Slashdot Mirror

As for how the footage came into the public domain, they never renewed the copyright, and it expired in 1977.

No one has really explained in detail what the case was about. Fox hired Time to produce a TV series based on a book. It was originally broadcast in 1949 and the copyright expired in 1977. Fox never bothered to renew the copyright. Dastar purchased copies of the original, public domain series, edited the footage, and sold it under their own name.

Fox complained, of course. They used the theory that, by selling the tapes and not revealing the original source of the footage, they were "reverse passing off" the footage as their own, a violation of the unfair trade practices act.

The court did not want to use trademark law to interfere with copyright law, and found for Dastar.

It's invalid because it was issued without giving him an opportunity to contest. From
CARROLL v. COMMISIONERS OFPRINCESS ANNE, 393 U.S. 175 (1968)

"The 10-day order here must be set aside because of a basic infirmity in the procedure by which it was obtained. It was issued ex parte, without notice to petitioners and without any effort, however informal, to invite or permit their participation in the proceedings. There is a place in our jurisprudence for ex parte issuance, without notice, of temporary restraining orders of short duration; but there is no place within the area of basic freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment for such orders where no showing is made that it is impossible to serve or to notify the opposing parties and to give them an opportunity to participate."...

and citing A Quantity of Books v. Kansas, [393 U.S. 175, 182] Ê 378 U.S. 205 (1964)."

" In the latter case, this Court disapproved a seizure of books under a Kansas statute on the basis of ex parte scrutiny by a judge. The Court held that the statute was unconstitutional. MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, speaking for a plurality of the Court, condemned the statute for "not first affording [the seller of the books] an adversary hearing." Id., at 211. "

It's invalid because it was issued without giving him an opportunity to contest. From
CARROLL v. COMMISIONERS OFPRINCESS ANNE, 393 U.S. 175 (1968)

"The 10-day order here must be set aside because of a basic infirmity in the procedure by which it was obtained. It was issued ex parte, without notice to petitioners and without any effort, however informal, to invite or permit their participation in the proceedings. There is a place in our jurisprudence for ex parte issuance, without notice, of temporary restraining orders of short duration; but there is no place within the area of basic freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment for such orders where no showing is made that it is impossible to serve or to notify the opposing parties and to give them an opportunity to participate."...

and citing A Quantity of Books v. Kansas, [393 U.S. 175, 182] Ê 378 U.S. 205 (1964)."

" In the latter case, this Court disapproved a seizure of books under a Kansas statute on the basis of ex parte scrutiny by a judge. The Court held that the statute was unconstitutional. MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, speaking for a plurality of the Court, condemned the statute for "not first affording [the seller of the books] an adversary hearing." Id., at 211. "

Looking at the verdict, independent claims 8, 15, and 26 were found infringed. Here are those claims:

8. A market apparatus for use with a posting terminal apparatus, said posting terminal apparatus having means for creating a digital image of a good for sale, means for creating a data record of said good for sale, a tracking number printer means, a tracking number scanner means and means for communicating to said market apparatus, said market apparatus comprising:

a communications means for communicating with the posting terminal apparatus;

a post/de-post communications handler operably connected to said communications means, said communications handler receiving a data record of a good for sale from the posting terminal apparatus, said communication handler detecting a predetermined posting terminal apparatus identification code from the posting terminal apparatus and verifying from said code that the posting terminal apparatus is an authorized user of said market apparatus;

a storage device operably connected to said post/de-post handler, said storage device adapted to receive and store said data record of a good for sale, said data record containing an image of said good for sale and a textual description of said good for sale;

a presentation mapping module operably connected to said storage device and a wide area communication network, said presentation mapping module providing via said wide area communication network an interface to said market apparatus for a participant, said presentation mapping module providing said participant with access to said data record textual description and said image of said good for sale;

a transaction processor operably connected to said wide area communication network and said storage device, said transaction processor adapted to receive a purchase request and payment means from said participant, clear said purchase request and payment means and if said payment means clears then transfer the ownership of said good for sale by modifying said data record of said good for sale to reflect the new ownership of said good for sale by said participant; and

a notification means operably connected to said transaction processor said notification means notifying the posting terminal apparatus in response to said transaction processor transferring ownership of said good for sale denoting with a finality of transaction said new ownership of said good.

