News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How Turtl has no idea when you're sharing copyrighted stuff by windexh8er on Monday March 31, 2014 @08:57AM (#7501099)
Disagree. They are simply stating a consequence of the design of Turtl: it's not possible (or not knowingly possible today) to understand if the end user is sharing copyrighted material. I don't feel that this is a point "feature" - it applies to any and all content by design and the intent is not therefore to provide a safe harbor of illegal material.

Some people are looking for data protection in the cloud (trading the risk for the convenience). If companies like Turtl or SpiderOak didn't exist myself, and many others, would be forced to rely on similar solutions that are self-hosted. Is that intent? I don't think so. That would imply me locking my vehicle or house at night is some sort of indicator of nefarious activity.

What really annoys me is that people go off the handle about intent and fall back to "the law" being the overriding position in these sort of arguments. Bull shit. I have content I've created that I don't want to share with the world. I shouldn't have any shame or feeling of guilt associated with protecting my assets (digital or physical).

"Read between the lines" - give me a break. I hope that's not everyone's first perspective when they read positions as such. It's that line of thinking that's shifting us to a "guilty until proven innocent" mentality of usage of the Internet.

Re:How Turtl has no idea when you're sharing copyrighted stuff by bradleyland on Monday March 31, 2014 @11:11AM (#7501923)
> "Read between the lines" - give me a break.

"Everyone's" first perspective is not what should matter to you if you're evaluating legal risk; which is the context of the advise being offered here. When a civil suit is brought against, you, the standards of proof are entirely different than criminal, and these standards are ignored to the author's peril when constructing a message like the one linked here.

To get specific, when someone brings a civil suit against you, the first bar they must pass is relatively low. Once they have passed this bar, they can wrap you up in a very expensive lawsuit for a very long time. I know because I've been in this circumstance for the last four years. Before an actual trial, you get the opportunity to challenge the suit in a variety of ways. A judge gets to decide whether the plaintiff's complaint passes the tests for your challenge. If they do, the trial proceeds, and ultimately you end up in front of a jury.

This is the part where you're gambling -- with huge sums of money at stake -- when it comes to copyright. It doesn't matter if "everyone" decides to read between the lines; it only matters if the selected jury does. That is a gamble of epic proportions. Both lawyers are jockying to select a jury that they feel will fall on their side of the case, but keep in mind that the standard of proof in civil trials is a "preponderance of evidence", not "beyond reasonable doubt".

Re:How Turtl has no idea when you're sharing copyrighted stuff by windexh8er on Monday March 31, 2014 @06:59PM (#7504901)
And that seems to be the unfortunate truth. Something that has no direct intent can be positioned such that it's creators or users end up in a legal quandary. I don't see how that can move forward in a positive manner - the question is what is questioned next?

It seems as though only actors which are threatened by true privacy have a position, and that position includes significant wealth, political power and greed. Those actors set a precedent based on already won battles which don't seem to revolve around facts but, again, money and power. Everyone else is then left to spend "huge sums of money" to defend a position that was never unconstitutional in the first place.

Frustrating.

Re:How Turtl has no idea when you're sharing copyrighted stuff by khafra on Monday March 31, 2014 @10:52AM (#7501782)
> "Read between the lines" - give me a break. I hope that's not everyone's first perspective when they read positions as such.

He wasn't talking about everyone's first perspective. He was talking about a judge in a copyright infringement lawsuit's final perspective.

Re:How Turtl has no idea when you're sharing copyrighted stuff by einhverfr on Tuesday April 01, 2014 @01:49AM (#7506397)
This is true but the opinion in MGM v. Grokster is pretty clear:

You risk being held liable for contributory infringement if you advertise infringement as a possible use for your product.

There really is no other way to read that case, and despite technical differences between Ginsberg (really, really bad) and Breyer (really, really good), all 9 justices on the court agreed with that basic idea. Advertise infringing uses? Get held liable. What this means is one really should shy away from saying things that may be taken as advertising infringing uses.

You can read the whole thing at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html

Please do so.