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Has it actually been passed?

I saw this story on Slashdot yesterday (Thursday) and it's now Friday morning (10am in England) and there is nothing on the BBC and no update to the parliament.uk page regarding the bill.

Is there a chance this hasn't actually been passed which is why it's not being reported? The BBC has no recent (within last week) news on this.

OK, so searching with Google News I can now see a few UK papers picking this up today: The Independent, Digital Trends, Out-Law, and Press Gazetta but they are not what you'd consider main-stream.

Fuck the main-stream media.

Fuck the UK government.

Wrong /. summary: The Court didn't say anything, an Advocate General did. I don't know if even calling it a "ruling" as TFA does is correct. It's an Opinion and the Court may or may not follow it (p=0.8).

But if they do follow it, does this override national regulations such as German fucking Störerhaftung? And what about the legal enforcement of "captive portals" for free Wifi that break HTTP and are just impossible for HTTPS and non-web services (email etc.)?

We all know how UK love its citizens to be free of surveillance. After all, there is only one surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain and UK data retention law protects the citizens of abuse.

Oh and by the way, according to this article, you are probably wrong, as Microsoft has promised non-US customers that their data will not be stored on servers under US jurisdiction. If this assurance turns out to be false, they are guilty of fraud.

(From the article: "These concerns led Microsoft to allow non-US customers to have their personal data stored on regional servers outside the US, in contrast with other large technology groups which have expressed their resistance to such a model.")

P.S.: Note that I have no idea if the customer in this particular court case is a U.S. citizen or not. I would agree that it would be pretty bogus if Microsoft is simply claiming that just because they stored data from a U.S. citizen on an overseas server they don't have to comply. Unfortunately, it seems all the details of the case are sealed. The argument of the U.S. government that they can't be bothered to seek the assistance of foreign governments are the kind of arrogant bullshit we have come to expect of the U.S. regardless.

Remember, Microsoft did not learn from their 1999 fiasco, they did it again 4 years later, though only in the UK.

The right to privacy and safeguards against illegal recording are included in most european Constitutions, you cretin.

And it took me just 2 minutes on google to find this:

http://www.out-law.com/page-97...

You can copyright an implementation of a language, but you cannot copyright the language itself. This view is more completely settled in EU law, but there are US cases that have reached the same conclusion.

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~aho/cs6998/lectures/11-10-11_Zimmeck_ProtectPL.pdf
http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2013/01/sas-v-wpl-programming-languages-not.html
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/january/computer-programming-languages-should-not-be-viewed-as-copyrightable-says-high-court-judge/

I think what you describe is the last time Microsoft will ever be [allowed] to pull that stuff off.

Word did not crush Word Perfect. Microsoft [ab]used their Windows monopoly to harm a competing product.

Microsoft's multiple attempts into mobile have all been disgraceful failures and they've been making attempts for decades. Microsoft screwed over Orange mobile more than once (really Orange? And you're still playing with Microsoft?) and Microsoft accused of stealing mobile phone trade secrets as they go back on their deals [again] with another Microsoft partnership gone bad.

I see the term "Microsoft Partner" as the thing which happens before something bad happens... you know, like getting kissed by a mafia boss or something.

Not only Shoulder surfing, but also security cameras.
It would not be nice if I go to Internet cafés, and the web form will show to all people my passwords in clear.

Schneier now backs an approach taken by BlackBerry devices and iPhones, which display each character briefly before masking it.

That is not good with security cameras or other cameras, like web cameras, or mobile phone cameras, which are quite common in public places like Internet cafés.

PS: I referring to the article of Bruce Schneier: http://www.out-law.com/page-10152 not the article about Fedora. I know that it's very uncommon to install Fedora in public Internet cafés.

UK law also has a similar provision in the UK's E-Commerce Regulations (scroll down to Minimum information to be provided). Google does not comply, I talked to a Google employee who told me, something like, that it was not convenient/efficient and that I should use a web form.

I don't like putting questions via web form since I don't get to keep a copy as I do when I send email.

You guys have different definitions of "comply" as the rest of the world I assume.

