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This paragraph of the article is phrased badly. The concept of patenting a business method is not new. What's new is that USPTO and the courts are allowing these stupid things to stand.

The Supreme Court wrote a fabulous ruling about bad patents way back in 1950. I urge everyone to read the full ruling and see how utterly it applies to modern events. Here's a couple favorite quotes:

• "The mere combination of a number of old parts or elements which, in combination, perform or produce no new or different function or operation than that theretofore performed or produced by them, is not patentable invention."
• "The function of a patent is to add to the sum of useful knowledge. Patents cannot be sustained when, on the contrary, their effect is to subtract from former resources freely available to skilled artisans."
• "The Patent Office, like most administrative agencies, has looked with favor on the opportunity which the exercise of discretion affords to expand its own jurisdiction. And so it has placed a host of gadgets under the armour of patents - gadgets that obviously have had no place in the constitutional scheme of advancing scientific knowledge."

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

I wasn't sure about the Ben Hur case, so I looked it up (the article I was reading is actually the first chapter of a book called Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood, and touches on the copyright issue very briefly). Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur was an American, he apparently fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The case I mentioned is Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros (1911), and was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that current copyright laws also extended to motion pictures. here's the text of the ruling of the case.

Much better would be to look at the Sony v. Betamax case. In that case, the judge said that VCR (known as VTRs then) manufacturers should be allowed to produce VCRs since the new technology had, "substantial non-infringing uses". Translation: Just because the technology can allow copyright violations, that doesn't mean that it should be outlawed. (copying machines, tape recorders, etc).

Case: Sony v. Betamax

Stick to recording technologies when making intellectual property copying arguements, not guns.

Seriously people, it's civil law. The spyware programs are on seriously shaky ground to begin with. Not to mention the Fourth amendment issues. see http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/am endment04/ If you find spyware on your system, track them down and take them to court. Remember to include the programmers and software vendors in the suit. I recommend a aggressive response to this. Who knows, we may see you here on slashdot.....

The only government entities in this country who have "Sovereign Immunity" are the Supreme Court and the president. The Supreme Court can, however, overturn a prior decision later, and the president can be impeached if the Senate doesn't like him. Before you post semi-ignorant statements like this, go through any site with documentation of federal court cases (my favorite is FindLaw and look at how many are So-and-so v. United States.

Only two million Americans have purchased HDTV sets. As for broadband, rural and underserved areas aside, there is not an availability problem. There is a demand problem.

So not enough Americans want to watch higher definition TV / Internet? Maybe they want to spend some time raising their kids instead. Do we really need to cripple all computers in order to get people to watch more TV? This does not make any sense. Does Ernest Hollings represent people, or corporations?

a "broadcast flag" which would instruct digital devices to prevent illegal copying and Internet retransmission of digital broadcast television.

The "broadcast flag" must signal the copyright expiration date, else the SSSCA/CBDTA is unconstitutional. But it is already unconstitutional, because it depends on the DMCA, which is unconstitutional. (Because it extends copyright duration without "promoting the progress of science and useful arts".)

From: "James S. Tyre"
Subject: Service of process by email

"Finally, we turn to the district court's order authorizing service of process on RII by email at email@betrio.com. We acknowledge that we tread upon untrodden ground. The parties cite no authority condoning service of process over the Internet or via email, and our own investigation has unearthed no decisions by the United States Courts of Appeals dealing with service of process by email and only one case anywhere in the federal courts. Despite this dearth of authority, however, we do not labor long in reaching our decision. Considering the facts presented by this case, we conclude not only that service of process by email was proper -- that is, reasonably calculated to apprise RII of the pendency of the action and afford it an opportunity to respond -- but in this case, it was the method of service most likely to reach RII."

Rio Properties, Inc. v. Rio International Interlink, decided yesterday by the Ninth Circuit. Highly fact-specific.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0115 466p.pdf

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Blocking child pornography is essentially impossible. Blocking any sort of "content" or "IP" is an extremely difficult task. It's one thing to block port 25; unfortunately the IETF has yet to standardize on a port number for kiddie porn.

First, there's the problem of deciding what to block: Let's take the obvious example, of blocking a jpg. This means someone has to determine the age of the person in that jpg. I looked at about 1,000 jpgs last nite, and I pity the fool who has to monitor my drunken pr0n surf.

