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I believe the real obstacles are the fact that big oil and coal own our "elected representatives". The result: Trumps EPA allowing increased mercury levels because cleaning the air is "too expensive and unnecessary"..
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t...
https://www.bna.com/26-environ...

The Federal preemption clause applies only to LAWS and the FCC regulations are not laws. So preemption works only in limited cases like public safety or national security. Both are hard to argue.

Don't believe me? Well, ask the Sixth Circuit: https://www.bna.com/sixth-circ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
https://www.bleepingcomputer.c...
https://www.bna.com/hacking-ca...

Shall I go on?

Cable monopolies have been around for eons and they were just as strong under the Dems and would have retained that strength under Hillary.

Wheeler would have stayed on as head for at least a bit. Net neutrality was protected under Obama and nearly immediately killed under GOP rule. Do you have a reason to suggest Hillary would have been the same aside from an insistence that democrats must be as bad as republicans despite evidence to the contrary?

Monopolies are anti-free market. It is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue.

In theory. In theory, communism works. In theory.

In reality, "free market" should join santa claus on the list of things adults realize aren't real.

Oh, by the way, the Sherman Antitust Act was passed under a Republican president...

Different definition of "republican party" as you should know from high school.

I live 1 mile from the Oregon border. I shop and work in Oregon all the time. I am familiar with Oregon.

It isn't speculation to think that an ISP might want to think twice about opening a new operation in Oregon. Comcast fought this new Central Assessment process for business property tax all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court. They lost just last October. http://www.bna.com/oregon-supr... Comcast says that the new assessment rules will cost them big. It increased their Assessment by $701 million in 2009 alone.

Basing the valuation of equipment and property even partly on the name of the owner, instead of the equipment and property alone, seems unfair. Changing the rules to create an exception to get around Measure 50, also seems like dirty pool.

If I owned an ISP, and was considering opening a business in Oregon, I think I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't take a 2nd or 3rd look at how this new assessment scheme was going to impact my business.

This isn't a right wing or a left wing position. This is a business decision. A new, higher property tax system, is going to impact the viability of the budget for the operations.

I had never even heard of this central assessment until today, but it didn't take me 10 minutes to find out that Comcast sure as heck is upset about it. If Comcast is that mad, you can believe that Google and every other ISP in your State is also looking at it.

I do know that the past few years have been financially difficult for Oregon. The recession hit State and Local Government coffers very hard. I haven't heard any of my friends in local Government complaining about tax shortfalls for a few years, so I have to assume that things have started to bounce back. But in 2008/2009 when this change was made, things were really dark for Oregon, tax wise that is.

Obviously you did not follow recent events where the French government forced Google to pay $81 million, or where the Free ips threatened Google by blocking every ad on their internet service. And after all, France is in Europe, you know, the union that fined Microsoft $672 million.

According to our 'lovely' president Obama, ACTA does not need to be ratified by Senate because it is a trade agreement, not a treaty. So, unless forced to (e.g. by Sen Wyden's amendment to the JOBS Act http://www.bna.com/wyden-amendments-houses-n12884908487/) or Obama decides to send it to the Senate on his own, The Senate will have no say on ACTA.

However, arbitration clauses can be invalidated by unconscionability. The first part is easy, it's a take it or leave it agreement from a party in a stronger negotiation position vs a less legally sophisticated party. As for the second part, if the courts find that the purpose of the arbitration clause is to insulate themselves from customer's legitimate grievances, then it can be struck down as unconscionable.

For example

This has been tried. See the story of "TakemymoneyandnoEulasapply@aol.com." That seems to have had no effect. For an overview of current law, see this legal commentary on terms of use.

When companies have tried to enforce the provisions of an EULA against consumers, the courts have not been that supportive. This usually comes up involving mandatory arbitration clauses and anti-class-action provisions. PayPal lost in court on that one.

It's a "service" and yes they can.

I'm guessing you've never taken a single class in contract law. This is not even a grey area, IMHO.

