And in some parts of the world it is illegal to criticize the government, worship certain religions, even send out videos of what is publicly happening in the streets. Is Microsoft going to CYA by making those things violations of their use agreements?
Microsoft anti-gun stance
- Thread starter oneounceload
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I think they're mostly concerned about liability.
I haven't found any instances where accounts were terminated at Microsoft due to firearms.
Paypal, on the other hand, has seized accounts with tens of thousands of dollars in them over the purchase or sale of firearms PARTS.
I haven't found any instances where accounts were terminated at Microsoft due to firearms.
Paypal, on the other hand, has seized accounts with tens of thousands of dollars in them over the purchase or sale of firearms PARTS.
Nuclear - to answer your question, some providers of social media and services DO have to do just that. When we used to sell software to Canadian customers, we had to code in extra measures for privacy protection of "personal information"; something which was carried in to our US production of code, to avoid forking the project. (Canadian privacy laws are pretty strict).
There are PLENTY of things in place in acceptable use policies which at first glance are frightening - they are, from beginning to end, a "cover our ass" document. The entire REASON for those agreements to even be in existence is because people sue people over all sorts of crap, and the corporations want indemnity (as much as possible, anyway).
Anyway, you show me one instance where a person's hotmail account or whatever gets banned due to firearms, and I'll get concerned.
What they are really afraid of is a headline that reads:
"Man stockpiles arsenal, goes on gun rampage with firearms, ammunition, and body armor bought off of Bing" (or google shopping, or .... {insert service here})
There are PLENTY of things in place in acceptable use policies which at first glance are frightening - they are, from beginning to end, a "cover our ass" document. The entire REASON for those agreements to even be in existence is because people sue people over all sorts of crap, and the corporations want indemnity (as much as possible, anyway).
Anyway, you show me one instance where a person's hotmail account or whatever gets banned due to firearms, and I'll get concerned.
What they are really afraid of is a headline that reads:
"Man stockpiles arsenal, goes on gun rampage with firearms, ammunition, and body armor bought off of Bing" (or google shopping, or .... {insert service here})
leadcounsel
member
Um. Leave. Microsoft.
Besides, how do they have access to your account? Isn't it private?
Besides, how do they have access to your account? Isn't it private?
Lead - that's perhaps a better question.
They banned a guy's live account recently for semi-nude models in his sky drive account. Not shared. Private. (The guy was a graphics designer / artist)
How they even knew they were there? They either had an algorithm (which fed human review) or just a bunch of paid humans to go snooping.
It doesn't matter WHAT cloud service you use - if you use one... use client side encryption.
They banned a guy's live account recently for semi-nude models in his sky drive account. Not shared. Private. (The guy was a graphics designer / artist)
How they even knew they were there? They either had an algorithm (which fed human review) or just a bunch of paid humans to go snooping.
It doesn't matter WHAT cloud service you use - if you use one... use client side encryption.
Seriously? Again?
Why would "buy a mac" solve the problem?
APPLE DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTES TO ANTI-GUN ORGANIZATIONS.
There is a direct, non tenuous connection there. Not just some words in an acceptable use policy - actual dollars changing hands to lobbyists and organizations.
Good grief, given the options, sometimes picking the "lesser of three evils" shouldn't be so hard.
Why would "buy a mac" solve the problem?
APPLE DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTES TO ANTI-GUN ORGANIZATIONS.
There is a direct, non tenuous connection there. Not just some words in an acceptable use policy - actual dollars changing hands to lobbyists and organizations.
Good grief, given the options, sometimes picking the "lesser of three evils" shouldn't be so hard.
bergmen
Member.
Erik M
Member
maybe I need to take a layer of tinfoil off - but Ive always had an unspoken concern that the story of google shopping limiting or removing firearms related info will somehow filter down to youtube removing all of its firearms related videos (since google owns them). I hope thats not to far off subject.
