Slashdot Mirror

It's in full swing:

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and...

https://www.americanbar.org/pu...

Hell, even wikipedia has it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Ordering a Tesla is done online, and thus is subject to mail-order and online-order laws. Deliveries of items ordered delayed past the original stated date must be refunded, or at least you must seek the approval of every customer who pre-ordered to allow the order to stand. Failure to do so opens you up to $10,000 fines for each and every violation and up to 3 years in prison.

You know, can someone explain wether in the USA one is allowed to basically claim to be a lawyer *and* also claim to be speaking in a professional instance, without actually being one *and* licensed for practice? Where I live, that is a crime, and can land you in jail.

Read this and this.

I suspect that he's not actually violating the law until he attempts to contract to provide someone with legal counsel. All of my consulting contracts make it clear I'm not an attorney, for that reason.

Neither do the Courts

One would think so. It is a rather incredible decision. Here's a legal summary which includes a link to the full text of the decision: https://apps.americanbar.org/a...

[U]nless a person has a pre-existing right to be free of the threatened economic harm, threatening economic harm to induce a person to pay for a legitimate service is not extortion.

WTF??? What is a "legitimate service"? I guess the mafia has been doing it wrong this whole time. If only they had been offering a "legitimate service" with a threat of economic harm, rather than a questionable service with a threat of physical harm, they would have been in the clear.

Perhaps I'm missing something though. Here's another article about it, where they talk about this ruling being beneficial to protect review/complaint websites in general: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

I can see a need to protect the right of people to publish grievances with businesses, but this specific decision seems rather lopsided.

Seriously, if PEOPLE are taking out mortgages, I doubt it's many. Probably 1 or two. People are stupid, but surely not many are THAT stupid.

You are ignoring the most powerful motivator to make risky financial decisions there is: "So many people are making so much money and i'll be an idiot if I am the only one making nothing!"

There are probably thousands if not tens of thousands of people who have already invested far more money than they can afford to lose on Bitcoin. The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that 2 to 3 percent of adults in the United States (as many as 9 million people) have serious problems with gambling. Another 3 million meet the criteria for “pathological gambling” (also known as “compulsive gambling”). These are the types of people who would think Bitcoin is a good investment; the kind which can double their money overnight. "If I only invest $1000 instead of $10,000 I will lose $9000 when the price doubles, I need to invest more!"

Many people really will make a lot of money on this (many already have). Maybe Bitcoin goes up to $50k and today's investors will make serious money. But it is no different than doubling down on a good black jack hand. Eventually most people will probably lose big.

The concept of "defending oneself within nature" is a tricky one. There is a quite good historical and legal review of the concept at https://www.americanbar.org/pu... .

I'm afraid that it's become a common code prase for what Locke and Hobbes proposed, a "a primitive and dangerous world in which each person could use deadly force whenever they judged it necessary". The difficulty with the pholosophy is that one of the first reactions of the inhabitants would be to spawn warlords, and guards. The second reaction, that of the warlords and the guards, would be to take the weapons away from everyone else. _That_ is evolution, as well. It's a social rather than biological evolution, but social behavior can be as critical to a species as its DNA.

I suggest to Slashdot readers that limiting access to firearms is part of social evolution, and that we not be confused by ideas that legal approaches are somehow "unnatural".

Also, in nearly all of the renditions I've seen, it's been used in a satirical sense, mostly to poke fun at anti-fascists, and, even more hilariously, at fascists themselves.

Ironically, your post includes the answer to why this is irrelevant. Notice how your subject line was "parody", but in the body, you say "satire" (well, "satirical")? Those are different things under copyright law.

The short version is that:
(i) parody makes fun of the thing it's copying. Think Weird Al's "Smells like Nirvana", which explicitly makes fun of Nirvana and Smells Like Teen Spirit, or his "Perform That Way" which makes fun of Lady Gaga and Born that Way. Parody falls under fair use because, since you're making fun of the thing you're copying, there's no way to do so without copying it.
(ii) satire makes fun of something else.Think Weird Al's "Eat it" or "I'm fat", which make fun of obesity, but do not make fun of Michael Jackson or those songs, except stylistically. He could have made fun of obesity with countless other songs, so the copyright on those songs do not limit his expressive rights. That's why satire does not fall under fair use.

So, if those renditions you've seen are making fun of, say anti-fascists or Hillary Clinton or what not, they're satires. They are not parodies of Pepe the Frog, and therefore are not protected by fair use, unlike if they had actually been parodies.