Yes, it is true that they can change the terms at any time, but until such time as you agree to those changed terms, they have no right to operate under the assumption that you have agreed to them as Facebook does. More to the point, if the change to the terms is considered large enough to constitute a substantive change to the nature of the contract, they are required to explicitly get agreement to the updated terms or else the new contract is NOT valid.

This is very basic law, people. We're talking first year of law school. Heck, I'm not a lawyer and even I know enough about contract law to know that these terms are invalid. Some citations to start you off:

• Union Pac. R.R. v. Chi., Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pac. R.R. (among other things, ruled that a substantive change is sufficient to make a contract invalid)
• Affirmed by Douglas v. US District Court ex rel Talk America, and a blog about the case

And a few older ones that I didn't have time to find links for:

• Hanson v. Puget Sound Navigation Co., 52 Wash.2d 124, 323 P.2d 655 (1958)
• Marnon v. Vaughan Motor Co., 184 Or. 103, 194 P.2d 992 (1948)
• Carothers v. Carothers, 260 Or. 99, 488 P.2d 1185 (1971)
• Miller Construction Co. v. Watts Construction Co., 223 Or. 504, 355 P.2d 215 (1960)

Read the linked decision - this didn't say that you don't have to read past Page 1, it said that only informing the user of the existence of licensing terms if they scroll to the very bottom of the page doesn't make the terms binding.

Essentially, if the plugin installer used a "clickwrap" license - as explicitly stated by Sotomayor in a footnote - it could have been binding.

But instead, there was a single sentence at the bottom of the page: "Please review and agree to the terms of the Netscape SmartDownload software license agreement before downloading and using the software." Installing the plugin didn't show the license, and if you didn't scroll down past the download button, you wouldn't see anything about the license.

You should read the ruling, it seems pretty clear to me that Sotomayor did indeed know what she's talking about and came to the correct decision.

Ok, so these reports are available for purchase here. We should not have to purchase them, obviously. Also, it looks the the US-Italian embassy is leaking the crap out of them. z0mg!

Not that such a thing is even legal. (PDF warning!)

Every first-year law student knows that changing a contract requires offer and acceptance as a new contract. This is basic stuff. The lawyers can add that text until their fingers fall off, but it's not enforceable.

No, I refuse to buy their products due to their policy of firing longer term, higher paid employees then offering to rehire them at starting wages (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aw.zhHEzMpZU&refer=home), as well as their established history of racism (http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980929/971372.htm) and other, shall we say, shady behaviors.

they can [...] make you go through a arbitration process FIRST

No, They can't.

I'm too lazy to look it up because I don't care enough about slashdot, but I know the background enough to make a qualified statement.

Paypal had such a clause in its agreement. Someone in some other part of California sued for some minor amount in small claims.

Paypal appealed all the way through CA courts to a federal court. The federal court, interpreting CA law, and citing dozens of precedent cases, determined that forced arbitration and geographical constraints on the jurisdiction were an unfair practice in California FOR SMALL CLAIMS. That such provisions were designed not to protect consumers, but to insulate corporations from suits.

I make my first sentence a lie. http://pub.bna.com/eclr/021227.htm

You're talking about the affirmative defense of invalidity. Any lawyer worth his salt automatically lists invalidity as a defense in his answer to a patent complaint. Always. Without fail. The ones who don't, get malpractice suits. Even if they don't claim invalidity, it may not matter, since courts are free to treat invalidity separately from infringement. This practice has not slowed the trolls, since they expect it when they file suit. In fact, they expect it five years ahead of time when they file or buy patents in the first place, since it's part of their business model. They aren't stupid, just annoying.

Yes, it is public domain. And as such NASA has exactly the opposite problem from most organizations when trying to contribute back to open source.
NASA's licensing

Thumbnail = Excerpt was settled, at least for the California circuit, by Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) . From the ruling:

There is no dispute Defendant operates its Web site for commercial purposes. Plaintiff's images, however, did not represent a significant element of that commerce, nor were they exploited in any special way. (5) They were reproduced as a result of Defendant's generally indiscriminate method of gathering images. Defendant has a commercial interest in developing a comprehensive thumbnail index so it can provide more complete results to users of its search engine. The Ditto crawler is designed to obtain large numbers of images from numerous sources without seeking authorization. (6) Plaintiff's images were indexed as a result of these methods. While the use here was commercial, it was also of a somewhat more incidental and less exploitative nature than more traditional types of "commercial use." (7)

snip

Amount And Substantiality of the Portion Used

The third fair use factor assesses whether the amount copied was "reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying." Id. The analysis focuses on "the persuasiveness of a [copier's] justification for the particular copying done, and the enquiry will harken back to the first of the statutory factors, for . . . the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use." Id. at 586-87.

