Slashdot Mirror

https://www.legalzoom.com/arti...

Dunno about 99%, but the actual problem is that a lot of solutions can be defined mathematically, and that mathematical solution implemented in a variety of ways - mechanical, electronic, or as software. There's nothing intrinsically different about the three solutions, just their form differs.

For example, the bounce animation Apple patented is familiar to almost every engineer as the system response of a slightly underdamped second order system. It overshoots slightly before settling at a new steady state value. It's been implemented for thousands of years as a mechanical spring-mass-damper (most familiar as the springs and shock absorbers supporting your car wheels), and for over a century in electronics. There was literally zero innovation implementing this well-known system response in software. But because of our broken patent system, Apple was able to get a patent for it because they were the first to apply for an obvious idea implemented in software.

This wouldn't be a problem if patents were actually being used correctly. You cannot patent an idea. You can only patent an implementation of an idea So even if it were new, nobody could patent the idea of a bounce animation when scrolling hits the end. Apple could patent a certain implementation of a bounce characteristic to iPhones, but other manufacturers could come up with different implementations which were slower, faster, bounced more, bounced less, bounced differently. Unfortunately, the courts have been way too generous in allowing patent infringement lawsuits against the same idea implemented in different ways.

creimer had no trademark on cdreimer, there are hundreds of people called cdreimer. You can't trademark or copyright a name.

Bottom line: you can't trust Slashdot, they are arbitrary. They let thousands of AC spam and hate messages through but cancelled cdreimer.

What is it with all this non-factual legal nonsense that is easily contradicted by a simple search? You most certainly CAN trademark a name, pretty much all over the world

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of them, that identifies and distinguishes the source of a trademark. Names of people and companies, business logos and symbols, and particular sounds can all be trademarked. Everything from Julia Roberts' name, the Nike "swoosh," and the NBC chimes are registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Trademarks identify a product, service, person, or thing from others in the same field, and trademark infringement has, and always will be, a serious offense.

Designer Ralph Lauren has had his name trademarked since 1972 for added protection. Fashion designer Donna Karan found her trademark useful when she fell victim to a dispute over her name.

Seriously, don't you know how to use the internet? Or haven't you even followed the news, how both Russia and China have granted trademarks on the Trump name?

If you are accused of defamation, slander, or libel, truth is an absolute defense to the allegation. If what you said is true, there is no case.

News media's use of confidential sources has been tested and upheld MANY times.

It's been tested many times-- but not always upheld. Most recently, New York Times reporter James Risen faced the threat jail time for refusing to reveal his source for a story: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01... https://www.thenation.com/arti...

In the words of Leanne Phillips" "Can a journalist be forced to reveal confidential sources? The answer appears to be no...as long as that journalist is willing to go to jail." https://www.legalzoom.com/arti...

some others:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/10/17678244-journalists-watch-as-reporter-faces-jail-time-for-not-revealing-sources?lite
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/04/08/fox-news-reporter-facing-jail-for-protecting-source-mainstream-media-yawns-raising-questions-of-liberal-bias/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2005/12/lipservice_journalism.html
http://www.rcfp.org/jailed-journalists

No need to over-react :-)

I'm not suggesting there's something unusual about blatant distribution of the original work... that's piracy, but if you make a patch - that's not, that's original work, or if you use none of the original content and create a replica and release it for free that's original content, sure if you sell it there might be an issue but no original content was used and it's free?? or you create software that utilises the original content but don't distribute it and require the user to have a copy of the original??, please read all of my points before responding.

Sounds like you're describing derivative works, which requires the approval of the copyright holder under US (and many other nations) copyright laws.

The step that you and many others who share a similar opinion miss is that in general, the police don't waste their time pulling someone over without some form of probable cause.

I guess that's why we have so many non-violating stop and search court cases?

For drunk driving accusations, this falls into one of two dominant scenarios: 1) it's about 3AM and all the bars closed down for the morning; 2) the driver was driving recklessly. Even if it is 3AM, if you do not show any signs of impairment when the officer comes to talk to you, they probably won't waste their time with a field sobriety test.