The email address of the service provider must be given. It is not sufficient to include a 'contact us' form without also providing an email address.

They provide an email address, so they comply. The law does not say that a human has to reply to them.

UK law also has a similar provision in the UK's E-Commerce Regulations (scroll down to Minimum information to be provided). Google does not comply, I talked to a Google employee who told me, something like, that it was not convenient/efficient and that I should use a web form.

I don't like putting questions via web form since I don't get to keep a copy as I do when I send email.

However it contains a lot of common sense and most is applicable accross jurisdictions.

http://www.out-law.com/page-5536

I don't know about the US, but parallel importing is not legal in the EU. AFAIK, this was the first case. Here in the EU, it really is one law for corporations and another for us.

Don't go blaming the IT departments so quickly. Blame the contractors, and those who purchase said contracts. While I can certainly point fingers at some terrible in-house public sector IT departments, they're not all bad, not by a long shot.

I'm posting AC for business confidentiality reasons: my company provides web software (business stuff, not the main site) for the UK National Institute of Health Research. They're our first (and only) public sector client. I had to liaise quite a lot with the previous supplier, with regards to migrating data out of the old system. I simply could not believe how awful it was. It seemed to be designed from the ground up to require maximum maintenance, and apparently there were 5 staff members at the contractor who worked full time on supporting the business logic. Not on updates or new features, just on keeping it working.

When we were negotiating the contact with them, they wanted a clause that said if we failed to provide them with any software at all, they got 50% of their money back. That shocked us. Just how bad is the public sector IT culture that they felt they'd only be entitled to half their money back if they got nothing for it?

The previous suppliers told us they wouldn't be able to provide the data extracts we required until several months after the go-live date, so we then entered into a big wrangle to let us get a copy of their database and do it ourselves. This was a wrangle because they wanted to protect the "trade secrets" or "intellectual property" of the data model itself. Which was awful btw; I ended up with a 35-page print out of it sellotaped together on the wall, manually drawing in lines where all the foreign keys ought to have been.

We got the migration done to the client's satisfaction in the end, but this wouldn't have been possible without a bunch of IT guys at NIHR's end who were pretty damn competant, and very willing to get stuck in. I can't say as much for the contractor's guys, though. We ended up with a TUPE case against us, with them arguing that we had a legal obligation to hire them on, even though we were providing a completely different system (i.e. one that worked).

Anyway, that's a bit of a rant. In conclusion, if IT seem like they're a wee bit shit, then they might be, or alternatively, they might be having to deal with a lot of shit from elsewhere.

There's a European directive - the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive - that makes this illegal in Europe, http://www.out-law.com/page-10583.

The term 'demand' seems to be a journalistic excess here. For example the Canadians actually passed cooperative legislation enabling this.

http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2011/2011-10-12/html/sor-dors209-eng.html

As has the UK.

http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2012/march/uk-opts-in-to-eu-us-pnr-agreement/

So this so-called 'demand' seems to have been handled by typical intergovernment negotiations.

According to the first article I found, they're also breaking UK law. http://www.out-law.com/page-8060

Collecting IP addresses isn't illegal, but building a profile tied to an IP address is.

An IP address in isolation is not personal data under the Data Protection Act, according to the Information Commissioner. But an IP address can become personal data when combined with other information or when used to build a profile of an individual, even if that individual's name is unknown.

However, they're from the USA, so I doubt they care.

"Nominet does not have any clear obligation in its registrant Terms and Conditions that a domain name should not be used in connection with any activity that would constitute an offence under UK criminal law,"

"This is in contrast to many registrars and a number of registries including .org and .biz"

"We believe that formal policy advice is needed to underpin proposals for a change to Nominet's Terms and Conditions to give a contractual basis to suspend domains where Nominet has reasonable grounds to believe they are being used to commit a crime (e.g. a request from an identified UK Law Enforcement Agency)" link

It isn't the function of Nominet to police the Internet. Let the police charge the registered DNS holder, anonymous or otherwise, with a crime, get a court ordered sanction and then Nominet suspends the account.