In the thumbnail index, Defendant used Plaintiff's images in their entirety, but reduced them in size. Defendant argues it is necessary for a visual search engine to copy images in their entirety so users can be sure of recognizing them, and the reduction in size and resolution mitigates damage that might otherwise result from copying. As Defendant has illustrated in its brief, thumbnails cannot be enlarged into useful images. Defendant's Memo of P & A, at 3. Use of partial images or images further reduced in size would make images difficult for users to identify, and would eliminate the usefulness of Defendant's search engine as a means of categorizing and improving access to Internet resources.

snip

If only the thumbnail index were at issue, Defendant's copying would likely be reasonable in light of its purposes.

So the California circuit considered thumbnails to be fair use, at least for search engine purposes. This case was appealed, mostly sustained but partially remanded to a lower court to reconsider the issues described by the content that I cut out of this excerpt, which isn't relevant to Google's case.

Note: the snipped content focuses on an image attributes page that Arriba provided but Google does not, in which the entire image is presented in a different context than the original. Google probably avoids this issue posed by Kelly by showing the full size image only in its original context or as a stand-alone image served by the original server, though the ability to see the full size image by itself might be a point where they could legitimately argue infringement, depending on how Kelly played out when remanded to the lower court, a piece of information that I don't currently have. The initial finding of the lower court said that even this use was legitimate, but again, since this was remanded to a lower court on appeal and I don't have the final ruling, I can't say with much certainty on that matter..

IANALBIPOOSD.

Thumbnail = Excerpt was settled, at least for the California circuit, by Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) . From the ruling:

There is no dispute Defendant operates its Web site for commercial purposes. Plaintiff's images, however, did not represent a significant element of that commerce, nor were they exploited in any special way. (5) They were reproduced as a result of Defendant's generally indiscriminate method of gathering images. Defendant has a commercial interest in developing a comprehensive thumbnail index so it can provide more complete results to users of its search engine. The Ditto crawler is designed to obtain large numbers of images from numerous sources without seeking authorization. (6) Plaintiff's images were indexed as a result of these methods. While the use here was commercial, it was also of a somewhat more incidental and less exploitative nature than more traditional types of "commercial use." (7)

snip

Amount And Substantiality of the Portion Used

The third fair use factor assesses whether the amount copied was "reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying." Id. The analysis focuses on "the persuasiveness of a [copier's] justification for the particular copying done, and the enquiry will harken back to the first of the statutory factors, for . . . the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use." Id. at 586-87.

In the thumbnail index, Defendant used Plaintiff's images in their entirety, but reduced them in size. Defendant argues it is necessary for a visual search engine to copy images in their entirety so users can be sure of recognizing them, and the reduction in size and resolution mitigates damage that might otherwise result from copying. As Defendant has illustrated in its brief, thumbnails cannot be enlarged into useful images. Defendant's Memo of P & A, at 3. Use of partial images or images further reduced in size would make images difficult for users to identify, and would eliminate the usefulness of Defendant's search engine as a means of categorizing and improving access to Internet resources.

snip

If only the thumbnail index were at issue, Defendant's copying would likely be reasonable in light of its purposes.

So the California circuit considered thumbnails to be fair use, at least for search engine purposes. This case was appealed, mostly sustained but partially remanded to a lower court to reconsider the issues described by the content that I cut out of this excerpt, which isn't relevant to Google's case.

