The 5th circuit includes Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi so they can go fuck themselves. You think I'll live by the opinion of some backwater states? Only a corrupt supreme court would uphold this ruling-ohhh fuckity fuck fuck!
If y'all don't like it, encourage your friends in Texas to fucking vote. This kangaroo court gets to be the reliable Conservative rubber stamp it is, because they're appointed by whatever president is in power when vacancies become available.
Biden was able to appoint two, and Obama appointed two, Clinton one. Bush Jr. appointed four, Reagan appointed two, and Trump appointed fucking six, which explains why they constantly capitulate to big business.
You do realize that federal judges crib notes from judges in other jurisdictions, right? As in, while this ruling probably doesn't directly effect you, if there's a similar case in your jurisdiction, they'll look at this decision and probably side with it if the facts of the case are similar enough.
I don't think you want that. That will cause every ISP to block VPN and torrent traffic out of fear because essentially this will be "law" being established if they get their hands on it
A company "accusing" someone of piracy isn't proof. Access to the internet is almost essential these days. If you can prove a person is pirating prosecute them under the law with fines or even incarceration if warranted. But stripping internet access from someone shouldn't be seen as an acceptable punishment for a free citizen anyway.
Whoever owns the network attached to the IP address also shouldn't be responsible for actions of every user. Let's ban an entire company, college, or government institution from the internet because an IP showed up on a list... dumb ruling.
And while we're at it, let's cut the wind off at their property as well, so they can't generate any local wind power!
And definitely take away their fruits and zinc and copper, so they can't build their own massive multi-lemon batteries, which they will otherwise rapidly upscale by growing even more lemons, using the same array of lemon-powered LEDs that also grew that weed, all in an infinite loop of lemon kush! We really can't let that happen.
Hey someone's gotta keep the average IQ of a lawyer bell curve balanced. I'm pretty sure the 5th circuit is the equivalent to "Florida Man" in the legal space.
The theory I heard on the Strict Scrutiny podcast is that the 5th Circuit exists to write atrocious opinions on terrible rulings so that the Supreme Court can make rulings that are only 85% as horrible as that so the SC can seem more reasonable by comparison.
Owch, I should start a blog. My chain of thought went from this to meshnets and presumption of innocence, and in the dispersed intersections of these to communications control and totalitarianism, and there I wrote some kind of socio-political rant (again) for a fiction book or movie.
I can't erase that much text, so it's under a spoiler tag.
spoiler
We live in a pretty usual time. We grew up in an unusual time, though, fueled by anti-colonialism, WWII experience and Cold War, and then some optimism over its end. When some kind of justice could really be had in the West and even the second world.
Soviet dissidents would use Soviet laws in Soviet courts against the Soviet system with their defenders honestly working for that goal, and the only way the system was able to confidently close them was by inventing a non-existent kind of schizophrenia and then forcibly putting them into mental institutions.
One can say those formerly privileged parts of the world are turning into some kind of Turkey as shown in Midnight Express, and hopefully the third world is moving in a different direction.
When I was 12+, I would talk pretentiously and vaguely how all this won't last and we are seeing the last decade of it in any notable form (while in fact it was dying when I was a baby), and that the solutions are in decentralization and preparation for underground communication and asymmetric warfare, keeping in mind that the enemy won't be using anything conventional or predictable either.
I think this is symmetric to why we are seeing such decay - because for information people have lost understanding that you should always read between the lines, and for justice people have lost understanding that it can never be had by the law without spending blood, sweat and tears, and that this is not end of history and neither information nor justice are something we can reliably have in any matter in any moment.
So that advice is simply about being more humane, rejecting absolutes and burning idols, and knowing there'll always be a situation where you are morally right, but the whole world, the law, the opinions, the public morale and the balance of power - they will all be against you and you should still fight and shouldn't accept it. And also that civilization is similar to Ouroboros eating its tail - you have to ruin some parts for it to live, and those parts don't want to be ruined and have that supported by laws and popular opinions ; you have to be destructive.
The culture of resistance. Something old Star Wars EU had (literally, in the WEG guidelines from 1994 PDF I have, comparing the Empire to the "civilized world" and saying that Empire's civilians generally don't feel any different and don't know about Empire's atrocities, unless they are personally affected).
Or they received a USB cable, which they later used to transfer pirated files, in an envelope... Remove their mailbox! (Or force every postal service person to ignore it...)
In Canada, I get letters (well emails) when I rawdawg some torrents; but it's never gone further than that.
Prior to using usenet, I constantly torrented w/o a VPN (talking 10+ TB of data across 3ish years) and received a new email notice or two every other day. I've still got a folder with 60+ notices. ISP doesn't give af, they just forward the copyright notice in the form it was sent to them, and that's it.
Now though I primarily use usenet and haven't gotten a notice since. Downloads are also way way more reliable and faster.
The 5th Circuit remanded the case to the district court for a new trial on damages. Record labels can expect a lower payout because the appeals court said they can't obtain separate damages awards for multiple songs on the same album.