Deus Machina
Member
They're trying to block you from using Bing to buy stuff, too.
So... not if they can help it.
So... not if they can help it.
Jeff H, unfortunately, I've said all I can say on the matter regarding Microsoft's policy; I can however expand on OURS.
Online service providers will continue to grow more restrictive in allowed content, because the US federal government has made their intentions well known that they (the government) holds the service providers accountable. The federal government has moved beyond takedown notices and cease & desist letters and moved directly in to seizing equipment.
Often, the idiots take TOO MUCH, too.
There was a datacenter in Texas that offered co-location services for customers. As with many datacenters around the world, they provide the connection and the facilities, and rent out rack space to customers. (Datacenter racks, by the way, represent some of the highest real estate per square foot prices in the world; it's my company's #2 expenditure behind payroll).
Anyhoo, the FBI came in to that datacenter and took ALL of the equipment out, because they traced illegal activity back to one customer in the datacenter. They didn't bother asking the datacenter operators which equipment belonged to who; they shut down the whole damn thing and loaded ALL of the servers, routers, and communications gear in the building up and hauled it off. Took down MANY legitimate companies and it was quite some time before they got it all sorted out. A lot of equipment was returned damaged or inoperable.
So, yeah, hosting providers (like my company) are VERY SERIOUS about covering our asses legally. If we even suspect a client is doing something illegal, we have to act promptly and cooperatively with law enforcement, or run the risk of ALL of our servers getting seized.
It's even more confusing for them now - because multiple customers are hosted on private clouds. Multi-tenancy - many customer servers running on the SAME physical equipment, and cloud technology - ability to move customer virtual servers from one physical server while they are running, to another physical server or cluster, without disrupting the services provided, are increasingly common.
So you can't even draw a line anymore of "this customer is running on THAT server, or THOSE servers" - those servers might be running hundreds of virtual servers for dozens or hundreds of customers.
As an example, right now our standard rack design at my company is an 8 node highly available failover cluster with 128 physical Xeon CPU's, 768 gigabytes of RAM, four redundant switches, four redundant storage servers with 48 drive/48TB of RAID6 storage space for customer VM's. We can run up to 448 customer virtual servers per rack off that cluster, each (theoretically) belonging to a different customer, while retaining the ability to lose any one of the host servers without incurring downtime.
So in that one rack, we could have as many as 448 different customers.
If any of them do something illegal, we have to act, to protect the other 447 customers on that equipment.
We use the same exact technology as Microsoft does in THEIR cloud operations, so I have to assume they are in a similar situation.
Does it make more sense now?
Online service providers will continue to grow more restrictive in allowed content, because the US federal government has made their intentions well known that they (the government) holds the service providers accountable. The federal government has moved beyond takedown notices and cease & desist letters and moved directly in to seizing equipment.
Often, the idiots take TOO MUCH, too.
There was a datacenter in Texas that offered co-location services for customers. As with many datacenters around the world, they provide the connection and the facilities, and rent out rack space to customers. (Datacenter racks, by the way, represent some of the highest real estate per square foot prices in the world; it's my company's #2 expenditure behind payroll).
Anyhoo, the FBI came in to that datacenter and took ALL of the equipment out, because they traced illegal activity back to one customer in the datacenter. They didn't bother asking the datacenter operators which equipment belonged to who; they shut down the whole damn thing and loaded ALL of the servers, routers, and communications gear in the building up and hauled it off. Took down MANY legitimate companies and it was quite some time before they got it all sorted out. A lot of equipment was returned damaged or inoperable.
So, yeah, hosting providers (like my company) are VERY SERIOUS about covering our asses legally. If we even suspect a client is doing something illegal, we have to act promptly and cooperatively with law enforcement, or run the risk of ALL of our servers getting seized.
It's even more confusing for them now - because multiple customers are hosted on private clouds. Multi-tenancy - many customer servers running on the SAME physical equipment, and cloud technology - ability to move customer virtual servers from one physical server while they are running, to another physical server or cluster, without disrupting the services provided, are increasingly common.