Note that at 3am, hopped up cops are more than happy to pull over anyone, for any reason. They are bored, and arresting anyone, even under false pretenses, means they get to do something other than just being bored.

they've either gotten stuck with a cop who's had a bad day and will look for any slight excuse to fine or arrest someone

Yep, and that means arresting you whether you're guilty or not, just because you were out, oh, and they have an "unofficial" quota to meet.

All piping / conduits will not only be visible, but shown off as part of the style

This is genius (assuming people get to like the style). It is such a pain to try to work on anything around the house when you have to guess where the conduits go, or fiddle with a plumbing trap through a one foot opening that can't even fit a slip wrench. Walls covered with pulverized rocks made a lot of sense when they were just there for privacy but now that the lifeblood of a house is running through them architects should figure out how to make the whole system more accessible.

So to OP, even if you don't go this far, make sure that things can be worked on! Pipes leak and room configurations change and if you designed the house without flexibility for infrastructure then one day when you (or a professional) have to deal with an issue it will suck.

As a side note, IANAL but whenever you sell you may need to disclose the fact that you are storing evil spirits in the floorboards.

Name me ONE other context in which a business owner can refuse to serve someone.

Every other context that does not involve a "protected class". This is a fundamental right of businesses. A grocer can refuse to sell you anything at all for any reason at all (and this has been upheld by SCOTUS on a number of different contexts) so long as it does not violate the very specific exceptions (ie, protected classes-- race, disability, etc).

If you want more source than that, here
So Are "Right to Refuse Service to Anyone" Signs in Restaurants Legal?
Yes, however they still do not give a restaurant the power to refuse service on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.
or here or good old yahoo answers (which gets it basically right!).

For all of your vehemence, you seem to be ignorant of what the law is and says. The equal protections acts created exceptions to a general rule that businesses DO have the right to toss you out if they dont like you, your behavior, or your haircut.

If your puny little religious mind thinks you deserve to be able to refuse service,

My puny religious mind is going off of widely understood legal precedent, and showing how that is rational. Maybe you should do the same.

NO. Sony v. Universal (and subsequent rulings) have made it clear, it does not matter where a backup comes from...

Well, one Bing search and the first hit I get is from Legalzoom which has a pretty straightforward writeup. You may be interested in the section labeled "DMCA Basics", but more relevant to the subject at hand they say "What the DMCA does, through DRM, is make the circumvention illegal, not the actual copying. So, now, even if you own your DVD and are trying to make a personal copy ... it is illegal to bypass DRM protection measures to make your backup". Note I didn't say anything about copyright or fair use, but like it or not you are not legally allowed to bypass even broken DRM to make a personal backup of your own purchased media.

"The only thing stuff like that will have a baring on is child custody. And infidelity still wont count."

in many states, that is an incorrect statement Florida is one of many states.
http://info.legalzoom.com/flor...

If you deliver something by mail you have no guarantee they got it, unless you use a service that requires a signature on delivery.

You could have a sheriff deliver the papers for you.

It's more of a historical note than anything. Britain had classes, such as royalty and commoners.

In the US, we are all considered equal under the law.
More info here.

Fortunately for the GP, the odds are pretty high that any jury would have a few people burned by the telecoms industry.

sorry, some lysdexia. it's the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

This site has some general info, although I wish it had more citations. If you find anything more please post
http://www.legalzoom.com/us-la...

Can the state tell someone they must not refuse to do business with brunettes? Or people with freckles?

Yes.

Apple treats you as a criminal? I'm sorry but you are simply trolling.

http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-rights/copyrights/apple-responds-eff-jailbreaking FRom the article because I am lazy.

"Apple has responded to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)'s request to the US Copyright Office to declare hacking a smartphone legal; not surprisingly, Apple believes jailbreaking is copyright violation and, therefore, illegal."

Someone needs there mod points removed :)

Just so we're clear here, you want to declare taking advantage of a root exploit "legal", but only if it's on an Apple phone.

What about a Linux server? If it's legal to to exploit a root vulnerability on iOS then surely it is on Linux, or Windows, or OS X too, right?

Apple treats you as a criminal? I'm sorry but you are simply trolling.

http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-rights/copyrights/apple-responds-eff-jailbreaking FRom the article because I am lazy.