As an aside, Weird Al always gets permission from artists before he copies their songs, and while it's primarily because he's such a nice guy, the above satire/parody divide is another significant reason.

Disclaimer: I am an IP lawyer. I am not your IP lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

It's fairly well-established that parody is only a valid defence if the thing itself is being parodied. If you're not making a parody of Boy's Club or Pepe, then you can't validly claim fair-use parody.

What you're talking about is "satire" (i.e. using the work to criticise something else), which is on shakier grounds, legally, and an active topic of discussion.

Second, parody and satire (especially against politician) are exempt from copyright laws to begin with...

You made that up.

did not...

You can call yourself a 'doctor' upon completing your PhD.

You and I both know I am referring to a medical doctor.

You can call yourself a 'attorney' upon completing your law degree.

No you may not. Every single state says otherwise. Did you even research this because what you are saying is factually untrue?

I totally agree that a civil engineer has to be licensed in order to sign off on projects, but I think it's blatantly stupid if after successfully completing a study in electrical engineering at a university you still can't call yourself an engineer.

I did not say that. I said you need to be professional license to sign off on construction documents. Mechanical, chemical and petroleum engineers must do so when authorizing such documents. It is not just civil.

That's my logic. If a state doesn't trust the certificates of their universities, they better regulate those, instead of their graduates.

Again you have it backwards. A college confers a degree. The state grants a license. The state controls the designation. Are you aware that some colleges are not within the jurisdiction of states?

http://www.americanbar.org/con... If you're going to be pedantic, at least correct it to the more commonly used "pled".

Here's the law. They can stop Uber from using the Google technology (mainly the LIDAR afaict) until it becomes common knowledge (and then they have to wait a little longer to make up for the head-start they got by stealing the secret). They can use civil seizure to ensure Uber doesn't secretly continue using the technology. They can make Uber pay damages (profits lost by Google + profits gained by Uber).

There is also the issue of patent 8,836,922, which Google claims is being violated. It is also related to LiDAR. Also 9,368,936 and 9,086,273.

Google is also claiming that Uber's business practices were unfair, fraudulent, and illegal. They don't really go into detail why, except to say that reasonable people would have been deceived by misrepresentations and omissions coming from Uber.

So those are the claims. Also worth noting that Google has asserted their right to a jury trial. Here's the original lawsuit, it's fairly readable.

And if that one employee were carrying one fifth of the entire company's workload, and he made the right decision 99.84% of the time, you'd be a moron for firing him. That's especially true when your least overruled employee is wrong 44.7% of the time and the average overrule rate is 74.3%.

In other words, you're full of shit and ignorant on this subject. Read up before getting involved in adult conversations.

Not necessarily.

Crucial to the calculation for a foreign entity, then, is whether a U.S. court is likely to exercise jurisdiction over it. A survey of DMCA cases brought in U.S. federal court with foreign defendants reveals a general willingness of courts to exercise jurisdiction over such companies when U.S. copyright law is implicated. Corporations that are foreign in their registration and address but conduct a substantial amount of business in the United States will not be able to dodge jurisdiction based on formalities.5 In addition, companies that maintain servers in the United States with little to no other connections will likely face federal court jurisdiction. However, a foreign company with foreign ownership, foreign servers, and nothing more than a small, passive American user base may escape jurisdiction.6

Like the ACA, which is exceedingly illegal, if we're playing the Constitution game.

Supreme Court begs to differ. lol.

No idea, not relevant to my life.

But I'm 99% sure they meet all of the various requirements for privacy and security for legal and medical purposes.

A quick Google seems to show the American Bar approves at the very least.

http://www.americanbar.org/pub...

>Mozilla Foundation, as a 501(c)3 non-profit, would not base their decisions solely on valuation or profit

There you go again, answering a question I didn't ask. I asked if the Mozilla Corporation paid the Foundation a fair market value for trademark licensing, not whether the Foundation received a profit from it.

>and indeed they could get in trouble with the IRS if they did

No they wouldn't.

>The decision to license to their own operating corporation was so that they could achieve the purposes in their constitution, which have to do with net freedom

Heh, now you're just making shit up.

>Don't like my answers? Do your own research.

I just askin Does anyone else who has some actual knowledge about large 501(c)3 organizations want to chime in?