Perhaps it would be possible to use some VERY sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm, but, like spam filtering, you're never gonna block 100% of the bad stuff while letting 100% of the good stuff through. Nevermind the incredible resource hit of scanning each downloaded jpg, or the fact that your CRC-matching database of known jpgs ain't worth shit once I take the 640x480 jpg and save it as 644x483.

But that's not even the real problem. No, the real problem is THE DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY. Basically it depends on things like "community standards" and such which don't really make sense on the Internet. With child pornography, the definition gets even more complicated; things that are otherwise acceptable become pornography when the subject is under 18, such as a picture which shows the outline of the vulva through clothing isn't porn if the girl is 23 but is porn if she's 9.

(In fact the entire laws about kiddie porn in this country are totally fucked. The gov't can offer to sell you kiddie porn, say from an ad in the back of a magazine, and then sell it to you, and then bust you for possession. This would normally be entrapment, but the Supreme Court decided that kiddie porn is such a scourge that normal constitutional protections are outweighed by the need to lock up pedophiles. Hmmm... "First they came for the pedophiles, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a pedophile. Then they came for the Arabs..." But I digress.)

To make matters worse, pornography doesn't even have to be a picture or movie. Text can be pornography. For instance,
I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself from licking 15-year old Timmy's perineum as he lay unconscious.
That could be construed as kiddie porn, believe it or not. Of course in this context I won't be going to jail (I hope) since my INTENT isn't prurient (but who can really tell my intent?). But if I logged on to some kiddy chat room and made that comment, I would be in big trouble, esp. if the moderator knows what a perineum is.

So not only do you have to filter the content, which is a subjective process in the first place, you have to ascertain the context of that content. In other words you have to Meta-Moderate, and we all know how much fun that is!

No, this will never work, and the "blacklist" that gets passed from the Penn. A.G. to the ISP's will have all the same problems as the anti-spam blacklists: How do you get off it, do you notify someone that they're on it, or would that just tell them it's time to get a new IP address, etc.

Here are some links to interesting legal stuff:
Supreme court def. of pornography (pdf, sorry)
has the famous "I know it when I see it" qoute from Justice Potter Stewart
Google HTML version

Guy in jail for selling videos of girls in their panties

Guy acquitted after gov't got him to order kiddie porn thru mail and then busted him. He was acquitted because the gov't hadn't proved intent, not because it was entrapment

I am not a lawyer, but I play on on Slashdot.

Blocking child pornography is essentially impossible. Blocking any sort of "content" or "IP" is an extremely difficult task. It's one thing to block port 25; unfortunately the IETF has yet to standardize on a port number for kiddie porn.

First, there's the problem of deciding what to block: Let's take the obvious example, of blocking a jpg. This means someone has to determine the age of the person in that jpg. I looked at about 1,000 jpgs last nite, and I pity the fool who has to monitor my drunken pr0n surf.

Perhaps it would be possible to use some VERY sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm, but, like spam filtering, you're never gonna block 100% of the bad stuff while letting 100% of the good stuff through. Nevermind the incredible resource hit of scanning each downloaded jpg, or the fact that your CRC-matching database of known jpgs ain't worth shit once I take the 640x480 jpg and save it as 644x483.

But that's not even the real problem. No, the real problem is THE DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY. Basically it depends on things like "community standards" and such which don't really make sense on the Internet. With child pornography, the definition gets even more complicated; things that are otherwise acceptable become pornography when the subject is under 18, such as a picture which shows the outline of the vulva through clothing isn't porn if the girl is 23 but is porn if she's 9.

(In fact the entire laws about kiddie porn in this country are totally fucked. The gov't can offer to sell you kiddie porn, say from an ad in the back of a magazine, and then sell it to you, and then bust you for possession. This would normally be entrapment, but the Supreme Court decided that kiddie porn is such a scourge that normal constitutional protections are outweighed by the need to lock up pedophiles. Hmmm... "First they came for the pedophiles, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a pedophile. Then they came for the Arabs..." But I digress.)

To make matters worse, pornography doesn't even have to be a picture or movie. Text can be pornography. For instance,
I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself from licking 15-year old Timmy's perineum as he lay unconscious.
That could be construed as kiddie porn, believe it or not. Of course in this context I won't be going to jail (I hope) since my INTENT isn't prurient (but who can really tell my intent?). But if I logged on to some kiddy chat room and made that comment, I would be in big trouble, esp. if the moderator knows what a perineum is.