Note: the snipped content focuses on an image attributes page that Arriba provided but Google does not, in which the entire image is presented in a different context than the original. Google probably avoids this issue posed by Kelly by showing the full size image only in its original context or as a stand-alone image served by the original server, though the ability to see the full size image by itself might be a point where they could legitimately argue infringement, depending on how Kelly played out when remanded to the lower court, a piece of information that I don't currently have. The initial finding of the lower court said that even this use was legitimate, but again, since this was remanded to a lower court on appeal and I don't have the final ruling, I can't say with much certainty on that matter..

IANALBIPOOSD.

Thumbnail = Excerpt was settled, at least for the California circuit, by Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) . From the ruling:

There is no dispute Defendant operates its Web site for commercial purposes. Plaintiff's images, however, did not represent a significant element of that commerce, nor were they exploited in any special way. (5) They were reproduced as a result of Defendant's generally indiscriminate method of gathering images. Defendant has a commercial interest in developing a comprehensive thumbnail index so it can provide more complete results to users of its search engine. The Ditto crawler is designed to obtain large numbers of images from numerous sources without seeking authorization. (6) Plaintiff's images were indexed as a result of these methods. While the use here was commercial, it was also of a somewhat more incidental and less exploitative nature than more traditional types of "commercial use." (7)

snip

Amount And Substantiality of the Portion Used

The third fair use factor assesses whether the amount copied was "reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying." Id. The analysis focuses on "the persuasiveness of a [copier's] justification for the particular copying done, and the enquiry will harken back to the first of the statutory factors, for . . . the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use." Id. at 586-87.

In the thumbnail index, Defendant used Plaintiff's images in their entirety, but reduced them in size. Defendant argues it is necessary for a visual search engine to copy images in their entirety so users can be sure of recognizing them, and the reduction in size and resolution mitigates damage that might otherwise result from copying. As Defendant has illustrated in its brief, thumbnails cannot be enlarged into useful images. Defendant's Memo of P & A, at 3. Use of partial images or images further reduced in size would make images difficult for users to identify, and would eliminate the usefulness of Defendant's search engine as a means of categorizing and improving access to Internet resources.

snip

If only the thumbnail index were at issue, Defendant's copying would likely be reasonable in light of its purposes.

So the California circuit considered thumbnails to be fair use, at least for search engine purposes. This case was appealed, mostly sustained but partially remanded to a lower court to reconsider the issues described by the content that I cut out of this excerpt, which isn't relevant to Google's case.

Note: the snipped content focuses on an image attributes page that Arriba provided but Google does not, in which the entire image is presented in a different context than the original. Google probably avoids this issue posed by Kelly by showing the full size image only in its original context or as a stand-alone image served by the original server, though the ability to see the full size image by itself might be a point where they could legitimately argue infringement, depending on how Kelly played out when remanded to the lower court, a piece of information that I don't currently have. The initial finding of the lower court said that even this use was legitimate, but again, since this was remanded to a lower court on appeal and I don't have the final ruling, I can't say with much certainty on that matter..

IANALBIPOOSD.

Thumbnail = Excerpt was settled, at least for the California circuit, by Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) . From the ruling:

There is no dispute Defendant operates its Web site for commercial purposes. Plaintiff's images, however, did not represent a significant element of that commerce, nor were they exploited in any special way. (5) They were reproduced as a result of Defendant's generally indiscriminate method of gathering images. Defendant has a commercial interest in developing a comprehensive thumbnail index so it can provide more complete results to users of its search engine. The Ditto crawler is designed to obtain large numbers of images from numerous sources without seeking authorization. (6) Plaintiff's images were indexed as a result of these methods. While the use here was commercial, it was also of a somewhat more incidental and less exploitative nature than more traditional types of "commercial use." (7)

snip

Amount And Substantiality of the Portion Used

The third fair use factor assesses whether the amount copied was "reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying." Id. The analysis focuses on "the persuasiveness of a [copier's] justification for the particular copying done, and the enquiry will harken back to the first of the statutory factors, for . . . the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use." Id. at 586-87.