Corporate formalities must be observed to protect the separation of the entities. Each organization must have a separate governing body and should conduct separate board and committee meetings, with separate minutes taken. The entities also should avoid commingling assets by using separate bank accounts and should maintain an arm’s length relationship. If the subsidiary and the parent will share any resources such as office space or employees, or if one entity is going to provide goods or services to the other, or a license of any intellectual property, the entities should enter into a written resource-sharing, services, or licensing arrangement. A charity must receive at least fair market value for whatever it provides to the for-profit entity.

Did you miss the bit about "equal work"?

And the definition of equal work is what?

As one person told me when discussing this subject "My bread costs the same as yours. He was in big favor of a Union-like rule that if you are a sheet metal worker, that the newest and most experienced should get exactly the same pay.

I'll note that as he put in more years, it didn't seem quite so fair.

Regardless, there are people out there that demand that.

Let us take the Patriarchy out of the equation and deal with an only female situation

So tell me. A Woman who takes a year off from her position every time she has a child, should she be paid the same as a person in the same job who continued to work those 10 years?

This is not a hypothetical question. We had a staff assistant who over a 10 year period, had three children, and took the max leave each time.

And in an odd twist of equality, she got her her job back each time. While that sounds like the height of equality, that meant that her activity cost three other women their jobs, as the temporary workers lost theirs when she came back.

And if you asked her, almost certainly she will say yes. Her co-workers? Maybe not so much. The three women who lost their jobs? I dunno, they weren't around to ask.

If you were to ask the people who worked with me yet were making a third of what I was - I wonder what their response would be. I know many didn't like it one bit. That didn't cause them to start working harder.

The Ledbetter act, that modifies the Equal Pay act (1963!!) also known as the Fair Pay Act of 2009 shows a prima facie cas as:

Prohibits paying employees in a job dominated by a particular sex, race, or national origin less than employees in another job dominated by the opposite sex or a different race or national origin, if the jobs are “equivalent” and in the same establishment. “Equivalent jobs” means “jobs that may be dissimilar, but whose requirements are equivalent, when viewed as a composite of skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.”

An affirmative defense to the charges has to be

“Factor other than sex” – employer must prove: (1) such factor is either job- related with respect to the position in question or furthers legitimate business purpose; and (2) that such factor was actually applied and used reasonably in light of asserted justification. Employees could rebut legitimate business purpose defense by demonstrating that an alternative employment practice exists that would serve the same business purpose without producing such differential and employer has refused to adopt such alternative practice. It's rather difficult to find the actual contents, with most people simply siding into their camps and battling it out. http://www.americanbar.org/con...

So I think the woman who had all the children in short order, might actually have a case. Why should she be paid less than teh other women who did not make the choice to do that?

And as for the law, as I see it, my seniority or work skills are not applicable under the new law, a woman or whatever gender one feels like using, who refuses to work any more than 40 hours a week will have a successful lawsuit. Based on our genders - no one owuld ever expect her to say it wasn't gender based. Thoughts?

Sam Harris had a podcast which contains an audio clip of an imam teaching that it's OK to kill gays, that it was the compassionate thing to do. I got the impression from the 'cast that the clip was from an imam in the Orlando area, and that it was taken a week or so before the shooting.

(I can't link the specific podcast at the moment because the site that I read it at is temporarily offline.)

We have often thought that the right to practice religion is absolute, but I'm wondering now if it should be.

Does being a religion give you a license to say anything you like? We have laws against hate speech even though we have free speech in general, and we have laws against speech that encourage a specific crime.

We guarantee freedom of religion, but we also guarantee freedom of life.

Which one has priority?

Maybe it's time to prioritize freedom of life over the freedom of religion. Maybe we should say categorically that you *can't* preach that it's OK to kill people of a certain class, whatever the class might be.

This would apply to any religion, even Christian ones ("thou shall not suffer a witch to live"), and it would apply to all cases: people who leave the religion are free to go unmolested (Islam, Scientology), people that the religion dislikes would be free to go unmolested (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism), and so on.

So for example, I would cite The Westboro Baptist church claiming that gays should be put to death, or evangelists calling on their flock to assasinate abortion providers.

As a country, I think we might legitimately say "not in this country" to these extreme views, and in these specific cases maybe intervene and say "no, you can't preach that even if your religion believes it".

Personal safety should be absolute, and the right to religion isn't more important.

In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, imams haven't stopped teaching that gays should be killed.

Perhaps they should.

