At this point, many of us are numb to the impending whatever. There is always 6 things happening that shouldn’t be happening (that we know about) and that could upend our lives. And usually there is very little we can do besides yell on the internet.

Lol. Unless you know where to smash, the data is still recoverable. And she is paranoid.

Yeah, it’s a very old one. Iphone 4. It’s been collecting dust for years.

Any idea how to do that if it was say your mother in laws, and she doesn’t remeber any of the related passwords including icloud?

Coed recreational sports team. Lots of them are mostly social with a little bit of sports tossed in. And almost all of them are looking for more players.

Only if they have any interest in people’s long term well being. Which if they really had, they would send them to war.

The vast majority of lawyers don’t work that way. They get paid as they go. The ones who do… aren’t going after your average private person because they don’t have enough money to be worth it. Even 100% probably wouldn’t be enough in these cases. How much do you think they could win from Joe public per case?

I’m not sure you are following my logic. For them to take every person who shares a plex server with people to court would cost an exorbitant amount of money. First they have to find them all, which is non-trivial. We are talking hundreds of thousands here. Then they have to get proof according to local laws. That already requires them to employ experts in each jurisdiction. Then they can send the letters, which have to be tailored based on the jurisdiction, which probably isn’t much, but they have to be sure it is legal to even send it. Some places (though few) it will open them to being sued if not worded correctly. Then to take it to court they will need licensed lawyers in every jurisdiction. The cost would be crazy. And for the cases they win, they won’t get much money because they aren’t sueing companies, they are sueing people.
It’s not that a person would necessarily win in court, they may or may not. But the scale of the expense is soo much higher than the revenue as to make it a very bad financial undertaking.

You don’t have to respond to the letter at all. That’s my point. It has virtually no meaning other then to allow them to say “I told you so” in court. And for that to have any meaning, they would have to show that you knew the letter came from the legit rights owner. Since the name is likely something none of us have actually heard of, you could argue you didn’t think it was legit. But to even get to that point they have to file a suit and pay lawyers and all that. I can send you a cease and desist letter claiming the right to tell you to stop doing anything I want. It’s just a scare tactic. Plenty of companies have been caught sending them when they had no legal right to make the demand. Most pirates know this, and will just ignore it.

You can trick people into paying… but if you are talking people who pirate media, your sucess rate will be pretty low. Legally, cease and desist letters do nothing on thier own other than prove you notified them. Any free defense lawyer would argue that thier client didn’t believe the sender had any right to make the request, and the send provided no legal proof. But again, even ifnthey could get say 100k from each person running one of these. It wouldn’t pay they law firm bills, not even close. It would be a major expense.

Well for starters, those 100k would be spread all over legal jurisdictions, like even different countries. So you would need a representative certified to practice law in each of those jurisdictions. And of course the laws are different, so each case would be different. And the people you are suing have relatively little money to pay in compensation. The number of people needed to pull that off would be so high that the cost would be drastically larger than the potential financial gains. And since the board of directors have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, they would have to put a stop to it. The shareholders care little for the long term potential gains of such an enormous expense.

Isn’t that what grad students are for… lol. It’s been a few decades since I wnet to college (in the US). We rarely spoke to our professors. They had grad students as TAs handle most of the student interaction and managment of software tools and such.

Seems like a good way to implement massively distributed piracy. The comapnies can’t possibly make a case against all of them, there are too many. I like it.

This was exactly my first thought. He should be disqualified for many reasons, but that ain’t one of them. Thinking that way is why we have him.

Got any links, they would be interesting to read. I’m not personally sure how to filter my search for credible analysts and what not. But seems like a good thing to learn.

Well, what I was saying is they “could”, and thus they are technically holding back. So thier failure to take Ukraine doesn’t prove they can’t take on Nato minus the US. And even now, it is still technically NATO, including the US. So their inability to take it isn’t the same as taking on NATO without the US. I don’t know if Ukraine could have held up without US money and such. Not sure the EU had enough to spare at the time. I know the EU is looking to increase production to reduce it’s reliance on the US, but I am not sure how far they have gotten.

Seems all you need to use to get the threat of the insurrection act is a snow shovel. Go big or go home I say. And even without it, he deployed marines in so cal.

Well TIL. I though they couldn’t make them that small back then. But anyway, the russians were producing the latest version of small tactical nukes in the 20 teens. Those are pretty new.

What I would like to see is local organizations, like even city councils, running programs to arm thier citizens. Ideally with free training and such as a requirement. Super awesome would be if they setup shop near protest sites to do some basic training and then sell the weapons to the people legally for like $10 or something. Essentially, legally and responsibly arm the protestors. If ICE starts shooting, they return fire. That should really give ICE pause.

I will say I don’t know what Russia specifically has in thier arsenal beyond the general “tactical nukes”. But artillery shell or missle… it makes little difference. Tactical nukes are relatively new, so aren’t much of an age concern as the bigger older stuff. Functionality concerns, only they really know. And I agree, which is why I said they are holding back. But if the situation changes, they may not need to hold back.