So not only do you have to filter the content, which is a subjective process in the first place, you have to ascertain the context of that content. In other words you have to Meta-Moderate, and we all know how much fun that is!

No, this will never work, and the "blacklist" that gets passed from the Penn. A.G. to the ISP's will have all the same problems as the anti-spam blacklists: How do you get off it, do you notify someone that they're on it, or would that just tell them it's time to get a new IP address, etc.

Here are some links to interesting legal stuff:
Supreme court def. of pornography (pdf, sorry)
has the famous "I know it when I see it" qoute from Justice Potter Stewart
Google HTML version

Guy in jail for selling videos of girls in their panties

Guy acquitted after gov't got him to order kiddie porn thru mail and then busted him. He was acquitted because the gov't hadn't proved intent, not because it was entrapment

I am not a lawyer, but I play on on Slashdot.

I'm astonished. I use google for generic searches, but any time I need a specific answer, google is the one I definitely would not use, as it never returns the link I want in the first 3 pages.

So I have a list of twenty-something search engines I use for specific purposes as they all have their sweet spot.

Here are my top 7:

ask.com
altavista.com
findlaw.com
lycos.com
metacrawler.com
alexa.com
alltheweb.com
etc etc

The CTEA extended the term of protection by 20 years for works copyrighted after January 1, 1923. Works copyrighted by individuals since 1978 got "life plus 70" rather than the existing "life plus 50". Works made by or for corporations (referred to as "works made for hire") got 95 years. Works copyrighted before 1978 were shielded for 95 years, regardless of how they were produced.

I don't doubt that the FAA is going to do this, but I also don't doubt that they'll get their butts sued over it. Somebody owns the assets of those defunct aircraft companies, even if they're no longer supporting the airplanes, and Bono gives them the right to sue. Not that they will, but they could. I doubt the FAA has the authority to violate copyright law, even if the copyright holders don't care -- the RIAA and MPAA might just care enough to sue to enforce copyright law in general (although IANAL and don't know if a 3rd party can bring suit in a copyright case).

IANAL, so instead of arguing the point, I present this post as a list of expert opinions which contradict Rogerborg's position.

Rogerborg: Look, I'll spell it out again, shall I? There is no clause in fair use, there never has been one, that allows fair use for anything other than: (1) criticism and comment, (2) parody and satire, (3) scholarship and research, (4) news reporting and (5) teaching. To qualify for consideration under the fair use defence, your use must fall into these categories. You don't even get to argue the "negligible impact" until you've shown that you qualify. There is no case zero. There is no case six.

Current national security advisor Condoleezza Rice authored a paper on fair use in 1988, in which she states "The concept of fair use is necessarily somewhat vague when discussed in the abstract. Its application depends critically on the particular facts of the individual situation. Neither the case law nor the statutory law provides bright lines concerning which uses are fair and which are not."

As mentioned in the previous post, the Sony vs. Universal City Studios Case contradicts Rogerborg's black-and-white interpretation of section 107, as it defines time-shifting television programs as fair use.

Previous case law has held that the following are fair uses of copyrighted materials:

Making personal backups of software.

Time-shifting television programs.

Format-shifting.

Compilation creation ("mix tapes")

Rebroadcasting radio in a business.

In short, a wide body of experts seem to disagree with the viewpoint espoused by Rogerborg. I exhort you to consider this when reading his posts. I further ask that you consider that he was willing to defend his viewpoint so vehemently in spite of the contradictory expert viewpoints readily available.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as [emphasis mine] criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Nowhere does it say fair use is exclusively for the conditions you lay out.

Please, if you believe that "rip off" stuff you must think it's pretty damn simple to make a feature film of that size...

So what if it's big? Disney still may have infringed the copyrights on Nadia and Kimba by creating a derivative work. Barring fair use (which is pretty much ruled out in commercial derivatives of fictional works except for parodies), United States copyright law considers creating a substantial derivative of a copyrighted work to constitute copyright infringement no matter how much original material was added.

"Rip Mix Burn," indeed.

But the world is also full of new ideas for lower-bit-rate encoding, including wavelet, MPEG-4 and such proprietary codecs as Microsoft Corp.'s Corona. The DVD Forum's technical working group has already proved that encoding rates as low as 7 Mbits/s will yield HD video of acceptable quality.

