was 9.4 or so, and that was a national outrage. It's around 6.9 now and we're still flooded with horrifying ads to make sure it stays down.

To put things in perspective, Texas has about the same population as Australia, and it's road toll is over double ours. You Americans need more police pulling over speeders, not fewer.

So, in response to your suggestion, there are much better places for police to go.

Again, one cannot get a "should be" from an "is." If this was something that needed to be changed, then it would need to be changed!

Way more important places to start first and foremost. You're working from a broken system to begin with that has an emphasis on waste and keeping lawyers and judges in court as long as possible in order to make as much money as possible. There have been probate cases that have lasted in excess of 80 years just so everyone can keep riding the gravy train. Civil cases could be heard and decided on in a day rather than taking years. Works that way under the Inquisitorial system.

That said, in the US we have federal law enforcement officers who would have jurisdiction over federal crimes. Perhaps that's something Australia could look into?

We've got that. They work on interstate crimes such as murder, people trafficking and terrorism, that sort of thing. They also work on policing of the territories and protection of political figures, as well as overseas deployments for policing countries that go to shit, like the Solomon Islands, East Timor and that sort of thing.

In comparison to all that stuff policing copyright law is a bit like policing piss in bathwater.

[3278]

Currently piracy is being dealt with as a civil matter [and not criminal], that's absolutely correct. But we can't get a "should" from an "is." Just because currently enforcement is civil doesn't mean it should remain civil, right?

Actually that's exactly why it should remain civil. Who is seriously going to benefit from this sort of thing being made criminal other than massive corporations that can now get the police to do their dirty work for them? It would be a huge drain on police resources and waste of their time.

The people who would largely benefit would be rightsholders [who are not always "massive corporations," and enforcement of the laws protecting them isn't "dirty work," it's "their purpose for existing"] as well as to the guilty parties, who are currently in a legal limbo which can result in massive civil penalties, or not, at the whim of the judiciary, who is the other party who would benefit from making the issue a criminal rather than civil one, because currently the courts are being beat the hell out of with these cases, without precedent or legal standing. It's a wreck.

Now, once you've benefited "holders of intellectual property" and "people who steal intellectual property" and "the federal court system," you're coming perilously close to providing benefits for the entire nation. I know it's popular to hate rightsholders because they often have more money than we do, but as it turns out, some "massive corporations" provide employment for large numbers of persons.

We could get rid of all the traffic cops trolling for speeders so that they could patrol for crimes of a more serious nature.

Speeding kills people. Often.

Compared to the rates of speeding, no, but if "speeding" doesn't work for you in this case, feel free to substitute any relatively minor crime for which enforcement is often obtained by patrol: petty theft, jaywalking, vandalism. Surely you agree, then, that we shouldn't police offline, because after all vandalism isn't that serious.

Again, one cannot get a "should be" from an "is." If this was something that needed to be changed, then it would need to be changed!

Way more important places to start first and foremost.

Sure, I don't disagree with that. The system of government in this country and in every other country on Earth is profoundly broken, and efforts superior to enforcing intellectual property rights online could be made. While there are people dying in Darfour, it's hard to talk about illegally downloading music. I'm not saying this change is priority one, only that it should be made. I'm not saying it should be immediate, only that it should happen.

But: every time a cop pulls someone over for a busted taillight, he could be solving a murder. Does that mean we stop policing taillights? Why?

That said, in the US we have federal law enforcement officers who would have jurisdiction over federal crimes. Perhaps that's something Australia could look into?

We've got that.

Yeah, I was being a sarcastic dick. Obviously you have federal law enforcement officers, which is why your argument that local police have no authority over these cases is so weak. Now, if your point is, "But every single more important problem hasn't been solved yet, so we can't enforce intellectual property!" then I definitely take your point. But I don't think this has to be an either/or situation. As I said before, "What I would prefer, though, would be to assess what level of criminal activity we're willing to tolerate, and expend the resources required to maintain that level of criminal activity. Violent crime is way down, and thus throwing more police at violent crimes is likely to have a minor effect on their rate, while piracy is way up, and thus throwing more than the almost zero police we have on it could have a major effect."