15. A market apparatus for use with a posting terminal apparatus, said posting terminal apparatus having a digital camera for creating a digital image of a good for sale, a record maker module for creating a data record of said good for sale, a tracking code printer, a tracking code scanner and a posting terminal communication interface for communicating with said market apparatus, said market apparatus comprising:

a communication interface for communicating with the posting terminal apparatus;

a post/de-post communications handler operably connected to communication interface, said communications handler receiving a data record of a good for sale from the posting terminal apparatus, said communication handler detecting a predetermined posting terminal apparatus identification code from the posting terminal apparatus and verifying from said identification code that the posting terminal apparatus is an authorized user of said market apparatus;

a storage device operably connected to said post/de-post handler, said storage device adapted to receive and store said data record of a good for sale, said data record containing an image of said good for sale and a textual description of said good for sale;

a presentati

First, the quote from today:

I did not actually break into any troll boxes, although I did imply that in a misguided attempts to use some of their trolling rhetorical devices against them.

And now, the quote from yesteryear:

Incidently, Sdem is also incompetent at securing his computer. That is a glaring deficiency for someone who spends most of his time annoying and harrassing others. Thus, our investigation was able to progress well beyond simply viewing his public Internet posts. We were monitoring his system in real time, and are providing dozens of (somewhat) interesting screen shots below. We were also going to post some of his files, passwords, and full keystroke logs, but that would be gratuitously mean. After all, he is only a high school kid, so maybe he will mend his ways. Sdem: if you are reading this, change your passwords before we change our mind :).

So, not only did Mr. Fyodor illegally access the victim's PC (18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)), but he also unlawfully intercepted and disclosed the contents of communications on that machine (18 U.S.C. 2511(1)(b), (1)(c), et al) and threatened to make further disclosures to injure the victim's property and/or reputation (18 U.S.C. 875(d)).

In other words, if word of your exploits makes it up to the Justice Department, you are going to be fucked. We know full well that the Bush administration likes to make examples, especially of slimy Russian hackers. What reason do you have to believe you won't be next in line?

Statutory law may require some contracts be put in writing and executed with particular formalities. Otherwise, the parties may enter into a binding agreement without signing a formal written document.

While it is always a good idea to put the terms of a contract in writing, not all contracts must be in writing.

A deal done on a handshake - "You do X for me, and I'll pay you Y" - is a contract, because it is a legally enforceable agreement involving an exchange of promises.

Why didn't you act earlier?. . . The point is we're really only recently seeing significant moves by many players, specifically IBM, to come out and state that they are moving wholesale to Linux.

It must be obvious to every one familiar with equitable principles that it is inequitable for the owner of a copyright, with full notice of an intended infringement, to stand inactive while the proposed infringer spends large sums of money in its exploitation, and to intervene only when his speculation has proved a success. Delay under such circumstances allows the owner to speculate without risk with the other's money; he cannot possibly lose, and he may win.

The short answer is "History and Case Law." But don't take my word for it... peruse some of the info on the following page(s).

CyberSpace Law Center

-ZK

Look here and
here and here

Utility patent covers new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or compositions of matter (such as chemical compositions and compounds), or any subsequent new and useful improvement.

The US Civil Rights Commission report on the 2000 FL elections reported that unauthorized vehicle checkpoints took place near voting places: This was a minor impact compared to some of the other tactics which disenfranchised thousands. The NCAA lawsuit settlement resulted in sweeping changes to FL election laws. One of the most important exposes of FL election fraud was done by investigative reporter Greg Palast. Anyone who's unaware of the massive election fraud which put Shrub in office must be limiting their news sources to the censored, right wing US news media.

There may be precedent for this. eBay was able to convince a judge to bar spidering of their site.

There is another legal concept called "Unfair Competition" which links copyright and facts.

Normally, facts cannot be copyrighted. However, this law seems to kick in when one company compiles and publishes time-sesitive information that it has taken from a direct competitor in a way which "free-rides" on the efforts of the competitor. It is usually applied to news organizations, when one newspaper sends a reporter to Iraq and a second newspaper (perhaps an evening edition) uses the "facts" in the first newspaper's article to publish the very same news.

I could see the instantaneous publishing of all competitors' prices as a violation of this legal theory.

Isn't there something in US law requiring "due diligence" before attempting to prosecute a suit? Note IANAL, and worse, IANAA (...An American), so I could be wrong, but FindLaw's legal dictionary seems to think so.