Whether you are for or against Oracle, everyone in this discussion seems to ignore the fact that Oracle _had to_ file this "Rule 50" motion in order just to _preserve_ their right to appeal since federal circuit appellate courts often refuse to hear arguments on appeal if they are not backed up by a "rule 50" motion at the original trial. Rule 50 motions (a.k.a. Judgment as a Matter of Law) basically just say that based on the case file the opposing party, Google in this case, has presented insufficient evidence to reasonably support its case.

I would not want to be Oracle trying to find a foot to stand on in this quagmire of a pit they have dug for themselves, but while they fish around for something to grab a hold on, I cannot fault their legal team for filing a motion that they would be _remiss_ for not filing. The oracle legal team were just doing their job ... no matter how easy it was for the judge to "blast" (i.e. shoot down). Oracle as we have previously seen, has a "never say die" policy in courtroom battles, and while the verdict regarding "copyrightability" in the previous trial in 2012 seemed like a "slam dunk", they did manage to find an appellate court ruling to overturn that verdict. I can imagine their legal machine is on lock-down this time again to maintain their track record in overturning judgments they do not like. It would be premature to count them out yet on the verdict of "fair use".

Google is the one actively enabling the distribution of copyrighted material without a license, for profit.

You need to explain this in far greater detail than you have. Google Inc. is a search engine that, until the recent reorganization into Alphabet and its subsidiaries, owned an interest in YouTube LLC.

The two are otherwise distinct legal and operational entities. In fact, the entire point of an LLC is that the members are not liable for the actions of the LLC above and beyond the value of the members' interest in it, whether the members are natural person investors or conglomerate entity investors. In order to pierce the veil, so to speak, you'd need to show that YouTube was not merely owned by Google but, for example, an alter ego for Google itself.

They are the ones who have to get a license, on their nickel, and pay damages for infringement.

Since YouTube existed well before the Google acquisition, and YouTube LLC continues to run as a separate service/business, you'll forgive me if I don't blithely accept that conclusory opinion.

They have a system for detecting infringement, they should use it for all uploads and most of the problems go away.

Either you ignored the section of the DMCA in the post that you're responding to, or you've decided to make a moral argument that DMCA should be changed. Subjective moral arguments do not supersede unambiguous aspects of existing laws. Show that ContentID satisfies every element of the definition of a "standard technological measure," show that Google Inc. (or Alphabet) is legally responsible for YouTube LLC's practices, and then you can begin to argue that Google must pay damages for infringement.

Of course that will mean uploaders supplying real contact info, but this is the same as any other commercial contract.

Non sequitur. Nothing in the DMCA requires that uploaders supply real contact info, whether standard technological measures are involved or not. You don't get to create that requirement yourself, with or without the assistance of the courts. Legislating is a Congressional power.

What BendBroadband is doing is dirty, but it's hard to say if it is illegal.

If a monopoly holder forces a consumer to buy a second product in order to get what they want, in this case buying cable TV service if they want broadband without a data cap that is Unlawful Tying and is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. But who knows? The devil is in the details, and those details would have to be worked out in court. I'm guessing the question would hinge on whether or not BendBroadband is the only broadband provider in town. In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the lawsuit.

http://www.americanbar.org/gro...

Generally you would be better off taking a foreign tax credit than a foreign tax deduction. The tax credit reduces your US taxes dollar for dollar. In you Irish example if you paid $100 to Ireland you simply subtract that from the $350 you would have owed the US and now only owe $250. http://www.americanbar.org/gro...

If it was just his picture or logo on a t-shirt, you'd be right. But as he's adding elements for the purpose of parody/satire, the plaintiff is a prominent public and political figure, and there is no "likelihood of confusion" whatsoever; it's very unlikely the suit will be successful.

http://www.americanbar.org/gro... It's also illegal in California: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-... A problem with computerizing government is that they make the rules. Idk how English government works, but in the US tickets are issued by a county government who also prosecutes unauthorized legal practice cases. I'm sure any county would miss $3m.

The U.S. Constitution provides that federal laws are the "supreme law of the land." In the context of aviation, the doctrine of field preemption—that state action is preempted because Congress intended to occupy the entire regulatory field—has been held by many courts to generally prohibit state regulation of aircraft safety and operations. Underlying this position is that the U.S. government by statute "has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States." As the Supreme Court explained more than 40 years ago in an opinion invalidating a locally imposed curfew on aircraft noise, "a uniform and exclusive system of federal regulation" is required "if the congressional objectives underlying the Federal Aviation Act are to be fulfilled." Thus, in the context of aviation, federal preemption long has been understood to sweep with a wide broom.