"Apple has responded to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)'s request to the US Copyright Office to declare hacking a smartphone legal; not surprisingly, Apple believes jailbreaking is copyright violation and, therefore, illegal."

Someone needs there mod points removed :)

Don't count on the judicial branch to come riding in on a White Horse. legalzoom

You go to legalzoom.com and it costs you from $99 + state filing fees.

Alternatively: pay a lawyer.

Not exactly. Sure, you can pay someone to go talk the government into letting you incorporate, but no lawyer can bestow corporate status on anybody or any group. In the USA, you go to a State government to gain corporate status. Other places are different I suppose.

You go to legalzoom.com and it costs you from $99 + state filing fees.

Alternatively: pay a lawyer.

So, why do you think you need to actually empty your mailbox if it's three miles away?

The response above perfectly answers that question:

Try it and see what cruel things the government does to you. The IRS people... The motor vehicle department... the lawyers ... jury duty. Automated speeding tickets. Rare random demand letters from the government about X, Y or Z (i.e. registered mail).

You do not want to lose the letter from DMV with request for payment of your car plates fees, or with a sticker once you do pay. Inattention to jury summons may be even less pleasant.

Plenty of laws regulating labor in this country, the Fair Labor Standards Act being chief among them.

Here's another resource with more information on the differences between employees and contractors.

these people are NOT employees. They are contractors.

I'm confused as to what the difference is in general, aside from job security.

A few things, actually.

Not exactly.

Canada: http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100310200119AASqYaB

U.S.: http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/privacy/when-can-police-search (with legal citations)

That's why Apple Records lost to Apple Computer.

Did they? Apple Computer paid Apple Corp. in 1981 and then again in 1991. And even though Apple Computer won the first trial over iTunes there was a good enough chance they would have lost on appeal that they bought the trademark lock, stock, and barrel from Apple Corp.

Defamation (includes libel and slander).

Obscenity: The Supreme Court test for obscenity is as follows: (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.

Fighting words: As defined by the Supreme Court, fighting words are "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

Causing panic: The classic example of speech causing panic is someone yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. Speech may be suppressed where a reasonable person would know that his speech is likely to cause panic and/or harm to others.

Incitement to crime: Speech that spurs another to commit a crime.

Sedition: Speech that advocates unlawful conduct against the government or the violent overthrow of the government.

http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/freedom-speech/free-speech-primer-what-can

You're welcome to assume, but you would still be wrong. Check out A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001), and the UMG Recordings case cited therein:

We conclude that the district court did not err when it refused to apply the “shifting” analyses of Sony and Diamond. Both Diamond and Sony are inapposite because the methods of shifting in these cases did not also simultaneously involve distribution of the copyrighted material to the general public; the time or space-shifting of copyrighted material exposed the material only to the original user. In Diamond, for example, the copyrighted music was transferred from the user's computer hard drive to the user's portable MP3 player. So too Sony, where “the majority of VCR purchasers ... did not distribute taped television broadcasts, but merely enjoyed them at home.” Napster, 114 F.Supp.2d at 913. Conversely, it is obvious that once a user lists a copy of music he already owns on the Napster system in order to access the music from another location, the song becomes “available to millions of other individuals,” not just the original CD owner. See UMG Recordings, 92 F.Supp.2d at 351–52 (finding space-shifting of MP3 files not a fair use even when previous ownership is demonstrated before a download is allowed); cf. Religious Tech. Ctr. v. Lerma, No. 95–1107A, 1996 WL 633131, at *6 (E.D.Va. Oct.4, 1996) (suggesting that storing copyrighted material on computer disk for later review is not a fair use).