Let's also not disregard the impact piracy does have. I know no one dies because I downloaded a Midnight Oil CD, but the global cost of intellectual property crime on the internet is massive; while often radically overstated, it's still an enormous sum, and while you dismiss that as "corporate profits," it turns out that corporations sometimes spend some of their profits paying employees, which they then often use to drive economies and feed children. Downloading an MP3 isn't murder, absolutely not, but the overall effect of global online intellectual property crime is massive, and not limited only to persons and agencies you don't like.

[Crazy Elf]

The people who would largely benefit would be rightsholders [who are not always "massive corporations," and enforcement of the laws protecting them isn't "dirty work," it's "their purpose for existing"] as well as to the guilty parties, who are currently in a legal limbo which can result in massive civil penalties, or not, at the whim of the judiciary, who is the other party who would benefit from making the issue a criminal rather than civil one, because currently the courts are being beat the hell out of with these cases, without precedent or legal standing. It's a wreck.

That's the legal system, dude. The more a case gets put before the courts the more legal precedent is established. The area you're talking about is relatively new, and as such it remains a complicated issue until such time as there is enough precedent in place to streamline things. There are cut and dry issues such as drink driving that are only just becoming streamlined now as a result of decades of legal challenges.

Downloading shit off of the internet hasn't been happening that long and there isn't much in place in the court system as a result. Companies are much better off looking at other ways to get around people stealing their shit, like lots of computer game designers have been doing for years. Those sorts of solutions actually work a good deal better than legal action.

I know it's popular to hate rightsholders because they often have more money than we do, but as it turns out, some "massive corporations" provide employment for large numbers of persons.

And they're forced to employ more people to deal with issues like these, so it's a win for everybody. Rich people get fucked and poorer people get jobs.

Compared to the rates of speeding, no, but if "speeding" doesn't work for you in this case, feel free to substitute any relatively minor crime for which enforcement is often obtained by patrol: petty theft, jaywalking, vandalism. Surely you agree, then, that we shouldn't police offline, because after all vandalism isn't that serious.

Rhetoric and moving the goal posts.

Sure, I don't disagree with that. The system of government in this country and in every other country on Earth is profoundly broken, and efforts superior to enforcing intellectual property rights online could be made. While there are people dying in Darfour, it's hard to talk about illegally downloading music. I'm not saying this change is priority one, only that it should be made. I'm not saying it should be immediate, only that it should happen.

But: every time a cop pulls someone over for a busted taillight, he could be solving a murder. Does that mean we stop policing taillights? Why?

1) Pulling someone over for a busted tail light isn't such a bad thing to do. How often do you check your tail lights? Often people that are told they have a tail light out had no idea, and thus it's not a bad public service.

2) If someone ends up with two tail lights out they may end up with no break lights, which can result in an accident. Probably worth being proactive about that sort of thing.

3) As you said earlier routine traffic stops can result in larger finds, and a broken tail light is as good an excuse as any. May turn out a murder hasn't been diligent in the maintenance of their vehicle.

4) Visible police presence serves as a reminder to the community that police are out and doing their job. This can result in a reduction of serious crime as a result.

5) It's a break from the police listening to the illegally downloaded music that they'd otherwise be listening to in their patrol vehicle.

Yeah, I was being a sarcastic dick. Obviously you have federal law enforcement officers, which is why your argument that local police have no authority over these cases is so weak.

Not really. Federal police can't go kicking down someone's front door without state police involvement, and state police aren't about to go, "Holy shit! They're burning Disney movies?! WE HAVE TO STOP THIS!"

As I said before, "What I would prefer, though, would be to assess what level of criminal activity we're willing to tolerate, and expend the resources required to maintain that level of criminal activity. Violent crime is way down, and thus throwing more police at violent crimes is likely to have a minor effect on their rate, while piracy is way up, and thus throwing more than the almost zero police we have on it could have a major effect."

I'm pretty sure that society as a whole is willing to tolerate a shitload of piracy.

[3278]

The people who would largely benefit would be rightsholders [who are not always "massive corporations," and enforcement of the laws protecting them isn't "dirty work," it's "their purpose for existing"] as well as to the guilty parties, who are currently in a legal limbo which can result in massive civil penalties, or not, at the whim of the judiciary, who is the other party who would benefit from making the issue a criminal rather than civil one, because currently the courts are being beat the hell out of with these cases, without precedent or legal standing. It's a wreck.