In any case, if this means what I think it means in this context, the RIAA sure didn't do it.

(Your head hurt from all these conditionals yet?)

There is no federal common law of crimes, and pretty much no federal common law of any sort outside of a few narrowly defined areas (e.g., admiralty and maritime law).

Why you think that common law (unwritten, a tradition embedded in thousands of precedential cases contained in law reporters that few public libraries have) is necessarily better for the "average Joe" than civil law (statutes available online for anyone who cares to read them) is not clear.

see section 230(c) for their defense raised. It basically immunizes a "content provider" (slashdot included) against defamation that might occur on their board. as for the kiddie porn, see section (e)(1).

Congrats for making it all the way down here in the posts... you must be really bored. For those comments above that "don't really see anything wrong with... [MS improving the OS by prescribing hardware]". I will assume you didnt follow the anti-trust case very closely. I would strongly urge you to CAREFULLY read the Findings of Fact. Surprisingly, the Judge in this phase of the trial nailed the issue... its only too bad the meat of this document was overlooked by virtually everyone else. In short, MS was proven to have manipulated and maintained an "Applications Barrier To Entry". Which means if you don't have the developers writing for your OS, then you ain't gonna compete with MS. Well, now that MS has been [*cough!*] disciplined, and is a good citizen, there surely is no real harm in them having direct control of hardware that will support all the third party software that will run on it. For those who think this might not be a bad thing, I hear the Jeff Dahmer is reformed and available to babysit your kids... when can he come over?

According to Section 2332b of title 18, United States Code as amended by SEC. 808 of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001, it shall be considered an act of terrorism to violate, as the RIAA proposes, title 18, part 1, chapter 47, section 1030, (a) (5) (A) (iii), and thereby causes or intends to cause at least $5,000 in damages (title 18, part 1, chapter 47, section 1030, (5) (c) (i), if such an act involves any transaction across our national boarders (title 18, part 1, chapter 113B, section 2332 b (g) (1).

And their DOS attack strategy may make them liable under Title 18, part 1, chapter 65, section 1362 as well.

That is, if the RIAA accidently or intentionally causes damage or inconvenience costing $5,000 or more, or even if their attempt is thwarted but had it succeeded it would have caused $5,000 loss, they have committed the Federal offense of fraud; and if their actions cross our national border, they are international terrorists.

It may be worth VPN-ing your connections through a Canadian ISP.

As terrorists, the RIAA is liable to life in prison, secret detention, trial by secret tribunal, and secret execution. All of the labels supporting the RIAA are guilty of providing material support for a terrorist organization.(Title 18, Part 1, Chater 113B, Section 2339A)

The law abridged to pertinence reads:
Whoever... knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage... ("damage" means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information)... without authorization, to a protected computer;...(the term "protected computer" means a computer... which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication [do you use ebay? email people in other countries?])... intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or... intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; and...[by so doing] caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused)... loss... (the term "loss" means any reasonable cost to any victim, including the cost of responding to an offense, conducting a damage assessment, and restoring the data, program, system, or information to its condition prior to the offense, and any revenue lost, cost incurred, or other consequential damages incurred because of interruption of service)... to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period... aggregating at least $5,000 in value;... [shall be punished by] a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both... [or] a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both [for a second offense].

Is it libel? You decide. Read the whole bit.

Also see defamation.

This is the best you can get from Slashdot. As usual, for a real answer, you're going to need to consult a lawyer. I especially note that slander/libel is done on the state level according to findlaw, so since you don't give your state of residence, and because few if any posters are likely to understand the details of interstate legal interactions for things like this (including me!), it's probably impossible for even a lawyer who happens to be cruising Slashdot giving out free advice (also known as "casting pearls before swine") to give you a solid answer.

Is it libel? You decide. Read the whole bit.

Also see defamation.

This is the best you can get from Slashdot. As usual, for a real answer, you're going to need to consult a lawyer. I especially note that slander/libel is done on the state level according to findlaw, so since you don't give your state of residence, and because few if any posters are likely to understand the details of interstate legal interactions for things like this (including me!), it's probably impossible for even a lawyer who happens to be cruising Slashdot giving out free advice (also known as "casting pearls before swine") to give you a solid answer.