A lot of people seem to be pimping Virgin as a safe option, but this is really ignorant:

http://www.out-law.com/page-9180

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/virgin_to_monitor_filesharing_in_uk.php

Virgin were also considering their own content service, and part of their offering to the music industry to achieve favourable licensing for this service was to offer to deal with file sharers or hand their details over.

Virgin absolutely cannot be trusted, if not only because they too have a media arm which means, like Sky, have a vested interest in supporting the media industry. I wish people would stop putting them on their list of so called trustworthy ISPs. Virgin will be the first to sell your details off or punish you directly without fair trial if there's money in it for them. They're absolutely one of the worst ISPs to be giving your money to in this respect, but most people get blinded by their shiny 50mbps broadband package it seems when talking about them.

Even TalkTalk were considering Phorm, and it was only when BT got a shit load of bad PR for it that they really backed off of the idea of it. A certain degree of scepticism is needed when dealing with them, however their boss has at least been the most vocal and active in fighting the DEA measures.

wiretapping legislation specifically forbids monitoring of telephone communications except in specific circumstances

The circumstances are more specific than most people think. Basically, unless you are a police force carrying out a criminal investigation, then you are on very shaky legal ground when intercepting communications. From The laws relating to monitoring your employees:

An employer who controls the system will be open to a civil action from either party to the communication if it intercepts communications without either:

    * reasonable belief that both parties to the communication consent to the interception; or
    * lawful authority

The point that a lot of companies miss is that, although an employee may have signed a contract, both parties to the communication must consent to the interception. For general web browsing - given that the visited web site (Google etc.) has not consented to the intercept, then the intercept is illegal. This can not be overridden by a contract of employment, except in the situation where both communicating parties are employees of the company and have signed such a contract. What makes this even more interesting is that filtering companies like Bluecoat and Smoothwall sell products that do SSL based interception. With SSL, there is a clear expectation from both communicating parties that the communication is going to be private, and yet the intercept is carried out when only one party has even potentially been notified that it may occur. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and I'm surprised that nobody has brought the issue to court yet.

There are no details that I've been able to find about people sued by the BPI. Try it; the trail always goes cold. Maybe a few settled out of court, possibly nobody was actually ever threatened; they just announced they had threatened people in order to ride on the backs of the RIAA's climate of fear without risking the backlash.

Certainly people have been sued, but I think you mean private individuals. The BPI tend to stick to hassling small businesses who play background music or police forces that have commercial radio playing in their offices, that's more profitable for them I guess.

However a simple first google turns up: http://www.out-law.com/page-4957 with reports of 28 UK individuals being sued. (out-law is a very good source for such things IMO).

I believe you can buy paint that shields from such signals. http://www.out-law.com/page-7953

Maybe because of his very rare medical condition he could put a claim in on his medical insurance (or the local government's social care services) to get his place proofed against such evil electro-magnetic waves.

Or he could just get up off his arse and do it himself. Surely the peace of mind that having such paint would give would be enough?

Oh, he'd probably complain about losing his mobile phone signal... o_O

If you buy online in the UK you do have the right to return it.
http://www.out-law.com/page-430

In UK law at least, a public private key is perfectly acceptable.

http://www.out-law.com/page-443

UK contract law tends to be quite open about what constitutes a contract mind, verbal agreement is enough but obviously harder to prove in a court of law.

Sorry, but what the fuck? How did you comment get modded insightful? It's completely ignorant.

The EU doesn't control Britain, it can however lay down rulings against it if it doesn't comply with laws it has agreed to comply to as a member of the EU. The EU has no power to act against a member nation if a member nation is not breaking any EU rules or agreements. The EU has absolutely no blame in the state of Britain as a surveillance state.