That's the legal system, dude. The more a case gets put before the courts the more legal precedent is established.

That's definitely true, and on the issue of precedent, more time would help fix that problem if we stayed with the civil court solution, but it's not going to fix any of the other problems. Besides, precedent isn't how we make laws: we make laws with the legislature, enforce them with the executive, and judge the cases with the judiciary. What's been asked, then, is for the judiciary to essentially make laws, determining financial penalties and so on.

It'd be like us deciding stealing was no longer going to be enforced criminally, you just sued the guy who stole stuff from you. That's not the legal system, dude! Let's also remember that we're not talking about megacorporations, we're talking about rightsholders, which aren't always the rich assholes you hate. Sometimes they're, you know, one guy. Another nice thing about dealing with this in a criminal fashion is that lawyers cost a lot of money. If you want to sue 10,000 people for stealing your shit, it's going to cost you, probably a lot more than you have if you're just a single person, or a small record label, or a comic company, or whatever. It is simply and completely unworkable to put the burden on the rightsholder: this is what police are for.

Companies are much better off looking at other ways to get around people stealing their shit, like lots of computer game designers have been doing for years. Those sorts of solutions actually work a good deal better than legal action.

You really think that DRM that just kind of fucks with pirates is "a good deal better than legal action? Really? You crack the game, you remove the DRM, and Batman isn't a gimp anymore. Compared to what you have to do to remove the police officer from your doorstep, that seems pretty simple!

And how is this going to work with movies, or television, or music?

Compared to the rates of speeding, no, but if "speeding" doesn't work for you in this case, feel free to substitute any relatively minor crime for which enforcement is often obtained by patrol: petty theft, jaywalking, vandalism. Surely you agree, then, that we shouldn't police offline, because after all vandalism isn't that serious.

Rhetoric and moving the goal posts.

No, I'm sorry, but the goalposts remain exactly where they are. My point doesn't rely on the example, so if you don't like the example, I invite you to substitute your own.

As for the charge of rhetoric [again, seriously, that's not the word you're looking for!], again, that's hardly so. I'm applying your logic to other situations to show you how your logic is flawed.

Kindly address the point, or just let it go. This "rhetoric" stuff just makes everyone make fun of you.

But: every time a cop pulls someone over for a busted taillight, he could be solving a murder. Does that mean we stop policing taillights? Why?

1) Pulling someone over for a busted tail light isn't such a bad thing to do. How often do you check your tail lights? Often people that are told they have a tail light out had no idea, and thus it's not a bad public service.

Yeah, but it's still not as severe as murder, so by your stated logic, we must stop policing taillights, because every second that cop is writing that ticket, he could be doing something more important. No one's saying taillights aren't important, but surely you're not saying they're more important than murder!

3) As you said earlier routine traffic stops can result in larger finds, and a broken tail light is as good an excuse as any. May turn out a murder hasn't been diligent in the maintenance of their vehicle.

4) Visible police presence serves as a reminder to the community that police are out and doing their job. This can result in a reduction of serious crime as a result.

...you totally don't get how this undermines your point, do you?

Federal police can't go kicking down someone's front door without state police involvement, and state police aren't about to go, "Holy shit! They're burning Disney movies?! WE HAVE TO STOP THIS!"

Then it sounds to me like you have an enforcement problem. If the federal officers aren't allowed to serve warrants or process or enforce crimes without the state police, and the state police aren't willing to follow the law, then it sounds to me like your country is completely fucked up.

I'm pretty sure that society as a whole is willing to tolerate a shitload of piracy.

You may well be right! It's just like more spending on violent crime: we could do so, but when people look at cost/benefit, some people say, "Look, it's not worth 18 million dollars for a 0.5 percent reduction in violent crime. Instead, let's spend that 18 million where it can do more good." And that's a perfectly reasonable argument to make, when made reasonably. We may decide that the cost of enforcing intellectual property rights online is greater than the benefit we would gain. If that's the case, we should certainly look elsewhere for solutions.

But most individuals won't look at the situation rationally. They'll rail against the man, or complain about fat cats, or say all pirates are assholes who should be shot in the face, but they won't make a rational, informed cost/benefit analysis of the situation. So you may well be right that society simply isn't willing to pay the cost, no matter the benefit. That doesn't mean the benefit wouldn't be worth the cost, only that people are often short-sighted and selfish, or unfortunately ignorant, or hugely biased for or against whatever. And that's the joy of democracy.