A copyright is any of the exclusive rights granted to the author of a work under the Berne Convention, or under local copyright laws, such as USC Title 17 for those of us in the US. These exclusive rights can be transferred, as occurs with Copyright Assignment to the Free Software Foundation, but even such a transfer isn't the copyright itself, but a transfer of ownership of copyright.

The GPL not a copyright, it is a license, and a non-exclusive one at that. A person who makes use of the GPL to redistribute or modify software doesn't have a copyright for the software, they have permission from the copyright holder to do certain things under certain conditions. The GPL makes use of copyright law, but that doesn't make it a copyright.

Music licensing is more complicated. Sometimes a license is given to redistribute a work, or to use a sample in a recording; sometimes music is licensed en masse . Sometimes copyright is assigned to various parties, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it is assumed as part of a "work-for-hire" contract. Sometimes the copyright is split, the songwriter having copyrights for the lyrics, the band having copyrights for the score, the producer having copyrights for the studio recording, and these can get licensed in whatever ways. But, again, the license is not the copyright.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice. Determining which parties own which copyrights can be a complicated issue demanding professional legal help.

Search for potential life. And keep searching for it.

I'm not sure what you meant by But the RIAA never got a subpoena.

RIAA certainly did serve Verizon with a subpoena, on July 24, 2002. This is what the entire case is about, RIAA seeking to enforce that very subpoena.

I find it fascinating that most young people(plenty of whom are over the voting age) get furious when someone challenges their (non-existant, except for Fair Use)"right" to rip off music/movies, but don't blink an eyelid when things like the Patriot Act are passed, a FAR more serious violation of ACTUAL rights. I want to scream into their ears "who gives a SHIT about your music? Look at what they're doing to our FREEDOM!"

While the PATRIOT Act is devastating to our liberties and freedoms, Any erosion of our rights is a start down a slippery slope.

And while I know that the slippery slope argument is flawed, it is well used in the legal arena.

There is. 35 U.S.C. 102(b):

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States,

Well, in the case of the 2000 election, what the "majority opinion" meant was literally more than half of the voters. It isn't whim, but objective, countable (ahem--not counted) votes. Voting makes our system legitimate.

We can bicker about the how legitimate our voting numbers are (my memory is that it was actually about 40% of the registered voters, which was half? (perhaps less) of the eligible voters). But if you are going to call voting a "whim," then you are dumping the premise of democratic government. I don't want to do that.

Your point is valid if we are talking about "political cultures" or "affiliations" within the US, but unless we are going to say that we no longer wish to support the idea that we have a majority system based on representative democracy in which majority vote wins, then the electoral college has become a campaign manipulation tool, not a check on majority passion. Check out this article on find law for a discussion of the college.

See Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) for the full explaination.

This is a position that requires someone who knows about the fields of information collecting, data mining, and personal privacy. Not someone on a soapbox.

RTFA. From it, you'd read:

"The privacy rights community generally views O'Connor Kelly as a consensus builder, but it is too soon to say how much influence she will have in protecting Americans' privacy rights, said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "

Though she is a self proclaimed geek at heart, there isn't much record on her personal stance. She brought Doubleclick back in line, and patched the major gaps in its public relations. This could be seen as a minimum to saving the company; so was it a strong privacy move, or simply providing good counsel for a client? Too early to tell.

I'd be more concerned if it was some know-nothing anti-gub'ment clown from the EFF in a position of power, in the end. They'd make it illegal to write down someones first name, if they had their way.

First of all, O'Connor Kelly won't be making law. That's a job for congress and the president (remember highschool government?). Secondly, an extreme privacy advocate in the whitehouse would probably do wonders to offset the DoJ influence that's there now; but then anything that GWB doesn't want to hear already probably won't be said.

A deal in which a retailer agrees not to operate an e-commerce site in exchange for the ability to purchase the supplier's goods -- part of a class of contracts broadly known as "non-price vertical restraints" -- is subject to the "rule of reason:" the proscription is examined in conjunction with the competitive state of the market to determine if the activity is illegal.

Generally speaking, these contracts have been upheld; see, e.g., O.S.C. v. Apple, 792 F.2d 1464, 1469-70 (9th Cir. 1986) and H.L. Hayden Co. v. Siemens, 879 F.2d 1005, 1014 (10th Cir., 1989), both upholding the ability of suppliers to contractually foreclose dealers' ability to sell products via mail-order.

