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The Copyright Royalty Board consists of:

James S. Sledge
Stanley C. Wisniewski
William J. Roberts

Picture and bios here
http://www.loc.gov/crb/background/crb-judges.html

And they invite you to send them comments!

http://www.loc.gov/crb/contact/

The Copyright Royalty Board consists of:

James S. Sledge
Stanley C. Wisniewski
William J. Roberts

Picture and bios here
http://www.loc.gov/crb/background/crb-judges.html

And they invite you to send them comments!

http://www.loc.gov/crb/contact/

Copyright owners and webcasters can still negotiate rates (See 17 U.S.C. Sec. 114(f)(3)). The decision that the Copyright Review Board refused to rehear merely establishes the terms and conditions that enable webcasters to license copyrighted works without seeking permission from the copyright owners. If Congress had not enabled the establishment of these compulsory license rates, then webcasters would not be able to broadcast any works without seeking permission from copyright owners because Congress had introduced a digital performance right in the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995.

Copyright owners presumably are interested in maximizing their revenues, while webcasters probably would like to minimize their costs. Thus, both groups still have a incentives to negotiate. The compulsory licensing rates will not kill internet radio: they simply provide terms and conditions of last resort for copyright owners and webcasters who cannot otherwise reach an agreement.

• The estate tax in the United States is a tax imposed on the transfer of the "taxable estate" of a deceased person - Estate Tax
• In the United Kingdom, Death Duty was first introduced as a tax on estates in England and Wales over a certain value from 1796 - Inheritance Tax

Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. The people in Gitmo doesn't enjoy much of what the rest of us would call liberty.

There IS no third category "illegal combatant" is bull. Furthermore -- even if it wasn't -- you'd need an actual court for determining if some random person picked up in some random country actually does fit the definition for "illegal combatant". (which has the problem that the US has refused to even define the term. In effect saying, these people are "X", but we don't say what we mean by X.)

You might want to read all of the pertinent information about HR811 first hand before contacting your representative about it.

This bill does many of the things that we in the /. community have argued for for some time now including open code inspection, reliable voting systems, and yes, reliable recounts and audits. Now is the time for the /. community to act on our endless snarky comments and help to move real change forward.

The Bill's text and record are available at Thomas. While there you can peruse the list of 200 Cosponsors to see if your house rep is among them (and should be given a cookie for that) or not (and should be corrected).

If you both support the bill and are a U.S. Citizen or Resident, you can go to the U.S. House of Representatives Website at www.house.gov, and Write your rep or contact them via their website (Recommended) to urge them to support the bill or thank them for already cosponsoring it.

With time to spare you can head over to the Senate and urge your senators to back the forthcoming companion bill in the senate. Following that a stop off to contact The Executive Branch (va a aqui para Espanol) to urge signing of the bill wouldn't hurt.

If you believe in any of the things this bill does then a few minutes on the phone or sending a polite e-mail shouldn't be too much. As cynical as we all can be about the influence of money on elections a groundswell is too costly to be overrun.

This bill does many of the things that we in the /. community have argued for for some time now including open code inspection, reliable voting systems, and yes, reliable recounts and audits. Now is the time for the /. community to act on our endless snarky comments and help to move real change forward.

The Bill's text and record are available at Thomas. While there you can peruse the list of 200 Cosponsors to see if your house rep is among them (and should be given a cookie for that) or not (and should be corrected).

If you both support the bill and are a U.S. Citizen or Resident, you can go to the U.S. House of Representatives Website at www.house.gov, and Write your rep or contact them via their website (Recommended) to urge them to support the bill or thank them for already cosponsoring it.

With time to spare you can head over to the Senate and urge your senators to back the forthcoming companion bill in the senate. Following that a stop off to contact The Executive Branch (va a aqui para Espanol) to urge signing of the bill wouldn't hurt.

If you believe in any of the things this bill does then a few minutes on the phone or sending a polite e-mail shouldn't be too much. As cynical as we all can be about the influence of money on elections a groundswell is too costly to be overrun.

The RIAA will step on anyone at the will of the major labels money. Please help stop the RIAA and the band of Corp. thieves.

HELP SAVE NET RADIO IN THE US..

http://www.loc.gov/crb/proceedings/2005-1/rates-te rms2005-1.pdf

SaveNetRadio.org

Help Keep Internet Radio Online

Whats Happening

On Friday March 2nd 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board announced new royalty rates for Internet Radio stations. The rates are retroactive to January of 2006.

The new rates are far higher than any industry experts expected. In fact, if they remain unchanged, bankruptcy looms for many online radio stations.

The new rates essentially levy a tax of $0.0011 per performance. Now, that doesn't sound bad does it. But consider this. Each hour, the average radio station plays 16 songs. So that's about 1.76c per hour, per listener. A station with 500 listener average would be hit with fees of $211 per day, $6,336 a month or $76,000 a year.

This amount of money is beyond the resources of all but the very wealthiest of corporations. Many of the internet radio stations are run by enthusiasts and hobbyists. These small stations are the ones bringing new music, and old favorites to you every day. Music you can't hear on corporate-owned terrestrial stations.

Could this be the day the music died?

What can you do?