"Flash mob law"

There is a thing ... called a "flash mob": a group of people converge at a location; perform (what reasonable persons would call) a harmless artistic act and then disperse. Often coordinated via social media, and often taking no more than about 5 to 10 minutes from convergence to dispersal...

(This becomes relevant)...

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwLlFKaX-ms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE ( yah, I know, "/." and this mentions God, but it is high human ART darnit!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNXd3wX_USc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTdI1dU6Eh8

These may or not be to your taste, but it is unlikely that they are blatently offensive; also they are short enough that they are unlikely to be seriously disruptive...
They look like a lot of fun to watch or even to participate-in

Then, references to "Flash Mob Law" were returned in the results from a web search.

Following the link, I found http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gpsolo_ereport/2012/may_2012/basics_flash_mob_law.html

There is something VERY WRONG when the First thought that must apparently go through one's head when contemplating something intended as simple non-malicious fun is:
I (We) could be SUED or ARRESTED!
Before anything else, Better call a lawyer,
-And an insurance agent..
-And PERMITS, mustn't forget PERMITS...

If The above is the First thought, the Second is likely going to be:

Oh wait... I don't have a few hundred (thousand?) uncommitted bucks for legal advice and "permit-sions"
Nor six months of planning time.
Nor any idea what Permi(ts)(ssions) might be demanded

I don't need someone to hold my hand.

What makes you think programmers are better able to negotiate the labor market than physicians (AMA), lawyers (ABA), or other "knowledge workers" (AAUP)? Those groups - especially AMA and ABA - have done an exceptional job of legislating protection for native practitioners. In many cases, a lawyer isn't even allowed to practice across state lines, nevermind international boundaries. And the hoops for a foreign-trained physician? Even a US citizen trained outside the country (say, at SGU) faces extra regulatory scrutiny returning to the US. When the AMA started, any hack with a sharp knife could do surgery; now they're among the most protected classes of workers.

A lone wolf may be a fine programmer, but the market is a big game of prisoner's dilemma: the isolated, self-interest strategy loses.

Doctor and Lawyer salaries are through the roof because those are two of very few jobs that can not be outsourced to a third world country. If Blue Cross could ship you to Haiti for a 40c an hour doctor you don't think they would?

Welcome to the "Global Economy". You have heard all about it I'm sure, and how great it is. A real Utopia where everyone benefits. Assuming of course you are already extremely wealthy, because the rest of the people are expendable. As long as a company can stay afloat using dirt cheap labor, they will. Zuckerberg won the lottery, nothing more. That is your shot to getting out of the cesspool we are creating by complacently watching the government be run by the same people profiteering.

History is cyclical, we have seen this all before. The same result will come eventually, because people never learn to learn from history.

Doctors are being outsourced:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6621...
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...

Lawyers are being outsourced:
http://www.americanbar.org/pub...
http://www.economist.com/node/...

Doctor and lawyer salaries are not high because they can't be outsourced (they can), but because of the fucked up healthcare and legal systems in America.

Did you ever hear a cowboy or lawyer complain?

Umm... Yes?

Actually, I cannot conceive of any situation in which I'd want drones to fly over my property, whether loitering or whizzing.

Well, it doesn't really matter what you want. It has been established by the courts that you don't control the airspace above 83 feet of altitude. Here is a reference for that: https://supreme.justia.com/cas...

Furthermore, this AB and other State's laws, are preempted by the federal law mandating the FAA to control all airspace from 83ft and higher. Here is a reference for that: http://www.americanbar.org/con...

So, as long as the UAV operator has been certified by the FAA, it looks like you will have to tolerate unmanned (or manned, for that matter) aircraft hovering over your property at and above altitudes of 83ft AGL.

c) you're a lawyer, you're lying about what you are doing, and you should give me your name now so i can report you for an ethics violation under the model rules and your state's bar's ethics rules.

a) Violating the "model rules" is meaningless. Model laws and rules are an example and a suggestion, not actual laws or rules.

b) What motivation do you think this individual could possibly have to tell you his name when you say this is what you are going to do if he does?

except in the realm of law, where the Model Rules of Professional Conduct hold quite a bit of sway with the individual state bars in the U.S.

and the point was not to actually get whoever this is to "fess up." what speedlaw wrote is factually and legally wrong. incorrect. it's a rhetorical point.

Because, based on what I understand so far, they seem to be ancient, anti-competitive laws established by states in response to a perceived crisis that ended decades ago and which are now being used by the formerly-underdog players to abuse their now-dominant positions.