However, there is a caveat: since GW operates its own e-commerce site, it's in horizontal competition with its dealers. This doesn't automatically mean that the restraint becomes horizontal (and, indeed, the penumbra of antitrust law suggests it does not), but it does give some squeaking room for lawyers who want to challenge those restrictions.

Nonetheless, the preponderance of the law is on GW's side, especially since (unless things have changed in the decade or so since I last played a tabletop game) the market is very competitive. It's very unlikely to my mind that a successful challenge to this restraint could be mounted.

Oh. I thought we were talking about spam in the real world. Spam isn't truthful. Forged headers, fake return addresses, hijacked servers, fake opt-out instructions, claims that "This mail is not sent unsolicited. You opted in via a third party" and similar nonsense, while selling GetABiggerDick, MMF, HomeMortgageRefinancing, CheapTonerCartriges and BootlegSoftware. Spammers have no history of being truthful.

Of course, no domestic law could prevent foreign spam no matter how draconian

On that, we agree. And the proposed law which started this discussion isn't designed to prevent spam, but to legalize it. However, we've been talking about the first amendment implications. You claim that spam is free speech, and laws against it would be thrown out due to the first amendment. I've called "Bullshit".

As for advertisements being free speech, I'm mindful of what the Supreme Court said in Central Hudson (447 US 557): The First Amendment ... protects commercial speech from unwarranted governmental regulation. ... [W]e have rejected the "highly paternalistic" view that government has complete power to suppress or regulate commercial speech.

Central Hudson is related to a complete ban on an industry, keeping them from advertising in any way, via any media. It's a completely different thing.

You can find the ruling at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=us&vol=447&invol=557

It starts by saying : A regulation of appellee New York Public Service Commission which completely bans an electric utility from advertising to promote the use of electricity violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Your claim that a complete ban on advertising (using any media) by electrical companies is comparable to a cost shifted situations such as spam doesn't give me much hope in your chances of being successful in law. However, I do realize that lawyers are willing to twist the truth into very convoluted shapes, so perhaps you'll do well.

You have a case regarding the bulk nature of spam being objectionable -- cite it! I want to read it. I like to think I know about the First Amendment, having studied it quite a lot here in law school, and having discussed spam _specifically_ for days, but perhaps I'm missing something that you can point out. I don't mind being corrected, but I encourage you to put up or shut up.

Ah, the old "I'm right, because I'm a lawyer" ploy. Sorry, but I'm not buying. I'm no lawyer, but I've studied the issue for a lot more than a few days, and there are plenty of court rulings on my side. You've yet to produce one that supports your argument, with Central Hudson being your only attempt.

As to put up or shut up, I've posted quotes from specific rulings before, and you've ignored them. But I'll try again, even though I know that you'll probably ignore them again.

You'll find a well thought out discussion, with plenty of court rulings, on the subject of spam and free speech at http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/spam_law.html. I'll hit some highlights, and this is fairly long anyway, but I'm not going to attempt to duplicate everything on that page - you can read it there, if you actually care. I'm not convinced that you do.

Various excerpts shown below.

AOL v. Cyberpromo
http://legal.web.aol.com/decisions/dljunk/cyberord erf.html
Cyber Promotions, Inc. does not have a right under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or under the Constitutions of Pennsylvania and Virginia to send unsolicited e-mail advertisements over the Internet to memb

I can't believe the Iraqi Information Minister would contradict John Walker (Lindh), a known member of the Taliban...

According to Article 49 of the legal complaint, the record companies are suing for the maximum statutory damages allowed under the DCMA, which is $150,000 per work infringed. This actually has nothing to do with economics or actual monetary loss that the companies have endured, but rather is the punishment imposed under
17 U.S.C. Section 504(c).

The Constitution may be bent in many ways these days, but it still forbids making retroactive laws (called ex post facto). See Article I, Section 9, Clause 3. Since reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS predates the DCMA, they can't be sued.

The Constitution may be bent in many ways these days, but it still forbids making retroactive laws (called ex post facto). See Article I, Section 9, Clause 3. Since reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS predates the DCMA, they can't be sued.

Sorry, but they have been tested in court, at least a few times, and have stood up...