If you enjoy internet radio, HEARING YOUR BAND ON INTERNET RADIO, you need to make your feelings known right now to your representatives in the Congress and Senate. Write to them and ask them to help repeal the decision of March 2nd by the Copyright Royalty Board. It only takes a couple of minutes.

SaveNetRadio.org

Congress: House.gov/writerep

Senate: Senate.gov

More background on this decision

SaveNetRadio.org

DigiMedia.org

DigiMedia.org FAQ

KurtHanson.com

Broadcastlawblog

Thank you & please help.

http://myspace.com/scottandpam

The RIAA will step on anyone at the will of the major labels money. Please help stop the RIAA and the band of Corp. thieves.

HELP SAVE NET RADIO IN THE US..

http://www.loc.gov/crb/proceedings/2005-1/rates-te rms2005-1.pdf

SaveNetRadio.org

Help Keep Internet Radio Online

Whats Happening

On Friday March 2nd 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board announced new royalty rates for Internet Radio stations. The rates are retroactive to January of 2006.

The new rates are far higher than any industry experts expected. In fact, if they remain unchanged, bankruptcy looms for many online radio stations.

The new rates essentially levy a tax of $0.0011 per performance. Now, that doesn't sound bad does it. But consider this. Each hour, the average radio station plays 16 songs. So that's about 1.76c per hour, per listener. A station with 500 listener average would be hit with fees of $211 per day, $6,336 a month or $76,000 a year.

This amount of money is beyond the resources of all but the very wealthiest of corporations. Many of the internet radio stations are run by enthusiasts and hobbyists. These small stations are the ones bringing new music, and old favorites to you every day. Music you can't hear on corporate-owned terrestrial stations.

Could this be the day the music died?

What can you do?

If you enjoy internet radio, HEARING YOUR BAND ON INTERNET RADIO, you need to make your feelings known right now to your representatives in the Congress and Senate. Write to them and ask them to help repeal the decision of March 2nd by the Copyright Royalty Board. It only takes a couple of minutes.

SaveNetRadio.org

Congress: House.gov/writerep

Senate: Senate.gov

More background on this decision

SaveNetRadio.org

DigiMedia.org

DigiMedia.org FAQ

KurtHanson.com

Broadcastlawblog

Thank you & please help.

http://myspace.com/scottandpam

The RIAA will step on anyone at the will of the major labels money. Please help stop the RIAA and the band of Corp. thieves.

HELP SAVE NET RADIO IN THE US..

http://www.loc.gov/crb/proceedings/2005-1/rates-te rms2005-1.pdf

SaveNetRadio.org

Help Keep Internet Radio Online

Whats Happening

On Friday March 2nd 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board announced new royalty rates for Internet Radio stations. The rates are retroactive to January of 2006.

The new rates are far higher than any industry experts expected. In fact, if they remain unchanged, bankruptcy looms for many online radio stations.

The new rates essentially levy a tax of $0.0011 per performance. Now, that doesn't sound bad does it. But consider this. Each hour, the average radio station plays 16 songs. So that's about 1.76c per hour, per listener. A station with 500 listener average would be hit with fees of $211 per day, $6,336 a month or $76,000 a year.

This amount of money is beyond the resources of all but the very wealthiest of corporations. Many of the internet radio stations are run by enthusiasts and hobbyists. These small stations are the ones bringing new music, and old favorites to you every day. Music you can't hear on corporate-owned terrestrial stations.

Could this be the day the music died?

What can you do?

If you enjoy internet radio, HEARING YOUR BAND ON INTERNET RADIO, you need to make your feelings known right now to your representatives in the Congress and Senate. Write to them and ask them to help repeal the decision of March 2nd by the Copyright Royalty Board. It only takes a couple of minutes.

SaveNetRadio.org

Congress: House.gov/writerep

Senate: Senate.gov

More background on this decision

SaveNetRadio.org

DigiMedia.org

DigiMedia.org FAQ

KurtHanson.com

Broadcastlawblog

Thank you & please help.

http://myspace.com/scottandpam

Project Gutenberg uses plenty of scans from American Memory to make their etexts--they do pretty much what you describe. At the lowest level, they make a plaintext copy, but they also do formatting and in-text hyperlinking: for instance, linking footnotes to their references, or index page numbers to anchors in the text. (See the HTML version of this etext to see what I mean.) Browse to a random book from this random collection, and you'll see what the LoC provides for their collections currently. As Brewster Kahle will be involved, you might want to see what projects he's done and how they're provided: a random book from the Million Book Project is available as a DjVu document, as well (badly) OCR'd text.

Is Durosport just a warmed over Borat joke pitched at the Slashdot demographic?

No, I'm not a Moldovan or a Kazakh FYI.

And this Durosport sppof does seem a whole lot less racist (against xUSSR people and Muslims that is).

And for my last demonstration, I will show you t how politically correct and humorless I truly am, here is a link to Moldovan Internet stats:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/international/european/moldo va/resources/md-general.html

• http://www.healthcare-now.org/
• H.R.676 info http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d110:6:./t emp/~bdg5vb::%7C/bss/d110query.html%7C

They made every effort to bring the situation back under control before they pulled out their weapons and opened fire.

That would explain that 'semi-automatic' weapons ban that Congress is considering.
Don't want those scary 'semi-automatic' weapons in the hands of the wrong people.

has Congress really studied the impact of DST shift?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this hasn't been widely reported — the mainstream media actually reading the text of a bill would be revolutionary.

