Stream-Ripping Sites And YouTube Now Engaged In Whac-A-Mole

Furnished content.


As we've been talking about for a bit now, there is a new favorite target of the music industry when it comes to anti-piracy efforts: stream-ripping websites. It's important to continue to point out that, despite the plain fact that these sites are quite often used to generate audio-rips of copyrighted music video material, that is most certainly not their only use. Other uses for these sites are non-infringing. But this is the music industry we're talking about, with it's storied history of carpet-bombing technology tools rather than precision bombing actual infringement.Meanwhile, YouTube more recently decided to conspire with the music industry against these sites by blocking several prominent stream-ripping sites without word or warning. From that original post we wrote:

All of this is made even more strange in that Google didn't give any heads up about this new policy, isn't talking about it now, and has to know that it isn't going to work long-term.

And indeed, little over a week after the blocking efforts started, many of the targeted sites are able to rip MP3s from YouTube again.Mp3-youtube.download almost instantly announced that it was working on a fix and today the site is working just fine. The same is true for Dlnowsoft.com, which was also blocked last week, as well as the massively popular Onlinevideoconverter.com, which is among the top 200 most-visited sites on the Internet.

“To fix the problem, we simply used other servers that are not in the range of IP-addresses blocked by YouTube,” the operator of the stream-ripping site informed us.If YouTube is indeed serious about its efforts to take out ‘voliative’ stream-ripping sites, it will likely block the new IP-addresses as well, eventually. This will then trigger a proverbial cat and mouse game, one we know all too well from other pirate site blocking efforts.Mp3-youtube.download informs us that they indeed took countermeasures, like the other sites that work again.“I think the YouTube update is stupid because we will always find a solution,” the operator says.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Appeals Court Says No Rights Were Violated When A Cop Shot At A 'Non-Threatening' Dog But Hit A Kid Instead

Furnished content.


The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has reached a conclusion that defies easy summation. But here's an attempt: it is not well-established that cops shouldn't shoot children they've ordered to lie prone on the ground while trying to shoot a dog that posed no threat to officers.In reversing the lower court's denial of qualified immunity to Officer Michael Vickers, the Appeals Court has opened the door to preventing the stupidest, most-inept cops from being held responsible for their careless blunders.In this case, Vickers and other officers were pursuing a suspect through a neighborhood. This pursuit inserted them into the backyard of Amy Corbitt, where Corbitt's 10-year-old child (known only as SDC in the opinion) and five other children (two of them under the age of three) were playing. The officers entered the yard and demanded everyone present to get down on the ground, including the children. They handcuffed the only adult in the backyard (Damion Stewart) and kept the children on the ground. The officers had the scene secured as they outnumbered the prone children who were still laying on the ground with guns pointing at them.The surprise entrance of the family dog turned this scene from merely-horrific to possibly deadly. From the decision [PDF]:

Then, “while the children were lying on the ground obeying [Vickers’s] orders . . . without necessity or any immediate threat or cause, [Vickers] discharged his firearm at the family pet named ‘Bruce’ twice.” The first shot missed, and Bruce (a dog) temporarily retreated under Corbitt’s home. No other efforts were made to restrain or subdue the dog, and no one appeared threatened by him.

Eight or ten seconds after Vickers fired the first shot, the dog reappeared and was “approaching his owners,” when Vickers fired a second shot at the dog. This shot also missed the dog, but the bullet struck SDC in the back of his right knee. At the time of the shot, SDC was “readily viewable” and resting “approximately eighteen inches from . . . Vickers, lying on the ground, face down, pursuant to the orders of [Vickers].”

Barnett (the fleeing suspect) “was visibly unarmed and readily compliant” with officers.

As noted above, at the time Vickers fired at the dog, SDC just happened to be playing in his own yard when, for reasons beyond his control, his yard became the scene of an arrest operation. Although we have held that SDC was already seized at the time of the shot, SDC is best described as an innocent bystander. And although the commands of the officers that SDC and the other children lie face down on the ground were actions directed at SDC and the other children, Corbitt does not claim that those actions violated SDC’s Fourth Amendment rights; rather, she claims that the action of Vickers firing at the dog and accidentally hitting SDC violated the Fourth Amendment. We hold that Vickers’s action of intentionally firing at the dog and unintentionally shooting SDC did not violate any clearly established Fourth Amendment rights.

Indeed, we are unable to identify any settled Fourth Amendment principle making it obviously clear that volitional conduct which is not intended to harm an already-seized person gives rise to a Fourth Amendment violation.

This is not a case that so obviously violates the Fourth Amendment that prior case law is unnecessary to hold Vickers individually liable for his conduct. To find otherwise would require us to conclude that no reasonable officer would have fired his gun at the dog under the circumstances. This we are unable to do.

The majority accurately points out that qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent.” Maj. Op. at 10 (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986)). Because no competent officer would fire his weapon in the direction of a nonthreatening pet while that pet was surrounded by children, qualified immunity should not protect Officer Vickers. Therefore, I dissent.

Consider the present facts and circumstances: officers arrived at a home and found the subject of their search. At gunpoint, the officers ordered the suspect and all persons in the area—including six children—to the ground. Everyone complied. A nonthreatening family pet was present on the scene; there is nothing to suggest that this pet acted with hostility or threatened the safety of anyone— including the officers. With all the children and the suspect still lying on the ground pursuant to the officers’ commands, Officer Vickers shot at the family pet. He missed. He waited. He shot again. He missed again, instead striking a child who had been—at all times—lying within arm’s reach of the officer.This conduct—discharging a lethal weapon at a nonthreatening pet that was surrounded by children —is plainly unreasonable.

No reasonable officer would engage in such recklessness and no reasonable officer would think such recklessness was lawful.

0 comments, click here to add the first