In the thumbnail index, Defendant used Plaintiff's images in their entirety, but reduced them in size. Defendant argues it is necessary for a visual search engine to copy images in their entirety so users can be sure of recognizing them, and the reduction in size and resolution mitigates damage that might otherwise result from copying. As Defendant has illustrated in its brief, thumbnails cannot be enlarged into useful images. Defendant's Memo of P & A, at 3. Use of partial images or images further reduced in size would make images difficult for users to identify, and would eliminate the usefulness of Defendant's search engine as a means of categorizing and improving access to Internet resources.

snip

If only the thumbnail index were at issue, Defendant's copying would likely be reasonable in light of its purposes.

So the California circuit considered thumbnails to be fair use, at least for search engine purposes. This case was appealed, mostly sustained but partially remanded to a lower court to reconsider the issues described by the content that I cut out of this excerpt, which isn't relevant to Google's case.

Note: the snipped content focuses on an image attributes page that Arriba provided but Google does not, in which the entire image is presented in a different context than the original. Google probably avoids this issue posed by Kelly by showing the full size image only in its original context or as a stand-alone image served by the original server, though the ability to see the full size image by itself might be a point where they could legitimately argue infringement, depending on how Kelly played out when remanded to the lower court, a piece of information that I don't currently have. The initial finding of the lower court said that even this use was legitimate, but again, since this was remanded to a lower court on appeal and I don't have the final ruling, I can't say with much certainty on that matter..

IANALBIPOOSD.

Web browsers should present a header which has some disclaimer like "The user of this web browser is not authorized to enter into contracts with any party on behalf of XXX company. Any agreement purportedly entered into via this network connection is null and void". It would be desirable to have a machine-readable standard for this, so web servers can determine whether they should deny access to certain pages or forms. Courts have recognized the "robots.txt" file convention, so there's legal precedent for this. (eBay vs. Bidder's Edge) It doesn't require legislation; a widely used standard would be sufficient. This is a task for W3C.

Direct install via CD should have a similar convention, but that's harder to do. First, fix it in web browsers.

Krause argued that Titleserv never owned the program copies at issue, but rather possessed them as a licensee pursuant to an oral agreement. Titleserv countered that it owned the copies because it paid Krause a substantial sum to develop them and had an undisputed right to possess and use them permanently.

This quote is from:
HERE

Hoy! An oral agreement.
Legal, binding, but not provable in this case.

When you put your trash in your driveway (not even on public property) for collection, the police can in some cases search it without a warrant (U.S. v. Redmon, No. 96-3361, 7th Cir., March 10, 1998 - http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980331/963361.htm). Seemingly (if my skimming of the opinion was adequate) in part because you intended it to be taken away by another party and didn't expect to retain control of it.

It seems logical to assume the same applies to any signals you are transmitting outside your house and/or property lines if you intentionally allowed others to access them. Hmmm... would this same logic apply if you by accident let others access them w/o a password and the police intercepted them.

I am not admitted to practice in New Hampshire (I don't even know where the suit was filed), and none of this is legal advice - that said...

"SLAPP" is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. It basically means all of the lawsuits that big companies file against "the little guy" when "the little guy" exercises his First Amendment rights to protest in a "matter of public concern." A really good run-down of the reasoning behind Massachusetts' anti-SLAPP statute (only because that's the one I'm most familiar with) is here. Historically, these suits will often present as claims for defamation or "interference with contractual relations" for the statements made by the defendant.

There are certain legal tests that one must meet in order to have their "petitioning activity" qualify as being "protected" under the statute. Without more facts and knowledge of the analagous statute in NH (if there even is one), I wouldn't hazard a guess as to whether or not "contacting SpamHaus with information about a spammer" would fit. Might be a good case to bump up the appellate process and make new law in the jurisdiction, though. ;)

The advantage of filing a Special Motion to Dismiss under these Anti-SLAPP statutes is that frequently, they allow for an immediate award of costs and attorney's fees, effectively stopping the frivolous lawsuit in its tracks and strongly discouraging companies from filing such suits in the future.

This guy should find a lawyer, explain ALL of the facts of the suit, and ask her to consider if this could be seen as a SLAPP suit, and how to proceed. Like I've said in other posts, most bar associations have lawyer referral services (LRS) that require member attorneys to give a free or cheap initial consultation. It sounds like this would be a great case for someone to take on.