[edit: Let me say this, though, about deciding we don't want to prosecute these crimes. If that's so, we need to make the decision, and change the laws. A good system of laws works like a good RPG system: you need to be able to know [at least roughly] what to expect when a given action is taken. Selective civil cases, as I've mentioned, result in people not understanding the ramifications of an action. Reduction in criminal activity is unlikely to occur under such a circumstance, whereas widespread criminal enforcement, obviously, will be significantly more successful. If that's the path we choose to take, of course.]

[Crazy Elf]

Besides, precedent isn't how we make laws...

Actually that's exactly how we make laws, historically speaking. That's the entire foundation of the legal system.

It'd be like us deciding stealing was no longer going to be enforced criminally, you just sued the guy who stole stuff from you.

You do realise that copyright violation isn't stealing, right? Stealing involves taking something from someone with the intent to permanently deprive them of that thing. No such thing occurs when it comes to copyright violation, instead someone copies something that someone did in order to either distribute it, for profit or otherwise. The amount of profit that's actually missed out on is highly debatable and hence it's a civil matter and best dealt with in that way. Proposing criminal action for this sort of thing will clog up the criminal system with cases of people downloading music in lieu of them having done something serious and be a complete waste of police time. It'll also reduce the amount of people willing to help police, because just about everyone downloads music illegally.

It's a bad idea.

Let's also remember that we're not talking about megacorporations, we're talking about rightsholders, which aren't always the rich assholes you hate. Sometimes they're, you know, one guy.

And if you read the follow on to that the owner of the website removed most of the content that they were lifting from the other person after they was sent an email about it. There were problems with that, too, but it's probably a lot quicker than legal process would have been. You do realise that police don't teleport to places where crimes take place, right? Particularly when they involve complicated warrants involving the seizure and investigation of computers, which something like this inevitably would have to involve?

Another nice thing about dealing with this in a criminal fashion is that lawyers cost a lot of money. If you want to sue 10,000 people for stealing your shit, it's going to cost you, probably a lot more than you have if you're just a single person, or a small record label, or a comic company, or whatever. It is simply and completely unworkable to put the burden on the rightsholder: this is what police are for.

No, police are for dealing with criminal matters, these are civil ones. Solicitors are for civil matters. Some work for a percentage based on what you win in court, so there are always options when it comes to this sort of thing. You'd want to have a pretty good case first in order for them to take it on, though. Also, you can have costs awarded in court, too, if you win.

You really think that DRM that just kind of fucks with pirates is "a good deal better than legal action?

Yep. Discourages the shit out of me when I'm sourcing pirated stuff. Sure, it won't stop the hard core pirates and the like, but you never will stop them. It's about limiting things, and game companies are doing a good job of limiting piracy with moves like this. Particularly the moves that are subtle and only show up after hours of game play, like the Earthbound example.

Put that in EVERY game and eventually people will say, "Fuck it, I'll just buy it."

And how is this going to work with movies, or television, or music?

Not sure, but someone will work it out.

Then it sounds to me like you have an enforcement problem. If the federal officers aren't allowed to serve warrants or process or enforce crimes without the state police, and the state police aren't willing to follow the law, then it sounds to me like your country is completely fucked up.

Yeah, sounds to me like you don't know what you're talking about.

As for the rest of it, I don't think society gives a flying fuck about copyright protection and would probably object to a sizeable portion of police resources being directed towards combating it.

[3278]

Besides, precedent isn't how we make laws...

Actually that's exactly how we make laws, historically speaking. That's the entire foundation of the legal system.

It's actually not, and I'm not sure what gives you that impression. Precedent doesn't create law, it clarifies how laws apply to given specific situations; precedent is then used to apply similar decisions to similar cases. The judiciary clarifies the application of law, it doesn't "make laws." Maybe things are very different in Australia, I don't know, but here in America, the legislature creates law, the executive enforces it, and the judiciary rules on specific cases. It is most certainly not up to the civil courts to deal with criminal actions.

It'd be like us deciding stealing was no longer going to be enforced criminally, you just sued the guy who stole stuff from you.