Congress is using this bill to study the impact. The bill calls for a study in 9 months to see if the DST change actually had any impact, and consider changing it back if it didn't. So programmers who didn't design for maintenance might get another chance sooner than they thought.

And to an even greater extent the problem is that we aren't sure how much manipulation to allow before we call a particular shot a forgery.

Here is an original scan of a negative from the FSA photo project, a Jack Delano shot.

Here is the scan of the print.

Obviously we aren't talking about some massive fakery here, no people have been edited in or out, no machine gun nets have been added. But the print is definitely different from the negative. what if this were done with smoke coming from a building, or blood on a sidewalk, or something else that could be emphasized or not in order elicit a certain emotional response?

This is certiantly an issue that will require social solution long before we can bring technology into it.

And to an even greater extent the problem is that we aren't sure how much manipulation to allow before we call a particular shot a forgery.

Here is an original scan of a negative from the FSA photo project, a Jack Delano shot.

Here is the scan of the print.

Obviously we aren't talking about some massive fakery here, no people have been edited in or out, no machine gun nets have been added. But the print is definitely different from the negative. what if this were done with smoke coming from a building, or blood on a sidewalk, or something else that could be emphasized or not in order elicit a certain emotional response?

This is certiantly an issue that will require social solution long before we can bring technology into it.

Congress isn't quite as unsavvy as you might think, but there is significant room for improvement:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.Res.1 49:

They have made a half decent start, but I think what is lacking is a publicly visible way to see the bill and all the bill changes while the proposal is in committee and also a way to track who made what changes. Also I have noticed that thomas seems to cut off after a certain number of lines... not sure if they have fixed that yet.

If anyone is interested in donating their time to put together a system to do what this thread is proposing, free and open source, I've been giving this some thought. It wouldn't necessarily be just applicable to Congress, I think good software would be flexible enough to apply just as well to your local city council or your state legislature as it would be to congress.

I'd prefer to make it java based: struts 2, jpa, spring, hibernate Mysql/Oracle as that is what I have been working with most recently. But if you are a php, python or ruby on rails person, then maybe a few different versions might eventually be worth putting together to give people options.

So, far I would see the system as role based wiki like, with an option to simply upload a text file to overwrite the previous version, each version would have a threaded possibly moderated discussion associated with each change (unlike the current wikipedia free for all "discussion"), with possibly a way to have weighted voting for comments like slashdot and a way to have weighted voting for specific versions of the law. A system that could just as easily scale to be used by a congressional committee internally, or your local city council or opened to the public to solicit feedback.

email me at poreilly@openlaws.org if you are interested in doing a thankless job for no money. well, hopefully not thankless.

First, we're talking about 109th Congress, H.R. 3199, section 502, "INTERIM APPOINTMENT OF UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS." Version control is in Thomas, run by the Library of Congress. (Unfortunately, you can't link to Thomas documents effectively; it's a front end to a non-Web system and the URLs are temporary.)

So where did that go in? The versions passed by the House and Senate are quite different, and this bill was rewritten in conference committee. This language isn't in either the House or the Senate version. We go to the Bill Summary and Status File, and look under "Amendments". This is the change log for the bill. Nothing about this is in there.

This change was added in the House-Senate conference committee, which is how stuff like this usually sneaks in.

The only reference to this change is in the conference committee's report, at House Congressional Record page H1130. The text is:

Section 502. Interim appointment of United States Attorneys

Section 502 is a new section and addresses an inconsistency in the appointment process of United States Attorneys.

That's where it went in. But there's no indication of who put it there. The members of the conference committee were appointed by the Speaker of the House, and they were:

• Sensenbrenner
• Coble
• Smith (TX)
• Gallegly
• Chabot
• Jenkins
• Lungren, Daniel E.
• Conyers
• Berman
• Boucher
• Nadler
• Scott (VA).
• Hoekstra
• Wilson (NM)
• Harman.
• Norwood
• Shadegg
• Dingell.
• Oxley
• Bachus
• Frank (MA)
• King (NY)
• Weldon (PA)
• Lofgren, Zoe

One of those members of Congress is responsible.

The decision ignored not only the small webcasters operating under the old (already fairly prohibitive) rules, but also some less expensive options proposed by SoundScan, the RIAA spinoff that collects the royalties (instead of the traditional ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). No surprise that the FCC screws the people who have to pay the rates dictated by the monopoly FCC: the only documents allowed in the "trial" were submitted by incumbent, huge broadcasters and a couple of tax collectors.

The old rules required $500 minimum payment a year, while 4-minute songs would cost about $95 a year per-play at .07 cents per listen. So the minimum audience (by cost) is at least 6 people continuous, which means at least 25-50+ intermittent listeners, even dedicated ones. Which rules out true "small webcasters", people streaming the way most people blog: with a tiny audience of their friends. That keeps little guys out of the business, instead of competing on innovation and quality with the incumbents dictating the rules. Their audiences and operating staffs are large enough that the new, higher royalty rates are a cheap price for maintaining their domination of media, unlike journalism which now faces serious competition (and quality demands) from little bloggers. "Official publishers", a cartel of $BILLION media corps calling the shots.

Think maybe it's just bureaucracy working with business, try finding the dates and ways to comment in the "15 day period" now reportedly underway. Or participate in the process as a consumer in any way at all.