That's basically my understanding of the issue. Wikipedia is a good start.

This NADA PDF has the North American Dealership Association view on it. Unsurprisingly, it supports independent dealers, though their little sheet doesn't impress me.

Reading their 'differences', I'm reminded of firearms as being the next most closely regulated product. There dealerships are also the 'norm', but if Winchester(for example) wanted to open a store somewhere, they would be fully able to do so under their license. Irregardless, none of their points shows a need for independent dealerships, just that there needs to be rules to follow for selling cars.

Has the Traditional Automobile Franchise System Run Out of Gas? - has more.

The supreme court of Canada made no such decision.

Non-compete and non-solicitation agreements are enforceable in Canada.
Sadly, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

This is a good review of the law around this in several countries.
There are many others.

They're a bit harder to enforce in Canada because you have to show that they have reasonable time limits and geographic scope. But there are cases where reasonable geographic scope has meant the whole of Canada and reasonable time limits are still in the years.

Here ya go, AC.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pu...
http://kff.org/other/state-ind...
http://scholarship.law.cornell...
http://www.americanbar.org/con...
https://docs.google.com/spread...
http://www.indiana.edu/~emsoc/...

I can only assume that you'll return the favor. :D

Well, if you made a list of fields TV portrays accurately it'd fit on a very small business card. We shake our heads at the use of computers and technology, doctors shake their heads at medicine....

The problem with your analogies is that Hollywood's portrayal of technology and medicine don't change public opinion in a truly harmful manner. Not so with their portrayal of law enforcement work. Read about the "CSI effect":

http://apps.americanbar.org/li...

That's not to mention shows like "cops" where a drug search *always* yields drugs whereas in real life they had to throw as much film on the cutting room floor because it showed the cops tearing up someone's car and finding nothing, and we can't have that on TV.

Even in the movies. My wife and I saw "Courageous" a few years ago, and in the plot a police officer is found to be stealing drugs from evidence and dealing them. His coworkers set up a sting, he's arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. The film targets conservatives who eat that stuff up and believe it. In reality, getting any kind of conviction in a case like that is rare enough that it's background noise.

Yes. The petitioner knew what he was doing; read the first few pages of the brief (Elonis v US: Brief for the US) and note how around page five he's clearly crying "free speech" in his Facebook posts because he thinks he can get away with making threats at the same time if he calls them art. He knows what he's doing. Art, like pornography, is a subjective call in law, and the petitioner made the mistake of assuming that laws were wholly objective, with no common-sense tests to them. From page seven, two quotes:

The post also stated: “Art is about pushing limits. I’m willing to go to jail for my Constitutional rights. Are you?” J.A. 333. The post—which included an accurate diagram of the house where petitioner’s wife and children were staying---made petitioner’s wife “fe[el] like I was being stalked” and “fe[el] extremely afraid for mine and my childrens’ and my families’ lives.” J.A. 153; see J.A. 154.

Fold up your PFA [protection-from-abuse order] and put it in your pocket

Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?

Try to enforce an Order

that was improperly granted in the first place

Me thinks the Judge needs an education on true threat jurisprudence

And prison time’ll add zeros to my settlement

But what he finally gets in trouble for is this, which the FBI, which had been tipped off about him, saw:

That’s it, I’ve had about enough

I’m checking out and making a name for myself

Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined

And hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a Kindergarten class

The only question is . . . which one?

In the end, this guy needed psychological help more than anything, and the real disappointment isn't that he was arrested, but that arrest and incarceration are the only tools that society has for dealing with this kind of problem. He pretty clearly had a problem way back on page 3, and a better system for maintaining order would have given him some sort of psychological help then.

Here's a whole list of them. San Francisco even had racial quotas for elementary schools as late as 1997.

Court heeded the judgment of experts, including educators, business leaders and even military leaders, to decide that a public school, at least at the university level, may treat students differently based on race. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 330-331. While its decision in Grutter is not before the Court in the instant case, the sad truth is that, until Grutter is overturned or limited, the clock has been turned back almost a century, to the days of Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, again giving school officials the power to discriminate against students solely because of their race

Apparently using quote .. quote will preview okay but break when actually submitted.

Here's a whole list of them. San Francisco even had racial quotas for elementary schools as late as 1997.