The EU has however acted against Britain when the British government has allowed illegal interception of people's data. It has acted to rule against the UK on it's DNA database. It has moved to block Britain and France's 3-strikes policy being supported globally by ACTA. Now, it is moving to block street view from taking pictures without warning as this very article states, and is another ruling that runs counter to the UK position on street view

Now, I'm British, it's quite clear Europe is actually of net positive benefit with respect to privacy and rights, the real problem with the UK is the British government and the people that support it. Blaming the EU for the UK's problems is so utterly idiotic and ignorant, when it's quite clear the EU has done everything it can within it's power, to prevent the British government from further eroding the rights of British citizens. But here's the problem, most people in Britain are impartial to it, most of the people here are their own worst enemy.

If you want to blame anyone, blame the fuckwads that keep voting in Labour and the Tories over and over. Blame the idiots here who don't bat an eyelid when their government steals yet more fundamental rights away from them. Sure as hell don't blame the EU though, because it's the only entity with any power that actually does anything in our favour- certainly more so than the government of any member state, or of countries like the US, Australia and so forth.

Do you, perhaps, mean the 50-ish FOIA requests that the CRU received over the course of two days, each one taking probably an hour or two of their legal counsel's time to process?

Cite please. I've heard about these claims, but haven't been able to locate any facts (aside from a Nature article which I can't read) on the matter even via Google. I did find a similar UK example where someone requested 15 FOIs from the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive or "Centro" over a period of 11 months. The 15th request was denied because it was "vexatious" and disproportionately inconvenienced the public authority. It sounds to me like the same held for this alleged burst of FOIA requests and could be turned down for similar reasons.

One thing I'm unclear on is whether the CRU could require payment of a reasonable fee for service of legitimate FOIAs? That happens to be true in the US. If it is a burden to compile the request, then the requester can be asked to pay for the effort.

That were, in fact, legitimately denied? Sure, one of the scientists said that he'd rather delete the data than give it to the people who spammed them with "legitimate" FOIA requests - but those FOIA requests were not granted (and funnily enough, none of the people submitting those FOIA requests followed up on them through legal channels), and the data was not deleted.

So you claim. All I've been able to find on that is the summary of a Nature article which claims 50 such requests within a week not two days. I have no idea who or why. I'm too stingy to pay for the article and mention of it doesn't appear anywhere else.

Except you can already block all that with your web browser, if you don't like it.

Why put undue burden on site owners when cookie blocking features *already exist* in every browser out there? That's why this law is retarded-- not because of the intention (which I also kind of agree with, to an extent).

Actually, RTF directive:

Where it is technically possible and effective, in accordance with the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46/EC, the user's consent to processing may be expressed by using the appropriate settings of a browser or other application.

So the entire thing is pointless and inaffective; anyone ever sues under it, you just argue that the settings of their browser that control acceptance of cookies were set to accept them, and therefore the user had implicitly consented to receiving them, point the court at this paragraph of the recital (which is an explanation of the intent of the directive) and that should be it.

I disagree. Look at China. Due to rampant piracy, no company can make a name for themselves (I'm talking more physical products vs. media). Anyone trying to make a high quality product is undercut by someone making a low quality knockoff (down to the same name/logo) driving the quality producer out of business. Now everything becomes a low quality product competing over price. This makes it hard to compete globally.

The Chinese government seems to recognise this and in the past year there have been significant revisions in how IP is officially viewed in China, with IP rights now being seen as a key driver of their economy. The implementation of the "National Intellectual Property Strategy Outline" is being rolled out across the country. The Outline states that strong protection IP rights are critical to the State's plans to move China away from being a manufacturing and imitation economy to a more innovative one. There is more information about these changes in this opinion piece by an IP lawyer http://www.out-law.com/page-10472

Should I sue because they didn't accommodate for people with my particular disability? Plenty of people are missing limbs. Why aren't they in an uproar over Guitar Hero?

They might be actually, but are in line behind pathetic one hit wonders mad that the guitar hero version sounds like the original song, a talentless trailer trash bimbo suing because she thinks her dead husband is copyrighted, and a delusional guitar maker that seems to claim a patent on pretending you're playing guitar without actually playing guitar.

Whatever court hears completely bat-shit insane lawsuits by greedy jerks trying to get money they didn't earn from successful games must be pretty backlogged.

Surely the provision that the measures taken must be proportional is enough to stop any disconnections?