Nor is your assertion that archaic laws are overturned when not enforced. You could in fact bring up any of the laws still on the books; they would just be overturned and are considered to be a waste of taxpayer money to bring a case on them, so no one does. If a law is on the books and has not been repealed, it is still valid. Even these crazy examples still are law. Even if you were correct, digital file sharing has only been around for years, not decades or centuries. Mixtapes are recognized as a different issue because they are analog and therefore lossy -- they cannot be recreated and reshared an infinite number of times. Nor are you sharing your mixtape with massive quantities of people. This is why record companies haven't gone after mixtapes. You're only sharing a self-terminating, lossy version to a limited number of people that you likely know, not a high-fidelity perfect copy of an original to a market of millions. The former is likely to drive up demand by free marketing, whereas the latter is likely to suppress demand by providing a free, identical copy to potential market members. Also, you have no idea whether mixtapes are older than me or not :) I have vinyl and mixtapes, as well. From the Wikipedia article on Mixtapes:

An important distinction between homemade mixes and retail compilations of pop music is that the latter generally obtain permissions for the use of copyrighted songs, while the former do not. As a result, mixtapes, such as those produced and sold by club DJs in the 1970s, are illegal. Most[who?] mixtape enthusiasts assume that private mixtapes are inoffensive from a fair use standpoint, but this is far from clear. Frank Creighton, a director of anti-copyright infringement efforts for the Recording Industry Association of America, was quoted in New York Times as saying that "money did not have to be involved for copying to be illegal."[7]
While mixes on cassette tapes may not have inspired the wrath of the record industry in the past, Mr. Creighton said, "digital mixes have better sound quality", and given the proliferation of CD burning for friends and relatives, "it would be naïve of us to say that we should allow that type of activity".[7]

I would be really wary of thinking that simply because a law is not commonly enfo

http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/equal-rights/right-refuse-service

The courts seemed to disagree with your and Wikipedia's interpretation. Perhaps the prohibition is built within the case law but my understanding was the law was specifically designed because hippies and what not were being refused service. You do not get more political then hippies protesting wars.

Engines are the classic example used for design vs. utility patents. A good example in this area is the Bruce Crower's engine, which as commented on there is sketchy to try and patent as anything other than a design patent, given how old prior art is for combining stream with engines in various ways.

Now, if you physically have one of these engines, it might be feasible to reverse engineer how it works with less resources than it takes to license the design, amortized over enough production units. The idea itself is worthless though; you need a functional prototype before you can prove this will work usefully in the real world. If I can read the summary page of a patent and duplicate the technology from that, it's really a stretch to say it's worth awarding a patent on. If it's not difficult to build a functional device (or program, to extend to software too) if we just have a brief outline of the idea, it's pretty ridiculous to claim it's an innovation big enough to patent. That's how I'd like to see the prior art claims of a patent checked. If a "person having ordinary skill in the art" can duplicate the "advance" just given the claims, not the method, that should never be a patentable advance; it's only an obvious small step forward.

Additionally, as for unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment), neither parents, nor those acting in their place, require a warrant to access the personal papers of the children in their care and custody. The school principal was acting in loco parentis, had legal care and custody of the student at the time, and facebook account posts are not private - even deleted facebook posts are discoverable.

A student caught passing a note to someone else during a test can't say "it's personal - you can't see it." Same reasoning applies to the right of schools to search students lockers, again without a warrant.

Students are not adults, and as such, do not have the same rights as adults.

What does this really mean?

It means that the banks are deciding what's illegal now. The government either doesn't have the authority (not this country) or a real reason to shut them down, so now the banks are doing it for them. Justice is served?

The question was rhetorical but what the hay! The issue of jurisdiction is likely a big one.

Seems to me that this is a "right to refuse service" type thing. A business operator has a right to refuse service if there is a legitimate business reason that does not violate the rights of protected groups. So you can refuse service to bikers who won't take off their patches (preventing fights) in your bar but you can't reserve secluded booths for heterosexuals only. To do this, you just refuse service... no notice, no warrants, and no court orders, etc are required.

http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/equal-rights/right-refuse-service

But... be prepared for lawsuits if you are not careful about who you refuse service to. I am surprised that Wikileaks has not sought injunctions against the removal of payment services pending resolution of the issues.

Else, I would say that if a site primarily engages in illegal activity then Mastercard is perfectly correct to refuse service. Not to mention that if they continue to knowingly provide support to a criminal enterprise then they may risk some liability. Where the divide sits and how this would come out in a court case is beyond me.