These rules control the future of broadcasting. Including the future of TV, the digital streaming that will be the only TV after the required switchover in 2009. Which means that those 2010 rates will jump along with the new video streaming they figure out, after they see how much abuse these new rules can deal the "emerging market". The system that only telcos, cablecos and broadcasters want for themselves, while they merge like the new satellite monopoly Sirius/XM.

If anyone can find the way to comment, and to insist on rules that respect the consumers, please post them. And get your friends to use them. While it's still cheap to send group emails without being in the spam business.

The decision ignored not only the small webcasters operating under the old (already fairly prohibitive) rules, but also some less expensive options proposed by SoundScan, the RIAA spinoff that collects the royalties (instead of the traditional ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). No surprise that the FCC screws the people who have to pay the rates dictated by the monopoly FCC: the only documents allowed in the "trial" were submitted by incumbent, huge broadcasters and a couple of tax collectors.

The old rules required $500 minimum payment a year, while 4-minute songs would cost about $95 a year per-play at .07 cents per listen. So the minimum audience (by cost) is at least 6 people continuous, which means at least 25-50+ intermittent listeners, even dedicated ones. Which rules out true "small webcasters", people streaming the way most people blog: with a tiny audience of their friends. That keeps little guys out of the business, instead of competing on innovation and quality with the incumbents dictating the rules. Their audiences and operating staffs are large enough that the new, higher royalty rates are a cheap price for maintaining their domination of media, unlike journalism which now faces serious competition (and quality demands) from little bloggers. "Official publishers", a cartel of $BILLION media corps calling the shots.

Think maybe it's just bureaucracy working with business, try finding the dates and ways to comment in the "15 day period" now reportedly underway. Or participate in the process as a consumer in any way at all.

These rules control the future of broadcasting. Including the future of TV, the digital streaming that will be the only TV after the required switchover in 2009. Which means that those 2010 rates will jump along with the new video streaming they figure out, after they see how much abuse these new rules can deal the "emerging market". The system that only telcos, cablecos and broadcasters want for themselves, while they merge like the new satellite monopoly Sirius/XM.

If anyone can find the way to comment, and to insist on rules that respect the consumers, please post them. And get your friends to use them. While it's still cheap to send group emails without being in the spam business.

Talk about tinfoil hats, how paranoid do you have to be to tie a daylight savings change to the Iraq war?

The daylight savings time change is one tiny paragraph of a huge energy policy bill, and by the way provides for a study in 9 months to see if it actually helped, and a potential of reverting back to the 2005 schedule if it didn't help. You may not agree with the policies put forth in the bill, but it certainly wasn't prompted by a desire to avoid appropriating money --- my senators and representative (all republicans) voted against it for anti-pork reasons.

Ahh but it's even better than that. This decision was mas not made in the Commission but in the Council of the European Union. The council is basically a meeting of the affected ministers in the national governments. It's on these meetings that the real decisions on future EU directives are made. This particular stinker was spearheaded by former minister of justice of Sweden, Thomas Bodström.

The best part of these council meetings are that the proposals doesn't have to be about the niche of the particular subgroup of ministers. This way you can introduce legislation in the most bizarre ways. As an example they tried to sneak through a directive on software patents via Agricultural and Fisheries Commission. It's our European variety of the USian paper clip amendments. This coup tried the good ole 20 december, just before holiday, when everyone just wants to go home, trick as well.

Ohh and for any US citizens reading this, this more or less exact legislation is being pushed through in the USA as we speak. Check out what Lamar Smith (R-Tx) has been up to with the amendments to bill H.R. 837, the SAFETY (Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth) act. In Europe they pushed the big brother laws with the threat of terrorists, it seems you USians gets screwed via the 2nd back door to constitutions, ie the think-of-the-children loophole.

Which section of the DMCA are you claiming they are violating ?

Here's a handy link so you can let us all know : http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.228 1:

> First, the fact that MPAA violated his license. According to the DMCA under section 1204 penalties range up to a $500000 fine...

Well, putting aside the rhetoric, this is a simple breach of contract case.

As you correctly point out, Section 1204 of the DMCA does indeed carry the potential for hefty fines. But not for the simple breach of contract action this would be. Section 1204 is the penalty for breaching Sections 1201 and 1202.
See here.. : http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c105:6:./tem p/~c105awNRih:e52661

So what are 1201 and 1202 ?
`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`Sec. 1202. Integrity of copyright management information
See here .. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.228 1:

So, you claimed breach of the DMCA is baseless.

How about your theory of loss of income from potential licencees ? I think you are on very weak ground here because you will have great difficulty in proving certainty of the claimed loss and causation of the claimed loss on the balance of probabilities.

This could be shown by discovery of the actual "conversion rate" of site visitors to licences bought from other such sites - eg the author's own site may prove to have a conversion rate that is exceedingly low.

Your comment's re criminality are rubbish, and again rely on that incorrect breach of the DMCA.

You do have one good point.
I would say, first get a GOOD lawyer. - who I suspect would advise you to forget about the whole thing, and then send you a bill for $300.

> First, the fact that MPAA violated his license. According to the DMCA under section 1204 penalties range up to a $500000 fine...

Well, putting aside the rhetoric, this is a simple breach of contract case.