You do realise that copyright violation isn't stealing, right? Stealing involves taking something from someone with the intent to permanently deprive them of that thing.

Yep. And that's why copyright violation is stealing. You're not permanently depriving someone of the song or the movie, though: it's not like stealing a CD or a DVD. You're depriving them of the profit they would have received if you had purchased the song or movie. Now, you're certainly right that there's not a 1:1 equivalence to, say, shoplifting, in which a physical item and its profits are taken, but that doesn't mean no permanent deprivation of a thing takes place. The counter-argument to that is that maybe you wouldn't have purchased it anyway, but since that hypothetical cannot be proven, it cannot be enshrined in law.

Are IP crimes exactly like property crimes? Certainly not, or they'd be property crimes. But they're still, both literally and figuratively, crimes of theft.

The amount of profit that's actually missed out on is highly debatable and hence it's a civil matter and best dealt with in that way.

Ah, no. The civil courts would determine loss, yes, and then monetary damages, but the criminal courts still determine and apply the criminal penalty. If you burn down my house - and you might - it'd be "highly debatable" what my total monetary loss was, and so your monetary damages would be decided in a civil suit, but that would all happen while you're in jail for the criminal act of arson.

It'll also reduce the amount of people willing to help police, because just about everyone downloads music illegally.

Wow. "Just about everyone?" In that case, I would expect enforcement would become critical, as our entire foundation for intellectual property would have collapsed. The fact that is hasn't shows that IP crimes aren't as widespread as you seem to think.

Besides, are we really going to base laws on, "Well, but, everyone does it, so no one will help police if we enforce it, so let's not bother?" That's seems unworkable, and fucktarded.

Let's also remember that we're not talking about megacorporations, we're talking about rightsholders, which aren't always the rich assholes you hate. Sometimes they're, you know, one guy.

And if you read the follow on to that the owner of the website removed most of the content that they were lifting from the other person after they was sent an email about it.

You are 100 percent completely incorrect. Maybe you should learn about what you're talking about before you say things that are clearly and simply factually incorrect. Seriously, dude, you don't know anything about any of what we're talking about. You don't understand the civil court system, or precedent, or IP law, and you can't even get the facts straight about one simple example that I linked you to! What are you even doing?

No, police are for dealing with criminal matters, these are civil ones.

Seriously, are you a fucking dolt? Did your mother put her cigarettes out on your jelly forehead when you were a baby? Intellectual property crimes are criminal matters. You know why? Because they're enshrined in the criminal code. You may think IP crimes shouldn't be criminal matters, but they are criminal matters. No one is suggesting we need to make these things crimes, because they already are. What I'm suggesting is that we could save everyone a world of trouble if we would prosecute them as criminal matters.

You really think that DRM that just kind of fucks with pirates is "a good deal better than legal action?

Yep. Discourages the shit out of me when I'm sourcing pirated stuff. Sure, it won't stop the hard core pirates and the like, but you never will stop them.

No, it won't even stop casual pirates. When you download the game, you download the crack, and that DRM goes "poof." The techniques you're discussing do not significantly impact piracy, because the very distributions people receive already contain the solution to the problem.

How DRM like this stops you is a source of great mystery for me. If you run into a problem like this in the future, really, you should just ask me about it, because there's no reason for gimping DRM to be a consideration. Or, hey, buy the stuff, as you say.

And how is this going to work with movies, or television, or music?

Not sure, but someone will work it out.

That should be the new "Rhetoric!"

CE: "How will the police enforce these laws without crippling financial costs?"
32: "Not sure, but someone will work it out!"

As for the rest of it, I don't think society gives a flying fuck about copyright protection and would probably object to a sizeable portion of police resources being directed towards combating it.

This goes back to the conversation we had on Animalball, and I've got to say: I have posted probably hundreds of links showing increased enforcement of intellectual property laws in Australia, Canada, the United States, France, Spain, England, and other nations. The trend is certainly toward increased enforcement, and there's been very little public outcry. In fact, it's so rare that those are the sorts of things I put under the heading, "It's not all bad news for pirates..." But there's definitely been some! Canada, for instance, changed their tune pretty abruptly when citizens spoke out [and with a delightful lack of violence, I might add, just to rub your nose in some more of your shit], and various changes to ACTA and COICA and TEMPLEMOUNT [or whatever the new one is called] have been effected by citizen displeasure, but overall, I think you're going to find the Wild West is coming to an end, and I don't believe society will particularly give a shit.

