21–30 of 167 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It made me wonder if there were any theonion articles on hn. It turns out, there were a couple of them that even received comments and upvotes, but not much for the last 3 years. My guess is that submissions from theonion are auto-banned. [1] http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=the...
That is kinda sad, actually. Many articles on The Onion are more intellectually stimulating than stuff on HN front page.
How do these NDAs work? Can they really demand that you pay them money and not tell anyone? Seems pretty creepy.
The age of criminal responsibility in Finland is 15. So I'm at a loss at what is going to happen to this 9 year old girl. Certainly downloading music without paying for it is wrong. But there are much better ways of dealing with this than sending in the police. And justice needs to be public. (With a few rare exceptions). Forcing people to sign NDAs is creepy and weird. I'd be interested to know what would have happe…
IANAL but I expect they will pin it on the father on the basis that he paid for internet access and therefore responsible.
I really don't like the sensationalist "pull at the heart strings", vibe in this title. I it feels a bit misleading and over-dramatized just to cause controversy. I get what they're trying to say, I but there has to be a better way to say it.
At least, they had me laughing out loud.
The age of criminal responsibility in Finland is 15. So I'm at a loss at what is going to happen to this 9 year old girl. Certainly downloading music without paying for it is wrong. But there are much better ways of dealing with this than sending in the police. And justice needs to be public. (With a few rare exceptions). Forcing people to sign NDAs is creepy and weird. I'd be interested to know what would have happe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly?
Certainly. Perhaps I needed a bit more clarification: "Downloading music that should be paid for, and not paying for it, is wrong if you keep that music for longer than you need to decide whether to buy it or not is wrong. Most people would make an exception for format shifting. EG you own a CD and download a pirate MP3. In theory this needs to be paid for (and is included in law in some areas) but in practice it's n…
I never understood how people came up with the caveat about trying before you buy. To me, it always seems to make a mockery of the whole thing even more. DOwnload an album. Listen for a couple of days. Go to the record store. Buy a CD. Throw it in the trash. Keep listening on your ipod guilt free, but still illegally.
Anyway, my point is that a lot of people don't agree that downloading music without paying for it is wrong. You could argue the point but I you can't just dismiss it with a "we can all agree that.."
How do these NDAs work? Can they really demand that you pay them money and not tell anyone? Seems pretty creepy.
You always have the right to refuse though and have the courts sort it out, should they choose to pursue a case.
So the choice is simply: Pay X up front and promise not to tell anyone, then be left alone OR Don't pay, attempt to fight it in court (using lawyers/solicitors/barristers) and absorbing the cost of this upfront yourself, regardless of the outcome.
The age of criminal responsibility in Finland is 15. So I'm at a loss at what is going to happen to this 9 year old girl. Certainly downloading music without paying for it is wrong. But there are much better ways of dealing with this than sending in the police. And justice needs to be public. (With a few rare exceptions). Forcing people to sign NDAs is creepy and weird. I'd be interested to know what would have happe…
Reading the guy's original rant (in Finnish) on Facebook[1], I can tell you that he actually did do that. He sent a picture of the CD and the receipt to the lawyer and explained the whole situation to him. He didn't hear back from the lawyer after that, and assumed that he had decided to back out (because really, it'd make sense). Fast-forward to almost a year later and the police show up on his door to confiscate the laptop.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/aki.w.nylund/posts/1015113904124507... (though obviously this won't be of much use to anyone who doesn't understand Finnish)
EDIT: I decided to translate some relevant parts of the Facebook post. I initially thought of translating the whole thing, but frankly the original text is rather badly written, which makes it pretty painful to translate.
Okay then, what follows will be a long and exhaustive tale in regards to my earlier status post.
Everything started about a year ago - my daughter asked where she could listen to some of the songs from the latest album of her favorite artist Chisu, since she hadn't saved up enough money to buy the album yet (but her friends at school already had it, apparently).
It was a Saturday evening and I was leaving for work, slightly behind the schedule as usual, so I quickly showed a couple different search engines that my daughter could use and told what keywords to look for. The next day my daughter told me she did find some songs, but that they "didn't work". And apparently she had managed to even "download" something, but that only resulted in errors on the computer screen. I couldn't keep watching all this pain pour out from my little girl, so we marched to the closest supermarket and I bought her the CD from this top Finnish artist.
Fast-forward to Spring and I get an e-mail from some attorney, claiming that I had illegally distributed a musical record on The Pirate Bay. As a result, I'd have to pay 600€ (SIX HUNDRED EUROS) in charges to a specified account (the e-mail actually had an account number in it?!) and sign an NDA so that I wouldn't be able to tell anyone (or anything) about these charges or the reason for them. The first impression I had was that this had to be some sort of Nigerian prince -type scam, but after checking the attachments and looking up the "attorney's" background, I fired a quick e-mail back that basically said "What in the fuck is this thing about?"
Unfortunately, the answer didn't tell me anything new - just repeated the same "pay 600€ and sign the NDA, or this will go to court" from the first mail. After that, I realized that this was probably connected to my daughter googling Chisu and managing to download some songs (that didn't work) and it was probably some kind of "trap" set up by a record label, my ISP and the police. I sent another e-mail to the attorney detailing the likely chain of events that could have happened here and attached two pictures along with it: one of the purchased CD and another of two concert tickets for a Chisu gig that I was going to attend with my daughter.
[...]
When I didn't hear any answer from the lawyer, I figured that even he must have some common sense and had decided to drop the case in favor of some "real" criminal deals.
How do these NDAs work? Can they really demand that you pay them money and not tell anyone? Seems pretty creepy.
You always have the right to refuse though and have the courts sort it out, should they choose to pursue a case.