As you correctly point out, Section 1204 of the DMCA does indeed carry the potential for hefty fines. But not for the simple breach of contract action this would be. Section 1204 is the penalty for breaching Sections 1201 and 1202.
See here.. : http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c105:6:./tem p/~c105awNRih:e52661

So what are 1201 and 1202 ?
`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`Sec. 1202. Integrity of copyright management information
See here .. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.228 1:

So, you claimed breach of the DMCA is baseless.

How about your theory of loss of income from potential licencees ? I think you are on very weak ground here because you will have great difficulty in proving certainty of the claimed loss and causation of the claimed loss on the balance of probabilities.

This could be shown by discovery of the actual "conversion rate" of site visitors to licences bought from other such sites - eg the author's own site may prove to have a conversion rate that is exceedingly low.

Your comment's re criminality are rubbish, and again rely on that incorrect breach of the DMCA.

You do have one good point.
I would say, first get a GOOD lawyer. - who I suspect would advise you to forget about the whole thing, and then send you a bill for $300.

It's also available on http://thomas.loc.gov/, which is the standard place to look for bills online.

I'll probably get troll rated by Edwards partisans, but he just doesn't ring true to me. When I examine candidates, I examine their history and look at what they've said in the past and what they say now, to see if there's a thread of consistency and integrity.

He's against the Iraq war now that it's safe and popular to be, but he not only voted for it, he was actually the Co-Sponsor of Lieberman's bill.
  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:SJ000 46:@@@P:
Even Kerry, who caught a lot of flack for voting for the war before voting against it or whatever the mangled soundbite was, had the intelligence to not Co-Sponsor the war. But Edwards joined Zell Miller, Jesse Helms, and Sturm Thurmond to Co-Sponsor Lieberman's bill. He defended his vote for the war and even said he "wasn't duped" by the president, and said that he would invade Iraq if he were president even after no WMDs were found. He didn't back down until after 2004 was over, because he was afraid of looking "weak" on national security. Of course, now his tune has turned 180 degrees.

He also said he's a champion of the poor, citing his work suing doctors for medical malpractice on behalf of "the little guy." And yet, when you examine his legal history, he has never done a single Pro Bono case.

Now that he's wooing Labor Unions for primary support, he's done a lot of good work campaigning for raising the minimum wage, even though it doesn't take political courage for a Democrat to say he's in favor of it, since it plays well to the base. But if you look at his Senate record, he's responsible for a lot of stuff that went against Labor Union interests. He voted to give China most favored nation status and the attendant trade conditions of that status, even though we have a huge trade deficit with China and their taking of our manufacturing base. Edwards also voted for expansion of the H1B visa program that allows companies to import foreign high tech workers (such as programmers and computer engineers) to fill American jobs but deny them immigration status. This work visa is a non-immigration visa, so they end up taking American jobs but not being able to contribute to America's future by becoming citizens. H1-Bs have been blamed for helping to keep American software wages depressed.

He tries to cater to the environmentalists and the poor, but then he engages in a major act of conspicuous consumption by tearing down wilderness to construct a new mansion. I think he has the right to live however he wishes, and his house is a silly issue to focus on, but it does underscore a lack of congruity.

Now, people do change over time, and the positions of career politicians certainly do. Surely he has seen the error of Iraq by now, and perhaps he started to grow a focus on poverty and labor long after he left the Senate, thus accounting for why he didn't sponsor any anti-poverty legislation in congress. But when you see that he changes significantly on several major issues, a pattern begins to emerge.

When I look for candidates, I try to see if their past actions match their current rhetoric and pandering. I try to see if their private faces out of the spotlight match their current public faces on the campaign trail.

Unfortunately for Edwards, he falls short in my eyes. It rings false.

He voted for....nay, CO-SPONSOREd...the Iraq War and now apologizes. Two ways of looking at it...Honest mistake, in which case he lacks the judgment on matters of war and peace to be president...or disingenious jockeying to follow public opinion, in which case he lacks the political courage to follow his conscience instead of the polls.

I put a lot of thought into examining candidates who want to be my president...and I just cannot in good conscience vote for Edwards.

Okay, pro-Edwards partisans may now troll-rate me.

It's nice to see that people care about this issue as it is fairly significant. Now let's make sure that our voice is heard by pestering those who represent us in Congress. The bill the article talks about is H.R. 977. It is currently in the hands of the Committee on the Judiciary. Finally, go to Congress.org, find out who your representatives are, and let them know your concerns with regards to this bill.

What about works funded by the NEA?

I would argue that if you take taxpayer dollars for your art project, then (in the same way that the software that I write at work belongs to my company, not to me) it's basically a government work, done on commission. If you don't like that, don't take the cash. Nobody ever said that cash handouts should come without strings attached; actually, as long as the government is giving away my tax dollars, I'd prefer that they attach enough strings to make sure that the public has the greatest possible benefit. And ensuring that everything produced ends up in the public domain would be a good way to ensure that.

I could probably be argued to compromise on something that gave the author a short-term period of exclusivity, say 5 or 10 years, but nothing like the current copyright span. (I could also see giving the same terms to recipients of scientific grants; i.e., you have 5 years to publish your results in any journal you want, but at the end of that span, it needs to be submitted to a central database and all findings become public domain material. The journals would bitch and moan, but they'd have to bend over and deal, or become irrelevant; government funding drives too much science for them to ignore or blackball it.)