M. A. Mortenson Company, Inc. v. Timberline Software Corp. & Softworks Data Systems
PROCD, INCORPORATED, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MATTHEW ZEIDENBERG and SILKEN MOUNTAIN WEB SERVICES, INC., Defendants-Appellees.

Well, my attorney says that case law supports them (I own a small software company)... so technically I suppose my information is hearsay.

However, looking around reveals a couple of cases: M. A. Mortenson Company, Inc. v. Timberline Software Corp. & Softworks Data Systems and PROCD, INCORPORATED, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MATTHEW ZEIDENBERG and SILKEN MOUNTAIN WEB SERVICES, INC., Defendants-Appellees.

At least these two basically affirm what I have been lead to believe, they may not hold up if you are "signing your life away" (i.e., if they are unconscionable), but they do work at securing IP rights and lack-of warranty.

First, the existence of filesharing technology does not imply that the developer of that technology (Microsoft) knows about a specific act of infringement using said technology (e.g. you copying files over Microsoft's SMB protocol using MS servers and clients). The RIAA case suggests that Daniel Peng does know about such specific acts, in part because he participated in them.

Second, I believe that Xerox or Microsoft would be immune from contributory copyright infringement due for the reasons outlined in the Betamax case, notably the "substantial non-infringing uses" defense. Now in theory, this might apply to Mr. Peng, but as my original post tried to point out, given his own (alleged) direct copyright infringement, he doesn't quite meet the test outlined in, say, this EFF analysis:


The recent court interpretations of the "Betamax defense" have at least two important implications for P2P developers. First, it underscores the threat of vicarious liability--at least in the Ninth Circuit, a court will not be interested in hearing about your "substantial noninfringing uses" if you are accused of vicarious infringement. Accordingly, "control" and "direct financial benefit," as described above, should be given a wide berth.


Likewise, I doubt a court will be much interested in hearing about the "substantial noninfringing uses" of Mr. Peng's SMB indexes if he himself is involved in substantial direct (not even vicarious) infringement.

Third, depending on the type of use Mr. Peng's SMB indexing service received according to whatever evidence would be at trial, it might be possible for the RIAA to show that his indexing did not, in practice, have substantial non-infringing uses. This is why the RIAA's ability to show the "top 20 searches" may be relevant; if all of them were copyrighted songs, it would be hard to successfully argue that Mr. Peng's network had 'substantial' non-infringing uses.

The more I read about this case (Findlaw has the legal papers), the more it looks to me like the RIAA carefully scoped out exactly which 4 campus network cases offered them the strongest cases. But then maybe I'm just being paranoid?

--LinuxParanoid (disclaimer: I'm a coder, not a lawyer)

Incorrect.

From your link: Steal:
"To take (the property of another) without right or permission."
From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=property
1. "c. Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks."

Whether this is the same as the crime is one thing, and whether it SHOULD be is another, but your argument is incorrect. By the definition of the word, it IS stealing.

Oh, the original poster is quite correct. Two problems exist with your counter, first, you're both using non-legal definitions. Second, you've tried to strike down the wrong concept within the phrase. I'm perfectly happy to grand that a copyright or trademark is property, within the context of this discussion.

To steal, however, is to take something. Taking something implies that the original owner no longer has it. If you really want, look at that site's definition of take. 1, 10, 27, and 28 of v. tr., 1 of v. intr. While there are a couple of definitions that might be used to indicate the original still exists, these definitions indicate that the original has been derived from, not that the original has been duplicated. (16, 17, 18, v. tr.)

To copy a copyrighted work without permission is to commit the crime of copyright infringement, not to commit theft. The two are substantially different crimes. See United States Code, Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 501(a):

Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 121 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a) ... is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author

As you can see, the crime is clearly defined and is not in any way a subset of larceny (theft). author as provided in section 106A(a) ...

AIDS victims often advocate that AIDS drugs should be free or have their patents nationalized or invalidated so that all of those who suffer from AIDS could afford medication. The big problem with this is that if the profit motive is remove from creating AIDS drugs, companies won't risk hundreds of millions required to develop the drugs.

I don't see any conflict here, at least under U.S. law. When the U.S. federal government nationalizes a patent, it uses its Fifth Amendment power of eminent domain, which guarantees the patent holder "just compensation" for the patent (James v. Campbell, 1882).

