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[SOPA] is shelved. EU voted [ACTA] down; rises from grave as [CETA]

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Posts

  • SticksSticks Registered User regular
    My company fired a guy for stuff he wrote online. As it turns out, if you are going to lie on your resume, it's probably best not to have the truth on your fucking blog.

    I would straight up refuse to hand over that kind of information for a job application though. If that is a deal breaker, see ya, I have better places to work. The one exception I can see would be applying for a job that requires a security clearance of some sort. I recognize that background checks need to be more thorough in those situations.

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  • VanguardVanguard for the Night is Dark and Full of Big Areolas Registered User regular
    Yeah, but if you're getting a job in some random office? Fuck that.

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  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Their ideas are old and their ideas are bad. Risk is our business.Registered User regular
    Sticks wrote: »
    My company fired a guy for stuff he wrote online. As it turns out, if you are going to lie on your resume, it's probably best not to have the truth on your fucking blog.

    I would straight up refuse to hand over that kind of information for a job application though. If that is a deal breaker, see ya, I have better places to work. The one exception I can see would be applying for a job that requires a security clearance of some sort. I recognize that background checks need to be more thorough in those situations.

    Well, that's a different and more sensible thing.

    I mean, my facebook is set pretty restricted, but still. Fuck off, Lord CEOs of America. Gotta love feudalism.

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  • SticksSticks Registered User regular
    Yea, I know the job market sucks right now, but I like to think I'm pretty fucking good at what I do. If you are going to trust me to complete my work assignments without cocking up your business, and if you are going to trust me to keep proprietary information private, the least you can do is trust me not to have stupid shit written on my facebook. Why? Because if I'm not savvy enough to hide that kind of information before you have a chance to look for it, then chances are I'm not qualified to do the job for which you're hiring me.

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  • LochielLochiel Registered User regular
    I wonder how these same companies would act if, during the interview, you asked for a record of all the ethics and work related complaints filed against them. Sexual Harassment, Safety Violations; the works.

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  • HounHoun Jump In Save the WorldRegistered User regular
    I can answer that. They wouldn't hire you.

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  • LochielLochiel Registered User regular
    Well, if they can't trust me enough to share their dirty laundry, how can I trust them enough to share mine? At least those companies and I can agree we don't want to work together.

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  • HounHoun Jump In Save the WorldRegistered User regular
    Many people don't have the luxury of sabotaging a job interview over personal ideology. Which is why employers get to push these lines and get away with it; they have all the leverage.

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  • LochielLochiel Registered User regular
    Of course; I didn't mean to imply that anyone could. Just that I would.

    What do you suggest?

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  • HounHoun Jump In Save the WorldRegistered User regular
    I have no suggestions. It's an unfortunate fact of any human relationship where power is unequal; the more unequal, the greater the exploitation of it.

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  • AspectVoidAspectVoid Registered User regular
    Sticks wrote: »
    My company fired a guy for stuff he wrote online. As it turns out, if you are going to lie on your resume, it's probably best not to have the truth on your fucking blog.

    I would straight up refuse to hand over that kind of information for a job application though. If that is a deal breaker, see ya, I have better places to work. The one exception I can see would be applying for a job that requires a security clearance of some sort. I recognize that background checks need to be more thorough in those situations.

    The company I work for has also fired people for things on their Facebook page, but ONLY if the person lists that they work for the company. The company policy is that if you put your place of work on Facebook, then you are required to abide by company policies in regards to public information that you post. This policy came about because a potential client searched Facebook for company employees and found some rather...embarrassing pictures on one of the employees accounts. Suffice to say, we didn't get the client, and it cost the company quite a bit of revenue.

    If you don't put down the company as where you work, though, they don't care what you post on it.

  • rockmonkeyrockmonkey Registered User regular
    AspectVoid wrote: »
    Sticks wrote: »
    My company fired a guy for stuff he wrote online. As it turns out, if you are going to lie on your resume, it's probably best not to have the truth on your fucking blog.