A good model for what the NEA could become, would be the photographic projects commissioned by the FSA in the 1930s, which included work by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, or the Department of the Interior's commissioning of Ansel Adams in the 1940s (the Manzanar photos). In both cases, the works produced ended up in the public domain and are now freely available (online and in hardcopy). Had the tactics common today been used, most of the works would still be under copyright, and few Americans would ever have seen them. (And, it goes almost without saying, many of them would probably be gone forever.) Projects like these should be the rule where government funding of the arts is concerned, rather than the exception.

I would rather see the NEA fund a smaller number of works more completely, and have the output free for anyone to view, copy, reuse, distribute, and modify, than fund a large number of works halfassedly, without regard to what the public can do with the output, as currently seems to be the case. As it stands right now, the NEA is practically regressive; it uses taxpayer dollars to fund projects that only a small percentage of citizens (generally those in higher income brackets anyway) really care about. If the government is funding Art, then the resulting artworks should belong to all the people, to do whatever they want with it. If artists don't want to give the People their art, they don't have to take the People's cash.

Calling it a monopoly would be akin to calling ANY BUSINESS a monoploy as you can only buy their product from them.

You seem to have quite a bee in your bonnet on this one. Whenever I get the urge to write in all caps, I go for a walk. Maybe you should try that.

The poster I was responding to was suggesting that CDs are like any other commodity. They aren't. You don't go buy a pound of CDs in the same way you buy a pound of butter. As I explained elsewhere, they're still somewhat subject to supply and demand, but not to the same extent commodity suppliers are.

As to the word "monopoly", you're basically wrong. As experts say in obvious places, copyrights, patents, and trademarks are all government-granted limited monopolies. That a monopoly is limited doesn't make it less a monopoly. If I have a monopoly on the world's beef, people can and will substitute chicken, but that doesn't mean I don't have a monopoly.

Yes, modern businesses make extensive use of these, but that's precisely because they're monopolies, and monopolies allow greater profit than commodities. I'm not even saying that's bad; there's a useful purpose behind all of them. I'm just saying that you can't think about the CD market in the same way you think about the butter market. Butter is pretty much butter, but Madonna is not pretty much Weird Al.

Most other countries have the Copyright on recordings go into public domain about 50 to 90 years

Currently. And that's longer than it once was. There are a lot of people with a lot of money working to change that. Remember, I said, "in practice, eternal." The question is, will we let them?

Wow, the slashdot community meets it's twin! In a sort of Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror" way without the evilness. By that I mean that the Libraryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library community has been at the forefront of infotech since BCE putting the tech to real use for the general populace - making the info available. Tags? try the MARChttp://www.loc.gov/marc/overview.html/ based WorldCathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldCat/, Deep Web? try your Nationalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_libr ary/ Library or Consortia.http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/ Come on slashdotters get in behind your Libraries and build the future!

As I understand it, there definetly is a tiered library system. There is definetly a distinction between a city library and a county library.

Also, have you considered that there actuallly are Federal libraries like, hrrm, say the Library of Congress? Why couldn't we get a digital subscription to thier collected works? :)

Also of note, is that most state funded University libraries are public places. While I am sure that most state citizens can't checkout books without being a student, I think that there are places that allow you to. I'm sure that every library deals with this differently, but I remember that I checked books out of ASU West's library when I was in high school and taking a course at a community college, i.e. not an ASU student.

Look at what they have also introduced! Beware H.R. 393!!

Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.

An admitedly quick search doesn't pull up any cases where someone was sued for infringement based on a false claim of title. Also given that these notices were filed under the DMCA & the DMCA itself has penalties for false filings(1), trying to push this through would probably be doomed to failure at the dismissal request.
Mistakenly claiming ownership will result in damages. Sorry, we meant video 12659 not 12650.
Falsely claiming ownership to create a competitive advantage will result in a tort suit for interfierance and purjury.
Falsely claiming ownership with malicious intent gives you slander of title and purjury.
Title 17 Chapter 5 (501c)

(c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.

Is the only other section I find in the actual text of title 17 reguarding falsely claiming copyright ownership. The section you quote is from a copyright primer - not the code itself. Even 501c may not apply because they are not placing notices on the works, just claiming to own them - a fine distinction that might be enought to avoid the fine.

Title 17 Chapter 1 (106a) covers rights of atribution for visual works, but again doesn't invoke infrignement for falsely claiming that atribution.

(1)DMCA 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) makes knowingly making a false claim an act of Purjury. Proving knowingly and not error is hard enough to prevent these from showing up in court unless the person requesting the takedown gets picked to be made an example of.

So whose money will talk fastest, advertisers or Homeland Security?

DHS has $19,632,348,000 to spend for 2007 for the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) alone, so I guess they'll win.

In any case, a DMCA notice would probably not be considered purjury. The sender took no oath to be truthful when they sent the notice.

Excepting, of course, that they did:

6. Include the following statement: "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

This isn't a random rule YouTube/Google made up, it's part of the DMCA.

(Link to the relevant section of the DMCA will probably break soon, stupid Library of Congress. Start here, click "[H.R.2281.ENR]", then click "Sec. 512" in "TITLE II".)