1. Microsoft is let off completely by Justice largely due to the requests/lobbying of digital-content-providers.
2. In return for getting off the hook, M$ provides its new codecs to said content-providers, along with its current Digital Rights Management scheme.
3. M$ monopoly is secure as it helps other industry players squeeze the consumer, reduce choice, and further consolidate power in the hands of an incredibly richer and more powerful anointed few.

Evidence that this is the wrong forum in which to ask this question is the fact that, of the people who actually responded with advice, about half say, "only give opinions" while the other half say, "don't give any opinions, only verifiable fact."

Try Findlaw for informal legal advice with some hope of accuracy and/or consistency.

On a potentially humorous note, I heard about someone in the banking industry who had been ripped off by a former employee. The employee actually had the gall to put her name down for a recommendation (without asking her, of course). So she replied, "I cannot recommend him too highly," and left it at that. Hmm... What do you suppose she meant by that, anyway...

And now for the IANAL-but-I-play-one-on-TV advice: AFAIK, not only can either party sue you for the contents of your letter, but another party can sue you over problems caused by the employee if misrepresentations are found to have been made.

I read about a case in CA where a high school student (allegedly molested by her principal) successfully sued the writers of recommendation letters for the principal because he had been accused of sexual harrassment before, and they failed to mention it. Of course, if they had mentioned it, the pricipal probably would have sued them.

Also, if you are the ex-employer, be even more carefull. In some states, at least, you are only allowed by law to verify the term of the employee's employment at your company, and nothing else.

While it talks a bit about copyright, everything in the proposed bill that I saw has been written in terms of regulation of commerce. That means that the power enabling them to pass the bill comes from the Commerce Clause, and not the copyright/patent clause. For instance instead of saying that copyrights must be protected, they make it illegal to sell "digital devices" (a class which includes software) without copy protection built in. Note, what is regulated here is having a product that does not meet their spec. This is no different in principle than laws mandating that cars have seatbelts.

This is good for them in many ways. Not the least of which being that there are no pesky "fair use" or "limited times" exemptions that need to be respected. And another is that this clause is pretty much blanket power, and it is interpreted very much in the favour of the federal government. For details on how it is interpreted, read FindLaw's explanation.

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(3) The information acquired through the acts permitted under
paragraph (1), and the means permitted under paragraph (2), may be
made available to others if the person referred to in paragraph (1)
or (2), as the case may be, provides such information or means
solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an
independently created computer program with other programs, and to
the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under
this title or violate applicable law other than this section.

Which basically says, as long as you are trying to make one program inter-operate with another, it is perfectly legal to circumvent a copy protection system if doing so does not violate any other part of title 17 (the copyright code) other than this section (the anti-circumvention section).

Even if bnetd did support Warcraft III, it is still legal to do so. It is not their fault that Blizzard was too stupid to make the beta expire by its self. With your line of thinking, any company could deliberately release non-expiring betas to prohibit competing services.

From the article, now that I've RTFA (BTW - what's up with your rules for using "RTFA"?):

At issue is whether Proetto's e-mail and instant messages to the girl should have been suppressed at trial. Proetto claims police violated the state's wiretapping law by looking at the messages without first obtaining a warrant. Proetto also claims his Fourth Amendment privacy rights were violated.

1. Wiretap without a warrent (potentially valid)
2. Infrigement of privacy (bogus)

There doesn't seem to be a federal issue in the case...[and]...There is nothing in the article which points to a fourth ammendment issue.

-sk

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This comment has been removed since it was clearly in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 871 (Threats Against The President) and / or Section 875 (Interstate Communications: Extortions / Threats). You can Read More Here. We're sorry to have to do this, and while we don't necessarily agree with this, it is still the law. When the Secret Service gets involved, we don't have many options. We appreciate your understanding in the matter. Please call (202) 406-5000 if you have any questions.

That's a common misperception. Take a closer look at the ninth amendment.

Also being covered in photo.net (which is interested in the photographer's point of view on copyright.)

Interestingly no-one there thinks linking is illegal. YMMV & IANAL!

photo.net discussion

Case law have some info here (pdf)

In theory you're right. If I tell somebody that they can't publicly display my work, then they can't. However, if some 3rd party tells them to display the work, then is the 3rd party responsible?

If you take a look at the decision itself, around page 19 you can see where the argument becomes patchy. Essentially, the court establishes that displaying an image on a computer monitor constitutes a display, and that the image's being available to the public makes it a public display. Which is all good.