My residential broadband connection is used by other people as well, so if I am accused of some heinous and socially reprehensible crime such as using P2P (by the way, have 'they' figured out that bit torrent streams don't necessarily equate to copyright infringement?) and my internet connection is cut off or throttled, then that is disproportionate as it affects other people who are innocent of using dubious and encrypted transport streams...

How would 'they' be able to differentiate between users on the private side of the network? I have one public IP address and several internal computers...I don't see how they could identify, accuse and cut off me and my residential connection directly.

If 'they' could then what is to stop another member of my house hold from subscribing to broadband (which would give me access again). Or are they planning on putting a blanket 'don't supply' notice on my address?

If some injunction can be sought against others to prevent me from gaining access via their connection, what happens to my mobile subscription (which includes internet access)? I am able to tether my phone to a pc and access the internet through that.

If the result of 3 accusations results in all of the above, what's to stop me from buying a 'pay as you go' broadband dongle (with cash) and using that? If all of the above was somehow preventable I would have to use open Wifi AP's, which in itself is potentially illegal in the uk, http://www.out-law.com/page-10299 so I might as well just break the law now, download some tunes illegally and save all of this agro - Sod it, I would rather just use Spotify - it's quicker and less hassle than downloading music.

I don't have a vendetta against advertising. It is a legitimate and effective means to inform people about a product. What I detest is advertising that in any way interferes, inconveniences, or obstructs what I am trying to do. I am one of those people who browses with images disabled, with javascript and activeX disabled most of the time.

It appears I'm not "one of the only people" who have a negative reaction to in-your-face ads: (Usability tests show pop-ups are brand suicide )

The Oxford-based consultancy's in-depth usability tests amongst a range of web users found that pop-up advertising was the single biggest turn-off amongst users, with every subject expressing irritation and frustration when pop-ups appeared.

More alarmingly, 60% of those tested said that pop-ups even led to mistrust for both the brand being advertised and the host site where the pop-up appeared.

I had nothing against Geocities. I had a dial-up connection at the time and all those ads loading slowed my browser to a crawl. I was also using Yahoo as my search engine so I did see a bunch of irrelevance. (Later I switched to Google).

The main reason I did not like Geocities is that its pages took too much time to load on a dial-up connection. There were times when I snapped my fingers saying, "aw, that looked to be interesting but...it's Geocities" when a search result appeared that I liked. There was no vendetta, just someone who wanted to pop online, get some information as quick as I could, then pop offline. All those ads made that difficult.

Google tried a fast one, the global publishing equivalent of tightly packaging a web browser with an OS, and got caught.

How is that exactly?

The only "negotiations" up to this point had been akin to the conversation the kid has with the candy jar. Now, perhaps, a genuine dialogue can begin.

There was a genuine dialogue between the Author's Guild and Google. What, you think this rejection is going to result in Microsoft and librarians testifying in the DoJ's analysis of this deal? I highly doubt it. The official word makes it sound like they want it to be 100 pages of clauses instead of 2 pages but we all know it's essentially going to come down to one hundred million dollars from Google to the Authors Guild with opt out abilities for any author or publisher. Some clauses on orphaned works, some clauses on allowing your competitors sales rights (already promised), subscriptions for libraries (already promised) some more clauses on this and that. And BOOM! it's done. Even Google seems to think they're just going to rework and resubmit. Is this what you mean by "genuine dialogue" and how does that make this deal less evil?

Letting the E.U. in on software patents would simply result in more patent violation suits against Microsoft. You'd think Microsoft would have learned by now.

It's possible. In that case, by keeping the deals they make to different developers secret, they will have better negotiating power.

But this could also be more about Apple wanting control of what the media journalists, bloggers, and commenters on internet forums can say about Apple, their policies, and decisions. (E.g. the secrecy requirements may be "defensive" in nature, standard language they could use for all developer tools, possibly)

For example, if Google revealed certain information, it could result in the media publishing critical things about Apple.

Apple is very sensitive and aggressive in controlling their public image, and they are well known for their secrecy.

