Bill’s Mind

June 9th, 2007

The article at News.com.com.com.com :P

You’ve got to love California and their Hollywood legal system. A federal judge has ordered TorrentSpy.com to start tracking its visitors’ habits, as part of the discovery process in their suit against the MPAA.

It just keeps getting better and better (and by that I mean WORSE). You see, the MPAA doesn’t even have any proof of copyright infringement. They’re asking the defendant to provide self-incriminating evidence, which is a direct violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This sets one ugly precedent. It’s yet another gross distortion of the law to favor rich corrupt organizations. In a sane court, trying to sue someone over made-up claims with serious consequences and without evidence is one of the best ways to get your case dismissed with prejudice. If they can’t make a ruling by just looking at the plentiful information on the TorrentSpy site, then really they have no business looking at their confidential logs. This creates a harassment scenario where any entity can sue anyone with made-up accusations, waste the defendant’s time, tarnish their image and in the end, they just pay the court fees and say “oh well, no proof, we’ll catch you next time” then move on to the next victim. Just like penis enlargement spam, eventually they find a sucker.

June 9th, 2007

Who is Bill ? At one point I was defined as “an angry coagulate of superior intellect and vast technoculture”.
Well yes, I am those things. More importantly, I’m a guy who has hardly ever cared for tradition. One time-honored tradition of the human race is to work until you’re very old and/or dead. Give 40 years to a company, build up a retirement fund, and hope to have enough life in you to enjoy it. I consider that mentality obsolete in the 21st century… Read the rest of this entry »

June 9th, 2007

It’s been quiet on my blog this week, mainly because I’ve been overwhelmed with other things. New York was one thing, server problems were another. Just a few days ago I was bitching about binary packages on Linux, sure enough I ran into a massive problem while installing some little thing, whose dependencies clobbered some of my custom configured software. GRR!
On to the Quickies… Read the rest of this entry »