So you can't even draw a line anymore of "this customer is running on THAT server, or THOSE servers" - those servers might be running hundreds of virtual servers for dozens or hundreds of customers.
As an example, right now our standard rack design at my company is an 8 node highly available failover cluster with 128 physical Xeon CPU's, 768 gigabytes of RAM, four redundant switches, four redundant storage servers with 48 drive/48TB of RAID6 storage space for customer VM's. We can run up to 448 customer virtual servers per rack off that cluster, each (theoretically) belonging to a different customer, while retaining the ability to lose any one of the host servers without incurring downtime.
So in that one rack, we could have as many as 448 different customers.
If any of them do something illegal, we have to act, to protect the other 447 customers on that equipment.
We use the same exact technology as Microsoft does in THEIR cloud operations, so I have to assume they are in a similar situation.
Does it make more sense now?
lobo9er
Member
Jorg Nysgerrig
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- Apr 13, 2006
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Ha. Haha... hahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha... ..BWHAHaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!
Oh man, that's not something to read first thing in the morning. That'll send coffee right out your nose.
You must be new around here, welcome to the internet.
These terms were last updated in April 2009. Have you heard about anyone being shutdown for guns yet?
The full terms are found at: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/code-of-conduct?woldogcb=0
In context, it sounds like they are more concerned about people posting gun ads that may run afoul of local laws than an order confirmation coming from some place.
Really isn't anything new, like Jorg said.
Craigslist doesn't accept firearms ads (used to).
Our local newspaper doesn't accept firearms classified ads (used to). They became part of a "classified ad syndicate" thing where classifieds get posted up to a website together on the internet.
Our local Tradinpost.com still takes gun ads, and they charge 50% less commission on firearms than they do other items. As far as I know it's still just a local thing. You can find those in every gas station within 3 counties of here.
The overriding theme here seems to be if it's multi-state or international, they restrict anything that's federally restricted. (Fireworks, firearms, alcohol, tobacco, etc).
I would imagine that the terms of service / acceptable use policies are just a safeguard against litigation for facilitating the movement of contraband. But I'm not a lawyer. So I don't know how exposed a company is.
For a point of comparison, look at Gun Broker - and the amount of disclaimers both they, and people who post ads/auctions, have to post to keep the lawyers happy.
Craigslist doesn't accept firearms ads (used to).
Our local newspaper doesn't accept firearms classified ads (used to). They became part of a "classified ad syndicate" thing where classifieds get posted up to a website together on the internet.
Our local Tradinpost.com still takes gun ads, and they charge 50% less commission on firearms than they do other items. As far as I know it's still just a local thing. You can find those in every gas station within 3 counties of here.
The overriding theme here seems to be if it's multi-state or international, they restrict anything that's federally restricted. (Fireworks, firearms, alcohol, tobacco, etc).
I would imagine that the terms of service / acceptable use policies are just a safeguard against litigation for facilitating the movement of contraband. But I'm not a lawyer. So I don't know how exposed a company is.
For a point of comparison, look at Gun Broker - and the amount of disclaimers both they, and people who post ads/auctions, have to post to keep the lawyers happy.
Deus Machina
Member
Overall, I'll bet it's one of those things where they just write a catch-all. I'm reasonably sure they could write region-specific TOS's for hardware and services, but they have to cover all their users, too.
Like Jorg said, I'll bet it's something they only use to enforce local laws. Of course it's in the rules, and they'll use that to cover themselves the first chance they get, but they probably won't enforce it unless it's illegal in a specific area.
Like Jorg said, I'll bet it's something they only use to enforce local laws. Of course it's in the rules, and they'll use that to cover themselves the first chance they get, but they probably won't enforce it unless it's illegal in a specific area.
wannabeagunsmith
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Apple rules in more ways than one, I see.
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