Then the court addresses the key question. Who's responsible for making the image available to the public? The person who places it on a public webserver, which is designed to hand out images to web-browsers (and has the capability to decide under what conditions it wishes to hand the image out), or the person who links to the image?

This is where the argument gets glib, and in my mind, overly broad:

No cases have addressed the issue of whether inline linking of framing violates a copyright owner's public display rights. However, in Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Webbworld, Inc., the court found that the owner of an internet site infringed a magazine publisher's copyrights by displaying copyrighted images on its web site. The defendant, Webbworld, downloaded material from certain newsgroups, discarded the text and retained the images, and made those images available to its internet subscribers. Playboy owned copyrights to many of the images Webbworld retained and displayed. The court found that Webbworld violated Playboy's exclusive right to display its copyrighted works, nothing that allowing subscribers to view copyrighted works on their computer monitors while online was a display...

Although Arriba [the defendant] does not download Kelly's images to its own server but, rather, imports them directly from other web sites, the situation is analogous to Webbworld. By allowing the public to view Kelly's copyrighted works while visiting Arriba's web site, Arriba created a public display of Kelly's works. (the italics are mine)

The problem with the case is that this broad (and under-explored) legal step opens the door for all sorts of ugly anti-linking decisions. If I can't link to inline images, then what about normal hyperlinks like this one? By the precedent set in this case, I'm 100% responsible for allowing the public to access this site. I may enjoy other protections, such as fair use, but the culpability for "allowing the public to access" that web page winds up being my own, not the person who chooses to give it out on a public webserver.

I think the discussion may have missed both a novel aspect of the case (PDF) and a significant factor in the court's analysis:

First, the infringement didn't occur because ditto.com copied the work, but because they violated Kelly's right to publicly display his work. A run-of-the-mill infringement claim is going to involve copying or creating a derivative work, which makes the analysis in this case relatively interesting.

Second, the question of whether ditto.com infringed on Kelly's right to display his work still came down to a question of fair use:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In this case, the infringement of the right to display came, essentially, because Kelly was trying to sell copies of his photographs and ditto.com displayed the images in a way that made it less likely that people would ever visit his site (why bother? they could right-click the images displayed on ditto.com's site) and buy copies of his works.

In other words, the analysis could be different if the copyright holder isn't trying to sell copies of their work. It could also be different, I think, if one of the other factors tilted more strongly in favor of the defendant: for example, a not-for-profit use of a work in a context of political or artistic discussion.

Mike "Still Bitter About Submitting This Story Yesterday Morning and Having it Rejected" Skoglund

I think the discussion may have missed both a novel aspect of the case (PDF) and a significant factor in the court's analysis:

First, the infringement didn't occur because ditto.com copied the work, but because they violated Kelly's right to publicly display his work. A run-of-the-mill infringement claim is going to involve copying or creating a derivative work, which makes the analysis in this case relatively interesting.

Second, the question of whether ditto.com infringed on Kelly's right to display his work still came down to a question of fair use:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In this case, the infringement of the right to display came, essentially, because Kelly was trying to sell copies of his photographs and ditto.com displayed the images in a way that made it less likely that people would ever visit his site (why bother? they could right-click the images displayed on ditto.com's site) and buy copies of his works.

In other words, the analysis could be different if the copyright holder isn't trying to sell copies of their work. It could also be different, I think, if one of the other factors tilted more strongly in favor of the defendant: for example, a not-for-profit use of a work in a context of political or artistic discussion.

Mike "Still Bitter About Submitting This Story Yesterday Morning and Having it Rejected" Skoglund

I think the discussion may have missed both a novel aspect of the case (PDF) and a significant factor in the court's analysis:

First, the infringement didn't occur because ditto.com copied the work, but because they violated Kelly's right to publicly display his work. A run-of-the-mill infringement claim is going to involve copying or creating a derivative work, which makes the analysis in this case relatively interesting.

Second, the question of whether ditto.com infringed on Kelly's right to display his work still came down to a question of fair use:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In this case, the infringement of the right to display came, essentially, because Kelly was trying to sell copies of his photographs and ditto.com displayed the images in a way that made it less likely that people would ever visit his site (why bother? they could right-click the images displayed on ditto.com's site) and buy copies of his works.

In other words, the analysis could be different if the copyright holder isn't trying to sell copies of their work. It could also be different, I think, if one of the other factors tilted more strongly in favor of the defendant: for example, a not-for-profit use of a work in a context of political or artistic discussion.