Not all lawyers are bloodsucking bottom-feeders. Some are, and they give the rest of us a bad name. Just keep an open mind when you want a lawyer. ;)

"Who the FBI, CIA, NSA, DoD, and the Pentagon ought to be going after is China, Korea, Thailand, and all the other Southeast Asian countries that are costing American companies millions, if not billions, in 'lost revenues' on computer software sales. Sadly, that would require an act of war..."

The US (and other Berne signatories) do fight piracy in the countries you've mentioned, and it doesn't take an act of war in the sense that you probably mean. It's typically done with economic sanctions.

Examples and more info:

• http://www.templetonthorp.com/en/news621
• http://www.bna.com/itr/arch245.htm
• http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Press_Release s/2003/May/Special_301_Report_Finds_Some_Progress, _But_Improvement_Needed.html
• http://usinfo.state.gov/ei/Archive/2003/Dec/31-309 8.html

You could try, if you really want to. File a lawsuit, class action if you feel like it. You could use trespass to chattels as one claim - see eBay v. Bidder's Edge for one example (only granting an injunction, but indicating that trespass would likely succeed at trial).

Maybe you could also try unjust enrichment. This generally requires a showing that the defendant recieved a benefit provided by you and that the defendant was unjustly enriched thereby - i.e. to let the defendant remain enriched without compensating you would be improper under the law. Courts in such cases can decide a contract was formed (a fiction) - called a quasi-contract, or they might use another legal construction, but this allows them to order restitution.

I'm currently researching unjust enrichment, unfortunately, it seems a difficult cause of action to prove sufficiently. My guess, though, is that with the bad public view of spamming, courts might be willing to go your way.

Yes. It's a well-known, and controversial, case,EBay vs. Bidder's Edge. That was only a preliminary injunction, though. Bidder's Edge shut down on February 21, 2001, so the issue was never really decided.

The law was signed Feb 2002, and it only requires ISPs to block sites specificied by the attorney general. I still don't like the law, but it was significantly relaxed in part due to efforts by Pennsylvania's ACLU.

It does not require ISPs do do any "policing" on their own, but it does require them to attempt to block sites specifically ID'ed as child porn by the attorney general.

Usenet is distributed and has non-infringing uses. Indeed, the vast majority of newsgroups are non-infringing. Sure, there was the ALS Scan vs. RemarQ case, but that was relatively minor, and the MP3 newsgroups do have non-infringing material, such as bootlegs from bands that have designating that their live performances can be shared. This is substantially more material on a percentage basis than on Kazaa.

Someone else mentioned Comb vs. PayPal in passing. That's a very important case, because it directly addresses how far a click-wrap agreement can go. It's not over yet, but in a ruling on an initial motion, a Federal District Court ruled that PayPal's agreement was a contract of adhesion and an unreasonable one. Requiring commercial arbitration in Santa Clara, California and prohibiting class actions was ruled to be unconscionable. PayPal is fighting this.

civil anti-trust suits are not restricted to monetary damages, although since monetary damages can be tripled, they are often the plantiff's focus.

For instance, in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services "The ISOs[Independent Service Organizations] alleged that Kodak used its monopoly in the market for Kodak photocopier and micrographic parts to create a second monopoly in the equipment service markets. A jury verdict awarded treble damages totaling $71.8 million. The district court denied Kodak's post trial motions and entered a ten year permanent injunction requiring Kodak to sell "all parts" to ISOs.

Personally, I think purely seeking monetary damages against a company with as deep pockets as microsoft is a mistake; they can just jack up their site-licenses and roll with the punches. And civil suits are a valid way of addressing most of the structural problems I cited above.

Another note, even if the plaintiffs only sue for money, they have great flexibility in using the threat of a fiscal award to force microsoft to agree to modify its behavior in a settlement. Surely settlements aren't limited to cash only, are they? Even in this settlement proposal, MS has agreed to set up an independent agency to oversee the plan, to provide support, and to provide software as well as hardware. That's not just "financial restitution" is it?