    I would straight up refuse to hand over that kind of information for a job application though. If that is a deal breaker, see ya, I have better places to work. The one exception I can see would be applying for a job that requires a security clearance of some sort. I recognize that background checks need to be more thorough in those situations.

    The company I work for has also fired people for things on their Facebook page, but ONLY if the person lists that they work for the company. The company policy is that if you put your place of work on Facebook, then you are required to abide by company policies in regards to public information that you post. This policy came about because a potential client searched Facebook for company employees and found some rather...embarrassing pictures on one of the employees accounts. Suffice to say, we didn't get the client, and it cost the company quite a bit of revenue.

    If you don't put down the company as where you work, though, they don't care what you post on it.

    This seems a sensible update to me. It's akin to wearing a company logod shirt after hours and in public, if you're doing so then you're representing the company and need to act like such. We're a business casual office and wear what we want for the most part but we do get company t-shirts and polos, so if you're out drinking or just in general acting a fool, you better not be sporting that company logo.

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  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    ACTA rapporteur will recommend EU Parliament to reject ACTA
    Today the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats, the European Parliament’s second biggest group, held a meeting on ACTA.

    At the end of the meeting David Martin, the Parliament’s rapporteur on ACTA said his job as rapporteur is to balance hopes and fears and to make his recommendation on voting for or against ACTA. He said that the Commission says ACTA doesn’t change European law. Then what benefits would we get? Only cooperation with 3rd countries. He thinks there is inadequate separation of commercial and personal use. In the end, he said, he thinks that the hopes do not balance the fears and his recommendation will be to reject ACTA.

    So, after the ITRE draft opinion on ACTA, the draft final report on ACTA will recommend rejection as well. Note that another 3 committees will formulate opinions, and that Members of the committees can propose amendments. After that, the Parliament’s plenary session will vote on ACTA, possibly in the beginning of June. See the Parliament’s Procedure file.

    S&D group leader Swoboda said he will recommend his group to reject ACTA. In the Parliament, the Liberals (ALDE), who often have a swing vote, and the Conservatives (EPP), the Parliament’s biggest group, did not formulate opinions. Many EPP Members are believed to be pro ACTA.

  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    Today, the European Parliament’s last advisory committee had its say on ACTA – the Development Committee, overseeing third world development and world health issues. It joined its previous committees in recommending that the European Parliament rejects ACTA.

    This was the fourth and last of the advisory committees that had a say in ACTA’s adoption. It turned the (horrible) draft around completely, and recommends the European Parliament to reject ACTA by a crushing vote of 19-1. The Development Committe, DEVE, thus joins the previous three advisory committees of ITRE (Industry, Research, Energy), JURI (Legal Affairs), and LIBE (Civil Liberties) in recommending rejection. To see all of these areas of responsibility recommend a rejection of the controversial treaty will be a hard political nut to crack for the treaty’s proponents.

    Sauce

  • SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    At this point, it seems pretty dead in the EU. There will be a new attempt under a different acronym though.

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  • LeitnerLeitner Registered User regular
    Vanguard wrote: »
    Fuck that. Let's blow everything up.

    In all serious, this is bullshit. There should be a law passed that protects potential candidates from being forced to turn this shit over.

    While I agree that this is ridiculous, you could always just delete your account before applying for job interviews, then reinstate it after, or make your account completely invisible (which is probably a good idea in general) and say you don't use any social networking sites.

    If you don't have an account they'll presume you're lying to them and depending on how many candidates they have (I would imagine enough, they're not going to do this particular thing for higher level stuff for a number of reasons), probably not hire you.

    Why I have a locked down profile intentionally for public dissemination.

    And this presumes just deleting or hiding the profile will keep it safe anyway. If they want to put in even the most minimal effort, they can pull up a surprising amount of supposedly hidden or deleted data you've put out there.

  • Panda4YouPanda4You Registered User regular
    SanderJK wrote: »
    At this point, it seems pretty dead in the EU. There will be a new attempt under a different acronym though.