Chaos can stay chaos until there's money to be made from order. The Wild West lasted until there was too much to lose, and it might have lasted much longer if it weren't for lots of laws, lots of legal decisions, and a few technological advancements [like barbed wire]. When the internet was college kids, researchers, and a few power users, we could afford to be unregulated, but now that Amazon and Apple and Google and Microsoft are challenging companies like BP, Exxon, and Shell, civilization is slowly going to creep outward.

Who is right? Only time will tell: in 10 years, or 20, or 50, we should certainly revisit this conversation and see which future has come to pass, but [spoiler]it's pretty clearly the guy who isn't talking completely out of his ass once again[/spoiler].

[Jeff Hauze]

So...me, then?

[3278]

Ah, no. Obviously I'm talking about SDQ. I was using "guy" in the Rikka Tien sense: "Jesus shit, guy!" and "Hey, guy, you no fight lion with tiger!"

[Crazy Elf]

Besides, precedent isn't how we make laws...

Actually that's exactly how we make laws, historically speaking. That's the entire foundation of the legal system.

It's actually not, and I'm not sure what gives you that impression.

Um, the entire concept of Common Law. You really don't know what you're talking about, do you?

Yep. And that's why copyright violation is stealing. You're not permanently depriving someone of the song or the movie, though: it's not like stealing a CD or a DVD. You're depriving them of the profit they would have received if you had purchased the song or movie.

Which is what makes it a civil matter. Look at the legal definition of theft:

The unauthorized taking and removal of the Personal Property of another by an individual who intends to permanently deprive the owner of it; a crime against the right of possession.

It's not theft. It's a civil matter. I really don't think you know what you're talking about.

This goes back to the conversation we had on Animalball, and I've got to say: I have posted probably hundreds of links showing increased enforcement of intellectual property laws in Australia, Canada, the United States, France, Spain, England, and other nations.

Wow, you've found hundreds of examples of enforcement on this sort of thing, which occurs thousands if not millions of times every day. You know I can find you hundreds of examples of other crimes being enforced across the world every day, yet you find a few examples of these issues being enforced here and there and you say it's a massive global trend.

It's not.

[SumDumQuim]

You know I could be a guy. This is the interwebs... it has been known to happen....

I have not talked out my ass in months though. In fact I have not talked much of all, so serious here and shit.

I miss you guys though, I can't say "Oh you fucking racist!" in my new forum, they would never understand. I have wanted to post it 10 times, but sadly I can't. I love you guys for that. Fuckers.

Also, whatever you are talking about? Elf is wrong. I don't have to read all that bullshit to tell you that for a fact, and I am not taking sides. I might have to read if he were arguing with Bone granted, I had to put that caveat out there to retain my street cred.

[3278]

Actually that's exactly how we make laws, historically speaking. That's the entire foundation of the legal system.

It's actually not, and I'm not sure what gives you that impression.

Um, the entire concept of Common Law. You really don't know what you're talking about, do you?

Oh, another swing and a miss for the Aussie! Again, common law doesn't make law, it clarifies law. From your link: "In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, an idealized common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts." That's quite different, you'll note, from, say, statutory or constitutional law.

Now, you could make an argument that, "Common law (also known as case law or precedent), is law developed by judges through decisions of courts," means that laws are created by that "development," but again, law doesn't originate in the courts: it's clarified in courts, resulting in development, or clarification, of the existing statutory laws.

Would you like to try batting again? I enjoy nothing more than pitching. Hey, wait a minute...

Yep. And that's why copyright violation is stealing. You're not permanently depriving someone of the song or the movie, though: it's not like stealing a CD or a DVD. You're depriving them of the profit they would have received if you had purchased the song or movie.

Which is what makes it a civil matter. Look at the legal definition of theft:

The unauthorized taking and removal of the Personal Property of another by an individual who intends to permanently deprive the owner of it; a crime against the right of possession.

Yep. That exactly describes the removal of the potential profits resulting from intellectual property violations. Not sure what you're getting at, since it seems like you're pulling evidence that supports my position and not yours; don't get me wrong, I don't mind softball, but I thought we were playing...damn it, I can't manage to turn this sports metaphor into an innuendo!