Mike "Still Bitter About Submitting This Story Yesterday Morning and Having it Rejected" Skoglund

Plagiarism is already illegal,...
No, it's not.

But suit can be brought against the plagiarizer. Perhaps because plagiarism is a violation of copyright? Hence, illegal.

if someone else wants to use one of my physics homework problems, verbatim and with credit, in their own GFDL'd physics textbook, they can...they can't just publish my whole book as a not-free-as-in-anything book, without dealing with me.

But quoting you is, as defined by the GFDL Section 4, releasing a Modified Version of your document. There is no concept of fair use in the GFDL at all allowing selective quoting.

There are three perfectly good ways around such a problem: (1) the author can choose a BSD-style license; (2) the author can offer the book to the publisher under some separate contract, rather than under the GFDL; (3) the publisher can GFDL the stuff with which they're mixing the author's GFDL's work.

Under a general "unfree" copyright, none of that rigamarole is necessary. Simply select the quotes and attribute them. The GFDL goes far beyond that, requiring such extreme measures on the part of publishers.

Would you complain that the GPL isn't good for programmers because they don't gain much from the license?

No. A nicely working GPL system results in a feedback loop of improvements back to the original author. These improvements are not necessarily easily implemented, and may be beyond the abilities of the software author.

A manual or other text is easily edited and the author is able to solicit feedback without having to give up redistribution rights to his own writings.

I don't see any reason an author wouldn't simply retain general copyright.

Is it really a democracy when the governor of florida engineers the election of his brother by ordering state trooper roadblocks to turn away voters from the polls...

...and then justices appointed by his father run the clock out on the issue rather than having the balls to make a discision.

It's also worth noting that the CNN/MSNBC/Time/AOL/WSJ/XXX uber-report on the election results found that Bush won in most every case but for the most convoluted counting methods (something like count dimples but not hanging chads in four or five counties only.) I truly believe that in a hundred years Bush v. Gore will be hailed as a landmark case for the preservation of voting rights. The catcalls to contrary are sour grapes from people who don't see the big picture.

Certainly democracies have problems. It's not the perfect government model. So, when you find the perfect one, let me know. So far, democracy seems pretty good (yes, yes, I know we have republic not a democracy, but since that's what everyone calls it, I'll do the same.)

-sk

He admitted that cracking websites to spread his message was illegal, he didn't admit that bomb info was illegal.

As for the question of: When does is it become illegal to advocate breaking the law? As far as I can tell, the case law goes something like obscenity case law. It has a long history with major decisions contradicting each other. It has various tests (Brandenburg test , Clear and Present Danger) being proposed. And it's essentially a gray area with no obvious place to draw the line, but a line must be drawn because one extreme is clearly legal and the other extreme is almost certainly illegal.

A U.S. court of appeals threw out an injunction against distributing the novel The Wind Done Gone, a parody of Gone With the Wind. Read the decision here.

The exemptions in the DMCA are useless. Look at Judge Kaplan's decision. The courts don't respect them, so we can't trust them.

We can't even be guaranteed our right to trial under the 7th Amendment. "Summary judgement for plaintiff" overrides that. Unconstitutional yes, but that won't stop the courts from taking everything you have and giving it to the plaintiff.

Findlaw.com provides a lot of real world contracts for free at:
http://allbusiness.findlaw.com/type/operations/ser vices.html
http://allbusiness.findlaw.com/industries/technolo gy/programming.html

I have used these contracts as a resource for understanding what terms are typical and find them to be a very useful starting point for building a contract with lawyers. You should always run your contracts by a lawyer before signing them.

I hope this helps.

This article here discusses how Microsoft's decision to release only it's lobbying of law makers in the executive branch, and not Congress, probaby was detrimental to it's case.

That'd be here.

It's an appeals thing, too. At the very bottom we see this choice sentence:

> For the foregoing reasons, this court AFFIRMS
> Robert and Carleen Thomas' convictions and
> sentences.

Page after page of posturing, hot air, sophistry, and arguments to emotion to simply declare that free, consenting adults should not be free, even behind closed doors. That ancient religious beliefs based on non-existant gods can be whitewashed by a relabeling and still forced down people's throats! Even that requires requires the irrational belief, held by self-styled advanced thinkers, that as long as it ain't religious, it's fair game. Get out the tamping rod, hold open his throat, and start ramming!

