[tahoe-dev] any progress on rebooting the Test Grid?

[Ted Rolle Jr.]

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer, just an old cop.

What we need for this situation is case law --- how the court interprets a
law, if there are indeed laws enacted to cover these matters.

Unfortunately, deep pockets usually win.

There are levels of certainty in US law.
``Reasonable suspicion'' means that you're right about 50% of the time.
``Probable cause'' (PC) raises the standard to 75--90%.
Reasonable suspicion: a stranger wears an overcoat in hot weather, and there
is a bulge where there shouldn't be a bulge.  This can quickly turn into
probable cause if the subject reaches inside and pulls out a gun.
Another example of PC: an expired tag on a license plate means that the
car's registration (probably) is not current.
Another war story:  my partner and I found a car parked in a local park.
The  dome light was on.  We pulled the subjects out; they were making lines
of cocaine on a piece of glass.  We also found a bong and other drug
paraphernalia.  We had to let them go because we didn't have PC for a drug
bust.  After all, a dome light can be reasonably be used to read a map.
But I digress.

The node was shut down ``Just because.''  If I understand tahoe-LAFS
correctly, there is no possibility or reasonable suspicion to infer that the
file was indeed stolen, based solely on the file's (unreadable) content;
perhaps the party who put the file on tahoe-LAFS confessed to having done
so. _This_ would constitute PC.

If we ask ``how high'' on the way up whenever someone says ``Jump!'',
tahoe-LAFS could effectively be shut down by the ``Big Guns.''

Unfortunately, few of us have the time, money, or inclination to fight back.
Peter Secor acted reasonably, given the circumstances.

The July 2011 issue of Linux Journal has an article ``Put your Office in the
Clouds with OpenGoo.''  It describes a website developer's experience of
having his Google access revoked because he stored affiliate links for
website development.  Google claimed that these files violated its Terms of
Service.  The affiliate links were never displayed; they were used for
collaboration in building web sites.  Chillingly, Google apparently monitors
such things and assumed that he used the sites for advertising and jumped on
it, claiming that the use of these links violated their Terms of Service.
The burden of proof was on the user to counter Google's interpretation of
his actions.  Big guy vs. little guy.
He did manage to clear himself, but took all of his files off of Google,
stored them on his site, and used OpenGoo for collaboration.


On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Zooko O'Whieler acronx <zooko at zooko.com>wrote:

> Folks:
>
> The Test Grid is went off-line a day or two ago. I heard from Peter
> Secor that he received a takedown request from Sony because there was
> a copy of a file that Sony claimed someone had claimed to have stolen
> from Sony. Technically, if you receive such a takedown request (in the
> USA) you need to quickly remove access to that particular file and
> then you can if you like challenge the validity of the request and
> then the burden of proof shifts to the requestor to prove that the
> file is something that you may not host. However, I assume that David
> Triendl (who is located in Austria), who was the actual operator of
> the public demo gateway, didn't feel like dealing with the hassle and
> just took down the gateway.
>
> Anyway, I think it would be cool if we had the live public demo
> gateway back up so that visitors to http://tahoe-lafs.org who clicked
> on "Try Tahoe-LAFS on the web!" got to see a live demo gateway instead
> of the current error message.
>
> Regards,
>
> Zooko
>
> [1] http://tahoe-lafs.org/~zooko/TWN2.html
> _______________________________________________
> tahoe-dev mailing list
> tahoe-dev at tahoe-lafs.org
> http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
>



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