Court heeded the judgment of experts, including educators, business leaders and even military leaders, to decide that a public school, at least at the university level, may treat students differently based on race. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 330-331. While its decision in Grutter is not before the Court in the instant case, the sad truth is that, until Grutter is overturned or limited, the clock has been turned back almost a century, to the days of Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, again giving school officials the power to discriminate against students solely because of their race

That's what trial by jury is for.

Nope. SCOTUS says "Can't have; not yours."

http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/adr/articles/winter2013-032713-federal-arbitration-act.html

the U.S. Supreme Court sent a clear message to all state courts that the Federal Arbitration Act precludes any interference with arbitration proceedings based upon valid arbitration agreements, even if those proceedings seek to enforce a contract provision that violates state law

You no longer deserve a day in court even if the health insurance contract is prima-facie illegal. There is good reason that more people with life-threatening illnesses are appealing to the court of public opinion for their fights with the insurance companies...

If my insurance company ever denies me the right to live, I'll do the same to their nearest office full of gestapo.

That's what trial by jury is for.

Nope. SCOTUS says "Can't have; not yours."

http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/adr/articles/winter2013-032713-federal-arbitration-act.html

the U.S. Supreme Court sent a clear message to all state courts that the Federal Arbitration Act precludes any interference with arbitration proceedings based upon valid arbitration agreements, even if those proceedings seek to enforce a contract provision that violates state law

You no longer deserve a day in court even if the health insurance contract is prima-facie illegal. There is good reason that more people with life-threatening illnesses are appealing to the court of public opinion for their fights with the insurance companies...

It would be useful to know how many of the court's decisions are affirm vs reverse.

http://www.americanbar.org/con...

I did some tallying on table 3 and found the following numbers on total decissions;
Reversed: 58.48%
Vacated: 12.58%
Affirmed: 28.94%

The article doesn't mention whether "vacated" is counted separately or as a reversal.
The graph shows only reversed and affirmed, so I'm assuming vacated counts as a reversal.
If this is the case, reversed and vacated together is 71.06%.
So if you'd guess "Reversed" all the time, you'd be slighly more accurate than the algorithm.

I don't know of any challenges, but the principle in question seems nearly identical to the copyleft notion underlying the GPL -- a notion that went untested in court for a very long time because, basically, every attorney that looked at it decided it wasn't worth fighting.

At least some manufacturers of electric cars presumably will have more money splashing around than open-source software developers, and thus will be more attractive targets. Beyond that, I'd be careful analogizing very much at all between copyrights and patents -- they're two entirely separate bodies of law.

I'm not aware of any purchaser of a patent who has successfully argued that they can revoke a licensing commitment to a standards body, either. It seems to me that the precedent is rather firmly established.

It all depends on what you mean by "successfully argued." The real-world question is not whether an argument will ultimately carry the day at trial, but how much money you're going to spend either (1) fighting the case to get to trial, or (2) settling the case so you don't have to spend the money fighting and have the legal uncertainty hanging over your company's head. Those amounts tend to run in the millions of dollars for all but the true bottom-feeders, who may walk away for low-mid-six figures. Though it's a bit dated, here's a fairly good overview of the last several years of significant litigation over commitments to standards bodies. There have been a number of smaller cases as well.

I completely agree with the sentiment that IP laws (laws in general!) should be much simpler. There's two problems with your argument, though. First, some areas of law are necessarily so complex that only a tiny fraction of lawyers and judges (let alone laypersons) are competent to handle them. I would not trust a constitutional law guru to handle corporate bankruptcy, nor a brilliant civil rights litigator to draft a patent on synthetic DNA.

Second and more importantly, there's nothing "select" about who can know and understand these laws. Anyone who wants to become well-versed in the vagaries of US IP laws can do any or all of the following:

1) Read the actual laws
2) Pick up a book that will aid you in understanding IP law (no quality guarantees there, I just googled "understanding IP law" and this is the first thing that popped up)
3) Go watch some YouTube videos that explain, for instance, design patent law or the concept of trade dress (again, no quality guarantees, just showing there's tons of content out there)
4) Go to law school and take some IP courses (I don't recommend this if all you want is a passing understanding of IP law)
5) Ask NYCL himself to explain the issue to you

Unlike some of the scientific content discussed here on /. (esp. things like QM and particle physics), IP laws are not particularly hard to grok for the average person—with a little effort and a helpful search engine. Stop me if I'm stabbing a scarecrow here, but I think you might be confusing "IP laws shouldn't be unreasonably complex" with "IP laws should be intuitive enough that people don't even have to look them up".