They are also well known for sending armies of lawyers at web sites or people revealing information they don't want puiblished, or that are excessively critical of them. Their tools include cease and decist letters, DMCA notices, threats to sue, and actual lawsuits....

Examples in recent years:

• Apple Computer ordered to pay more than $750k in attorney fees and court costs in a case that pitted the electronics giant against a group of online journalists who posted information about an unreleased Apple product on the Web.
• Apple Broke the law by lying about Steve Jobs' health
• Apple product failure results in gagging order
• Apple Lawyers set sights on new prey (after sending cease-and-decist letters to "Podcasting" websites over alleged dilution of the "iPod" mark)
• Apple Lawyers bully bloggers over iPhone skins
• Apple Lawyers Tried To Cover-Up Exploding iPod Stories,
• Microsoft Cows To Apple Lawyers, Changes 'Laptop Hunters' Ad
• Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site, 2 (Think Secret)
• Apple lawyers nix box pix
• Apple's lawyers attack everyone over iPhone icons - "Apple's lawyers also sent letters to journalists who simply reported on the fact that the skins were available."
• Apple's lawyers threaten fake Steve jobs (Parody site)
• Apple sued for threatening fan wiki - 2
• Apple sues Victoria School - over the use of a logo that is shaped like an Apple. [...] students are now afraid to give their teachers apples now because of the fruitâ(TM)s striking resemblance to the company logo.
• Apple Lawyers shutting down Iowa Bar's iPod Mondays
• Apple Cease-and-Decists Stupidity Leak
• A

In the UK this is true only if the photograph was taken from a public place (and not even then, if the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy, as they may well do in this example). Facebook/MySpace users who put up photos of people are sometimes breaking the law. More significantly, they are also crossing the boundaries of politeness, but then they're Facebook users - so it goes with the territory.

See example: http://www.out-law.com/page-6820

Please, when did a corporation last value principles over profits?

When they found out they could be sued over it.

If iTunes store was infact the best store around, how come you can't just release it into the wild and people will love it? I'm sorry, what? I really don't get what you're trying to say here.

I'll explain further. If iTunes is such a great application, how come it isn't a choice? If it was infact the best choice then I see no reason why iPod or iPhone or iWhatever owners would choose otherwise. Because it simply isn't. It's a messy application that nearly made me vomit a little in my mouth the first time I saw it.

I'm very much interested in what part of my post was FUD. Typichal fanboy abbreviation to use, FUD. Oh and for future posts, remember to explain what exactly you think is "FUD", or it only makes you look like a douche.

If you actually do a google search for "Brian Shuster Ideaflood Inc" you find this article about a porn-baron with a patent for pop-up ads. Truly a modern day Nikolai Tesla...

(From http://www.out-law.com/page-3551):

Ideaflood Inc. is an intellectual property holding company owned by Brian Shuster. He previously ran porn web sites that were accused by the Federal Trade Commission of deceptively charging customers. While he is said to have made millions from internet porn, with which he is still involved, he now sees Ideaflood's patents as his best potential revenue source.

His pop-up ad patent application was filed in 1998 and granted in 2002. Last week, Shuster modestly told MSNBC news, "I apologise for being a pioneer."

Not sure if you'd heard of these guys:

http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/

They used to be the Internet Bill of Rights group but changed their name recently.

While many in this conversation have said we don't need to separate online/computer rights from general rights, this seems to only be the case in a "perfect world." Sadly, all too many countries pay lip service to the UN Declaration of Human Rights (if they bother at all) and even supposedly democratic & free countries butcher our rights in the online/communications world (Echelon, Australia's proposed Internet Filter, data retention acts in the UK & Korea, etc).

Between the efforts of the IRPDC and the Association for Progressive Communications (with their Internet Rights Charter as I mentioned previously in this discussion) there is work being done to raise awareness of our digital rights, not least of which is knowledge that we even have them let alone that they're being ripped from us.

So if Windows wasn't popular, it wouldn't be a problem to bundle IE in?