In any case, a DMCA notice would probably not be considered purjury. The sender took no oath to be truthful when they sent the notice.

Excepting, of course, that they did:

6. Include the following statement: "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

This isn't a random rule YouTube/Google made up, it's part of the DMCA.

(Link to the relevant section of the DMCA will probably break soon, stupid Library of Congress. Start here, click "[H.R.2281.ENR]", then click "Sec. 512" in "TITLE II".)

You can't claim victory when you've made very deliberate predictions that temperatures will go up, and then refine those predictions (still going up but in a narrower range), if temperatures actually go down.

Let me draw a parallel: Sulfate aerosols. Twenty years ago... BAD! Spend five billion dollars on a five million dollar problem by requiring major changes to industry by amending the clean air act. Now, twenty years later, the same environmental crowd that fought against sulfates so vigorously tell us sulfate aerosols are keeping global temperatures down and should be intentionally put into the atmosphere. Keep in mind, they don't want to lift clean air act restrictions. They want to spend more money (pocket more grants) seeding it with jet airplanes, balloons and artillery cannons... I still haven't heard how this is supposed to avoid the production of acid rain, but there it is, staring you in the face. Twenty years ago, you would have told me to stuff my sulfate conspiracy theories too, I suppose.

So you say a temperature switcheroo in a few decades is impossible? Suppose they just throw up a two or three page "debunking" over at realclimate and continue on their merry way. Would that pass your sniff test? They are simply trying to scare up power and support, just like George W Bush does with the terrorism rhetoric. Remember, the whole sulfate aerosol business started in 1995 when the IPCC's prediction of 1.3C-2.3C temperature increase only turned out to be about a 0.5C increase.

By 1995, in its second full assessment of climate change, the IPCC admitted the validity of the critics' position: `When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account, most climate models produce a greater mean warming than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity to the greenhouse effect is used. There is growing evidences that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the warming due to increases in greenhouse gases.'

Let me translate this statement. It means either it is not going to warm up as much as we said it would or something is hiding the warming. I predict that every attempt will be made to demonstrate the latter before admitting that the former is true.

Source: Testimony of Dr. Patrick J Michaels before the 105th US Congress, 1997

Oh great, the sworn enemy of the cult of global warming tries to fund a study and now they're bribing people according to slashdot editorialization. This gets so old. It's like talking to a wall.

I haven't seen anyone discredit this panel or this document yet.

Really? Given the document came out today, that might be a bit difficult. As for the panel... You must have missed the bitch slapping they got back in 1997 by Dr. Patrick J Michaels in front of congress. He the former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and has a Ph.D. in Ecological Climatology. But screw those credentials, I'm sure we can classify him as a shill if you will allow me to quote him...

In science, regardless of how much external political and social pressure is applied, it is inevitable that the observed data and theoretical hypotheses or models, if you will, will eventually reach an internally consistent equilibrium. This is happening today.

However, it was apparent that when the first so-called consensus was imposed upon the issue of global warming by the First Scientific Assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, such an equilibrium had not been reached.

That report in 1990 stated, `When the latest atmospheric models are run with the present concentrations of greenhouse gases, their simulation of climate is generally realistic on large scales.'

The suite of climate models extant at that time predicted that the globe's mean temperature should have risen by then between 1.3 and 2.3 degrees Celsius. Slightly revised versions of these models provided the technical background for the Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in 1992.

The observed warming since the late 19th Century has only been 0.5 degrees Celsius, or less than one-third of the predicted value. Critics argued, as I did before this committee, that there would have to be a dramatic reduction in the forecast of future warming in order to reconcile the facts and the hypotheses.

By 1995, in its second full assessment of climate change, the IPCC admitted the validity of the critics' position: `When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account, most climate models produce a greater mean warming than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity to the greenhouse effect is used. There is growing evidences that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the warming due to increases in greenhouse gases.'

Let me translate this statement. It means either it is not going to warm up as much as we said it would or something is hiding the warming. I predict that every attempt will be made to demonstrate the latter before admitting that the former is true.

Such attempts were made, and initial results, particularly those published in `Nature' on July 4, 1996, appeared initially to bolster the argument that the sulfates were masking the expected warming. That particular study used weather balloon data from 1963 through 1987. Most striking was a warming of the middle of the Southern Hemisphere, which you can see in the top of the figure on page 3. There is a box around this dramatic warming region. It contributed most to the apparent reality of the sulfate-greenhouse effect interaction.

However, when the entire set of weather balloon data from 1958 through 1995, rather than what was used in the paper was used, this most pronounced region of warming shows no change whatsoever.

In the figure that I am referring to here on page 3, the closed circles, the filled circles, are the data that were used in the 1963 through 1987 study and all the circles are all the data.

In response to this, the senior author of that paper told the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the correspondence failed because greenhouse warming had overwhelmed the cooling effect of sulfates since 1987.

As you can see from Figure 1, there was no net change in temperature in the last decade. So this statement was clearly wrong.

Again, words are one thing, actions another. There is a waiver in that section, II 207 (a)(3). Your point seems to be that it is too early to be cynical. Sorry can't help it. I want to see it enforced in a court one day. To me, that would be follow through.

Pssst!.... don't tell anyone but none of them ever had irrefutable proof.