That's because it's completely false . Not only that, but even if it were true, the problem has never that more men work in a field than women. That's merely a consequence of the problem. The problem is a lifelong pressure put on women not to join certain fields (like IT, etc) as well as a prejudice against those who do.

In the most narrow sense, that is largely, but not completely, correct. Some of the anti-Klan or civil rights laws related laws do in fact touch questions of free speech or expression. Some examples:

Georgia Supreme Court Reinstates Ban on Wearing of Klan Masks
DOJ Attorney Cracks Down on Anti-Muslim Hate Speech
The Law and Your Job - Sexual Harassment

The US is using its national intelligence agencies to obtain intelligence on terrorists trying to kill people.

Yes, and obtaining intelligence on political movements like Occupy Wall Street.

The intelligence agencies themselves don't have police powers.

Oh? What's that you say? TFA is about warrantless surveillance undertaken by the FBI, which is the federal agency with explicit domestic police powers.

The suspect in this case is accused of assisting a terrorist group.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, providing "material support" to a terrorist group can be as simple as expressing support for it. And having a terrorism suspect browse your web site is enough to spark a secret investigation of your organization which scares away many of the donors who keep it in operation.

East Germany's secret police had both an intelligence function and police powers.

The FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, at least, are agencies with police powers and intelligence operations. Heck, even the NYPD is in on the deal.

Their primary purpose was to keep the East German Communist party in power.

Given that NSA snooping hasn't indisputably foiled even a single terrorist plot, and the FBI instigated virtually all of the "terrorist" plots they've busted, I have to wonder what is the primary purpose of these agencies. Surely not to intimidate political dissidents!

You could be arrested and imprisoned for such things as making jokes about the nation's leadership, wanting to form a new political party,

Here in the U.S., they've at least figured out that making jokes about the leadership is essentially harmless and does nothing to erode their power. If people started to rise up to challenge them, we might see that change; the architecture of oppression is in place. As for forming a new political party, it does no harm to talk of it, because it's essentially impossible due to the laws in most areas which protect the two incumbent parties.

being a member of an unapproved church,

Like a mosque?

trying to leave the country without permission (could get you shot on the spot)

It won't get you shot, but you apparently can't leave without permission. The U.S. apparently has more finesse than East Germany did.

and many other possible infractions.

There are plenty of other infractions that'll get you in trouble, like walking while black,

Plus, there's <1% of the land up in Alaska that's actually owned privately. The rest is owned either by the Feds, the State, or the Natives.

You misstate the case slightly. Native land is private land under ANCSA. Native Corporation land can, and has been, sold. Further, the selection of land by the state has had a strong focus on private ownership and development.

While it changes slowly, the 1% number isn't static. (Sorry to pick at nits, but you try to present a picture that's static, when it's not.)

Unless I'm mistaken, the witness does in fact enjoy the same privilege to avoid answering when the answer would be self-incriminatory? The american bar association has a whole article detailing under what circumstances it's appropriate, and how to handle it when examining a witness that suddenly takes the fifth. http://apps.americanbar.org/buslaw/blt/blt00may-shield.html

In fact, the very article you linked mentions that not only can a witness take the 5th, they are also allowed to do so selectively without giving up their right to testify on other matters. In that way they have more privileges than the accused while still posessing the same protections.

A witness can't just refuse to answer for just any reason, including fear of getting someone else in trouble, but that's how our justice system works for all people. Otherwise anyone could simply refuse to testify in someone's defense because of prior history, personal gain, or outside compulsion. Those types of things are an "obstruction of justice" as the term was really intended. (Meaning the person is willfully trying to avoid justice being served to another person through malicious action or inaction)

Additionally, without the compulsion to answer except under narrow circumstances, the ability to corrupt or threaten witnesses would become even simpler, since they wouldn't even need to claim duress and raise any alarm bells. In fact, most witnesses' self-interest would be best served by staying quiet, since speaking would put them at risk of retaliation, while simply claiming " I don't want to talk" means you're safe from everyone including, in theory, that dangerous criminal who's on trial.

In your example, Alice could reply with "I'm not sure" since she's only a suspected witness. She could safely claim to have been confused about what was going on, or have an unclear memory of what exactly happened, thus making her unsure whether "Bob did it". If they started to go down a path that might have something to do with her status as an accomplice, such as asking why she was on the scene, she could respond with "I plead the fifth" and refuse to answer that string of questions. She could also refuse to answer if they started asking her about prior drug use or some other unrelated crime.