Windows isn't popular in the generally accepted sense. It has a de facto monopoly, which means that because it has been dominant for so long, people just expect to use windows. They don't agonise over whether windows is any good, they just buy a computer and expect it to have it. Part of that is its dominance in the workplace which is also due to having historical dominance.
If microsoft don't like EU law, then they can fuck off and take their business elsewhere. Instead they deliberately twist the EU decision to make things seem as bad and as inconvenient as possible. Same as with the ODF debacle. Instead of being part of a solution, they twist things to their benefit and try to lock others out. I would be interested to learn exactly how much of the fines awarded against them have actually been paid. I would not be surprised if they haven't actually paid a penny. In which case all the whining about how they are constantly being punished is so much hot air. Why should we forget the past on the grounds that they have already been punished, when they never underwent any punishment or paid their dues ?

Hah, I just googled for "microsoft eu fines paid" and the best result was this - notice the bottom line on that page. Sometimes it writes itself ...

Walt Disney Co. has asked the Los Angeles Superior Court to dismiss a lawsuit raised almost 12 years ago by a family-owned firm that owns the rights to Winnie the Pooh which alleges that Disney owes it merchandising royalties of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Disney has been mainly losing but has managed to draw this out, as far as I can tell, to this very day (18 years). On Monday, June 26, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thus sustaining the Appeals Court ruling. (cited reference)

Or maybe not. Disney managed to drag out the proceedings long enough that eventually they won the proceedings in the state of California, in the end. It seems that the other side had hired the wrong P.I. after starting to get crazy about Disney's creative accounting (there was a claim that Disney had been destroying evidence in this case, also).

And as far as I can see, the Federal lawsuit which was threatened by the rights owners isn't going to finish in the near future, even as the big D continues to rake it in, year after year.

"No restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities ... save when public security is threatened..." - Out-Law.com

Yes, it certainly seems so. I don't expect it to make much difference, though, as you'd need to take the case to the ECHR to get a disconnection overturned. Who can be bothered with that?

'Going to medical school.'

Going to law school?

And while they're there, they could work towards drafting some sort of legal framework that guarantees 'consumers' of the European Commission's policies the same basic rights as those expected under other responsible authorities - e.g., the right not to have harmful copyright extension legislation imposed by an organization that 'wilfully ignores scientific analysis and evidence in its policy making process':

http://www.out-law.com/page-9378

In the past 10 years, the most notable patent lawsuits were:

SCO vs. Linux - After hundreds of millions of dollars were blown away in lawyers legal fees, the judge rules that Linux didn't infringe on SCO's intellectual property. Best site for news here is Groklaw

3Dfx vs. Nvidia - 3dfx lost and merged into Nvidia

Rambus vs. Hynix vs Micron Technology vs. Infineon Technologies vs. Siemens AG. vs. Samsung

Rambus seemed to be suing just about everyone, and everyone else was countersuing Rambus and each other. Legal letters seem to be flying around like chairs in a Saturday night bar fight.

Hynix to pay Rambus $379 million in patent dispute

A complete list of legal updates provided by Rambus

Micron vs. Rambus

Although it does seem better to settle all patent disputes with cross-licensing as soon as possible, rather than slogging it out into bankruptcy

Rambus and Infineon settle patent dispute

Though the activity is likely to have been technically illegal, Robertson said that it is unlikely that the corporation will be punished for it.

"The maximum penalty for this offence is two years' imprisonment. But it is very unlikely that any prosecution will follow because the BBC's actions probably caused no harm. On the contrary, it probably did prompt many people to improve their security," he said.

A blog posting from security firm Sophos suggests that the BBC has committed an offence of making unauthorised modifications to a computer. Robertson said that that is unlikely.

"The offence of unauthorised modification requires a recklessness or an intent that I don't think the BBC has displayed," he said.

Section three of the Computer Misuse Act describes the need for an intent to impair the operation of a computer or to hinder access to data. Such intent is not required for the section one offence of unauthorised access, said Robertson.

The BBC did not respond to OUT-LAW's request for comment. However, a message on the programme's Twitter account suggests that the team did consult lawyers. "We would not put out a show like this one without having taken legal advice," it said.