I think Pasteur had pretty irrefutable proof. They had microscopes. They knew what caused the problem. All he had to do was convince religious freaks that bacteria didn't spontaneously appear out of nowhere by an act of God. But if you feel bacteria spontaneously generate themselves out of nothing but component pieces, feel free to drink unpasteurized milk and scoff at the rest of us for being just as susceptible to disease as yourself.

I don't think science is what you seem to think it is.

I guess that all depends on whether or not you classify global warming as science. GP is simply asking for a bit more than speculation before making trillion dollar policy decisions. I don't think that is too much to ask. Climate scientists claim CO2 is one of the primary drivers of "global warming." Yet, CO2 was an order of magnitude higher 450 million years ago and temperatures were roughly the same as they are today. CO2 concentrations are about 20% higher today than they have been any time in the last 400,000 years yet drastic temperature increases have not followed suit. In the mid 90's, Dr. Patrick Michaels called bullshit in front of Congress when predictions of higher temperatures made by computer models did not materialize. After wiping the egg from their faces, "climate scientists" once again were eating humble pie when computer models that generated gloom and doom "hockey stick" graphs were shown to spit out hockey sticks with random input by people who were not climate scientists.

Given that brief synopsis, I can see a person might be skeptical. Especially when the people predicting the end of the world are asking for taxpayer dollars to do it.

The guy who posted the video of the penises attacking the wife's avatar could have just certified to YouTube that the material was non-infringing, and then YouTube under the DMCA would have left the video up...

Incorrect.

Check section 512 yourself. (Direct link to section 512 that might work.)

There are two key parts: c.1.A.iii: The service provider "upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;". The legal content must be taken down "expeditiously." No window of opportunity is allowed in which to contact the person who posted it. Then g.2.B and C: "upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph [the service provider] ... replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice."

Anyone willing to tell a lie can silence your online speech for ten days.

There is no trial, not even a judge's review. Even if your ISP wanted to, they can't put the content up faster than than ten day (at least, not without losing the safe harbor provisions). That's assuming you promptly file the counter notification. You can bring charges that the third party lied, but it's hard to prove when they claim "Oops, I guess we were wrong." Ten days might not seem like much, but it might get a company past an initial news rush. A number of companies have used the ten day window to illegally silence leaks of sale prices on "Black Friday" until the day had passed.

The take down notice system is, at its core, a good idea. I've even filed take down requests. However, it is not a good balance. It amounts to suppression of speech. If you're going to supress speech, you need a much higher standard than some random person's claims. The reason you can be silenced for 10 days is to give the original claimant time to file an infringement suit against you. Why does the claimant get such a window, but the person whose speech is being suppressed doesn't? A more fair balance would be that upon receipt of notification, a sevice provider needs to make a reasonable effort to contact the poster. If the poster fails to provide counter-notice within ten days, then the content gets yanked.

The guy who posted the video of the penises attacking the wife's avatar could have just certified to YouTube that the material was non-infringing, and then YouTube under the DMCA would have left the video up...

Incorrect.

Check section 512 yourself. (Direct link to section 512 that might work.)

There are two key parts: c.1.A.iii: The service provider "upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;". The legal content must be taken down "expeditiously." No window of opportunity is allowed in which to contact the person who posted it. Then g.2.B and C: "upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph [the service provider] ... replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice."

Anyone willing to tell a lie can silence your online speech for ten days.

There is no trial, not even a judge's review. Even if your ISP wanted to, they can't put the content up faster than than ten day (at least, not without losing the safe harbor provisions). That's assuming you promptly file the counter notification. You can bring charges that the third party lied, but it's hard to prove when they claim "Oops, I guess we were wrong." Ten days might not seem like much, but it might get a company past an initial news rush. A number of companies have used the ten day window to illegally silence leaks of sale prices on "Black Friday" until the day had passed.

The take down notice system is, at its core, a good idea. I've even filed take down requests. However, it is not a good balance. It amounts to suppression of speech. If you're going to supress speech, you need a much higher standard than some random person's claims. The reason you can be silenced for 10 days is to give the original claimant time to file an infringement suit against you. Why does the claimant get such a window, but the person whose speech is being suppressed doesn't? A more fair balance would be that upon receipt of notification, a sevice provider needs to make a reasonable effort to contact the poster. If the poster fails to provide counter-notice within ten days, then the content gets yanked.

The problem is that the administration has created a fake label for these people. By calling them enemy combatants, he deprives them of even the right of determination of POW status by refusing to permit any process whereby the government "proves" before a court or a tribunal that the person is an "enemy combatant", or even to permit the "enemy combatant" the chance to prove that he is not one.

Actually the distinction is alien unlawful enemy combatant. Which is defined in the act as an alien (non-citizen) combatant that does not belong to the military or officially recognized militia of any country or sovereign state. It is pretty specific. The act specifies that lawful enemy combatants get all the normal protections of the Geneva convention and normal court-martial procedures in the case of violations of the law of war. It also specifies that military commissions can only be formed in areas under martial law or occupied territories.

Oh and congress created the 'fake label' not the administration though they participated when the president signed the bill into law.

In case someone wants to read the actual text of the bill as passed by the senate, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.039 30:.

The Text of the Amendment in Question:
One click only, for your reading enjoyment.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./tem p/~c110NaSiwe:e38473:/