    Panda4You on
    "In this discussion of copyright [extension] it's actually appropriate to call it theft.
    This music is being (preemptively) removed from the public domain; it's being stolen from the people."
  • SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    Also in somewhat related and hilarious news, today was the day that new Dutch Internet regulations are in effect.
    As a result, an estimated 99.9% of sites are now breaking the law. This includes most state websites, most political party websites etcet.

    The reason is that someone threw a fit about tracking cookies, and as a result those must now be opt-in. All of them.

    Including stuff like Facebook like buttons, google-analytics etcet.

    (The law also does other thing such as include net neutrality for any site not found illegal under Dutch law)

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  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    INTA has rejected ACTA, 19-12 vote.

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Echo wrote: »
    INTA has rejected ACTA, 19-12 vote.

    Is that it dead, or does Parliament have to have a vote on it?

  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    INTA's vote was on whether to recommend signing ACTA or not. So they now recommend not signing it.

    That's four out of four committees that have rejected ACTA. It'll take some major dirty deals to get it voted through in Parliament in spite of that.

    edit: of course, the turd will just get some fresh polish and a new name, like the last couple of times.

    Echo on
  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    ...and that's ACTA voted the fuck down in the EU Parliament.

    This in spite of the conservative groups, who earlier were against taking ACTA to EU Court to look at its legality when they wanted to fast-track it and now were for taking it to court for the same reasons in order to delay today's vote. Assholes. Their vote to take ACTA to court fell, 255 for 420 against.

    The ACTA vote itself: 39 for, 478 against (165 abstained).

    This means that EU member states will not ratify ACTA. And from the looks of it, ACTA in its current form is effectively dead - which other nation would want to ratify it if the EU isn't also aboard?

    But that's just ACTA. This godawful zombie will rise again with a new coat of paint and another name. Trust me on that.

  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    It's amusing to see all these buggy-whip manufacturers thrash back and forth from purchased legislation to shotgun lawsuit to purchased legislation... meanwhile I can buy right now on Amazon, for £9.99 delivered, a USB key drive that will hold 32Gb - enough to hold, what? 120 losslessly encoded albums? 150? In a year or two, 64Gb will be available for the same price. At that price, you can basically put a decent fraction of your entire music collection on a bit of hardware the size of your little finger and just lend it to anyone you like. It's not even a big deal if you don't get it back.

    And then there's the price of hard drives. Again, it's becoming practical to put your entire movie collection onto an insanely cheap 2Tb drive and just lend it to people - obviously a smaller group than you would with a semi-disposable key drive, but the effective bandwidth is still massive.

    Before broadband was cheap and widely available, people did pretty much the same thing with CD-Rs, and that was much less convenient (and rather more expensive per bit).

  • MortiousMortious Move to New Zealand Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    V1m wrote: »
    It's amusing to see all these buggy-whip manufacturers thrash back and forth from purchased legislation to shotgun lawsuit to purchased legislation... meanwhile I can buy right now on Amazon, for £9.99 delivered, a USB key drive that will hold 32Gb - enough to hold, what? 120 losslessly encoded albums? 150? In a year or two, 64Gb will be available for the same price. At that price, you can basically put a decent fraction of your entire music collection on a bit of hardware the size of your little finger and just lend it to anyone you like. It's not even a big deal if you don't get it back.

    And then there's the price of hard drives. Again, it's becoming practical to put your entire movie collection onto an insanely cheap 2Tb drive and just lend it to people - obviously a smaller group than you would with a semi-disposable key drive, but the effective bandwidth is still massive.

    Before broadband was cheap and widely available, people did pretty much the same thing with CD-Rs, and that was much less convenient (and rather more expensive per bit).

    While I don't have any stats to back this up, I'd think that the amount of piracy that can be done via physical drives is orders of magnitude lower than what's currently done on the internet.
    When I did the physical CDRs back in school, everything was limited to what other people had, and who I knew, where as now it's limited to my imagination. And my data-cap :(

    This is probably especially true for 1st day downloads.