AIDS victims often advocate that AIDS drugs should be free or have their patents nationalized or invalidated so that all of those who suffer from AIDS could afford medication. The big problem with this is that if the profit motive is remove from creating AIDS drugs, companies won't risk hundreds of millions required to develop the drugs.

I don't see any conflict here, at least under U.S. law. When the U.S. federal government nationalizes a patent, it uses its Fifth Amendment power of eminent domain, which guarantees the patent holder "just compensation" for the patent (James v. Campbell, 1882).

Read the complains filed in federate court here.

Adam, a classmate of mine in a course on Information Technology and the Law noted on the course newsgroup that FindLaw has the complaints online.

The irony is that this happened the same week we discussed the Napster case in the class.

Privacy actually is an explicit constitutional right. I'm not going to point to a line in the Constitution that gives you that right, though, because the Supreme Court Justices did a much better job than I could when they penned Griswold v. Connecticut.

That someone would claim privacy is not a right is surprising in that it redefines what I think of as common knowledge; it is, after all, the justification for Roe v. Wade, and I hope we've all heard of that.

[T]he use of the motto "In God We Trust" on currency, on documents and public buildings and the like may not offend the clause. It is not that the use of those four words can be dismissed as "de minimis" - for I suspect there would be intense opposition to the abandonment of that motto. The truth is that we have simply interwoven the motto so deeply into the fabric of our civil polity that its present use may well not present that type of involvement which the First Amendment prohibits.

This general principle might also serve to insulate the various patriotic exercises and activities used in the public schools and elsewhere which, whatever may have been their origins, no longer have a religious purpose or meaning. The reference to divinity in the revised pledge of allegiance, for example, may merely recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded "under God." Thus reciting the pledge may be no more of a religious exercise than the reading aloud of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which contains an allusion to the same historical fact.

This remains an odd interpretation of the Second Amendment, as the most significant rights bestowed in the Bill of Rights are given to individuals and not state governments. The legislative history of the Second Amendment directly contradicts the argument put forth by those who claim the Second Amendment does not grant a personal right to each citizen. In essence, the ACLU, and others, simply wish to interpret the amendment as saying the exact opposite of what it actually says. (A more intellectually honest argument for anti-gun advocates would simply be to call for repeal of the Second Amendment.) For a good analysis of the constitutional history and interpretations of the Second Amendment, read this case.

This is the same logic recently used by NOW and several other abortion-rights groups in Scheidler v. National Organization for Women : sure, using RICO to prosecute anti-abortion protestors was an unprecedented expansion of racketeering laws, but at least they're using that unprecedented expansion against the right kinds of people.

The logic was flawed then, and it's flawed now: if PATRIOT gets a successful prosecution, or even plea-bargain, out of PayPal, then the feds will be emboldened to prosecute more PATRIOT violations. Each prosecution feeds upon itself, until, like conspiracy or wire-fraud laws, PATRIOT will be "low-hanging fruit," attached to a great many cases with only tenuous ties to the ostensible goals of PATRIOT.

You may not like PayPal, you may even have legally-actionable issues with them -- but file a class-action if you do. Don't cheer them getting prosecuted under a vague section of an overly-broad statute, because the next time they issue an indictment, it could be for you.

The Audio Home Recording Act only covers music, not TV. And it is not limited to radio, it also applies to CDs, records, and cassette tapes. But it only covers copying, not distributing.

Also, the same is true for any TV shows. I can record The Sopranos, burn it to a DVD, and give it to a friend, yet I can't download the episode of the Sopranos I missed last week even though I pay for HBO!!

Where did you get that idea from? It is not legal to record the Sopranos and re-distribute it. The Sony case only covered time-shifting. Strictly speaking, librarying TV shows was not covered by the opinion.

"Who the fuck cares?"

This is where I go out on a limb because I could not find the citation. I remember reading that the Supreme Court ruled in a case where a map publisher sued another publisher for copyright infringement. The defendant used the plaintiffs map to create a new map. The plaintiff had introduced small errors into the maps in order detect such copying. The court ruled in favor of the defendant on the basis that since it was a new representation, it did not copy the creative aspect of the map. The introduction of errors is not a basis for copyright protection because nobody would ever be able to copy facts.

You have indeed touched upon an important point. Fair use isn't really the issue here. It can easily be argued that airline fares are facts. Facts can't be copyrighted.

Feist Publications, INC. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 US 340 (1991)