IMHO, this will depend on what sort of diligence Mastercard exercises. Do they just take the RIAAs word on what is bad, a la Homeland Security? RIAA cast a wide net and obviously did not take care not to check out what was what. Or are they smarter than that?

Homeland Security may be able to get away with this but I think MasterCard would have some legal liabilities.

Watch for legal battles.

No worries, citizen! You can upgrade your status by incorporation for a low fee. Then you too, can enjoy all of the rights, with none of the responsibilities of a living, breathing hoo-man being.

Actually, I thought the entities we refer to as "corporations" were non-corporeal. So does that make them spirits?

Because individual rights mean squat these days?

Maybe you should consider incorporation, citizen.
All of the rights, none of the responsibilities! Get out of jury duty!

Someone else posted a link. The right word was "business that serves the general public" from this and and this (posted by someone else above) seem to support that almost any reason is valid when it can be supported there was almost any business interest, but arbitrary discrimination isn't allowed. That doesn't mean it isn't done, but what business owner would just randomly not want to do business. I didn't mean to imply that a business owner has to sit someone down and explain the reason, maybe they just scream at the customer unintelligibly waving a broom. Just saying if it became a legal matter, the business owner has a burden to meet.

and as far as the last quote, would you mind finding me an example of a limited liability corporation with a business in a commercially zoned area that has successfully argued their right to free association, establishing any kind of precedence, anywhere in the United States?

I will totally agree that shopping centers are goofy, but to the best of my understanding, don't shopping centers most always have their own zoning with special rules and such that are agreements made between the mall business and the city.

You can charge people with being a nuisance or loitering, but places open to the public must be open to the public with very little exception. All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal. [...] You must be breaking the law for a business open to the general public to refuse to serve you. Of course, as mentioned above, breaking the law can include public nuisance, and loitering.

Wow. You are so wrong my brain is melting.

A business can legally refuse service to anyone, unless the reason is race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. More information here and here. Feel free to google some more.

In short, refusing service to a customer who is breaking the terms of service is perfectly legal.

IANAL, and you should get one.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, and I'll probably get modded down for this. But seriously, if your enterprise is going to go anywhere, you need competent legal representation from the get go. If you don't have a lawyer on staff or as a partner, you should hunt around and find a decent lawyer who is willing to partner with you for a minority equity stake. Find a reasonably guy who's able to see the long-term potential of your company and is willing to invest the time that it takes to ensure a strong legal foundation, and you won't regret your equity loss even one day. (I'd say that in a startup with 2-4 partners, a %10 stake is probably about right, YMMV)

Slashdot is littered with condescending posts about business majors who thought that what programmers do is just simple and who tried to do it themselves, and did a total WTF stupid in the process. Things like trying to write enterprise, thousand-user software in FileMaker Pro. Or secure a website with javascript-based access control. Or passed passwords via telnet over the plain-Jane Internet. Or any of a thousand other obvious stupids that only somebody completely clueless about technology might think is a good idea.

And when it comes to anything legal, you are just as dumb, just as clueless, and just as likely to do a serious WTF that leaves your fledgling company high-and-dry, or worse, in deep liability doo-doo. Lawyers go to school and learn the meanings of all kinds of "almost-English" words like "good faith" and "collateral estoppel" that mean almost nothing to you or I, but have real implications when brought up in court or on contracts.

You are an expert in your field, you expect (and deserve) to get paid well for your time. Lawyers are in the same boat, in a different industry.

At the very least, see sites like Legal Zoom or Nolo Press and have some reasonably decent quality documents to start with. That is, until you can get some reasonable legal representation.

The bottom line: if you don't get legal representation, you are going to be legally representing yourself. And you'll probably muck it up just as bad as the idiot who thought that writing a high-quality 3D FPS game in Perl was a good idea.

If they have no reasonable grounds for suing, then their lawsuit will be rejected by the courts. If they do have a reasonable grounds for suing then the courts will hear their case.

Yeah, because the courts are completely infallible. Silly, frivolous lawsuits are never heard, much less win.

http://www.legalzoom.com/legal-articles/article11331.html

You're shitting us right? Replace home with business.

You can't. Homes and business are very different things, legally and ethically.