If you look at the definition of digital audio recording device/medium, you will see that hard drives do not fall under that definition. Monkeydo is perfectly right that the Audio Home Recording Act does not protect against copying which doesn't occur on AHRA media or devices.

But you can argue the flip side as well. The requirement for copy protection schemes mentioned in the same section also applies only to digital audio recording devices/media, so one is not legally required to implement them on computers. IOW, making MP3s on your computer is either specifically protected because they're for non-commercial private use or is specifically exempted from the need for protections altogether because the computer isn't an audio recording device.

This is the essential issue in the Diamond Rio case. By copying music onto a hard drive, it ceases legally to be a digital audio recording because it is no longer stored on a digital audio recording medium! While this seems to be ridiculous, that is exactly what the Appeals Court ruling concluded:

The district court concluded that the exemption of hard drives from the definition of digital music recording, and the exemption of computers generally from the Act's ambit, "would effectively eviscerate the [Act] " because "[a]ny recording device could evade [ ] regulation simply by passing the music through a computer and ensuring that the MP3 file resided momentarily on the hard drive." RIAA I, 29 F. Supp. 2d at 630. While this may be true, the Act seems to have been expressly designed to create this loophole.

Thus, it appears that there is a specific legal precedent that allows circumvention of serial copy managment just by copying the data onto a computer hard drive, as it then ceases to be legally considered to be a digital audio recording. And the Appeal Court ruled that this was not only true by the language of the law but also by its legislative history:

In fact, the Rio's operation is entirely consistent with the Act's main purpose -- the facilitation of personal use. As the Senate Report explains, "[t]he purpose of[the Act] is to ensure the right of consumers to make analog or digital audio recordings of copyrighted music for their private, noncommercial use." S. Rep. 102-294, at *86 (emphasis added). The Act does so through its home taping exemption, see 17 U.S.C. S 1008, which "protects all noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings, " H.R. Rep. 102-873(I), at *59. The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or "space-shift," those files that already reside on a user's hard drive. Cf. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 455 (1984) (holding that "time-shifting" of copyrighted television shows with VCR's constitutes fair use under the Copyright Act, and thus is not an infringement). Such copying is paradigmatic non-commercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act.

That appears to me to be a pretty strong argument that making MP3s so that you can take them with you is legally protected.

The GA State Supreme Court does not see anything wrong with it...
SEE

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that publishing a screen shot of a game in the context of comparative advertising by a party other than the copyright holder was fair use. (Sony vs Bleem)

This new directive is bad news for all us Europeans. Unfortunately, Norway is not a proper member of the EU, we're only barely a member of the European common market, so we have no say in how the new directive will be worded, but will just have to incorporate the new directive into Norwegian law.

All you other Europeans, on the other side, you have a right to vote and can protest to your local politicians, your local members of the European Parliament, your government, etc to change this new directive before it comes into effect!!!

I think this is the text of the new directive. You might try to do your own searches.

I'd like to finish my little call for a united european action aganst this new directive with a quote in legalise about the new directive. (Think web-proxies, caches and buffers in routers. Think about copyright costs for ISPs.)

3. The draft definition includes direct and indirect reproduction, whether permanent or temporary, in any manner or form. The first element in the proposal relates to the terms "direct" and indirect" reproduction. Such a formulation can be found both in Article 7 of the Rental Right Directive and in Article 10 of the Rome Convention. This term means reproducing a work or other protected matter directly onto the same or a different medium. The term "indirect" covers reproductions done via an intermediate stage, for example, the recording of a broadcast which itself has been made on the basis of a phonogram. The provision is also intended to make clear that the right is not affected by the distance between the place where an original work is situated and the place where a copy of it is made. The second element (temporary/permanent) is intended to clarify the fact that in the network environment very different types of reproduction might occur which all constitute acts of reproductions within the meaning of this provision. The result of a reproduction may be a tangible permanent copy, like a book, but it may just as well be a non-visible temporary copy of the work in the working memory of a computer. Both temporary and permanent copies have to be covered by the definition of an act of reproduction, since even temporary reproduction may cause serious economic prejudice to the rightholder.