  • MichelanvaloMichelanvalo Registered User regular
    That might be a product of convenience though, Mort. Tape trading was a massive thing in the 80s. CDR burning was huge in the late 90s. Half the albums I had were due to copies being taped or burned from friends. It was only when the internet became a thing that everyone had that piracy moved from our stereos to our hard drives. And instead of sharing it with 5 friends, we shared with 500. If digital piracy ever winds down, you might see a rise in usb drive swapping.

  • MortiousMortious Move to New Zealand Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    Of course, not disagreeing with that. I'm more talking about the volume of material being pirated now as compared to then. Instead of downloading (which I don't ofc :P) which ever game gets my fancy, and the latest episode of Game of Thrones as it's released in the US, as I don't have SkyTV, I'll be limited to what my irl social network has and might have to buy the DVD if I'm the only GoT fan.

    I'm guessing that convenience has a non-zero effect on piracy, at least amongst those with disposable income. It won't kill piracy, but the volume of material for the average user will probably drop.

  • Magus`Magus` Registered User regular
    Steam has done gangbusters in various countries that have worse piracy issues than the US does. The reasons for? Ease of use, stability and just the general extra junk Steam sometimes gives you. So yeah, it has an effect on piracy.

  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    Magus` wrote: »
    Steam has done gangbusters in various countries that have worse piracy issues than the US does. The reasons for? Ease of use, stability and just the general extra junk Steam sometimes gives you. So yeah, it has an effect on piracy.

    If anyone can eke out a market in Somalia, it's Valve.

    The sound of eight hooves reaches his ears, comes from the heavenly light, two wolves howls fills his heart with fear, and he sees two ravens fly. Down from the sky a warlord rides, like fire his one eye glows, and just before the preacher dies he knows his god is false.
  • shrykeshryke Registered User regular
    That might be a product of convenience though, Mort. Tape trading was a massive thing in the 80s. CDR burning was huge in the late 90s. Half the albums I had were due to copies being taped or burned from friends. It was only when the internet became a thing that everyone had that piracy moved from our stereos to our hard drives. And instead of sharing it with 5 friends, we shared with 500. If digital piracy ever winds down, you might see a rise in usb drive swapping.

    Physical swapping of content is far far more restrictive though.

  • Erich ZahnErich Zahn Registered User regular
    Sticks wrote: »
    More people participating in things like tor is good. More people sucking up its bandwidth for p2p is not.

    Tor does not work. Or rather, it only guarantees you a certain level of privacy. (PGP is still unbreakable don't worry!)

    Every ISP is required to log the communications going through it, and the government already knows what Tor traffic looks like, so... yeah. Use internet cafes and a flash drive if you actually want to maintain anonymity.

    Fun fact, the construction of mandatory "soft wiretapping" nerve centers is one of the largest impediments to the construction of broadband infrastructure in the US. They cost absurd sums and clog tubes like nought else. Also, the more of them there are, the slower the flow of info will go.

    Erich Zahn on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Yet another reason to hate Citizens United: Verizon attacks net neutrality on First, Fifth Amendment grounds.

    AngelHedgie on
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  • MortiousMortious Move to New Zealand Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    Yet another reason to hate Citizens United: Verizon attacks net neutrality on First, Fifth Amendment grounds.

    Not an expert or anything, but their stance does kind of make sense, if they're using private infrastructure. But isn't a large part of it government funded?

  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/the-pauls-new-crusade-internet-freedom
    The manifesto lays out five specific battles with government regulation and with liberals who state their goal of online liberty in similar terms, but who view corporate encroachment as a more immediate risk. The Paul manifesto seeks to rein in anti-trust actions against companies in new industries; to stop attempts to impose "Net Neutrality" rules on broadband providers; to prevent government control of online infrastructure; to broaden private control of the wireless spectrum, and shore up "private property rights on the Internet."