They did pass a law like this at one time, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court under Brown v. Texas in 1979.

On the grounds of the 4th Amendment, you may not be punished for refusing to identify yourself, unless they have reasonable suspicion that you engaged in criminal conduct. So if you're stopped for a traffic violation, you do have to identify yourself if requested.

For those of you who have an interest in learning about American laws, http://www.findlaw.com is a wonderful resource.

For those of you who have an interest in learning about American laws, http://www.findlaw.com is a wonderful resource.

In the US Constitution the federal government has a set of specified powers. It cannot, no matter how it wants to, act unless empowered by a specific grant of power. (Which has lead to some absurdities. For instance the federal laws regarding divorce are enforcable due to a grant of power covering interstate commerce. Some think this logic is a little strained, but lawyers accept it...)

One of the powers of the executive branch is the power to pass and enforce treaties if the Senate agrees. There is no limitation on what these treaties can cover. What that therefore means is that the federal government can pass laws on virtually anything so long as they can first find some other country to sign a treaty with. For more on this topic see this findlaw article which is part of their commentary about the US Constitution.

In the US Constitution the federal government has a set of specified powers. It cannot, no matter how it wants to, act unless empowered by a specific grant of power. (Which has lead to some absurdities. For instance the federal laws regarding divorce are enforcable due to a grant of power covering interstate commerce. Some think this logic is a little strained, but lawyers accept it...)

One of the powers of the executive branch is the power to pass and enforce treaties if the Senate agrees. There is no limitation on what these treaties can cover. What that therefore means is that the federal government can pass laws on virtually anything so long as they can first find some other country to sign a treaty with. For more on this topic see this findlaw article which is part of their commentary about the US Constitution.

It's very much a flamebait statement, and had I the points, I would moderate it as such. Mickey's critically short on facts, in virtually every single thing he's posted.

His objection to tribunals flies in the face of legal precedent - scroll down a bit to my other post and check out Ex Parte Quirin. In it, the Court notes that Congress already gave the Executive the power to create military tribunals, and therefore, no further permission is required from Congress.

His objection to the lack of a formal declaration of war betrays a startling ignorance of the history of the war-making powers of the executive branch - see this article (scroll down to the sixth paragraph to see what I mean)

His objection to Bush "deciding which american citizens will be protected by the constitution" betrays a surprising ignorance of the text of Bush's Executive Order, the text of which explicitly limits its application to non-citizens.

And so forth.

Have you usurped the Supreme Court as being the definitive interpreter of the Constitution? Because according to the Constitution itself, the Supreme Court is final word in judicial review.

"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish....[Their] judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution..."
- US Constitution, Article III sec 1-2

Because they haven't struck down the Lanham Act yet. So not a SINGLE THING IN MY POST WAS WRONG.

It you disagree with the law, fine, go ahead. If I think that the first amendment gives me the right to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, I'll still go to jail for yelling it. (Schenk v US)

Furthermore, with respect to your last point:

"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate"
-US Constitution, Article V.

Trashed our system of justice by authorizing secret trials, using secret evidence, and even allowing secret executinos. The "evidence"will not be avaiable for the accused to refute, with no opportunity for the accused to appeal. In doing so he has invoked the divine right of kings, not even asking for congress's approval

Kind of hard to square your characterization of what's been done with the fact that he's acting with the blessing of the Supreme Court when authorizing military tribunals. Ex Parte Quirin , for your bedtime reading tonight.

I will have to put in another vote for your position, good sir. I have read and well understand all of the responses to your post, lambasting you for wanting to censor the network based upon your own standards of morality, and I would like those people to consider this: What does it gain us to have sex, violence, and profanity prevalent on network television? What positive impact on society does it create? The US has a standard of legal obscenity which is defined thus:
(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and
(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (1) All I'm saying is, regardless of whether it's within the network's collective right to have more swearing and sex on television, why do they want that? If the answer is just to make more money, then perhaps we need to think twice about where we draw the line. (1) Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973)

Not "don't matter," but can be suspended for the good of the country.
Proof: See Lincoln's suspension of Habeus Corpus during the civil war.
Constitutional Rights: See Schenck v. United States, 1919 ruling by the supreme court that stated directly that your rights during wartime may be limited for the good of your country.

Get over yourself. Set your priorities straight. The United States as a whole is way more important than you or I. I will be the first to help our President out in this war.