Anyway, even if it's not "theft," that doesn't somehow make it a civil matter. Murder isn't theft, but it's still a criminal matter, because the statutory law forbids it. Arson isn't theft, but it's still a criminal matter, because the statutory law forbids it. Intellectual property crimes could arguably be considered not "theft" in the normal "physical property" sense, and would still be criminal acts, because the statutory law forbids it.

Wow, you've found hundreds of examples of enforcement on this sort of thing, which occurs thousands if not millions of times every day. You know I can find you hundreds of examples of other crimes being enforced across the world every day, yet you find a few examples of these issues being enforced here and there and you say it's a massive global trend.

It's a hard choice between the guy who has actually provided massive support for his position, and someone who simply states that they could, if they chose to. It's a hard choice between someone who pretty clearly spends a pretty large portion of his time researching these issues, and someone who very clearly doesn't.

Look, I'm no expert. If you were a network news producer looking for an authority to put on screen, you sure as hell wouldn't call me! I'm nobody in this field, just a guy who spends an hour or two a day reading about it. But...come on, Elf. You're obviously aware that you know about a tenth as much as I do about this issue. I mean, you don't spend any of your day reading about it, and it shows. And that's fine! There's no sign in the sky saying, "Crazy Elf must know a lot about intellectual property enforcement on the internet." It's okay that you know less about this than I do: I'm sure there are plenty of fields in which you're vastly better educated than I am! But, really, man: this isn't one of them, and we all know it. And I don't mind fielding your fly balls - and your balls are fly; there, managed that one! - but you gotta know you're foul.

[Crazy Elf]

Oh, another swing and a miss for the Aussie!

No, Common Law is judge made law. Perhaps the wikipedia page doesn't fully expand upon the point, but that's certainly what it is. It's the entire foundation of the legal system.

Yep. That exactly describes the removal of the potential profits resulting from intellectual property violations.

I can't continue to have this conversation with you if you're retarded.

Intellectual property crimes could arguably be considered not "theft" in the normal "physical property" sense, and would still be criminal acts, because the statutory law forbids it.

Federal laws that won't be enforced at a state level and therefore will not be enforced at all.

Look, I'm no expert.

True.

[3278]

So you've just given up, then. You admit your only point supported by evidence isn't supported by the evidence you've provided, and your best zinger is an out-of-context quote that applies more to you then me, so I've gotta figure that you've just realized that you're not only not very good at this "logic" thing, but that you're actually, you know, wrong. That sucks for you.

Where's the humor, man? If you can't bring the evidence, if you can't bring the logic, at least you could bring some Crazy Elf! Come on, use a racial slur or joke about rape or something, mate! My role in these matters - boring old logic-box prattling on and on about shit no one else could possibly care about - is pretty clear, but I'm kicking your ass and cracking wise, and the best you can do is call me "retarded?" Come on, I busted out sports/sex double entendre, and you're linking to Wikipedia pages that don't even agree with your position?

You need to bring some game, dog. Step it up. You're not going to win on logic, we know that: you're both wrong and not that bright, plus you're just not familiar with the topic. But I wouldn't get into a firefight with Ray, or a fist fight with Bone: if I had to fight those guys I wouldn't even do it from the same state. I wouldn't do it from the same fucking planet. If I could arrange to be in another universe it'd still be too fucking close. You don't fight someone on their strength, particularly if it's your weakness! So bust out your A game, sport! Don't tell me this is the best that's left in the Elf!

There is an alternative, but I hesitate to suggest it. It's a way fraught with peril, which requires long, arduous hours of painstaking effort and personal betterment, but at least you stand a better chance, since it seems like you can't even manage funny anymore. What you could do - damn, I can't believe I'm suggesting this - what you could do, is actually take some time to learn what the fuck you're talking about before you make a complete ass out of yourself for the hundredth time.

This isn't a good feeling for me. Kicking a dog makes me feel dirty, but kicking a crippled comatose puppy like you makes me feel...uh, like a raped schoolgirl on her way to get an abortion? I don't know, did I do that right? I don't think I belong in your world any more than you do in mine.

Bring your real game next time, champ. Start by being educated, being right, being rational. Or just stick with being funny. You still do that sometimes, don't you?