A person's business is what allows them to make a living.

A hitman's business is what allows him to make a living. So what? If the way you make a living is harmful to the rights, health, or safety of others, you have to find a new way to make a living.

Some are run by the common folk. This is even more true for bars and restaurants, the main businesses effected by these type of laws.

The folks who work there are much more "the common folk," and they deserve a safe work environment.

The last time I checked, "Management reserves the right to refuse business to anyone."

The last time I checked, putting up a sign doesn't change anything. Management's right to refuse service is strictly limited by civil rights laws and the A.D.A.

This may not be the _your_ business approach, but if that is how the business owner wants to go about it, that is his RIGHT!

No, it's not. You do not have a natural right to occupy and control land for business purposes.

Now, that's not to say it's not a very useful thing to allow people to occupy and have limited control land for some purposes. But that permission is granted - or should be granted - only in so far as it serves the public interest and the protection of people's rights. That includes the right of workers not to be needlessly endangered by the health hazards of secondhand smoke.

That paragraph and defense of yours is creeping WAY to close to the government controlling what I do inside my house.

Not at all, provided you're doing it with other consenting adults. Your home is your castle; inside of it, smoke all you like. Smoke crack at home, I'll fight for your right to do it.

But until you figure out how to smoke your poison of choice without exhaling, your right to smoke ends where my respiratory tract begins.

It has.

It's called http://www.legalzoom.com/

Take a look. These services aren't hard to find.

"since it is theoretically just as easy to repeal a law as to enact a new one that goes further in the same direction"

This is theoretically correct. 'In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice they are not'

In the end, however, I was not talking about how easy or hard it is to repeal restrictive laws. In practice that does not matter. What matters is how likely is it that the restrictive law gets repealed vs. a more restrictive law passed. Simply considering the number of laws on the books, it is clear that passing new laws is more likely than repealing old ones. Here is some evidence to back that up. And those are just the funny ones.

I think that the largest trouble with the slippery slope argument is that the slope is usually not slippery, or much of a slope, as you said. However, every so often some power-hungry nut-job gets into power, and then the slope is usually steep and slick.

It *is* a good device to communicate an idea, and it may even turn out to be correct, but it has no more place in classical logic than anecdotal evidence or appeal to emotion.

Now I think we are getting close to the heart of our differences. You seem to care more that your logic is correct than that your conclusions are correct. I am the opposite. Even an idiot is occasionally correct, even if by nothing more than sheer dumb luck, and almost always in spite of correct logic, not because of it. With that understanding I can partly agree with you. The 'slippery slope' is not a very logically sound argument. This fact does not however, have all that much to do with whether it is correct.

I was interested in your comment and decided to do some research to find more information. Unfortunately, searching with all permutations of Apple/Music/Records/Label/Beatles that I could think of on Britannica returned no information at all, while a simple search for Apple Records on Wikipedia returned a thorough and unbiased article.

As for the lawsuit, neither source mentioned it, but at least Wikipedia linked to a seemingly non-biased summary.

So I guess my point is that people have to decide what's better.. lots of information with a rare chance of zealotry, or no information at all.

On the other hand, Apple could also simply start their own music label and really rock the industry.

As I understand it, Apple couldn't legally create their own music label due to an agreement made with Apple Records in the 80's.

See this article for more information.

The iPod and iTunes ventures are clearly associated with music, so Apple (the Beatles version) are in the process of suing Apple (the computer company) for the third time..

don't forget to add import duty after the VAT which is another 10% of the total inc vat price

but i agree its another rip-off-britain pricing scheme, still Apple are getting beaten down this year so perhaps after a few big fines they will re-evaluate their pricing policies

that is if they are still around after Apple Corps have finished with them

Comments on Slashdot's advertising are always on-topic.

Slashdot advertiser LegalZoom offers to apply for registration of copyright for you for $149. There is no reason you cannot do this yourself, for only $30.

Slashdot marketing does itself an enormous disservice by allying its brand with a bad deal such as this, in my opinion. If the Slashdot brand becomes associated with dubious propositions, then Slashdot advertising will become far less valuable.

U.S. Copyright Office