Copyright infringement is theft from the copyright holder, not the consumer. And it IS theft.

No. It isn't.

Copyright, as a concept, was invented to ensure that there was some degree of incentive for creative works to be produced, by allowing the creator (or her assignees) a temporary monopoly in order to make bank off their effort. Copyright infringement, as a concept, exists solely due to the fact that copyright, regardless of its intentions, is a fiction due to the very nature of information propagation.

You want to talk about theft? Fine. Talk about how 99% of western culture has been branded, monetized, and is now owned by some corporation or other. Talk about how Sonny Bono and Cher stole Mickey Mouse off the American people in 1997. Talk about what the various WIPO and Free Trade treaties do to perpetuate this (Australia's high court ruled that the DMCA-style law of the day only applied if you were ALREADY breaking the law, then we signed USAFTA and are now obligated to introduce a NEW DMCA-style law, for instance [1].) Talk about how much money the IFPI have spent bribing officials in the Swedish judicial system. Talk about Fritz Hollings and the SSSSCA/CBDTPA. Talk about what these fuckers have stolen off society at large and YOU in particular.

But don't tell me that I owe the fuckers who sue daycare centres for singing 'happy birthday' a brass razoo. I don't. If you believe otherwise, then you've already lost the game.


[1] Sony v. Stevens, http://www.out-law.com/page-6200

What about some highly publicised antitrust countersuit.

Type of behaviour caught.. http://www.out-law.com/page-5811
"tying (i.e. stipulating that a buyer wishing to purchase one product must also purchase all or some of his requirements for a second product)."

Exactly. Ericcantona, the poster of this story is having a good laugh at the expense of the tin foil hat brigade frothing at the mouth over this. Especially considering what he posted is complete mis-information. Here's a quote from an informed article:

The laws order the retention of who called whom, when and for how long but not the content of phone calls. The internet log retention orders will also mandate the keeping of information on a user's activity but not the content of any communications.

A telecoms business lobby group told OUT-LAW.COM at the passing of the Regulations last year that the orders would have little impact on the industry.

"The reality is that nothing much has changed. The new legislation will make little practical difference as most telecoms providers keep certain information for billing purposes and customer records," said Michael Eagle of the Federation of Communications Services. "That information would be enough to meet the requirements of law enforcement agencies. There is no need to keep more data that you are ever likely to be asked for."

Only a fool believes everything he/she reads on Slashdot without checking out the facts first.

Under UK law (S.40 [IIRC] UK Patent Act, possibly in Europe too) as a named inventor you have a right to reasonable compensation. If you're not reasonably compensated then you can take the company to a tribunal IIRC (it may be some other legal hearing).

Compensation is considered commensurate with the profit to the company, so if the company make millions from your work you are entitled to more than just standard pay.

FWIW, http://www.ipo.gov.uk/newsletters/ipinsight-200803/ipinsight-200803-3.htm:

Compensation

Once ownership is established as yours, an employee inventor still has the right to claim a fair share of the benefits. In principle, it is a right designed to guard against an employer enjoying a windfall, while leaving the employee no better off. In practice, you will usually come to your own arrangement.

But if a court has to make an award, it will reach its own judgement of what constitutes a fair share. The pay, skill and input of your employee will be set against how well the invention has done.

See for example http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=7405 reporting on a Hitachi employee's Japanese compensation claim amounting to 14% of royalties. You can always donate the money to the EFF, or me ;0)>

Yeah, people in the UK get royaly screwed for the overpriced shit. Companies put all kind of lame excuses as VAT or shipping. Yet, it has been shown that the companies charge a lot more than they should (even considering profits!).

The typical example I give people in the UK for trying to open their eyes is the Tesco vs Levi's issue, basically Tesco (the UK Wal Mart like chain) found it cheaper to buy Levi's Jeans in the USA, ship them to the UK and sell them at a lower price than what Levi's was selling them in the UK.

Levi's sued Tesco, but the lawsuit was a stupid thing about trade marks, which IMHO was just a side issue that Levi's used to continue screwing the idiots that buy such overpriced jeans.