    Dear Ron Paul: Fuck you.

  • SkutSkutSkutSkut Registered User regular
    That doesn't sound very promising.

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  • JavenJaven Registered User regular
    Mortious wrote: »
    Yet another reason to hate Citizens United: Verizon attacks net neutrality on First, Fifth Amendment grounds.

    Not an expert or anything, but their stance does kind of make sense, if they're using private infrastructure. But isn't a large part of it government funded?

    Yes, for the most part, the actual laying of cable and installing of infrastructure is very heavily subsidied by the government. Personally, it's why I think Verizon pretty much halted any FIOS expansion. Our broadband infrastructure in the US is complete dogshit, and Verizon was trying to position fiber obtics as the next big thing, so when/if the gov't decides to fund infrastructure projects, they have a leg up on the contract.

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  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    Yet another reason to hate Citizens United: Verizon attacks net neutrality on First, Fifth Amendment grounds.

    So they're abandoning Common Carrier then?

  • emp123emp123 Registered User regular
    V1m wrote: »
    Yet another reason to hate Citizens United: Verizon attacks net neutrality on First, Fifth Amendment grounds.

    So they're abandoning Common Carrier then?

    Their reasoning does seem to open them up to liability for any and all pirating that occurs over their network. Although I guess they could then just seek recovery from the violators and I assume the content providers would be willing to waive suit against Verizon in exchange for telling them who did the pirating so they could go after them directly (although Verizon has much deeper pockets than any of its customers so...).

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  • HounHoun Jump In Save the WorldRegistered User regular
    Yeah, at this point it's inevitable. All hail our new copyright overPOST TAKEDOWN NOTICE: THIS POST HAS BEEN FLAGGED AS IN VIOLATION OF US COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT LAWS AND BEEN TERMINATED AS PER PROVISIONS IN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ATTACHE ACT.

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  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    Meanwhile in Europe
    Geist lists several passages of the new trade agreement, CETA, side by side with passages in ACTA, showing us how the two are identical in passages.

    However, the net reacts as though this was written after it was clear that the European Parliament would reject ACTA, or even after the rejection itself last week: that it was an intentional back door for the same provisions. The timeline doesn’t support that conclusion.

    The leaked CETA documents – the live versions of which are still being negotiated, by the way – were written in February 2012, according to Geist. The reason they reiterate exactly what is written in ACTA is much easier explained by the documents being written before the street protests started: those documents were simply written in the assumption that ACTA was practically a done deal just needing rubberstamping, and so, the negotiators copied material from ACTA as a background for the new agreement.

    This was more than a reasonable assumption from the European Commission in February 2012; it was even the way I would have expected them to do their job, whether I liked it or not.

    Today, however, reality looks completely different. The Europarl is watchful of anything that resembles ACTA and gave the European Commission the bitchslap of its life in the rejection of ACTA. If the Commission tried anything like that today and again, like with this CETA thing, they’d be a) acting in bad faith, and b) asking for the political bitchslap of their lives squared – possibly up to and including being fired by Parliament. (A resignation of the responsible Commissioner, Karel de Gucht, was hinted at during the ACTA proceedings – and Parliament is going to regard another attempt at doing the same thing with an utter lack of humor.)

    So this is not “ACTA rises again”. This is not “ACTA, the First Zombie Remake”. This is an entirely logical document as it would have been written in February of 2012, written with the political assumptions of its time in mind.

    Today, reality looks starkly different. If the European Commission thinks they can get anything like this through European Parliament, they’re ignorant and stupid. The Commission can sometimes come across as ignorant, due to their lack of contact surface with ordinary citizens, but they’re very very far from stupid.

    That said, now that the alarm bells have gone off, it’s doubtful if CETA will pass if it’s even remotely similar to ACTA. We’re at the level where being printed on the same kind of paper may be too much – ACTA is that toxic. I expect the net will keep its watchful eyes on continuing CETA developments to alert Europarl of any foul play, but we’re not quite there yet.

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